Cold in July by Joe R. Lansdale
I looked at my watch. Ann and Jordan were not up yet. Another hour and they would be going through the morning routine and Jordan would be spilling his first glass of milk for the day. Damned if that didn’t suddenly seem endearing.
Most likely Ann would wake up mad at me and stay mad all day. She had agreed to let me go and had given me therapeutic sex the night before, but in time she would get mad again. She’d think about Russel and how foolish I was, and she’d be hot as those pipes at the foundry that shot out the fire.
James and Valerie would run the shop well enough, but James would moon over Valerie’s ass something disgraceful. He might do it so much he wouldn’t count change right.
Maybe Jack the mailman, with Russel gone, would start throwing the mail again.
I got up and stretched and felt the worse for it. I put on my clothes and went out into the hall and through the living room where Russel was lying awake, looking at the ceiling, smoking a cigarette.
“You too?” he said.
“Just got up,” I said.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said.
“I slept, but it wasn’t worth a damn. I guess I dozed too much in the car. I don’t do so good after midnight anymore.”
“Older you get, the worse it gets,” Russel said.
“If it can get any worse than this,” I said, “you might as well kill me now.”
Russel threw the covers back and stood up. He had on pale gray shorts with a triangular design down the inseam; his belly hung over the waistband as if slowly melting. His arms, back and shoulders were covered with gray hair and his face looked long and creased with lines. His chest seemed to have fallen in like the roof of an old house and his posture was bad. Only his arms and hands looked strong. It was as if old age, mad as hell, had crept upon him during the night and climbed inside his skin.
“Let’s find some coffee,” Russel said, lighting a cigarette.
He slipped on his clothes and coughed some smoke and we staggered along to where the living room quit and became the kitchen. Russel found a Mr. Coffee, and after rummaging through the cabinet, a can of Folger’s and some filters.
“Maybe there’s something to eat in the fridge,” he said.
I went over and looked in the refrigerator and found some thick bacon wrapped in wax paper and some eggs. I put the stuff on the counter and got some bread out of the bread box and put it in the toaster and chased down a frying pan. I opened up the bacon wrapper and put all the meat in the frying pan and started stirring it with a spatula.
“Best way to cook that is naked,” Jim Bob said. I turned and there he was wearing his jeans and no shirt, that stupid-looking chicken on his chest, his big feet bare and awkward looking without his boots.
“Naked, huh?” I said.
“Yep,” Jim Bob said. “Get a little hot grease popped on your balls and you learn to turn that fire down.” He came over and turned my fire down and took the spatula and went to moving the bacon around. “How’d y’all sleep?”
“Not too good,” I said, “but it wasn’t the accommodations. I just had a lot on my mind.”
“Same here,” Russel said.
“That’s too bad. I slept like a hog on ice.”
We ate breakfast and the bacon was great. Best I’d had in years. I asked Jim Bob about it.
“Came from my hogs,” he said. “I raise the squeally fuckers. I’ll take you out and show them to you after a while. Got a wetback takes care of them for me. I get these eggs from a fella down the road. Got his own chickens and he doesn’t let them peck shit, but then he don’t put them in no boxes and force-feed them neither.”
“What about Freddy?” Russel asked abruptly.
“We go check on him,” Jim Bob said.
“We’ve got to find him first,” I said.
“No problem. New phone book just came out, and since he’s new in town he’s bound to have a phone. I mean, he ain’t Freddy Russel no more. He’s got a new life and new name and the FBI has given him a new past.”
Jim Bob got up and went over to the phone book and opened it. “There’s a lot of Fred Millers in here, but that ain’t no sweat neither. We’ll check the old phone book and look and see which Fred Miller has been added to this new listing.”
Jim Bob put the open phone book on the table and went away and came back with another phone book and opened it. He put it on the table beside the new one and compared. “Here we go,” he said. “Only one new Fred Miller in the book, and now we’ve got his address.”
“You’re sure it’s him?” Russel said.
