Rumble Tumble

Haskel said, “That baby holds twelve .44 cartridges, and underneath it has a shotgun shell. It’s activated by that second trigger. It clicks back once, then sets, and you click it again. It’s a twenty-gauge. It hasn’t got the room-cleaning power of that Remington, but you get one man in your sight, let loose on him, and he’ll be cool in the summer and cold in the winter.

“The top barrel is accurate, and it’ll shoot a goodly distance. More than that middle-measure barrel will lead you to believe.”

Haskel picked up the other rifle of the same design and tossed it to Leonard. “I’ll even throw in a box of shells per rifle,” Haskel said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said, “but how much are the rifles?”

“A thousand apiece.”

“Shit,” Leonard said. “Maybe we ought to get a powder horn and a ramrod and a Hawking reproduction.”

“I’ve got ’em,” Haskel said. “Look, you take both, I’ll make ’em eight hundred apiece. I’m actually selling these bastards at discount prices.”

“Seven hundred apiece,” Leonard said.

“Seven-fifty,” Haskel said.

“Oh, all right,” Leonard said, but you got to throw in one of those pistols.”

Haskel looked down at the table. He had brought out three handguns. He picked up one of the snub-nose .38s and weighed it in his hands as if he could tell its worth that way.

“All right,” he said. “But no shells with it.”

“How much are the shells?” Leonard asked.

“Sixty dollars.”

“For a box of .38s?”

“For twenty shells. They’re all dum-dums.”

“No thanks,” Leonard said. “Plain ole .38s will do. We want to be prepared, but we’re not trying to take on the Republican Guard.”

“All right. Anything else?”

“Shit, Leonard,” I said. “We don’t need all this stuff. Lose the shotgun and one of the rifles.”

“You never know,” Leonard said. “Give us three handguns, provided they aren’t a thousand a pop and my balls on a platter.”

“You can keep your balls,” Haskel said, “but the pistols, they’re seven-fifty apiece.”

“Jesus,” Leonard said. “You have these cut out of you, or what? That’s dear.”

“Take ’em all, get a discount.”

“How much?”

“Fifty dollars.”

“Fifty dollars! Jesus Christ, you’re really giving us the Jesse James.”

“These prices are bargain-basement, man.”

“Whose basement?”

“All right, I’ll cut you a hundred on the deal. Throw in a box of shells.”

Leonard sighed. He looked at me. I said, “I tell you, we don’t need all this stuff. I’m a man of peace.”

“Yeah,” Leonard said, “but they might not be.”

“You got you a little something planned,” Haskel said. “A job.”

“Nothing like that,” Leonard said. “All right, wrap it up.”

“Don’t you want to see this stuff work?” Haskel asked.

“Yeah, well,” Leonard said. “I reckon.”

8

“We can go outside for these,” Haskel said. “I use the range in back for the heavy shit.”

Leonard and I each carried a rifle and Haskel carried the sawed-off and the revolvers and ammunition in a cloth bag. He walked us out the door, down the trail, and over near the hog pens. He put the bag down, broke open the double-barrel and took two shells out of his overalls pocket and pushed them into the gun.

“Watch this,” Haskel said, and suddenly he turned toward the hog pen and cut down with both barrels. There was a sound like God letting a big one and the fence splintered. When the smoke and dirt and hog shit cleared, both hogs lay with their feet in the air.

“Goddamn,” Leonard said. “Wasn’t any call for that.”

“Gonna eat ’em anyway,” Haskel said, opening the shotgun and popping out the shells. “Soon as I get you two packin’, I’ll get my woman to help crank them sonofabitches up with the wrecker and we’ll scrape ’em. Scrapin’ a hog beats scaldin’ any day. Still got to use lots of hot water, but it ain’t quite the work. Come here, now.”

We followed Haskel down the trail to a spot at the base of the barn. “Ya’ll want telescopic sights for these?”

“No,” Leonard said.

“Might ought to have ’em,” Haskel said.

Leonard shook his head.

Haskel said, “See them bumps on the hill out there?”

We nodded.

He swapped his shotgun for the rifle Leonard was carrying.

“Watch this.” Haskel jerked the rifle up and fired and cocked and fired in rapid succession. The bumps on the hill went away. “Come on out with me now,” Haskel said.

As we walked we could smell yet another awful stench. It wasn’t the outhouse and it wasn’t the pigs; it was something long dead and rotting. It was more armadillo carcasses. They were spread at the base of the little sand hill, and at the top of the hill we saw what Haskel had been shooting. The heads off buried armadillos. We stood at the top of the hill, and all around the spots where the exploded heads stuck out of the dirt there were bones and fragments of skulls and brains, and down on the far side of the hill were wire cages. All but one of the cages was empty. It housed a frightened armadillo that kept darting from one end to the other.

“Were those armadillos alive?” Leonard asked.

“Ain’t no fun shootin’ a dead’n,” Haskel said. “Fuckers root up everything. Figure this is how they pay.”

“They’re just doin’ what their instincts tell ’em,” Leonard said.