Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

“I’m not going to wait that long, Charlie.”

I went back to Leonard. He said, “My ankle’s bad twisted. I’ve got down here now and can’t get up. It’s swollen from me kicking that big devil. I must have hit wrong. I think I’ll have to cut off the shoe.”

“Leonard, it’s not over yet.”

“I know. You’ll get him, won’t you? For me and you, and Uncle Chester?”

“You know it.”

“And Hanson for that matter. Boy is he gonna be pissed.”

“That’s how I like him best. Pissed… You’ll be all right?”

“Get him, Hap. Get him now.”

I folded the cloth around the Psalmbook and went away.

It took me a while to get from the Hampstead place back down to Uncle Chester’s, but not as long as it had taken us to go up there. I wasn’t trying to sneak and the rain had subsided. I thought all the way down. I thought about how stupid I’d been. I was so mad my ribs didn’t even hurt.

When I got to Uncle Chester’s, I went on past and across the street to MeMaw’s. The porch light was on, and Hiram’s muddy van was in the driveway. The porch overhang was dripping water like rain off the bill of a cap. I climbed on the porch and knocked on the door. A full minute passed before Hiram answered. He was wearing a different set of clothes than I had seen him wearing at the carnival. His hair was wet and his face was flushed and sweaty. He was a little out of breath. He had his van keys in his hand.

I said, “How’s MeMaw?”

“The same,” he said. “I’m going up there.”

“Can I come in?”

“Man, I don’t mean to be rude, but I got to run. I was just going out.”

“I just need a minute,” I said and pushed my way inside, and he closed the door. The house had the faint and pleasant aroma of home cooking. I looked at the photographs on the wall, the picture of Jesus behind the stove. The cheap, yellowed curtains. The place seemed a lot less clean than when I had seen it last, and smaller, and darker.

Hiram said, “You look like hell.”

“I been busy. I bet you’re fixing to light out, aren’t you?”

“What I was saying. I got to get back to the hospital. I need to get on back right now, spell my sister.”

“I think you think the Reverend’s going to do some talking. I don’t think you’re going to the hospital. I think you’re going to run like a goddamn deer.”

He looked at me, trying to think of something to say. “The Reverend?” he said.

“Did you know you and I just missed each other?” I said.

“How’s that?”

“I got something for you that’ll explain.”

I went over to the kitchen table, took the cloth out from under my arm, and shook the book of Psalms out of it. I took the American flag, popped it wide, let it float down over the table and the book.

“I believe you dropped this,” I said. “At least it wasn’t the Texas flag… You were going to wrap a child’s body in it, weren’t you, Hiram. Stick a sheet from the Psalms in one of the magazines hidden up there. That day I was over here, you quoted part of a Bible verse. That was from the Psalms, wasn’t it? MeMaw saw you got religious training.”

“Hap-”

“You didn’t know I was at the house, Hiram. You thought the Reverend was caught and going to talk, and you were just about to make a run for it. You know what? Fitzgerald’s dead. And T.J., hell, he wouldn’t remember you an hour from now. Not so it’d cause you any trouble anyway. But you panicked, and that’s what nails you.”

“Hap-”

“Oh yeah, there is someone who’ll remember you. You dropped the kid too. The one you were watching at the petting zoo. I bet he got a good look at you, seeing how it wouldn’t have mattered had things gone according to plan. Simple plan, huh? Fitzgerald loaded the kids back in the bus, said he had to stay for some reason, would catch a ride, whatever, then you helped him grab the boy. Or rather you helped trick the boy. He was someone Fitzgerald knew from the church, someone he gave a free pass to, someone he was acting like a father to, one of the lost ones. And T.J., he was on the bus, but he got off too, to help. He’d do anything for his brother.”

“You got to understand, Hap. I didn’t start any of this.”

“I don’t need to understand anything. All I understand is you and Fitz and T.J., every year, killed a young boy, cut him up and buried him under that house. That’s all I need to understand. The why of it doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“I was going to stop. Really.”

“No. I don’t think so. And it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Hiram seemed to consider a moment, then whirled and snatched up one of the kitchen chairs and came for me. He brought it around and hit me on the side, and my injured ribs exploded with pain, but I moved into him as he swung, and cut the force of the blow. I grabbed his face with both my hands and slammed my forehead forward, into his nose, and he jerked back, spewing blood. He dropped the chair, fell leaning against the stove. The impact shook the wall, and the picture of Jesus rocked on its nail and came loose and fell on top of the stove and the glass shattered.

He came at me again, but I moved in with a right to the stomach, hooked a left to his head. It wasn’t a good left. My ribs hurt too bad to put the torque into it. He hit me high above the ear, not a good shot, but all those blows I’d taken from Fitzgerld were wearing on me. I could feel my legs going rubber. I covered my face with my arms and fist and let him chunk a while. He wasn’t any better a boxer than he had been before, just a scrapper, and his wind wasn’t any better either. The blows stung a little, but Leonard gave me worse when we sparred.

After a few hits Hiram began to breathe hard through his mouth, gulping air like a whale gulping plankton. I broke my cover and hooked between his hands with a solid right and took out what breath he had left, then put him down with a swinging elbow. That last technique made my injured rib move a way it wasn’t supposed to move, and I felt it stab against my side. The damn thing had been cracked, and now it had broken loose. I couldn’t help but lean against the sink and feel sick, and when I turned to look at Hiram, he was up. He’d gotten a butcher knife off the cabinet, and he lunged at me with it. He wasn’t any better a knife fighter than he was a boxer.

I parried the lunge to the outside with my arm and grabbed his wrist and pulled him off balance and tugged him against the sink counter and used my free hand to strike him behind the head with my forearm, driving him down into the porcelain sink. His head made a sound like a clay jar breaking and he went out, would have hit the floor if his chin hadn’t hung on the edge of the sink. I kicked his feet out from under him and he went down, sprawled on the floor with blood running out of his mouth. His hand opened slowly, like a flower blooming, and the knife lay free in his palm. I kicked it away. I stood over him a moment, feeling something I couldn’t put a name to.

Finally, I leaned against the sink and tried to get my breath. I was starting to lose it. MeMaw’s kitchen was spinning like a Disney World ride. I turned on the faucet and ran some cold water into my hands and splashed it on my face and rubbed it through my hair. That didn’t help much. I held my head low in the sink beneath the faucet and let the water run over my neck and the back of my skull. A few minutes later the spinning stopped and my rib really began to ache.

I eased my way over to the phone and called the law, asked them to patch me through to Lieutenant Hanson, and to tell him his good buddy Hap Collins was on the line with a murderer in tow.

Four nights after Hiram went down, MeMaw died, and two months later I was still thinking about her. I was glad she never woke up. Never knew. Hiram had lied about his sister being with MeMaw. He’d never called anyone. The need to kill had been so strong inside him, he’d left his dying mother’s side to do what he felt he had to do. The whole thing haunted me like a ghost.