The Bottoms

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Me neither.”

  When we went out, I made sure to close the door good.

  We walked around the house, to the side facing the river, and finally down to the water. Looking back at the house, I noted there was something hanging on a nail on the outside wall. It was a chain, and from the chain hung a number of fish skeletons, and one fresh fish.

  We went over and looked at it.

  “It looks like it’s just been hung up there,” Tom said. “There’s still water drippin’ off of it.”

  The fish bones along with the fresh fish showed me someone had been hanging fish there on a regular basis, and for some time, like an offering to Mose.

  On another nail, strings tied together, was a pair of old shoes that had most likely been fished from the river. Hung over that was a water-warped belt. On the ground, leaning against the side of the house, below the nail with the shoes, was a tin plate, a bright blue river rock, and a mason jar. All of it laid out like gifts.

  I took the dead fish down, all the old bones, and cast them into the river and put the chain back on the nail. I tossed the shoes and belt, the plate, rock, and mason jar into the river.

  “What’d you do that for?” Tom asked.

  “I think that fish was still alive. It don’t need to suffer. Ain’t no one gonna come get it and cook it.”

  “We could.”

  “But we ain’t.”

  “You throwed all that other stuff away too. That seems kinda mean, Harry. Someone is hanging it here like a gift.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I done it. Not out of meanness, but so the gifts would seem to be taken.”

  I couldn’t really explain it. It just seemed like the thing to do.

  Mose’s old boat was still by the house, laid up on rocks so it wouldn’t rot. A paddle lay in its bottom. We decided to take it and float it downriver to where the briar tunnels were. We loaded Toby in the boat, along with our shotgun, pushed it into the water and set out. We floated the long distance back to the Swinging Bridge and under it, watching to see if the Goat Man might be lurking about. Our idea that he was afraid of daylight was fading, and we had begun to feel nervous, and just a bit foolish.

  We had been a lot braver planning than doing.

  In shadow, under the bridge, deep into the bank, was a dark indention, like a cave. I imagined that was where the Goat Man lived, waiting for prey.

  The thing to do, of course, was beard him in his lair. But we didn’t. We didn’t say a word. We just paddled on by.

  We paddled gently to the riverbank where we had found the woman bound to the tree. There was no real sign she had ever been there. It seemed like a dream.

  We pulled the boat onto the dirt and gravel bank and left it there as we went up the taller part of the bank, and into the briars. We hadn’t discussed this, but we wanted to see the spot where we had found the first body, where we had been frightened in the tunnel of briars.

  The tunnel was the same, and it was clear in the daytime that the tunnel had, as we suspected, been cut into the briars. It was not as large or as long a tunnel as it had seemed that night, and it emptied out into a wider tunnel, and it too was shorter and smaller than we had remembered.

  There were little bits of colored cloth hung on briars, like decoration. There was a red strip and a blue strip and a white strip with little red flowers on it. There were pictures from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue of women in underwear and there were a few of those playing cards like I had heard about. The briars were poked through the pictures where the women’s crotches were.

  In the middle of the tunnel was a place where someone had built a fire, and above us the briars wrapped so thick and were so intertwined with low-hanging branches you could imagine much of this place staying dry during a rainstorm.

  We hadn’t seen all those pieces of cloth and paper that night, but they, or ones like them, might have been there. Dry as the place was, during all that raining and flooding, it couldn’t have remained completely dry. Someone would have to have been adding fresh material to it from time to time.

  Toby was sniffing and running about as best his poor old damaged back and legs would allow him. He was peeing on one spot, then another, leaving his mark all over. He was as agitated as if the briars were full of squirrels.

  “It’s like some kind of nest,” Tom said. “The Goat Man’s nest.”

  A chill came over me and it occurred to me that if that was true, and if this was his den instead of the cave under the bridge, he might come home at any time. I told Tom that, and we called up Toby and got out of there, tried to paddle the boat back upriver, but couldn’t.

