Joe Lansdale: Cold in July

“And if the windows are rolled up?” I asked.

“Shoot through the windows, Dane,” Russel said. “Bullets break glass.”

“Oh.” Some killer I was. That hadn’t occurred to me.

“Thing for us to do now,” Jim Bob said, “is go to bed, sleep late, fix up the truck tomorrow and drive over there and wait. And then do it.”

· · ·

That night I dreamed I was standing at one end of a dusty street wearing Roy Rogers garb, lots of fringe and a white hat, and a two-holstered gun belt sporting pearl-handled revolvers. At the other end of the street was Freddy. He was wearing the suit he’d been wearing at the video store. He didn’t have a gun belt. The Mexican was off to the side holding his horse for him. The horse was the color of the Chevy Nova. Both Freddy and the Mexican were smiling. I started walking. Freddy started walking, and the closer he got to me the taller he got, until he was way up there with his head in the clouds. I pulled my revolvers, quick as the wind, as they say in Western movies, and I lifted them up and started blasting away, and Freddy leaned down from the clouds and his face came closer and closer to the ground and my bullets speckled his flesh like peppercorns, but it wasn’t bothering him. He was smiling. And his eyes were as cold as the arctic wastelands. He reached out with his hands, which had become gigantic, and took me in them and began to wad me into a ball. Great gouts of blood shot out from between his fingers.

I sat up sweating. I put my back against the baseboard and wished I smoke d.

The bedroom door opened. It was Russel.

“You screamed,” he said.

“I did?”

“Yeah. You okay?”

“Fine. Nightmare.”

“I have a lot of them.”

“And after tomorrow?”

“I’ll have a lot more, I guess. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I’m all right.”

“Well, goodnight, son,” Russel said and went out.

I almost said, “Goodnight, Dad.”

I awoke about eleven to find Russel and Jim Bob out in the garage applying putty to the license plates of the truck. The camper and hood ornament and stripes were already on it.

“What a day I’ve had,” I said.

“Yes sir,” Jim Bob said, “worked your little fingers right down to the bone. We’re gonna grab a sandwich in a minute.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Not now,” Russel said, and he smiled at me.

After we ate our sandwiches, Jim Bob opened a drawer in the kitchen and took out the guns he and Russel had chosen. He put them on the kitchen table and went out to the Bitch and got the sawed-off and the little ankle holster with the revolver in it. He went upstairs then and came back down with the Ithaca 12-gauge, a. 45 automatic and a Western style. 44. He also brought down a gun cleaning kit and several boxes of ammunition.

“Okay,” Jim Bob said to me, “I’m gonna suggest you take the Ithaca. You’re not used to shooting guns, and this one is very light and you can hit what you’re shooting at without being a good shot. Just in case you need a backup, take one of the handguns.”

I picked up the. 44. Guess Ann was right, too many John Wayne movies and cowboys books. It was in a sleek, black holster, but it didn’t have a belt and tie-down straps; the holster had a clip that fastened to your belt or waistband.

“Good choice,” Jim Bob said. “Revolvers don’t jam.”

“This is a lot of artillery to kill two guys by surprise with, isn’t it?” I said.

“The rules here are that there are no rules. We’re gonna do it quick and fast and get out. But things can happen. As the Boy Scouts say, Be Prepared. Since we’re gonna be doing this in the open, I’m gonna have us some disguises. Simple stuff. Just so we can’t be recognized easy, and with the truck worked over, well, we just might get away with it. The key is to do it quick and to move on.”

“We’re really going to do this, aren’t we?” I said.

“Damn tooth,” Jim Bob said.

· · ·

After five o’clock we started over to Freddy’s part of town. All three of us in the cab of the truck. Jim Bob driving, Russel in the middle, me on the passenger side. We had the revolvers and the sawed-off in a tow sack behind the seat. The sack was tied with a rope, and one end of the rope was fastened to the gun rack behind us. In the rack, in plain view, was the Ithaca. The guns had been cleaned and loaded and the glove box was full of extra ammunition, just in case we had to fight the Marines.

· · ·

We got to Freddy’s side of town too early because the traffic chose to be unusually moderate. We drove a few miles past Freddy’s and stopped at a McDonald’s for coffee. Russel hadn’t said a word since we left Jim Bob’s house. But he looked different. Tough again. Committed. As if during the night he had conjured up enough will to chase Old Age out of his skin. He was hard-faced, clear-eyed and level of shoulders. He looked like an old soldier about to go into battle.

At about seven-thirty, I excused myself from the McDonald’s booth and went into the bathroom and threw up my coffee in the toilet. That was getting to be a habit, throwing up. If it wasn’t killing somebody caused it, it was the heat or planning to kill someone. I washed my face and rinsed my mouth out by cupping water in my hand. I studied my face in the mirror. It was like after I had killed the burglar, just the same. No sign of anything on it. Just good old Richard Dane, husband and father, would-be vigilante.

I wondered if there would be much blood when we did the killing, and I wondered if they would scream. I wondered if Russel really would be able to make Freddy understand he was his father, and if it really mattered in the long run. I guess it mattered to Russel.

I rinsed my mouth again and went back and sat down next to Jim Bob and tore up my paper coffee cup, and at seven-thirty we left and headed back to Freddy’s part of town.

It wasn’t dark when we got there. The sky was showing gray and there was a haze of light, but the days were getting longer and they had a way of dying slowly. There was still plenty of light to see by, to shoot by, to be shot by. I felt as if we were waving a flag with Identify Us written on it.

We cruised some streets near the subdivision where Freddy lived, killing time, thinking about what we were about to do, checking our watches.

Jim Bob reached some things from under his part of the seat and tossed them into Russel’s lap. “The disguises I promised.”

One item was a cap with hair attached to it. The hair looked like the stuff Raggedy Ann and Andy have on top of their heads, the same carroty orange. Jim Bob took off his cowboy hat and hung it on the gun rack and reached for the cap from Russel and put it on. The orange hair hung down over his ears and almost in his eyes. He got a pair of sunglasses off the dashboard and put them on. All he needed was a red, round nose and some floppy shoes.

Russel handed me a black wig and took a blond one for himself. There was a can of blacking there too, and Jim Bob said, “Make a mustache or something with that stuff.”

Russel put on the wig and opened the can of blacking, rubbed a little on his upper lip and put a dab on his chin, passed the can to me. I put on my wig and made myself a thick mustache with the blacking, assumed I looked like Groucho Marx in a Beatle wig.

I put the blacking in the glove box and checked my watch.

Nine minutes to eight.

As we turned down the street that led to Freddy’s house, Russel took hold of the rope that was attached to the bag full of guns and pulled it up.

“Careful,” Jim Bob said, “them sumbitches are loaded.”

“I know that, goddamnit,” Russel said.

The brave assassins get jumpy. I realized I was breathing through my mouth and that I felt a touch light-headed.