“Then it’s us. So long, Hap.”
…
We were too lazy to cook, so we drove into town and had dinner at a cafe. We digested awhile at a coffee shop, then went over to the gym to work out, kick the bag and punch the mitts, then we drove back. As we turned on my street, we saw a car stop three houses up from mine in the Apostle’s Baptist Church parking lot and turn off the lights. The car was one of those low-slung jobs that in the light from the street looked like an angry rodent crouched to attack.
Leonard slowed, said, “Think maybe those are eager churchgoers who have come to wait until the church doors open on Sunday?”
“Seems unlikely.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
We drove by. I turned in the seat and looked out the back. The car was still sitting there. A little red dot from a cigarette was visible. No one had got out.
“What do you think?” I said.
“I think they’re bracing themselves to do something bad, and I got a feeling it isn’t the church they got a quarrel with.”
“Couldn’t be us, could it?” I said.
“It’s hard to believe anyone could be angry with us,” Leonard said, “but yes, I believe they have come to visit us. Call it instinct. Call it experience.”
“Someone somewhere is always mad at us.”
“Yeah, that’s probably more accurate.”
Leonard turned the corner and we went around the block and on the back street. We parked at the curb next to an empty lot with high grass. I opened Leonard’s glove box and got out his automatic.
“That’s my gun.”
“Not today,” I said.
Leonard pulled a short club out from under his car seat, lifted his deerstalker from the middle of the seat, and put it on. We got out and went across the field. At the end of the field we came to a backyard, and crossed that without any dogs barking. From there we could see mine and Brett’s house and the board fence around the backyard.
We didn’t say anything to each other. Sliding across the yard, through the night, we came to the fence and climbed over it, and fell into the backyard. We went across the dead grass and I got my key and opened the back door and we slipped in.
I went right, toward the kitchen, and Leonard turned to the left, toward the downstairs closet.
I was at the corner of the kitchen and the living room, thinking maybe we were overreacting, and that the car we’d seen had been nothing more than the preacher of the church stopping by to pick up a Bible, when the front door was kicked open with a bang and two men with guns plunged inside along with the light from the street lamp.
33
It was as I feared and suspected. Our beatings hadn’t put the fear of the devil into them after all. They had found out who we were and where we were, but as luck would have it, they didn’t know what car we were driving or that we had passed them by on the street.
The first one in the door was Thomas. He had a cast on his right hand. It was up in a sling. The other was Chunk, and he was limping, had a cast on his leg and some kind of heel on it to help him walk. They both had handguns.
Without meaning to, I said aloud:
“Really? You’ve got broken hands and legs, and… Shit, really?”
Thomas and Chunk paused there in the light, as if for a dance number. Thomas saw my shape and lifted the gun, held it sideways like a movie thug, said, “You fucks broke my right hand, motherfucker. But I’m left- handed.”
There was a ca-chunk sound, and then I heard Leonard in the shadows by the open closet say, “Yeah, and I got me a shotgun in the gauge of twelve from the closet, cocksucker.”
The world seemed stuck in amber.
Finally, Thomas said, “Well, okay.”
That hung in the air like a popcorn fart for about thirty seconds.
Thomas’s gun was still pointed in my direction. I had Leonard’s automatic held down by my side. I said, “Put the gun down, or Leonard will blow you both out the door like so much dust.”
“Actually,” Leonard said, “what I’ve found, you shoot a guy with a shotgun, he don’t blow backwards so much as he drops like a curtain and it makes a mess you wouldn’t believe. There ain’t enough janitors in town to clean it up right, but then again, that’s just my personal experience.”
As he said this, Leonard was moving forward, the shotgun at his shoulder.
“You know, I got a gun too,” I said. “I could shoot somebody.”
They ignored me. They were all about that shotgun.
Besides, I had yet to lift the automatic from my side. My face was covered in sweat and my gun hand was trembling. I had tunnel vision. You get that when you’re scared. It’s a thing happens when you’re in a tight situation, especially one of potential violence. Me, I had gotten over it a long time ago. I could control it.
Or could. But tonight, not so much.
Leonard hit a light switch.
Thomas, without lowering the gun he was pointing at me, glanced at Leonard, did a kind of double take at the hat.
“You don’t worry about it,” Leonard said. “How’s it gonna be? A maybe shot you get to take at me and Hap, or a certain boom from the shotgun, and the both of you blood and rags. My aim don’t have to be as good as yours.”
Thomas and Chunk let their handguns drift to their sides.
“Ain’t nobody doin’ nothing,” Chunk said. “I told this fool we ought not mess with you two crazies.”
Thomas turned his head slightly, looked at Chunk. Right then he knew his number one man had climbed out the window, so to speak.
“Now, with your guns at your side,” I said, “dip your knees… Oh, sorry, Chunk. How about just drop them.”
“You two,” Thomas said, “I hate you both. I hate you cocksuckers big-time.”
“That comes up a lot,” Leonard said.
34
The cops came and took Thomas and Chunk. Drake, the chief of police, was with them. He was lean and black and his nose looked even flatter than when I had seen him last. He stayed after the other cops left. We had the lights on now. Very cheery.
Leonard moved the shotgun so he could sit on the couch. Drake said, “Don’t handle the gun anymore.”
I sat in a stuffed armchair and tried not to let anyone see that my hands were shaking. They had been that way for days, and tonight, after the events, they were shaking even more. I shoved them down by my sides in the chair.
“I’ll take that with me when I leave,” Drake said, nodding at the gun.
“Okay,” Leonard said.
They had already taken the automatic, which was registered to Leonard. I was a little uncertain how that
