Joe Lansdale - Waltz of Shadows

“Enough,” Arnold said. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll tell d Ick you if I want to do anything.”

I told him everything I knew. While I talked, his eyes widened, and he started to interrupt me a couple of times, but when I paused to allow him, he waved me on. When I finished, he said, “It’s clear you ain’t seen the news today. I caught a bulletin about noon. They found Doc Parker’s wife. Doc was gone off somewhere when it happened. Story is some nuts broke in and killed her. They’re saying it was some kind of Satanist cult. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Said the law found most of the ones did it, but they were all dead in a house somewhere. Chief of Police said he figured one or more of their group got whacked out on drugs and killed the others.”

“One, or more?”

“That’s what it said. Only names mentioned were the Doctor’s and his wife’s. Christ, the guy they’re looking for is Bill?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Hard Dick Bill.”

“You got a right to be jacked around, Hank, but I don’t see why you’ve come to me with this.”

“Guess because you’re family, and I wasn’t ready or willing to talk to Beverly yet.”

“And you knew I had been in trouble and ran around with a tough crowd, and might have some insight into all this.”

“That crossed my mind.”

“Well, nothing I know is gonna be much help to you. Let’s go on up to the house. We ain’t gonna catch nothing. Fuck Zen.”

Arnold dumped the chicken necks overboard. “They can have these for free this time,” he said. “I keep ’em around the house anymore, they’ll grow together and come get me.”

We paddled back to shore, got our gear and walked back to the double-wide. Inside, Arnold poured us coffee from the thermos and got me some of his socks to put on. When I felt warm enough, I went out to the truck and got the photo album, let Arnold look at it.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” Arnold said. “You think Bill was telling things straight?”

“He might have made himself come off prettier than he should have, but he was too scared to be lying.”

Arnold closed the album and gave it back to me. He poured us more coffee.

Arnold said, “I think maybe you got the best game plan already. Go see the lawyer. Something’s fishy with the cops.”

“Thanks for listening. I guess that’s all I wanted. Someone to listen.”

“So you came to me, not having talked to me in ten years. That’s some kinda thing to break the ice with, pal.”

Arnold walked me out to my truck, cussing the dog off of me. I put the photo album in the inside pocket of my Dad’s old hunting coat, slipped it off, and put on my newer one. I stood by the truck and listened to the wind in the bottle tree.

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Arnold knew what I was thinking. He said, “Gal lived with me, Kinley, she put them bottles up there. Bet it took her month to fix it that way. She was a passin’ woman, had some negro blood in her… Believe that? There’s a change for you. Until a few years ago, I called negroes niggers, then I met this gal and she didn’t look negro, and I got in tight with her and found out, and suddenly, it didn’t matter anymore.”

“What happened to her?”

“It finally quit working out. She moved off to Memphis… But I was saying about those bottles. Kinley had her some hoodoo beliefs. Said those bottles caught the bad mojo around you, bottled it up. Got a hunch you might ought to make one of those up for your yard.”

“What are you saying?”

“None of this sounds right, from the top to the bottom. You watch yourself, cause the mojo around you is pretty goddamn dark.”

“I’ll watch,” I said. I got in the truck and cranked it. I pulled around in the drive and drove away.

· · ·

I hadn’t gone far when I heard a horn. I looked in my rear view. It was Arnold’s pickup. He was driving fast. I pulled over and got out. He screeched the tires and stopped beside me. He got out of his truck and walked around front and came over to me. I didn’t know the expression he wore.

He stood in front of me, said, “You stupid sonofabitch.”

Then, as if he didn’t have any say in the matter, his hand came up and he hit me on the side of the head with an open palm.

I rolled against my truck and spun and came up swinging. He caught my arm and grabbed my head in the crook of his elbow and pulled me to him and started squeezing.

I slammed a couple of low, awkward ones in his gut. It was like punching a side of beef, and the truth of the matter was, I didn’t have the heart to fight him. He yanked me in closer, and let go of my head and grabbed me in a bear hug, trapping my arms, lifting me off the ground. He held me to him and squeezed until I thought I’d scream, then he shoved me back against my truck and stood panting, looking at me. “You fucking stay out of my life all these years and you want me to take you in like there was never any bad blood between us. Well, fuck you, asshole. Fuck you.”

A trickle of blood oozed out of the corner of my mouth and ran down my face. I reached up and wiped it off with the back of my hand.

Arnold walked over to me, his big hands dangling at his sides. He stood directly in front of me. “Goddamn you,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. Worse. And you know what?”

“What?”

“It didn’t do a thing for me.”

“It didn’t do much for me either. You going to do it some more?”

“No.”

“Good.”

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“I know,” I said, and hugged him back.

Cold and dark, a big piece of yellow moon, purple tree shadows flying across the hood and windshield of my truck. Me driving the back roads and talking and Arnold riding and talking and hunkering close to my old humming heater, nursing the warmth.

The years weren’t brought back, but maybe a few moments were, and when I returned Arnold to his truck and let him out, we shook hands and he clapped me on the shoulder and called me Bubba. I drove away feeling good about something, and not knowing why, way things were with Bill, but feeling good just the same, and thinking the world wasn’t such a bad place after all, and everything that had happened, crazy as it was, was going to work out. Order would soon be restored to the universe, and I would feel like the fine-tuned mainspring of the cosmic clock.

But a fella can be wrong about things.

I knew Bev was going to be on the unpleasant side when I got home. My mother usually called about two hours after I left, to see if I was home yet. It was her motherly way of checking on me.

That motherly habit would reveal I had left Tyler some time ago, and should have been home.

I stopped off at a convenience store and bought a cup of coffee and the evening paper. I figured I was already in deep shit, so a few more minutes wouldn’t matter. I sat in my truck with the engine running and the overhead light on, draped the paper against the steering wheel and read it while I sipped the coffee.

The discovery of Mrs. Parker’s body was front page. SOCIALITE VICTIM OF GRUESOME SATANIST MURDER, the headline read. There was a photograph of her smiling at the camera, sitting next to her husband at some social event.

Seemed the Doc’s housekeeper had discovered the body. The Doc was notified at an out-of-town hotel-someplace in Colorado-where he was supposedly conducting business at some kind of seminar for his profession.

Due to the circumstances, and knowing it would come out sooner or later, and realizing, in a case like this, he’d be a suspect, the Doc admitted a lot of his business activities had been frolicking with a certain young lady who came forward to offer an alibi. It was also noted in the article, that numerous others had seen the Doc and the girl together, including at the time the murder had taken place.