The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

“That’s the way you’d see it too, if you’d bother to look.”

Their eyes meet. Jessie knows that Joe is dead. She watched Oates murder him the night before, saw Joe’s heart chewed by buckshot. Saw the open ruin of his chest, slick and dark as blackberry jam. Saw his dead eyes, cold and green and still full of need, as Larry Oates stood over him with a smoking shotgun in his hands.

So she knows this shouldn’t be happening — this rendezvous with a dead man — but she trusts her eyes because she sees things other people don’t even know how to look for. Especially in her dreams. In dreams she sees those things dead on, and she never, ever blinks.

And right now she sees Joe Shepard, the only man she ever loved, a corpse standing in the barn where they first met Larry Oates. Her lover is free of the grave, and the rain has washed a lot of the mud off of him, but Jessie knows he’s not free at all. Not really.

That’s the way it looks to her. Of course, even someone like Jessie can’t see absolutely everything. She’s human. She misses things now and then. Little things, mostly. Or not- so-little things — like nine hundred bucks pulled from a rip in her lapel by the man who killed her lover.

So the next thing she tells the dead man isn’t exactly a lie. “I’ve still got the money,” she says. “Every cent, just like I told you. I promise I’ll bring it back if you just wait a little longer.”

Joe shakes his head, rain-washed face bathed in dim fluorescent light and a few trickles of unhallowed mud like dark tears on his cheeks. There’s not much light in the barn, but there’s enough to see the important things, like the little bit of a smile on Joe’s face, a smile Jessie has seen a thousand times before. A smile that means he understands things in a way she doesn’t. A smile that means he’s got to lay it out for her one more time.

“That money,” he says. “It was everything to me.”

“I swear, Joe. I’ve got it. I’ll bring it to you. If you just wait — ”

He grabs her by the lapels and pulls her close. Digs his dead fingers into the ripped seam. Comes up short one roll of greenbacks amounting to nine hundred dollars.

“Oates pulled it out when you stabbed him. He dropped the money, and rainwater carried it across the parking lot.” Joe taps his head. “I watched it happen, saw everything inside my skull. It’s funny being dead. You see all sorts of things. You even see some things that haven’t happened yet. Like this — a couple hours from now a little waitress with a pierced belly button is going to step outside for a cigarette break. She’ll spot that nine hundred bucks just before the rain washes it down a drain, and she’ll pick it up, and — ”

“I’ll go back for it,” Jessie says. “One way or another, I’ll make her give it to me.”

“Considering that you’re out cold at the moment, I don’t see how you have much chance of getting that done.”

“Trust me just a little longer, Joe. I can do it.”

Joe shakes his head some more, and the look on his face is stone cold, a look Jessie never saw when he was alive. “I’m tired of trusting other people,” he says, his voice flat. “It’s time I handled this myself.”

“No. Just give me one more chance — ”

“You had your chance. Our deal was that I’d stay put if you brought back every dollar, and now you’ve gone and lost nine hundred bucks. You don’t understand what that money meant to me. I won’t let anyone keep me from it. Not even you.”

There’s a work table near the barn door. Joe walks over to it. The table is littered with beer bottles and ashtrays and weapons. Joe picks up Larry Oates’ shotgun. “Somehow, I’ve got a shot at a second chance,” he says. “That’s what’s important here. I can feel it in my gut. It’s a new feeling, something that wasn’t there when I was alive, and I’ve got to go with it. See, this isn’t some crazy dream, Jess.”

Jessie stares at him. His green eyes are set, unblinking, not smiling at all anymore. Alive, his eyes always smiled. But now his eyes are dead, and different, like part of a mask.

A mask worn by a stranger.

“If you do this thing,” she says, “you won’t be the man I know anymore.”

Joe nods his head. “Maybe I’ll be different. Maybe I already am. I don’t know, Jess — maybe losing your pulse raises your IQ. Maybe I’m smarter than I used to be. Or maybe I’m just seeing some things that you can’t see — the same way I see that waitress picking up my money in a couple of hours. Any way you slice it, I know what feels right in my gut, and I’m going to go out and do it. It’s the only way I know to get back everything I lost.”

“But that waitress doesn’t have anything to do with this. All she’s going to do is pick up some money. Nine hundred bucks — ”

“You’re wrong. It’s more than money now. A lot more. That’s all you need to understand.”

Jessie stares at him. A chill travels her spine, because she barely recognizes the man she loved.

She wants to say more, but Joe holds up a hand. “Here’s my advice, Jess — stop worrying about me, and stop worrying about waitresses you don’t even know. Start worrying about yourself. After all, you’re the one who just knifed a drug dealer. I think he might be a little pissed about that.”

It’s almost funny, that last part.

But Jessie doesn’t laugh. Not this time.

And Joe doesn’t smile.

Not anymore.

“Shit,” Smitty says. “Shit!”

He boots the clutch and his hand chops the gear shift. His knuckles ache like a sonofabitch. Smitty doesn’t like to hit women. They all have hard fucking heads.

He shakes his right hand. It’s sure enough messed up. Probably busted. And Oates. Man! His partner is in the back of Smitty’s Peterbilt tractor, bleeding in the sleeper, gutted like a fish. If Oates dies… if the bossman doesn’t make it… Man, Smitty can’t handle everything on his own. He’s always been the guy who moves the merchandise, doing the job while he runs redwoods down the coast. He’s no businessman. He can’t handle cops and lawyers and all the rest of it, the way Oates can…

Shit!

Smitty glances at the chick. She’s out cold, buckled into the passenger seat. Ankles bound with duct tape. Wrists bound with same. She won’t be getting away.

Not this time. Last time, they weren’t careful enough. Oh, sure, her boyfriend wasn’t any problem. Just some loser looking to make a buck by moving some dope. They hooked him with a good line and a couple beers in a Portland tavern. That was all it took. After a little drive into the country and a couple more beers in Oates’ cozy cabin in the woods they marched the two of them out to the barn to show the boyfriend the merch. Right then and there Oates did him easy, blasting the boyfriend’s ass as soon as the fool told them what kind of green he wanted to lay down.

Moron came north to be a player, didn’t even get into the game. The girl was something else, though. She got away while they were searching the dead guy for his bankroll. Had to be that she had the dough, because all they found on her fool of a boyfriend was a withdrawal slip showing he’d cleaned seventy-six hundred and seventy- seven bucks out of his bank account —

Not much money, really. But they’d killed for it.

And now Oates might fucking-well die for it.

And that makes it important.

That makes it everything.

Oates is huddled up in the sleeper, bleeding on a mattress that stinks of Smitty’s sweat.

Bleeding bad. The towel Smitty gave him is soaked through. He looks for something else, but the bedding is filthy, and the only other thing he spots is a stack of old skin magazines.

Oates grabs a copy of Hustler and presses it to his belly. He closes his eyes and thinks about the money. Seems like it’s right there in front of him. He can see it clear as day —

Right there in front of him. There it is. That little green jellyroll trundling across the parking lot.

It doesn’t look very thick, that jellyroll.