The Bottoms

by Joe R. Lansdale

  My knees sagged. Tom. Oh God. Tom.

  I went over to it slowly, bent forward, saw with relief the hand was too large to be Tom’s, and it was mostly rotten with only a bit of flesh on it. In the shadows it had looked whole, but it was anything but. The rotting hand was in a half fist and it was holding a little chain; the chain was draped through its bony fingers, and in the partial open palm on a pad of darkening flesh I could see what it held was a bullet-dented French coin.

  Taylor’s coin.

  I was trying to reconcile this with the Goat Man, figure on how it had all come together, when there was a hand on my shoulder.

  As I jerked my head around, I brought up the shotgun, but another hand came out quickly and took it from me.

  I was looking straight into the face of the Goat Man.

  The moon rolled out from behind a rain cloud, and its light fell into the Goat Man’s eyes. They shone in his red-black face like cold emeralds. They were the same color as Mose’s eyes.

  The Goat Man made a soft grunting sound and patted my shoulder. I saw his horns were not horns at all, but an old darkened straw hat that had rotted, leaving a gap in the front, like something had taken a bite out of it, and the tips the gap had made had been turned up by time, wind, and rain.

  It was just a straw hat. A blasted straw hat. No horns.

  And those eyes. That skin. Mose’s eyes. Mose’s skin.

  In that instant I knew. The Goat Man wasn’t any Goat Man at all. He was Mose’s son, the one wasn’t right in the head and was thought to be dead. He’d been living out here in the woods all this time, and Mose had been taking care of him, and the son in his turn had been trying to take care of Mose, by bringing him gifts he found in the river, and he was still doing it, even if Mose was dead and gone. He was just a big dumb boy in a man’s body, wandering the woods wearing worn-out clothes and shoes with soles that flopped.

  The Goat Man turned and pointed upriver. I knew then he hadn’t killed anyone, hadn’t taken Tom. He had come to warn me, let me know Tom had been taken. Now he was pointing the way. I just knew it. I didn’t know how he had come by the hand or Taylor’s chain and coin, but I knew the Goat Man hadn’t killed anybody. He had been watching our house; maybe he thought of himself as a kid. Hadn’t aged a day in his head. The sensation I had felt earlier hadn’t been any possum watching us, it had been the Goat Man. He had been in the woods and had seen what happened with Tom, and now he was trying to help me.

  I broke loose from him, ran back to the boat, tried to push it free again. The Goat Man followed me, put the shotgun in the boat, grabbed the end of it, and together we pushed it out of the sand and into the river.

  I splashed into the water with the Goat Man. He grabbed me suddenly and stuck me in the boat, pushed on out until the current had it good.

  I watched as he waded back toward shore and the cabin. He stood on the bank looking at me, like a friend who hated to see his playmate go away. The wind snapped at his old hat and plucked at his clothes as if to remove them.

  I picked up the paddle and went to work, trying not to think too much about what was being done to Tom.

  Dark clouds kept passing over the moon, but none grabbed it and held it. It peeked out every now and then, like a frightened child looking out from beneath warm blankets. The raindrops became more frequent as the wind grew hard and slightly cool with dampness.

  I paddled so hard my back and shoulders began to ache, but the current was with me, pulling me fast. I passed a whole school of water moccasins swimming in the dark. I feared they might try to climb up in the boat, as they liked to do, thinking it was a floating log and wanting a rest.

  I paddled quickly through them, spreading the school. One did indeed try to climb up the side, but I brought the boat paddle down on him hard and he went back in the water, alive or dead I couldn’t say.

  As I paddled around a bend in the river, where moss hung down from trees like curtains, and as I paddled through the moss, fighting it the way you might a thick swath of spiderwebs, I saw where the wild briars grew, and in that moment I had a strange sinking feeling, like carrying a bucket full of water and suddenly having the bottom drop out of it.

  The feeling came not only for fear of what I might find in the briar tunnels, but fear I might find nothing at all. Perhaps I was all wrong and the Goat Man did indeed have Tom. Possibly in Mose’s cabin, hiding her there, waiting until I was out of sight. But if that was true, why had he given my gun back? Then again, he wasn’t bright. He was a creature of the woods, same as a coon or a possum. He didn’t think like regular folks.

