Joe Lansdale: Waltz of Shadows

“Couldn’t I carry a gun in my boot or something?” Virgil asked.

“No,” Price said. “Fat Boy or Snake might want to search you. You just get low and stay there. I’ll get the extra I got to you, provided I can reach you.”

Arnold and I got in the back seat of the car. Virgil and Poot got up front. Price climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. I looked at my watch.

Three-fifteen.

· · ·

Time we were nearing Busby it was just short of four o’clock.

We picked up Doc at an abandoned filling station just outside of Busby. He had parked his car around back. He was worried about it. He whined about it. No one gave him any sympathy. He got in the back with me and Arnold.

On the other side of Busby the East Texas woods grew thick and the land was low there; you could see a lot of swampy looking areas where the water had built up from all the rain we’d been getting. Doc directed us down a narrow road that wound into the trees. Growth there was so dense with shadow and dangling moss, it seemed later than it was.

After a ways, we came to a cattle guard and a gate made of post and barbed wire strands. I got out?s. I gotand unfastened it, and Price drove through. I hooked the gate back and got in the car and we drove on.

The road ceased being a road and became a couple of red clay ruts. On either side of us was a poorly attended pasture and no cows. A lone oil well pump nodded up and down off to the right. Woods surrounded the pasture.

We entered into the thick of the trees again, and the road was very narrow and very rough and full of holes. It bounced us so hard our guts hurt. The road veered left down a steep incline. Doc said, “Don’t go that way. You can’t get back up it.”

Price stopped. “There’s no where else to go.”

Doc pointed. Off to the right, if you looked hard enough, you saw that what you thought was all woods was partly camouflage netting. Just enough to blend in with the narrow road and the trees. It hung from a high wire, and Doc got out of the car and moved it by pulling a line off to the right, like pulling a curtain cord.

Price drove through and Doc got on the other side of the netting and took hold of another wire and pulled it, restoring the camouflage. We drove on. The limbs on either side of the road brushed the car.

“About how far?” Price asked.

“Another half mile,” Doc said.

Price stopped the car. He turned and looked at Doc. Doc was sweating. He looked to be having an attack of malaria.

Price said, “You look nervous, Doc. Don’t look nervous. You’ve come to see what you like. Remember? You get nervous, you make me nervous, and I can shoot you easy as Fat Boy… All right, mighty hunters, this is where you get off.”

I picked the rifle off the floorboard, Arnold got the shotgun, and we slipped out of the car. I took a deep breath of the chill air and looked out at the woods. I loved the woods. I hadn’t been in serious woods in years, and it had taken this kind of thing to get me back.

I looked at my watch. Ten minutes until five. By the time Arnold and I got into place, and Doc drove on down to the sawmill, it would be ten or fifteen minutes after. Provided we didn’t run into problems.

Price got out slowly and unlocked the trunk of the car and climbed in. Before I closed the lid on him, he said, “Remember, you got to watch my ass.”

I closed the lid.

Virgil was out of the car. He had the earphones in his hand. I took them and slipped them on. Virgil called Poot out of the car and adjusted something on his collar. He bent close to the dog and said, “Can you hear me?”

“Me or the dog?” I said.

Virgil looked up, said, “You, smartass.”

“I can hear you.”

Virgil held the driver side door and motioned Poot back into the car. Poot jumped in the front seat.

Virgil said to Doc, “Well, come on. I’m not a doorman.”

D?lign="leoc eased out of the back seat and got up front on the passenger’s side. He looked as stiff as a corpse. Virgil got behind the wheel and rolled down his window. Poot climbed into his lap and looked out and dangled his tongue. I gave Poot a pat.

Virgil said, “Shoot true, motherfucker. I don’t like to think I’ve made my last dollar off a whiplash settlement.”

“Watch yourself,” I said.

“Yeah,” Virgil said. He rolled up the window and sat behind the wheel. Arnold and I moved into the woods.

The floor of the October woods was full of dry leaves, so we moved heel toe to minimize the sound of our walking. As we went, I moved my eyes gently over the landscape. The trees, the leaves. Watching in case we might come upon a mass of blackbirds, and startle them to flight, alerting Fat boy and Snake there was someone in the woods. It was my guess they’d know about that sort of thing.

The land sloped down and became wet. My shoes began to take on water. We followed along the side of the slope until the land leveled off. Then we moved on toward where the light broke brightest. If my information from the Doc was correct, that would be where the saw mill and the pasture were.

“We’re starting the car now,” came Virgil’s voice through Poot’s wire and into my headset.

I touched Arnold on the shoulder and made a gesture with my hand that told him the car was moving. We went along a little faster. The ground grew soggy in the extreme. The trees thinned slightly.

We came close to where the woods broke, got down low and crawled toward the break. Near the break was a recently fallen red-bud tree. We got behind that and peeked over the trunk and through a mass of dried brush.

From there we could see the sawmill and the pasture surrounding it. The sawmill lay about an acre and a half away from us. It was big and old and clapboard grey. It had been the sort of mill where the logs had been delivered by mule and the saw blade had been under a little open air shed. A lot of work had been done on the mill to make it more of a warehouse. The formerly open air shed had been closed in.

There was a satellite dish on our side, pulling in Mothra and Reptilicus for our friend Snake.

Not far from the dish was an old fashioned outdoor convenience.

Beyond the sawmill we could see marshy pasture land. Far left, behind the mill, was a thin stand of blackgums. Way they were growing, I knew they were bordering a small branch of water. Past that, visible through the blackgums, and well behind a scattering of sick looking water oaks, was a higher level of pasture land. There was a crop duster airplane parked out there; a yellow, Stearman biplane, designed along the lines of the old World War I aircraft. Probably great help for flying in a batch of pornography now and then.

Out front of the sawmill, a Bronco and an old gray pickup were parked. The road Virgil would be arriving on, a couple of red clay tire tracks, horseshoed onto the sawmill property and died there.

“We’re almost on it,” Virgil said through Poot’s wiring. I turned to Arnold and made a one inch sign with my? sign wi thumb and forefinger. He nodded. A feeling of elation and dread came over me. My heart began to pump hard, trying to bring up blood from the South Forty. I had to fight not breathe through my mouth. I put my mind on what I was doing, tried to think of it in a rote manner.

It was late and cloudy and the sun was still short of setting, but we were facing west and I didn’t want to take any chance of the clouds clearing momentarily and a last ray of sunlight glinting off my rifle barrel. I got a hand full of dirt and ran it along the ridge of the barrel, dulling the bluing. Arnold did the same, even though any shot he might make was a little long for a twelve gauge pump, even if it was packing slugs. It was my job to make the long ones, and Arnold’s to ease up for the close work. I tried to remember how it was when I stalked deer, back before I gave up hunting. Man was nothing more than an animal, after all, a clumsy but ultimately more deadly form of animal. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, put my hand over the front of the scope and eased the rifle stock into my shoulder, lifted my fingers away gradually, hoping the glass of the scope wasn’t catching light. I was being overly cautious, but I’d learned to take Fat Boy and Snake very seriously.