Joe Lansdale: Waltz of Shadows

My head a smidgen clearer, I was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming desire to know what Snake was doing. Decorating an assortment of trees, I hoped.

I looked up the muddy, leafy hill I’d slid down, and saw Snake at the top of it, pushing out of what was left of a clutch of young pines, all now broken off by debris of the plane. Something had caught the flesh on the top of Snake’s head and peeled back a big chunk of his cobra tattoo. I could see the bone of his bloodstained skull. He was limping like both legs were made of sticks and a chunk of canvas from the plane was draped around his neck like a scarf. He glared down on me with something less than admiration. He jerked the canvas fragment off and tossed it aside. He bent painfully and pulled up his pants leg and got a little gun, probably a. 22, out of an ankle holster.

He was moving slow, but I figured it was time to move on just the same. I got a leg under me and put my back to the tree and got up. Snake fired the gun and a chunk of bark jumped out of the tree on my left.

Most definitely a. 22.

I stumbled behind the tree, let myself fall on my butt so I could slide down the rest of the slope on the mud. At the bottom of the slope, it fell off dramatically and dropped through a thicker growth of brush and gave me up about six feet over a foot of creek water.

Splashing into the cold water charged me. I got my bad leg under me, which was about as supple and useful as a fence post, slopped down the creek and around a bend.

At the end of the bend, the creek went under a bridge, and it went under it through a metal culvert. The bridge supported a narrow dirt road that had given up to weeds and had probably once been a logging road.

I stumbled to the road and was about to climb out of the creek and cross it, when I saw the culvert the water was running into was mostly blocked by accumulated pine needles, leaves, and branches.

It occurred to me, that if I could ease that debris back, I could slip inside the culvert and pull it to me. If Snake wasn’t looking just right, he might not realize the culvert was as wide and deep as it was, and he’d go on by. That would give me a chance to sneak out later, and get back to Arnold and Price and the car.

It wasn’t a military plan up there with D-Day, but I didn’t feel all that good. In fact, I felt light headed and delirious from all the banging around I’d gone through and all the blood I’d lost.

I got hold o?›I got hf the debris and pushed it aside without pulling it up, and wiggled into the culvert head first, crawled on my hands and knees until only my feet were touching the refuse. I used the top of my foot to pull the stuff back down. It grew darker. The water sounded loud inside the culvert.

The pain in my leg was only a little worse than if it were being sawed off with a dull rock, and my wrist had taken on the appearance of a fleshy baseball. I used my good hand to palm the mud on the bottom of the culvert, and pulled myself forward, toward the other end, which was unblocked by nature’s dandruff.

When I got there, I cautiously stuck my head out and looked down. The water had eaten out a pretty fair drop on this side, ten feet maybe before you hit the creek and deeper water than the other side. Three or four feet perhaps.

I pulled back inside the culvert and listened to my breathing. It seemed stereophonic in there. I slowed and softened it by breathing deeply through my nose and letting it out easy through my mouth.

Back down the far end of the culvert I could hear Snake stumbling slowly along, the splashing of the creek water echoing up through the culvert like a megaphone. I hoped that the leaves and needles that had bunched there would fool him.

Closer he came, the dumber I felt. All I had done was climb into the mouth of a cannon with the fuse about to be lit. I felt about in the bed of the culvert for some weapon, but there was just cold water and mud. I checked my pockets and came up with the wadcutters and the pocket knife Arnold had given me. I dropped the wadcutters and opened the knife and held it. I noticed that the blood from my leg was coloring the water, running a dark stream over the lip of the opening and down into the creek. I hoped it had grown dark enough that if Snake looked he wouldn’t realize what he was seeing.

Snake stumped and splashed along until he reached the culvert and stopped.

I held my breath. I looked down past my legs, down the twelve foot length of the culvert. Through a rent in the debris, I could see Snake’s legs. He hesitated only a moment, then I heard him scrambling up the side of the bank and onto the road.

I listened for footsteps above me, but heard nothing. Was the road too thick to hear? Had I fooled him? Or was Snake standing up there thinking things over?

Then I knew what he was doing. He was leaning over the edge of the road, toward the open end of the culvert. I could smell him and I could see his shadow darkening the opening, blocking out the last red drips of the sun.

I scooted up close to the mouth of the culvert and cocked the knife back and held my breath. Snake hung his head over and down, looked inside. I could see the little dark caverns where his eyes lived, but not the eyes themselves. It was strange, being looked at that way and not seeing the eyes that were looking. He dropped the hand with the. 22 in it into view and I pushed off with my good leg and went straight at him and jabbed the knife toward one of those dark spots where an eye lived.

Snake snapped his head to the side, and my blade went into this cheek, hit bone and ripped free of his flesh. He bellowed and the sound of it bounced about my close quarters and the. 22 went off and put a shot into the bank around the culvert. He tried to get his hands back and?ands bac under him to pull himself up, but I got my injured arm around his neck and tugged him, pulled him off the road and halfway over the lip of the culvert. I tried to hold him that way while I plunged the knife into the side of his neck, but he fell the rest of the way off the road and over the edge. The momentum of his fall, and me still holding him, jerked me out of the culvert and sent me banging into the bank beneath the culvert, tumbling into the water below, on top of him. As we fell, I saw the. 22 pistol come free of him, heard it hit somewhere on the far bank, then we were underwater.

I came up as he did, pivoted on my good leg and got my bad arm around his neck from behind, tried to choke him with it. He got his chin down and I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. It was like trying to squeeze the bone out of the leg of a rhinoceros.

I brought the knife around and jabbed him in the side. He made a sound like a man straining to shit, swung his right elbow back and caught me in the side and made my legs buckle. But I hung on. I knew if I let go of him, he was going to be mad.

I put my foot in the back of one of his knees and pushed, keeping my grip on his throat with my arm. His leg bent and he went down again, face first under the shallow water. I went under with him a little, then he arched his back and lifted me into the air, raised his head slowly. I was losing my grip on his throat. He had his fingers buried into the ball that had once been my wrist and he was squeezing so hard it was giving me hemorrhoids. I brought the knife around, over my forearm, yanked my forearm away, and jerked back with the knife.

He twisted sideways and sent me backwards. I hit on my back in the water, got my good leg under me and rolled to my right, started climbing onto the bank, but it was too steep and too muddy for me to make it all the way. I turned on my back and held the knife cocked and ready.

Snake had wobbled to his feet. He stood in the middle of the creek with a hand over his throat. Wet darkness seeped between his fingers. The final redness of the dying sun bled over his already bloody head, the deep wound I had made in his cheek. He staggered toward me, almost reached me, then went to his knees in the water. He was making a sound like a pig with slop in its nostrils. He heaved and spat blood and crawled through the water and got up on the bank beside me, and lay on his belly. I turned my head to look at him, and he turned to look at me. He went to an elbow and pushed over on his back and slid down the bank until his feet were in the water. He lay there and held his throat and made a rasping noise, worked his mouth like a guppy.