Cold in July

14

The uniform cop they left with us was built like an industrial water heater and was a decorated Vietnam vet and a black belt in jujitsu. He was ugly too. I don’t know why, but that kisser of his made me feel better. He didn’t look like the sort to worry about his native good looks if it came down to serious business, and I figured it would take someone like him to handle Russel, even if Russel was in the ballpark of sixty years or so.

The cop’s name was Kevin and they put him in a chair in the hallway, then the rest of them went outside to make their watch. The plan was simple. They would do this obvious watch for a couple of days. Not laying in the yard or anything, but staying in the woods behind the house, and patrolling regularly, posting a man in the ditch that ran to the far right of our property. They would not be overly sloppy about it, but they’d do things in such a way that if an old pro like Russel were around, he’d spot them. Then, when the couple of days were passed, they would leave. Except Kevin. He would remain in the house, having never revealed himself to the outside; he would remain and wait. Close surveillance would be maintained where we worked and where Jordan went to school. Police officers in unmarked cars would be waiting to follow us in the mornings at a safe distance and in the afternoons when we returned. Weekends, police would be hidden in the woods surrounding the house, only this time with the intent of not being seen. “Very organized, and very safe,” Price said.

So we started that night. The police went away except for the few who were supposed to be in the woods behind the house and the man in the ditch. Inside, we turned on the alarms and pulled the grills in place. Considering how easily Russel had gone through them before, I felt almost silly bothering with them.

The cop had food and a coffee thermos next to his chair in the hallway. Except to go to the bathroom, he didn’t plan to move. In fact, he didn’t look like he could be moved; he looked as solid as a stone gargoyle.

Price called about ten. They hadn’t seen Russel, but they had found his car. It was not far from our house, parked on a little dirt road that wound into the woods and ended at a dead end of trees and garbage that some of our less environmentally conscious citizens had tossed out. It seemed likely that Russel was somewhere in the area. Maybe creeping up on the house at the very moment. If Russel saw the cops and went away, more cops would be waiting at his car. If he abandoned the car, we still had our old plan. Wait a few days, make things look easy for him, then surprise him. We just had all kinds of plans.

I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but I was more tired than I thought; worry had gnawed me down. As I was drifting off, I tried once again to imagine Russel with little Freddy, but nothing came of it. I thought then of my own father, Herman Dane. I missed him. I didn’t know exactly why. He had never spent much time with me. He went hunting and fishing a lot and took me only once. He worked the rest of the time just to put food on the table. My mother called him names at night when I was supposed to be asleep. I think he loved me, but he always looked at me with a kind of astonishment, as if I had been landed in his house by aliens. I’ve been told I look just like him.

When I was twelve he took his beautiful Winchester rifle from the closet and loaded it in his station wagon with his rods and reels, and said he was going on a fishing trip. He let me walk him out to the car. He got down on one knee and told me he loved me and held me. That’s the only time I remember such a thing. He drove away and I never saw him again. They found him in a fishing camp with the Winchester barrel in his mouth, his naked toe on the trigger. The top of his head was gone. There was talk of too many bills and another man my mother loved. I never knew for sure. I didn’t go to the funeral.

My Uncle Ned, dad’s brother, used to say, “He was a man of honor and integrity.” I didn’t understand what he meant then, but as I grew older and heard more about my dad from others, I came to understand what my Uncle Ned meant. He lived by his word and had a simple code of justice. I suppose it could have been called a Hemingway code, or some such thing. He didn’t bother people and he didn’t allow himself to be bothered. He stood up for himself and didn’t expect others to do it. And I guess he shot himself because my mother’s infidelity was just too much. Maybe being an honorable man living in a dishonorable situation was more than he could stand.

After the suicide, my mother went into a blue funk and went away, leaving me to live with my grandfather and grandmother. Two years later we heard she had died in what was then called a tourist court just outside of Amarillo. Too many pills and too many men. I didn’t know how to feel about her.

