Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

“That was a close one, wasn’t it? Man, that truck-driving asshole nearly ran me off the road.” Joe winks at her. “Or did you have something to do with that, Jess?”

Jessie doesn’t say a word. Joe watches the storm through the windshield, as if he doesn’t really expect an answer, as if he’s determined to enjoy a Sunday drive through hell no matter what happens.

“Too bad Edward Hopper didn’t do pastoral scenes,” he jokes. “He would have loved this stuff.”

Joe laughs, but it’s like a hollow echo of yesterday. Jessie wants to cry. He’s trying really hard. He always tried really hard. He was a carpenter — still is, she figures, even though he’s dead. But money never came easy for him, and it always seemed to go too fast.

So their life wasn’t what they wanted it to be. A succession of low-rent apartments in low-rent towns, the kind of towns where a girl grows comfortable carrying a butterfly knife in her pocket. But that’s how it is when you work for someone else. They make the money, you do the work. They live someplace nice, and you don’t. Their wife doesn’t take anything but her credit card when she heads off to the grocery store after dark, your wife makes sure to remember her butterfly knife.

So when a friend offered to make Joe a partner in a custom cabinet shop, he jumped at the chance. Only problem was that Joe didn’t have enough green to buy his way into the business. So he decided to cash in his savings, make a run up north into marijuana country like he had in his college days, grab some quick profit on a larger scale than he’d ever tried before. But his old contacts steered him in the wrong direction, and he ended up in a Portland bar looking for a friend of a friend, and a short time after that he ended up on the wrong end of Larry Oates’ shotgun, and now his future doesn’t have anything to do with the life he wanted to make.

Now his future is all about death.

“You’ve got to listen to me, Joe. You can’t do this.”

“It’s the only way. Either I do it or I crawl back into that hole in the ground. It’s that simple.”

“But that waitress. The one who’s going to find the money… she doesn’t have anything to do with any of this.”

Joe’s anger flares. “She poured Oates a cup of coffee, didn’t she? Brought the bastard his breakfast while I was digging my way out of a grave like some goddamn gopher. She flirted with him and bought his dope and put money in his pocket that’ll maybe buy more shotgun shells he can use to put some other poor bastard six-feet under.” Joe snorts laughter. “Hell, Jessie, that little waitress gave Oates everything but a sweet little cherry on top.”

“But that’s no reason to kill her!”

“You’re right.” Joe glances at his wristwatch. “But in just a little while she’ll be picking up nine hundred bucks that can buy another chance at life for me, and that’s all the reason I need.”

“But why does she have to die ?”

“That money was taken in blood. Blood is the only way to get it back.”

“And what about me?” Jessie asks. “I’ve got your money, too. When you finish with the waitress, will you come after me with Larry Oates’ shotgun?”

“Jesus Christ, Jessie.” Joe sighs. “When I’m done with the waitress, it’s over. That’s what this thing in my gut tells me. I get that money back and I’m alive again, for keeps.”

Jessie doesn’t say anything.

She swallows hard. Up ahead, the road is dark.

Lightning flashes. A rip in the sky that’s too wide and too bright, like the polished blade of a butterfly knife.

Joe breaks the silence. “Don’t you want me to have another chance, Jess?”

‘Yes. Of course I do.”

“Then you have to let me do this thing.” Joe nods at the shotgun, waiting on the back seat. “And I have to do it this way.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“I’m not. This is wrong. Everything tells me that. Even if we could turn back the hands of time, if everything could really be the same as it was, I couldn’t pay the price you’re asking. Because if we pay that price, things won’t ever be the same as they were. You’re not a killer, Joe. You never were. Not alive, and not in the dreams I had for us. If you become one now, you might get a second chance, but what kind of a chance would it be?”

Joe shakes his head. “Remember what your mother used to say, Jess? About the way you saw things, I mean?”

“She said I had a special kind of eye. She said other people didn’t even know how to look at the things I could see.”

“Your mother was wrong. At least on one count. See, I know exactly how you see the world. I know how you see it when you’re awake. I know how you see it when you’re dreaming. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not the man you used to see in your dreams, but your dreams aren’t the same as they used to be. They’re not even dreams anymore. Think about that, Jess.”

“There’s got to be another way.”

“If you think of one, be sure to tell me about it. Until then, the clock is ticking.”

Up ahead, thunder rumbles. Loud. Getting louder.

When it comes again, Joe’s voice isn’t any more than a whisper. “It’s about time for us to say adios, Jess.”

Jessie opens her mouth. She can’t go now. Not yet… not until she convinces him she’s right.

Joe shifts gears, and the engine roars, and so does the thunder. Before she can so much as whisper, lightning tears Jessie’s world in half.

The next part takes only a second, maybe two. But to Jessie it seems to last forever, like crawling up a rickety set of cellar steps with a couple of broken legs.

Out of the dark, into the light.

That’s what it’s like. Because things start to come together for Jessie. The things Joe said about the way she sees things, about her dreams… and the way they’ve changed since Joe died… and the way Joe has changed, too…

A lightning crack as Smitty slaps her one more time, and Jessie’s eyelids flutter open. She’s on the floor of Oates’ barn. Her boots are by her head. Smitty looms over her, clutching her leather jacket in one hand, a fistful of dollar bills in the other.

He’s raided Jessie’s wearable bank, and he’s not happy. “I know how much money you had,” he says. “Seventy-six hundred and seventy-seven dollars. There’s nine hundred missing, bitch. I swear you’re going to give me every penny.”

Jessie rolls over onto her elbows. Her wrists and ankles aren’t bound anymore, but she can hardly move. Her right eye is swollen shut. Her lips are bruised and puffy, like a couple banana slugs glued to her face, and there’s a sound in her head that she can’t escape.

A sound like thunder.

Smitty pulls her to her feet and shoves her against the truck. For the first time, Jessie realizes they’re not alone. There’s a car parked over by the workbench, the one littered with beer bottles and ashtrays and guns. It’s a Mercedes. Oates is stretched out on the hood, his shirt skinned off, his skin nearly as white as Joe’s. There’s a man bent over him — he’s got to be the doctor that Smitty phoned — and his hands are covered with blood.

Oates screams, his body bucking against the hood of the car. Smitty whirls and yells something. The doctor swears and snatches up a syringe. He drives the spike into Oates’ pale flesh. The killer bucks again and falls back, his head striking the Mercedes hood with a hollow sound like a coffin lid slamming closed.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor says. “I swear to God, Smitty, I did everything I could.”