The Hour of Lead (35 page)

Lucky propped himself on one elbow and peered past Lawson. Wendy stared from a face softened and fleshy with the years. Her cheekbones no longer carved her face into a clear shape. She'd lived too long comfortably. Her eyes were the same brown; there
remained a little desperation left in them and when he struck upon it, she squinted and recalled.

“Put him out,” she said.

“He's in no shape for that.”

“He can't stay.”

Lawson bent and his face became large again. “You want to go the hospital, buddy?” Lucky could smell the coffee on his breath. He shook his head. Lawson shrugged. Wendy's eyes darted from the couch to some spot in the kitchen. She didn't look at her husband. She was already hiding him, Lucky knew.

“He's a cop,” Matt whispered. “Some criminal bunged him up and wants to do more. He just needs an hour to get squared away,” Lawson told her.

“Can't you see this bothers me?” Wendy asked.

Lawson collected his lunchbox. “Probably puts him out, too.”

“What if I say no?”

“Do you want them to kill him? I doubt he can take a second whipping. Where's my coffee?”

Wendy held to the thermos. “Matt!” she pleaded.

“Should I set him at the end of the driveway for the trashman?” Lawson asked. He took her hand and raised it in his. Wendy pressed her lip under her front teeth, a fresh gesture to Lucky. She'd kept learning after him, and he'd stopped with her. He was inclined to lay a good slap on her.

The children rose ten minutes after Lawson's departure. Lucky smelled pancakes and listened as Wendy piled them onto plates. The children were an inconvenience to the chore ahead. He supposed he could rise and shoo them himself, but he didn't desire a battle. Lucky dozed and Wendy fed her brood and collected the breakfast dishes.

“You've eaten double what you're allowed already,” she said to the boy. “You and Angel get along,” she said. “It's too nice a day to
waste indoors.” Luke went to his room for a basketball. Through the window, Wendy watched him amble toward the concrete hoop and backboard at the park.

“I don't have a basketball,” the daughter told her.

Wendy opened the cabinet above the refrigerator. She offered Angel a leather-bound book. “Tell me what they mean,” Wendy said.

The door shut behind her. Wendy remained at the window, watching her. When her attention returned to the room, Lucky sat up, rubbing one shoulder.

“I'd have a cup.” He nodded at the coffeepot.

Wendy brought him one.

“They're fine children,” he said.

She nodded.

Lucky winced raising the coffee.

“Does your visit have a purpose?” Wendy asked him.

“Right to the point, same as I recall.” Lucky smiled. “I'm sheriff,” he said. “For Lincoln County. I'd say that's some improvement from the last we saw each other.”

Wendy studied her fingers through the holed afghan.

“I'm going to take Lawson for a long walk off a short pier. I've been paid good money.”

“What do you have against him?”

“You,” Lucky said. He blinked, speaking in monotone, as if he might be translating some language difficult to decipher. “Things just got into a line and stopped here.” Lucky stood and lifted her at the elbow until she was upright, then steered her toward the bedroom. She halted in the hall. He backhanded her, but she held her ground.

“All that's over,” she said.

“It hasn't ever been done on my end.”

“What you feel is no longer my concern,” she told him. “I'm sorry to put it that way. It's cruel, I know. Maybe all of it was cruel. I'm cruel, maybe. Me letting you think it was more. I'm sorry.”

He undid her housecoat but she closed it and tied the wrap. He was a child, as she'd left him. He put his gun to her head.

“Take off the clothes.” She did and stood in front of him, a naked woman, yet she looked as composed as if she'd dressed for winter.

“Nothing will be different if you do it.”

“Everything will change.”

“No,” she said. “You'll have raped me. That's all.”

“You love me.”

Wendy shook her head. “We were confused,” she said.

Lucky stood. His head ached and so did his chest. Each breath tried him. He was still confused, he realized.

“Go on into the front room,” he told her. He followed her there and rested on a chair. He directed her to the sofa. Wendy sat with her legs and arms covering herself. They stayed quiet a long time.

“When's Lawson get back?” Lucky said.

“I thought you were here for me.”

He shook his head. “I just happened onto you.”

She looked at him. “You're here for me.”

“You're just begging for him now,” he told her. He chuckled a little. “I listen to them old country songs. Nobody knows, but I hear when they come on. Them boys can sing. I figure I been wounded like them maybe. By you and by Lawson, too. But I can't carry a tune.” He shook his head. “It's a shame,” he said. “I could sit here and serenade you until he gets home. Maybe if I was sung out I wouldn't need to kill him.”

“What good will killing him do you?” she asked him.

He smiled. “What good does it do them cowboys to sing?”

“He'll turn the tables on you,” Wendy told him.

“I doubt it,” Lucky said. He thought he needed killing, though. It would be some rest finally. He imagined it as peaceful as sleeping late. He set his gun on his lap and waited. When the children returned, he stripped them and put them next to their mother. The
girl was heavy-breasted and thin at the hip, but his loins were done. The boy was thick bone and muscle and skin and a confused pair of eyes.

He felt drowsy and ordered Wendy to perk coffee, then drank the entire pot, but it did not wake him. He stood and circled the room; the colors went to mud and he dreamed waking dreams that smelled like fresh meat and fire and tasted of iron and smoke and he heard his name whispered, a silly name, yes, but the voice spoke it like it was from a book and equal to other words and if he repeated it long enough, he would mean what books meant and end as books ended.

