was brave, because he was petrified.
Leonard reached out and shoved him aside. The guy went over the edge of the porch and rolled on the grass and got up and started running.
Leonard tried to open the front door, but someone had locked it. I got up on the front porch about the time Leonard screamed, “Stand back, motherfuckers,” and shot a hole through the door big enough to poke your head through.
I grabbed Leonard by the shoulder, “Hold up, man.”
Leonard looked back at me, and I saw in his eyes what I had felt moments ago. Anger. Frustration.
“You can’t kill them, Leonard.”
“I can kill the house.”
I took my hand off his shoulder and stood back, and he kicked the door where the blast had torn a hole, and the hole got wider, and he kicked again, and an entire panel of the door collapsed, and swift as a summer cloud blowing across the face of the sun, Leonard hit the door and it went to pieces and he was inside.
And I was in after him.
The house was poorly lit, and when we came through the door, Mohawk and the one I called Parade Float came out of the dark. They leaped and grabbed Leonard, one on either side, Mohawk trapping the shotgun against Leonard’s body.
Mohawk yelled, “Now, baby.”
Over Leonard’s shoulder I saw a stringy white woman with greasy hair, dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts, stick a little automatic in Leonard’s face and pull the trigger.
Nothing happened. The gun had jammed. A rush of adrenaline shot through me like a gusher of crude oil blasting to the surface.
I stepped in and hit Mohawk in the side of the head with a right and he loosened up on Leonard just as Leonard kicked the woman in front of him in the stomach and sent her tumbling down the hallway.
I reached out and clawed my fingers across Mohawk’s face, raking him in the eyes, and then I turned sideways and kicked him in the side of the knee. The kick was off, and the knee didn’t break, but he yelped and let go of Leonard and fell backward through an open doorway.
Leonard was using the shotgun stock to do some dental work on Parade Float when I went by him and grabbed the woman. She was obviously fucked up on something and feeling no pain, and she’d gotten up on her knees and grabbed the gun again. She pointed it at my groin, and I reached down and scooped it aside with my palm and jumped in close and grabbed her head with both my hands and gave her a knee in the face, hard as I could. I figured I’d be hearing from the Southern Club for Manhood after that, but I didn’t give a shit, you try and hurt me, I’m going hurt you back. She went backward with her nose flat and blood flying and the gun went off and plaster puffed out of the wall. I kneed her again, and the automatic went sailing away from her, down the hall, and now there were guys coming out of nowhere, all over, a half-dozen of them, and one of them came up behind me and grabbed me in a full nelson. I dropped to a wide stance and punched forward with both hands, and that loosened the guy’s grip. I wheeled and hit him in the side of the head with my elbow, and followed on around with my body and scooped my arm around behind his head and pulled him down and kneed him in the groin and kicked the inside of one of his knees and then the other, and the second one broke with a sound like a drumstick snapping.
I took a punch in the side of the head and one in the kidney and I yelled and turned and hit a guy with a forearm and saw another guy fly by me on the end of Leonard’s foot, and then I saw the stock of Leonard’s shotgun catch another one in the side of the head, and after that I saw less of Leonard because I was busy.
I threw some punches and kicks, but mostly punches and knees and elbows, because the working conditions were tight. Guys started running past me and Leonard, darting for the door. Back of the house I heard a woman scream, and some guys yell, and the back door slammed, and I knew a fistful of folks who’d been on the buy were out of there and making tracks.
I checked the woman. She was still out.
I looked behind me. Parade Float was on his ass, unconscious, leaning against the wall, dribbling blood- soaked teeth down his chest. He was still wearing his shower cap. Those things were really worth the money.
Another guy, the one whose knee I’d broke, was on the floor screaming so loud I thought my brain would turn to mush. Leonard walked over and kicked the guy in the face, hard, and I grabbed him to keep him from doing it again.
Leonard turned away from me and went into the room where Mohawk had gone, and I ran over there and entered just behind him. And there was Mohawk, on the bed, on his knees, holding a revolver, pointing it at Leonard. The gun vibrated like a guitar string. Mohawk said, “Don’t! Don’t now. I’ll shoot your goddamn dick off. Get away from me, you crazy nigger.”
And Leonard, truly crazy, crazed as if he had a hot soldering iron rammed up his ass, walked right up to him. Mohawk didn’t fire because he was too scared to fire, afraid the bullets would bounce off Leonard’s chest.
Leonard tossed the shotgun on the bed, reached out and grabbed the barrel of Mohawk’s gun and twisted it away from him and grabbed him by the throat with the other hand. He tossed the gun aside and whipped Mohawk around and put his forearm under Mohawk’s chin and applied a judo choke. One of those that doesn’t cut the wind, just cuts the blood off to the brain, and because of that, I knew Leonard had gotten himself together.
Mohawk thrashed a little, then got still.
I put a hand on Leonard’s shoulder. “Let him go, man.”
Leonard let him go, and Mohawk fell off the bed and onto the floor. He was out. With that choke, it only takes a few seconds.
Leonard got Mohawk by the feet and dragged him out of the bedroom, and I watched from the hallway as Leonard pulled him onto the front porch, and down the steps, Mohawk’s head thumping the steps like bongos. Leonard laid Mohawk out in the yard and came back in the house. He reached down and got Parade Float by the shirtfront and boosted him to his feet and put the big bastard over his shoulder and turned to me.
“Drag ’em out,” he said.
I went over and picked the woman up. She was very light. A temporary feeling of guilt went over me, hitting her like that, but then I thought of the gun pointing at my balls and her firing it, and I wanted to hit her again. I took her out in the yard and laid her between Mohawk and Parade Float. I went back inside and got hold of the guy with the broken knee and pulled him onto the porch and shoved him off. He screamed all the way and really screamed when he hit the ground.
In the distance, we could hear the ambulance sirens.
“Inside,” Leonard said.
We went inside and into the bedroom where Mohawk had been. Leonard pulled the mattress off the bed and started dragging it through the doorway. He piled it in the hallway, and I followed after him as if I were a strand of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.
We went into the kitchen, and Leonard rumbled around and found a box of kitchen matches. He tried to open the box but was so wired he dropped them on the floor. I picked up the box and opened it and got a match out and struck it on the side of the box and handed it to him.
He grinned at me. The devil was behind that grin. He took the match and carefully lit a curtain over the kitchen window. The curtain began to blaze. I got a match out, went over to a sack of overflowing garbage, struck the match on the counter and looked at the flame. I saw the overdosed child in it, saw the dead bodies beneath the house, the bones in the trunk, the shadowy shape of Illium.
I dropped the match on top of a grease-splattered Hamburger Helper box. A moment later the sack was flaming. I kicked the fiery sack under the kitchen table and the flames licked up and caught the plastic table cloth. The table itself was littered with garbage. It caught fire pretty quick.
We moved down the hallway, and Leonard took out his pocketknife and cut the mattress open. I lit the stuffing inside, and the mattress blazed mightily.
We did the same sort of thing in the bedroom with the curtains and the sheets. Leonard rescued his shotgun, and we went over to the bathroom and found some bottles of alcohol in the medicine cabinet. We sloshed that around the place and lit it. Flames raced up the walls.
By the time we walked out the front door our matches were used up and the house was seriously on fire. There were ambulance attendants in the yard, looking at Mohawk and the others. There was an ambulance at the
