Rumble Tumble

“It got to be one of the whores,” said the black man.

“Man, y’all ain’t none of us?” said another.

“No shit,” Leonard said. “All you got to do is give us Tillie, and we will be on our way.”

“You can get right back to cutting one another, fuckin’, and dancing,” I said. “Just as soon as we take Tillie out that door. By the way, you need to bury that motherfucker on the floor. That stuff running out of him isn’t prune juice.”

The guy with the tit on his head said to the woman he was holding up, “You Tillie?”

The stoned woman shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

That was when one of the men in the back, either less stoned than the others or more so, produced a handgun quick as a bunny fucks and fired it. The shot hit me in the shoulder, and without really knowing how, I was on the floor. Then I heard Leonard cut down with the shotgun and the middle of the room went away. Lick Pussy Man had a hole in his eagle and a couple guys were lying on the floor in his blood, moaning. The gun roared again and the guy with the handgun spun around and landed face first. What was left of his head flowed across the floor.

Time stood still. I got hold of the Winchester and used it to help myself up. Now I felt pain. There was a roar at the back of the place, followed by a yell, then another roar. The door at the rear flew open and there was Brett, followed by the stench of gunpowder. A wreath of smoke circled around her head, blood was sprinkled on her face, blood was on the wall behind her. One hand was clamped on Tillie’s elbow, the other held the shotgun pushed up against her hip. Tillie was zonked and completely naked. Like her mother she was a real redhead. Leonard had been right, there had been some work done on her face, but it was her.

“Out of the way!” Brett said. “Fuck out of the way. I’ll shoot any fucker in my way.”

Those still standing parted. Brett and Tillie went between us and out the door. Brett’s face looked demonic. Tillie looked as if she might be trying to add up a hard math problem.

A couple of men, half dressed, but holding heat, rushed out of the back room. A woman peeked out between them, then turned and went away. The men were in the room now, both zonked as lords, but trying to sober. “What the fuck?” one of them said. “What the fuck?”

“Avon,” Leonard said. “And we mean business.”

Then I suppose it all came together for everyone, what was really happening. Pistols snapped out of back pockets and ankle holsters. I cut down the Winchester, cocking and firing. Metal bees buzzed by me, and I kept firing. People seemed to leap away from me, and I saw the girl who had been using her tit for a hat go back in a blaze of flesh and bone as one of my wild shots hit her in the chest. I pivoted to look at the woman sitting on the floor. She was pulling a pistol out from under the dead black man’s shirt and pointing it at me. I turned and fired and the shot drove her head back into the wall and the other black man yelled something at me and I saw he had a gun and I fired. I had gone prehistoric, sniffing that swamp gas and tar. I think I shot him three times. All I know was a moment later I was cocking and pulling the trigger on an empty rifle. I heard Leonard letting fly again, realized he’d been blasting all the time, then through the back door, out of other rooms more men began to pour. They had shotguns and pistols and no sense of personal safety.

I cut down with the shotgun barrel and it was as if a great and invisible wave tore through the fresh recruits, then I was yelling to Leonard to back out of there, and out he went, and me after him, the wall splintering behind us, the men from the back rooms falling over the bodies of their comrades, slipping in their blood.

I said we backed out of there. Hell, we ran out of there. The jeep came whipping up to the door. We jumped in and Herman lifted his rifle with one hand and fired at the doorway, then he dropped it, grabbed the steering wheel, and away we went.

Just as I was easing myself to a sitting position, there was a blast and I felt stings all over my lower left side. Leonard cut down on those behind us and Herman stabbed the accelerator through the floor. We bolted up and over the ridge where we had hidden earlier, and turned south. Behind us more bullets popped and hissed, but now we were running on the other side of the ridge and they couldn’t see us and their shots were striking the dirt.

“Holy shit!” Brett said. “Holy fucking shit!”

“Shit,” I said. “We killed a bunch of people, Leonard. We killed a bunch of people.”

“Of course we did,” Leonard said, putting a hand on my shoulder, pulling it back as he felt the blood. “Of course we did.”

“Oh, God,” Brett said. “They weren’t so tough, were they? Were they?”

My thigh began to ache. I looked down. It was bleeding, turning my pants wet. My side hurt. I reached over and felt it. Small wounds. Pellets under the skin. I felt limp.

Behind us I saw a blur of white. Leonard saw it about the same time.

A horse.

A man riding bareback.