Bullets and Fire
A Short Story
by Joe R. Lansdale
I was asked if I would like to write a really hardboiled story for a magazine, and I thought, why yeah. The story idea popped into my head in a flash. I was trying to write a story that dealt with revenge, and how far anger and the desire for revenge could take you, but mostly what I wanted was to be entertaining. BULLETS AND FIRE is, I hope, just that. Fast paced, dark, redemptive, and full of action.
I don’t remember a lot about the writing of this one, only that it came fast and furious. I couldn’t put the words down fast enough. I was typing so fast, I thought I was going to break a finger. I love it when I get a gift from the gods like that. It doesn’t always happen that way. But when it does, I embrace it.
Joe R. Lansdale
I HAD HIT the little girl pretty hard, knocking her out, and maybe breaking something, messing her nose up for sure, but for me, it was worth it.
I sat at the table in the bar and smelled the sour beer and watched some drunks dance in the thin blue light from behind the bar. I was sitting with Juan and Billy, and Juan said to me, “You see our reasoning, you gonna get in with us, you got to show what you got, and fighting a guy, that shows you’re some kind of tough, but hitting a girl like that, her what, twelve or thirteen, way you smoked her, now that shows you don’t give a damn. That you ain’t gonna back up if we say what needs to be done you’ll just do it. That’s the way you get in with us, bro.”
“Yeah,” Billy said, “it makes you tough to fight a guy, brave maybe, but to hit someone like that you don’t know, just someone we pick on the street, and to savage her up like that, my man, that’s where the real stones is cause it goes against… What is it I’m looking for here, Juan?”
“What mommy and daddy taught?” Juan said.
“Shit,” Billy said, “my daddy hit me so much, I thought that was how you started and ended the day.”
“Hell,” Juan said. “I don’t know. You guys want some more beers?”
I sat there and thought about what I had done. Just got out of the car when they told me, and there was this young girl on the sidewalk, a backpack on. I could still see how she looked at me, and I was just going to hit her once, you know, to knock her out, a good blow behind the ear, but nothing too savage, and then I got to thinking, these guys are going to take me in, they want to see something good. I did what had to be done. I beat her up pretty good and then I took her wallet. I started to take the backpack, but I couldn’t figure on there being anything in that I’d want. But she had little wallet that was on a wrist strap, and she ought not to have been wearing like that, where it could be seen. Someone should have told her better.
Juan came back with some beers and a bowl of peanuts and we sat and drank some beer and ate the peanuts. I like peanuts.
I touched my shirt and felt something wet, and started to wipe it, but then I realized it was sticky. The girl’s blood. I wiped it on my pants. It was dark in there, and wasn’t anyone able to see much that mattered.
I watched some more couples get up and start dancing to the music on the jukebox, moving around in that blue light to a Smokey Robinson tune. My dad had always liked that song, about seconding and emotion. Billy said, “You know, even being a black man myself, I don’t like it when they play that old nigger music. How about you, Tray, you like that old nigger shit?”
I did, and I didn’t lie about it. “Yeah. I like soul fine. I like it a lot.”
Billy shook his head. “I don’t know, it’s all kind of mellow and shit. I like a nigger can talk some shit, you know, rap it out.”
“All sounds like a hammer beating on tin to me,” I said. “This stuff, it’s got some meat to it, cooked up good, plenty of steak, not just a bunch of fucking sizzle.”
“He told you,” Juan said. “One nigger to another. He told you good.”
“Yeah, well, I guess nothing says we got to like the same stuff, but that’s all Uncle Tom jive shit to me. A little too educated, not street enough.”
I remembered what my brother Tim said to me once, “Don’t let these neighborhood losers talk you down. Education hasn’t got a color. Money, it’s all green, and education, it gets you the money. It gets you something better than a long list of stick ups and stolen money. You got to have pride, brother. Real pride. Like daddy had.”
Daddy had worked some shit ass jobs to help us make it. Mama died when we were young, fell down some stairs, drunk, broke her neck. Daddy, he didn’t want us to end up drinking and fighting and getting our selves in trouble the same way. He tried to raise us right, told us to get an education. That’s what Tim had done, got an education. He’d gone straight, done good. I loved Tim. He was a proud man. Well, boy, really. He wasn’t much older than me. Twenty-two when it was all over for him. When I thought of him, what I thought of was a proud man, and I hated he was gone.
Me, tonight, I wasn’t so proud. I’d beat that girl good and taken her little pink wallet from the pocket of her dress. A pink wallet, that when you opened it and folded it out, had some pictures, some odds and ends and five dollars.
“So, you guys, to get in with the gang, you do something like you had me do tonight,” I said.
I knew the answer to that, but I was just making conversation.
“Yeah, well, we did one together,” Juan said. He was Mexican and almost as dark skinned as me, and that’s pretty damn dark. All I could see of him really was his teeth in the blue light from behind the bar. He said, “We did a guy, me and Billy. Did him good.”
“So you do a guy, and then you have me do a girl, and you tell me that’s the way to do it? What about the rest of the gang? Any of them do like I did?”
