Speed got out of his car. We got out of ours. After a moment, the back door of the other car opened and a man slid out, leaving the door open. It was Cox. I had never met him, but had seen a couple photos of him on the Internet, usually something to do with law-breaking. He always claimed to be innocent, and always got out of whatever problem he was in. He was a tall, lean man with gray, well-cut hair, and a look about him that said he liked things his way. He was dressed in a nice gray suit to go with the hair. My dad always told me not to trust anyone who ran around in the middle of the day with a suit on. If they wore one because they were on their way to preach, he told me to watch them even closer.
“So,” said Cox, “we’re here to deal.”
“If you got something to deal with,” I said.
“They got guns,” Speed said.
Cox glanced at Speed. “What did I tell you?”
“No guns,” Speed said, but he didn’t look worried about the situation. My guess is it was mostly show. My bet is when I saw Speed was on his cell phone, he was calling ahead to tell Cox we had guns.
“We just want to play even,” I said. “Your man here has a gun. And I’m going to guess the guy in the plaid coat has one too. Wouldn’t surprise me you had one. All I’m saying is we all keep our guns and stay friends. Having us put ours up and you keeping yours, that wouldn’t be playing fair. And me, I’m all about fair play.”
“You said we would put them all in a pile,” Speed said.
“I lied,” I said.
“All right,” Cox said. “We’ll play your way.” He looked at Givens. “Got the money?”
Givens held up the briefcase they both knew was empty.
“Good,” Cox said.
“You got the girl?” Leonard said.
“I do,” Cox said.
He looked back at the car. A young man who looked a lot like Cox, but with black hair, got out. He poked his hand back inside the car, when he pulled on it, a girl came out with it. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra. This wasn’t a negative. She had unreal red hair and a pretty face, but there was something about it that made you want to throw a pie at it.
Givens said, “These men, they know what the real deal is.”
I looked at Leonard. He looked at me. The cat had just jumped from the bag.
Givens walked over to Cox’s car carrying the briefcase. He stood by Cox.
“They know,” he said. “They know and they’re trying to work me to get the girl back. They know she’s in on it.”
“Yeah,” Cox said, “and how do they know that? You tell them?”
“They figured it,” Givens said.
“That’s right,” Leonard said, “we’re pretty smart for old country boys. We can even tie a square knot in the dark.”
I let my hand drift to the edge of my shirt. Speed eased his coat back. I think the guy in plaid was still trying to figure out what everyone had said. Cox didn’t look any different at all. Oh, maybe a bit irritated, but nothing more. The girl looked at the young man, who I figured was Jackie, then looked at Cox. She seemed to be waiting for someone to tell her something.
“All right, so they know,” Cox said.
“They plan on taking me and her to the police,” Givens said.
“They do, do they?” Cox said.
“That’s exactly the plan,” Leonard said.
No one said anything for a while. A plane flew over. I wished they were parachuting in reinforcements.
“I think there’s more of us than there are of you two,” Cox said.
“What a mathematician,” Leonard said.
“Me and Leonard get to shooting though, your numbers may decrease,” I said.
“Speed here,” Cox said, “he’s fast on the draw, and he hits what he aims at.”
“I’m not that fast on the draw,” Leonard said, “and I’m not that good of a shot, but I still might hit something. But him, Hap, he can shoot. That motherfucker is a natural. He don’t really know from guns, but he knows shooting. It’s like a goddamn inborn knack.”
“This is true,” I said. “I’m like a fucking prodigy.”
I didn’t add that my expertise was really with long guns, though I did all right with a handgun. And Leonard was right. I didn’t know that much about the workings of guns, really. Not the way gun nuts do, the guys talking about them the way you ought to talk about a woman, but I could hit stuff. As for fast on the draw, I had no idea. I never thought of slapping leather with anyone. I usually had my gun out and ready.
“We got quite the conundrum then, don’t we?” Cox said, and grinned a little.
“Pretty conundrummy,” Leonard said.
Speed was a little to my left rear, but I could see him well enough. Across the way was Crew Cut, and not far from him were Cox and the girl, Jackie, and Givens. Leonard was off to my right.
“You know what?” Leonard said. “I’m going to step a little wide, in case my man here decides to shoot. He’s got dead aim, but I don’t want to be in the line of fire. He might let a lot of bullets go.”
“You really good?” Speed asked me.
“There’s all manner of opinions floating around,” I said.
“He will blow your head off, Speed,” Leonard said, without looking back at me, keeping his eyes on the others. “It will happen so fast you’ll never know you have a hole in you.”
I thought: Don’t build it up so much, Leonard. This Speed guy, he looks like someone who would like to try me out, and I’d rather not. But I didn’t let on I was worried. I smiled a lot. I was one confident and happy-looking sonofabitch.
“I’m thinking I might like to try you, fast man,” Speed said.
Shit. I knew it.
“We don’t have to, you know,” I said.
“You sound a little scared,” Speed said.
“It’s just I don’t like having to clean my gun,” I said. “All that smoke in the barrel. The cost of a bullet.”
