Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209) (19 page)

They'd already introduced themselves—I'm guessing with a grunt and a nod—but I did the pleasantries again anyway and watched them size each other up. I told them what had happened with Jump Down, and Pelzer laughed and shook his head. Jeep fumed.

He said, “Soon as we're done with this business here, that little bastard is dog food.”

“I kinda thought you'd say that,” I said. “But let's take one massacre at a time.”

I walked past them and into the house and found Peggy and Anci calmly doing math homework at the kitchen table. There were some sodas and chips and other supper leavings strewn out, as was Peggy's Winchester Model 94 short rifle. She put her hand on it when I came in the room.

I said, “Easy there, deadeye.”

She said, “Good lord, you gave me a fright. What the heck happened to you?”

“Ran into an old pal.”

“And he kicked your ass?”

I said, “He had a momentary upper hand, but things evened out in the end.”

Peggy said, “That's Tony Pelzer out there.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, he can't come in here. Apologies to whatshisname . . .”

“Jeep.”

“Apologies to whatshisname, but I don't want him in here with us, and me and this rifle here told him so.”

“They can wait on the porch,” I said, and told her what there was of it to tell. She took it in and looked at me a long time. She ruffled Anci's hair and whispered something in her ear, and Anci hopped down off her chair and went quickly and quietly out of the room with a worried glance at me.

When we were alone, Peggy said, “You're going to leave that little one behind.”

“Just for a while.”

“That's not what I mean, Slim. What I mean is, you're going to go off and get yourself shot to hell and leave her behind for good and permanent. What kind of a father would do something like that? I didn't know better, I'd think you were enjoying this thing a little.”

I don't mind telling you, that got me a little warm under the bandages, and I said so. Days of bad sleep, worse food, and hot-and-cold-running beatings had got to me some, I guess. I said, “And I think you're forgetting that our alternatives aren't too attractive, either. I let this thing go, I got to spend my midlife crisis looking over my shoulder for stray bullets. Anci, too.”

“You could run.”

“Run where? Another town? Another state? And what would that teach Anci?”

“It'd teach her that sometimes you get in over your head. That sometimes it's okay to cut your losses.”

I said, “And someone taught you that, Peggy.”

She stepped to me and hit me in the mouth. It was a pretty good shot, too, and I stepped backward twice and hit the wall. Thing like that can go one or two ways. Sometimes a punch makes you madder and sometimes it knocks your mad right out of the room, and Peggy's hit did the latter. We both looked at each other in that shocked way you get under such circumstances, and then we laughed a little.

Peggy said, “Goddamn it all. Look at me.”

I touched my bloody mouth with my fingers.

“It's okay.”

“I ain't apologizing, you asshole,” she said, but she smiled sheepishly. “I'm just pissed I didn't knock your sorry ass out.”

“Oh. Can I say that you've got a pretty good swing for a schoolteacher? Or will that just lead to more violence?”

“I grew up on a chicken farm with four brothers,” she said, proud. She got her purse and dug until she found some scraps of pink tissue for me. “And I was the oldest. My mom made sure I knew how to fight.”

“I knew all that,” I said, “except the part about your mom. She sounds like a hell-raiser.”

“You would have liked her,” she told me, and smiled sadly at her memories. “She was as ornery as a Republican mule, and she could drink all the men in the county under the table.”

“Sounds tough.”

“She was. Maybe too much so. But something gets everybody, eventually. You sure you got to do this thing?”

“Pretty sure.”

She picked the rifle off the table. She said, “You want some backup?”

“I want Galligan and his men in one piece at the end of this,” I said. “You come along, there won't be enough left to fill an ashtray.”

“Say that again. I don't know the last time I was so mad.”

“Me, either. You mind keeping watch over Anci?”

“We'll be here when you get back.”

“Thank you.”

We kissed, and she touched my face and said, “I know I said I wasn't, but I am sorry about before. About hitting. I guess there's been some tension between us lately.”

“Maybe a little.”

“This is all my fault. Everything that's happening.”

“It's nobody's fault. Or it's all our fault. Or something. It's the way we built our world, and I guess it was inevitable that it'd come to tears one day.”