But I never stopped thinking about my dad. The big hands (like Russel’s) holding me, hugging me. The smell of King Edward cigars on his breath as he told me he loved me. The hollow tubes of his eyes.

I doubt I really remember his eyes. That may be a thing I’ve created to remember. An extra frame slipped into the motion picture of my past. But his eyes must have been that way when he left that day. My mother was a beautiful woman.

I thought of the baby Ann and I had lost, relived that horrible scenario again. Then I thought of a few nights past when Ann’s elbow brought me awake and our horror cycle had begun. I reviewed the entire incident, ended it with me standing over the dead man who was sitting on our couch, his eye gone, his blood on our painting and wall.

Finally I tumbled down into the deepest part of sleep where the unremembered dreams live, and what happened next I’m not entirely sure of. But it went something like this:

Russel was even smarter than we thought he was. Breaking into the house earlier, leaving the doors open, had been a ploy. Instead of leaving, he had found the opening in our closet that led to the crawl space above, and he had pulled himself through the trap door and up there to wait among the rafters, wiring, and insulation. Even with the central air cooling the house, he would have been steaming up there. That was where all the heat rose and became trapped. He would have been basted in his own juices, his clothes clinging to him as damp and tight and hot as a thin swathe of tar. But he lay up there, not moving, silent, waiting. The day wore on and cooled near evening, and finally, when we were asleep, he opened the sliding trap in the closet and eased himself down, gently opened the door. That would have put him in a position to look right at Ann and me, helpless while we slept. But it wasn’t us he wanted.

He stepped out of the closet and went to the bedroom door, closed this night due to our visitor in the hall, and he cracked it open. Our cop, thinking it was either Ann or me said, “Mr. Dane?”

I heard that down there in the deep part of sleep, and loaded with fear as I was, I came out of that sleep quickly, like a polaris missile pushing up from the depths of the sea, breaking the waves and nosing the air.

But already Russel had jumped our cop, and there was a yell from Kevin and the sound of something slamming against the wall in the hall, and I was rolling out of bed, grabbing at the shotgun under it, rushing for the bedroom door.

I got out in the hall just in time to see our Vietnam vet, black belt policeman take a marvelous left hook on the chin that bounced him over his chair even as his hand was in mid-draw for his revolver. The sound of the punch and the way Kevin went down like a broken manikin told me he wouldn’t be getting up for a while.

It was me and Russel. He turned just as I put the shotgun on him and tried to pull the trigger, but found it was on safety. As I thumbed at the switch, Russel moved across the hall and knocked up the barrel of the gun, and as it was in action now, and my finger was firm against the trigger, it went off and a shot went into the ceiling, raining plaster on us like snow.

Through no great technique of my own, I went back and my feet got tangled with Russel’s and we fell halfway into the bedroom. The shotgun went sliding away, under the bed, I think, and Russel didn’t pursue it. He hit me a hard right on the forehead and my mind filled with blackness and glitter.

When the glitter fell away, I came awake to Ann yelling, “He’s in Jordan’s room!” And we were both up and running, me wobbling as I went.

I heard Jordan yell, “Daddy,” and a weakness went through me like the worst disease you can imagine. I felt like the slowest, stupidest, most mortal person on earth. I had allowed Russel to hornswoggle me, whip me, and now he had my son.

I must have been out only fractions of a second, because by the time I got up and wobbled after Russel, he had only made it halfway to Jordan’s bed, and I could see Jordan sitting up with his back against the headboard, looking at Russel.

I leaped on Russel’s back and landed with my legs wrapped around his waist and my arms around his throat. He stumbled, then ran back, smashing me against the wall so violently I felt as if my spine were being pushed out through my chest. The breath went out of me and my legs and arms wouldn’t hold and I let go of him and slid down the wall like a dying slug.

But now Ann was on him, almost in the same position I had occupied, and she was clawing at his face, and he was spinning in pain, trying to toss her off, but it was like trying to fling off a sheet wet with glue.