  We finally got out and made to carry it along the bank, but it was too heavy. We gave up and left it by the river. We walked past the Swinging Bridge and for a long ways after that till we found a sandbar. We used that to cross, went back home, finished the chores, cleaned ourselves and Toby up before Mama and Daddy and Grandma came home.

  We thought about what we had seen all day, and considered telling Daddy, but since we weren’t supposed to have gone anywhere, our young minds were at an impasse. What would have seemed obvious to someone older didn’t seem all that obvious to us.

  That night, as me and Tom were out on the sleeping porch, whispering, Grandma came out. We went quiet. She said, “You two been actin’ like conspirators all day. I’m too nosy to let it go.”

  “It ain’t nothin’,” Tom said.

  “I believe it is somethin’,” Grandma said, seating herself on the swing between our beds. “Why don’t you tell me. I promise I ain’t gonna tell your Mama and Daddy.”

  We, of course, were dying to tell someone. I looked at Tom, she nodded. I nodded back. Tom said, “You swear not to tell, less’n your head falls off and gets covered in ants.”

  Grandma laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t want that. So I swear.”

  We told her all about it. When we finished she said, “You ain’t the only detectives. And since all three of us are detectin’, we need to make a pact right now. We’re gonna keep what we know between us.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Daddy might need to know some of this.”

  Grandma considered. I knew enough about her to know she was the one that always wanted to be in the know. So it was no surprise to me when she made her proposition.

  “Tell you what. Let’s keep it to ourselves, unless, or until, we got enough evidence your Daddy can use. That fair enough, kids?”

  We agreed it was.

  “Then we’ll make a pact to that effect, lest our heads fall off and get covered in ants.”

  We swore it.

  Grandma said, “I was in town today. I went over and visited Mr. Groon. He’s such a nice man.”

  “You visit him a lot,” Tom said.

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Then you don’t think he had anything to do with this mess?” I asked.

  “Heaven forbid. No, I don’t.”

  “He’s in the Klan,” Tom said.

  “Was,” Grandma said. “Me and him talked, and he brought up the little incident here on his own. He said he dropped out. And he is Jewish. Said he joined up with them boys without really thinkin’. He thought they was out for right doin’. He saw a movie once called Birth of a Nation, and in that the Klansmen were good fellows. But after the other night, out here with your Daddy, and Mose gettin’ hung and all, he got to figurin’ that for the grace of God should they figure on the fact he’s a Jew, he could have been on the end of that rope. He got out of the Klan. Burned his robes.”

  “Grandma?” Tom asked. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “Hardly … Well, not yet. It could happen that way.”

  Tom giggled. “Grandma. You’re too old.”

  “Just by your standards, young lady. What y’all say we look at this shack of Mose’s tomorrow, and that cave and that briar tunnel too.”

  Next morning, when Mama and Daddy left for work, me, Grandma, Tom, and Toby climbed in Grandma’s
car with her shotgun, and she drove us over to Mose’s shack. About halfway there, I remembered that I forgotten the Bible.

  I had a hunch about Mose’s old shack, and I wanted to check it out. But my hunch was wrong. There was nothing new hung from the nails, or leaned against the wall outside. But there was something curious. The boat we had left on the bank was back in its place atop the rocks with the paddle inside.

  We told Grandma about that.

  “Well, I’ll swan,” she said.

  We looked around the shack for a while. It was the same as yesterday, except the water-meshed photograph in the frame had been set up on the table, and the faded Sears and Roebuck cutout of a little boy colored in pencil was nowhere to be found.

  When I told Grandma that, she said, “Someone visits here, that’s for sure. Question is, why? Tell you what, let’s take the boat and see this place of yours,” Grandma said.

  Grandma got in the boat, me and Tom pushed it into the water, and with me paddling, Tom sitting in the front of the boat playing guide, we made our way to the briar tunnel. It was a pleasant trip. The day was warm, the river was running swift, and the water was dappled with the shadows of overhanging trees.

