The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Before he put his hat on, the sweat on his fingers was dry. He broke open the shotgun, put the shells in his pocket, opened the Chevy’s back door and tossed the shotgun on the floorboard.

  He got in the front behind the wheel and the seat was hot as a griddle on his back and ass. The sun shone through the slightly tinted windows like a polished chrome hubcap; it forced him to squint.

  Glancing over at Calhoun, he studied him. The fucker was asleep with his head thrown back and his black wilted hat hung precariously on his head — it looked jaunty almost. Sweat oozed down Calhoun’s red face, flowed over his eyelids and around his neck, running in rivulets down the white seat covers, drying quickly. He had his left hand between his legs, clutching his balls, and his right was on the arm rest, which was the only place it could be since he was handcuffed to the door.

  Wayne thought he ought to blow the bastard’s brains out and tell God he died. The shithead certainly needed shooting, but Wayne didn’t want to lose a thousand dollars off his reward. He needed every penny if he was going to get that wrecking yard he wanted. The yard was the dream that went before him like a carrot before a donkey, and he didn’t want any more delays. If he never made another trip across this goddamn desert, that would suit him fine.

  Pop would let him buy the place with the money he had now, and he could pay the rest out later. But that wasn’t what he wanted to do. The bounty business had finally gone sour, and he wanted to do different. It wasn’t any goddamn fun anymore. Just met the dick cheese of the earth. And when you ran the sonofabitches to ground and put the cuffs on them, you had to watch your ass ‘til you got them turned in. Had to sleep with one eye open and a hand on your gun. It wasn’t any way to live.

  And he wanted a chance to do right by Pop. Pop had been like a father to him. When he was a kid and his mama was screwing the Mexicans across the border for the rent money, Pop would let him hang out in the yard and climb on the rusted cars and watch him fix the better ones, tune those babies so fine they purred like dick-whipped women.

  When he was older, Pop would haul him to Galveston for the whores and out to the beach to take potshots at all the ugly, fucked-up critters swimming around in the Gulf. Sometimes he’d take him to Oklahoma for the Dead Roundup. It sure seemed to do the old fart good to whack those dead fuckers with a tire iron, smash their diseased brains so they’d lay down for good. And it was a challenge. ‘Cause if one of those dead buddies bit you, you could put your head between your legs and kiss your rosy ass goodbye.

  Wayne pulled out of his thoughts of Pop and the wrecking yard and turned on the stereo system. One of his favorite country-and-western tunes whispered at him. It was Billy Conteegas singing, and Wayne hummed along with the music as he drove into the welcome, if mostly ineffectual, shadows provided by the Cadillacs.

  “My baby left me,

  She left me for a cow,

  But I don’t give a flying fuck,

  She’s gone radioactive now,

  Yeah, my baby left me,

  Left me for a six-tittied cow.”

  Just when Conteegas was getting to the good part, doing the trilling sound in his throat he was famous for, Calhoun opened his eyes and spoke up.

  “Ain’t it bad enough I got to put up with the fucking heat and your fucking humming without having to listen to that shit? Ain’t you got no Hank Williams stuff, or maybe some of that nigger music they used to make? You know, where the coons harmonize and one of’em sings like his nuts are cut off.”

  “You just don’t know good music when you hear it, Calhoun.”

  Calhoun moved his free hand to his hatband, found one of his few remaining cigarettes and a match there. He struck the match on his knee, lit the smoke and coughed a few rounds. Wayne couldn’t imagine how Calhoun could smoke in all this heat.

  “Well, I may not know good music when I hear it, capon, but I damn sure know bad music when I hear it. And that’s some bad music.”

  “You ain’t got any kind of culture, Calhoun. You been too busy raping kids.”

  “Reckon a man has to have a hobby,” Calhoun said, blowing smoke at Wayne. “Young pussy is mine. Besides, she wasn’t in diapers. Couldn’t find one that young. She was thirteen. You know what they say. If they’re old enough to bleed, they’re old enough to breed.”

  “How old they have to be for you to kill them?”

  “She got loud.”

  “Change channels, Calhoun.”

