Joe Lansdale - Cold in July

Jim Bob got the jack, tire tool and four-way tool out of the trunk, jacked up the front of the Rambler while Russel quickly loosened the bolts. Rodriguez came out to smile at us with his bad dentures.

“Good tires?” Rodriguez said.

“Best Sears sells,” Jim Bob said. “Would I jack you on tires?”

“You might do that,” Rodriguez said.

“They got tread on them and they hold air,” Jim Bob said, “and that’s a sight more than I can say for these dudes. Now run along and play and let us work.”

“Make the bolts tight,” Rodriguez said, and walked off.

When he was out of earshot, Russel said, “Can he be trusted?”

“Wouldn’t have brought him in on this if I didn’t think he could,” Jim Bob. said. “I’ve used him before, couple of times. Didn’t need him either time, but I was kind of comforted knowing he was there.”

“Yeah,” Russel said, “but we get hit we got to get to him in time.”

“Be an optimist,” Jim Bob said. “I am. Gets you through life happier than a lizard.”

“What about guns?” Russel asked.

“I got us covered on that.”

“When I shoot Freddy,” Russel said softly, “I don’t want it to… I want something that will take him out. You know what I mean. I don’t want him to suffer. Just bam and it’s over.”

“It’s how you use what you have,” Jim Bob said, “but I’ll try and get something with some punch. I’ve got a. 357. That could be the thing. I also got the sawed-off and an Ithaca 12-gauge.”

“I don’t like the idea of a shotgun somehow,” Russel said. “It seems… messy.”

‘It is messy,” Jim Bob said. “It’s all messy… Look, you want to back out of this plan, suits me.”

“You back out,” Russel said, “and I’ll still go through with it, one way or another.”

“All right,” Jim Bob said. “I’ll get you something that’s a stopper. It’ll be up to you to put the bullet home.”

“I used to be able to shoot,” Russel said. He took off the old tire and I rolled the new, mounted one around to him and he put it on the wheel stubs and put on the lug bolts and Jim Bob let the jack down. Russel tightened the lug bolts, and we went around back to replace the other two.

When we were finished, Russel stood up and wiped his hands on his pants and said, “I want him to know who I am, and what I’m doing,” he said. “But I don’t want him to hurt much. I want it to be quick. That’s why I want the right gun, Jim Bob. You know what I’m saying?”

“I know,” Jim Bob said.

I drove the Rambler and Jim Bob and Russel went in the pickup. At the house, Jim Bob seated us at the kitchen table and gave us beers, then went upstairs and came back down carrying pistols.

He put one of the revolvers on the table.

“A. 38, short-barreled, no sight. A belly gun. I thought I’d use it and the sawed-off double-barrel I got in the Bitch’s trunk. That way I’ll have some insurance should the Mexican get into things. I got a hunch both those boys carry guns.”

“The. 357 is for me?” Russel said.

“Yeah.” Jim Bob reached in his shirt pocket and took out a little plastic case and put it and the. 357 on the table next to the. 38. “There’s your ammunition,” he said. “I’ve got a speed loader for you and a holster. You might want to wear one of my sport jackets so you can keep it out of sight.”

“Sport jacket?” I said.

“Well, I don’t wear it much,” Jim Bob said. “It ain’t my style.”

“I can believe that,” I said.

“I guess we’re set,” Russel said, looking at the gun as if someone had shit a turd in the middle of the table.

“I’ve got a snub-nose. 38 in the trunk of the Bitch with an ankle holster. You can wear that for backup.”

“That’s all right,” Russel said.

“I’m not asking, I’m saying. I’m still running the show here, and I say you wear the ankle holster. None of this suits you, I got a couple more guns upstairs,. 45 automatic, a. 44 western style revolver and an Ithaca 12-gauge. All this is cold stuff, by the way. No way it can be traced unless we get sloppy and leave them lying around with our fingerprints on them.”

“Or they find your bodies,” I said. “Have you thought of that? They just might outshoot you.”

“I’ve thought I might get wounded,” Jim Bob said, “and that’s as far as I’ve thought. I won’t let myself think beyond that. Last two times I didn’t even get that. Came out without a scratch.”

“Was there shooting?”

“First time I bluffed. Second time there was shooting. I shot a little faster.”

“What now?” Russel said. “What’s our next step?”

“We leave the guns for now and start checking Freddy out,” Jim Bob said. “Follow him around for a few days. Find out where he goes and when, and figure how hard or how easy this is all going to be. We get his program down, then we make our own program. Then we do it.” Jim Bob turned to me. “I got the Rambler so if we needed a backup car, something less conspicuous than the Red Bitch, we’d have it. Ben and I’ll do the first watch in the truck. We find out anything that needs you and the Rambler, I’ll call you here. We may just want to switch cars so they won’t be seeing the same one all the time and get suspicious. Guess that’s all you need to know for now.”

“All right,” I said.

“Before you say that,” Jim Bob said, “understand exactly what you’re into. You’re helping plot a murder. We’re going to kill a man and you are an accessory to the deed. You don’t get caught, you got to go through life living with it. Think you can?”

“I don’t like the idea,” I said, “but if I went away now I’d still know you were going to do it, and my knowing is just as bad. I’m going to end up living with it one way or another.”

“I just want it understood,” Russel said, “that when it comes to Freddy, I do the shooting, Jim Bob.”

“No promises,” Jim Bob said. “Looks like Freddy is going to give me a ventilator shaft, I’m taking him out. I’ll do my best to do it your way, but I’m not putting my head on the block. I don’t go that far for anyone. Thing is we’re going to do it, and that’s enough.”

“When do we start?” I asked.

“Tomorrow morning,” Jim Bob said. “Early.”

Next morning, well before light, Jim Bob and Russel drove away in the pickup. I stayed around the house and killed time. I had an early breakfast of fried eggs and burned toast and too-strong coffee. Later, about eight, I had a muffin and a glass of milk. Before noon I drank a beer. At noon, I ate a sandwich. I had some iced tea. I watched television; about half of a monster movie where irritated puppets were destroying a cardboard city. Where were The Three Stooges when you really needed them?

I was as nervous as a witch during the Inquisition. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see my wife and son. I wanted to go fishing.

I went over and sat by the phone and looked at it.

It wasn’t intimidated. It didn’t ring. I stopped looking at it. I picked up a magazine about hog raising and read about ear mites in the South; they seemed to be a problem, but nothing that couldn’t be defeated. I wondered if Jim Bob’s hogs had ear mites. I wondered what the hogs thought about it if they did. I even tried to see the ear mite’s side of it. The phone still didn’t ring. It knew I was really watching it out of the corner of my eye. A watched phone never boils, or something like that.

I went upstairs, not to snoop, but because I had to do something. I was about ready to crawl along the wall like Spider Man. The door to Jim Bob’s room was open and I went in there. There was a big table with a computer on it and some computer manuals. There was a row of books next to his bed. The books were all Westerns, Louis L’Amour and T.V. Olsen. There was a shotgun on a deer-antler gun rack over the bed. I went over and tested the tips of the antlers with my finger. Not that sharp. That was all right. I wasn’t that sharp either. I was involved in a plot to kill a man I didn’t know and had never so much as spoken to. There was already one man dead by my hand, and I didn’t even know his name.