C Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

The gangster on the right end of the table farthest from Garrett pushed back so hard in his chair that he sent it flying behind him. He stood up next to the table. The dark boy in the middle, who had been getting serviced, stared openmouthed while he inexplicably felt the sudden need to button himself back up. The blond girl next to him screamed while holding her hands to the sides of her face. Garrett still had both of his hands on the table wrapped around his mug, his bearing remarkably calm, his eyes taking in the man with the shotgun, who was approaching him, as if trying to place him, trying to figure out why he’d called out his name.

“You the shitbird Garrett?” Jeter asked him.

Jeter didn’t notice that the man who had stood up was bent slightly forward now, his arm behind his back digging for something in his pants.

Jeter pointed the shotgun with one hand, said again, “You Garrett Moreland?”

And the gangster pulled his weapon, a semiautomatic, and fired four quick rounds- pop-pop-pop-pop -with the weapon held sidewise out in front of him. Jeter’s coat danced, and he stumbled back a step, then swung the shotgun over and it exploded again and kicked higher than Jeter’s head. A great bloom of red spattered across the chest of the gangster, who fell back over the chair he’d previously sent skittering across the floor.

Patiently, Jeter slid the shotgun back into its sling inside his duster and came out with a stainless-steel.45 semiauto. He shot the dark boy in the middle point-blank in the neck before the gangster could rack the slide on the pistol he’d been fumbling for. The gangster’s gun skittered across the table and fell to the dirty carpet.

“Run away, girls,” Jeter said. “I’ve got business here with young Mr. Moreland.”

The blonde kept screaming as she ran, her hands still pressed to the sides of her head. There was a moment when our eyes locked as she ran toward the door, and I wondered if she’d be able to identify me later.

Jeter stepped aside for the female with the spiked hair, not expecting her to stop, turn, pause, and shove a pistol into his armpit and pull the trigger three times with muffled bangs. He cried out with a yelping sound, the hand with the pistol dropped to his side, and he staggered several steps to his left before collapsing on the dance floor in a heap.

“ Goddammit! ” he bellowed, sounding more angry with himself than with the girl. He writhed on the floor, making himself a moving target for the girl with the spiked hair, who clumsily tried to aim at him. He rolled to his belly and came up with the.45 and took her down with three rapid shots.

Like a bear cub, Jeter rose to all fours and, with a grunt, he was back on his feet. The second gangster he’d shot was still sitting upright at the table, his hand clamped to his neck. Arterial blood squirted out between his fingers. Jeter staggered over to him and put the muzzle of his.45 to the man’s forehead.

“ Sign your stupid name on them papers, ” Jeter said in his ridiculous Mexican accent, “ or you die, senõr! ”

I walked stunned through the acrid hanging gun smoke and put my hand on Jeter’s shoulder. Shotgun shells and spent casings littered the floor.

“That’s not him,” I said.

“ Your signature or your brains, senõr! ” Jeter said, pressing hard with the gun.

“Jeter, that’s not him!” I shouted. “Garrett ran out the back while you were on the floor!” I was fairly certain Garrett never saw me.

Jeter paused, letting that sink in. I could hear the rapid patter of blood on the floor from the wounds inside Jeter’s coat.

“They all look alike to me,” he said with a harsh laugh, and pulled the trigger. The gangster flopped backward, his eyes wide-open, a smoking hole in his forehead.

JETER STOOD UNSTEADILY and holstered the.45. His face was drawn and white, his eyes sallow.

“Man,” he said, “I really fucked this one up.”

I nodded.

“I shoulda played that different,” he said. “I never would of thought that girl would have a gun. This is a rough damned place.”

I didn’t know what to do. Try to get him to the Jeep? Take him to a hospital? Leave him there? Wait for the police to show up? I didn’t hear sirens yet.

“I don’t want to die here,” Jeter said. “I want to die in Montana. Not in Denver. Not in this shit hole with these shitbirds.”

He tried to take a step toward the door, but he couldn’t seem to get his legs to obey. Blood streamed from the hem of his coat and pooled on the floor.

“I’m really shot up,” he said weakly. “It’s like everything warm is pouring out of me. I’m gettin’ real cold. Help me, Jack.”

“Where do you want to go?”

That grin. “Montana.”

“We can’t go to…”

“I can hear Cody talking to me in my head,” Jeter said suddenly. “I just can’t hear what he’s saying.”

“Cody?”

“Yeah, I hear him.”

And I remembered I was still clutching my cell phone. I looked at it, saw the call I’d placed had connected five minutes ago.

I lifted it to my mouth. “Cody?”

“Jack, are you all right? Jesus-all I could hear were gunshots.”

“I’m okay, but your uncle Jeter…”

“I heard. I’m on my way. Hang tight for five more minutes.” He clicked off.

Jeter chinned toward the bar. “See if you can find some different music on that stereo, Jack. Find some good old country I can die to. Hank Snow, Little Jimmy Dickens, Hank Williams, Bob Wills-something good. I can’t stand the crap they play in this place.”

With that, he pitched forward like a felled tree. His head hit the dance floor so hard, the fall alone might have killed him.

I WAS LEANING against the bar when Cody came in. I’d unplugged the beer signs in the windows and turned off all but the black light over the table so the Appaloosa Club looked closed from outside, and no patrons would come in. I was having an out-of-body experience again, thinking I wasn’t really there.

Cody pulled on a pair of rubber gloves.

“Help me get him into my trunk,” Cody said. “If we leave him here, the cops will eventually trace him to me.”

“Where are you going to take him?”

Cody shook his head. “Up in the mountains. I’ve got a place in mind.”

“He wanted to go to Montana,” I said dumbly.

“I’ll get him up there one of these days,” Cody said, grasping Jeter’s collar and dragging him toward the door.

Cody said, “Jesus, how much hardware does he have under that coat?”

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” I said, walking behind. “It was terrible, Cody. It was a slaughter house in here. The bartender broke Jeter’s hand with a baseball bat, and Jeter started blasting. Garrett got away.”

“I heard. You called me, remember?”

“We’re going to go to prison,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Cody said, looking around the club. “Looks gang-related to me. It looks like maybe a big fight over meth-distribution territory.”

“Do you really think that’s how the police will see it?”

Cody paused and looked up angry. “Are you going to help me, or what?”

“DON’T RACE OUT OF HERE,” Cody said, after we’d lifted Jeter’s body into his plastic-lined trunk and slammed the lid. “Take it slow and easy. The last thing you want is to be pulled over for speeding. Judging by that look in your eye, you’d confess.”

I nodded.

“Go home,” Cody said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

He gave me a brotherly punch in the shoulder. “We probably should have kept Uncle Jeter out of this. He was past his prime and over his head. And he was too much of a bigot to think straight.”