Read Online Cold in July by Joe R. Lansdale - Free Book Online Page A

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.

 
    15
     
                
    That night Jordan went back to bed with us and I lay there
thinking about Russel. After all that had happened, the thing that