Read Online The Up-Down by Barry Gifford - Free Book Online Page B

rolled up twenty dollar bill. Punzy was fully dressed. Her eyes were only half open and she staggered over to a chair and passed out with her head on the table.
    â€œWho’re you?” shouted the man with an eyepatch when he noticed Pace. Before Pace could say anything, the other man began urinating on the floor. Pace took off and ran back to the cottage, grabbed his Remington .332 over-and-under shotgun and two shells from the bedroom closet, loaded the gun and walked quickly back to the house.
    The two men were still in the kitchen. The one with the eyepatch was shaking Punzy by her right shoulder, trying to get her to wake up. His cock was at half-mast and he was yelling.
    â€œCome on, honey gal, suck Porter’s hairy old dick again!”
    Pace leveled the shotgun at him and said, “Get out.”
    The other man threw his whisky bottle at Pace. It missed and Pace turned the .332 a few degrees and shot him in the groin. The man screamed and fell down.
    â€œTake him and get out!” Pace shouted at Eyepatch, pointing the gun again at him.
    Eyepatch lifted up his partner, who was howling and writhing in pain while bleeding copiously onto the floor, and dragged the wounded man out the back door. Pace stood in the doorway and watched as Eyepatch dumped him in the bed of the truck, then got behind the steering wheel and drove away.
    The men’s clothes were scattered around the kitchen. Pace walked into the dining room and fired the other shell into Punzy’s Bose, blowing it apart and off the table they had become used to having dinner on, then went back into the kitchen. Punzy had slid off her chair onto the floor, where her head rested in a pool of the wounded man’s blood.
    Pace sat down in the chair in which Rapunzelina had been sitting and placed the shotgun on the table. It was quiet now in the kitchen except for the gurgling sound of Punzy’s troubled breathing. Words from the Fourth Circle of Dante’s Inferno came to his mind and he spoke them:
    â€œNot without cause our journey is to the pit.”
    Pace did not move for a very long time. He looked down again at Punzy and wondered what would become of her. Her breathing feathered out and she slept now like a child. Pace looked up and imagined Sailor was sitting across the table from him, smiling.
    â€œWell, Daddy,” Pace said. “I’ve got my answer now. You had Mama’s everlasting arm to lean on and I don’t. That was your secret, wasn’t it? Havin’ Lula there for you made it possible to go on.”
    Pace knew what he wanted to write now. He got up and walked back to the cottage.

 
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    Part Four

 
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    1
    The one person Pace could think of that he wanted to see and whom he believed would understand his state of mind following the bizarre and highly unsettling events of the past few months was Marnie Kowalski. Marnie lived in New Orleans, and during his first few weeks back in the city in which he’d grown up, after his divorce from Rhoda Gombowicz, Pace and Marnie had been lovers; but their mutual saving grace was that they had become good friends into the bargain and remained close despite the waning of their short-lived romantic entanglement. Pace trusted Marnie and he knew she trusted him, so it was to Marnie Pace turned in his most recent of darkest hours.
    â€œPace, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’m glad you’re callin’ ’cause I’ve thought of you often since you moved to North Carolina. How’re things, darlin’?”
    â€œMarnie, you know I’ve seen and gone through some more than passin’ strange episodes in my life but lately there’ve been several goin’s on have about got me puzzled as to God’s plan.”
    Marnie laughed and said, “Pace, honey, you of all people know He ain’t never had one. Don’t give me any details ’til you get here. You are comin’ to see me, aren’t you?