Joe Lansdale: Mucho Mojo

I started to go after him, but I couldn’t get past the Reverend, so I stepped in and hit him with a right cross to the jaw and he dropped the flashlight and staggered across the room and Gleason grabbed him. When I hit him, the flash hit the floor and went around and around, showing Gleason and the Reverend, then shadow, then light, then the flash quit rolling and pinned them.

The big shadow was T.J., of course, and when Gleason grabbed Fitzgerald, T.J. grabbed Gleason, got him by the head with his huge hands, held it like it was a basketball he was about to shoot.

I heard the one who got away fall through some boards in the front room, heard him grunt and scramble, then Gleason let go of Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald spun and hit Gleason in the stomach with a hook, and though I was already moving, and so were the others, it was all too fast. T.J. had Gleason good. He twisted Gleason’s head like he was screwing the lid off a stubborn pickle jar. Gleason’s sad toupee popped loose, soared above the light of the flash, then came back to it like a hairy UFO and slapped the floor. Behind it all, you could hear Gleason’s neck crack like a plastic swizzle stick.

“Stop them!” Fitzgerald yelled to T.J., and Charlie was on Fitzgerald, and Leonard stepped in and kicked T.J. flush in the groin and drove his palm up into the giant’s chin, and the giant grunted and reached for Leonard, and Leonard moved away into shadow.

Charlie flew into me unconscious, courtesy of Fitzgerald’s left hook. I eased Charlie aside, and me and Fitzgerald came together.

The rhythm of our punches and the constant kicking of Leonard against T.J.’s body filled the room. I hit Fitzgerald with a jab and he hooked me to the body and I felt a rib crack, but I’d had that before. It wasn’t poking through the skin, so it was a pain I could isolate. I bobbed in and jabbed again and threw an overhand right, but Fitzgerald had moved out of the moon of light the flashlight provided, and I threw my punch at movement instead of substance. He leaned away and landed another in my ribs, same spot; it hurt like a knife had gone there.

But I had something Fitzgerald didn’t have: a four-wheel drive. I kicked him hard in the side of the leg, just above the knee, and he wobbled into the light, and I could see him good now, and I hit him with a right in the face and kicked with a left roundhouse to his ribs. He faded back into the darkness and ran.

I turned to look at Leonard, just as Leonard scoop-kicked the inside of T.J.’s knee, then side-snap-kicked to the front of it. T.J. went down with a yell, hit the floorboards hard, rolled over and screamed, tried to get up, but the shattered knee wouldn’t hold him.

I heard Fitzgerald break through glass and kick out window struttings, then I heard him drop to the ground outside. I grabbed the flashlight and went after him, my ribs throbbing. When I got to the window and started through, I heard Fitzgerald scream like a man with a stick in his eye, then the scream turned to an echo, then a flat, soul-breaking whine.

I dropped to the ground and shone the light around. The rain was still pounding, and even with the light it was hard to see. I could hear him, though: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death… Oh, Jesus, not this way.”

I went toward the sound, and it was coming from the old well. Fitzgerald had tumbled down there in the darkness. I cautiously slid up to the pile of rubble that had been the well’s rock foundation, bent over, and shone the light down.

Fitzgerald wasn’t saying anything now, he wasn’t making any kind of sound, but he was alive. I could see his eyes blinking at the rain. The well was not wide, and the fall had been hard, and there was all manner of rubble down there – rocks from the curbing, limbs and brush, stagnant water – and he had hit in such a way that his waist was twisted and his legs were turned at an angle only pipe cleaners should make.

“I’ll get you out,” I said.

But he wasn’t listening. He bent his head toward his chest, and his ruined body shifted and his chin went to his knees, which were too high up for anyone but an acrobat, then he was still. He eased slowly into the water, then hung on some kind of debris.

I didn’t need an M.D. to tell me the Reverend Fitzgerald had passed into darkness. I held the light on him for a time, watched the rain beat him, realized that the way he was now, he looked like nothing more than a peaceful embryo waiting for birth.

I went back to the house by the porch and window. I didn’t see anyone lurking about. I found where the one who had gotten away had fallen through the boards, and down there I found something else too. Lying on his side on the ground, a black bag over his head, hands bound behind his back, ankles tied, was a child.

I got the boy out of there and pulled the bag off his head. He had a bandanna around his mouth, and under that something stuffed in his mouth, and he was having a hard time breathing. I got the thing out of his mouth and saw that it was a sock. I sat him on the side of the floor where the boards had given away, let his legs dangle. He looked at me. He was shaking.

“Please,” he said.

“It’s OK, son. I’m not one of them.”

“Please.”

I saw there was something else down in the hole, and got back down in there and grabbed it. It was a large piece of cloth, and under it was a book of the Psalms. I wrapped the book up in the cloth, which wasn’t just a cloth at all, and picked the boy up and made my way around the gap in the boards and carried him into the kitchen. He was stiff and frightened. I sat him on the floor with his back against the wall. He saw T.J. twisting on the floor, and he started to struggle, but the ties on his hands and feet prevented any real movement. He merely fell over and lay still.

“Easy,” I said. “You’re OK now.”

I glanced over and saw that Leonard had gotten Charlie’s handcuffs and was putting them on T.J. T.J. kept yelling over and over, “Bubba. Bubba.”

When Leonard had T.J.’s arms cuffed behind his back, he limped over to where me and the boy were.

“The runner lost the prizes,” I said, and lay the cloth and the Psalm book on the floor.

Leonard got out his pocket knife, and the boy flinched and made a sound like something dying.

“It’s OK,” Leonard said, and he cut the boy’s hands and feet free. “We got ’em for you, boy.”

Free, the child lay on the floor with his knees drawn to his chest. “They hurt you?” Leonard asked him.

The boy didn’t answer. He stared at Leonard. Leonard stroked the boy’s head. “Gonna be all right.”

I checked on Gleason. It didn’t take much of an examination to determine he wouldn’t be coming around. His head was twisted at such an angle it made my throat hurt. I found his toupee and stuck it on his head as best I could.

I went over then and looked at Charlie. He was lying on his back, conscious, but weak. “Where’s it hurt?” I asked.

“My head,” Charlie said. “Jesus, what a lick. The world’s spinning. I’d rather you hit me with the flashlight again.”

“Left hook,” I said. “He had a good one. He hasn’t got anything now.”

“You kill him?”

“The old well took care of him.” I worked Charlie’s coat off of him, folded it up and put it under his head. “Man, you going to have to go shopping. This suit coat is ruined. Pocket’s ripped clean the hell off of it.”

“Got his hand caught in it,” Charlie said. “Think Kmart’ll take it back?”

“Even they got to draw a line somewhere.”

“Gleason?”

“Afraid not. Take it easy, now. You might have a concussion. I’ll get some help.”

“Hanson don’t hear from us in a while, he’ll be up here.”