“You know what I think,” Speed said, pushing his coat back so the butt of his holstered gun could be seen. “I don’t think you’re that—”
I drew and wheeled and shot him, right in the center of the chest. I wheeled again, toward Crew Cut. He was struggling his gun out of the holster beneath his coat. I shot him in the arm. The gun he’d grabbed went flipping away and he fell back against the car, grabbed his arm, said, “Shit.”
Leonard had his gun out now. It was about time.
“Damn, Hap,” Leonard said. “That was some good shooting.”
“Wasn’t bad,” I said. “Disarm the dick cheese.”
Leonard pointed his gun at them. He said, “You, Nora, you get their guns from them, bring them over here and toss them on the ground behind the car. You get feisty, I’ll put a hole in you. I got a rule, anyone tries to hurt me gets hurt, male, female, wild animal. And if they got hide-out guns, those better come out slow and easy too, not be hanging around for later. Something like that would make me irritable, and like the Hulk, you wouldn’t like me when I’m mad.”
Nora did as she was told. It was quite a pile of guns she dumped behind the car. When she was finished, Leonard said to her, “You come over here and get in our car. Sit in the backseat, put your hands in your lap, and look prim.”
Nora got in the backseat of the car the way a child in trouble will do.
I went over to Speed. I had been watching him carefully ever since he hit the ground, except for when I shot the Crew Cut fellow. He was bleeding badly and his eyes were blinking very fast. He wasn’t even trying to reach for his gun. I knelt down beside him.
“Damn, my man,” Speed said, coughing a little. “I never even cleared leather.”
“That’s because I’m faster than you,” I said.
Speed made a barking laugh that tossed blood onto his lips. “You’re the real deal,” he said.
“Frankly,” I said, “I didn’t know that until just now.”
I pulled his gun from its holster, just in cas
e he might be stronger than he looked, though the way he lay there he gave the impression that lifting his fingers would be a serious workout. I lifted his head up so he wouldn’t choke on his blood. I turned my head, said to the young man: “Your name is Jackie, right?”
He nodded.
“You have the sports coat man there give you his coat.”
“My arm hurts,” Crew Cut said. “And I like this coat.”
“Give him the coat anyway,” I said, “or you won’t have to worry about hurting.”
Jackie went over and Crew Cut worked his way out of the coat. Jackie brought the coat to me. He said, “Don’t hurt Nora. This wasn’t any of her idea.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said, “but she isn’t going to get hurt as long as she doesn’t get cute. Now, sit down there on the ground in front of my car.”
Jackie went over and did just that. I rolled the coat up and put it under Speed’s head.
“Bullet didn’t have much impact,” Speed said, still gurgling blood.
“It was enough,” I said.
“I mean I didn’t feel it so much,” he said. “But I can hardly move.”
“That’s because you haven’t had time to feel it,” I said. “Now shut up. You’re spitting blood.”
Speed lay quietly on the sports coat.
I got out my cell phone and made a call.
Next day we were at Marvin’s office, in our usual spots. Marvin behind his desk, me in the chair in front of it, Leonard sitting by the coffee machine, munching on vanilla wafers. At least he had bought those with his own money.
Marvin said, “I called you here to tell you the cops believe your story, about how you thought you were just getting the girl back and they tried to kill you, so you shot them. They’re not too happy about you going out there without calling them, not telling them what the deal was, but I think they’re in a forgiving mood. They been wanting Cox on something that would stick, and you two talking at a trial, and Givens talking to save his own bacon, that’ll nail him. And way I figure it is you’ll be all right ’cause they’ll be shit-blind happy you helped nail Cox.”
“What about Speed?” I said.
“They think he’s going to make it and get to go to prison,” Marvin said. “He appears to be as tough as boot leather.”
“But he’s not near as fast as he thought he was,” Leonard said. “My man here is like fucking Wild Bill Hickock.”
“I got lucky,” I said. “And I shot him while he was talking.”
“Well,” Marvin said, “I think his future career is woodshop in prison.”
“What about Nora?” I asked.
“The kid, Jackie, he’s saying she didn’t know anything about it, and so’s the old man. She’s gone back to her stepmother. I think the cops will let that stand. Givens will get some time too. He’s backing Jackie’s story about the girl having nothing to do with it. Guess he wanted to have the same story Cox had. He’s helping put Cox in prison, but maybe he didn’t want to go the whole hog, thinks he might get a brownie point or two.”
“Think he will?” I asked.
“Nope,” Marvin said. “They will most likely have him shanked in prison. They do, no tears here.”
Leonard said, “Me either.”
I have to admit, I didn’t see myself shedding tears for that lying, conniving weasel.
“I believe Nora thought she found true love,” I said, “and would get some money out of her father, and she’d have some teenage revenge on her stepmother. For what, I’m not sure, but it seems that’s how she was thinking. She was close to her, but maybe she got unclose when she started to grow up and thought Daddy was putting more attention into Sharon than her. No idea really.”
“Frankly,” Leonard said, “my take is she’s just stupid. Probably glad it’s over, probably glad to be home. Probably forget Jackie in a year’s time. You can bet the way she’ll tell it to Sharon is she was forced. I think that little shit’s a born liar. One of those entitled turds who think they have the best of everything coming just because they are who they think they are, not necessarily who they are.”
