pubic hair was so neatly trimmed it looked like little fur panties. Her short legs were shiny, as if oiled. I figured her for about eighteen. Under the circumstances, she was about as sexy as an avocado. I could see now that there were thin, white cords tied to her wrists and in turn, to the bedpost. I didn’t try to untie them. No time for that. I gave her what I thought was a reassuring smile. If she caught the meaning, her face and eyes gave no sign of it. She just lay there quietly, watching, perhaps resigned.
There was just the one door on the far left, where Russel was, and a closet door between the bed and that exit. Jim Bob cocked the triggers on the sawed-off, jerked the closet door open, and the skinny guy, buck naked, came out of there with a scream and a flash of knife and the blade went down and over Jim Bob’s shoulder and poked him deep in the back. Jim Bob hit the man in the stomach with both barrels of the shotgun and pulled the triggers. Red jumped out of the skinny guy, front and back, and he flopped to the floor. Jim Bob went to his knees and bent his head. The knife stuck out of his back like a quill.
Russel, without hardly looking, reached over and took it by the handle and pulled it out with a jerk.
“Goddamn!” Jim Bob said.
Russel stuck the knife through his belt and opened the door in front of him and stepped quickly to the side, but nobody fired at him.
“Freddy,” Russel yelled into the room. “I’m Ben Russel. I’m your father. I’ve come to kill you.”
I went around behind Russel and peeked through the doorway and Russel moved inside and I followed. Jim Bob got up, leaned against the door jamb and said, “That hurt, Ben.”
The room was a big office room and there was a metal desk and chair and file cabinets against the wall and a big freestanding fireplace. I saw part of a pants leg behind the fireplace, then part of a shoulder and a face. Freddy.
I jerked up the Ithaca, but a hand came down on top of the barrel and the gun fired into the floor. It was Jim Bob. “There he is, Ben, the fireplace,” Jim Bob said.
Freddy stepped out from behind it and lifted a pistol and shot Jim Bob, sent him sprawling backwards. He fired again and hit Jim Bob a second time and knocked him through the open doorway.
“I’m your father,” Russel said, and the. 357 came up, but not fast enough. Freddy shot Russel in the right shoulder and the shot knocked the gun out of his hand. Russel went to one knee with a grunt.
I brought the shotgun around again, and fired. The shot knocked the hell out of the freestanding fireplace and a section of it came off and hit the floor and the fireplace wasn’t freestanding anymore. But I didn’t hit Freddy.
Freddy shot at me as I pumped another load into the Ithaca, and the shot punched a hole in my side and my right arm went numb and the shotgun swung wide right as if on a gate and went to the floor. I tried to reach for the. 44 in the holster by cross drawing with my left hand, but knew damn well I’d never make it. I was looking down the barrel of Freddy’s gun, the mouth of death about to spit in my eye.
Russel’s ankle gun barked, and Freddy let out his air as if punched. He sat down on the floor and his gun fell between his legs. “Shit, I’m shot,” he said.
He looked at the gun on the floor in front of him and reached out to get it, but his fingers wouldn’t cooperate and take hold.›
Russel walked over to him. He had the little ankle gun in his left hand and his right arm was folded in front of him out of my sight
“I didn’t want it to hurt,” Russel said. “I wanted it done clean because I love you.”
Freddy smiled and looked up. “Love me? Man, you just put a hole in me. Shit, you really my daddy?”
“Uh huh,” Russel said.
“If that isn’t some kind of trip,” Freddy said, and Russel shot him through the forehead.
44
The numbness had mostly gone out of my side, though my arm, for some reason I couldn’t fathom, felt like a wet Kleenex. I reached across with my left hand and felt where the bullet had gone in and out through my shirt and flesh, but neither wound seemed particularly dreadful. I didn’t seem to be bleeding much. I let that give me some comfort.
I left Russel standing over his dead son, went in and knelt down by Jim Bob. The trip from one room to the other assured me all my parts were working, and more feeling was coming back into my arm; it felt like it had gone to sleep and was struggling to wake up.
Russel came in and got down on his knees by me and reached out and touched Jim Bob’s arm. Jim Bob opened his eyes and looked at us.
“I thought you weren’t going to do that,” Russel said.
“It seemed like the right thing at the time,” Jim Bob said. “I don’t think I’d do it again, though.”
“Bad?” Russel said.
“Bad enough that Rodriguez is going to make some money. You look a mite piqued yourself.”
“A mite,” Russel said.
“Dane?”
“I’m hit,” I said. “I feel okay though. I think it went through the fat meat on the side. I’m not even bleeding much.”
“You got a cut on your neck,” Jim Bob said.
I reached up and touched where a bullet had sliced me, came away with blood on my hand. “They seem to be shooting all around the edges,” I said.
Russel touched Jim Bob’s forehead. “No fever,” he said.
“I haven’t got the flu,” Jim Bob said. “God, did we get them all?”
“Uh huh,” Russel said.
“Damn, we’re better than I thought,” Jim Bob said.
“Can you get the truck?” Russel asked me. “I must be getting old. I feel winded.” His eyes were full of tears.
“Yeah,” I said.
“The girl seemed all right didn’t she?” Jim Bob said.
I glanced over at the bed. She hadn’t gone anywhere. Her face was turned toward us, those pecan-colored eyes taking us in.
“She’s okay,” I said. “Just scared shitless.”
I got the keys out of Jim Bob’s pocket and walked to the truck and drove it back. Upstairs, Russel had used the skinny man’s knife to cut off the side of the sheet the girl was lying on (I bet she enjoyed seeing him coming toward her with that wicked knife), and had used it to make bandages for Jim Bob. When I got there, Russel took off his shirt and I used some of the sheet to bandage him, then he did the same for me. We put our shirts on, and I went looking for our guns, including Jim Bob’s lost. 38 which he said the Mexican had swatted from him and knocked across the room. I found it twisted in the thin man’s white suit, which lay on the floor beside the bed.
I put all the guns in the truck, then Russel and I used our good arms to carry Jim Bob downstairs and over the dead bodies. We dropped him only once. He cussed until the air sizzled. We put him in the camper and gave him his hat to lay on his chest, then Russel and I went upstairs and cut the girl loose, found her clothes under the bed, and turned our backs while she put them on. When she was dressed, we led her downstairs. She didn’t say so much as one word and her eyes told me she still hadn’t figured us out. After what she’d been through, she was entitled to doubt and silence.
We put her in the back of the truck with Jim Bob and Russel climbed in there too and rested his back against the cab and found one of his cigarettes and lit it and coughed some smoke out.
“You sure you can drive?” he asked me.
“I’m not seeing spots or anything,” I said. “My side hurts, but my left hand is good. My right hand has more feeling than it had just a few minutes ago.”
“Get weak, we'll swap on the driving,” Russel said.
“I’ll go as fast as I can without bringing the law down on us,” I said. “I’ll try not to make it too rough a ride, Jim Bob.”