  “Just passing the time of day, capon. Better watch yourself, bounty hunter, when you least expect it, I’ll bash your head.”

  “You’re gonna run your mouth one time too many, Calhoun, and when you do, you’re gonna finish this ride in the trunk with ants crawling on you. You ain’t so priceless I won’t blow you away.”

  “You lucked out at the tonk, boy. But there’s always tomorrow, and every day can’t be like at Rosalita’s.”

  Wayne smiled. “Trouble is, Calhoun, you’re running out of tomorrows.”

  3

  As they drove between the Cadillacs, the sky fading like a bad bulb, Wayne looked at the cars and tried to imagine what the Chevy-Cadillac Wars had been like, and why they had been fought in this miserable desert. He had heard it was a hell of a fight, and close, but the outcome had been Chevy’s and now they were the only cars Detroit made. And as far as he was concerned, that was the only thing about Detroit that was worth a damn. Cars.

  He felt that way about all cities. He’d just as soon lie down and let a diseased dog shit in his face than drive through one, let alone live in one.

  Law Town being an exception. He’d go there. Not to live, but to give Calhoun to the authorities and pick up his reward. People in Law Town were always glad to see a criminal brought in. The public executions were popular and varied and supplied a steady income.

  Last time he’d been to Law Town he’d bought a front-row ticket to one of the executions and watched a chronic shoplifter, a redheaded rat of a man, get pulled apart by being chained between two souped-up tractors. The execution itself was pretty brief, but there had been plenty of buildup with clowns and balloons and a big-tittied stripper who could swing her tits in either direction to boom-boom music.

  Wayne had been put off by the whole thing. It wasn’t organized enough and the drinks and food were expensive and the front-row seats were too close to the tractors. He had gotten to see that the redhead’s insides were brighter than his hair, but some of the insides got sprinkled on his new shirt, and cold water or not, the spots hadn’t come out. He had suggested to one of the management that they put up a big plastic shield so the front row wouldn’t get splattered, but he doubted anything had come of it.

  They drove until it was solid dark. Wayne stopped and fed Calhoun a stick of jerky and some water from his canteen. Then he handcuffed him to the front bumper of the Chevy.

  “See any snakes, Gila monsters, scorpions, stuff like that,” Wayne said, “yell out. Maybe I can get around here in time.”

  “I’d let the fuckers run up my asshole before I’d call you,” Calhoun said.

  Leaving Calhoun with his head resting on the bumper, Wayne climbed in the back seat of the Chevy and slept with one ear cocked and one eye open.

  Before dawn Wayne got Calhoun loaded in the ‘57 and they started out. After a few minutes of sluicing through the early morning grayness, a wind started up. One of those weird desert winds that come out of nowhere. It carried grit through the air at the speed of bullets, hit the ‘57 with a sound like rabid cats scratching.

  The sand tires crunched on through, and Wayne turned on the windshield blower, the sand wipers, and the head-beams, and kept on keeping on.

  When it was time for the sun to come up, they couldn’t see it. Too much sand. It was blowing harder than ever and the blowers and wipers couldn’t handle it. It was piling up. Wayne couldn’t even make out the Cadillacs anymore.

  He was about to stop when a shadowy, whale-like shape crossed in front of him and he slammed on the brakes, g
iving the sand tires a workout. But it wasn’t enough.

  The ‘57 spun around and rammed the shape on Calhoun’s side. Wayne heard Calhoun yell, then felt himself thrown against the door and his head smacked metal and the outside darkness was nothing compared to the darkness into which he descended.

  4

  Wayne rose out of it as quickly as he had gone down. Blood was trickling into his eyes from a slight forehead wound. He used his sleeve to wipe it away.

  His first clear sight was of a face at the window on his side; a sallow, moon-terrain face with bulging eyes and an expression like an idiot contemplating Sanscrit. On the man’s head was a strange, black hat with big round ears, and in the center of the hat, like a silver tumor, was the head of a large screw. Sand lashed at the face, imbedded in it, struck the unblinking eyes and made the round-eared hat flap. The man paid no attention. Though still dazed, Wayne knew why. The man was one of the dead folks.