“Sometimes, something like it,” Billy said. “We had one boy who loved dogs, we had him shoot his own dog. Pet it on the head and open its mouth and stick a gun in there and shoot him. Shot came out that dog’s ass, ain’t kidding you. Went through that dog’s ass and through a wall in the guy’s house and knocked a lamp over.”
“I think the bullet went in there and hit the end table,” Juan said. “I think the table jarred and the lamp fell off.”
“Whatever.” Billy said. “You know what, that guy, he don’t stay in the gang long. He shoots himself. Found him dead, laying over his dog’s grave. That’s no shit. Can you imagine that, getting that way with a dog? You got your gang, and your family, and everything else, that’s just everything else, and that includes dogs or the fucking kitty.”
“So I beat up a girl and this guy shot a dog, and you guys did a guy, so now we’re all equal. That the way it works?”
Juan shook his head. “Well, you got to do something to get in, but we did something big, and that made us kind of lieutenants. You, you’re just like a private. But you’re in, man. You’re in.”
“Mostly,” Billy said.
“The gang, they still got to have a look at you, and our main man, he’s got to give you the okay.”
“So what did you do?” I said. “I’ve heard around, but I was wondering I could get it from you.”
Juan sipped his beer. “Sure,” he said.
Billy said, “Way we did the guy was the thing.”
“We may be small town, baby,” Juan said, “one hundred thousand on the pop sign, but we got our turf and we got our ways, and we did that boy good.”
“He was young, maybe about your age,” Billy said. “Age we are now. He worked at a little corner grocery, was a grocery boy.”
“What grocery?” I said.
“One around the corner, just a half block from here,” Billy said. “Or was around the corner. Ain’t no more. There’s a big burn spot where it used to be.”
Billy and Juan laughed and put their fists together.
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“You mean the Clement Grocery?” I said.
“That’s it,” Billy said. “Guess it was, let me see, how long we been in the gang, Juan?”
“Three years come October,” Juan said.
“I know the place,” I said. “Course, I’m pretty new here now, but I used to live here, when I was younger, so I know the place. I didn’t live far from here.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “Where?”
“I don’t remember exactly, but not far from the grocery. I used to go there. I don’t remember where I lived though, not exactly. Not far from here, though.”
“You ain’t that old, you remember the grocery, you got to remember where you lived,” Billy said.
“I could probably find the place, just don’t remember the street number. You took me around, I could find it. But, man, I don’t give a shit. This thing you did with the grocery boy. Tell me about that.”
“We should have left that grocery and the kid alone,” Juan said. “It was a good place to get stuff quick, and now we got to go way around just to buy some Cokes. But, man, what we did, it was tough. We was gonna be in the gang, you see, and the Headmaster, which is what he calls himself, ain’t that something, Headmaster? Anyway, he says we got to do something on the witchy side, so we went and got a hammer and nails, and when we got there, the kid was working in the store, and the place was empty, just goddamn perfect.”
“Perfect,” Billy said.
“So we got hold of the kid and while Billy held him under the arms, I got my knee on his foot, and got a big ole nail I had brought, and with the hammer, I drove it right through his foot and nailed him to the floor.”
“He screamed so loud I thought we was caught for sure,” Billy said. “But nobody come running. They must have not heard him, or knew it was best to pretend they didn’t.”
“Fucker kicked me with his other leg, two, three times. And I just hammered the shit out of his leg and Billy couldn’t hold him anymore, and he fell over, and then I kicked him a bit and he quit struggling, but he was plenty alive.”
“That’s what makes what happened next choice,” Billy said. “We put some boxes of popcorn on him and then we set fire to the place.”
“You forget, I nailed his other foot to the floor.”
“That’s right,” Billy said. “You did.”
“He was so weak from the kicking we had given him, and all the blood that had filled up his shoe and was running out over the top of it, he didn’t know I was doing what I was doing until the nail went in.”
“He really screamed that time,” Billy said.
Juan nodded. “That’s when we got the popcorn, bunch of other stuff and started the fire. We ran out of there and across the street and in the alley. We could hear that kid screaming across the street, but nobody came. A light went on in a couple windows of buildings where people lived upstairs, but nobody came.”
“Fire took quick,” Billy said. “We were so close, and if I’m lying, I’m dying, we could hear that popcorn popping and him still screaming. And then we saw the flames licking out of the open doorway, and then we saw the kid. He had got his feet free, probably tore the nails right through them, and he was crawling out the door, but he was all on fire. Looked like that Fantastic Four guy. What’s his name, The Flame.”
“The Human torch,” Juan said. “Don’t you know nothing?”
“Yeah, him,” Billy said. “Anyway, he didn’t crawl far before that fire got him and then we finally did hear some sirens, and we got out of there.”
“Last look I got of that kid, he wasn’t nothing but a fucking charcoal stick,” Juan said.
“That’s what got us in the gang,” Billy said. “And the Headmaster, he said it was a righteous piece of witchiness, and we was in, big time. You sweating, man?”
I nodded. “A little. I got a cold coming on.”
“Well, don’t give it to me,” Juan said. “I can’t stand no cold right now. I hate those things. So stay back some.”
“This Headmaster, he got a name?” I asked.
