Joe Lansdale - Cold in July

James shook Russel’s hand and Valerie smiled, which was good as a hug any day. She seemed to like what she saw in Russel, and it was obvious Russel didn’t mind looking at her either.

“Well,” I said, “let’s get to work.”

Russel straightened the closet first, then swept and mopped the joint until it was as shiny as the White House silverware. When he wasn’t working, he talked to Valerie, and they got along just fine. A lot better than James got along with her. It burned James so bad he came up front and leaned on the counter and whispered, “What’s that old guy got that I haven’t got?”

“A hard-on?”

“Funny, boss. You’re a riot. Maybe you should get your own television show.”

After about a week, I got fairly comfortable with Russel. I even praised his work. I wanted to hate him, but I kept finding myself liking him. Now, when I looked at him, I didn’t get the vision of him on my son’s bed clutching the boy’s pajama top in one hand and holding a knife in the other. I couldn’t associate the man that night with the man working for me. I saw a man that reminded me of my father. And that made me uneasy. I’d force myself to remember what he’d done so I could get mad. But the anger wouldn’t last.

I got so content with him, I’d slip and say things about him at home. Nice things. Maybe something funny he’d’ said or done, and when I did, Ann would look at me as if I were a priest who had just announced the best use for a crucifix was scratching your ass. But I couldn’t help admiring the old guy. He was a character. He had style. Like the way he handled Jack the mailman.

Since our little run in, Jack had been less than friendly. He would deliver the mail by opening the door, giving us all a look that could turn bricks to shit, then toss the mail across the floor hard enough to send it sliding halfway across the shop.

I kept thinking he’d get over it, but finally decided I was going to have to confront him, or call his supervisor. But Russel took it out of my hands.

One Tuesday after Jack had done his trick, Russel came over and said, “So what’s with him?”

I didn’t want to bring up the night of the shooting, but I didn’t see any way out of it. I told Russel everything. It actually felt good to talk about it and get it off my chest. As the days had gone by, the incident, like a lingering chest cold, had built up inside of me again. I was sleeping lousy, snapping at Ann and Jordan, and thinking about the bad things in my life more than the good; it was a relief to let the poison out.

“I see,” Russel said when I finished, and he went back to work.

Wednesday at mail time, Russel was up front, waiting by the door, smoking a cigarette. It didn’t occur to me what he was planning until an instant before it happened. Jack came walking along like clockwork, opened the door, stuck a mail-filled hand in and cocked his wrist in preparation of a toss. But Russel grabbed the hand and bent it back and stepped outside with Jack.

Russel put his arm around Jack’s shoulders, and Jack shrugged sharply, but the arm didn’t go away and suddenly Jack and Russel were moving past the display window and out of sight.

I got nervous and went outside, and at the corner of the building I found Jack’s cap and our mail, and when I went around the corner I found the mail pouch and Jack and Russel. Jack was on the ground and there was a trickle of blood running out of his nose.

“This is against the law,” Jack said, “fucking with the U.S. Mail.”

“Next time,” Russel said, “I’ll shit in your cap and make you eat out of it. I expect you to deliver the mail right from here on out. Got me?”

Russel’s voice had been so low and straightforward, it scared me. It was the tone he had used that day in the parking lot of the day school.

“Yeah,” Jack said. All the bravado had gone out of him. He was just a big bully that had finally met his match.

“You aren’t so tough,” Russel said. “I’m a sixty-year-old man and I just kicked your ass. Get up and git.”

Jack rolled to his hands and got up. He saw me standing at the edge of the building and he turned red. I handed him his mailbag as he walked by.

“Don’t forget to pick up that mail you dropped,” Russel said. “Deliver it the way it’s supposed to be delivered. Now.”

Jack turned around and looked at Russel, and there was a hint of showdown in his eyes. But just a hint. It faded like an ice-fleck on a stove.

“Now,” Russel said in that menacing voice.

Jack swallowed, went around the corner, got his hat and picked up our mail. We followed him and watched him open the door and drop the mail inside, gently.

“Very nice,” Russel said.

Jack squared his shoulders as best he could, and walked past us. Before he was out of earshot, Russel called after him. “You have a nice day, hear?”

Lunch time I drove Russel over to Kelly’s, ordered hamburgers, fries and beers. I couldn’t help myself. There was something about the guy.

After lunch we had a couple more beers and Russel said, “I’m going to ask this straight out. You feel any different about me, Dane? I guess I’m saying, do you forgive me?”

“Does it matter to you?”

“It matters.”

I thought a moment. “I don’t know exactly how I feel. Obviously part of me likes you, or I wouldn’t be here with you buying you lunch and shooting the breeze with you.”

“Part of you.”

“I feel guilty liking you. Maybe I like you because you remind me of my father, or the way I remember my father. He killed himself when I was very young. Then, there are times when I think about that night you had hold of Jordan with one hand and had a knife in the other. You didn’t use it, but I still think about it. It’s like a snapshot in my head.”

“You know what I saw when I was holding your son’s shirt that night, Dane?”

“No.”

“My son. For some reason I saw Freddy, or the way I remember Freddy. I haven’t seen him since he was a boy, except that picture of him older that his mother sent me in prison. I don’t know if I really remember that much about him, or if I made it up in prison. But that’s what I thought of that night. Freddy.”

“Tell me about Freddy,” I said.

“I don’t know if there’s any more to tell. His memory is more like a parasite than anything else. It eats at me. He had little hands, blond hair, the same freckles on the back of his hand that I have.”

“And blue eyes.”

“Yeah, and blue eyes. I remember noticing that he had such little hands. Not just little for a baby, little hands. Not deformed, just small. My mother had hands like that. She also had the freckles on the back of one, just like me and Freddy. You know, the last thing I really remember about him is sort of sappy. It was Christmas and I bought him a red truck and I remember him on the floor playing with it. Even now, when I think of him, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. I have to look at the older picture of him and concentrate real hard to imagine him any older than five, and then I don’t do it so well.”

“What was the fly in the ointment, Russel? What happened?”

“I was the fly. I think from the day I was born I’ve been damaged goods. No bad cracks, but some hairline fissures. My dad was a night watchman at a factory and my mother took in sewing, later she had her own shop. They made a decent living and they were decent people. I can’t blame them for a thing. They did everything they could to encourage me, put me off in the right direction.”

“But it didn’t work?”

“Nope. I just couldn’t stick with anything. I got bored. I wanted everything now, not l ater.”