“Don’t pamper me,” Jim Bob said. “I ain’t gonna die or nothing. Long as they didn’t shoot my dick off, I’m gonna be okay.”
I closed the back of the camper and went around and got behind the wheel and drove us away from that big house full of death.
45
It was a hot Sunday afternoon in August and I was sitting at the picnic table out back of the house drinking a cold Lone Star, alternating between watching the condensation beads on the beer bottle and my son playing on his new swing set.
I had been sitting there thinking about my family.
About the things I had done. The hands that had hugged my son earlier were the same hands that had held guns that had been used to kill people. It didn’t seem right somehow. Even though the day was bright, when I thought about these things, I had the sensation of shadows moving behind my eyes. Perhaps the y were the sort of shadows Ru ssel had waltzed with, and now I had dancing partners of my own. And Russel had enough for hell’s own minuet.
It had been almost a month since the shoot-out, and not a day, a waking moment, had gone by without me thinking about it. It had replaced my thoughts about the burglar I had shot, and even the soft, little face of the daughter I had never known. The memory of that night was so strong I could sometimes smell the gunsmoke, blood, and fear. The experience had been exhilarating, like driving a car too fast, walking a high wire without a net. Better than either of those things could be. After those intense few moments of blood and thunder, I found myself wanting to do it again. Life now seemed remarkably tame and fearfully constant.
And when the desire to recall or repeat those moments of fibre and steel passed, I would fill up with a cold self-hatred and a longing for my soul. Not in a religious sense. I couldn’t believe there was anything on the other side of the void, not after what I had seen. But in the personal sense. I feared my humanity was threatening to ooze out of me, perhaps through a hole in the bottom like Russel had described.
My side and neck had healed nicely with only minor scarring, thanks to Rodriguez, and James and Valerie had been handling things at work quite well, during what I called my sabbatical.
I had gotten a card from Jim Bob saying he and Russel were “right as rain,” and I had read several newspaper accounts of the shoot-out. The Dixie Mafia was getting most of the blame. But Freddy Russel turning up again, dead for real this time, had proved most-embarrassing to the FBI. Especially since the local cop who identified the body through mug shots and the like, had turned this information over to the newspapers who grabbed it like a football and ran with it as far as they thought it would go, and that proved to be pretty far.
The papers also identified the silver-haired man. He was a rich industrialist and his house was found to be full of snuff films. Some in which he starred and personally delivered the coup de grace. There was lots of speculation about the whole thing, but none of it seemed to be leading to us, so I quit worrying.
Anyway, I was out back drinking my beer, thinking about all this, and Ann came out and said, “That man is here to see you,” and from the way she looked and spoke, I knew who it was immediately.
“I want him away from here,” she said. “Once is enough. I won’t have you going off with him again, for anything. Not even a Coke. Don’t offer him anything.”
“All right,” I said. Ann hadn’t forgiven Russel for Jordan, and even though I had never been able to explain to her the whole of the night at the house, she had a good enough idea what went on there without me giving it to her in painterly detail, and she blamed him for that too.
She called Jordan in with a promise of milk and cookies, and he bailed out of the swing and ran by me and grabbed my leg. I picked him up and held him in front of me. “Love you, Daddy,” he said.
“I love you too,” I said, and holding him was like touching some source of power. The emptiness I feared went away and I was filled again. For a time. I kissed him and put him down and patted him on the butt. He ran in after his mama, and I went on through the living room and outside.
Russel was in the drive leaning on Rodriguez’s Rambler. I walked over and shook his hand, but was easy about it. From the way he held it out I could tell his arm still hurt.
“I was trying to decide if I should come by or not,” he said. “I didn’t want to upset Ann. I saw her looking at me through the window, and I figured she’d go get you. I shouldn’t have come, I guess.”
“I wanted to see you,” I said.
“I see the bars on your windows are gone.”
“I felt like a canary. I got rid of them.”
“Good. Jim Bob said to tell you the burglar’s name was William Randolph. Mean anything?”
I shook my head. “I had forgotten about that, to tell you the truth. How’d he find out?”
“You’ll like this. He called Price, said he read in the papers about Freddy Russel, and since that was Freddy Russel, the guy you shot couldn’t have been him, and he figured Price owed you something after sicking those thugs with the bats on us.”
I laughed. “That sounds like Jim Bob.”
“Price didn’t even argue. He gave Jim Bob the name. He probably figures we were in on the action at that house, one way or another, but I don’t think he cares. I think he’s glad it’s over, and he’s probably glad the scum bit the dust. It’s not his job to help the FBI protect anyone anymore.”
“How is Jim Bob?” I asked.
“Good. Nothing bothers him long. He might even be the superman he thinks he is. The Mexican girl we got out of the house is taking care of him. He’s already getting around pretty good. He’s going to send the girl home to Mexico next week, give her a little nest egg to take with her.”
“That sounds like him,” I said. “What are you going to do now?”
“Nothing left to do. A man that can kill his own son, no matter what he’s done, is bankrupt of something. Soul. What have you. I put his photographs with that foul tape and burned them up, tried to burn up anything I might have felt about him. But I couldn’t. You know, I still love him after all he’s done, and I never really knew him. This won’t mean much, Richard. But if I could have had the kind of son I wanted, I would have wanted him to be exactly like you.”
“It means a lot.”
“I only wish I hadn’t gotten you involved in this mess.”
“You couldn’t have stopped me.”
He took me then and hugged me, and I hugged him back. It made me think of the last time I saw my father, before he went away and put the gun in his mouth.
When we pulled apart, Russel said, “That’s all I got in me.”
I was trembling slightly. It was hard to speak.
He walked around and got in the car and rolled down the window. “I got this for Jordan.” He reached a red toy fire truck off the seat and gave it to me. “You don’t have to tell him it isn’t from you. Maybe when he gets older, if he remembers that night… well, you can tell him… just tell him, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep the shadows away, Richard.”
“I’ll do my best, Ben.”
He backed the Rambler around and rolled down the drive and I waved at the retreating car, not knowing if he could see me in the rearview mirror or not. I turned and started back to the house. There was a loud report. It made my blood surge and I felt the exhilaration I had felt that night of the shooting. I whirled, realized immediately that the old Rambler had backfired. The rush went away. I felt scared then, because for a moment, the sound, so like a gunshot, had flooded me with a tide of clear, clean joy. And now that the tide was gone, I was disappointed. That’s what frightened me. The disappointment.
“No shadows,” I said aloud, and as I walked through the front door, I repeated it like a charm against evil. “No shadows.”
