Snake Dreams (24 page)

“Nope.”
Momma ever sees me again, she’ll probably throw a brick at me.

“Or your sister?”

“Huh-uh.”
I owe Sis nine hundred bucks.

“How about your wife in Waco?”

“Lulabelle don’t live in Waco. Her and the kids have a double-wide down at Kerr—” Oops.

Mr. Harper Finds Himself in a Spot of Difficulty

Whatever his shortcomings, and the list was a lengthy one, Jake Harper was not a coward. Far from it. He had been in a dozen hard-knuckle bar brawls, and he generally came out on top. But the tough guy had a strong instinct for survival, which at this instant was shouting inside his head,
Make a false move, you’re dead!

His girlfriend had a six-gun in her hands. And not of a small caliber. This was what is known in the trade as a Great Big Number. He rightly deduced that she had produced the heavy-duty shooting iron from somewhere in the bulky raincoat.

“Uh, Nance—”

“Don’t ‘Nance’ me, you two-bit . . .” Searching for just the right word, she furrowed her brow. It came to her. “You two-bit gigolo!”

“What?”

It was not that he required clarification. What Mr. Harper wanted more than all the gold in Fort Knox was to get out of the pickup without a perforation in his hide, and extending the conversation seemed to be the best means of accomplishing that objective.

It was not.

Click!
This was Mr. Six-Shooter’s way of saying howdy.

Nancy Yazzi had just cocked the thing, which, because it
was a double-action machine, was not absolutely necessary. But it was absolutely terrifying.

Jake did not wish to be present to hear the next (very loud) word uttered by the .44, which would be the Big Goodbye. He made a desperate grab for the door, heard the thunder roar, and hit the ground to scuttle away on all fours. In the cover of the phone-company van, the fleeing man got onto his hind legs and made a remarkable sprint for a heavyset fellow.

Going now for the one-handed shot, Nancy stuck her left arm out the driver-side door and pointed the barrel more or less in Jake’s direction. She pulled the trigger five more times to empty the cylinder. The first shot went into the sky; the second punctured a rear tire in the VW bus; the third went into Hamlet’s rooftop sign (neatly drilling a bull’s-eye in the second o of
COWBOY
); the fourth went through a window screen, across the saloon and over the bar, passed close to Ham’s right ear, and smashed a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s, which exploded just as the object of the shooter’s fury banged through the swinging front doors to flail his way across the barroom floor, knocking chairs, tables, filthy spittoons, and startled patrons aside as if he were the Father of All Bowling Balls and they were balsa-wood tenpins.

The fifth slug? Where that one ended up is anyone’s guess.

Nancy had additional armament behind the seat in the pickup. When the young woman toting a double-barrel shotgun came dashing in after her terrified boyfriend, things began to get downright
interesting.

Big-hatted cowboys, sooty coal miners, sweaty oil-field roughnecks, a painted lady of questionable character, and a nice young couple from Hot Springs, Arkansas, who had stopped to soak up some “local color” scattered for the nearest exits and hiding places. Some of those who were already bellied up to the bar scrambled over the top to join Ham, who was facedown on the floor. Others dived out of windows and a few followed Jake, who had made a beeline for the kitchen. Six fellows who were about to lose their water managed to get inside the men’s
room, which was about twice the size of an old-fashioned telephone booth. Four panic-stricken gents pushed their way into the ladies’ facility only to meet an outraged, middle-aged señorita who punched one in the nose and took to swinging her purse at the others—

BUT THIS
is altogether too much. The skin is flushed, the mind boggles, the pulse races, the blood pressure surges, the breath comes in short gasps. One needs a respite from these frenetic activities—a brief interlude of peace. What is called for is a visit to a park with serene paths that meander among stately maples in whose leafy boughs perky little bluebirds are all atwitter. But there is no such place in Pike County, Colorado. We shall go for second best, which is a visit with an elderly lady who is entirely sane, faultlessly honest, and is not known in the community for pursuing violent activities, such as shooting sprees with a passionate intent toward homicide. No, Daisy Perika does not qualify.

We refer to Miss Millicent Muntz.

BACK IN
Granite Creek, quite comfy inside her cozy abode at 751 Beechwood Road, the respectable bespectacled lady sits (primly, as you would expect) in an overstuffed mauve armchair, a small volume in her hand.
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Miss Muntz reads aloud to Mr. Moriarty from a favorite piece. Something about the
bleakness of her lot.

