Joe Lansdale: Waltz of Shadows

Jesus. That poor little boy had been about Sammy’s age.

I slid my arm from beneath Bev without waking her, got up and pulled on my pants and shirt and slipped out into the hallway in my bare feet and went down to the room where JoAnn and Sammy were sleeping. It was a big room with two beds and pink wallpaper that took in the sun through the open Venetian blinds and threw vibrating slats of pink over the room and the sleeping shapes of my children.

I went to JoAnn’s bed and gently brushed her hair back from her face and looked at her long and hard, soaking in all her features. Fred Bear had slipped from her arms and fallen off the bed onto the floor. I picked him up by his singed leg and tucked him into the crook of her arm.

I went over to Sammy’s bed. He was uncovered and he’d rolled over to a dry spot, because he’d wet the bed. I pulled the covers over his shoulders and he stirred and lay still.

“I love you,” I said softly to both of them, and left the room.

Back in our room, I got the. 38 off the nightstand and put it under my shirt and looked at Bev. Her back was to me and the sun was coming through a slit in the curtains. Her bare shoulder was lightly freckled, and the light made the freckles the color of strawberries, and I knew those freckles as well as I knew my own face. I loved them and had put my mouth to them and ran my hands over them so many times I could read them like braille.

I guess she felt my eyes. She stirred, rolled over and looked at me. “You’ve got tears,” she said. Her voice was sleepy and sexy and exasperated all at once.

“I’m just tired,” I said.

“Hold me.”

I took the. 38 out and put it back on the nightstand and slid under the covers and held her.

“Will you do it?” she asked. “Will you take care of Snake and Fat Boy?”

“Yeah. With some help.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes I do.”

“I’m scared.”

“Me too.”

“Hank… I’ve got to stay.”

“ I know, and it’s okay.”

“You knew all along I wouldn’t do it. They were in the room there, I could just walk in and do it. But not like this. I can’t leave the kids alone. Anything could happen.”

“And you know it’s my job.”

“I don’t know any such thing. Women can do what men do.”

“Yeah, but they don’t have to. Be honest. You could go and do it, but who do you think would be best at stalking and killing a man?”

“That sounds so immature. Why would I want to argue who’d be best at killing someone?”

“Because you want those sonofabitches dead just like I do.”

“Oh hell, Hank. I hate it when you’re right. I really do. This is the first time, mind you, but I hate it just the same.”

· · ·

We didn’t do much of anything that morning, and by lunch my stomach was so nervous the sandwich I ate turned immediately to acid. I found some antacids in a bathroom medicine chest, ate them like after dinner mints.

Right at one o’clock, me and Virgil and Arnold took the boat across the lake to Arnold’s cabin. The lake was choppy, and so was the sky. Choppy and gray as the back of a wet dog tick. Sky like that could have indicated anything from passing cloud cover to rain to hail or an incoming tornado. Not only had my life turned into anarchy, so had the weather.

Nothing was as it should be. Everything was a facade concealing instant chaos. A few days ago my life had seemed orderly. I had even reconciled with my brother. Now, here I was, in the soup, and I had pulled my brother in after me. My nephew had been murdered. I was being presented by the police and the news media, along with my family, as a child pornographer, a Satanist, a murderer, and an arsonist. My home was gone. My business was fucked. My wife was emotionally damaged. I wasn’t so good myself. My dog was dead and my kids had been frightened, and I was hanging out in a drug dealer’s house. I was dealing with a scummy cop who didn’t want his name soiled and a plastic surgeon who liked to look at dead, naked children and thought he was okay because he wasn’t fucking or killing anybody. I knew a dog named Poot, and my Andrew Vachss book had burned up before I finished it. The only thing I didn’t have were unsightly moles.

We reached the other side of the lake, tied up and got off the boat. The cold wind howled down through the pines and hardwoods and cut through us like razors.

Price wasn’t there.

Me and Arnold went around and sat on the front porch and hunkered against the cold while Virgil smoked a cigar out in the yard, thinking his own thoughts.

“I’m glad Beverly didn’t come,” Arnold said.

“I gave her a pretty good line of bullshit about how it’s a man’s job but I’m still a feminist.”

“Give self-analysis a rest,” Arnold said. “Everything doesn’t balance out. Hey, I got something for you.”

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a yellow handled pocket knife and gave it to me. It had my name stenciled into the wood.

“That’s just like the one you gave me all those years ago,” I said.

“Because it is the same one.”

I grabbed hold of the exposed part of the blade with thumb and forefinger and flicked the handle away from me so that the knife came open. I held it by the blade and looked at the edge of the knife. It was sharp and rust free.

“Can’t be,” I said.

“Because you buried it in the backyard of?e backya Dad’s old place?”

“Yeah… How’d you know?”

“Dad saw you bury it. He dug it up later and had your mother put it aside for me. She mailed it to me with a little note. I guess it was a year after I got off the farm she sent it to me.”

“You think Dad knew?”

“About you and the liquor store? No. But he knew you and me had trouble, and he thought we’d get over it and you’d want the knife back.”

“And you’ve been carrying it around all these years, knowing you were going to give it back?”

“Hell no, I was using it. But since you’re here.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Price drove up. We walked down to join Virgil. Price got out and stretched. He wasn’t wearing a suit. He had on a blue jean jacket, sweatshirt, blue jeans and high top, white tennis shoes. His face was a little haggard, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He still looked better than the rest of us. He studied Arnold. “You must be the half-brother?”

“Yeah,” Arnold said.

Price said, “I heard from Doc. I thought we’d end up getting down to business couple days from now, but Doc called Fat Boy this morning, said he had a guy was a good friend of his that wanted some kiddie porn. Told Fat Boy the friend was from out of town and in for the day and it was sort of now or never. Said the friend was nervous. Doc told Fat Boy he’d assured the friend there were cops in on the deal. Said the guy was adamant about having that security present. That crooked cops cheered him up. Doc made a point of saying how much money the friend had and that he was willing to spend it. This afternoon, five o’clock, we go to the sawmill.”

“Fat Boy bit awful goddamn easy,” Arnold said.

“Could be,” Price said. “Maybe he just wants to play the cards and see how they come out. He’s like that. But there’s another thing. He’s overconfident. He’s gotten away with some bold shit. You pull stuff like that off time after time, you begin to think God, or the Devil, is on your side. You get careless. You start to feel charmed.”

“You should know,” I said.

“Touche,” Price said. “I say we play. We come ready, we got as good a shot as we’ll get. I got two or three plans for when it’s over, how to make things look good, and they’re so brilliant I’m proud of myself.”