Joe Lansdale: Cold in July

Jim Bob nodded up the stairs, and went that way. Russel went right and I went left, the shotgun in front of me. I came to a door and opened it and found a closet. None of the coats tried to get me. I closed the door and went around the corner and down the hall, and then the world started rocking and rolling with the sound of gunfire. It was coming from upstairs. I started to turn, then heard running feet. I whirled and crouched, and one of the men from the van came beating toward me. When he saw me, he tried to slow down, and it was like one of those comic takes, where the comedian does a kind of choppy half-step, half-skid backwards. But this guy wasn’t a comedian. His hand went inside his coat and it came out with a revolver and I cut down on him with the Ithaca and took him full in the chest. He spun and went down, but rolled on his back and got to a near-sitting position and took a shot at me; the bullet burned along my neck. I pumped another load into the Ithaca and fired again and caught the guy in the chin and the shot made his head cock way too far back and he flopped on the floor and the hall filled with the odor of shit and gunpowder.

Shooting had been going on all the while, and I decided to go on down the hall and see what was there, then go back to the stairs and hope for the best. I jumped over the dead man and went around the corner expecting gunfire, but finding only a big empty kitchen with the makings of a sandwich on the counter. The guy must have been fixing himself a snack when the shooting started. I ran back up the hall and took a left toward the stairway, saw a blur of movement, dropped to one knee, and pumped a load into the Ithaca as I did. A man with one arm dangling limp and awkward at his side, an automatic hanging from one finger like a knickknack on a hook, stumbled backwards and fell against one of the big windowpanes that made up the front of the house, and began to slide down it, leaving a road of blood on the glass. Russel came into view, walked over to the man, put the. 357 to the top of his head and shot him.

“Russel,” I said.

He wheeled on me and the revolver cocked, then lifted up. His eyes were stoned looking and his face was as white as a Ku Kluxer’s sheet.

“Stairs,” he said.

There was gunfire up there, and when we got to the turn in the stairway, we found a Mexican. Not the one we were familiar with, but another. The top of his head was gone.

We went over him, on up fast, then a door came open at the top of the stairs and there was a scream like a dinosaur in pain, and Jim Bob came flying out, smashed against the wall and melted onto the landing. He had lost his hat and like Russel his eyes were wild looking and his face was dead white. He still had the sawed-off in his hand. The. 38 was gone from its holster.

It wasn’t Jim Bob screaming. It was the one Jim Bob called the Mex. He stumbled out of the doorway and onto the landing. The front of his shirt was dark and wet and the material sucked into his chest when he breathed. He looked as if he were wired up on something.

Jim Bob rolled his head toward us. “Shoot the motherfucker,” he yelled. “I gave him both barrels.”

Russel’s. 357 rode up and bucked and the Mex’s head snapped hard right and back around as if on a spring. Half his face was gone. The Mex reached down and grabbed Jim Bob by the leg and slung him at us. Jim Bob hit me and I went back, fell over the dead Mexican on the stairs. Russel was still where he was.

The Mex was coming down the steps after Russel like the Frankenstein monster. Russel lifted his gun hand and used his other hand to brace his wrist and he shot the Mex in the nose and the Mex doubled forward and tumbled down over Jim Bob and me and the other Mexican.

Russel continued up the stairs. Jim Bob got to his feet, broke open the sawed-off, and got two shells out of his snap shirt pocket and loaded the gun and flicked it shut.

I got hold of the Ithaca, which I had momentarily lost, and I went up after Jim Bob. Russel went through the door just ahead of us, and we rushed in after him.

The room was the room where they had made the video we had seen. A video camera was on a tripod at the far right, and another lay overturned on the floor. A third without a tripod lay on the corner of the bed. A man lay on the bed too. It was the man I had seen going up the stairs ahead of Freddy; I recognized his suit. He was lying on top of the girl. I couldn’t tell anything about her. I could only see the bottom of her naked feet, her arms thrown out as if in crucifixion, and her black hair spread against the white sheets like an oil spill on snow.

“Freddy and that skinny fuck are around here somewhere,” Jim Bob said. “Them and this guy and the Mex were in here when I came in. The skinny guy was putting the meat to her.”

I went over to the man on the bed and grabbed him by the collar of his suit and pulled him off the girl. He rolled face up. He looked like a man that had never had to work. He had very fine silver hair and a matching mustache. He. must have been fifty at least. Old enough to have been the girl’s father. Jim Bob had shot him several times in the chest and crotch. With the. 38 most likely. The wounds were small.

I looked at the girl. She didn’t move anything but her eyes. They rolled toward me. They were the color of old pecans. The nipples of her small breasts were uncommonly large and wide and matched the color of her eyes. Her pubic hair was so neatly trimmed it looked like little fur panties. Her short legs were shiny, as if oiled. I figured her for about eighteen. Under the circumstances, she was about as sexy as an avocado. I could see now that there were thin, white cords tied to her wrists and in turn, to the bedpost. I didn’t try to untie them. No time for that. I gave her what I thought was a reassuring smile. If she caught the meaning, her face and eyes gave no sign of it. She just lay there quietly, watching, perhaps resigned.

There was just the one door on the far left, where Russel was, and a closet door between the bed and that exit. Jim Bob cocked the triggers on the sawed-off, jerked the closet door open, and the skinny guy, buck naked, came out of there with a scream and a flash of knife and the blade went down and over Jim Bob’s shoulder and poked him deep in the back. Jim Bob hit the man in the stomach with both barrels of the shotgun and pulled the triggers. Red jumped out of the skinny guy, front and back, and he flopped to the floor. Jim Bob went to his knees and bent his head. The knife stuck out of his back like a quill.

Russel, without hardly looking, reached over and took it by the handle and pulled it out with a jerk.

“Goddamn!” Jim Bob said.

Russel stuck the knife through his belt and opened the door in front of him and stepped quickly to the side, but nobody fired at him.

“Freddy,” Russel yelled into the room. “I’m Ben Russel. I’m your father. I’ve come to kill you.”

I went around behind Russel and peeked through the doorway and Russel moved inside and I followed. Jim Bob got up, leaned against the door jamb and said, “That hurt, Ben.”

The room was a big office room and there was a metal desk and chair and file cabinets against the wall and a big freestanding fireplace. I saw part of a pants leg behind the fireplace, then part of a shoulder and a face. Freddy.

I jerked up the Ithaca, but a hand came down on top of the barrel and the gun fired into the floor. It was Jim Bob. “There he is, Ben, the fireplace,” Jim Bob said.

Freddy stepped out from behind it and lifted a pistol and shot Jim Bob, sent him sprawling backwards. He fired again and hit Jim Bob a second time and knocked him through the open doorway.

“I’m your father,” Russel said, and the. 357 came up, but not fast enough. Freddy shot Russel in the right shoulder and the shot knocked the gun out of his hand. Russel went to one knee with a grunt.