“That’s some serious psychoanalyst shit going on there,” I said.
“Naw,” Leonard said. “I just sort of made that up.”
“Actually, that’s what I really thought,” I said.
“I think that’s what Sharon wants her to do—just pretend things are fine between them until they are,” Leonard said. “In the long run, I think she figures what really happened won’t matter, and she’s probably right. And maybe Nora really did find true love, because Jackie didn’t tell it different, and Cox didn’t say his son was lying, so you got to give the old man points for going with what his son said. I think the cops want to let Nora go. They got the fish they wanted to fry and could care less about the minnows.”
“Cox family values,” I said. “Kind of touching. Go figure.”
Brett and I were lying in bed. I said, “I love you.”
Brett turned and put her arm across my chest. “I love you too.”
“I asked you to marry me, would you? Right now, if I asked?”
“Are you asking?”
“I’m running a test,” I said.
“A test, huh,” Brett said.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know, baby. Really, I don’t. I want to, but you know, I got married once before and it ended with me setting my husband’s head on fire.”
“So, you get married, you have to go for gasoline and a match?”
She laughed.
“No, I’m just saying what happened before, my first attempt at wedded bliss. What I’d say about us is this. Let’s give it some thought. Let’s see if it’s something that really matters, and if it does, we’ll get past talking about it. Maybe we’ll decide things are just fine the way they are and we don’t need a piece of paper.”
“It’s not the paper, it’s the commitment.”
“I know. I’m just saying let’s think about how much it matters to us. Give it some thought, some time.”
“All right,” I said.
“Do you want to play doctor?”
“No,” I said. “I’d just like to hold you.”
“Really?” she said.
“Really.”
“That works too,” Brett said, and so I held her.
Hap Collins (James Purefoy) and Leonard Pine (Michael K. Williams)
“Not nearly as many miles as either of those but they were made up of plenty of great forest and deep water, and they were beautiful, dark and mysterious—a wonder in one eye, a terror in the other.”
—Savage Season
“Leonard put on his equipment, shuffled his feet, put up his hands and made his way toward me.”
—Savage Season
“Well, what say we go up to the house and meet the rest of the gang?”
—Savage Season
The Boy Who Became Invisible
The place where I grew up was a little town called Marvel Creek. Not much happened there that is well remembered by anyone outside of the town. But things went on, and what I’m aware of now is how much things really don’t change. We just know more than we used to because there are more of us, and we have easier ways to communicate excitement and misery than in the old days.
Marvel Creek was nestled along the edge of the Sabine River, which is not a wide river, and as rivers go, not that deep, except in rare spots, but it is a long river, and it winds all through East Texas. Back then there were more trees than now, and where wild animals ran, concrete and houses shine bright in the sunlight.
Our little school wasn’t much, and I hated going. I liked staying home and reading books I wanted to read, and running the then-considerable woods and fishing the creeks for crawdads. Summers and afternoons and weekends I did that with my friend Jesse. I knew Jesse’s parents lived differently than we did, and though we didn’t have money, and would probably have been called poor by the standards of the early sixties, Jesse’s
family still lived out on a farm where they used an outhouse and plowed with mules, raised most of the food they ate, drew water from a well, but, curiously, had electricity and a big tall TV antenna that sprouted beside their house and could be adjusted for better reception by reaching through the living room window and turning it with a twist of the hands. Jesse’s dad was quick to use the razor strop on Jesse’s butt and back for things my parents would have thought unimportant, or at worst an offense that required words, not blows.
Jesse and I liked to play Tarzan, and we took turns at it until we finally both decided to be Tarzan, and ended up being Tarzan twins. It was a great mythology we created and we ran the woods and climbed trees, and on Saturday we watched Jungle Theater at my house, which showed, if we were lucky, Tarzan or Jungle Jim movies, and if not so lucky, Bomba movies.
About fifth grade there was a shift in dynamics. Jesse’s poverty began to be an issue for some of the kids at school. He brought his lunch in a sack, since he couldn’t afford the cafeteria, and all his clothes came from the Salvation Army. He arrived at history class one morning wearing socks with big S’s on them, which stood for nothing related to him, and they immediately became the target of James Willeford and Ronnie Kenn. They made a remark about how the S stood for Sardines, which would account for how Jesse smelled, and sadly, I remember thinking at that age that was a pretty funny crack until I looked at Jesse’s slack, white face and saw him tremble beneath that patched Salvation Army shirt.
Our teacher came in then, Mr. Waters, and he caught part of the conversation. He said, “Those are nice socks, you got there, Jesse. Not many people can have monogrammed socks. It’s a sign of sophistication, something a few around here lack.”
It was a nice try, but I think it only made Jesse feel all the more miserable, and he put his head down on his desk and didn’t lift it the entire class, and Mr. Waters didn’t say a word to him. When class was over, Jesse was up and out, and as I was leaving, Mr. Waters caught me by the arm. “I saw you laughing when I came in. You been that boy’s friend since the two of you were knee-high to a legless grasshopper.”