It had started to snow. Real snow. Highly unusual for East Texas. The flakes were huge, like cotton balls. Normally snow in this area was little more than flakes that barely stuck and lasted about as long as it took to melt one on your tongue. If I hadn’t been on a mission to blow people’s brains out, I might have enjoyed its uniqueness and beauty. Right now, it was nothing more than a hindrance.
I wasn’t far from where I wanted to go. There was a rest stop nearby and I pulled in there and tried to eat the sandwich because I thought I was crazy hungry, but it just turned out I was crazy scared. I drank a cup of coffee, slowly, because my hands were trembling. I turned on my overhead light and looked at the map Vanilla had drawn on a piece of paper. I studied it. I was close. I was very close. I turned off the light and sat and thought, and it seemed as if the trees in the roadside park were drawing nearer to me, as if the darkness between them were gathering together into something solid and demonic, trimmed in snow and ice.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and then opened them. I didn’t look at the trees.
I poured another cup of coffee and tried to work my courage up as I sipped it.
My cell phone rang.
I almost jumped out of my skin.
It was Brett.
“He’s slipping,” she said.
“Oh, shit,” I said. I felt the bit of sandwich I had eaten churn in my stomach and nearly rise up.
“Hap, I’m so sorry. They don’t think he’ll make it through the night.”
“Goddamn it! Goddamn it to hell!”
“They let me in to see him. They said I could come in because I’m all that’s here. I shouldn’t have told you to go. Oh, shit, Hap. I never thought he’d die.”
“He isn’t dead yet.”
“I held his hand. I told him you were taking care of things. I told him we loved him. Marvin is here. He’s out in the waiting room.”
“I told him to watch over you,” I said.
“He has a gun under his coat. And he gave me one. But really, a shootout in the hospital?”
“I’m just being cautious… So the doctor said… no hope?”
“Just said he was slipping away.”
“Tell Leonard I have his hat.”
“What?”
“Whisper in his ear. Tell the big bastard I have his deerstalker, and if he wants it back, he’ll have to take it from me. Tell him, he dies, I’ll shit in it. You tell him that.”
Brett laughed a little. It was strained, but it was a laugh.
“I’ll tell him. If he can hear me, he’ll come back just to kick your ass.”
“Right now I’d let him. You go back in there, and you take Leonard’s hand, and tell him his brother loves him. You hear me? You tell him that again. And you tell him what I said about his hat.”
“I will,” she said.
“I’m gone,” I said. “And so is the phone.”
I turned off the phone. I rolled down the window and tossed the coffee from the cup and threw the cup on the floorboard and sat for a moment. My stomach was really churning now. I got out of the car quickly and walked around back of it and upchucked the sandwich and the coffee. It burned my throat.
“Leonard. Don’t you die,” I said out loud.
I got back in the car and got a Kleenex out of the glove box and wiped my lips. I tossed out the sandwich. I put a few of the breath mints in my mouth to kill the vomit taste. I pulled away from the rest stop onto the highway.
Devil Red, I’m coming.