Free Lost Echoes by Joe R. Lansdale

of sound flash? What the hell was going on, because, you see…
    The man with the thinning hair, the older guy, the slightly thick one, he was pretty drunk, or seemed to be, but one of the guys, the biggest one, one who had drunk from the old man’s pitcher, he hit the old man in the side of the head with his fist, real quick-like, and the old man, he moved.
    Man, did he move.
    He wasn’t drunk anymore. That one shot to the side of the head kicked the drunk out of him, and what Harry saw next amazed him.
    The guy who hit him, he was the first.
    The old guy jerked out a leg. Sloppy-like, or so it seemed, but it caught the guy’s knee, took it out with a sound like someone snapping a garden-fresh green bean.
    One of the other guys started for the man, and the man grabbed him by the crotch with his right hand and shoved his left palm into the attacker’s face, took his feet out from under him, let his head drop like a cantaloupe on the cement.
    Third guy was coming in now, and he was big, and he was gonna fix the old man’s clock big-time, you could see it on his face, but the old man ducked, and the punch the guy swung went over the man’s head and the man snapped out with a right and a left, two loose shots to the solar plexus that made the assailant straighten up, then bend over in pain, trying to puke. The old man made with a kind of quick drunk step toward the guy, and standing sideways to him, brought his forearm up under the puker’s throat, drove his head back. Then the old guy slid in and snapped a sideways elbow to the dude’s chin, just under it; then that loose kick flew out again, this time a little higher, right in the old chicken neck and two potatoes.
    Down the guy went.
    The one who had his head bonked on the concrete got up at a wobble, came at the old man, really mad now, and the old man stepped sideways and the guy went past, and the old man stuck out a foot and caught the guy’s ankle, and it was asphalt rash all over that dude’s nose and chin, and he didn’t get up this time. Harry thought maybe he could get up, but didn’t want to, was trying to play dead, maybe even imagine he was buried six feet under, out of this old guy’s way.
    The guy with the ruined knee lay on the ground, screaming. The old man grabbed him by one arm and the hair and rolled him on his belly. He got the guy’s wallet out of his back pocket and took the money. He went to the other two, did the same.
    He saw Harry and Joey, standing in the doorway, their mouths wide-open.
    “How’s it hanging?” he said.
    He grinned, shoved the money in his pocket, turned, and fell over on his back, stiff as a board.
    “Well, I’ll be fucked in the butt,” Joey said.
    The guy with the screwed knee was still making sounds, writhing.
    Harry and Joey eased past him, over to the older guy, looked down at him, amazed.
    He was snoring.

 
    13
    “I’m a goddamn drunk,” the old guy said.
    “No shit,” Harry said. “I thought I was ripped, but you were torn, mister. You may still be messed up. Me, after what I saw, I’m dead sober now.”
    “I come in, and I go out,” the man said.
    “Do what?”
    “Sober, then not so sober. Never what I would call completely sober, but on the edge of it. Just enough to know I need to not go there. It’s an ugly place, this sobriety. Therein lies worry and evil. Have I talked much while I’ve been here?”
    “Mostly you been out,” Harry said.
    “That’s probably best for you. I like to talk. Weren’t there two of you? Or was I just seeing two of you? Though usually, I do that, one of you doesn’t look different.”
    “There were two of us.”
    “Good. I’m just drunk. Not crazy. Though I got to wonder sometimes.”
    “You and me both.”
    A spear of moonlight cut through a gap in the curtain and stuck in the linoleum floor like a spear. The man sat up and looked around. “I’m on the floor.”
    Harry turned on a lamp, pulled up a chair, sat, and looked down at the man on the