Joe Lansdale: Bullets and Fire

I said, “That boy, whose feet you nailed to the floor. That was my brother. My father committed suicide over it. I don’t like you are any of your gang. I’m glad you hurt bad.”

He tried to say something, but he couldn’t. All of his air was being used to stay alive.

“I just wanted you to know how much I hate you. You fucked up my life, and this sure fucks up yours. And I got Billy too. And the Headmaster, and a bunch of you fucks. You had a plastic Jesus in your pocket, I’d snap it in half. That’s how much I hate you. How you feeling, Juan?”

Juan looked at me, and his mouth came open, like a fish on a dock, hoping for water.

“I could kill you,” I said. “Make it stop hurting. But, I don’t want to.”

I stayed there on my knees until blood came out of his mouth and the smell of it and the shit in his pants became too strong for me to take. Then I stood up and looked at him. It was all I could do to stand up, and I should have moved on, maybe found a doctor. But I didn’t want to miss a second of it.

I watched until he was dead and his eyes were as flat and lifeless as a Teddy Bear’s.

I went away then, moving slow, but moving. I dropped the automatic somewhere. I walked until I came to some lights, and down the way I could hear traffic, and I could see people. People who weren’t in gangs. People with lives. People, many of which would live long and die of old age and have families. Stuff I wouldn’t know about.

I leaned against a brick wall, under a street light. The first I had come to since leaving the bowling alley. I looked up and watched bugs swarm around the light. They didn’t know they had short lives and didn’t care. They just did what they did and had no thoughts about it.

I grinned at them.

I took the little girl’s wallet out of my back pocket and opened it. It had five dollars in it. I looked through it and found her picture, and found a picture of her with a man, woman, and little boy. Her family, I figured. I found a little card behind a plastic window that had her address on it. It said: RETURN TO, and then there was the address. I knew that address, the general locale. It wasn’t far from where I had lived as a kid, back when dad owned the store and he and my brother worked there, and I hung out there from time to time. On that day my brother was murdered, set on fire, I had been at a theater down the street, watching a movie. It was a good movie, and now, because of my brother’s death, I couldn’t think of that movie without feeling a little sick, and I couldn’t think of it now. I thought about the girl again, and that was almost as bad as thinking about my brother or my father.

I thought about her nose. I hoped she could fix it, or maybe it wasn’t broken too badly and would heal all right. I thought about the guy whose knee I had taken out for the lack of payment to the Headmaster. I didn’t really care about him. He was in bed with the skunks, so he got stink all over himself before I did anything to him. He had it coming. Maybe he didn’t have it coming from me, not really, but he had it coming, and I didn’t feel all the bad about him. I didn’t feel bad about any of the gang. I just wished I had killed them all.

I read the address in the wallet again. I knew where that was. I started walking.

· · ·

I STUCK THE AUTOMATIC under my shirt and went along the back streets as much as possible. When I got on a main street, people began to pull back from me, seeing all the blood, way my face looked. I saw it myself, reflected in a store window. I looked like a ghost who had seen a ghost. The shock was wearing off. I was really starting to hurt.

I probably didn’t have long before the police got me, before people on the street called about this blood covered guy.

I took a turn at the corner, and started walking as fast as I could. I felt as if most of what was left of me was turning to heat and going out the top of my head. I went along until I got to the back alleys, and then I darted in, and I went through them. I remembered these alleys like I had been here yesterday, though it had been a few years. I remembered them well because I had played here. I went down them and along them, and somewhere back behind me I heard sirens, wondered if they were for me.

I finally went down an alley so narrow I had to turn sideways to get down it. It opened up into a fairly well lit street. I got the girl’s wallet out again and looked at the address. I was on the right street, and I memorized the number and put the wallet away and walked along the street until I found the number that fit the one on her little card in the wallet.

There was a series of stone steps that went up to a landing and there was a door there, and above it was the number. I climbed up to the top step, and that was about it. I sat down suddenly and leaned back so that my ass was on the stoop and my legs were hanging off on the top step. I could hardly feel that step. My legs seemed to be coming loose of me and sinking into something like quicksand. I had to take a look at them to make sure they were still attached. When I saw they were, I sort of laughed, because I couldn’t feel them. I pulled myself up more with my hands and put my back at an angle against one of the concrete rails that lined the steps on both sides.

I took out the wallet and I put both my hands over it and put the wallet up against my stomach. I tried to put it some place where blood wouldn’t get on it, but there wasn’t any place. I realized now that the warm wetness I was feeling in the seat of my pants was blood running down from my wounds and into my underwear. I hated they would find me like that.

I sat there and thought about my dad and my brother and I thought about what my sensei had said about you can’t correct what’s done, and if you try, you won’t feel any better. He was right. You can’t correct what’s been done. But I did feel better. I felt bad about the girl though, but I felt good about all those dead fucks being dead. I felt real good.

I felt around in my shirt, and my hand was like a catcher’s mitt trying to pick up a needle. I finally found my ball point and I opened the girl’s wallet, which was bloody, and I pinched out the little card with her address on it, and I wrote the best I could: I’M SORRY. REALLY, I AM.

I laid the wallet on my knee, got out my own wallet. I had three hundred and twenty-five dollars in there. I put the money from my wallet in her wallet, along with her five. I turned and looked at the door. I didn’t know if I could make it. There was a mailbox by the door, a black metal thing, and I wanted to get up and put the wallet in that, but I didn’t know if I could.

I thought about it awhile, and finally I got some kind of strength, and pulled myself up along the concrete railing, and when I got up, it was like my legs and feet came back, and I made it to the mail box, opened it and put her wallet in there with the card I had written on.

Then that was it. I fell down along the wall and lay on my face. I thought about all manner of things. I thought of my brother and my father, but the funny thing was I began to think about my sensei. I was on the mat and I was moving along the mat. And I was practicing in the air. Not traditional kata, because we didn’t do that. But I was practicing, punching, kicking, swinging my elbows, jerking up my knees. It felt good, and I could see my sensei out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t make out if he was pleased or angry, but I was glad he was there.

The sirens grew louder.

I thought of bullets and fire, and a deep pit full of darkness. I wished I could see the stars.

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If you enjoyed “Bullets and Fire,” maybe you’ll like The Big Blow , too. It’s a historical novella by the inestimable Mr. Lansdale, available as an e-book from Gere Donovan Press.