“Sure enough,” Jim Bob said. “We’ll check it out.”
“Too easy,” I said. “I’d never have thought of that.”
“That’s why I’m the fucking detective and you build frames,” Jim Bob said with a sly smile. Then he turned to Russel. “You going to try calling him, Ben?”
“He’s probably at work,” Russel said.
“You’ve got to do it sometime,” Jim Bob said. “We’ve gone this far, you might as well go the whole hog.”
“I think I’d like to sort of look in on him without him knowing. I just can’t pick up the phone after twenty years of not even trying to answer letters his mama wrote or writing him or anything.”
“Just doing it would get it over with,” Jim Bob said. “In the long run, I think that would be the easy way.”
“I guess it would for you,” Russel said. “But he’s my boy and I haven’t treated him like he was anything to me. He may not even know I’m alive or care. I just couldn’t do it straight out.”
"I'm all right,” Jim Bob said. “We’ll spy on him some until you get your nerves up.”
“You make it sound like some kind of showdown,” Russel said.
“Well,” Jim Bob said, “in a way, ain’t it?”
Russel nodded. “What say you take us out there to look at those scrawny hogs of yours, Jim Bob?”
“If you guys promise not to diddle them,” Jim Bob said, “they’re kind of shy.”
· · ·
So we went out and looked at these hogs of Jim Bob’s, and he must have had twenty, plus some piglets. They were huge things, white and big-eared and Jim Bob said they were called Yorkshires.
The hogs were housed in a roomy, air-conditioned building that had a flap door so they could go out into a big, fenced enclosure if they wished. There was the ripe smell of dung and urine in the air, but it wasn’t bad. The hogs were raised clean, and Jim Bob said the wetback, Raoul, came around once a day and changed the bedding and checked the water connections and made sure there was feed in the automatic feeders. When the hogs got fat enough, Jim Bob sold them, saving one for his own freezer, and some for breeding stock; now and then he replaced his boars and litter sows with younger more sexually ambitious swine he bought and brought in, so his bloodline wouldn’t foul, as he put it.
Out behind the hog house, he showed us a big wood and chicken-wire cage full of soiled hog bedding. “That’s my compost pile,” Jim Bob said. “Me and Raoul pull this crap out of the hog house and stack it here and let it heat up, and come spring it’s broken down and ready to spread. I hire this colored fella I know, Henry, to bring his mules over and bust up my land. Then me and Raoul, when he hasn’t been sent back to Mexico for a while by the Immigration, spread it around and plant early as we can. Pig shit, if composted right, can grow anything. Raoul keeps saying he’s gonna try putting a pussy hair out there and growing him a woman, but the only pussy hair he can get hold of is his wife’s and he damn sure don’t want another one of her.”
We walked down behind the compost pile and out into Jim Bob’s garden. We went between rows of corn with stalks nine feet high and bright green. There were mounds giving birth to squash plants with white pattie squash on them big as the crown in a cowboy hat. There were thick tomato vines staked on six-foot poles, and the strong, fine smell of the tomatoes was enough to make your nose hairs twitch. The tomatoes were firm as hardballs and red as a wound. Jim Bob
When we got to the far end of the garden, we turned left and walked around the edge of it, then started back between a row of turnip greens. The greens were thick and green and looked more like Venus flytraps than turnip greens. By the time we were out of the garden and heading back toward the house, I felt as if we had been expelled from the Garden of Eden.
29
“That’s Freddy’s house right there,” Jim Bob said.
It was late afternoon and the bottom of the sky had turned the color of a burst tomato and the gray was pushing it down and away. But we could still see where Jim Bob was pointing. We were across the street and about a half a block down from Freddy’s house. It was just a house. Light pink brick on a street full of houses built just like it, but some with gray and some with red brick. The lawn was mowed and I could see the knob of a sprinkler out in the yard. Freddy watered his grass. I wondered if he had a barbecue grill out back, and maybe a dog called Boscoe that had his own house with his name painted over the door.
