Cold in July

22

Jim Bob and Russel met us out in the parking lot.

“We’ll take the Red Bitch,” Jim Bob said.

Ann and I got in the back and Russel got in front with Jim Bob. It occurred to me that if Russel and Jim Bob were pulling our legs, they might be taking us out to the river bottoms to dispose of us. It could be that way. Russel and Jim Bob had been friends for a long time, and I hadn’t any idea what Russel had really said to him on the phone. I wished I had thought of that before now. I looked at Ann, and as the lights from stores and buildings slanted across her face and made her fine profile show there in the car, I got the feeling the same thoughts had occurred to her. I figured that if that was the case, her last words to me would be, “I told you so.”

We drove on out of town and as we did I looked over the Red Bitch real good. The upholstery was red and on the dash in upraised blue-silver letters was JIM BOB. The steering wheel was covered with a tacky, false cheeta skin and an emerald-colored suicide knob the size of a doorknob was fastened to that. Jim Bob liked to drive with his left hand on the knob and his right hand across the back rest. I could see a little of his face in the rearview mirror. He looked happy as a drunk.

“How are we going to dig him up?” I asked. It had occurred to me that I hadn’t seen any shovels, and that was making me even more nervous.

“Got some shovels and stuff in the trunk there. All manner of tools. Damn near everything’s back there in the trunk but another car.”

“Maybe we could use another,” Russel said. “This ain’t exactly one to be sneaking around in.”

“Who’s sneaking, goddamnit. We’re driving. Ain’t no crime in driving. Hell, I have a pickup, but I didn’t bring it.”

“No joke,” Russel said.

Jim Bob looked over at Russel and grinned. “Want to see me lose this cop?”

Russel grinned back. “I thought you were losing your touch. I noticed him when we left the Holiday Inn. They switched cars on us.”

Neither Ann nor I had looked back to see the car that was supposed to be following us, but it was tempting.

“Are you sure it’s a cop behind us?” I said.

“Oh yeah,” Jim Bob said.

“Can’t he just pull us over?”

“What for, driving a red Caddy? That ain’t no crime.”

“Perhaps this one ought to be,” Ann said.

Jim Bob laughed. “Lady, I like you, I really do.”

“If we run, won’t the cops be laying for us?” I said.

“Well, we ain’t gonna just run, we’re gonna lose him legal like. But before I do, could you folks tell me where the hell this graveyard is?”

“The other direction,” Russel said.

“Figures,” Jim Bob said, and he took a left in the Safeway parking lot just in front of a big tractor trailer rig. The car that was tailing us went by. Or I assume it was the one. When I got the chance to look, I saw a sporty blue Plymouth slow down and fall over to the left-turn lane. But the traffic was thick and he couldn’t make the left.

Jim Bob got back on the highway by rushing out front of a yellow Volkswagen that honked its horn and flashed its lights. It whipped around on the left and came even with Jim Bob. A husky college boy on the right-hand side rolled down his window and flipped Jim Bob the bird and yelled something.

Jim Bob waved at him friendly like, put his foot to the floor and the Red Bitch jumped forward. Jim Bob whipped in front of the Volkswagen again, went around another car and made the right lane. We went fast like that for two blocks, then Jim Bob took a right, then a left, then a right and a left again.

“Am I going in the general direction?” Jim Bob asked.

“General,” Russel said.

“Good enough.”

“We lose the cop?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Them and their little toy cars. Whatever happened to the good ole days when it was the biggest, meanest car on the road, not the smallest and the cheapest?”

“The Arabs is what happened,” Russel said.

· · ·

We finally got out to the graveyard, and Jim Bob killed the Red Bitch and went around and opened the trunk. I stood there wondering if we were about to be killed, but the trunk was just like he said. Full of tools. He got out two shovels and a long canvas bag and put them on the ground. He gave Ann the keys.

“You take the Red Bitch on down the road a piece and kill the lights but leave the motor running. Turn it facing this way, though, so you can see what’s going on in case something goes on. We’re gonna try and make this quicker than a bunny fucks-pardon me again.”

“Would you quit saying that?” Ann said.

“You know, I’d rather,” Jim Bob said. “What say if we’re gonna be waltzing partners I just let fly when I need to and consider me sorry for what I say. If I don’t cuss I get all filled up inside just like I was constipated and I don’t feel worth a damn.”

