Joe by Larry Brown Page B

off cause I wouldn’t loan him fifty dollars. Comes down here drunk, wantin to borry money off me to gamble with me. If I loaned himfifty he’d owe me a hundred. You ever heard of anything like that?”
     
    Joe picked up his cigarettes and put them in his pocket. “I ain’t surprised at nothin Curt would do. He’s got his mama’s pension check in his pocket right now. Fixin to cash it when he gets to a grocery store.”
     
    Henry shook his head.
     
    “Him and Franklin have pissed away every penny that old woman had. When Jim died he owned two thousand acres of land and had way over a hundred head of cows. And I mean by God worked his whole life to get it. I can remember when he didn’t have nothin. And now she ain’t got nothin. Taxes. It’s their own fault, I reckon. When them two boys was coming up they was a gallon churn used to set on the kitchen table. Was full of money, change. Quarters and dimes and nickels. Wasn’t no pennies in it. Franklin and Curt would get ready to go to town and they’d go in there and just scoop up a handful. They always had plenty of money but they never had to work for none of it. No sir, I ain’t loanin him no money.”
     
    “I’m fixin to take him uptown and get him drunk,” Joe said. “He knows where Franklin’s at, but he won’t tell me when he’s sober. I’ll get about a six-pack in him and get some of them old gals to rub some of that leg on him. He’ll tell me then.”
     
    “A drunk man tells no lies.”
     
    “You got that right. Well, I’ll be back after while, Henry. You don’t want me to bring Curt back with me?”
     
    “I don’t care. Leave him uptown and make him walk home if you want to. You can get you some of this deer meat when you get back if you want to. We ain’t got much room in the freezer.”
     
    “All right,” he said, and he went out the door. He closed it behind him and walked up the hall. He could see Curt sitting on the hood drinking a beer. He had his legs crossed, and was smoking a cigarette.
     
    “Is Henry in there?” he said.
     
    “Yeah. He said if you come in there he’s gonna shoot your ass. Come on, get in and let’s go.” He was going down the steps as he talked, and he stopped beside Curt where he sat on the hood. A truck came around the curve and it started slowing as it neared the house. They turned to watch it come.
     
    “I wonder who that is,” Joe said.
     
    “I don’t know. Looks like it’s comin in here.”
     
    It was. It slowed gradually and stopped beside the driveway, a white ’78 Ford truck with a smashed fender and a driver screaming strangled curses as he dragged something up from the floorboards. Fried hair and a yelling mouth fifty yards away, a man with blood between his eyes.
     
    “Is he talkin to us?” Joe said.
     
    “Goddamn!”
Curt threw one leg off the hood and slammed his beer down and Joe had started around the other side of the truck when the barrel came out the window and smoke erupted. Two concussions back to back sent hot lead flying as they labored with their hands up beside their chests, cartoon characters slipping and losing traction in the loose gravel. They were shot before they could move three feet. Joe fell and covered his head. Another shot went over his back and slammed into the house. Curt sobbed aloud and crawled behind the wheel of the truck, blood running from his shoe. Joe’s ears were roaring and he heard the transmission ofthe truck grinding as the driver tried to shove it up in reverse. He got up and jerked the door open, hitting Curt in the head with it, and felt around among the beer cans under the seat for his pistol. His hand closed over it. He snatched it out and ran to the road. The pickup had backed into the field above the house and the driver was winding the wheel in a panic, looking out the window. Joe ran up the ditch, trying to shorten the range. The truck roared out, skidded, almost went into the ditch on the other side, and he stopped and