“It could be another Fred Miller,” Russel said. “We don’t know this is Freddy.” There was something almost hopeful in Russet’s tone. I didn’t know if it was the years that were bothering him or what his son had become, or what he himself had become. Maybe all those things.
He shook out another cigarette and lipped it, lit it with his Bic lighter and inhaled, and about a quarter of the cigarette glowed and went to ash.
“You’re supposed to smoke those, not suck them,” Jim Bob said. “What you need’s a straw and something to drink. And this is Freddy’s house. I'll bet my left nut on that.”
“I don’t want your left nut,” Russel said.
“How about my right? I keep it a little cleaner.”
“Ha, ha,” Russel said, and sucked up another chunk of the cigarette and the ash fell off in his lap.
“Hey, watch the upholstery, and open a goddamn window,” Jim Bob said. “I feel like I’m in the fucking gas chamber.”
Russel brushed himself and the seat and rolled down his window and blew a mouthful of smoke out of it. Just watching him do that made me feel hotter than I was. The air-conditioned air in the car had died immediately when Jim Bob shut off the engine, and the air outside was only slightly less stale. At least it wasn’t full of smoke. I rolled down my window and stuck my head out and took a deep breath. It warmed my throat and lungs and made me thirsty. When I was finished with that, I pulled my sweaty shirt away from my back and leaned forward and said, “Now what?”
“Yeah, Ben,” Jim Bob said. “Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Russel said.
“You’re costing Dane money here,” Jim Bob said. “He’s footing the bill.”
“Nah,” I said, “that’s not the problem. I just want to do something. I’m getting itchy.”
“I just can’t do it yet,” Russel said.
Jim Bob sighed and rolled down his window. “Maybe you’d like to drive down to the other end, turn around, see the house from that angle.”
Jim Bob meant the comment sarcastically, but Russel, who wasn’t fully tuned in, said, “Okay.”
Jim Bob looked back at me and rolled his eyes. “All righty,” he said, and he rolled up his window and Russel and I did the same. Then he cranked the car and the air-conditioning panted through it and we went coasting down the street.
When we reached the dead end, Jim Bob backed the Bitch around as slowly and carefully as if it were made of eggs, and started back up the street.
Russel hadn’t even looked at the house when we passed it, and he didn’t act as if he were going to look this time. He had his eyes glued straight ahead.
“If we can get the colors of the house coordinated with the sprinkler knob,” Jim Bob said, “maybe we can buy Freddy some nice lawn furniture or something. A pink flamingo maybe.”
Jim Bob was going so slow and was so busy giving Russel a hard time, he didn’t notice the garage door at Freddy’s house going up or the blue Chevy Nova backing out of it down the short drive at top speed. I barely saw it, and by the time I yelled, the car was on us. The back of it hit the Red Bitch on the right-hand rear door, and sent my non-seatbelted self-flying across the car.
I put my hands on the seat in front of me and straightened to a sitting position. Jim Bob had killed the engine and was cussing “Goddamn idiot, I’ll kick, his motherfucking ass.”
“It might be Freddy,” Russel said.
“I don’t give a damn if it’s God,” Jim Bob said, opened his door and got out.
Russel turned around and looked at me. “You okay, Dane?”
I rubbed my neck. “I think so. But maybe I should yell whiplash.”
I looked at the car that had backed into us and saw the driver’s door open and the driver get out. And get out. And get out. He was as big as King Kong, Mexican, and had a look on his face like he’d eat shit and sugar before taking a beating from anyone. Jim Bob included.
Jim Bob was almost to the Mexican, but his steps were a little slower. He stopped about four feet away and cocked his hat back.
Russel rolled down his window, said softly to me, “I’ve been waiting to see this. I even thought about this in prison. I’ve wanted to see Jim Bob get his ass kicked all my life. He never has that I know of.”
