“I was going to stop. Really.”
“No. I don’t think so. And it doesn’t matter anyway.”
Hiram seemed to consider a moment, then whirled and snatched up one of the kitchen chairs and came for me. He brought it around and hit me on the side, and my injured ribs exploded with pain, but I moved into him as he swung, and cut the force of the blow. I grabbed his face with both my hands and slammed my forehead forward, into his nose, and he jerked back, spewing blood. He dropped the chair, fell leaning against the stove. The impact shook the wall, and the picture of Jesus rocked on its nail and came loose and fell on top of the stove and the glass shattered.
He came at me again, but I moved in with a right to the stomach, hooked a left to his head. It wasn’t a good left. My ribs hurt too bad to put the torque into it. He hit me high above the ear, not a good shot, but all those blows I’d taken from Fitzgerld were wearing on me. I could feel my legs going rubber. I covered my face with my arms and fist and let him chunk a while. He wasn’t any better a boxer than he had been before, just a scrapper, and his wind wasn’t any better either. The blows stung a little, but Leonard gave me worse when we sparred.
After a few hits Hiram began to breathe hard through his mouth, gulping air like a whale gulping plankton. I broke my cover and hooked between his hands with a solid right and took out what breath he had left, then put him down with a swinging elbow. That last technique made my injured rib move a way it wasn’t supposed to move, and I felt it stab against my side. The damn thing had been cracked, and now it had broken loose. I couldn’t help but lean against the sink and feel sick, and when I turned to look at Hiram, he was up. He’d gotten a butcher knife off the cabinet, and he lunged at me with it. He wasn’t any better a knife fighter than he was a boxer.
I parried the lunge to the outside with my arm and grabbed his wrist and pulled him off balance and tugged him against the sink counter and used my free hand to strike him behind the head with my forearm, driving him down into the porcelain sink. His head made a sound like a clay jar breaking and he went out, would have hit the floor if his chin hadn’t hung on the edge of the sink. I kicked his feet out from under him and he went down, sprawled on the floor with blood running out of his mouth. His hand opened slowly, like a flower blooming, and the knife lay free in his palm. I kicked it away. I stood over him a moment, feeling something I couldn’t put a name to.
Finally, I leaned against the sink and tried to get my breath. I was starting to lose it. MeMaw’s kitchen was spinning like a Disney World ride. I turned on the faucet and ran some cold water into my hands and splashed it on my face and rubbed it through my hair. That didn’t help much. I held my head low in the sink beneath the faucet and let the water run over my neck and the back of my skull. A few minutes later the spinning stopped and my rib really began to ache.
I eased my way over to the phone and called the law, asked them to patch me through to Lieutenant Hanson, and to tell him his good buddy Hap Collins was on the line with a murderer in tow.
39.
Four nights after Hiram went down, MeMaw died, and two months later I was still thinking about her. I was glad she never woke up. Never knew. Hiram had lied about his sister being with MeMaw. He’d never called anyone. The need to kill had been so strong inside him, he’d left his dying mother’s side to do what he felt he had to do. The whole thing haunted me like a ghost.
I was thinking about this one warm but pleasant afternoon while me and Leonard were out on the lake fishing, not catching anything, of course, just drifting around in the boat, untangling moss from our lines and watching birds fly over.
At least most of the mosquitoes had called it a season. It was still warm enough that a few of them came out on scouting missions, looking for a place to land, a place to refuel, a place that generally seemed to be located somewhere on the back of my neck, but an occasional quick slap took care of that matter.
“Get your mind off of it,” Leonard said.
“What?”
“You just took the bait off your hook and cast the empty hook back in the water. I’d say you’re thinking about Florida or Hiram.”
I had been thinking about Florida earlier. And Hanson. They were going to get married. Florida had invited me to the wedding. By mail. She said she hoped I’d come. Word from Charlie, who still shopped at Kmart, was that Hanson was hoping I’d stay home. I kept thinking I ought to wish Florida and Hanson well and be happy for them. That was the right thing to do, but I kept hoping she’d miscalculate and get her period on her wedding night. It was the least fate could do for me.
“It’s Hiram,” I said. “The whole mess.”
I reeled the line in, gingerly. My ribs were a lot better, but I still found simple things painful. The doctor had wanted to put a body cast around me, but I’d had broken ribs before. After he helped me get them set, I’d insisted on an Ace bandage, wrapped tight. I figured another month from now I could put on a Chubby Checker record and do the twist. Leonard had recovered just fine; the sprain had gone away within a week.
“You know,” I said, “I kinda liked Hiram. He had a good side.”
“You kinda liked his bullshit. There’s no balance in having a good side when you got the other side he had. Hell, you don’t know he had a good side. He had a good front, man. That guy had more masks than a gaggle of trick-or-treaters. Look the way he went off and left his mother so he could kill that kid.”
“I guess. You think he’ll get life, or a needle full of shit?”
“I pray for the needle. I’d like to be there to push the plunger in the fucker, or maybe just forget the dope and jab him to death with the needle.”
“The thing that worries me about you, Leonard, is you have such a hard time getting in touch with your true feelings.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna get me an analyst can help me out on that. Tell me why I’m queer, too. They like stuff like that. He’ll want to know if I dream about my daddy’s dick. Hell, maybe I’m lucky, shrink’ll be some blond stud that’s queer himself.”
“Hope springs eternal.”
“Listen, man, you worry too much about the psychology of things. That stuff’s just head voodoo. It don’t mean a thing. You took all the psychiatric and psychology degrees in the world, balanced that paper against the truth, there wouldn’t be enough there to wipe a baby’s ass on.”
“Maybe. But it figures with Fitzgerald, if the stuff Hiram says was true, and I think it was, but Hiram, I don’t know.”
“You want everything to come up neat, Hap. That’s bullshit. What Hiram said about Fitzgerald is probably true, what he said about himself is probably bullshit. What you’re doing, is still blaming yourself for not figuring Hiram sooner.”
“I should have seen it. Shit, everything was there. Boxes of flags in Hiram’s van, and each of the bodies had been wrapped in cloth, and he had quoted that piece out of Psalms. Add to that the fact he was here every year at the time of the murders, knew the Reverend and had a history with him. Toss in the religious connection, the way he’d acted that night I handed him Ivan, all drugged and dying, the way he looked at the kid like I’d given him a gift from God. The thought of that, knowing what I know now, gives me chills.”
“Monday morning quarterbacking. I’ve heard it all, Hap, and frankly, I’m tired of it. Look, amigo, I don’t blame myself. You shouldn’t blame yourself. Hiram was cool, and Fitzgerald, hell, he was ripe for the part and was guilty too. We had our eyes on him and couldn’t see the whole of it. That flag shit, hell, who would have thought of that? Only way it would come together is the way it did. You found the flag and the kid. But the thing is, another kid didn’t go down. We got ’em all. I’m gonna feel sorry for anyone, it’s T.J., rotting away in some state institution. Not that I’d want the fucker on the street, but in his case, I got a tear or two for him.”
“I don’t see any.”
“I cry on the inside. And I hope every day the poor bastard will die in his sleep. He ain’t nothing for this world. Shit, Fitzgerald told T.J. his own dick was a snake, he’d have believed it. Cut it off and tied it in a knot had Fitzgerald wanted him to.”
“No doubt about that.”