  Wayne looked in Calhoun’s direction. Calhoun’s door had been mashed in and the bending metal had pinched the handcuff attached to the arm rest in two. The blow had knocked Calhoun to the center of the seat. He was holding his hand in front of him, looking at the dangling cuff and chain as if it were a silver bracelet and a line of pearls.

  Leaning over the hood, cleaning the sand away from the windshield with his hands, was another of the dead folks. He too was wearing one of the round-eared hats. He pressed a wrecked face to the clean spot and looked in at Calhoun. A string of snot-green saliva ran out of his mouth and onto the glass.

  More sand was wiped away by others. Soon all the car’s glass showed the pallid and rotting faces of the dead folks. They stared at Wayne and Calhoun as if they were two rare fish in an aquarium.

  Wayne cocked back the hammer of the .38.

  “What about me,” Calhoun said. “What am I supposed to use?”

  “Your charm,” Wayne said, and at that moment, as if by signal, the dead folk faded away from the glass, leaving one man standing on the hood holding a baseball bat. He hit the glass and it went into a thousand little stars. The bat came again and the heavens fell and the stars rained down and the sand storm screamed in on Wayne and Calhoun.

  The dead folks reappeared in full force. The one with the bat started though the hole in the windshield, heedless of the jags of glass that ripped his ragged clothes and tore his flesh like damp cardboard.

  Wayne shot the batter through the head, and the man, finished, fell through, pinning Wayne’s arm with his body.

  Before Wayne could pull his gun free, a woman’s hand reached through the hole and got hold of Wayne’s collar. Other dead folks took to the glass and hammered it out with their feet and fist. Hands were all over Wayne; they felt dry and cool like leather seat covers. They pulled him over the steering wheel and dash and outside. The sand worked at his flesh like a cheese grater. He could hear Calhoun yelling, “Eat me, motherfuckers, eat me and choke.”

  They tossed Wayne on the hood of the ‘57. Faces leaned over him. Yellow teeth and toothless gums were very near. A road-kill odor washed through his nostrils. He thought: now the feeding frenzy begins. His only consolation was that there were so many dead folks, there wouldn’t be enough of him left to come back from the dead. They’d probably have his brain for dessert.

  But no. They picked him up and carried him off. Next thing he knew was a clearer view of the whale-shape the ‘57 had hit, and its color. It was a yellow school bus.

  The door to the bus hissed open. The dead folks dumped Wayne inside on his belly and tossed his hat after him. They stepped back and the door closed, just missing Wayne’s foot.

  Wayne looked up and saw a man in the driver’s seat smiling at him. It wasn’t a dead man. Just fat and ugly. He was probably five feet tall and bald except for a fringe of hair around his shiny bald head the color of a shit ring in a toilet bowl. He had a nose so long and dark and malignant-looking it appeared as if it might fall off his face at any moment, like an overripe banana. He was wearing what Wayne first thought was a bathrobe, but proved to be a robe like that of a monk. It was old and tattered and moth-eaten and Wayne could see pale flesh through the holes. An odor wafted from the fat man that was somewhere between the smell of stale sweat, cheesy balls and an unwiped asshole.

  “Good to see you,” the fat man said.

  “Charmed,” Wayne said.

  From the back of the bus came a strange, unidentifiable sound. Wayne poked his head around the seats for a look.

  In the middle of the aisle, about halfway back, was a nun. Or sort of a nun. Her back was to him and she wore a black-and-white nun’s habit. The part that covered her head was traditional, but from there down was quite a departure from the standard attire. The outfit was cut to the middle of her thigh and she wore black fishnet stockings and thick high heels. She was slim with good legs and a high little ass that, even under the circumstances, Wayne couldn’t help but appreciate. She was moving one hand above her head as if sewing the air.

  Sitting on the seats on either side of the aisle were dead folks. They all wore the round-eared hats, and they were responsible for the sound.

  They were trying to sing.

  He had never known dead folks to make any noise outside of grunts and groans, but here they were singing. A toneless sort of singing to be sure, some of the words garbled and some of the dead folks just opening and closing their mouths soundlessly, but, by golly, he recognized the tune. It was “Jesus Loves Me.”