  All of this went through my head and swirled around and confused itself with my own dread and the thought of actually cutting down on a man with a shotgun. I felt like I was in a dream, like the kind I’d had when I’d had the flu some years before and everything had whirled and Mama’s and Daddy’s voices echoed and there were shadows all around me, trying to grab at me and pull me away into who knows where.

  I paddled to the bank, got out, pulled the boat on shore best I could. I couldn’t quite get it out of the water since I was so tuckered out from paddling. I just hoped it would hang there and hold.

  I got the shotgun, went up the hill quietly, found the mouth of the tunnel just beyond the tree, where me and Tom and Toby had come out that night.

  It was dark inside the briars. The moon had gone behind a cloud and the wind rattled the bone-like stickers and clicked them together. Bits of rain sliced through the briars, mixed with the sweat in my hair, ran down my face, put salt in my mouth, and made me shiver.

  July the Fourth, and I was cold.

  Or was it the fifth now? I remember thinking that. Is it the fifth, and knowing full well I shouldn’t think that at all. I had to keep my mind sharp.

  As I sneaked down the tunnel, through the briars I could see an orange glow leaping, could see a shadow moving before the glow. And I could hear a crackling sound, like dry leaves being wadded up in a big man’s hand.

  I trembled, eased forward, came to the end of the tunnel, and froze. I couldn’t make myself turn into the large tunnel; the one that was cave-like and held pieces of paper with pictures of women on them, and cloth. And it came to me in a rush. The cloth I had seen, white with something red on it. It was the trim on the dress Mrs. Canerton had worn the night of the party, and then, I assumed, the night of her murder.

  Suddenly, it was as if my feet were nailed to the ground.

  I pulled back the hammer on the shotgun, slipped my face around the edge of the briars, and looked.

  There was a fire going in the center of the tunnel, in the spot where Tom and I had seen the burn marks that day, and I could see Tom lying on the ground, her clothes off and strewn about, and a man was leaning over her, running his hands over her back and forth, making a sound like an animal eating after a long time without food. His hands flowed over her as if he was playing a piano.

  He picked up a Sears and Roebuck catalogue off the ground, tore out a page, tore it again. I could see in the firelight it was a picture of a little girl. He rolled the picture up carefully, very tight, and gently placed it on the ground. I thought of the others, with those pieces of paper stuck into them, and I thought of Doc Tinn and his talk of fetishes.

  A huge cane knife was stuck up in the dirt near Tom’s head, and Tom’s face was turned toward me. Her eyes were wide and full of tears and blood-red flickers from the fire. Tied around her mouth was a thick bandanna. Her hands and feet were bound with rope, and they were twisted at horrible angles. It looked as if she would break at the slightest touch.

  As I looked the man rose and I saw that his pants were undone and he had hold of himself. He was walking back and forth before the fire, looking down at Tom, yelling, “I don’t want to do this. You make me do this. It’s your fault, you know? You’re getting just right. Just right. Tonight, you were just right.”

  The voice was loud, but not like any voice I’d ever heard. There was all the darkness and wetness
and muddiness of the bottom of the river in that voice, all the decay of dead fish and snakes and tossed garbage, the sewage from the on-bank outhouses.

  I hadn’t been able to get a good look at his face, but I was sure from the way he was built, and from seeing that chain in Mrs. Canerton’s hand, that it was Doc Taylor. I figured she had grabbed at him while they fought, got hold of his chain, and he cut her hand off, not knowing the chain had gone with it.

  Slowly he turned, and the way the fire caught his hair, I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t Doc Taylor. It was Mr. Nation’s son, the older one.

  Then he turned to where I could see him good, and it wasn’t Nation’s boy at all. I had merely thought it was because that’s the kind of person I expected.

  I stepped fully into the tunnel, said, “Cecil.”

  The name came out of my mouth, without me really planning to say it. Cecil turned, and when he saw me his face was like it had been earlier, when Tom was being bounced on his knee and the fireworks had exploded behind him. It was neither happy nor sad, but dreamy, like a man waking from something he couldn’t quite figure.

