Waltz of Shadows

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I glanced at Bev. She was sitting in the middle of the bed, her knees drawn under her chin.

  I went into the hallway. I didn’t hear anybody. I couldn’t decide what was going on with Snake and Fat Boy. I thought about JoAnn and Sammy and another wave of fear went over me.

  I crept down the stai doghtrs looking through the railing as I went. The house smelled strangely. My nose hadn’t been working too good because of the smell of piss on my face and because the house was tainted with Snake’s odor, but now I could smell something else.

  Gasoline?

  I stopped off at JoAnn’s door, tried to open it. It wouldn’t budge. I turned on the flashlight. A little wedge of wood had been shoved in between the floor and the carpet. I pulled it out, opened the door and slipped inside.

  I wanted to reach for the light switch, but was afraid to. I didn’t know what I might find. I touched JoAnn’s shape beneath the blanket. She was warm, but didn’t move. The blankets reeked with the stench of gasoline.

  “JoAnn,” I said, and shook her. She rolled over and yawned and tucked her knees beneath her. I pulled the blanket off, cradled her against my shoulder with one arm so my gun hand was free. She was only partially awake, but clung to me like a monkey.

  Beverly, wearing a shirt nightgown, startled me at the bottom of the stairs.

  “The babies,” she said. Her voice wasn’t one I recognized.

  “She’s all right,” I said.

  “Sammy?”

  “I’ll see.”

  “They gone?”

  “I think so.”

  “Give her to me.”

  JoAnn hardly moved when I passed her to Bev.

  Bev said, “I smell gasoline.”

  “Yeah. Stay here. Take this.”

  I gave her the .32.

  On the way to Sammy’s room, I turned on the living room light, found the .38 Snake had knocked out of my hand. Sammy’s door was wedged shut too. I kicked out the wedge and went inside.

  I turned on the light this time. The odor of gasoline was big time. The blankets and the walls had been sloshed with it. The kids hadn’t even been disturbed.

  I tossed the flashlight on the floor, put the .38 in my coat pocket and got Sammy out of bed. He said, “Daddy,” but stayed asleep on my shoulder.

  Gasoline.

  Me and Bev tied up.

  The sleeping kids locked in their rooms.

  It all came to me in a rush. I began to run.

  I yelled, “Out of here! Now! Out!”

  Bev hesitated momentarily, then bolted with JoAnn toward the front door. I rushed behind her carrying Sammy, and in that instant, the garage blew.

  A bright red spray of light leaped from it with a sound like an atomic bomb. Pieces of the garage and the van scattered into the trees and the yares >“Yed. Then the glass front door fragmented behind me and flew at us and the hot blast knocked us through the railing and off the deck, dropped us ten feet to the ground.

  I came down on top of Sammy and fragments of the railing and the glass door came down on top of me. Sammy awoke with a painful scream. I felt my back prick suddenly with heat. I leaped off of him and hit the ground rolling, putting out the fire and grinding glass into my back. I leaped up and dove for JoAnn who had broken from Bev and had one side of her pajamas pants on fire. I knocked her down and rolled her in the dirt and put her out to a chorus of screams.

  I ripped what was left of her charred pants leg open and saw that her skin was only a little pink. Beverly was getting up from the ground. She clenched her fists and started to yell. No words. Just expulsions of rage. I saw the .32 lying on the ground near her. I picked it up and put it in my coat pocket with the .38.

  Another eruption tore out the window in JoAnn’s room, and we ducked beneath a salvo of glass and wood fragments.

  “No more,” Bev yelled. “No goddamn more!”

  JoAnn broke suddenly for the house. “Fred,” she screamed.

  I grabbed her. “Stay here,” I said.

  I raced up the steps and onto the deck. A multi-forked tongue of flame licked at me from JoAnn’s bedroom window. I flinched away.

  I looked at the front door. No help there. The doorway was nothing more than a gate to the inferno; flames coiled and writhed where the glass had been.

  I darted down the steps, around to the side of the house where there was a little hill that rose up to JoAnn’s other window. I stood there panting for a moment not knowing what to do and certainly not knowing why I was doing it.

  Big yellow streaks of lightning cracked the black dome of heaven and I could smell the ozone from the bolts and I could smell the fire and the things it had consumed.

  Without realizing what I was doing, I jerked the screen off the window, used the butt of the .38 to beat out the window glass. I reached through, flicked the latch, felt the heat jump along my hand. I put the .38 in my coat pocket, shoved the window up, started hoisting myself inside.

  Bev grabbed my by the leg before I could work completely through. “No,” she said. “No!”

  I tugged away from her and fell inside. The heat hopped on me and clung. I rose up sweating. The far side of the room blazed. JoAnn’s bed was blown in half and the split mattress was roaring and jumping with fire. Sheets and blankets were twisting into ash. Flames danced against the wall and filled the open doorway and the place where the window had been. Fire writhed out from beneath the closed closet door.

  The way JoAnn’s bed was blown, I realized there had probably been a gas can and a timer tucked under it. Rage went through me almost as hot as the fire that chewed and popped around me.

  The fire showed me Fred. He was lying on the floor. One leg was being fondled by tiny yellow flames. I got him and beat the fire out against my leg, realized Bev was calling m walmost ase through the window.

  “Hank. Get out. Hank. You jackass. Get out.”

  Fred and I went through the window. I hit on the ground and rolled and I came up on a knee. Another blast of lightning. Cool rain splattered on my face.