  Wayne looked back at the fat man, let his hand ease down to the bowie in his right boot. The fat man produced a little .32 automatic from inside his robe and pointed it at Wayne.

  “It’s small caliber,” the fat man said, “but I’m a real fine shot, and it makes a nice, little hole.”

  Wayne quit reaching in his boot.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said the fat man. “Take the knife out and put it on the floor in front of you and slide it to me. And while you’re at it, I think I see the hilt of one in your other boot.”

  Wayne looked back. The way he had been thrown inside the bus had caused his pants legs to hike up over his boots, and the hilts of both his bowies were revealed. They might as well have had blinking lights on them.

  It was shaping up to be a shitty day.

  He slid the bowies to the fat man, who scooped them up nimbly and dumped them on the other side of his seat.

  The bus door opened and Calhoun was tossed in on top of Wayne. Calhoun’s hat followed after.

  Wayne shrugged Calhoun off, recovered his hat, and put it on. Calhoun found his hat and did the same. They were still on their knees.

  “Would you gentlemen mind moving to the center of the bus?”

  Wayne led the way. Calhoun took note of the nun now, said, “Man, look at that ass.”

  The fat man called back to them. “Right there will do fine.”

  Wayne slid into the seat the fat man was indicating with a wave of the .32, and Calhoun slid in beside him. The dead folks entered now, filled the seats up front, leaving only a few stray seats in the middle empty.

  Calhoun said, “What are those fuckers back there making that noise for?”

  “They’re singing,” Wayne said. “Ain’t you got no churchin’?”

  “Say they are?” Calhoun turned to the nun and the dead folks and yelled, “Y’all know any Hank Williams?”

  The nun did not turn and the dead folks did not quit their toneless singing.

  “Guess not,” Calhoun said. “Seems like all the good music’s been forgotten.”

  The noise in the back of the bus ceased and the nun came over to look at Wayne and Calhoun. She was nice in front too. The outfit was cut from throat to crotch, laced with a ribbon, and it showed a lot of tit and some tight, thin, black panties that couldn’t quite hold in her escaping pubic hair, which grew as thick and wild as kudzu. When Wayne managed to work his eyes up from that and look at her face, he saw she was dark-complected with eyes the color of coffee and lips made to chew on.
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  Calhoun never made it to the face. He didn’t care about faces. He sniffed, said into her crotch, “Nice snatch.”

  The nun’s left hand came around and smacked Calhoun on the side of the head.

  He grabbed her wrist, said, “Nice arm, too.”

  The nun did a magic act with her right hand; it went behind her back and hiked up her outfit and came back with a double-barreled derringer. She pressed it against Calhoun’s head.

  Wayne bent forward, hoping she wouldn’t shoot. At that range the bullet might go through Calhoun’s head and hit him too.

  “Can’t miss,” the nun said.

  Calhoun smiled. “No you can’t,” he said, and let go of her arm.

  She sat down across from them, smiled, and crossed her legs high. Wayne felt his Levi’s snake swell and crawl against the inside of his thigh.

  “Honey,” Calhoun said, “you’re almost worth taking a bullet for.”

  The nun didn’t quit smiling. The bus cranked up. The sand blowers and wipers went to work, and the windshield turned blue, and a white dot moved on it between a series of smaller white dots.

  Radar. Wayne had seen that sort of thing on desert vehicles. If he lived through this and got his car back, maybe he’d rig up something like that. And maybe not, he was sick of the desert.

  Whatever, at the moment, future plans seemed a little out of place.

  Then something else occurred to him. Radar. That meant these bastards had known they were coming and had pulled out in front of them on purpose.

  He leaned over the seat and checked where he figured the ‘57 hit the bus. He didn’t see a single dent. Armored, most likely. Most school buses were these days, and that’s what this had been. It probably had bullet-proof glass and puncture-proof sand tires too. School buses had gone that way on account of the race riots and the sending of mutated calves to school just like they were humans. And because of the Codgers — old farts who believed kids ought to be fair game to adults for sexual purposes, or for knocking around when they wanted to let off some tension.

  “How about unlocking this cuff?” Calhoun said. “It ain’t for shit now anyway.”