Joe R. Lansdale - Cold in July

COLD IN JULY

Joe R. Lansdale

Flyboy707 eBooks

Flyboy707 eBooks

No copyright 2011 byFlyboy707

No rights reserved. Allpart of this book may be reproduced in any form and by any means without theprior written consent of anyone.

This novel is dedicatedwith great love and respect to the memory of my good friend and agent, RayPuechner.

He was one of a very specialkind, and he will be missed .

This is one of my favorite novels, hands down.

It is also one of the most important ones Ive written.

Important for me as a writer. Important for my career.

It was my entry into the hardboiled, or noir, or dark crimefield. I dont know if any of those labels quite fit, but thats as close as Ican define it, and frankly, all that label stuff is so much BS.

But I will say this. I grew as a great fan of the Gold Medalcrime novel, exemplified by such fine writers as John D. McDonald, CharlesWilliams, and many others. I also read a lot of other crime novels by a varietyof writers from a variety of publishing houses, but Gold Medal was special. Iwanted to write something in that vein, long after its heyday had passed. Acontract with Bantam Books gave me that opportunity.

This novel was written quickly, in about two and halfmonths. I had just come off writing The Drive In in about the same time, butthough The Drive In came out to be what I like to think of as a good book, andan influential one for many writers, it was at the time, no fun to write. Thisone was a delight. It was the kind of book I had wanted to do for a while. Itcame from a true-life experience that became a dream.

My wife and I were shopping for houses, and we were shownone out by Lake Nacogdoches that had a bullet hole in the ceiling. Noexplanation was offered by the realtor, and it wasnt a house we liked enoughto buy, but by the time I got home that bullet hole seemed to be more in myhead than in the ceiling of that house. It was widening, and by the time I wentto bed that night, it was a chasm.

I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream, got up,went to the bathroom and washed my face, went back to bed, dreamed some more,got up, washed my face some more.

When I woke up the next morning I told the dream to my wife,and she said, Thats a story.

I thought it might be. It was rare for me to have the plotof a story before I started writing. Usually, the plot develops as I go, butthis time, it was laid out for me and the idea was a feverish one.

As circumstances were, a friend of mine, and an editor atthat time for Bantam, a very nice man named Greg Tobin, came to visit. My wife,always one to push the opportunity for me to sell a story or book, said, TellGreg about your dream.

Reluctantly, I did. I told it from beginning to end.

Greg said, Ill buy that.

And thats how it came about that I wrote the novel. It wasat that time my largest advance. It got good reviews, got optioned for film,and I wrote the screenplay. This gave our life an infusion of more money thanwe had ever had before, and though I was already full-time, it shortlysolidified the situation so that my wife could quit her job and go to work forme. I had been publishing for quite a while before that, and had been full-timefor several years, but from that point on neither my wife nor myself haveworked for anyone else, at least not in matters unrelated to my writing career.

The film wasnt made, though it was under option for quitesome time. The book came back into print at Mysterious Press, and then, fellout of print. It was picked up again for film, and right now, it looks as if itjust might happen.

That would be nice.

But the book is the book is the book, and I think it stillstands well on its own two feet, and is a kind of period piece of the earlynineties. It had, as much of my work does, ties to my own life. Not alwaysdirect ties, but there were strings nonetheless.

Im excited for it to be back out there for readers toenjoy.

So, please do.

Joe R. Lansdale

July 2011

Id like to thank Gary L. Brittain, David G. Porter and BobLaBorde for their advice on certain technical matters in this novel.

Cold in July

Joe R. Lansdale

Whoever fights monsters, should see to it that in theprocess he does not become a monster.

Nietzsche

That night, Ann heard the noise first.

I was asleep. I hadnt slept well in a while due to someproblems at work, and the fact that our four-year-old son, Jordan, had beensick the previous two nights, coughing, vomiting, getting us up at all hours.But tonight he was sleeping soundly and I was out cold.

I came awake with Anns elbow in my rib and her whisper,Did you hear that? I hadnt, but the tone of her voice assured me she hadcertainly heard something, and it wasnt just a night bird calling or a dogworking the trash cans out back; Ann wasnt the frighty type, and she hadincredible hearing, perhaps to compensate for her bad eyesight.

Rolling onto my back, I listened. A moment later I heard anoise. It was the glass door at the back of the house leading into the livingroom; it was cautiously being slid back. Most likely, what Ann had heardoriginally was the lock being jimmied. I thought about Jordan asleep in theroom across the hall and gooseflesh rolled across me in a cold tide that ebbedat the top of my skull.

I put my lips to Anns ear and whispered, Shhhh. Easingout of bed, I grabbed my robe off the bedpost and slipped it on out of habit.Our night-light in the backyard was slicing through a split in the curtains,and I could see well enough to go over to the closet, open the door and pull ashoe box down from the top shelf. I put the shoe box on the bed and opened it.Inside was a .38 snub-nose and a box of shells. I loaded the gun quickly byfeel. When I was finished, I felt light-headed and realized I had been holdingmy breath.

Since Jordan had been sick, we had gotten in the habit ofleaving our bedroom door open so we could hear him should he call out in thenight. That made it easy for me to step into the hallway holding the .38against my leg. In that moment, I wished we lived back in town, instead of hereoff the lake road on our five-acre plot. We werent exactly isolated, but in asituation like this, we might as well have been. Our nearest neighbor was aquarter mile away and our house was surrounded by thick pine forest and squattybrush that captured shadows.

It was strange, but stepping into the hall, I was very muchaware of the walls of the house, how narrow the hallway really was. Even theceiling seemed low and suffocating, and I could feel the nap of the carpetbetween my toes, and it seemed sharp as needles. I wondered absently if it weredeep enough to hide in.

I could see the flashlight beam playing across the livingroom, flitting here and there like a moth trying to escape from a jar, and Icould hear shoes sliding gently across the carpet.

I tried to swallow the grapefruit in my throat as I inched forwardand stepped gingerly around the corner into the living room.

The burglars back was to me. The night-light in thebackyard shone through the glass door and framed the man. He was tall and thin,wearing dark clothes and a dark wool cap. He was shining his light at apainting on the wall, probably deciding if it was worth stealing or not.