He turned around.
Speedy’s hands were pressed against the sides of his head. Maurice was pointing the shotgun at Lee but he’d not yet pumped the action. He was looking from Lee to Gilmore and back to Lee. Gilmore himself was unreadable.
Lee went out of the locker. He threw the sledgehammer away from him. It hit the ground and bounced and came to rest. He could hear Gilmore speaking to Maurice:
— … your kind of shit to deal with. You figure out what this little sack of shit thinks he saw. And then you figure out what you want to do with him. The plane will be here in an hour. And nobody says a word, a fucking word, to Arlene.
Gilmore came out of the locker and crossed through the shed. He slowed as he passed Lee and the two of them looked at each other and neither said anything, and then Gilmore went back outside into the gathering daylight.
The locker door was partially ajar but all Lee could see through the opening was Speedy’s back.
The business card he’d taken from his wallet was yellowed with age. It showed a cartoon man in coveralls holding an oversized wrench, and behind the man was a woodstove with two white eyes and a smiling row of teeth. Gunter’s Maintenance amp; Restoration-All Makes. There was a phone number and a concession address in Novar. He turned the card over and read a different phone number handwritten on the back. He was in the store, holding the cold receiver of the pay telephone to his mouth.
The man on the other end of the line had not spoken for a long moment.
— Do you understand? said Lee. If I call the bulls and they come with all their lights and sirens and all that shit, then these boys will kill him. If you don’t understand the rest of it then you have to understand that.
— I understand.
— Then …
— Yes. It’s a ways from me. I’ll need twenty minutes.
Lee closed his eyes.
— I’ll see you.
He hung up. He breathed slowly. He walked a lap around the interior of the restaurant. He opened the rusty tool box he’d seen the night before. The box contained wiring tools: a cable ripper, a selection of marrettes, screwdrivers, needle-nose pliers.
On one of the stripped grocery shelves he found an old pack of cigarettes. There was one cigarette in the pack. It was stale and dry and the smoke moved briskly through it when he lit it. He looked back at the telephone.
There was what might have been an office through a door past the round-top fridge. The smell of mouse shit was sharp. One window in the office was unboarded, and Lee looked out on the white stillness of the property. The rising sun was slanting crosswise through the spruce. He could not see the shed or the campers from here. He opened his wallet again and looked at what little remained. One thing was his parole officer’s card. He balled the card up and threw it in the corner. Wade Larkin hadn’t ever been much use in the first place.
Lee drew on his cigarette.
He came back out of the empty office and went towards the tool box on the table. That was when he heard boots behind him. Maurice was standing in the opening between the rear storeroom and the restaurant. The shotgun was laid over his shoulder.
— What are you doing, Lee?
— I came down here to warm up.
— To warm up. What are you doing with that tool box?
Lee went past him into the rear storeroom. Over his shoulder, he said: The heater in the van is broken.
He took two steps and then he started to run for the back door. Maurice swung the shotgun by the barrel and the butt hit Lee in the back of the head. He pitched hard onto the concrete floor. The tool box crashed open in front of him and the wiring tools and marrettes scattered out.
— What in the fuck, Lee? I told you not to come down here. And why are you running?
Lee’s vision wavered. There was an immense throb pulsing out from where he’d been struck. The cigarette, pressed between his cheek and the floor, was searing his skin. He rolled his head off it. He got himself up onto his hands and knees and put his fingers down over a flathead screwdriver that had spilled from the tool box. Maurice stood beside him. He put the shotgun to Lee’s ear.
Maurice started to say something but Lee snapped the screwdriver into Maurice’s thigh and brought it back out. He surged up off the floor and into Maurice and both men scrambled backwards into the restaurant, coupled absurdly, grunting, seeking out soft parts with knees and thumbs. Maurice still had hold of the shotgun in one hand but he hadn’t pumped it yet and his free hand was occupied with trying to crush Lee’s windpipe or drive his fingers into Lee’s eyes. Lee thrashed his head about. He pulled at any part he could get hold of. Maurice’s weight was enormous. He guided them by sheer size, both bodies colliding into tables and shelves.
Then Maurice backed Lee into the range and pressed his whole weight into him. He drove his knee up into Lee’s thigh and wrapped his hand around Lee’s throat and squeezed. But now they were fixed in one place. Lee rammed the screwdriver into Maurice’s neck, as many times as he could, as quickly as he could. Maurice’s fingers released Lee’s windpipe, and the big man moved backwards and found the refrigerator and sat down on the floor against it. He had his hand around his own neck now and he looked surprised. Doubtful. He was still holding the shotgun in his other hand.
Blood came out of Maurice’s mouth and between his fingers. It was all over his shirt. Lee staggered upright from the range, gagging air back into his lungs. His hand was slippery with blood.
Maurice said a nonsense sound.
Lee dropped the screwdriver and dug under the counter until he found a threadbare tea towel. He wiped the blood from his hand. He fingered the swelling on the back of his head. Then he went over to Maurice and pulled the barrel of the shotgun. Maurice held on. Lee planted his boot on Maurice’s arm and pushed, still holding the barrel, until the shotgun came free.
Maurice said the nonsense sound again. It might have been the word you. There was more blood than Lee could have believed possible. It was on the refrigerator and it was pooling on the floor.
Lee pumped the shotgun halfway, checking the gate to see the cartridge in the chamber, and then he finished the pump and thumbed on the safety. He knelt down a few feet in front of Maurice and leaned on the shotgun and continued to get his breath back. Lee watched until Maurice had stopped moving and all the sight had gone from his eyes. The blood still trickled out of him.
Lee got up. His head felt like a cracked bell and his left eye was blurred where Maurice had pressed it. His windpipe was burning. He went through the storeroom and looked out through the open door, across the rise of snow-covered property, to the shed and the van and the campers. Nothing moved.
He went out. There were tracks in the snow. His tracks coming, Maurice’s tracks coming. Lee climbed the rise and turned the shotgun out in front of him. The treeline beyond the shed was a dark sketch between earth and sky.
He came first to the prow of the Airstream where the windows were shuttered. He could see the man-door into the shed, open and dark. He moved up on the stoop of the Airstream and tried the door. It was unlocked. He slipped inside. The galley was warm and smelled like cigarettes.
A passageway ran from the galley to the forequarters of the trailer. Just as he was about to step forward he saw Arlene come out of where he reckoned the bedroom was. She was wearing her robe and was combing her hair out of her eyes. Lee pointed the shotgun at her but she did not notice him. She went into the bathroom midway down the passageway and folded the door closed behind her.
Gilmore’s voice spoke from the bedroom.
— In the fridge, said Gilmore.
— I will, said Arlene.