“Maybe,” she said. She paused and looked into me deeply
for what seemed a long time, and then she said, “And Slim, my answer is yes.”

“Your answer?”

“To what you've been asking me. You and me. Let's build that family together.”

“You're sure?”

“Damn sure.”

We kissed again and said our good-byes and a few other things, and after a moment I went out. Jeep and Pelzer were waiting. Pelzer was smoking a cigarette.

He said, “You're bleeding again.”

“I know.”

“You bleed more than a nun's vision. It makes a body nervous.”

Nervous or no, we gathered up our things and moved out into the swirling night. Pelzer drove his beat-up van. Jeep and I shared my truck.

Jeep said, “Hell of a night for this.”

Hell of a night for anything. The rain came down hard and pelted the windshield, and the wind shoved our vehicles around like scraps of tin. We'd settled on checking Galligan's De Soto residence first, but about halfway there Pelzer's van slid off the road into a ditch. He was banged up some, but when we stopped the truck and ran back through the washer to rescue him he seemed not much worse for wear.

“This is crazy,” Pelzer said over the noise of the rain.

It was crazy, but it was the plan, such as it was. It took us a half hour to pull him out of the ditch and get back on the road, time we keenly felt. When we finally reached Galligan's place, we found the house dark and seemingly empty, something Jeep Mabry confirmed with a quick reconnoiter.

“Told you,” Pelzer said.

I shrugged. “Time well spent, though. I'd hate to run all over the tricounties looking for them only to find out later that they were in the most obvious spot all along.”

“Meanwhile, Temple Beckett is being put in a box.”

“Pelzer,” I said, “you open your mouth again for something like that, I'm going to let Mabry here turn you into a sock puppet.”

Jeep grinned and folded his arms. Pelzer looked at him for a moment, assessing his chances, probably, then lapsed into a sullen quiet. His chances sucked, and he knew it.

Jeep looked at me. “Where to now, Slick?”

“Goines's place.”

“You know where it is?”

I knew where it was. The place was a rental, and not even in Goines's name, but you look hard enough, you can always find someone to bribe. It'd taken a bit of doing—and a bit of cash—but eventually I'd come up with an address. The place was a stone-and-wood A-frame somewhere between Pomona and nowhere, in a lonesome spot at the dark edge of the national forest and without a neighbor anywhere in sight. A perfect hideout. We separated again and rolled out that way, our windshield wipers barely keeping up with the storm, and after a bit of knocking around in the dark and the wild rain we managed to find the place. Under the clouds, it looked a little like an Indian cave or some kind of black-magic church, and when the lightning flashed overhead it cast a fearful, peaked shadow on the grass.

Jeep said, “Okay, better. But are you sure they're inside?”

“Sure enough,” I said. “It's a little late to be out for a stroll.”

“They could be somewhere else entirely.”

“I don't think so,” I said. “Their cars are around back, hoping to avoid anyone noticing. Not that there's anyone out here to notice, but I guess they've elected to be extra cautious. You can't see the cars, but look there in the grass. Tire marks, and the grass is flattened down. Recently, too.”

“Nice eye, buddy,” Jeep said.

“If you two girls are done complimenting each other,” Pelzer said, “maybe we should go see what there is to see.”

I nodded. Jeep nodded. He looked at Pelzer. For a moment, I thought he might knock his head clean off. He must have decided we'd need Pelzer's gun, though, because instead of head-knocking he hopped down from his truck and raced off through the rain into the dark. Pelzer and I followed, quickly and quietly. We didn't really have much more of a plan than that. We ran through the yard, through the howling wind and sheets of rain, straight toward the house. We were tough men on a mission, and we had all kinds of guns. There would probably be murders. We were finally living up to our potential as Americans.

Jeep was fast, but surprisingly, Pelzer was faster. He got in front of us and hit the front porch at a leaping sprint. He caught air and slammed into the door with his shoulder. I guess he had a picture of it in his mind. This was a good door, though. An expensive door. The wood flexed less than a millimeter and spat him out like a wad of gum, and he landed on the concrete with a yelp.

Jeep looked down at him.

“You dumb little peckerwood.” He shook his head. “I don't guess you thought of trying the knob first?”

