'Free country,' Otis said. 'Fuck the gun. Let's go. You come with me. Ted'll bring your car.'
I turned slowly, stood facing him. His face was broad, doughy. The knuckles on the hand wrapped around the big automatic were hairy and thick. 'Where?' I asked.
'Guy I know wants to see you.' He gestured in the direction of the black truck.
'Who?'
'What do you care?' The gun was black and mean- looking. He waved it around a little.
'I guess I don't.' I walked a few steps toward the truck, Otis walking behind, Ted back by my car. When I had space around me I turned again to face Otis, as slowly as before. My arms were still and loose at my sides, but my fingers and my spine were tingling.
'No,' I said.
'What the hell do you mean, no? I'm supposed to bring you in, I'm goddamn gonna bring you in.'
'You won't shoot me. Whoever wants me probably wouldn't like it if you brought me in dead.'
'No.' Otis smiled, showing thick brown teeth. 'But he might not mind if you was hurt a little.' We were standing no more than four feet apart. He lowered the big automatic, leveled it at my knee.
'He might not,' I said. 'But I would.'
While I was still talking, while his eyes were on my eyes and his attention on my words, I whipped my left foot up, over, out, caught his gun hand on the inside of the wrist. His arm flew back and I dived after it, grabbed it, spun him around so he was between me and Ted. He swung at my jaw with his free hand but he was way off balance and couldn't put a lot behind if, when it landed it didn't matter much. I kicked him again, in the stomach this time, and he squealed as I twisted his arm sharply from the wrist, bent it hard in a way it was never meant to go. He grabbed wildly at me. I wrenched the gun from him and smashed it across his jaw. I pulled his twisted wrist hard up behind his back, shoved the barrel of the gun under his chin.
'Tell Ted to drop it!' I said.
Nothing happened. I yanked on the wrist in my hand.
'Goddammit, Ted!' he gasped.
Ted threw his gun down as though it were suddenly hot.
'Okay,' I said. 'Face down in the road, hands behind your head. Now!' I pushed Otis down. Ted scrambled to flatten himself.
I picked up Ted's gun, a smaller, older version of the Ruger 9-mm I'd taken off Otis. I went over both men for anything else of interest. I found their wallets, leafed through them. Local boys, Otis and Ted, nothing more than what they looked like. I took my wallet, my quarters, and my keys back from Ted and then stepped over to my car.
'All right,' I said. 'Get up.'
They climbed to their feet. Otis was white, holding his wrist close to his chest. Ted just looked sullen, as though his picnic had been spoiled by rain.
'You broke my wrist, motherfucker,' Otis growled.
'No,' I said. 'If I had, it would hurt. Let's go.'
'Where to?'
'You tell me. It's your party.'
He narrowed his eyes. 'I don't get it. If you was coming anyhow, what was all this for?'
'Oh, a lot of reasons. One, I like to be the guy with the guns. Two, I want Grice to know I'm coming because I'm curious, not because he sent some penny-ante punks after me.' Otis ground his teeth when I said that, but he didn't speak. 'And three, nobody drives this car but me.'
'How did you know it was Frank wanted you?'
'I didn't. But this seems like his style. Heavy-handed and amateur. Let's go.'
They got into the black truck, started it up. I slid behind the wheel of my car, turned the key, and watched Ted slam the truck forward and back until it faced downhill.
I lit a cigarette, dragged on it deeply. The truck rolled down the hill and I followed. When we came out of the pines we turned right, driving farther up into the hills away from town. The late afternoon sun was lost behind a flat lid of clouds. Geese in a V-formation sliced across the sky, heading north.
I hadn't made those guys in the Park View, hadn't spotted them tailing me. I squashed the cigarette butt against the ashtray, slammed the ashtray shut. Ted sped up, bouncing over the rough road. There was no chance of my losing him but I sped up too, hugging his tail more closely than I needed to. Maybe it would piss him off.
There was a time when I kept a bottle of bourbon in the glove compartment, but it wasn't there now, so I lit another cigarette and followed the truck into the fading afternoon.
A pale-green house, dark-green trim, peeling paint. Shutters slanting or missing altogether. Unpainted two-by- tens on concrete blocks stepping up to a sagging, rail-less porch. Tattered screen doors; dark, uncurtained windows, staring blind.
The Chevy turned into a swampy field to the left of the house, bounced to a stop. I pulled partway off the road, parked so a car could pass me but not park me in easily.
Not a lot of people had ever tried living up here, deep in the woods near the top of the ridge, and most of the ones who had had given up and gone away. There was nothing here, except small streams and blackberry thickets and pale snowdrops already showing through a carpet of maple leaves. By next week, wild crocuses, lavender and gold; then lilies in stands of sunrise colors on the stream banks. But you couldn't farm this land, and the streams weren't really good for fishing.
