I could hear his feet scraping on the concrete floor of the garage. I listened intently; I wanted to estimate how far away he was.
'Sum of a bitch, stay whar yare.' He sounded an oldish man, maybe in his early sixties.
He was shuffling toward me. I moved my eyes so that I could catch his reflection in the door window of the pickup. As he moved closer I could clearly see an outstretched hand holding a snub-nosed revolver.
'D'ya know whose truck this here's is, feller?'
I shook my head very slowly.
'Muh sum's. Muh sum's a state trooper. He's out thar lookin' fer yer ass right now. But yer in muh house. You belong time. Sums o' bitches, shit, dammit...'
Either I was right they had been watching breakfast TV or Mr. and Mrs. Redneck's little boy had been on the telephone to fill him in on events.
He carried on.
'The troopers is comin' now t'drag yer ass in, feller.
Shit, thet's muh sum's truck, he worked dadbumed hard fer thet .. .
mutherfucker, shit...'
I kept watching the reflection in the window. He took another couple of steps toward me, but he shouldn't have done; you never get too close to someone when you're holding a pistol what's the point, it's designed to kill at a distance.
Another step and I could see the detail of the weapon. It was a .38, the same type as the young black guy had been buying at Jim's. As the salesman had told him, 'Just point it like your finger at the center mass and it will take them down.' The hammer was back, which wasn't good for me.
Revolvers work on a double action: to fire, you have to make a very positive squeeze on the trigger, which works both actions, pulling the hammer all the way back, and letting it then go forward. That serves as the safety device on a revolver, instead of having a safety catch, which you get on most semiautomatics. But he'd cocked it; the hammer was pulled back, the first action had already been taken up all he had to do now was gently squeeze that trigger with less than seven pounds of pressure and the thing would go off. A year-old baby can exert seven pounds of pressure with his index finger, and this was a big old boy who was pissed off and sparked up.
I remained passive. He had me; what could I say?
The reflection moved and he was almost on top of me, and then I felt cold metal in the back of my neck. He jabbed the pistol, moving it up and down, and, knowing that he had his finger on the trigger, I started to flap. I closed my eyes, ready to die.
'Fuckin' sums o' fuckin' bitches,' he ranted.
'Why dim't you fucks git a job like ev'ry other mutherfucker? .. . Shit.. . not jest come an' take .. .
yer not gonna take here ...'
I opened my eyes and looked in the window. He had his arm fully extended and the muzzle was still in contact with my neck. Either he was going to kill me by accident if that second pressure was pulled, or I was going to get fucked over well and truly once the son and his trooper mates arrived on the scene.
If I was quick enough on the initial move, I'd be safe for a second; it was what I did afterward that would decide whether or not I lived. I was going to get caught or I was going to die, so anything I did before that was a bonus.
I didn't want him to see me taking the three deep breaths to fill my lungs with oxygen, so I just let him get on with jabbing the muzzle into my neck while I closed my eyes and got ready. He cackled at his own humor as he said, 'Muh sum's gonna kick yer sorry ass, you fuck.' He was getting more angry as he gained confidence.
'Why is you here doin' yer kinin'? Git home an' do yer kinin' thar ... shit...' He was thinking of something to add. He found it: 'sums of bitches.'
I took the final breath and opened my eyes. Fuck it, just go for it.
ARRGGGHHHHHH!
Stepping forward with my right foot, and at the same time swiveling left on the other, I raised my left arm, bellowing like a lunatic. I was hoping for two things: that it would confuse him, and that it would also spark me up. It didn't matter to me which part of my left arm hit his weapon arm, as long as it did. My arm connected and I could no longer feel cold metal against my head.
My left forearm now had to keep contact with his weapon arm as I carried on swiveling around so that I was facing him. He was bigger than I'd expected. His unshaven face looked like crinkled leather and it was topped with a riot of uncombed gray hair. I grasped the material of whatever he was wearing on his weapon arm, trying to keep the .38 facing anywhere but at me.
A round went off, and the report echoed around the garage. He probably didn't even realize he had pulled the trigger.
I kept turning, and he started to scream back at me and holler for 'Ruby.' His face was no more than six inches from mine, and I could smell his bad breath and see his toothless mouth, wide open.
For the full two seconds my move had taken, my eyes had never left the pistol. In theory, the rules of squash apply: never take your eye off the ball. But I'd always found it hard; sometimes I reckoned it was just as effective to look at the other player, because just before he hits the ball his eyes will tell you if he's bluffing a hard one and is in fact going to hit it gently. It wasn't something I'd been taught, it was just something I found myself doing instinctively in that situation; maybe that was why I was such a crap squash player.
As I turned farther, so did he. The look on the old boy's face was not a happy one. A couple of seconds ago things had been going really well for him, and yet now he thought he was about to meet his maker. His head and body were turning away from me, presenting his back, and with my right hand I was able to slam his head against the wagon. There was a thud on the window as he made contact, with me still gripping what I could now see was the blue overall sleeve on his left arm. I pushed him hard against the pickup with the weight of my whole body, knocking the air out of him. I pushed with my right knee against the back of one of his kneecaps and he buckled. I held his head to control his fall.
I didn't say a word. I didn't have to. He was on his knees, spreadeagled against the wagon, his face pressed against the door. I gripped his weapon arm and shook it. The .38 clattered to the floor.
But that wasn't the end of it. This boy wasn't giving up. Spit and blood flew out of his mouth as he raged, 'You sum of a fuckin' bitch, thet's all yer want t'do, come here an' take .. . shit.'
I was worried about his wife; was Ruby on the phone to the police, or getting out the shotgun? I stepped back and drew my own pistol, kicking his left arm to get him right down on the floor. Then I delivered a couple of persuaders for him to get under the pickup. Now what? I ran.
I sprinted out of the garage, turned left past the front of the house and legged it across the grass, following the track I'd made on the way in. The rain was pelting down.
I heard a woman shout behind me, but I didn't look back. There were no shots.
I vaulted the fence and made my way through the woods to Sarah. She was on her haunches, against a tree. I collapsed next to her, panting on my hands and knees. I looked up and we exchanged a glance. What could I say? I'd fucked up. You can be so close to civilization, yet when you're wet, cold, hungry and don't exactly know where you are, it can seem so far.
There was a gap that she filled.
'What now?'
'Let me think ...' I looked back at the house. There was no movement.
Ruby was probably in the garage, dragging her husband out from under the pickup before heading back to the phone.
My mind was racing through all the options, but the decision was made for me. A cruiser ripped along the road from the opposite side of the house, a blue and white blur in the driving rain. No sirens, no lights, just a foot flat down on the gas pedal. If it was Mr. and Mrs. Redneck's little boy responding to the call, he wasn't going to be happy with the way I'd abused his father's Southern hospitality.
I got up and started to move. They would be following up big time, tracking the sign I'd left in the grass. I ran back the way we had come, then hung a right toward the road. At that moment I heard the helicopter rattling through the sky. We got into tree hugging again. The moment it had flown past, and not even bothering to look behind me to check for Sarah, I started motoring through the forest. She would just have to keep up.
Reaching the edge of the wood near the road, I dropped onto my hands and knees, watched and listened.
