Book Read Free

The Thicket

Page 29

by Joe R. Lansdale


  Not long after Shorty died I got to considering on the adventure we had together, and how we saved Lula, and how her life turned out to be better for having met Shorty. I thought about that great and impossible shot he had made. It was a shot that had not only saved her from Cut Throat, it had brought Shorty and her together. One night, thinking on all this, I decided to take my new Ford motorcar and drive over to Shorty’s telescope tower.

  I came to the tower in the late dark, climbed the ladder up. Once at the peak, I sat in Shorty’s special chair in front of his telescope. I sat there not moving for a while, then, careful not to budge his settings, I put my eye to the lens of his telescope and looked out at the velvet-black night sky that was riddled with stars; the view seemed to fall right through that scope and into my head.

  I looked for a long time at the stars, thinking about Shorty and him telling me about reading a book about a man who spread his arms and went to Mars, or at least some part of him did. I thought it might be nice if that happened to Shorty. That his spirit had gone to Mars. Then I realized he didn’t want that anymore. He was happy. And though he never did come to believe in God, I think he did come to believe in love.

  I watched those stars and the blackness between them, and had a kind of funny thought. It was that my old idea of God and heaven, harps and angels, was too small for all that I was looking at, and that the black out there, the stars spotted on it, belonged to something bigger and harder to explain than God. I have to tell you that right then was the first time I felt I was truly part of something stranger and more wonderful than I had ever imagined.

  It was a thought that didn’t bother me at all.

  About the Author

  Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Edge of Dark Water, Vanilla Ride, Leather Maiden, Sunset and Sawdust, and Lost Echoes. He has received the Edgar Award, the American Mystery Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, and nine Bram Stoker Awards. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was made into a film starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis and directed by Don Coscarelli. His short story “Incident on and off a Mountain Road” was also made into a film; it stars Bree Turner and was directed by Don Coscarelli for Showtime. Lansdale lives with his wife in Nacogdoches, Texas.

  joerlansdale.com

  Also by Joe R. Lansdale

  The Magic Wagon

  The Drive In

  The Nightrunners

  Cold in July

  The Boar

  Waltz of Shadows

  The Bottoms

  A Fine Dark Line

  Sunset and Stardust

  Lost Echoes

  Leather Maiden

  All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

  Edge of Dark Water

  The Hap and Leonard Series

  Savage Season

  Mucho Mojo

  The Two-Bear Mambo

  Bad Chili

  Rumble Tumble

  Captain Outrageous

  Vanilla Ride

  Devil Red

  Selected Short Story Collections

  By Bizarre Hands

  Sanctified and Chicken Fried

  Best of Joe R. Lansdale

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.

  To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters.

  Sign Up

  Or visit us at hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters

  For more about this book and author, visit Bookish.com.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  About the Author

  Also by Joe R. Lansdale

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2013 by Joe R. Lansdale

  Cover design by Kimberly Glyder; photographs by Carlos Restrepo/Arcangel (background), ryasick/Getty Images (ribbon)

  Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  mulhollandbooks.com

  twitter.com/mulhollandbooks

  facebook.com/mulhollandbooks

  First ebook edition: September 2013

  Mulholland Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Mulholland Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  ISBN 978-0-316-24875-4

 

 

 


‹ Prev