“I sure wouldn’t want you all constipated with cuss words,” Ann said. “But listen, I’m not a taxi.”

“No, ma’am, you ain’t, but we’re gonna do the digging and someone’s got to do the driving, and I’m running this shindig, so do what I say.”

“But we’re paying,” Ann said.

“And it’s money well spent,” Jim Bob said. “You can’t do no better than me. Now let’s get on with this.”

Ann looked at me and I shrugged.

“Okay,” she said.

“Take it easy on the clutch,” Jim Bob said as Ann got in.

“I can drive,” Ann said. She closed the door and started the car and drove down the road a ways, backed around, pointed the lights at us and killed them. The Caddy was just off the road and under an oak. When the lights were out, you couldn’t see it. It was that kind of night.

“They can wrap you up for quite a few years for grave stealing, can’t they?” Russel said.

“Hell, they can throw away the key,” Jim Bob said.

We went over to the graveyard fence and found the gate unlocked. “Reckon they don’t expect folks to come in much,” Jim Bob said, “and the ones here ain’t going nowhere.”

Russel located the grave and I took a shovel and Russel took one.

“What about you?” Russel asked Jim Bob.

Jim Bob opened the canvas bag and took out a long flashlight. “Hell, someone’s got to hold the light.”

Russel and I started digging. While we were at it, it began to turn off cool and it got darker. You could smell rain in the air. When we were about halfway down to the coffin, it began to sprinkle.

“Better get with it,” Jim Bob said. “I think it’s gonna come a real frog strangler, and if it does, you’re gonna have to bail as well as dig.”

“How’s your back?” Russel asked Jim Bob.

“Fine,” Jim Bob said. “How’s yours?”

“Hurts. I’m using a shovel,” Russel said.

“And you use it so well.”

Russel began digging faster, and as we got close to the box, his digging became more frenzied. I looked over at him once, and what light was on him made him look like a corpse. He was afraid of what we would find down there. His son and his hopes in a box.

I looked over at Jim Bob, and since he was holding the light, I couldn’t make out his features too well, but he seemed more solemn than I’d yet seen him. He was also quiet for a change.

Russet’s shovel scraped the coffin.

We began cleaning the dirt off. and around it. Throwing it up high and over. It was getting to be harder work. The rain was coming down faster and the clods were sticking together and becoming heavy.

“All right,” Jim Bob said, and he jumped down on the coffin with his light and canvas bag. He stepped off the box and found a place to stand between the coffin and the grave wall, and he opened the bag.

“There’s more to tapping these babies than just opening a lid,” Jim Bob said. “They seal these fuckers but good nowadays. You got to have the right tools. Fortunately, I got them.”

He pulled some strange instruments out of the bag and turned to look at Russel. “Whatever’s in here, I don’t want nothing crazy out of you. If it’s your boy, I’m sorry, but you move to cause Dane here trouble, and I’ll wrap this damn tool around your head.”

Russel smiled grimly. “You’ll try… but don’t worry. I haven’t got nothing against Dane anymore.”

“Well, just in case you get something suddenly,” Jim Bob said, “remember what I told you.”

Jim Bob applied the tools to the coffin and in a moment the lid popped up with a whoosh of air, like one of those cans of vacuum-packed peanuts, and there was the body. It was in a hell of a shape. It looked like someone had taken a can opener to it and stitched it up with black cord while drunk. The eye I had shot out was stuffed with what looked like, wax, and it hadn’t been done neatly; the body looked like something out of a monster movie.

“Ain’t much to look at,” Jim Bob said, and he put a hand on Russel’s shoulder.

Russel looked quickly at the face and said, “Hold the light on his right hand.”

Jim Bob did that and Russel picked up the corpse’s right hand and looked at it. “You remember my boy, don’t you Jim Bob?”

“When he was little,” Jim Bob said. “He was blond, wasn’t he?”

“Hair can be dyed… but this isn’t him. Freddy had a cluster of little, pale moles on the back of his right hand that looked like a four-leaf clover… like these.” He let go of the corpse’s hand and held his own in the light. I could see the faint pattern of moles on the back of his powerful hand. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed them before.

“You’re sure?” Jim Bob asked. “More than sure,” Russel said.

I was feeling sick. “From the looks of him,” I said, “you’d think they purposely tried to mess him up.”

