“He’s tougher than you think,” Clyde said. “He whupped my ass like I was standing still and about half retarded. I’d done about as good against him if I’d went in there with a blindfold on, my dick fastened to a chain and anvil.”
“What you do,” Lee said, “is you stay where you are, and I’ll go up.”
“Didn’t say I was afraid, just saying he’s mean as a boar hog with turpentine on his balls. He ain’t no big man, and he beat me like I was a cripple. You got to know, this guy is the devil, he wants to be.”
“I know you’re not afraid, just want you to stay here.”
“I got a slap jack, you want it.”
“No, you keep it.”
“Take the flashlight, then. It’s a heavy one.”
“No. You keep that too. I can see all right.”
“Heavy ain’t got nothing to do with seeing. I was talking about scrambling his brains with it.”
“I know, but you keep it.”
“We ought to go up together. Together, we got a chance. You don’t understand, this fella, he knows how to fight. He’s got some moves.”
“I got one or two myself.”
“I think he’s got three or four. Maybe five.”
Lee grinned at Clyde. “I’ll be careful. What I want you to do, is stand down here, that slap jack ready. See that window, you stand under it. But not directly under it. You’ll get a signal of sorts. It comes, you lay down on Hillbilly’s head.”
“With me down here, him up there? I better go up.”
“No. You stay.”
“Watch your teeth.”
Lee went up the stairs. They were solid and didn’t creak much. When he got to the door at the top, he stood back on the landing, took a deep breath, kicked the door with all his might. The lock sprang and the door swung open and slapped back against the wall.
Lantern light lay across the bed, and when Lee stepped into the room, Hillbilly, or the man he hoped was Hillbilly, sat up in bed, the sheet falling away from him. He had come out from between a woman’s wish-boned legs, his manhood poking up like a tent peg.
Lee said, “You Hillbilly?”
“What of it? Who the hell are you? What the hell you think you’re doing.”
“Why I’m the angel of the Lord.”
“You’re fucked up, is what you’re gonna be.”
“I got a daughter named Sunset. A granddaughter named Karen. I think you know them.”
For a moment Hillbilly was quiet, then he said, “Yeah. I know them. Real well.”
“That’s what I thought. Well, I’m here to beat your sorry ass.”
“There’s plenty tried,” Hillbilly said, rolling out of bed, his tent peg turning into a limp little hose.
“I think you’re a little too proud, son. I’m going to take some pride out of you. By the handfuls.”
“Old man, I’m warning you. You don’t know what you’re stepping into. You look way past it.”
Lee went for him. The whore screamed.
Hillbilly moved. He really moved. It was so fast he hardly seemed to move. One moment he was in front of Lee, the next he was gone.
Hillbilly knew he was fast, damn fast, knew too he had the old man, and when he slid to the side, twisted to come around and hit the old man in the back of the head, he was already grinning.
But the old man wasn’t there. The old man leaned, and Hillbilly’s fist went past and the old man snapped out a right and hit Hillbilly and took the grin away. It was a good shot. A damn good shot. Hillbilly hadn’t felt one like that in a long time. But he took it. Took it good. He was still standing.
He ducked, went for the old man’s knees, but the old man did a kind of backward hop, the grab missed, and the next thing Hillbilly knew, the old man had a forearm under his neck, had latched on like a dog tick in a hound’s ear, and now the old man was falling onto his back, bringing his leg up between Hillbilly’s bare legs, kicking him in the plums, carrying him over.
Hillbilly hit the floor on his back, so hard the lamp on the table jumped. He twisted around and came up, tried to come back on the old man, but the old man rolled to his feet and was facing him. Then Hillbilly felt the delayed pain in his balls, like someone had put them in a vise and tightened the crank. He bent forward, sick.
The old man came at him then, and it was fast. Real fast. As fast as Hillbilly thought he was. Faster. And the old man brought with him friends from hell. A left and a right. Followed it with a left hook that shook the inside of Hillbilly’s mouth and something came loose in there, then the old man had him by the waist, was lifting him up, rushing him backwards to the window, slamming him through it.
The whore bellowed throughout the whole thing, but she screamed loudest when Hillbilly went through the window, glass flying, blood drops spraying.
“You killed him,” the blonde yelled.
“Well, I was trying,” Lee said.
Clyde heard the racket, thought, I better go up, and was about to, when out the busted window came Hillbilly, hair, dick and balls flapping in the wind. It was a damn good drop, and Hillbilly hit hard. Still, the sonofabitch was trying to get up.
Clyde thought: Well, I guess that’s the goddamn signal.
Clyde went over there, and Hillbilly, spotted with glass cuts, his mouth dripping blood, on his hands and knees, looked up.
“You,” Hillbilly said.
“Howdy,” Clyde said, and swung the slap jack as hard as he could. The first blow caught Hillbilly on the side of the face, and he dropped, tried to rise again. The second blow caught him on the back of the head, and Clyde laughed as he delivered it. This time Hillbilly went down, stayed there.
Clyde turned, saw Lee coming down the stairs. He looked fine, his hair a little ruffled, his suit coat twisted. He was carrying a guitar. There was a woman at the top of the stairs wearing a sheet, cussing and yelling. Some lights in the downstairs apartment went on.
Lee walked over to where Hillbilly lay face down, studied him a moment, put the base of the guitar on the ground, rested one hand on the neck, leaned on it like it was a crutch. With his other hand he unfastened his pants, got out his Johnson, let piss fly. He wetted up Hillbilly’s head and the side of his face real good.
He said, “Here’s a message from the big dog.”
Hillbilly stirred, raised his head slightly.
“Sonofabitch,” Hillbilly said.
“Here’s a good-night tune,” Lee said, took the guitar by the neck and swung it. It was a beautiful swing. It whistled in the night, and when it struck Hillbilly, it made a sound like a rifle shot, then there was a ping and a sad throb of strings.
Hillbilly was down again, not out, just lying there, fragments of guitar all around, strings wobbling in the air like insect antennae. He got to his knees, cocked his ass in the air, as if ready to take it from the rear, froze there, not able to move, blacked out.
Lee put a foot on him and pushed and Hillbilly rolled over on his side and didn’t move. Lee fastened his pants, took Clyde by the elbow, said, “Let’s go. I need a drink. I don’t drink nothing alcohol, but a big bracer of cold milk will do me.”
Goose and Karen were out behind the oak, sitting on the ground with a pan of water and some knives, a kerosene lamp on the ground. Goose was skinning and gutting the four squirrels he had shot. Karen put them in the pan of water and used her hands to rub any loose hair off of them.
“Four squirrel, four shots,” Goose said.
“You were using a shotgun.”
“They weren’t sitting on the end of it.”
“Did you know them and rats is kin?” Karen said.
“Naw, they ain’t.”
“They are. They’re like in the same family or something.”
“They don’t look like rats-well, maybe they do a bit. Suppose they could be kinfolks. I got kinfolks might be rats, the way they look, so I guess any family can have rats in it.”
“Maybe we ought not think on that too much.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me. I ain’t much on thinking I’m eating a rat’s cousin.”