  He let go of his privates, let them hang out for me to see, like some kind of display at Groon’s general store.

  “Oh, boy,” he said, his voice still husky and animal-like. “It’s just gone all wrong. I didn’t want to have to have Tom. I didn’t. But she’s been ripenin’, boy, right in front of my eyes. Every time I saw her, I said, no, you don’t shit where you eat. But she’s ripenin’, boy. And I thought I’d go to your place, peek in on her if I could, then I seen her there, easy to take, and I knew tonight I had to have her. There wasn’t nothing else for it.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, son. There is no why. I tell myself I won’t, but I do. I do.”

  He eased toward me.

  I lifted the shotgun.

  “Now, boy,” he said. “You don’t want to shoot me.”

  “Yes sir. I do.”

  “It ain’t something I can help. Listen here. I’ll let her go, and we’ll just forget about this business. Time you get home, I’ll be out of here. I got a little boat hid out, and I can take it downriver to where I can catch a train. I’m good at that. I can be gone before you know it. I come out here in a truck with my boat, but I’ll leave the truck for you. You’re gettin’ old enough for a truck. You should have a truck. I’ll leave it for you. It’s up above Mose’s shack.”

  “You’re wiltin’,” I said.

  His pee-dink had gone limp.

  Cecil looked down. “So I am.”

  He pushed himself inside his pants and buttoned up as he talked. “Look here. I wasn’t gonna hurt her. Just feel her some. I was just gonna get my finger wet. A little smell. I’ll go on, and everything will be all right.”

  “You’ll just go down the river and do it again,” I said. “Way you come down the river to us and did it here. You ain’t gonna stop, are you?”

  “There’s nothing to say about it, Harry. It gets out of hand sometime.”

  “You killed those people, Cecil. I trusted you. My Daddy trusted you. We all trusted you.”

  “Nothing I can say, Harry.”

  “Mrs. Canerton. I thought you liked her.”

  “I do. I did. I like Tom. I like them, and I try to leave them alone. The ones that matter. I went for the prostitutes. Thought that would hold me. But I didn’t want them. I wanted something … fresher. Louise, she was so nice.

  “I didn’t mean to kill Louise. I wanted her, and she didn’t want me. She didn’t want to be tied. I swear, I wasn’t gonna hurt her. But she didn’t want me. We got to arguing, then I saw that chain and coin around her neck, and I thought of that silly little doctor having some of that, and she was mine, and I grabbed at her throat, at his damn coin, and her hand came up, got tangled in the chain, and I had the cane knife.”

  He pointed at it where it stuck up in the ground next to Tom. It was a wicked-looking thing, and the firelight brightened its edge and made it appear to be coated in blood.

  “I had it,” he said, “and I swung it. Cut off her hand. Damnedest thing. We was on the edge of the river. I told her I wanted to show her somethin’, see. That got her down here. And so we were on the edge, and”—he laughed slightly—“the damn hand, it popped right off and into the river. Can you imagine that …”

  “I know the Goat Man found it.”

  “Goat Man?”

  “You’re the real Goat Man. You’re Miss Maggie’s Travelin’ Man.”

  “You’re not making any sense, boy.”

  I wanted him away from the cane knife. “Move on around to the side there,” I said.

  Cecil slipped to my left, and I went to the right. We were kind of circling each other. I got over close to Tom and I squatted down by her, still pointing the shotgun at Cecil.

  “I could be gone for good,” Cecil said. “All you got to do is let me go.”

  I reached out with one hand, got hold of the knot on the bandanna and pulled it loose. Tom said, “Shoot him! Shoot him! He stuck his fingers in me. Shoot him! He took me out of the window and stuck his fingers in me.”

  “Hush, Tom,” I said. “Take it easy.”

  “This hurts. Cut me loose … Give me the gun and I’ll shoot him.”

  “All the time you were bringin’ those women here to kill, weren’t you?” I said.

