Free Waltz of Shadows by Joe R. Lansdale, Mark A. Nelson

were musicbox figures, wound up tight, going round and round to a grating noise that was supposed to be music. The shrieks and laughter of the skaters mocked us.
    Arnold said, “Git out, squirt. Don’t say you been with me. You came here to skate, but stayed out here and watched before going in. Let some people see you. Ben didn’t know you. Your face was covered.”
    I untied the shop rag, which was pulled down around my neck, and tried to fold it, but my fingers wouldn’t do the job. Arnold snatched the rag from me, reached across and opened the door. I got out of the truck, and Arnold drove off slow and easy. Gradually, the world slowed down. The music in the skating rink became defined, the lights flashed as lights are supposed to flash, and the shrieks and laughter from the rink no longer seemed directed at me.
    It was all over.
    Mostly.
    Arnold took the rap. The old man recovered with nothing more than a scar, and he couldn’t name Arnold’s accomplice, and Arnold wouldn’t name me. The judge liked the way Arnold had thrown the football in high school, liked the way he had run with the ball on his powerful legs, and he liked Arnold’s loyalty to his unnamed partner. The gun Arnold left on the counter turned out not to have been loaded, and the roll of pennies was worth fifty cents, not exactly big money. Arnold got six months on the county farm instead of a few years in prison.
    I went my way, free and easy, and when I saw old Ben on the street from then on, I crossed away from him to keep us from passing, least he recognize the eyes that had looked at him over the top of a shop rag mask. I was secretly glad when he passed on some years later, attacked by another robber, but this time one with a loaded gun and a more severe design.
    When Arnold’s time was up, I couldn’t face him. I couldn’t thank him for being silent, because I had come to believe that was exactly as it should have been. That he owed me because I wouldn’t have been in on the deal had he not taken advantage of my age, got me drunk and drove me over there. I came to believe I was better than Arnold. That I always had been, and had only been slumming. I put the knife he gave me in a Prince Albert tobacco can and buried it out back of our house and dismissed him from my life.
    I have felt that way since, except on dark nights when it’s three a.m., and I view myself in a different light. A light that shows me to be less than the man I pretend to be. A man who has never quite taken responsibility for his own actions.
    If the thing with Arnold was bad, there was another whammy to come. My father began to sleep less, drink and brood and argue with my mother. But Dad’s guilt and dissatisfaction didn’t last long. One afternoon on his way home from work at a construction site, he stopped off for a beer in his favorite bar on the other side of the county line. While he was having his beer, a drunk pulled a gun on the bartender for some reason, and my Dad lost his temper because the bartender was a friend of his.
    He jumped the drunk and took the gun away from him and beat him to the ground with it. He threw the gun behind the bar and the bartender poured Dad one on the house and Dad drank it. The drunk dozed on the floor while the bartender called the cops. The drunk’s girlfriend, who had been sitting calmly in a booth watching the action, took a .22 pistol out of her purse and popped it at my father.
    The shot caught Dad in the right eye and it was all over. She got a year because she was pretty, the drunk got six months because he was the sheriff’s cousin.
    After all these times of driving out, just parking and looking at the mobile home, was this going to be the time I actually walked up to his door and knocked?
    What was I going to say? Hey, Arnold, how’s the old hammer hanging? Haven’t seen you in ten years, and haven’t ever invited you over or called you or even sent you a Christmas card, and the knife you gave me those years