Boot Tracks Read online

  The guy was gone, his book open and face down on the chair he’d been in.

  Lights started coming on in parts of the house behind him. In the opposite direction the animal repeated its God-awful cry. I know what it is doing that, I just can’t put my finger on it, thought Rankin, as a lamp blinked on outside of the front entranceway. He leapt to his feet, understanding the whole deal was turning to shit. He heard a door open in the vicinity of the patio. He looked down at his hand and thought, where the fuck’s the .38?, because he wasn’t holding it anymore.

  He plunged an arm into the roses, piercing in several places the exposed flesh between the end of his coat sleeve and glove. He started blindly searching for the gun, the briers raking his wrist. From behind him or in his imagination he heard approaching footsteps. Christ, Jesus. More shit on the way.

  And after the son of a bitch had already hurt him bad in the back, hit it just right, he could tell because it throbbed like a bastard. And these fucking prickers. And that Goddamn animal laughing at me getting it. A light beam or nightmare bounced around on the edge of his consciousness.

  The hell’s the damn .38? I tell ya to hold onto it and you throw it into a fucking bush like how you never listen to a thing I say, never listen to a thing nobody says. He felt the revolver— or something as hard as it—at the same time he became certain the light beam and the footsteps weren’t in his mind.

  Playing over the grass several yards behind him, on its way forward, a thin, white shaft.

  The crunch crunch of the lightholder’s walking.

  He tried getting hold of the weapon or the thing resembling it, but his hand lost contact with it. The thought struck him that, with no walls to stop him, he could this time flat-out run from the son of a bitch; then the knowledge came to him in a flash, he’d never run from one again.

  He dove headfirst into the roses, tearing his cheeks to hell, not crying out though, not uttering a sound; on the other hand, his loud rifling of the thicket deafened him. Each prick of the briers felt to him like a needle stab in a personalized attack. He imagined the bushes working together to keep the gun away from him, moving it around from place to place, everything but him in that blackness a part of the conspiracy.

  In the corner of his eye, the white shaft a stealthily nearing predator.

  His frantic, close-mouthed breathing, his clawing at the ground, the son of a bitch’s clomp clomping on his way toward him. Then he got hold of it.

  He at once felt it beneath his hand, saw his hand in a dull beam, and, feeling like a small fish in a clear blue ocean teeming with sharks, heard a familiar voice say, “Get the hell to your feet.”

  He looked up to see Chester Rhimes, in one hand directing at him a flashlight and in the other wielding a thick, jagged board.

  As if he’d been readying to his whole life Rankin rose to his knees, leveled the .38, and fired it.

  The shot’s dull pop was softer than Rhimes’s grunt at absorbing the bullet; the chunk of firewood Rhimes had flung at Rankin as he’d pulled the trigger banged against Rankin’s chest, knocking him into the house wall.

  Pain surged from Rankin’s lower back down his left leg.

  Behind him rose another rasping, prolonged cry, the sound striking Rankin as a mocking laugh, giving him the uneasy feeling the hidden animal (he still couldn’t recollect its species from its call) could see him somehow.

  He struggled back to his knees. He scanned the ground ahead of him. No one was on it. Then Rankin saw a human shape several feet from where Rhimes had been when Rankin had seen him last, staggering toward the patio, behind the wavering light beam. Rankin raised at the shape his gun hand, registering only now that he’d again dropped the .38.

  He plunged back into the briers, scarcely aware this time of the prickers ripping at him. Quickly relocating the gun in the branches of a bush, he grabbed it, from his haunches wheeled back toward the retreating light, aimed and threw two shots at it.

  The beam gyrated crazily.

  Then it vanished.

  Not hearing a thud, Rankin guessed the son of bitch hadn’t gone down, that, wising up finally, he’d switched off the light after Rankin had put another round in him, and was either moving forward still or, too hurt to walk, standing in the dark.

  Rankin pushed himself upright, unable to suppress a moan at the hurt in his lumbar region. Once he was on his feet the pain eased, but not as much as he’d hoped for. He started walking, with a pronounced limp, at where the beam had blinked off fifty-odd feet before the front door; the lamp over the door cast into the patio a dim, yellow arc, through which Chester Rhimes would have to pass to get into the house or driveway.