  On the shore I saw a huge water moccasin basking on the twisted root of a big willow tree. Frogs plopped off the bank and into the water. Little black bugs darted about on the surface of the river as if they were Northern ice skaters. Twice I saw turtle heads poke out of the water to see if we were edible, then bob out of view.

  When we docked the boat and got up there in the tunnel, it was dark in spots, but there were streamers of light shining in and the edges of the lights were like the sharp blades of archangels’ swords, and the light showed the bits of cloth and the paper cut from the catalogues. Grandma looked around, touching the bits of cloth and paper.

  She said, “I don’t judge this to be any kind of killer’s nest. Some kids, boys most likely, have made them a playhouse. They got them some colored cloth and some pictures to spice up the place.”

  “But some of them pictures are of women in their underwear,” I said.

  “You don’t look at them same pictures while you’re out there in the outhouse, Harry? You just use that catalogue to wipe on?” Grandma asked.

  I blushed.

  Tom gave me a look that told me I hadn’t heard the end of this.

  “You can see where he built him a fire,” I said.

  “Kids or hoboes could have built a fire,” Grandma said. “And if you think about it, why would the killer want a fire? I don’t think he stays down here. I think he lives among us, or near us.”

  “He built it so he could see at night,” Tom said.

  “I guess that’s possible,” Grandma said. I could tell she had already made up her mind.

  “But he could come here,” Tom said. “He could use this place.”

  “You could be right,” Grandma said. “But I think you’ll find kids are makin’ ’em a playhouse here. Hoboes might be usin’ it to hide out.”

  “Ain’t it far in the woods for hoboes?”

  “Who’s to say?” Grandma said. “Let’s see we can get this boat back, and be back home when your Mama and Daddy get off work.”

  “Aw,” Tom said. “We got plenty of time.”

  “Yeah,” Grandma said. “But we’re goin’ anyway.”

  We went back to the boat, ready to carry it upriver, but when it came down to brass tacks, Grandma decided not to bother.

  “Mose is dead,” she said. “And we ain’t gonna have good luck paddling against the current. Carryin’ it will wear us down. We’ll just leave it. Besides, whoever brung it back last time might do the same.”

  We started walking. All the way to where we could cross over in the shallows, and all the way back to the car, I had a feeling that someone was moving silently between the trees, looking at us through the leaves, peeking out from the shadows. But every time I looked, I didn’t see anything but the woods and the leaves and river.

  That night I lay in bed and tried to think on things, and I kept coming back to this. Grandma was a grown-up, and a smart one, but she wasn’t no better detective than Daddy, and he wasn’t worth a hoot, and he’d tell you so. Me and Tom wasn’t so good either, but both of us had come to one decision. The murderer was the Goat Man, or what Miss Maggie called a Travelin’ Man.

  Thinking on Miss Maggie I felt sad again. There wouldn’t be any more of her fine cooking, or her wonderful stories. She was gone. Murdered in the very home where I sat with her many a time and she had laughed and called me Little Man.

  And Mrs. Canerton. She might have died because she was bringing me books. She might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but a feeling of guilt passed through me just the same.

  Poor Mrs. Canerton had always been so nice. All those books. The Halloween parties. The way she smiled. Her breasts in that dress last Halloween night. White and pure, with a collar touched with little red roses.

  As I drifted off to sleep I thought of telling Daddy about the Sears catalogue pictures and the cloth and such in the briar tunnel, but I had made Grandma a promise not to tell. I wasn’t sure I should have made that promise. I was thinking about going back on it, or begging off of it, when sleep overtook me.

  When I awoke the next morning, none of it seemed so all fired important, and in time Grandma seemed to forget all about it. She had found something new to occupy her. Mr. Groon. She even took to doing what a lot of folks thought was unladylike; she stayed around his store, visiting with him, helping him stock shelves and such, and for no pay at all.

  From time to time, me and Tom slipped off and went down to Mose’s old cabin. Now and then there would be a fish on the nail, or some odd thing from the river.

  I reasoned that someone was bringing Mose gifts, perhaps unaware he was dead. Or maybe they had been left there for some other reason.