The boy on all fours crawled into the kitchen, a good boy; he had attempted to resist, and might have accepted a bullet for his mother and sister, if Wendy had not scolded him into submission. Lucky watched him climb the counter. The boy dropped to the floor, a gun in his fist. Wendy and the girl stared at him. Lucky realized he had been speaking, but had no idea for how long. He raised the pistol and shot at the boy. It was a small caliber gun, but the report rang for long enough to break the cadence of thoughts in his ears.

Wendy had gone to the boy despite Lucky's weapon.

“He's all right,” she told Angel. The gun lay on the floor.

“Leave it,” Lucky said. “Please.”

Wendy returned to the sofa with Luke. Lucky thanked her, thanked all of them as if they'd done him a service. He listened to the stove clock tick; as it wound off minutes, his breaths joined the rhythm, then his thoughts, until it was just a clock in a room, and he was once more able to discern what was outside his head from what was within. He could hear their breathing, too, and he nearly shot them just to gain himself silence.

At half past four, Lawson parked in their driveway. Inside, he saw the gun on the floor. He bent to examine it.

“Don't.”

Lawson blinked adjusting to the curtained room. He recognized his family on the couch, unclothed.

“You and me have business?” Lawson asked.

Lucky nodded.

“This business require them undressed?”

“No. I just wanted you to see them this way.”

“Well, I have.”

Wendy held the children's hands. All their eyes stared at Lawson.

“It'll be all right,” he told them. The boy nodded and Angel, too. Wendy, though, began to weep.

“There somewhere else may be more fitting we can settle up?” Lawson asked.

Lucky shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He stood and followed Lawson to Lucky's car. Lucky sat in the passenger seat and held his gun on Lawson as he drove. West of the towns and into the rocky country that surrounded Banks Lake, Lucky ordered him onto a secluded, two-rut road that led to Northrup Canyon, where a creek ran year-round. He drove as far as the road allowed, then braked the car.

“We getting out?” Lawson asked.

Lucky nodded.

Lawson stepped out of the car. It was still light. He looked up the steep rock of the coulee.

“I don't suppose I could argue you from this?”

“I might enjoy hearing it.”

“I'm not a convincing speaker, anyhow.” He took a few steps toward the rocks. “Will you leave my family be?”

“I'm done with them,” Lucky said.

“Okay, then.” Lawson turned to face Lucky.

“You don't want to know what for?”

Lawson shrugged.

“Garrett,” Lucky said. “You know him?”

“Yes.”

“He wants you dead. Or in jail.”

“You prefer dead.”

“Less work,” Lucky said. He unzipped his pants and showed Lawson his workings. “I knew your wife.” Lucky leaned on the fender to relieve his labored breaths. “I don't anymore.” He shook his penis with his free hand. “Now I unknow her.”

“Let's get this done with,” Matt said.

“You're sure in a hurry for your demise.”

“I don't care for waiting.”

“Well, then I'll see to it you do a little longer.”

Lawson reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. He offered one to Lucky who lit it with a matchbook from his pocket and drew until the cigarette end caught. He exhaled a lungful of smoke. Lucky paced a circle around him.

“Linda Jefferson. You knew her?”

“She rescued me once a long time back.” Lawson said. “There was a storm. Is she not well?”

“She's my mother and she hasn't ever been well, goddamnit.”

“I'm sorry.”

A half-mile away, a car passed on the state road. They waited until its sound moved off.

“What's this got to do with my wife?” Lawson asked him.

“I knew her before you,” Lucky replied.

“Before she was in grammar school?”

“You were acquainted with her as a child?”

Lawson nodded, and Lucky saw it was as true as a condemned man's words were said to be. Lawson knew her before Lucky himself had and married her after. Lawson had known his mother before his birth: everyone that mattered. Lucky gazed at the gun in his hand. He had thought his living was on the edge of making sense, when it had really just quit logic for good.

He held the gun on Matt with both hands, like it was a fish he
feared would squirm from his grasp. Matt pulled up his shirt. “See this scar?”

Lucky nodded.

“Wendy shot me a long time ago.” Matt poked the scar.

“She did that?” Lucky said.

Matt nodded.

“I guess she give you a hard time, too.”

“I guess so,” Matt replied. “If you got to shoot me, I'd appreciate you doing it here.”

“It'll leave you gut shot. Head is quicker.”

“I'm sentimental,” Matt said.

“I suppose if I'm going to go on and shoot you, it's only fitting you pick the place.” He put the barrel next to Matt's ancient wound.

“You prepared?”

“You'll leave off my family?”

“I'm a lot of things, but I don't lie.”

Matt nodded and clasped his hands over the gun and turned the barrel downward at what he thought was the same angle. Lucky tugged the trigger. The bullet's blow shoved Matt backwards into a sagebrush and spun him onto his side. The pain started dull and familiar. Blood warmed his chest and back. He lay with his eyes closed waiting for his organs to come apart.

Lucky stood over him. He rolled Matt and stared at the wound, and shook his head. “Goddammit,” he said.

A few seconds and Matt heard the car door shut, then the engine turn. The tires rattled the gravel and joined the sound of the highway. Matt lay, waiting for death. The sky darkened with coming night. He thought nothing and remained where he was. After half an hour, he realized he'd quit hurting as bad. His bleeding had slowed, as well. His lungs took in breath and without sputtering fluid. His eyes worked. He heard the highway. He wondered if this was a trick dying played on a man, one that let him leave life
easier. His watch read a quarter past seven and an hour later, it read a quarter past eight. He tipped himself to sit. The wound punished him for movement, but not as much as it could have. He stood. His legs remained unsure, but that was because they'd gone numb. He unbuttoned the shirt to examine the wound and knew then he wouldn't die.