Joe Lansdale: Cold in July

The papers also identified the silver-haired man. He was a rich industrialist and his house was found to be full of snuff films. Some in which he starred and personally delivered the coup de grace. There was lots of speculation about the whole thing, but none of it seemed to be leading to us, so I quit worrying.

Anyway, I was out back drinking my beer, thinking about all this, and Ann came out and said, “That man is here to see you,” and from the way she looked and spoke, I knew who it was immediately.

“I want him away from here,” she said. “Once is enough. I won’t have you going off with him again, for anything. Not even a Coke. Don’t offer him anything.”

“All right,” I said. Ann hadn’t forgiven Russel for Jordan, and even though I had never been able to explain to her the whole of the night at the house, she had a good enough idea what went on there without me giving it to her in painterly detail, and she blamed him for that too.

She called Jordan in with a promise of milk and cookies, and he bailed out of the swing and ran by me and grabbed my leg. I picked him up and held him in front of me. “Love you, Daddy,” he said.

“I love you too,” I said, and holding him was like touching some source of power. The emptiness I feared went away and I was filled again. For a time. I kissed him and put him down and patted him on the butt. He ran in after his mama, and I went on through the living room and outside.

Russel was in the drive leaning on Rodriguez’s Rambler. I walked over and shook his hand, but was easy about it. From the way he held it out I could tell his arm still hurt.

“I was trying to decide if I should come by or not,” he said. “I didn’t want to upset Ann. I saw her looking at me through the window, and I figured she’d go get you. I shouldn’t have come, I guess.”

“I wanted to see you,” I said.

“I see the bars on your windows are gone.”

“I felt like a canary. I got rid of them.”

“Good. Jim Bob said to tell you the burglar’s name was William Randolph. Mean anything?”

I shook my head. “I had forgotten about that, to tell you the truth. How’d he find out?”

“You’ll like this. He called Price, said he read in the papers about Freddy Russel, and since that was Freddy Russel, the guy you shot couldn’t have been him, and he figured Price owed you something after sicking those thugs with the bats on us.”

I laughed. “That sounds like Jim Bob.”

“Price didn’t even argue. He gave Jim Bob the name. He probably figures we were in on the action at that house, one way or another, but I don’t think he cares. I think he’s glad it’s over, and he’s probably glad the scum bit the dust. It’s not his job to help the FBI protect anyone anymore.”

“How is Jim Bob?” I asked.

“Good. Nothing bothers him long. He might even be the superman he thinks he is. The Mexican girl we got out of the house is taking care of him. He’s already getting around pretty good. He’s going to send the girl home to Mexico next week, give her a little nest egg to take with her.”

“That sounds like him,” I said. “What are you going to do now?”

“Nothing left to do. A man that can kill his own son, no matter what he’s done, is bankrupt of something. Soul. What have you. I put his photographs with that foul tape and burned them up, tried to burn up anything I might have felt about him. But I couldn’t. You know, I still love him after all he’s done, and I never really knew him. This won’t mean much, Richard. But if I could have had the kind of son I wanted, I would have wanted him to be exactly like you.”

“It means a lot.”

“I only wish I hadn’t gotten you involved in this mess.”

“You couldn’t have stopped me.”

He took me then and hugged me, and I hugged him back. It made me think of the last time I saw my father, before he went away and put the gun in his mouth.

When we pulled apart, Russel said, “That’s all I got in me.”

I was trembling slightly. It was hard to speak.

He walked around and got in the car and rolled down the window. “I got this for Jordan.” He reached a red toy fire truck off the seat and gave it to me. “You don’t have to tell him it isn’t from you. Maybe when he gets older, if he remembers that night… well, you can tell him… just tell him, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Keep the shadows away, Richard.”

“I’ll do my best, Ben.”

He backed the Rambler around and rolled down the drive and I waved at the retreating car, not knowing if he could see me in the rearview mirror or not. I turned and started back to the house. There was a loud report. It made my blood surge and I felt the exhilaration I had felt that night of the shooting. I whirled, realized immediately that the old Rambler had backfired. The rush went away. I felt scared then, because for a moment, the sound, so like a gunshot, had flooded me with a tide of clear, clean joy. And now that the tide was gone, I was disappointed. That’s what frightened me. The disappointment.

“No shadows,” I said aloud, and as I walked through the front door, I repeated it like a charm against evil. “No shadows.”