“Hey, Frito,” Jim Bob said, “ain’t they got no fucking mirrors in cars where you come from, huh? What the dog-shit is wrong with you, man?”
The Mexican just looked at him. He was wearing a tight-fitting, blue Hawaiian shirt with yellow and red palm trees on it He had on yellow slacks and big, black wing tips with olive explosions on the toes. He was nearly seven feet tall and his chest was like a beer barrel.
“You talk to me?” he asked.
“No, fucking Chili lips, I’m talking to the goddamn Nova. It looks the smarter of you two. Did you see what you done to my car there? Fucked the paint job. Look at that”
Jim Bob turned to point and the big Mexican (a.k.a. Frito and Chili Lips) stepped forward and grabbed the brim of Jim Bob’s hat and pulled it down so hard Jim Bob went to his knees. Then the Mexican kneed Jim Bob in the face sharply.
“We ought to help him,” I said.
“Shit,” Russel said. “Look at the size of that guy.”
The Mexican had Jim Bob by the back of the neck now and the seat of the pants and was using him to punch the door on the Nova.
“Too far,” I said, and got out of the car. On the street side, I stood and yelled over the top of it. “Hey. Quit that.”
The Mexican looked at me like I was crazy, then went back to jamming Jim Bob’s head into the Nova.
I went around the car, not real fast. “Now that’s enough of that,” I said. “Quit.”
The Mexican dropped Jim Bob on the drive and said, “Okay. You do.” Then he said something in Spanish. It was brief and as menacing as his English.
I didn’t run. I stood there.
Had too. My feet were glued to the ground. Seeing him come toward me was akin to watching some natural phenomenon, like an eclipse. He was almost on me. I put up my fists. Not that I thought I’d get to use them much. I just hoped it was short and painless.
Russel opened the door of the Bitch and got out. I didn’t see him, but I heard him. At the same time Jim Bob got up. He had a look on his face that was more embarrassed than peeved.
“Say, you want to try that again, Taco Ass,” Jim Bob said, “only with me looking this time?”
The Mexican turned to look at Jim Bob and Jim Bob said something in Spanish and waved Russel away with a hand. “Just me and him.”
I backed away and to the side. I could see the Mexican’s face that way. He was smiling. It was a nice smile, like the kind sharks must get before they go for the dangling leg of a swimmer.
Then Jim Bob
The Mexican screamed. Jim Bob’s foot whipped up again, and his leg went high and arched back and his heel hit the man behind the temple with a crack like a wooden ruler being snapped.
The man fell down and didn’t get up.
“Shit,” I said. “He isn’t dead is he?”
“Hell no,” Jim Bob said. “I ain’t wanting to hurt the shithead any worse than a beating. He ought to watch where he’s backing.”
Jim Bob found his hat and put it on and winced. “Owww. Man, he was trying to put me through that door… Thanks for wanting to help, Dane. And fuck you, Ben.”
“I sure hated to see you whip that bastard,” Russel said.
Russel went over and rolled the Mexican on his stomach and got a wallet out of his back pocket and opened it and looked for identification. He read what he found and put the wallet back. He said, “There’s a little sap in his back pocket too. Be glad he didn’t take that out.”
“I am,” Jim Bob said. “That identification didn’t say he was called Fred Miller, did it?”
“No, smart ass, it didn’t,” Russel said.
Jim Bob walked up to the house and rang the doorbell. Russel shook out a cigarette and stood with it unlit between his lips, watching the door. No one opened it. Jim Bob knocked. Still no one opened it.
Jim Bob came back and went over to look at where the back of the Nova was pressed against the Bitch. “You look at that? My fucking rear door is totaled.”
“Get the license plate number if you want to fuck with insurance,” Russel said.
“After I kicked his ass?” Jim Bob said. “No thanks. I might have to kick it again, and I’m not sure I can. Shit, look at that.”
He walked over to the Mexican and grabbed the man’s pants leg and pulled it up a little bit, revealing a small holster with a small revolver.