It was as I feared and suspected. Our beatings hadn’t put the fear of the devil into them after all. They had found out who we were and where we were, but as luck would have it, they didn’t know what car we were driving or that we had passed them by on the street.
The first one in the door was Thomas. He had a cast on his right hand. It was up in a sling. The other was Chunk, and he was limping, had a cast on his leg and some kind of heel on it to help him walk. They both had handguns.
Without meaning to, I said aloud:
“Really? You’ve got broken hands and legs, and… Shit, really?”
Thomas and Chunk paused there in the light, as if for a dance number. Thomas saw my shape and lifted the gun, held it sideways like a movie thug, said, “You fucks broke my right hand, motherfucker. But I’m left-handed.”
There was a ca-chunk sound, and then I heard Leonard in the shadows by the open closet say, “Yeah, and I got me a shotgun in the gauge of twelve from the closet, cocksucker.”
The world seemed stuck in amber.
Finally, Thomas said, “Well, okay.”
That hung in the air like a popcorn fart for about thirty seconds.
Thomas’s gun was still pointed in my direction. I had Leonard’s automatic held down by my side. I said, “Put the gun down, or Leonard will blow you both out the door like so much dust.”
“Actually,” Leonard said, “what I’ve found, you shoot a guy with a shotgun, he don’t blow backwards so much as he drops like a curtain and it makes a mess you wouldn’t believe. There ain’t enough janitors in town to clean it up right, but then again, that’s just my personal experience.”
As he said this, Leonard was moving forward, the shotgun at his shoulder.
“You know, I got a gun too,” I said. “I could shoot somebody.”
They ignored me. They were all about that shotgun.
Besides, I had yet to lift the automatic from my side. My face was covered in sweat and my gun hand was trembling. I had tunnel vision. You get that when you’re scared. It’s a thing happens when you’re in a tight situation, especially one of potential violence. Me, I had gotten over it a long time ago. I could control it.
Or could. But tonight, not so much.
Leonard hit a light switch.
Thomas, without lowering the gun he was pointing at me, glanced at Leonard, did a kind of double take at the hat.
“You don’t worry about it,” Leonard said. “How’s it gonna be? A maybe shot you get to take at me and Hap, or a certain boom from the shotgun, and the both of you blood and rags. My aim don’t have to be as good as yours.”
Thomas and Chunk let their handguns drift to their sides.
“Ain’t nobody doin’ nothing,” Chunk said. “I told this fool we ought not mess with you two crazies.”
Thomas turned his head slightly, looked at Chunk. Right then he knew his number one man had climbed out the window, so to speak.
“Now, with your guns at your side,” I said, “dip your knees… Oh, sorry, Chunk. How about just drop them.”
“You two,” Thomas said, “I hate you both. I hate you cocksuckers big-time.”
“That comes up a lot,” Leonard said.