Joe Lansdale - Cold in July

“We all think we’re smarter than the other guy,” I said.

“I thought it more than others. I know better in a way, but hell, I still think that deep down. There’s a part of me that just can’t understand why I’ve got to go the slow route like the Philistines.”

He drank some of his beer and smiled at me. “I’m a case, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but you don’t sound so different from a lot of others. That still doesn’t explain what happened.”

“Maybe it’s just a lazy streak Dane, I don’t know. But I’d be working in some factory, making some machine mash aluminum pipe into lawn furniture, and I just couldn’t see beyond that. It was like whatever it was I was looking for was hiding and it could hide real good. I felt like I had been sent to hell. You know what hell would be to me, Dane? Working in an aluminum chair factory, mashing that goddamn monotonous aluminum pipe into chairs, the sound of those fucking machines going, cachump, cachump, and some redneck standing over me telling me to do it faster. That’s hell to me.”

“Lot of people have done shit jobs,” I said. “Me included. You don’t have to do them all your life.”

“I don’t doubt that, but for me I could never see beyond them. No future window, I guess. As time went on I started feeling empty, and then I got into the quick money.”

“Stealing?”

“Yep. I didn’t get caught when I was young. Just luck, no other reason. I fell in with some guys and we knocked off filling stations all over East Texas. Carried water pistols that looked like guns and we’d split the take. Even then I felt it was just something I was doing until I found what it was I was supposed to do. The thing that would take that part of me that was empty and fill it up.”

Russel raised his beer very deliberately and took a long, slow sip from it.

“To shorten this story up,” Russel said, “I didn’t stop doing it, and I did a little stretch later on for a grocery store robbery. I went in with my water pistol and the owner had a pistol under the counter, and his didn’t shoot water. He just held the gun on me while one of the clerks called the police. I did some time. Not much. I was young and the judge was lenient, and they didn’t know how long I’d been robbing places. To them it was my first offense.

“Anyway, I graduated to the big time when I got out. I went to Florida and got in with this professional hotel robber named Mick. He had a perfect scam. He had bellboys and elevator operators on his payroll, and when a good mark checked in, they’d call him.”

“Just business to them.”

“Exactly. Then he and I would come over at the right time, go to the mark’s room, beat the lock, which is something I got good at-”

“I know.”

“That guy g y pped you. Those locks and bars he gave you might keep a twelve-year-old kid out, but any burglar could go through that stuff like a worm through shit. You ought to get your money back.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. What about the Florida stuff?”

“We’d go into a room and take what we wanted, put it in the mark’s suitcase to add insult to injury, and just walk out. We knew all the back routes and we had the inside help. It was nothing. Got so we were making big bucks.”

“But you weren’t satisfied?”

“Nope. Same old story. I couldn’t see beyond what I was doing. I always wanted to, but couldn’t. It was like the moment was it, and once I realized that, everything just sort of closed in on me. Robbing beat the hell out of factories, but after a while it just didn’t do it. And I could never get over the guilt. I wasn’t really a born criminal. I couldn’t rationalize it the way Mick and others could. I always saw it as wrong. My upbringing, I guess. I mean I knew I was a crook and a sleaze. I didn’t feel like a debonair cat burglar, I felt like a scumbag. One time we were robbing this hotel room, and on the way out I saw myself carrying the suitcase full of loot in one of those full-length mirrors, and it hit me. It was like a picture of my life and I didn’t care for it.”

“So you tried to reform.”

“Yes, I did. I came back to East Texas. I met Jane and we got married. I started working at a plywood plant, and for a while there, the work didn’t bother me. I had someone to come home to and something to expect. Then when Freddy was born, things began to fall apart. I wanted things for the little guy and I couldn’t see it happening at the plywood plant. I got a little promotion, but it was so piddling it just made me mad. Like I said, I’ve got no patience. I want everything now. Thinking back on it, I was doing pretty good there and the promotion came pretty quick, and the next one would have too. I’d have been off the line completely and I’d have been the redneck telling the other poor bastards what to do. But I got empty again and started fucking up. I stayed mad all the time and it showed at home and work, and I got demoted and I quarreled with Jane and yelled at Freddy enough that I felt guilty. And that’s when I started doing the little jobs. I’d take weekends and go case places outside of town and I’d steal little piddling things. I mean, it wasn’t helping my income much, but it gave me some kind of purpose. Damned if I can explain it. It’s like that guy that keeps rolling the rock up the hill in hell. Gets it to the top and almost over, then the bastard rolls back on him. My life was like that. I’d almost have it whipped, then it would roll back on me.”

“Did your wife know?”

“She suspected something. Me going off on the weekends, saying I was hunting or fishing. I never came back with nothing. I didn’t even go to the fucking fish market and buy fish to bring home and fake it. It was like I wanted to be stupid. If I had gone to the fish market, I’d probably have bought fish sticks just so I could look even more stupid.

“Finally I robbed the payroll at the plant. It came in late one evening and I knew all about where it was kept by then, so I came back that night, beat the lock and the safe and stole it. One of the bosses just happened to come back for something and he saw me going out of the building. Next day it didn’t take them long to putem ed a two and two together. They let me off with giving the money back and firing me. They didn’t want any stink.”

“Sounds to me as if you were lucky.”

“That’s a way of looking at it. Anyway, you know the rest. I finally got in with some guys and did a job on a liquor store and that one cost me about twenty years. Jane tried to stay in touch, and for a while I answered her letters, but I wouldn’t let her come visit. I didn’t want her and Freddy to see me in prison. I still didn’t feel like a convict. I felt persecuted. Can you beat that? I kept thinking they’d come to their senses and let me out.”

“She sent me pictures of Freddy and kept me informed about what he was doing. Said he did well in school and played football and was a quarterback. Seemed to be good at everything. I was proud in one way, but in another I felt like the shit at the bottom of a dog pile. I even burned her letters and some of Freddy’s pictures. Decided to just let them go so they could build a life that was worth something. It was like I had gotten worse than empty. It was like the bottom had come out of me and there wasn’t anything on the other side of me, just a hole to nowhere.”

“What about your wife?”

“She hung in there for a long time. She loved me. I quit answering her letters and for a time she still wrote, but finally she quit. With the last she sent that picture of Freddy as a young man. I never heard from her again. I learned later that she died drunk in a motel in Dallas. I don’t know anything else about it.”

“Freddy?”