put your name on it.”
Goat had created the monster horse out of scrap pieces of metal rod he had found on the floor of the shop. It was seven feet tall and weighed three quarters of a ton. The horse was rearing up, its front legs pawing the air. The back legs were attached to a thick metal plate, about four feet long, in such a way that the weight of the horse balanced perfectly against the length and thickness of the base. So perfect was the balance that a small child could sit on the horse’s back and push his neck and the horse would rock. Because it was made of many small pieces welded together, the horse had the look of a Van Gogh worked in steel, yet, the musculature and shape were perfect enough to make the real horses in the field next to the plant, neigh and paw the ground. It was indeed a masterpiece.
“I need your help this weekend, Goat. I’m going over to Sylvia’s to get my car off the blocks.”
Jimmy and Sylvia had broken up a few months back. She had taken their child and car and gone to live with a Mexican Pimp. Since then Jimmy had been dating a legless woman, Sweet Marie, whose gentle nature seemed to soothe his pain but lately he’d taken up with an Indian woman he called Helen Highwater. She was wild. She had the word kiss tattooed to her upper lip. She ran guns and drugs for a motorcycle gang and, according to Jim, made love like a tiger in heat.
“I ain’t going over there. And I’ll tell you something else; you don’t need to be going over there either.”
“Gotta’ get my car, son.”
“Drive that Indian’s car like you been doing.”
“A man oughta’ have his own car.”
“You ain’t going over there for the car, Rabs.”
Jimmy just smiled and walked off.
By quittin’ time Rabs had Goat talked into helping him go get his car over the weekend. The next day was Friday. Rabbit came in early and sawed the barrel and stock down on his single shot shotgun. Goat came in late and never heard a thing about that.
As Rusty tells it, on Saturday morning Jimmy woke up and took his shotgun and blasted the walls out of the shack he was renting in the Trinity River Bottoms. He called Goat, but the line was busy. He called Helen and borrowed her truck. He went across the river and bought a case of beer and headed to Leroy’s house.
Leroy was another welder from down at the shop. He had a child’s heart, a good wife, two kids, and a strong desire to drink beer and watch Mighty Mouse on Saturday mornings.
This morning, he was broke and had resigned himself to just watching Mighty Mouse, when in walked Jim with a case of beer. Late in the afternoon they picked up another case of beer, and Rusty, and headed over to Sylvia’s to get Jim’s car.
Sylvia stood on the front porch of the duplex, next to the outside stairs that led to the apartment on the second floor. She held two year old “Little Jimmy” in her arms; it was as if she were waiting for Rabbit. As if she knew, beyond all doubt, that he’d be there before dark. When Jimmy pulled up she didn’t move. She just stood there, her red hair glowing even redder in the red rays of the setting sun. She looked hot and nervous in her white shorts and red tube top. Jimmy got out and stood beside the truck; Leroy and Rusty were already moving toward the house.
“Your car’s out back.” She said, and then turned to go back into the house.
Jimmy watched her a moment then turned his head slowly to his left, as if he’d seen something out of the corner of his eye. A dark man was leaning against a tree about ten feet away, smoking a cigarette. Jimmy turned back to his wife; she was about half way through the screen door. He shouted.
“Hey is that the son-of-a-bitch you’re with now?”
In a flash, Jimmy had reached under the front seat and pulled out his sawed-off. The dark man ran toward the house. Bam! Jimmy fired but the dark man was out of range and galloping up the stairs. Jimmy reloaded and slowly closed in. The dark man reappeared at the top of the stairs firing a .38. Jimmy took a shot in the neck, then one in the stomach; he doubled over and fell at the foot of the stairs. Leroy took a shot in the back of the head as he ran toward the truck and fell dead on the dry, yellow lawn. Rusty got hit in the arm as he ducked behind a tree. The tree took two shots and the dark man had to reload. Rusty ran to the truck, jumped in and peeled rubber for three solid blocks, but couldn’t leave Rabs behind. When he returned the dark man was stepping slowly down the stairs smiling at Sylvia as he blew the smoke from the barrel of his revolver. As the pimp stepped to the porch Jimmy jumped up and cut him in two with a blast point-blank from his sawed-off. Sylvia screamed, hysterical. Rabbit spun and held out the shotgun for her to see the .38 slug embedded in the stock. He slammed another shell in the chamber and shouted.
“Where’s the rest of these motherfuckers?!”
Sylvia knelt down and cradled the head of her fallen lover. She looked up at Jimmy, half crying, half sneering.
“Don’t go out back, Jimmy, just leave. Get out of here.”
Jimmy just smiled and walked slowly to the rickety wooden gate that led to the backyard.
I couldn’t finish reading the last of the chapter; the grim details of Jimmy’s death had been seared into my memory at the time it happened. Besides, at this point my eyes were burning and I hurt all over. I had to sleep.
I went into the bathroom and removed my wolfman make-up as best I could, considering my condition, and crawled into my unmade bed. There was a moment, right before I fell into a deep dead sleep, when I thought I felt a presence in the room with me. That’s all, just a moment, then silence, then black.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A HOLE IN THE VOID
I BLEW A HOLE in the afternoon with a .38 caliber dream. Its blood soaked my pillow purple and bits of my brain went swimming in the vision-wine, while sunset wrote with shades of brown and electric pink on the wall beside my bed.
I woke up shivering, terrified by things I’d seen with my eyes closed. My tongue was clicking like a cricket in my mouth as my now open eyes danced from what I was sure was blood on my pillow to the dark ghosts jumping out of the sundown shadows. It took a bit to pull myself together. That’s not blood, that’s wolfman make-up; my mind was working again. There is a strange voodoo in pain, present or remembered, and I was still coming out of its spell.
When the phone rang I ducked. It took a minute or two for me to realize the sound I was hearing was not necessarily life threatening. I crawled out from behind the bed, still shaken, and slowly lifted the receiver to my ear.
“Ah, Professaur you’re home at last.”
It was Speedster. He always pronounced “Professor” as if it were “dinosaur” because he felt both species had died out a long time ago.
“Speedster, my old friend.”
I called him “my old friend” because of his age not the length of our friendship, though I felt, in an odd way, that it was true in both senses.
“You sound like shit! Whatta’ you been doing, going to A.A. meetings?”
“Worse, I think a coven of witches are after my ass—I just woke up from a nightmare that left bloodstains in my underwear—and then you
