Joe Lansdale: Devil Red

He cocked back the cane knife and I swung the bat at him, hit him in the shin. He barked and stumbled. I hit him again, this time in the side. I heard him grunt and he dropped the cane knife at my feet. I put one foot on it and pushed it back and away from me, into the shadows.

I heard Leonard’s bat come down hard, and I heard him say, “How do you like it?”

But I had my own business. The giant tried to get up and I hit him across his broad back. He made with another grunt but got up, and I swung for his kneecap. He went down screaming, rolling on the floor, clutching at his knee. His shadow rolled and crawled along the wall with him.

Leonard said to his man, “You got some money?”

The guy on the floor, who I figured was Thomas, was only wearing undershorts. Just as a fashion note, his and Chunk’s shorts did not match. He said, “You robbin’ me?”

“Nope,” Leonard said. “I’m takin’ back somethin’ you took that don’t belong to you. Where’s your wallet? And you better hope there’s money in it.”

Thomas had one hand up, to try and ward off the bat. He was otherwise stretched out on the floor, his head lifted a little.

“My pants are on the floor, by the bed. Wallet’s in the back pocket.”

“I’m on it,” I said. I went over and found his pants and took out his wallet and went over to the window where the moonlight was shining in. I stood to the side so I could watch the big man on the floor. He was still rolling around moaning and clutching at his knee. I figured I had destroyed it. It had been one hell of a swing.

“He’s got maybe three hundred dollars,” I said.

“Take a hundred,” Leonard said, standing over his victim, the bat raised. “That covers what’s owed, plus a bit for our time and him trying to shoot us, and a little extra for the bats.”

I took out the hundred and dropped the wallet on the floor. I looked at the girl. She was kind of pretty, or would be with twenty pounds on her. The last meal she looked to have had probably came out of a needle and didn’t have taste. I wanted to save her, of course. I wanted to save everyone. I wanted to be somewhere else as well, and I wanted to be someone else, and I wished I hadn’t flunked algebra in high school.

I held up the hundred. “Got it,” I said.

“Good,” Leonard said.

“You’re crazy, man,” said Thomas. “I’ll come for you.”

“I don’t think so,” Leonard said. “You’re a fuckin’ coward.”

I saw the man turn his head and look at the gun he had fired. It was on the floor where Leonard had disarmed it. It was maybe six feet away.

Leonard said, “That’s right, go for it. I’d love to make a homer with your head.” Leonard lightly tapped Thomas’s shoulder with the ball bat.

I could see by the way Thomas’s shoulders drooped that hope for the gun had gone the way of his young dreams. He was screwed and he knew it.

“Let me leave you with two bits of advice, one verbal, the other demonstrative,” Leonard said. “First, don’t rob and hurt old ladies. Second,” and with that Leonard brought the bat down on Thomas’s hand where it rested on the floor. The scream Thomas let out crawled up my back and nestled at the top of my skull and took a shit.

“That’s the demonstrative tip,” Leonard said. “That’s to let you know messin’ with and hurtin’ an old lady, that’s gonna get you hurt. You come back, you touch her, next time they find you it’ll be with this bat up your ass and your dead mouth wrapped around Chunk’s dead dick.”

Thomas was holding his hand, which, in the moonlight, looked kind of flat to me. He was breathing fast and lying on the floor, completely stretched out. A sound like a dying mouse seeped out of his mouth.

Leonard leaned over him. “Let me make it even more clear. You bother me, or send someone to bother me, or my brother here, provided you even know who I am, who he is, and I’ll kill them, and then I’ll kill you, even if I don’t know for sure you sent them. And then I’ll kill you after you’re dead. That’s how much I’ll kill you. Savvy, asshole?”

Thomas had his mouth open and was holding his hand. It was like he wanted to speak but nothing would come out.

“Savvy!” Leonard said.

“Savvy,” Thomas said.

“That’s good.” Leonard said, then went over and picked up the gun and put it in his belt. He looked back at Thomas. “I’m not just whistlin’ out of my ass. I mean what I say.”

“Yeah,” said Thomas. “I got you.”

“But do you believe me?”

“I do.”

“Let me hear an amen.”

Thomas looked at Leonard like he’d lost his mind. So did I. Leonard just kept looking at Thomas, waiting.

“Amen,” Thomas finally said.

“That’s right, ass wipe,” Leonard said, turned toward the door, stopped, and looked down at the giant. He said, “You can get big as you want, Chunk, but eyes and balls and kneecaps, they’re what we like to call vulnerable. Tell him, Hap.”

“Vulnerable,” I said.

“Don’t let me see your ass around either,” Leonard said. “You might consider a different climate. Comprehend what I’m saying?”

The man didn’t speak. Everyone in the room was so quiet, we could hear their IQs drop. Of course, they didn’t have far to fall.

Leonard kicked him on the kneecap he was holding. Chunk bellowed.

“Well,” Leonard said.

“I understand,” Chunk said.

I looked down at Chunk, and even in the dark, I could tell he was looking at Leonard the way I sometimes looked at him, like he was looking into a deep dark pit that had no bottom.

“Good,” Leonard said. “Our work here is done.”

I looked at the woman on the bed, said, “Probably goes without sayin’, but maybe you might not want to say or do anything either. And you’re maybe two pounds shy of organ failure. Eat something greasy.”

She nodded.

“Good,” I said. “Thanks.”

Out back we slung the baseball bats in the direction of the ball field. We went and got in the car. Leonard said, “You thanked her? And gave her a diet tip?”

“It just sort of came out,” I said.

“It took the edge off my witty remarks.”

“Sorry.”

“Well,” Leonard said. “You got to be you. How about we go by Wal-Mart, buy some cookies-and-cream ice cream, some vanilla wafers to dip in it?”

“Nothing like leg breaking and dessert,” I said.

“I broke the motherfucker’s hand, and I think I got a rib too,” Leonard said. “You’re the one broke a leg. A kneecap.”

“I can still hear it crack,” I said.

“Maybe we’ll get a couple cartons of ice cream, brother.”

Leonard started up his car and pulled out.

I said, “That really made you feel good, didn’t it, Leonard? Hittin’ that guy.”

“I don’t know good is how I feel, but satisfied sort of fits,” Leonard said. “And he didn’t shoot me, so I feel good about that. Motherfucker would have done better to throw the gun at me, his aim was so bad.”

Leonard took Thomas’s gun out of his waistband and handed it to me and I popped out the clip and cleaned it with a Kleenex. I wrapped the clip in the Kleenex and Leonard drove by a Dumpster behind a mall and I dropped it in. Then we drove out to the edge of town and I wiped the pistol clean and wrapped it in a piece of newspaper from the backseat and gave it to Leonard and he carried it out into the woods. When he came back, he said, “There now, all done. I dropped it down an armadillo hole.”

“If we hear of armadillos taking over possum kingdom, then we know what happened,” I said.

We took off our gloves, Leonard drove us to Wal-Mart, and we bought ice cream and cookies. I didn’t say much when we got to Leonard’s place, which was recently rented and cheap and in a part of town only slightly better than the one we had just left. We went upstairs and sat in fold-out chairs in a corner that served as a kitchen at a crate that served as a table, and with a spoon apiece, and cookies to dip, we ate and counted roaches racing across the floor. There were a lot of roaches, and some of them were bigger than my thumb. I was glad Brett wasn’t around for a change. She would charge a rhino if she felt it necessary, but the clicking of roach legs on linoleum could run her ten miles and make her climb a tree.