Joe Lansdale - Cold in July

So we started that night. The police went away except for the few who were supposed to be in the woods behind the house and the man in the ditch. Inside, we turned on the alarms and pulled the grills in place. Considering how easily Russel had gone through them before, I felt almost silly bothering with them.

The cop had food and a coffee thermos next to his chair in the hallway. Except to go to the bathroom, he didn’t plan to move. In fact, he didn’t look like he could be moved; he looked as solid as a stone gargoyle.

Price called about ten. They hadn’t seen Russel, but they had found his car. It was not far from our house, parked on a little dirt road that wound into the woods and ended at a dead end of trees and garbage that some of our less environmentally conscious citizens had tossed out. It seemed likely that Russel was somewhere in the area. Maybe creeping up on the house at the very moment. If Russel saw the cops and went away, more cops would be waiting at his car. If he abandoned the car, we still had our old plan. Wait a few days, make things look easy for him, then surprise him. We just had all kinds of plans.

I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but I was more tired than I thought; worry had gnawed me down. As I was drifting off, I tried once again to imagine Russel with little Freddy, but nothing came of it. I thought then of my own father, Herman Dane. I missed him. I didn’t know exactly why. He had never spent much time with me. He went hunting and fishing a lot and took me only once. He worked the rest of the time just to put food on the table. My mother called him names at night when I was supposed to be asleep. I think he loved me, but he always looked at me with a kind of astonishment, as if I had been landed in his house by aliens. I’ve been told I look just like him.

When I was twelve he took his beautiful Winchester rifle from the closet and loaded it in his station wagon with his rods and reels, and said he was going on a fishing trip. He let me walk him out to the car. He got down on one knee and told me he loved me and held me. That’s the only time I remember such a thing. He drove away and I never saw him again. They found him in a fishing camp with the Winchester barrel in his mouth, his naked toe on the trigger. The top of his head was gone. There was talk of too many bills and another man my mother loved. I never knew for sure. I didn’t go to the funeral.

My Uncle Ned, dad’s brother, used to say, “He was a man of honor and integrity.” I didn’t understand what he meant then, but as I grew older and heard more about my dad from others, I came to understand what my Uncle Ned meant. He lived by his word and had a simple code of justice. I suppose it could have been called a Hemingway code, or some such thing. He didn’t bother people and he didn’t allow himself to be bothered. He stood up for himself and didn’t expect others to do it. And I guess he shot himself because my mother’s infidelity was just too much. Maybe being an honorable man living in a dishonorable situation was more than he could stand.

After the suicide, my mother went into a blue funk and went away, leaving me to live with my grandfather and grandmother. Two years later we heard she had died in what was then called a tourist court just outside of Amarillo. Too many pills and too many men. I didn’t know how to feel about her.

But I never stopped thinking about my dad. The big hands (like Russel’s) holding me, hugging me. The smell of King Edward cigars on his breath as he told me he loved me. The hollow tubes of his eyes.

I doubt I really remember his eyes. That may be a thing I’ve created to remember. An extra frame slipped into the motion picture of my past. But his eyes must have been that way when he left that day. My mother was a beautiful woman.

I thought of the baby Ann and I had lost, relived that horrible scenario again. Then I thought of a few nights past when Ann’s elbow brought me awake and our horror cycle had begun. I reviewed the entire incident, ended it with me standing over the dead man who was sitting on our couch, his eye gone, his blood on our painting and wall.

Finally I tumbled down into the deepest part of sleep where the unremembered dreams live, and what happened next I’m not entirely sure of. But it went something like this:

Russel was even smarter than we thought he was. Breaking into the house earlier, leaving the doors open, had been a ploy. Instead of leaving, he had found the opening in our closet that led to the crawl space above, and he had pulled himself through the trap door and up there to wait among the rafters, wiring, and insulation. Even with the central air cooling the house, he would have been steaming up there. That was where all the heat rose and became trapped. He would have been basted in his own juices, his clothes clinging to him as damp and tight and hot as a thin swathe of tar. But he lay up there, not moving, silent, waiting. The day wore on and cooled near evening, and finally, when we were asleep, he opened the sliding trap in the closet and eased himself down, gently opened the door. That would have put him in a position to look right at Ann and me, helpless while we slept. But it wasn’t us he wanted.

He stepped out of the closet and went to the bedroom door, closed this night due to our visitor in the hall, and he cracked it open. Our cop, thinking it was either Ann or me said, “Mr. Dane?”

I heard that down there in the deep part of sleep, and loaded with fear as I was, I came out of that sleep quickly, like a polaris missile pushing up from the depths of the sea, breaking the waves and nosing the air.

But already Russel had jumped our cop, and there was a yell from Kevin and the sound of something slamming against the wall in the hall, and I was rolling out of bed, grabbing at the shotgun under it, rushing for the bedroom door.

I got out in the hall just in time to see our Vietnam vet, black belt policeman take a marvelous left hook on the chin that bounced him over his chair even as his hand was in mid-draw for his revolver. The sound of the punch and the way Kevin went down like a broken manikin told me he wouldn’t be getting up for a while.

It was me and Russel. He turned just as I put the shotgun on him and tried to pull the trigger, but found it was on safety. As I thumbed at the switch, Russel moved across the hall and knocked up the barrel of the gun, and as it was in action now, and my finger was firm against the trigger, it went off and a shot went into the ceiling, raining plaster on us like snow.

Through no great technique of my own, I went back and my feet got tangled with Russel’s and we fell halfway into the bedroom. The shotgun went sliding away, under the bed, I think, and Russel didn’t pursue it. He hit me a hard right on the forehead and my mind filled with blackness and glitter.

When the glitter fell away, I came awake to Ann yelling, “He’s in Jordan’s room!” And we were both up and running, me wobbling as I went.

I heard Jordan yell, “Daddy,” and a weakness went through me like the worst disease you can imagine. I felt like the slowest, stupidest, most mortal person on earth. I had allowed Russel to hornswoggle me, whip me, and now he had my son.

I must have been out only fractions of a second, because by the time I got up and wobbled after Russel, he had only made it halfway to Jordan’s bed, and I could see Jordan sitting up with his back against the headboard, looking at Russel.

I leaped on Russel’s back and landed with my legs wrapped around his waist and my arms around his throat. He stumbled, then ran back, smashing me against the wall so violently I felt as if my spine were being pushed out through my chest. The breath went out of me and my legs and arms wouldn’t hold and I let go of him and slid down the wall like a dying slug.