Finally he reached over his shoulder and got hold of her hair and jerked and bent forward at the same time and she slammed against the wall next to me and crumpled in a twist of arms and legs.

I tried to get up, but there was nothing left in me. It was as if someone had opened up a valve and let the life out of me. My breath wouldn’t come. I couldn’t even gasp; my lungs were jammed between a breath and an outburst. The room tilted. Russel reached the bed and Jordan screamed “Daddy” again. Russel grabbed Jordan by his pajama shirt, and with his other hand he produced from his back pocket a black shape that with a flick of his wrist sprouted a blade like a beetle showing a silver wing.

My breath came and I coiled my legs beneath me and I was moving. But I knew I was too late. Nothing could stop the thrust of that knife.

Except Russel. He froze with Jordan’s pajama shirt bunched in one huge fist, the knife poised in the other like a scorpion’s stinger. “Damn,” he screamed, and he threw the knife hard into the headboard of the bed and let go of Jordan and I hit him like a hammer securing a nail, threw my shoulder against him and we both went flying across the room. He got his hands around my neck and stood up and my feet dangled off the floor. I tried to kick as I hung there, but I couldn’t get any power in my kicks; my legs slapped at him like wet noodles.

He shoved me against the bed and kicked me in the groin and it felt as if my balls were in my ears. Then he had me on the floor, his thumbs locking behind my windpipe, and he was slamming my head against the carpet yelling, “I couldn’t do it, you sonofabitch, couldn’t do it you goddamn murdering bastard.” He let go of me with one hand, and still pinning me to the floor with the other, he rained knuckles on my head. In the dim light from the hallway his teeth looked like jammed machinery gears and there were tears in his eyes big as pearls and they fell on my face hot as fresh asphalt. His blows became weaker and weaker and he kept repeating breathlessly, “you sonofabitch,” and I struggled uselessly against him, flailing my fists at his side, and then Ann hit him with Jordan’s Little Sprout lamp and he collapsed on top of me.

Ann stood over me, looking like a Valkyrie in her nightgown, holding a lamp in place of a sword. She looked as if she badly wanted to hit Russel again.

At first I thought my head was ringing, but it was the world coming back into focus, sight and sound. It was the alarm. The police had set it off. I could hear them wrecking the front door. They had most likely been after it ever since the shotgun had gone off. The entire battle with Russel, though it seemed longer, had taken only a few minutes.

I rolled out from beneath Russel, and Jordan ran to me. I hugged and kissed him. “It’s okay,” I said. “Go to your mother.”

Jordan grabbed her leg and held her tight and Ann kept the lamp cocked, ready to bash Russel should he so much as fart.

I went to the front just as the police tossed aside the door and were about to shoot a riot gun into the lock on the grill.

“It’s all right,” I said. “He’s down,” and thought, bless his black heart, he couldn’t do it. I got the key to the alarm and the grillwork and let the police in. They handcuffed Russel and he came to enough for them to walk him out. As he passed me, he turned and said, “I think I knew all along I couldn’t do it.”

“That’s a big comfort to them,” Price said. “Let’s go.” Two policemen took Russel out to a cop car that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and they drove him away.

Price and another officer got Kevin awake and onto the couch to look him over.

“You need to work on your stepover toe-hold,” the officer told him.

“That old bastard is as strong as God,” Kevin said.

An ambulance was called out, and a doctor came and looked at Kevin and me and my family. He clucked some, applied a bandage or two and gave us an aspirin. A cop took the knife from Jordan’s headboard and Price said he’d see the front door got nailed up for the night somehow, and that tomorrow morning early he’d send a carpenter out to fix it, at the city’s expense. He shook my hand and went away. Someone put the door up and there was some banging and I went over and sat on the couch with Ann and Jordan, put my arms around them, and as if by secret signal, the three of us began to cry.