“Everyone calls him Slick when they don’t call him Headmaster,” Billy said. “Shit, I don’t even know what his real name is, or even if he’s got one. He’s maybe nearly twenty-six, twenty-seven years old. It don’t matter none to you, though. You done done your thing to get in, and we’re witnesses.”
“Once you’re in,” Juan said, “no one much fucks with you. It’s like a license to do what you want. Even the cops are afraid of us. They know we find out who they are and where they live, we might give them or their little straight families a visit.”
“Gang is the only way to live around here,” Billy said. “Get what you want, feel protected, you got to have the gang, cause without it, man. You’re just on your own.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know what that’s like, being on my own. So, I’m in. I’ve done my deed and I’m proud of it, and I want in.”
· · ·
WE WENT OUT OF THERE and around the corner and walked a few blocks to where the gang had their headquarters. I thought about the streets and how dark they were and figured that fast as the streetlights got repaired, someone shot them out. Maybe the city was never going to repair them again. Maybe they had had enough.
Dad told me once, that if people don’t care about where they live, the way they act, people they associate with, they get lost in the dark, can’t find their way back cause there’s no light left.
I had taken a pretty good step into the shadows tonight.
There was an old burnt out building at the end of the block and we went past that and turned right and there was this old bowling alley. The sign for METRO BOWLING was still there, but there was nothing metro about the place. The outside smelled like urine and there was some glass framed in the doorway and it was cracked. When we got to the doorway, Juan beat on the frame with his fist, and after a moment the door opened slightly, and a young white woman with long black hair showed her face. Juan said something I wasn’t listening for, and then we were inside. The girl turned and walked away and I saw she had an automatic in her hand, just hanging there like it was some kind of jewelry. Juan gave her a slap on the ass. She didn’t even seem to notice.
The place stank. You could hear music in the back. Rap, and there was also some good hip hop going, all of it kind of running together, and there were quite a few people in there. The floors where the bowling alley had been were still being used for bowling. Gang members, most of them dressed so you knew they were in a gang, flying their freak flags, were rolling balls down the wooden pathways, knocking down pins. The little pin machine was working just fine and it picked up the pins and carried them away and reset them. The alleys were no longer shiny and there were little nicks in the wood here and there and splinters stuck up in places as if the floor was offering tooth picks.
In front of the bowling alleys were racks for shoes, but there weren’t any shoes in them. Some of the gang members were wearing bowling shoes, and some weren’t. The clack and clatter of the balls as the machine puked them up and slammed them together made my ears hurt. Over near the far wall a big black guy had this Asian girl shoved up against the wall, so that both her palms were on it. She had her ass to him and her pants were down and so were his. What they were doing wouldn’t pass for bowling, though balls were involved.
“That there is B.G. He’s slamming him some nook,” Billy said.
“I kind of figured that’s what was going on,” I said.
We went past them and around a corner and into a back room. There was a desk there, and a guy that looked older than the others was sitting behind the table and he had a big bottle of Jack Daniels in front of him. He was a white guy with some other blood in him, maybe black, maybe all kinds of things, and he was sitting there looking at me with the coldest black eyes I’ve ever seen. They looked like the twin barrels of shotguns. He grinned at Billy and Juan and showed me some grillwork on his teeth, and the grillwork was silver and shiny and had what looked like d
iamond in them. For all I knew they were paste or glass.
On his right side was a young white girl who wasn’t bad looking except for a long scar on her cheek, and on her right hand side was a guy who looked as if he might like to eat me and spit me out. On Grillwork’s left was a husky looking Hispanic guy with eyes so narrow they looked like slits.
“So, you got a wayward soldier,” Grillwork said.
“That’s right, and we known him now a couple weeks, and he’s been wanting in, talking to us, walking around with us some, and he did some righteous business tonight,” Juan said.
“No shit,” Grillwork said. “What’d he do?”
Billy told him and Grillwork nodded like he had just been told I had invented time travel.
“That’s good,” Grillwork said. “That’s real good. So you wanting in, huh?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I want in. I thought I was in. I did what was asked.”
“Well, that’s a beginning,” Grillwork said. “You showed some stones doing something like that.”
I didn’t think it had taken that much in the way of stones. She was a kid, something a high wind could knock over.
“Sit the fuck down, man,” Grillwork said. “What’s your name?”
I sat in the chair in front of the table and told him my name.
“What you want in for,” Grillwork asked.
“I don’t have a family. It’s tough to make it in this town. Jobs bore me.”
“All right, all right,” Grillwork nodded. “You got to understand some things. You come in, you got to stay in. You want to get out, well, you get out all right, but all the way and pretty goddamn final. No final. Not pretty final. Final. Savvy?”
I nodded.
“You get in, we got work of our own, but it’s different. You do stuff that makes money by taking other people’s money. We sell some chemicals, man. Got our own lab.”
“Meth?” I said.
“Oh, yeah. Now and again, we deal in some weed and some pussy, but mostly we got the meth. You pick dough up on the side, that’s yours, but not by selling chemicals, man. The mind mixer business, that’s all ours, and I find you dipping your dick into that, you’ll wind up in a ditch with flies on your face. Got me?”