Town Burning by Thomas Williams

they had been issued. “Give me a gun,” he said. One of them handed him the big pistol. He hadn’t carried one because of the weight and because he didn’t like the feel of the pistol. The service automatic wasn’t a pistol; it was a cannon.
    Nakano put his hand on John’s shoulder. “Maybe they speak Spanish,” he said.
    “Naw. Hell, they’d know English,” Parsons said.
    But none of them knew enough Spanish, so John went down the stairs, close against the wall. When he came as near as he could to the door he stopped.
    “Come on out, now,” he said. “We don’t want to hurt you.” This time the gun inside the door was louder, and he looked at the door and saw three jagged holes in it. It was made of plywood and the outer layer of ply had split down in long strips. He reached around with the Colt in his left hand and put it to the door, then pulled the trigger four times. The Colt jumped around in his left hand and up, and the last hole was a foot higher than the others.
    For a moment he let the sound die, and then a terrible screaming began behind the door. He kicked it open and rushed in.
    The two women in black squatted screaming over the old man. Their mouths opened too wide and were red and black inside, and the screams blatted against his eardrums and whistled and blatted out again. Their black skirts were beaded with shiny blood, and the old man on the floor had taken all the slugs in his chest and neck and face. He looked a little like a wicker basket that had been full of strawberry jam, chopped by an ax; or like fresh red beef, chopped and cut. He had been peering through the bullet holes in the door, trying to see what was in the hall. An old nickel-plated revolver lay on the floor beside him, and in one corner of the room sat the reasons for his defiance of the law—four cartons of cigarettes and two one-gallon cans of Crisco. He and the women were not the people from Riken. They were awfully small-time black marketeers.
     
    “What did you say?” Bruce asked, sitting up higher in order to see John in the low chair.
    “Nothing,” John said again, and then looked more closely at Bruce. Bruce smiled at him, and the smile had no hard malice in it. It did not seem to belong to Bruce—as if he were wearing a mask.
    “I guess they’re a little late,” Bruce said.
    Gladys and William Cotter came into the room, the tall woman first, hurrying to her son’s bed. She stopped with both hands pressed upon his pillow.
    “How do you feel?” she asked.
    “O.K. I don’t feel too bad,” Bruce said, “but they’re going easy on the dope today and tonight.” He winced at the sound of the last word. His mother pulled a straight chair over to the bed and sat leaning toward him, her long hands making nervous circles upon the sheet beside his pillow.
    She wants to touch him, John thought. She wants to hold him and cure him with those nervous hands, but he won’t let her and never has. Neither of us ever has. I wonder why.
    “How’s the Miller house coming?” Bruce said to his father.
    “O.K., Bruce. The architect got mad as hell this morning when he saw that tin drip-edge, though.”
    A moment of fearful expectancy.
    “God damn it! I had that out with him before! Just because I’m not around, that sheeny son of a bitch! You tell him he agreed a month ago and if he don’t like the looks of it he can paint it. This isn’t Florida, for Christ’s sake!”
    “O.K., Bruce, I’ll tell him.” William Cotter didn’t look up.
    “Yeah, sure,” Bruce said in a low voice, staring at the top of his father’s head. “How’s the Waters’ house? How’s the roofing going on?”
    “Good weather for it,” William Cotter said, “but a crazy thing happened the other day. Junior Stevens put the vent in upside down. I saw it before they had it boxed in.” There was some hesitant pride in his voice. He looked up and smiled.
    “Put him back sawing slabs,” Bruce said. “He’ll never make a carpenter.