Joe Lansdale - Cold in July

I didn’t know the license plate number, but I gave him a good description of the car, for what that was worth. There must have been a lot of old, blue Ambassadors around.

Though I didn’t much feel like it, I shook Price’s hand and went outside. I understood his position, but I didn’t much care for it.

Standing there on the edge of the parking lot, I thought about Russel and his son and tried to imagine them at home together; Ben on the floor playing with little Freddy, or maybe sitting around in his bathrobe Christmas morning, laughing while the boy unwrapped his presents. But these weren’t visions I could hang onto. I could more easily imagine him teaching the boy to beat a lock or hotwire a car.

Then I got to thinking about what Russel had said about my son, and I got mad again, then scared. I drove over to the day school on North Street to get Jordan early. I planned to call Ann from there and tell her I had him and where she could meet us.

When I pulled into the church parking lot I saw Russel’s Ambassador and Russel was standing over by the dumpster, smoking a cigarette.

I parked near his car, got out, made a point of. memorizing the license plate this time, and went over to him.

Russel looked at his watch. “I didn’t think your boy got out until three-forty-five.”

I swung at him with everything I had. He rolled his head like a boxer to avoid it, but I caught him some on the jaw and the punch was hard enough to move his head and send his cigarette flying out of his mouth.

I brought the left around and tried to coldcock him, but he blocked that with his right forearm and stepped back out of range of any more blows.

“You hit pretty hard for a frame builder, Dane. You got to watch dropping your shoulder and roundhousing though. Gives your punch away, takes half the sting out.”

“You sonofabitch,” I said.

“Could be,” he said, and he got out a fresh cigarette and lit it. I stood there breathing heavy as I watched him take a puff and put the lighter back in his pocket. I watched to see if his hands were trembling. They weren’t. But mine were.

“Been to the cops yet? That’s what I figured you’d do. Go straight to them. I think you’re of the opinion that I’m threatening you and your family.”

I wanted to tear back into him, but he’d taken my shots so easily, I figured, sixty or not, he could mop up the parking lot with me.

“I told you once to stay away from my family. I won’t tell you again.”

“Careful, Dane,” he said. “You keep threatening me like that, I may have to lodge a complaint.”

I walked back to my car and drove it over to the far side of the lot and got out and walked through the side door. Once inside the glass door, I turned to see if he was still standing there.

He wasn’t, and the Ambassador was gone.

I left a message for Ann at the school, told the receptionist to tell her everything was all right and not to worry, but to meet Jordan and me at the police station.

At the station, Jordan was restless and I bought him a Coke and a package of those round peanut-butter-filled crackers. He drank some of the Coke and used the can to mash the crackers into the table. That seemed to bother Price. You would have thought it was his table. I didn’t make Jordan stop.

“Who was there first?” Price asked. “You or Russel?”

“Russel.”

“Did he do anything to you?”

“No. He said he thought my son got off at three-forty-five and I took a swing at him.”

“Did you make contact?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he hit you back?”

“No.”

Price did the reshaping number with his hand and face again. “You still got nothing, Mr. Dane. The worst he could be accused of is loitering. That’s a big parking lot. He could have been planning to go in one of the stores on the other side of it; maybe he was having a smoke before going inside. He could try and press charges against you for taking a swing at him. You’ve admitted yourself that you did.”

I didn’t even feel like arguing anymore. I could see where this was going. “For what it’s worth,” I said. “I got his license number.”

“I’ll run a check on the computer. Give me the number. It won’t take but a minute.”

I gave him the number and he went away with it and came back in about two minutes. I was watching the clock.

“Local car rental. All legal.”

“I guess that leaves me where I was.”

“I’m afraid so. I know how you feel, but I can’t arrest a man on another’s say-so. Even if the one accused is an ex-con. If we arrested everyone that might commit a crime, the jail would be full long before sundown.”

“I get the picture. But you still intend to have someone watching the house tonight?”

“That’s right.”

I collected Jordan and we went outside to wait on Ann. Jordan told me a story about a little blue rabbit that could run fast, and about five minutes later Ann drove up. I told her to follow us to our favorite Mexican restaurant and I’d tell her the story there.

· · ·

Ann went through all the arguments I had given Price, and I gave her all of Price’s arguments back. She didn’t like my answers any better than I had liked them coming from Price.

“I think you and Jordan should leave town,” I said. “Stay somewhere until this blows over.”

“I don’t like that,” Ann said.

“I don’t want the idghalada, daddy, I want chips.”

“It’s enchilada, son, and don’t talk when we’re talking. It’s not polite.”

“But I don’t want-”

“Will you hush, son? I’m trying to talk to your mother. Or she’s trying to talk to me… Christ, I don’t remember who was talking to who.”

“I just want chips,” Jordan said.

“Eat the chips then,” I said, “but let mommy and me talk.”

Jordan started eating out of the bowl of corn chips, looking quite content with himself.

“I was saying,” Ann said, “that I don’t like that idea. I don’t think we should leave. He could follow us. If we went to your mother’s for example, and he did follow us, we could put her in jeopardy as well as ourselves. I say we do as Price suggested. We get a gun and watch out. We’ve got burglar alarms and bars now. That should be worth something.”

“We could take Jordan out of school a few days,” I said. “And maybe you could get some time off. I could let James and Valerie run the shop and we could all stay home for a time. Wait Russel out.”

“It seems like the best idea to me,” Ann said. “Let’s go home.”

I drove out ahead of Ann, and Jordan rode with her. I began to relax some. I began to see everything in a different light. I felt silly. Just because Russel was trying to scare me, didn’t mean he had the balls to do anything. It didn’t necessarily mean anything more than he was upset about his son, which was normal. He was certainly no cream puff, I could see that, but he was still an old man and my house was barred and full of alarms and I had a shotgun in the garage and tough as he might be he couldn’t eat lead, as they might say in a B gangster movie.

I thought about the shotgun. Like the pistol, it was something I had acquired more on the spur of the moment than by design.

About five years back, in a town close to LaBorde, some nut had broken into a house and killed a family while they slept. Two of the victims were kids. Ann was pregnant with Jordan at the time, and I guess I was overcome with paternal instincts. I had never owned a gun and had never wanted to, but I went out and bought the. 38 that had eventually killed Russel. I told Ann’s father about the. 38 on a visit to Houston, and he had given me the shotgun, told me it was better than the revolver. Said it was less likely to penetrate walls and injure family members. It was a short-barreled Winchester pump, and he gave me some double aught loads and I took the shotgun and the shells home and they went into the garage and the pistol stayed in the shoe box. As my hysteria faded, I forgot about the shotgun and nearly forgot about the. 38.