  Rankin stopped walking, becoming aware again of the precipitation (full-blown sleet now) painfully pelting his face, which was smarting too from the rosebushes gauging of it.

  He cocked an ear at the lawn.

  He heard only the unidentified animal ramming its paddock, the owl—or a different owl—hooing off in the woods, the driving ice hitting the house, his raggedy breathing.

  He reached for his flashlight and discovered it was gone; he must have lost it back in the bushes.

  He swiped up a handful of slush, padded it into a ball, and, hoping to flush out the son of a bitch, flung it toward where he’d seen the flashlight go out; above the noise of the falling ice, he heard, after the dull thud of the ball landing, no unusual sound or indication of movement.

  Likely he’s dead, thought Rankin, and I just didn’t hear him fall; then the thought struck him that, long before Rankin had shot him, Chester Rhimes had been dead, and Rankin, now pursuing Rhimes’s ghost through hell, as dead as him.

  With a sudden, panicky feeling, as if he’d stepped off a ledge at the same time the lights had gone out around him, Rankin ripped off a glove and touched five fingers to his face. It felt to him like a pulpy, featureless blob that nonetheless every son of a bitch, dead or alive, in hell or on earth, could see was the corpse of Little Charlie. His fingers reached to the ski mask ending above his eyebrows.

  You ought to have had it on before the son of a bitch recognized you.

  Well, I’ll put it on now, anyway.

  He yanked the mask down over his face to the bottom of his neck.

  A weird feeling like, hello in there, who might you be?

  Also, a near-giddy sensation, while picturing Charlie Rankin as a mummy no one could see nor lay their hands on without their unwrapping him in the process of which Charlie Rankin would turn to dust.

  He pulled his glove back on.

  We’re the same amount blind, he thought, plus, in this sleet, he can’t hear my footsteps. Then he thought, if he can’t hear mine I can’t probably hear his, which could mean he’s miles gone or right next to me. He started moving forward again, listening intently. The mysterious animal once more called out. A hee-haw. A donkey’s what, realized Rankin. There’s a jackass out there. While putting a name to the creature, he had a premonition of something coming at him; then an object exploded against his chest.

  He fell backward onto the grass. Instinctively, he began rolling. He made three and a half revolutions, his chest and back killing him, then stopped, face down in the slop, shielding the back of his head with his hands, praying for the son of a bitch to die and Rankin’s mother too for bringing him into their lives.

  Finally he realized the son of a bitch wasn’t swinging at him. No one was swinging at him.

  He rolled onto his back, hyperventilating.

  He couldn’t count the ways he hurt. Anger he pictured as a blue-white flame burned in him. He felt a want to rip out the eyes of anyone who’d seen him cowering that way. He sat up. His clothes were soaked through. For the third time in ten minutes he’d lost the .38. Playing his hands over the ground, he crawled back to where he’d been clobbered. His left hand landed on a long, tubular wood stick he discovered was attached by a few splinters to an iron shovel blade. The son of a bitch had raised up out of the night and busted a shovel across his
chest. That he hadn’t stayed around to beat Rankin senseless after stunning him led Rankin to conclude Chester Rhimes was bad hurt.

  He found the gun coincident to hearing a crash toward the front of the house. He looked that way and saw in the dim arc cast by the entranceway lamp a human shape tumbling to the patio floor after apparently colliding with a statue or piece of furniture.

  Grabbing the gun, Rankin leapt halfway to his feet; pain, in his chest and back and converging between them, sent him back down to one knee. “Shit,” he moaned.

  He saw the shape fifty or so yards ahead of him struggling to stand and thought if he gets behind the locked door of that house all the sons of bitches win again and Charlie Rankin loses again. Two-handedly holding the pistol he drew a bead, through the sleet, on the rising shape. Melted ice and sweat dribbling from his hairline into his eyes further impaired his vision. He squeezed the trigger. He heard the muffled shot ricochet off a statue or the patio’s flagstone floor and saw the shape, now nearly upright, pivot briefly at him, then, dragging one leg, move off in an Egorish crouch for the house. Estimating that in two to three seconds Rhimes would be gone behind the hedge of hemlock bushes bordering the sidewalk to the entranceway, he releveled the gun. He fired, as the jackass made another bray; at the sound, he lurched, jerking the shot high. “Goddamn it!” he hollered.

  The shape started around the corner of the bushes. Rankin was about to loose another round at it, when Rhimes ran into another object on the patio and went down. He rolled out of sight behind the hedge.

  Rankin once more hefted himself up, all the way this time. He took off on a hobbled run for the patio. Halfway to it, he reached an angle from which he could see around the bushes, part way down the walk. Less than five yards from the front door, Rhimes was up and moving again in his tortured, one-sided gait. Rankin, with no time to close the gap between them, stopped dead, spread his legs wide to give himself a solid base, raised the revolver, aimed it at the middle of the son of a bitch’s back, and fired.

  Uttering not a sound Rankin could hear above the sleet Rhimes careered to his right as if he’d been hit down low on that side with a baseball bat. His upper body dipped as if he was on his way over, as if the slug he’d just taken in his hip or buttocks would finally drop him, but he kept stumbling ahead somehow.

  From the distance he was at, Rankin, keeping his outstretched hands around the gun and his eye on the weaving shape past it, calculated the .38 sighted a foot and a half to two feet low. He inched the bead up higher on Rhimes’s back, to the base of his neck, took in a deep breath, and, letting it out, pulled the trigger again.

  Only a metallic click from the revolver.

  He tried the weapon a second time. Even before the hammer hit another blank chamber, from counting up his shots he concluded he’d used them all. He reached into his pocket for more bullets, then recalled he had no more bullets. The .38 had come with a full clip and he’d emptied it.

  Feeling as if he’d been thrown, blinded, with his limbs broken, into a cage from which he could hear only snarling.

  Shoving the .38 into his pants-waist he started running as best he could toward the house, moaning from pain he could no more stop than the moaning.

  Rhimes must have heard or sensed him coming.

  At the bottom of the steps, he glanced over his shoulder at Rankin. Rankin had drawn close enough to Rhimes to see his face, but he didn’t see it; he saw only the distance the son of a bitch had to cross to get inside, the area he had to negotiate before he could lock Rankin outside. An odd, breathy sound from Rhimes, like air being forced with the last bits of ketchup out of a squeeze bottle. He turned back to the house, grabbed the banister, started dragging himself up the stairs.

  In the entranceway light growing brighter to him as he neared it, Rankin made out six steps; at their top, a landing five or so feet wide leading to a big wooden door; twin cannons with twigs or dead flowers in their barrels left and right of the door. Blood as if the sleet were mixed with it on the walk. More blood staining the stairs; he slipped on some of the blood as he started up the stairs; to keep from falling onto his back on the walk he latched with one hand onto the banister; he sat down awkwardly on the edge of a step.

  A pain in his lower back as if its nerves were being twisted with vise grips.

  He heard above him Chester Rhimes scrabbling (from the noise of it on his knees or belly) across the hardwood platform for the door; a hissing with Rhimes’s breathing suggesting one or both of his lungs were punctured. Feeling as if he were witnessing the scene he was in from somewhere safely away from it, yet with his mind absolutely in tune to it, Rankin struggled to pull himself back upright. Glimpsing Chester Rhimes’s buttocks and the rear of his raised head (Rhimes was now crawling), he heard Rhimes scream, “Open up! Help!”

  Rankin thought, could be he’s yelling to himself to hurry up get the door open, to the devil in the hope he’ll do it for him, to any soul in hell to do it, or to a particular person, or persons, in the house to.

  Then he was up and Rhimes was at the front door and Rhimes was opening the door.

  In one excruciating motion Rankin thrust himself onto the landing and, arms outstretched, lunged for Chester Rhimes as Rhimes, with mostly his hands, flung his body through the house’s open doorway. Rankin got hold of and tugged on a foot with a sneaker on it. The sneaker came off in his hands. He threw it aside and seized a piece of pants above the foot. The foot still in a sneaker kicked Rankin in the face. Rankin started climbing up the leg he was holding. Rhimes, kicking still, screamed as Rankin must have grabbed a place Rhimes had been shot in. Rankin’s gloves and coat and, as he shimmied up Chester Rhimes’s body, mask got soaked with blood. The piece of them he was gripping ripped free from the rest of Rhimes’s pants. He caught and, trying to roll Rhimes over, yanked at a handful of Rhimes’s sweatshirt. Rhimes, face down on the floor just inside the doorway, seized up like a sand crab poked with a stick. Rankin punched at the back of Rhimes’s head. Rhimes wiggled forward, slipping a ways out from under Rankin, then, three-quarters-of-the-way flipping over, shoved his right index and middle fingers into Rankin’s left eye.

  Rankin bellowed, clutching at the eye.

  Rhimes stabbed the fingers into Rankin’s testicles. Rankin’s vision went grey. Rhimes snatched at and tried to tear off Rankin’s scrotum, getting hold mostly of the crotch of his jeans and a chunk of his thigh. Rankin reached for Rhimes’s neck. Letting go of Rankin’s leg, Rhimes grabbed Rankin’s shoulders and jerked him forward, smashing Rankin’s face into Rhimes’s forehead. Rankin speculated he’d passed out and come to cheek-to-jowl atop his own corpse.

  Then he realized the warm body under him was slithering and breathing (a raspy, rattling sort of tremor) and that the bang its skull had made colliding with Rankin’s face was ringing still in Rankin’s ears and that the body was kissing—no, chewing on—Rankin.

  Rankin, roaring in pain, reared back his head.

  His bloodied nose, still attached to his face, popped free of Rhimes’s mouth.

  Rankin glimpsed his mother in her nightgown standing halfway down a stairway before him, watching him. “Go back to sleep like you always done!” he yelled toward her, as Chester Rhimes again whipped his head downward.

  Ahead of his plummeting face, Rankin thrust his right forearm into Rhimes’s face.

  Rhimes’s teeth or jawbone sharply cracked. His lips opened as if to blow a smoke ring or to form a word beginning with an O. Rankin circled around Rhimes’s throat his forefingers and thumbs; he squeezed them together; Rhimes made to pull away Rankin’s hands; Rhimes’s arm muscles trembled like slapped Jell-O molds. Rankin heard in front of him a scuttling noise and glanced up to see his mother approaching them carrying a fireplace poker, her white, flannel nightgown billowing out from her sides, giving her the illusion of flying.

  She reached them and swung the poker at, incredibly, Rankin. Rankin inclined his upper body at Rhimes; the poker bounced off his shoulders into Rhimes�
��s mid-section. Rankin’s mother raised the implement above her again. Rankin took from Rhimes’s neck one of his hands and as the poker came forward caught it in the hand. He raged at his mother, “Don’t you take up for him!” He tore from her grasp and threw across the room the poker. His mother watched the poker hit the wall. She turned back to Rankin. She began to shriek.

  Rankin let go of Chester Rhimes, who, smelling of shit and no longer moving, had a purple face with vomit and tooth particles at his lips.

  His mother wouldn’t quit shrieking.

  Rankin stood up. His mother, shrieking still, started backpedaling away from him. Rankin took a step after her. His mother shut up and, her eyes glued to Rankin, backed up faster. She collided with a table against the far wall. She reached blindly behind her and snatched from the table a glass bowl filled with nuts. She flung the bowl at Rankin. Rankin ducked, the bowl going over his head, nuts peppering his face. He kept walking at her. His mother’s hand groping on the table to her rear grasped a portable phone. She started to throw the phone at Rankin, then, as if it had suddenly occurred to her to instead make a call with it, took off running toward the stairs, holding and frantically punching numbers into the phone.

  Lunging at her, Rankin got a forearm between her feet. She went down in a belly-flop, the phone skittering across the floor. Rankin pursued her on his knees, hissing in response to his reactivated back pain like a wounded animal prodded with a stick. His mother, slithering after the phone, gave off short, rapid pants; her naked front side (the nightgown had come up over her waist) squeaked on the floor’s varnished wood. Rankin got a grip on one of her calves. The foot on her opposite leg lashed out at him. Rankin in his free hand snagged the foot like he would a slow pitched ball.