Эд Макбейн - Guns

Then he collapses to the ground, and rolls over onto his back and tries to catch his breath. He is afraid he will choke to death if he does not start breathing normally soon. His left wrist isn’t bleeding at all, the dog barely had his teeth on it before the Walther went off inside his mouth. But his right arm is bleeding very badly. His right arm looks like a piece of meat in a butcher shop, his right arm looks as raw as Jocko’s throat did when Colley looked into it earlier tonight. The dog’s teeth were easily as sharp as the knife Jeanine used, and Colley is certain he will die the way Jocko died, leaking blood from the hundreds of teeth slashes on his arm. He knows he has to stop the blood, and he decides he should take off his shirt and wrap it around his arm. But he is trembling so hard and fighting so painfully to catch his breath that all he can do is lie on his back on the trampled weeds, his eyes closed, the sunlight flickering on his lids.

The sun goes out.

He thinks he is dead.

He thinks his heart has stopped beating, his heart actually does stop beating in that instant when the blackness closes on his lids. He opens his eyes at once. The man standing there against the sun, blocking the sun, is wearing dirt-stained bib overalls, no shirt under them. His arms are long and thin and covered with hair. He is holding a shotgun in his hands, the barrel cradled on the palm of his left hand, the stock in the crook of his right arm, his right index finger inside the trigger guard and curled around the trigger. Colley looks first at the shotgun and then up at the man’s face.

It is thin and gaunt, the cheeks are sunken, there is a four-day beard bristle on the man’s jaw, the man looks like the fuckin rednecks Colley has seen in the movies — but this is New Jersey, what is a redneck doing this far north? The man’s eyes are a pale blue. Looking up into his eyes, Colley can hardly see any whites at all, the blue seems to consume the eyeballs, Colley is sure it is a trick of the light in the forest. But as the man continues to stare down at him, his mouth unmoving, his eyes unflickering, Colley begins to think this is not a man at all but is instead Death, the same Death ticking in the unseen clock in Jocko’s apartment, the same Death that’s been hounding him since nine o’clock last night when he shot and killed a fuckin police officer in a liquor store in the Bronx.

He does not know what Death wants of him, except his life.

The man suddenly reverses the shotgun, grasping the barrel in both hands. “You son of a bitch,” he says softly, and swings the stock at Colley’s head.

There is a clock ticking.

The side of Colley’s face is throbbing where the shotgun stock collided with his cheekbone. The Smith & Wesson has been taken from his side pocket, he is aware at once of the absence of its bulk. The other gun, the Walther, is probably still in the woods. He feels suddenly naked. He is lying on the floor in one corner of a wooden shack. His arm is crusted with dried and drying blood. No one has cleaned it, no one has dressed it. A woman is sitting beside him and above him in a straight-backed wooden chair. She is in her late fifties, her eyes are blue, her hair is gray. She is wearing only a soiled slip. She smiles when he opens his eyes. The clock is on a shelf behind her head. The time is ten minutes past three. He knows it is P.M. and not A.M. because there is sunshine outside the window to the left of the shelf.

“He’s out burying the dog,” the woman says. She is still smiling. There is a gold tooth in the lower left-hand corner of her mouth. She has long thin arms like the man’s and her knuckles are raw and red. The shotgun is leaning against the seat of the chair, the barrel not six inches from her right hand. “Shouldn’ta killed that dog,” she says. “He loved that dog like his own son. Why’d you kill the dog?”

“He attacked me,” Colley says.

“You had no right in them woods,” the woman says.

Colley’s arm aches. The bleeding has stopped, but he is worried about gangrene or blood poisoning or whatever — things he has only heard about and has no real knowledge of, except that he knows they can result from gunshot wounds and probably from dog bites as well — Jesus, does he have to worry about rabies, too?

“What were you doin in the woods?” the woman says.

“Taking a walk.”

“That’s posted property. Didn’t you see the posted signs?”

“No. Listen, have you got something I can put on my arm here? I’m afraid it might get infected.”

The woman shakes her head. “Shouldn’ta killed that dog,” she says, ignoring his request. “You’re gonna be in for it, he gets back.”

He wonders if he should make a play for the shotgun now, before the man gets back. He does not think the man will kill him, because if he was going to do that, he’d have done it in the woods. But he can feel the throbbing bruise on the side of his face where the stock connected with his cheekbone, and he does not want to suffer a beating when the man returns. It has been his experience that bad situations only get worse. If you do not make your move when something is just starting, then everything gets out of hand later on and it is impossible to make a move that will change the picture. The woman is sitting there smiling, she seems frail enough, he decides he will make his move now, try for the gun, blow her brains out if she gives him any trouble. The woman anticipates him. She has seen something in his eyes, she has looked into his head and seen the wheels turning. She lifts the shotgun and points it at him and says only, “Don’t.”

“Relax,” he says.

“Oh, I’m relaxed,” she says, and smiles. “It’s you better relax, mister.”

He looks at her face. She looks like a hillbilly, what are hillbillies doing here in Jersey, he thought this was a civilized state? Her hair looks like rats are nesting in it, there is something crusted on her right check, pus or whatever, her lips are thin and cracked, the eyes are blue and cold and hard over the thin long nose and the smiling mouth, gold tooth in the corner. Behind her the clock ticks away minutes, throws minutes into the room onto the dirty floor; there are minutes twisting and turning on the floor.

“What do you want with me?” he says.

“Me? I don’t want nothin with you.”

“Then put up the piece and let me go.”

“Sam told me to keep you here.”

“I’ve got money,” Colley says. “I’ve got more than three hundred dollars,” he says, and reaches into his pocket and discovers the money is gone. “Where’s my money?” he asks the woman.

“Sam took it. That was a valuable dog,” she says.

“That was a killer dog,” Colley says.

“Even so,” the woman says, and shrugs and smiles. “He was a valuable dog.”

“Okay if I get up?”

“No, you better stay right where you are.”

“I’m cramped, I want to get up.”

“That’s too bad,” she says. “Stay put.”

“Fuck you, lady,” he says, and is about to stand up when the smile drops from her mouth, the gold tooth winks out. He thinks for a moment she will squeeze the trigger and end it all right then and there. He is immediately sorry for what he said, but he is also too late. She comes up out of the chair, and before he can turn away, before he even realizes what her intention might be, she kicks out at his wounded arm. She is wearing worn and faded, laceless white sneakers, and her kick does not hurt as much as it might if she were wearing Army boots, but it sends immediate pain shooting into his skull nonetheless. He tries to roll away from her, but she lifts her foot and stamps on his arm, and then stamps on it again as if she is trying to squash a persistent bug, until finally he manages to turn the arm away from her so she cannot reach it. Her legs are unshaven, her slip is soiled, there is pus on her face, she lives in a filthy shack in the woods — but she objects to his language. She is a censor, this fuckin hag, and she has stamped her opinion onto his arm, causing it to bleed again, making her point much more emphatically than if she had, for example, merely washed out his mouth with soap. Satisfied, she sits again. Against the wall, Colley whimpers in pain.