Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Maybe that’s how Joe sees it. Jessie doesn’t want to see it that way, though. Something inside tells her it’s wrong, the same something that tells her Joe isn’t the same man anymore. She recognizes him, sure. But with Jerry Oates’ shotgun in his hands, he’s a very different man than the man she loved.

She can’t imagine a second chance with that man, even if she had one.

The barn door bangs open and closed, driven by a renegade wind. Outside, Joe is nothing more than a shadow, drifting through the rain.

Jessie wants to run away, but she knows it won’t do her any good. After all, she already tried that. Running in the wake of Joe’s murder, scared of the law, scared of anyone who looked like they might have their hand in Larry Oates’ till. Thumbing her way south, traveling three hundred miles with some harmless college kid before sleep stole her from his car, before her dream took her to the grave in a marijuana field where Oates and Smitty were shoveling mud into her dead lover’s face. Listening as Joe said that he couldn’t rest without the money, every dollar of it. Screaming in her head that he’d come back for it if he had to, that six feet of mud wouldn’t keep him in the ground.

She knew he meant it. The only reason he hadn’t done anything up until then was that Jessie had the money. Joe gave it to her as soon as he cleaned out his account, saying he’d feel better with her holding it until the deal was set.

She’d held it, all right. When she woke from the dream in the kid’s car, she still had every dollar tucked in her pocket, and what wasn’t in her pocket was jammed into her ripped lapel, and what wasn’t in either of those places was hidden in her coat lining or her boots.

She made the college kid drop her at the first exit.

Then she reversed course, thumbed her way north again.

But she didn’t make it to Joe’s grave.

And now she is unconscious.

And nine hundred dollars float in a puddle in a restaurant parking lot.

And a dead man named Joe Shepard is walking in the rain with a shotgun in his hands.

And it is so dark in Jessie’s dream. She stands in the barn doorway, calling Joe’s name. She can see him in the distance, but he doesn’t look back. Finally she runs after him, and the rain pounds down on her so hard and cold that she thinks it will freeze her solid, and lightning flashes ahead of Joe, jagged spears that slice the night, cracks widening and growing brighter and brighter until —

The chick’s eyes flash open. Right off, Smitty wants to hit her again. Goddamn if he doesn’t want to do that in the worst way.

But he resists the temptation. He has to keep his eyes on the road. He has to get down to business, the way Oates would.

The windshield wipers beat time as Smitty fishes his cell phone from his pocket. He calls information and gets the number he needs. Nearly runs off the road while he punches it in, and that just makes him madder.

The wipers beat some more. The phone rings for-fucking-ever. Then the doctor finally answers. He’s the kind who’s willing to keep his mouth shut for a price. Smitty tells him to get his ass out to Oates’ barn. The smarmy bastard wants to negotiate right then and there, but Smitty doesn’t let him. He tells the sawbones he’d better get his mercenary butt moving and cuts the bastard off before he can argue.

The chick doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t have to. Her eyes are talking for her. She’s got those suckers clicked onto hi-beams, emotionally speaking.

Cool gray eyes, but they’re burning like coals.

Let ’em burn, Smitty thinks, watching the flapping windshield wipers, the drenching rain. In this kind of motherfucking weather, nothing burns for long

Not where this little girl’s headed.

Nothing much burns in a wet marijuana field. Nothing burns at all under six feet of mud.

Jessie almost opens her mouth.

Almost. But there’s no sense in it. She can’t explain things to a guy like Smitty. Dream visions don’t exist in his realm of possibilities. Neither do walking dead men. And why should they? A bottom-feeder like Smitty can’t see things the way Jessie can. A guy like that is practically born to blink at all the wrong times.

And even if Smitty could see those things, he probably couldn’t understand them. Some things are hard to process, even with a bucketful of downtime. Like a man wanting something badly enough to chase after it when he’s dead, or a woman returning to a lion’s den to keep him from doing it.

But Jessie knows she’ll do just that if she gets the chance. It isn’t over yet. Smitty’s Peterbilt tractor isn’t hitched to a load of logs, and he wants to get Oates to that doctor. In other words, they’re traveling fast. They have another five or ten miles to go before they get to Oates’ farm. The restaurant is a good fifty miles behind them. That means Joe has to travel sixty miles south in the rain before he can do any damage with Oates’ shotgun. That’s going to take some time, even for a dead man who’s as determined as he is cold.

Jessie figures it this way — Joe will probably take her old VW. He has the keys. They were in his pocket when Oates buried him. She remembers that the bug is parked by Oates’ house, where they’d had the beers while Oates put them at ease. The house was a good mile walk from the barn, through the woods she’d watched Joe enter in her dream, and —

And then she remembers something else. The VW is down to fumes. Joe was so eager to make the buy that he didn’t want to stop and gas up the bug. Maybe he can make twenty miles, maybe thirty if he’s lucky, but no way will the bug make sixty. That puts the restaurant at least thirty miles out of range, and gassing up is going to be a problem because Joe doesn’t have a dime.

And dead men don’t carry plastic.

Jessie laughs. She can’t help herself.

Smitty ignores her, downshifting as he nears the turnoff. There’s an old Mustang sitting at the stop sign at the bottom of the road that leads to Oates’ spread. It’s black with a couple of thick red bars painted on the hood, and its turn-signal flashes as the driver waits to turn onto the highway going south.

Smitty spots the car. “Hey,” he says. “That’s my ‘67! Someone stole my goddamn Mustang!”

The stolen car starts across the highway. Instantly, Jessie knows that Joe is the driver. Her hands are bound but that doesn’t stop her. She grabs the steering wheel and the truck veers left as the Mustang cuts in front of it, and the two vehicles miss by the width of a raindrop as Smitty stomps the brakes and whips the wheel and the Peterbilt screams down the highway sideways, hydroplaning like a sonofabitch.

Smitty’s tractor ends up on the shoulder, sliding though mud and gravel until Jessie’s door kisses a redwood. Smitty grinds the gears and turns the rig around while Jessie watches the Mustang’s red taillights disappear in the storm, like coals burning down to ash.

One more second and those taillights will be gone.

One more second and Joe Shepard will be on his way.

One more second until the storm and the dark hold sway.

One more second until —

Smitty just can’t help himself. Not anymore.

“This is all your fault, bitch,” he says.

His fist whips out and clips Jessie’s jaw.

Everything goes black.

“Hey there, Jess. Good to see you again.”

She opens her eyes and she’s in the Mustang, riding shotgun with a dead man.