The cat, sprawled in his usual habitat (the basket-bed), does not respond with any noticeable enthusiasm. It is possible that, being of the male persuasion, the feline would have preferred the manly verse of Robert Service.

THERE. WAS
that not a pleasant diversion? With the mind now at rest the pulse rate and blood pressure once again within the proper brackets, and breath coming easily, let us return to the fray.

FOUR OTHERS
pushed their way into the ladies’ facility, only to meet an outraged, middle-aged señorita who punched one in the nose and took to swinging her purse at the others—

But let us dispense with these not-so-innocent bystanders and concentrate on the principal characters.

Watch Jake Harper come a-running out the back door of Hamlet’s Cowboy Saloon, make a hard left around the corner of the cinder-block building, and hotfoot it to the Escape, whose name had never seemed so appropriate.

Three racing heartbeats later, watch Nancy Yazzi emerge from the same door, fire in her eye, the over-and-under 12-gauge tucked under her arm, primed and ready for action. Watch her stop, stare, wonder,
Where’d that $%&#* so-and-so go?
What the frustrated young woman needs is a clue.
Aha!
She hears any number of engines being cranked to life, just as many vehicles departing as fast as they can go—destination: anyplace but
here
!

She rounds the corner, points the shotgun in the direction of Jake’s recently pilfered Ford Escape. The top barrel says
ka-Booom!
The bottom repeats the earsplitting statement.

More or less shielded amid the fleeing pack, the diminutive SUV was not struck by a single pellet. The aforesaid pair of
ka-Booms
did pepper three pickup trucks, and the lumbering stake-bed loaded with hay, which (as a consequence of the fellow behind the wheel being unnerved by the assault) rammed the VW bus, flipping that vehicle onto its side. Seven of the kazinging lead spheres also struck a passing FedEx van, whose stalwart driver (without so much as batting an eyelash) took note of that little cluster of stars that made a brand-new constellation on his sandblasted windshield, jutted his clefted chin, kept
right on going. No matter what, come heck or high water—
the parcels must go through.
The fellow definitely had the right stuff.

Nancy Yazzi’s stuff might not have been entirely
right
, but she was not short on grit. Undaunted by the knowledge that the hateful man was picking up speed, she leaned the spent shotgun against the overturned VW bus, got the pistol and a handful of .44 cartridges from her raincoat pocket, and reloaded Charlie Moon’s revolver. Realizing that this might be her last opportunity to severely injure the former lover, she held the pistol in both hands, closed her left eye, sighted down the barrel with the other one, pursed her pretty lips, held her hot breath, got a steady bead . . . pulled the trigger.

When operating a firearm, the importance of applying proper technique cannot be exaggerated.

Just as Jake Harper was pulling onto the gravel road, the slug passed through the rear window, buzzed like a bumblebee between the front seats, and smacked into the dash-mounted AM/FM radio. The next one—and this is not an exaggeration—
parted his hair
before it smacked into the windshield. Two of the next four lumps of lead came close enough to the terrified driver to clip an earlobe and penetrate a loose undergarment. This caused his teeth to clench, his mind to generate what is aptly called an HNDE (Harrowing Near-Death Experience). But, as scary as the HNDE is, Near is not the same thing as Dead Center, and by the time the stolen pistol was empty, Jake was roaring past other fleeing vehicles as if they were backing up, running one off the road into an irrigation ditch, another through a
bob-war
fence and into a slime-encrusted pond.

Long before the state police arrived to investigate this most recent hullabaloo at Hamlet’s rowdy roadhouse, all the witnesses had fled the scene. Ham, who had spent the exciting interlude with his nose pressed against the filthy floor behind the bar, informed the officer that the joint had been shot up by a gang of
at least
six guys. Great big guys, with automatic weapons. And hand grenades.

Which was why the incident was never connected with Nancy Yazzi and her errant boyfriend. Not that either one of them gave it a thought. Both had other, more urgent business to tend to. Nancy, a persistent soul, had not given up the chase. Moreover, she was not all that far behind Jake Harper. The outcome hinged on whether that distance would stretch or shrink.

The Escape’s top speed on a conventional highway exceeded what the rebuilt F-150 could muster by about fifteen miles per hour, which is a considerable advantage. The problem was (for Mr. Harper) that the potholed gravel road was several notches below
conventional,
and he was a long way from a paved highway. This being the case, the outcome of the race was—
problematic.

Even though not a single drop of Jake Harper’s blood had been spilled, the day was not yet over and neither was the saga of these star-crossed lovers. While the outcome remains in doubt, one feels justified to offer the following observations: