Paradise Springs was a dying town. I'd never been anywhere near the place, but I'd seen enough little shit-holes just like it to know the drill. It was Mayberry by way of the Twilight Zone, the kind of place where good people worked hard and died young and the bad ones grew fat and lived forever.
I ignored the open mouthed stares of the few locals hanging out along the main drag and parked the Wide Glide in front of a one story wood frame building that housed the Post Office. I was looking for a long lost brother from the bad old days in Viet Nam. Paradise Springs was his home town and getting back to it was all he talked about for the entire time we were in-country. If he was alive, he'd still be here. The post office seemed like the best place to start.
A skinny, bald headed little man with an Adam's Apple so big he looked like he might need radiation treatments told me I'd have to come back in an hour. Said he was due home for lunch and his wife wasn't the patient type. Before I had a chance to convince him I wasn't the patient type either, he pulled down a wire mesh screen, snapped the lock in place and was gone. I took a deep breath and headed for the door. I could wait. I'd learned patience, if nothing else, since the last time I saw the Sarge. Besides, the little weasel was safely out of reach.
What I saw when I stepped back out onto the sidewalk made me forget the weasel postmaster. Some asshole was sitting on my Wide Glide. Sitting sidesaddle with his left foot cocked up on the brake pedal and the other jammed down on my immaculate chrome drag pipes. He was facing a way from me, twisting the throttle with his left hand like a two hundred pound four year old. He was talking to a girl who seemed about as impressed with him as I was.
I started to yell at the dickhead to get his ass off my bike before I kicked a lung out of him, but I stopped myself. Like I said, I'd learned patience. It would be better to exercise some self control, to be diplomatic and walk calmly over without making a scene. That way, I could be absolutely sure of getting my hands on the sonuvabitch before he had a chance to run.
As I closed the distance between us, I saw him grab the girl. She jerked away but he caught her again, pulling her roughly up to him by her shirt. He kissed her hard on the mouth and mauled her breasts with one grubby paw. The little chick was tough, I had to give her that. She bit him on the lip hard enough to make him jerk back, spitting blood. I was almost on him but before my fingers could close around his throat, he popped her open handed across the face.
As she went down, so did he. I pulled him backwards off my scooter and dumped him on his ass. As he rolled up onto his feet, turning to see what had hit him, I moved in close and punched him twice in the face. While he stood there bleeding, I took his right knee out from under him and then stretched him out flat on his back with a palm strike under the chin as he went down.
I did a quick recon as I unlocked the Dyna. The asshole was out for the long count and none of the rubberneckers lining the sidewalk seemed interested in stepping in to back his play. The girl struggled back to her feet and seemed OK.
“Yer welcome,” I said, straddling the bike. “Hey listen, I'd love to stick around and bask in all that gratitude, but I'll be a memory by the time the cops show up.”
She let out a breath. “Well, it's a little late for that,” She pointed to the guy I'd just laid out and I saw it. On the left breast pocket of his grey work shirt was a silver badge. A pair of cheap dime-store handcuffs hung from his belt. Lastly, I could make out the grips of a really big automatic pistol sticking out of the waistband of his khaki pants.
Shit! Not in town, ten minutes and I'm already a candidate for 90 days on the county work farm for assaulting the local constabulary. I twisted the dash switch and punched the button. The 95 inch Twin Cam roared to life beneath me. Time to fly.
“Look, sweetheart,” I said over the thump of that big motor, “I'm outa here. You wouldn't be able to tell me how to find Emmett Jordan's place, would ya?”
“I can't exactly tell you.,” she said as she climbed on between me and my sleeping bag. “But I can show you.”
I was in no position to argue. The cop was beginning to stir around and he still had that gun. I dropped the bike into first and we were gone.
On the way to Emmett's, the girl filled me in on a few things over the roar of my drag pipes. It explained a lot.
“I live there with my kid,” She yelled into my ear as I navigated the half dirt, half asphalt back roads. “When Emmett got called up for this Iraq war, he made me go ahead and marry him in case he got, well, so I'd get his insurance for me and Sammy if anything was to happen.”
“You mean he's stayed in the service after Viet Nam?”
“Army Reserve. Lotta men around here do it. Helps pay the bills,” she yelled back. “But Emmett did it cause he loved this country. He said he still owed a debt, and he intended to pay up.”
That was Emmett all right, even though it seemed to me he'd paid enough the first time.
“This kid?” I shouted back to her. “He belong to you and Emmett?”
“In a way, I guess he does. The only daddy Sammy's ever known was Emmett. He accepted him right along with me. Loves him like he was his own blood.”
The road got worse after that. I stopped listening to the girl and concentrated on milking as much speed outta the bike as I could, as we bounced over the uneven surface. I kept one eye in my mirrors, lookin' through the cloud of dust for a pickup truck with a blue light on it. The last thing I needed right now was to have to outrun some hayseed cop over dirt roads while packin' double on a 600 pound street bike.
When we finally rolled up in front of Emmett's farm house, we were a long way from anywhere. As we shook off the dust, the girl gave me a hard look.”Somethin' wrong?” I asked.
She eyed me from underneath her windblown mop of curly brown hair. “It's just that I've been doing an awful lot of talking the last few miles an you haven't said too much.” She planted all 110 pounds of herself between me and the front steps. “So maybe it's time you told me a little about how you know Emmett and convince me I should even let you near this place.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “The short version goes like this. I met Emmett in 1970 during my first tour in Viet Nam. Does he talk about it much?”
She shook her head. ì
“Didn't think so. Anyway, I was greener than new money when I landed in that hell hole. He was my Sergeant. Took me under his wing and taught me what they didn't teach you in training. Turned me into a soldier. It's cause of him that I'm alive. For us, it was all about accomplishing the mission and gettin' back in one piece. We got good at it. Maybe too good, 'cause, one day near the middle of our second tour, I stepped in it so deep that even the old Sarge couldn't bail me out. They choppered me out in little pieces and that was the last time I saw his ugly face.”
I ran a hand across my face, my fingers tracing the fine web of scars under the short beard. “I guess I've measured everyone I've ever known since Viet Nam by Emmett Jordan. And they've all fallen way short of the mark.” I stopped to see if anything I'd said had satisfied her. Those eyes never wavered. She still wasn't ready to trust me.
Finally, I broke the silence between us. “I guess I just wanted to tell him I still remembered him, remembered what we did. That it was all real and not some bad dream, and that it all still meant something to me, ya know?”
She nodded and let a sad half smile cross her pretty face. “Now you sound like Emmett.” She stepped aside and gave me room to step up onto the porch.”I'm Rita Jordan.” She stuck out her hand. I shook it but didn't offer a name. The one I was using wasn't mine anyway.”Come on in,” she said. “I'll see if I can scare us up a beer or two and something to eat. Sammy'll be getting home from pre-school anytime now and he'll be hungry. Bus drops him off right there at the front gate. I'll tell you about Emmett while we eat.”
I should have said, “no”, made my excuses and rode right the hell on out of there. Emmett wasn't even here and there was gonna be a price paid for punchin' that cop. I couldn't afford to be here when that bill came due.
I didn't feel like explaining to Emmett's woman that my driver's license and bike registration carried a name that my old friend had never heard of. Or that in another town, half a country away, there were murder and fugitive warrants in name he would recognize. I didn't feel like explaining to her that I couldn't stand a nickel and dime bust for thumping some hillbilly cop, even if I was in the right. Because by the time everything got straightened out, the N.C.I.C. and FBI finger print checks would land me in a cage for the rest of my life, for a crime I didn't commit. What I did feel like doing was gettin' the hell out of there.
I started for the door, but before I could reach it, she stepped back into the living room with a beer in each hand. “Got chili heatin' up.” She said. I accepted the beer and sat down where she pointed. I could at least stay long enough to meet the kid. She sat down across the beat-up coffee table from me. “You haven't told me your name, but I'll bet you're the one he called the Wingman.”
I almost spit beer all over the hardwood floor. No one had called me Wingman for over thirty years. I managed to choke down that swallow and took another. “How'd you figure that out? Emmett knew a lotta guys over there besides me.””Maybe so,” she said. “But the only one he ever really talked to me about was the Wingman.”
I told her about the name, about how Emmett hung it on me because I was always covering his six just like he was covering mine. The rest of the team picked up on it and it stuck until I got back to the world. After that, it faded away. The bad memories didn't.
“Emmett always spoke highly of you. Said you were the best combat soldier he ever knew. He said you got shot up real bad and he lost track of you.”
“Yeah, well,” I said taking a breath. “We lost track of a lot of good people over there.”
She looked at me and tears welled up in those sea green eyes. “You need to know Emmett's not coming back.”
That stopped a longneck bottle six inches from my mouth. “What?”
“About two months ago we got word that he'd been shot up in one of those attacks they keep having since we declared 'peace' over there. They were on patrol and got ambushed. I don't know exactly what happened, but I know my Emmett had to be right in the middle of it.” She caught her breath and went on. “This time he didn't make it. He died on the way back to the hospital.”
“Damn it!” I slammed the beer down on the coffee table so hard she flinched. Another good man gone. Emmett Jordan had finally paid that debt to America in full. “I'm sorry, guess after everything I'd seen him do all those years ago I thought Emmett was indestructible.”
She reached over and put a hand on my arm. “No one's indestructible,” she said. “Not me, not you, not even Emmett Jordan.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, both lost in our own sorrow. Then her eyes seemed to sparkle through the tears and a smile suddenly stole across that lovely bruised face. She laughed out loud. “You know, Emmett surely would have enjoyed watchin' you punch on Bobby. I guess we both owe you.”
“No,” I said, laughing a little myself now. “Not really. I'd have done him anyway. He had no right to touch my bike, much less you. Cop or no cop.”
Her pretty mouth set itself in a sour thin line. “He ain't the real law. That was Emmett's job. Bobby and his two no account brothers just sort of appointed themselves deputies once Emmett's unit shipped out for the war. It didn't change much anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Old man Putnam, Bobby's daddy?…. Before he died, he owned everything that's worth a damn around here. You worked for him, one way or another, or you didn't draw a paycheck. The Putnam brothers grew up runnin' roughshod over folks. The only one ever stood up to any of the Putnams was Emmett Jordan. He made 'em walk the line and leave decent people alone. With him gone off to Iraq, they just went back to doin' what came naturally.”
She shook her head. “Bobby Putnam's always had it bad for me.” She shivered. “I kinda belonged to Bobby once. But that was before me and Emmett.”
We talked our way through some more beer and some fine leftover chili and corn bread while we waited for the boy to get home from school. She told me how it had been for Emmett since we parted company in that long ago dark place.
He'd come home from the war to find that the ones who'd stayed behind had made some changes. Old man Putnam had used his money to lock Paradise Springs in an economic stranglehold. The folks who wanted to work, worked for Putnam's slave wages or they didn't work at all. And Putnam's three young boys had grown from rowdy kids into bullying bad-asses who ruled the county like feudal princes after he died.
Emmett stood up to them. He got himself elected Sheriff, figuring to do what he could to protect the town he loved from the Putnams. As the years went by, Emmett made sure the law was the one thing in Paradise Springs that old man Putnam's money could never buy. Emmett was the man every boy wanted to grow up to be, and every girl wanted to grow up and marry. That last group included a snot nosed little tomboy who'd grown into the woman who sat across from me now. “I guess all us girls dreamed about Emmett,” She said. “But around here, dreams are mostly the nightmare kind and mine was Bobby Putnam. He married me right after high school. It wasn't like I had a choice. He took me for the same reason he parked his butt on your motorcycle in town today, because he wanted to, and he knew he could.”
She looked out the window for the boy. “I guess I was a looker then, but he lost interest once he could do with me as he pleased. He started slappin' me around when he was home which wasn't very often. He beat me into two miscarriages, but I fooled him with Sammy. I was twenty and just plain wore down, no where to go and no family left to turn to. When I found out I was expecting again, I did what I should have done from the start. I called Emmett Jordan.”
“Anyway, Bobby was fresh back from whorin' around and mean drunk. He'd beat me pretty good by the time Emmett got there. He was just drunk enough to try to keep Emmett out. When Emmett saw my bloody face, he tore the door down getting through it. He dragged Bobby out into the yard an beat him nearly to death. After he was hauled off to jail, Emmett did a funny thing. He walked over to me and asked me why I stayed with Bobby Putnam, why I didn't find someone else. I looked at him, all bruised up, cryin' and pregnant to boot, and asked him point blank just what the hell kinda man would want a woman like me. Emmett looked down at me with those big sad eyes of his and said, 'A man like me just might.' And I fell in love with him right then and there. We were together every since.”
“Bobby left me alone after that.” She let that little shiver take her again. “When he found out Emmett was dead he started sniffin' around again. It ain't just me he wants. If he can get his hands on Emmett's place, he'll finally own everything in the valley.”
“And the boy?” I asked.
“Bobby never knew he was Sammy's real father. I'd only been sure for a day or two and the pregnancy went long. I guess Bobby just thought he was Emmett's.” Those eyes flashed. “But I kept no secrets from Emmett Jordan. He loved that boy like his own blood. Sammy's birth certificate says Jordan and nothings gonna change that.”
I looked out and down the walk. The bus had long since pulled off but there was no sign of the boy. “Shouldn't he be here by now?” I asked.
Rita got up and walked to the screen door. I followed, feeling the hair on the back of my neck bristle. Then we heard it.
“Ritaaaa! Hey, Rita baby,” the deep male voice called. “I think I got somethin' of yours out here, girl.” And over the laughter, came the frightened cries of a scared little boy being kept from his mother. “Better send out that motorcycle trash, Rita. Yer little bastard wants his momma!”
“Oh, God!” I heard her breath catch in her throat. “It's Bobby.. and he's got Sammy!” She started through that door like a mother bear after a cub. I pulled her back inside just ahead of a load of buckshot that shattered the screen door facing where her head had been.
Quit that goddamm shootin' Jimbo.” I heard him yell. “You might hit my lil' sweet thang, an I got plans fer her.””Let me go!” She fought against my grip. “He's got my boy!”
I shook her hard. “Listen to me, goddammit!” I forced her to look at me and not out the shattered door. “It's me he's after. But when they're done with me, he's gonna play a nasty little round of catch-up on you. Emmett trusted me with his life. You gotta decide quick if you do, too.”
The sea green eyes focused and narrowed. I could see the iron flowing back into her. “Just protect my child.”
I nodded. “Check your phone.” She moved across the room and picked it up. She shook her head and tossed it away. “Line's dead,” she said. “And we're too deep in the valley to get a cell.”
Outside, I could hear the boy crying and the two rednecks growling taunts about what they were going to do to me and the woman. I saw Rita hesitate. “Oh.. my God,” I heard her whisper. “He really has gone crazy this time.” “Don't listen to them!” I snapped. “Listen to me! You said Emmett was a Sheriff. He had to have a gun around here.”
She nodded and ran for the back of the house. When she returned she carried an old style police gun belt, the kind with the quick draw holster and a leather slide with 12 cartridge loops. Nestled in the rig was a big nickel plated revolver. I slipped the gun from the worn leather. It was just what I'd figure Emmett would choose, a Smith & Wesson model 58, .41 magnum. It was a huge war-hammer of a gun with a four inch bull barrel and fixed sights. It had been designed with one purpose, to stop dangerous men dead in their tracks.
I opened the cylinder and checked the loads. Six 210 grain soft lead semi-wadcutter magnum rounds, each the size of my little finger, fell into my palm. The nickel finish was worn but the action was smooth. I reloaded the pistol and snapped the cylinder closed.
I moved to a window off to the far right of the front door and peered over the sill. Bobby Putnam, complete with store-bought deputy badge and broken nose was standing square in the middle of the walkway 15 yards from the porch. It would have been an easy shot for the fixed sight Smith until he snatched up Rita Jordan's boy and held him up like a Roman shield. A fat man stood off to his right with a pump shot gun in his hands. That would be Jimbo. And there was likely to be one more Putnam brother out there somewhere.
Better come on out here, biker boy!” He shook the kid. “This brat wants his momma.” I saw Rita's move too late. She was past me and out the door before I could get a hand on her. She charged down the walk, running full tilt at the man who held her son. Putnam side stepped and clubbed her with the automatic he held in his right hand. Rita went down hard and stayed there. He pointed his big pistol at her. “You got ten seconds, biker trash,” He yelled in that crazy voice. “Then this little boy gets to see what the inside of his momma's head looks like.”
I thought of Emmett. I'd left the jungle owin' him my life. Now maybe it was time to pay it back. “I got yer six one more time, brother!” I whispered. I fingered the twelve spare rounds out of the leather loops and placed them in my front right pocket, then let the gun belt fall to the floor. I took a deep breath, stuffed the .41 into my jeans at the small of my back. I kept my right hand on the wooden grips, my finger just outside the trigger guard as I stepped out onto the porch. It had worked for Val Kilmer in “Tombstone”. Maybe it'd work for me in Paradise Springs.
Fat Jimbo's twelve gauge pump swung to meet me but Bobby Putnam's gun never left Rita Jordan. I heard him yell for someone named Billy Ray and a big farm boy holding what looked like a Winchester lever action stepped out from behind the oak tree at the end of the driveway. I walked to the edge of the porch and stood with my left shoulder leaning against the big banister post. “You don't look too good, Putnam”, I said, keeping my voice as low and even as I could. “Your face looks like you walked into a door.”
“Keep talkin', motherfucker!” he growled. “Right after I kill you I'm gonna fuck this whore to death right in front of her brat. So you just keep right on talkin' shit, all the way to the fuckin' graveyard!” He started to move the big gun off of Rita. As the muzzle of his pistol cleared her head and began that long slow arc toward me, I brought the .41 out from behind my back and shot Fat Jimbo between the nipples, eliminating that shotgun. Suddenly everybody was shooting. I ignored some incoming, took careful aim at Bobby and fired once. I couldn't chance hitting the boy so I had to shoot low. His left leg exploded just above the knee. He went down beside Jimbo.
Then my luck ran out. Billy Ray worked the lever on that Winchester and slugs were chewing splinters out of the wooden post inches from my face. I went head first over the rail on the right side of the porch hitting the ground with all the grace of a bag of concrete. I came up running for rear of the house, needing to put something hard between me and that rifle. I could hear the sharp bark of Bobby Putnam's handgun. Bullets plowed the grass in front of me. I stole a quick look over my shoulder. He was sitting up, still holding little Sammy in front of him, throwing shots at me and screaming for his dead brother to get up. The kid was kicking and scratching, ruining his aim. Apparently he'd forgotten all about Rita, who was trying to get to her feet.
Our eyes locked. It all came rushing back like it was yesterday, the cold fear becoming grim, adrenalin charged resolve, fueling the mind-muscle matrix that turned instinct into action. I was back in the jungle, as if I'd never left. I stepped in and wrapped my left arm around the barrel of the rifle, trapping the weapon against my side. The gun went off, sending a bullet smashing through the wall behind me. As he struggle to free his weapon, I jammed the bull barrel of that big .41 under his chin and triggered off two rounds. I was so close I could feel the heat from the muzzle flash and taste the blood as his face exploded. What was left of him fell back onto the grass. I dropped the Winchester, stepped over him, covered in blood and brains. I sprinted toward the front of the house. One more now. Just one more.
I popped the big gun's cylinder and dumped the empty shells onto the ground. I stopped at the corner of the porch long enough to nervously pull six fresh rounds out of my pocket and feed them one by one into the cylinder. Fully loaded, I stepped out from the building. Time to end it.
Rita was on her feet, standing beside Bobby Putnam holding Jimbo's shotgun to his head. He still held the boy, his pistol against the kid's quivering ear. As I closed the distance she never spoke. She never wavered. She stood like a rock, grinding the big ugly 12 gauge muzzle down into Bobby's cheek.
Throw it down!” I said, the nickel plated magnum glistening in the afternoon sun. “She'll kill you and if she don't, I damn sure will. Now drop the fuckin' gun and let the boy go.”
His finger tightened on the trigger. “Goddammit, Putnam.” I yelled. “That's your kid you're about to shoot!” His cold stare shifted from me to the woman, and I could see that he knew I was right. Startled he let his white knuckle grip on the automatic relax and released the child. Sammy scrambled toward his mother on all fours. Her attention shifted from the shotgun trigger to her son.
“You fuckin' whore,” Bobby spat and snatched the barrel of the shotgun as Rita attempted to step back and scoop up her boy.
Putnam pushed the 12-guage barrel aside and grimaced in pain as he swung the spun the automatic in Rita's direction. His unrelenting anger didn't stop. It bubble like hot lava in a volcano. He could only think that another, better man fathered his child.
In this short time I had come to appreciate and respect my brothers wife. I drew down on Bobby as fast as I could and fired, but missed.
Bobby's shredded leg flowed with blood. But the bastard was in no danger of bleeding out. His automatic was securely aimed at the center of Rita's shapely torso. My revolver equally accurately aimed at the center of the cranial ridge between his eyebrows.
“Fuck you sonuvabitch,” he ground his teeth. “I'm going to kill the bitch and you if I'm lucky.”
Hesitation is one of those aspects of movies that makes the audience wonder who the hell has the balls to pull the trigger first.
I felt the shakes start as the adrenalin buzz burned down. I tried to shake it off. I walked, rubber legged, back around the house, picking up the six empty .41 shells. There was a small pond. I laid the gun, empty shells and the extra cartridges on the grass and waded in. I washed and scrubbed as best I could, getting as much of Billy Ray Putnam off of me as possible.
I gathered up the gun and shells and walked dripping wet back to the front porch. Rita stepped out, white and shaking. “I need a big cloth and some gun oil,” I said shaking. She stared past me out onto the walkway where Bobby Putnam lay staring at the evening sun through three sightless eyes.
“Now, Rita!” I snapped. She disappeared and came back with what I needed. Moments later, I had Emmett's gun, cartridges and empties wiped clean of my prints and Jimbo Putnam's shotgun wiped clean of Rita's. Lastly, I wiped off the beer bottle and dishes I'd touched. I didn't give much of a fuck about the rest of the mess. I needed to roll.
Something pulled at me as I headed for the Wide Glide with Rita following. I started the scooter and listened to the big engine growl, but we didn't speak. I was tired, more drained than I'd been in years. Thirty three years to be exact. I leaned over and kissed her on her cheek just below that nasty bruise. Her sad green eyes filled with tears and she attempted to say something.
I kissed her again on the lips and dropped the clutch.
