“Now, sir, I think we’d better talk about this.”
“Oh, we’re going to talk about it all right,” I said, “but you’re going to sit down now or you’ll be laying down in a second. Now take that seat.”
The chair looked maple but wasn’t as strong. But it didn’t feel like he could bust it, either. So I got him sat down and had him put his hands behind his back and got the rope out. The whole time he was still talking a blue streak, but I didn’t pay no mind. I worked the rope through the slats of the chair and around his wrists. I had him lace his fingers together behind his back so his thumbs were pointing up in the air and got to work tying the knot. My fingers aren’t so nimble as they were, but I got it as tight as I could. I gave my hands a shake to get the sting out, picked up the pistol, and pulled another chair so I was facing Jackson from about six feet away, close enough to hear him good but far enough away to get a shot off if I had to. He was still talking.
“. . . and I want you to know the truth. I mean, don’t you think you should hear the truth first?”
“All right, son,” I said. “Let’s hear your piece.”
I can’t remember all of what he said, but you should have heard it. A preacher caught in his neighbor’s bed couldn’t have talked any faster. He was wearing that mask again, but I saw where it didn’t fit him around the eyes. Those were just cold; they didn’t move or change with the rest of his face. You spend enough time around convicts and criminals, you learn these things. It’s the eyes every time. He thought he was going to sweet-talk this hillbilly old man and he slipped on that mask like it was nothing. You might think it’s brave to be able to smile at a man who’s got you tied up and covered cold, but it wasn’t, not this time. Even though I had the drop on him, he’d taken a look at my old jeans pulled up past my belly and my work shirt older than he was and didn’t see a man like him staring back. He was just saying “good dog” to a bad one.
I opened up the bag at my feet and took the whetstone out.
“Maybe you think that you can try and tell me things are different now than they used to be,” I said, “but I lived back then and I live right now and I’m the one who knows both. So let me tell you, there’s always been fellows like you who think they’re slicker than owl shit. Folks always wanted to get a piece of action before they were married, and quite a few always have. There’s always been whiskey and beer and girls who like to try it as much as a man does. And there’s always been bastards like you who think that’s the easy way to get in a woman’s drawers. I saw Mandy that morning. I saw her face, goddamn you.”
“Now, wait a minute!”
“Be quiet now. I know that Mandy’s telling the truth and you ain’t. But even if I wasn’t sure, it wouldn’t matter to me. She’s my blood and under my care, and you’re not.”
With that I pulled out the knife, long with an elkhorn handle and hard iron blade. That got him sitting up.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I liked to hear the fear that he couldn’t keep under control anymore. I scraped the knife against the grain of the whetstone, real slow, just for show. The blade was already sharp enough to split a hair, but I liked watching the scraping sound run up and down his spine with each pass.
“Well, now, I thought a long time about what to do with you. First thought was just to blow your goddamn head off, and it’s not much more than you deserve. Not much more, but more just the same. So, like I told you, you just sit still and take what’s coming to you and you’ll wake up tomorrow.
“So I thought about cutting your pecker off to make sure you can’t ever do again what you did to my Mandy. And I like the sound of that.”
I let him stew on that for a second.
“But it wasn’t your meat alone that did what you did. It was your hands that held her down and let you get your way. So that’s how I decided I’d make sure you’d never hold another woman by the throat again. I’m going to take off your thumbs.”
The chair proved itself right then; it didn’t break. Jackson was breathing hard and high now, and his mask was gone and he looked cold and crazy at the same time.
“That’s insane,” he said.
“Did I say how I used to be a prison guard?” I asked him. A second full of nothing passed, so I went on. “Back in 1959, I was still pretty green, I drew the short straw for some serious overtime, driving a convict to Kansas so that he could be hanged. That’s a long road, taking a man to die. Jimmy Carson and I drove Convict Rodriguez for six hours and he never said a word to either of us but ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ He’d killed his wife and the man she was in bed with, so many shotgun shells that they were more puddles than people when he was done. And they were going to hang him for it. He knew he had to answer for what he did, so he didn’t hold it against us for doing what we had to do. And my whole life I’ve thought more of that hanged son of a bitch than a lot of people who never did wrong, but never did right, either.”
While he chewed on that I turned my back to him and cocked the pistol. I didn’t want him to see I needed two hands to do it. Then I went to the phone on the counter and dialed three numbers.
“Nine-one-one emergency services. What’s the nature of your emergency?”
“Miss, my name is John Hendrix. You need to send an ambulance and a squad car over to 1526 Glen Avenue, apartment number three-oh-nine.”
“Sir, what is the emergency?”
“Well, there’s going to be one bleeding man here in a few minutes. I’ll try to sop it up, but you better send that ambulance quick. The squad car will be for me. Tell ’em I won’t kick when they come.”
“Sir—”
“I’m John Hendrix.”
I heard the noise behind me and just got the gun in my hand before Jackson hit me from behind. My knee gave out with a pop I could feel inside my head and we were down on the ground, me on my stomach and Jackson on my back. My arm was trapped under my chest, the pistol in my face and gun oil in my nose.
Damn old fingers too rotten and sore to tie a goddamn knot the right way, that was what did me in. Jackson had gotten himself untied while I was talking, and now he was breathing in my ear as loud as a lover. His left arm wrapped around my windpipe and squeezed. And I didn’t see my whole life like they say you do. No, all I saw was what Louise was doing right at that moment, sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee wondering where I’d gotten myself off to. Right then I wished hard that I could be pulling into the driveway with a bit of breakfast for her. But there wasn’t any time left to feel sorry for myself.
I got my head lifted up the floor until the back of my head touched Jackson’s cheek. That just made it easier for him to choke me and he squeezed and whooped. But it gave me enough room to lift the pistol off the ground. I had to twist my wrist as hard as I could and my fingers were shaking with the strain but I got the end of the .38 between my teeth. One hard push and the barrel scraped the roof of my mouth until the angle felt right. I pulled the trigger.
The bullet blew out the back of my head and smacked right into Jackson’s face. He fell on top of me and we both bled out together on his living room floor. Which is good enough, I guess.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to all who helped me shape these stories, and the editors and publishers who gave them their first homes. In particular, thanks to Todd Robinson, an early champion of these stories as a writing-group partner, editor, publisher, and friend. Read Thuglit.
Thanks to Nat Sobel, who waited for seven years while I got my act together.
Thanks to Megan Lynch for taking a chance.
Thanks to the writers who have made my time in television feel like a paid M.F.A., in particular Bruno Heller and Tom Szentgyorgyi.
Thanks to Elizabeth, who doesn’t mind living in a world where everything talks.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JORDAN HARPER was born and educated in Missouri. He has been a music journalist, film critic, and TV writer. He is currently a writer-producer for Goth
am. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Elizabeth.
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CREDITS
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover lettering © by Joel Holland
Cover photograph © by Nancy Newberry
Title page photograph by Suet Yee Chong
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LOVE AND OTHER WOUNDS. Copyright © 2015 by Jordan Harper. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-239438-5
EPub Edition JULY 2015 ISBN 9780062394392
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Love and Other Wounds Page 13