“I think that was the idea exactly, sport,” Jim Bob said.

That hadn’t occurred to me seriously, and now that Jim Bob said it, I felt that this whole thing was even deeper than I expected. A conspiracy. Little obstacles all along the way. Maybe they expected the body might get dug up at some point, and wanted to make it hard to identify. And maybe an autopsy on a body that no one is expected to see isn’t performed for points on neatness.

I tossed my shovel out of the hole and climbed out after it. I had had enough. Jim Bob shut the coffin, stood up on it and took my hand and I pulled him up.

Russel followed. His big hand took mine and I yanked him up, and as I did his eyes looked straight at me. I couldn’t tell what was in them, but it wasn’t threatening.

I took my shovel and started throwing the dirt in furiously. Russel grabbed up the other shovel and joined me. Jim Bob held the light.

We threw the dirt in at random, then we found our stride and began shoveling in unison, shovelful per shovelful. We got faster and faster. I could hear Russel grunting beside me and the smell of his sweat and the light rain was on the wind and I began to feel loose, even strangely comfortable. There was nothing I wanted to do more in the world at that moment than cover that hole.

Finally Russel and I had it finished and we patted our shovels on the earth as if by signal.

We looked at each other.

“Anybody ever quits wanting to dig graves around here,” Russel said, “I think we could get a job.”

I grinned. “Probably.”

Lights pinned us against the night and doors slammed and I looked toward the road. I could make out that it was two pickups, and I could see four men getting out of them with baseball bats. They went around in front of the trucks, which they had parked across the road facing us, and stood framed in the lights.

One of them nervously, or perhaps eagerly, tapped his bat against the side of his shoe. He called out, “What’er you fucks doing out here?”

“Paying our respects to Uncle Harvey,” Jim Bob said.

“This time of night?” the voice asked.

“It’s the time of night we get the most sentimental,” Jim Bob said. “What about you boys, you out here for a little batting practice?”

“You might say that,” the voice said.

“That’s kind of what I figured,” Jim Bob said. “Don’t reckon you boys would listen to reason?”

“Sort of doubt it,” the voice said.

“Yeah, well, remember, I gave you your chance.”

One of the men laughed, then they all came toward us and started through the gate.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Simple,” Russel whispered to me, “first asshole within range, you see if you can crease his head with that shovel.”

“It could kill him,” I said.

“Let’s hope so,” Russel said. “Those bats won’t do us much good, I can promise you that.”

“Is there any good reason for this?” Jim Bob asked. “I mean, what have we done to you boys?”

“Not a thing,” the speaker said, and then he rushed Jim Bob with the bat.

Jim Bob was standing slightly in front of us, and he dropped the flashlight and turned in the direction of the grave, I thought to take the blow on his back, but he kept going down and he spun and his leg shot out and caught the first man on the ankle and knocked his feet out from under him and the man hit the ground and the bat went up and fell down heavy end first and struck him between the eyes and the man yelled.

Jim Bob was on his feet then, and the second man was nearly on him and the bat was coming down. Jim Bob went straight to the man and ducked under the bat and the bat waved uselessly over Jim Bob’s shoulder and Jim Bob grabbed the man’s throat with one hand and uppercut him in the balls with the other, then he twisted his hip into him, slipped an arm around his waist, bent, and sent the man flying. Jim Bob didn’t even lose his hat.

Russel stepped forward and faked a shovel blow to the third man’s head and the man brought the bat up to block and Russel dropped the shovel low and hit him in the kneecap. The man barked and went down.

The last man made a run for the trucks. He was nearly in the middle of the road when the Red Bitch came barreling down on him and the lights came on, then the Bitch braked, but the car still hit him and sent him over the hood. He rolled up against the windshield and flipped over on the driver’s side. He tried to stand, I guess, because the door came open, and at the same instant the inside light framed Ann, the door made impact with the man hard enough to make my testicles pull up.

The men from the pickups were down and I hadn’t done anything but hold a shovel.

The man Jim Bob had thrown was trying to get up, so I looped my shovel over casually, not putting much force behind it, and let it come down on his head. It made a nice, comforting ring on contact.

“See you’re still messing with that Jap stuff,” Russel said to Jim Bob.

“Korean. Hapkido. Hey, Dane, that wife of yours. She ain’t got a sister at home, does she?”