“I’m like, ‘Easy, buddy.’ He waggles the gun and hollers, ‘I ain’t your buddy, cracker, break yourself! Cash, checks, credit cards!’ Then he adds, ‘And cigarettes!’”
“And you can tell, now, that this guy is on something. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s got that gun right there against my head, maybe two inches from my temple, he has actually stuck his hand and gun inside my car. One twitch of that finger, and I’m dead. No more Bobby Swanson.
“Homeboy screams, ‘Wallet, motherfucker!’
“I’ve got my hands in the air, you know, palms open, one on either side of my head. I’m like, ‘Easy, man, I’ll get you my wallet, okay? It’s under my seat. I’m gonna drop my right hand and reach under there to get it. You cool?’
“Homeboy’s shaking. He’s like, ‘Get that fuckin’ wallet, bitch!’
“So real slowly, I reach down under the seat. I don’t have any wallet under my seat, now. That shit was in my right hip pocket. What I’ve got under my seat is my Glock. I grab it, then I shoot my left hand out and pin Homeboy’s gun hand to the steering wheel. Then I pop out the Glock, and BAM! BAM! BAM!”
He turned to one side to show me how he did it. Holding an imaginary gun in his right hand, he twitched his trigger finger three times.
“Homeboy lets go of his gun and falls backwards onto the highway. I crank the Mustang and peel a wheel. Whip around in a circle. Meanwhile, Homeboy’s shitbag friends saw the flashes and they’re getting out of the Cadillac. So I unload as I drive by. BAM BAM BAM! BAM BAM BAM! BAM BAM BAM!”
His trigger finger contracted repeatedly, the hand moving from side to side to show the shot pattern.
“These shitbags are diving for cover, hitting the deck, diving back into the Caddy; there’s one there in the back seat, waving his arms around like he’s in church and just got the Holy Spirit. I knew I couldn’t get away with actually bagging any of these guys, but I wanted to keep their heads down, you know what I’m saying? I shot the rest of the magazine over their heads. Then I hauled ass up 17 to Jacksonville and called 911 from the nearest pay phone.”
“What happened with the guy? The one you shot?”
“No idea. Cops found the blood on the road, but no car. But listen, there’s a point to this.”
He leaned forward.
“I could have given the guy my wallet, okay? Maybe he wouldn’t have shot me. Maybe everything would have been okay. But maybe not, because this world is full of shitbags. A man that’s asshole enough to rob another man on the side of the road would do about anything.”
His eyes burned with intensity.
“It’s a fucked-up world out there,” he said. “Nice guys don’t finish last; they don’t finish at all. You remember that shit.”
I frowned. “Why are you saying that?”
“Fuck why,” he said. “Just remember it. Don’t ever forget how many fucked-up people exist in this world. They outnumber us. We have to stay frosty. You know what I’m saying?”
My head bobbed like one of those stupid plastic dolls you see on people’s desks sometimes. Bobbleheads; empty lumps of plastic.
“It’s important for you to hear this,” he said. He took a long drink of beer and set the glass down on the table with a solid thwack. Not hard enough to slosh the remaining beer out of the glass, but close. “And it’s important for you to understand that. How fucked up this world and everybody in it actually is. Because I know how you think.”
That conversation played again in my head now, ten years later. The lights in Abby’s bedroom and the master glowed on my approach up the winding driveway from 62 South, the tires of the BMW crunching over the dry shreds of autumn color that had fallen and obscured the driveway. Home late yet again—but I hadn’t missed my girls. I could still say goodnight.
In the garage, I cut off the ignition and got out. We had enjoyed unseasonably warm weather for early October, but the temperature had dropped with the onset of night and my breath came in puffs of steam that vanished in the air as quickly as they materialized. The driver’s door closed with a solid thunk followed only by the ticking sounds of the cooling engine. The exterior lights, streaming in through the Plexiglass windows on the garage door, cast a shadow of my bust over the passenger side fender of Allie’s Explorer and the wall over my tool bench.
Because I know you, Bobby had said to me. And I know how you think.
Of course he did. He knew a pussy when he saw one. None of my degrees or Dean’s List awards or job offers changed the fact that had that been me on the side of the road back in 2002, I’d have given the man my wallet. And my keys, and my shoes and anything else he wanted. Because while I’d thought of myself then—all the way up until February of this year, actually—as an optimist, in the modern world “optimist” translated into “pussy.”
With the bases loaded at the bottom of the ninth and his team down by three, Bobby had stepped up to the plate and took a swing. And it had been a good one. That night in 2002, I came to understand that Bobby was a hard son of a bitch because he’d always been a hard son of a bitch—something inside of him allowed his mind to work the right way in the right situation. I never stopped admiring him for it, because I so wasn’t like that.
But maybe at least a little bad-assedness is genetic. When my own bases were loaded, I had him as my batting coach. And what happened?
“I knocked that ball out of the park,” I muttered into the cold air as I made my way to the door that opened to the little mudroom off the kitchen. “Home fucking run.”
How’s that for a pussy?
I stood in the silence of my kitchen and stared down the hallway where I had shot the two men. I had done this without hesitation. That same inner power that had guided Bobby’s decisive actions ten years ago had guided mine eight months ago. When you looked underneath the suit and the layer of comfortable fat, you found a cold, hard son of a bitch under there. A man who didn’t give a rat’s ass.
I thought about getting a beer, but that would just make me have to pee twenty times during the night, so I went upstairs. I changed clothes. I made passionate love to my beautiful wife and I fell asleep with absolutely no trouble at all.
And just before I drifted off, it occurred to me that I had appeared on the Billy Horton show exactly a month ago. A whole month, and I hadn’t heard from the Bald Man.
But, of course, nothing good lasts forever.
13.
I awoke to a ringing telephone. My hand shot out and grabbed the land line receiver on my nightstand, but the ringing continued and I realized it came from my cell, sitting atop my dresser.
“Make it stop,” Allie groaned, kicking me weakly.
Grumbling, I swung my legs out and stood up. I staggered over to the dresser and snatched the phone. “Hello?”
Nothing on the other end but the distant hum of what sounded like a car engine and a radio—the tinny music sounded familiar, but it sounded so far off I couldn’t identify the tune or the artist. Above all this, the sound of somebody breathing into the phone. Not the heavy, sexual breathing of a prank caller, but the easy respiration of someone who simply doesn’t want to talk.
“Hello?” I said louder.