Jeep tried the knob. The door clicked open, and Jeep pushed it once gently then reared back and kicked it hard with the bottom
of his boot. A big guy with a tattooed face was there to greet us. The door greeted him first, smashed into his mush and drove him over and to the ground. He tried to get up, but Jeep stomped his knee and kicked him in the nuts, and the guy burped a word I'm pretty sure he made up on the spot.

I came in behind Jeep. Pelzer followed me, ducking low and to the left as soon as he was inside. I sort of hoped that they'd be hiding out in small numbers, but the room was full of assholes and firearms. The furniture had been scooted back against the walls and the den turned into a kind of situation room with a table in the center. The lights were on and some candles were lit in case the lights went out. There were bottles of booze everywhere and cigarettes and ashtrays. There were six guys present, too, besides tattoo-face: three rednecks, a mountain man with a big beard who looked like he ate weightlifters for breakfast, a fat boy with a leather jacket and one of those swollen faces looks like it's about to pop, and Goines, still wearing that silly orange hat. Seriously, he looked ridiculous.

Everything that happened next happened in a jumble. Redneck #1 slid a long-barrel .38 from the crack of his ass. But Jeep was ready. He whipped out his twelve gauge and emptied fire and steel into the room. Redneck #2 got hit and parts of him went down in a pool. The table pretty much disappeared. Everyone else jumped from under their hats and dove for cover.

A gun went off and there was a flash of heat and a spark and I hit the deck. It was like someone had hit me in the chest with a post-hole digger. When I got up, the dude with the beard was charging me. I didn't have time to get my footing, and he tackled me and down I went again, harder this time, but came up with the bastard's leg. I tried twisting him to
the floor, but he was like a block of lead; he barely moved. He whacked me a good lick in the eye, and I dropped his leg and rolled over and away and came up two-footed and ready to fight. Just then, the storm picked up even more. The wind punched the house, and the wallboards rattled and moaned threateningly, and a window blew out. Rain and some freezing something came pushing in and the power flickered and died and darkness draped the room like a widow's frown.

I turned again and the Beard was there, like a nightmare. He punched me in the top of the chest, going for my neck maybe, and I fell over and rolled. I came up on the balls of my feet, leapt in. I snatched a small, decorative mirror off the wall and hit him with his own face, and the Beard went down and stayed there.

I looked up and wished I hadn't. The room was like an operating theater. Pelzer had Redneck #3 and Fatboy by the hair, one in each hand, and he was banging their heads off the coffee table so hard that both their faces were flattened like wet clay. He only stopped when I yelled at him, and the boys slid one way and other, sighing in relief as they slumped onto the smashed furniture.

“You're spoiling my fun, Hawkshaw,” Pelzer said.

“Fun, hell. That was about to be murder.” I looked around on the floor at the various bodies and parts of bodies. I didn't see anything orange. I said, “Where's Goines?”

“Here.”

Back of the room was a kitchen and one of those kitchen cutouts. Goines must have slipped down behind the counter during all the excitement. There was a blur of Day-Glo as he stood and swung into the room and shot Pelzer in the head. Pelzer disappeared behind the sofa, and Goines turned
the gun and shot twice at Jeep, who dove for cover. Then he turned his attention to me. I didn't have any cover available.

What I had was maybe half a second. A sawed-off shotgun rested on the pile of matchsticks that had been the coffee table, and I dove and reached for the pistol-grip gunstock but came up instead with a table leg. Good enough, I guess. I swung it hard at Goines's wrist and hit it, and he yelped like a calf and dropped his Dan Wesson .45 Bobtail. He tried to pull back and into a football kick, but it was a clumsy effort and I jabbed him between the eyes and swung the table leg at that silly orange hat, going for the home run.

The boy was quick, though. Quick as a greased cougar. He stepped under my swing and cracked me a good one in the ribs and then dropped to the floor and hooked my legs and brought me down with him. On my way, I reached out to arrest my fall and dropped the table leg, but the Bobtail was there beside me, and I grabbed it and fired off two wild ones. The air tore around us and Goines screamed and jumped backward off me and crab-walked toward the kitchen.