  “It’s a perfect place. Already made by hoboes. Once I decide on a woman, well, I can easily handle a woman. I always had my boat ready, and you can get almost anywhere you need to go by river. The tracks aren’t far from here. Plenty of trains run. It’s easy to get around. I used my truck to bring the boat down.”

  “You told where Mose was? You told Mr. Nation.”

  “Your Daddy gave me a lead. And Smoote, that idiot, who do you think cuts his hair? He was all worked up about that colored man in his barn, and he got to talkin’, and I didn’t mean to do anything with it, but hell, lots of people knew about it ’cause of his big mouth, and it was just a matter of time. All I had to do was let it slip to couple folks I figured wore the hoods.”

  “But why?”

  “He took the blame, and I’d quit. I really wanted to, you know. I wanted to marry Louise, settle down, cut hair, live like your Daddy. Maybe even have some kids. But I can’t do it, Harry. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. I thought I had it beat, then Louise took a shine to that boy doctor. It all snapped.”

  “Just go on and shoot him,” Tom said.

  I squatted, got hold of the cane knife, ran it against the ropes that held Tom with my left hand and kept the shotgun tucked to me with the right hand.

  “Sometimes friends make you mad, don’t they? They do wrong things. But they don’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help myself.”

  “We ain’t talkin’ about stealin’ a piece of peppermint here. You’re worse than the critters out there with the hydrophobia, ’cause you ain’t as good as them. They can’t help themselves.”

  “I tell you, neither can I. You don’t know what I saw in the war. It was horrible.”

  “You was the one killin’ them Germans way you told Daddy about, wasn’t you?”

  “Your Daddy told you about that, huh? Yes. It was me. It was a relief. Pretty soon, I wasn’t scared anymore. When I was home, I was always scared. My Mama, she liked me. She liked me a lot. And she liked to tie me up like her Daddy tied her when he had her. I learned that from her. The tying. But I didn’t like being tied. She did. I liked the tying. We were quite a team till I overdid it. That was in Arkansas. I went away to the war then, and I learned to kill more. To enjoy it. And when I came back … Well, I just naturally found it burned off tension. I’m tellin’ you, Harry. I can’t help it. I tried to keep it to people that didn’t matter.”

  “Like anyone matters to you,” I said, sawing without much success at the ropes.

  “You’re gonna cut me, Harry,” Tom said.

  The fire crackled, bled red colors across Cecil’s face. Some of the rain le
aked in through the thick wad of briars and vines and limbs overhead, hit the fire, made it hiss.

  Cecil said, “You’re like your Daddy, ain’t you? Self-righteous.”

  “Reckon so.”

  “My Daddy’ll whip your ass,” Tom said.

  The cane knife was sharp, but just too hard to handle, and Tom was starting to cuss and going on about letting her loose and giving her the shotgun. I finally tossed the cane knife down, got my pocketknife out and opened it with my teeth.

  Cecil eased toward me.

  “Don’t come no closer, Cecil. I’ll shoot your legs out from under you.”

  “Shoot his pee-pee off!” Tom yelled.

  The pocketknife was easier for me to handle. I finally got the ropes loose and Tom sat up rubbing her wrists.

  “It’s all right now, Tom.”

  “It will be when we shoot his pee-pee off.”

  I stood up, raised the gun, and Cecil flinched. But I couldn’t cut him down. I wasn’t raised to kill a human being. I couldn’t even shoot a squirrel or catch a fish if I thought I wasn’t gonna eat it, and I damn sure wasn’t gonna eat Cecil.

  Just wasn’t in me to shoot a fella in cold blood. He needed it, no doubt, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I figured if I blew his knee off to cripple him till I could get Daddy, he’d end up bleeding out slow, and dying anyway. The idea of letting buckshot fly into human flesh overwhelmed me, made me ill, and took my common sense away.

  I didn’t know what to do with him. I decided I had no choice but to let him go, tell Daddy, and have him try and hunt him down. If I went to tie him up, I was certain he’d turn the tables, and I was afraid if I tried to take him back at the point of a gun, he’d outdo me somehow.

  Tom was pulling on her clothes when I said, “You’ll get yours eventually.”

  “Now you’re talkin’, boy.”

  “You stay over yonder, we’re goin’ out.”