Cold in July by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online Page B

She didn’t like my answers any better
than I had liked them coming from Price.
    “I think you and Jordan should leave town,” I said. “Stay
somewhere until this blows over.”
    “I don’t like that,” Ann said.
    “I don’t want the idghalada, daddy, I want chips.”
    “It’s enchilada, son, and don’t talk when we’re talking.
It’s not polite.”
    “But I don’t want—”
    “Will you hush, son? I’m trying to talk to your mother. Or
she’s trying to talk to me… Christ, I don’t remember who was talking to who.”
    “I just want chips,” Jordan said.
    “Eat the chips then,” I said, “but let mommy and me talk.”
    Jordan started eating out of the bowl of corn chips, looking
quite content with himself.
    “I was saying,” Ann said, “that I don’t like that idea. I
don’t think we should leave. He could follow us. If we went to your mother’s
for example, and he did follow us, we could put her in jeopardy as well as
ourselves. I say we do as Price suggested. We get a gun and watch out. We’ve
got burglar alarms and bars now. That should be worth something.”
    “We could take Jordan out of school a few days,” I said.
“And maybe you could get some time off. I could let James and Valerie run the
shop and we could all stay home for a time. Wait Russel out.”
    “It seems like the best idea to me,” Ann said. “Let’s go
home.”

 
    12
     
                
    I drove out ahead of Ann, and Jordan rode with her. I began
to relax some. I began to see everything in a different light. I felt silly.
Just because Russel was trying to scare me, didn’t mean he had the balls to do
anything. It didn’t necessarily mean anything more than he was upset about his
son, which was normal. He was certainly no cream puff, I could see that, but he
was still an old man and my house was barred and full of alarms and I had a
shotgun in the garage and tough as he might be he couldn’t eat lead, as they
might say in a B gangster movie.
    I thought about the shotgun. Like the pistol, it was
something I had acquired more on the spur of the moment than by design.
    About five years back, in a town close to LaBorde, some nut
had broken into a house and killed a family while they slept. Two of the
victims were kids. Ann was pregnant with Jordan at the time, and I guess I was
overcome with paternal instincts. I had never owned a gun and had never wanted
to, but I went out and bought the .38 that had eventually killed Russel. I told
Ann’s father about the .38 on a visit to Houston, and he had given me the
shotgun, told me it was better than the revolver. Said it was less likely to
penetrate walls and injure family members. It was a short-barreled Winchester
pump, and he gave me some double aught loads and I took the shotgun and the shells
home and they went into the garage and the pistol stayed in the shoe box. As my
hysteria faded, I forgot about the shotgun and nearly forgot about the .38.
    To the best of my memory the shotgun was broken down and was
in the garage storage cabinet in the original box with oilcans and tools in
front of it. I told myself I would get it out of the box when I got home and
load it, put it under my bed, but in the end, I was certain I would feel silly
with it there because nothing was going to come of my mental cowboy movie.
Russel would lose interest in his dead son, as he had probably had little
interest in him when he was alive, and he would go away and things would return
to normal.
    But when I pulled up in our drive and Ann and Jordan pulled
in behind me, the fear and uncertainty returned. Even with the bars and the
alarms, or perhaps because I had to have them, I knew I might never feel safe
in that house again. And I was more certain of this when I went ahead of them
with my key in hand ready to unlock the door.
    It was cracked open about three inches already.
    I turned and scooped Jordan up with one arm and grabbed
Ann’s elbow with the other and directed them back to