  We dutifully took down what was there and returned it to the river, wondering if maybe it was the Goat Man leaving the goods, and if so, why would he do it? Could a monster like that have liked Mose? Could they have been an offering to the devil, like in Miss Maggie’s story about the Travelin’ Man? It wasn’t peed-in whiskey, but who was to say if the devil liked fish and junk from the river?

  When we looked around for sign of the Goat Man, all we could find were prints from someone wearing large-sized shoes. No hoofprints.

  Sometimes we both sensed someone watching us. I always brought the shotgun with me, hoping that old Goat Man would show himself, give me just one shot. All the detective work in the world couldn’t do what one shotgun blast could.

  Then a thought hit Tom one day while we were down on the river.

  “What if the devil ain’t bothered by no shotgun?” she said. I hadn’t considered that. But I should have. After all, he was the devil.

  We went away from there, less sure of ourselves, shotgun or no shotgun, and we didn’t go back for a long time after. For the next few days I wondered if fresh fish and things from the river were on them nails, and what did the provider think when they weren’t gone when he came back? Or had he been watching us all along from the concealment of the woods? It was a mystery too large for my mind, and finally, I had to tuck it aside.

  23

  As the summer moved on, it got hotter and hotter, and the air was like having a blanket wrapped twice around your head, and sometimes it seemed as if the blanket was on fire and filled with smoke.

  Got so you hardly wanted to move midday, and for a time we quit slipping off down to the river even to fish, and stayed close at home.

  That Fourth of July, our little town decided to have a celebration. Me and Tom were excited because there were to be firecrackers and Roman candles and all manner of other fireworks, and, of course, plenty of homecooked food.

  Even more exciting was the fact they were gonna have a moving picture show.

  Folks still thought about and talked about the killer from time to time, but mos
t had settled on Red as the culprit, and since his car had been found and his house seemed to have been left pretty much as it always was, rumor got around that Daddy had been close to figuring out he was the one, so he’d took off.

  The story seemed to satisfy people because it’s what they wanted to believe. It was easier to lie down at night, or trek out to the outhouse beneath the moonlight, or check on your trot lines, if you thought the killer was long gone.

  Women could lie a little easier in their beds, even if they had taken to locking doors and windows, something not done before the coming of the Bottoms Killer.

  Even Daddy and Mama and Grandma had come to believe it had been Red. It seemed reasonable.

  Me and Tom kept our eyes peeled, expecting the return of the Goat Man at any moment. We figured he was just lying out there in the woods waiting till things settled down, till folks least expected it, then he’d strike.

  But on the day of the Fourth, a day of ice cream, fireworks, and a picture show, we dropped our guard. We had dropped it before, of course, and nothing had happened. And how could anything happen on a hot Fourth of July with all the wonderful things we had to look forward to?

  The town gathered late afternoon before dark. Main Street had been blocked off, which was no big deal as traffic was rare anyway. Tables with covered dishes, watermelons, fresh-churned ice cream on them were set up in the street, and after the Baptist preacher said a few words, everyone got a plate and went around and helped themselves.

  I remember Daddy telling Mama that he was grateful the tables were well stocked, not only because there was plenty of food, but that it had hastened the preacher through his sermon. The Reverend was known to be an eager and accomplished eater.

  I ate a little of most everything, zeroing in on mashed potatoes and gravy and mincemeat, apple, and pear pies. Tom ate pie and cake and nothing else except watermelon that Cecil helped her cut.

  There was a circle of chairs between the tables and behind the chairs was a kind of makeshift stage. There were a handful of folks with guitars and fiddles playing and singing; the men and women folks would gather in the middle of the closed-off street and dance to the tunes. Mama and Daddy were dancing too, and Grandma and Mr. Groon. Doc Taylor was holding Tom’s hands, and he was dancing with her. He was so big, and she was so small, it’s like when you pick a dog’s front paws up and make him hop around on his back legs. He looked happy, though rumor was he was fretting hard over Louise Canerton.