  Bev took Fred away from me, got me under the arm and jerked me up, pulled me away from the house. Before we had gone far, she turned suddenly and started hitting me with Fred. “He’s a teddy bear. A goddamn teddy bear. You idiot.”

  I pushed her toward the pickup and yelled for the kids to follow. We began to run. When we reached the pickup our world went to pieces with a roar. We turned, saw it go as the back of the house blew and the third floor dropped down and a savage demon of flame stretched up from the center of the rubble and hissed at the rain, then nodded the tip of its orange-red head toward us as if in appreciation of the feast.

  23

  The rain slammed us as I drove to a convenience store not far from our house and parked beside the telephone booth out front and got out and dialed the fire department number written on the front of the phone. I smelled so bad from Snake’s urine and the smoke from the fire, I had to leave the door open so I could breathe. The rain sounded like pea gravel pounding on the booth. I got the fire department and gave our address and didn’t give my name. I had a great and growing distrust of authority these days. I wasn’t even sure the fire department wouldn’t arrive to put fuel on the fire, instead of putting it out.

  My call had been mostly to prevent the woods from catching on fire and threatening our neighbors, because I knew the house was gone and no number of trucks and hoses could save it. Everything that had been precious and essential to us, except our lives, were gone. Photographs. Tax records. Insurance files. Clothes. The kids’ toys. Books. Albums. Birth certificates. Our dog. The gatherings of twenty years of marriage.

  I got in the truck and Sammy said, “Daddy, what’s that smell?”

  I didn’t answer. I rolled down the window and pulled away. I didn’t know where we were going. I didn’t know what to do about Fat Boy and Snake. I knew I wanted to kill them, but I didn’t know how, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to ever see them again. They had sent little evil things down inside me to
jiggle my bones, play tunes on them I hadn’t thought could be played.

  We hadn’t gone far when JoAnn began to cry, then it hit Sammy too. He suddenly realized what the flames had taken and he broke down.

  “Ssssshhhhh,” Bev said. “It’ll be all right.”

  “No. No it won’t,” I said. “It won’t ever be all right.”

  I pulled over beside the road, opened the door to the front of the truck, wandered into a bar ditch and fell down on my knees. Water was roaring through the ditch and it soaked my pants. I bent my head into the brown rush and ran my fingers through the water and through my hair, trying to get the smell of Snake off me. I stuck my face under the water and came up screaming. The heavens beat my face with rain, flashed lightning and rolled thunder in response. Finally, I just leaned there on my knees and cried.

  The kids were out of the truck now, calling, “Daddy,” and crying. I knew I should stop and get back in the truck and act strong, say it was all right and we’d get through everything, but I didn’t feel that way. I felt worse than that time with Arnold at the liquor store. I felt as if I should have my Southern manhood card revoked.

  Bev came around front of the truck and yelled for the kids to get back inside, then she came over and got down on her knees in the water with me. She put an arm around my shoulders and kissed my ear and said, “It’s okay, baby. Don’t. Please don’t.”

  “Goddamn me,” I said. “Goddamn me.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Come on, baby. I didn’t mean what I said. Really. I promise.”

  She got an arm under one of mine, helped me get up, led me back to the truck. The kids were crying. I started the engine and watched the windshield wipers slap the rain. Bev put her hand on my wet knee. A small surge of strength and optimism stirred through me.

  “It’s going to be all right, kids,” I said. “It’ll be all right.”

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Bev said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I pulled onto the highway.

  About two miles later the volunteer fire department passed us.

  · · ·

  We rode through the center of the city, out toward Lake Imperial. The storm grew stronger, causing the windshield wipers to struggle, then, as is often the case with East Texas storms, it blew out and was gone and the sky turned light and the moonlight filtered through the wet haze and purple shadows slanted across the truck like falling timbers.

  Off in the distance, moving away like a train, I could hear thunder and see the now and then eruption of lightning.

  “Where are we going, Daddy?” Sammy asked.

  “A cabin,” I said.

  I caught Bev’s eye out of the corner of mine and could see she was confused, but she didn’t say anything. I thought about her lying there on the bed with Snake on top of her, his horrible smell filling her nostrils, and then maybe Fat Boy, his weight on her, and I gripped the steering wheel so hard my forearms cramped.

  We went up a high hill and dipped down on the other side. The trees were tall here and the moon appeared to be speared on the tops of the pines on the right hand side of the road. We went down the deep hill and JoAnn said that it got her stomach, and then she talked for Fred, who said much the same, and then we went around a bend in the road and on the right the tall trees went away and there were rows and rows of living Christmas trees in various sizes.

  As if nothing had gone wrong tonight, Bev said, “Look kids, a Christmas tree farm.”

  “Is that where we got our tree?” JoAnn asked.

  “No, stupid,” Sammy said. “We bought ours from the Rottery Club.”

  “Rotary,” I said. “And don’t talk to your sister like that.”

  Just past the Christmas tree farm, we turned right, onto a red clay road. It was slick and dangerous and I slowed considerably. I turned us onto another, smaller red clay road and we drove up behind the Christmas tree farm, and went slower than before.

  Through a break in the trees on our left, you could see a moon-shiny glimpse of Lake Imperial. All along that side of the lake were terribly expensive, deserted lake houses that had been built chiefly by out-of-town rich folks. The lots had suitably spaced trees, lawns kept by weekly caretakers, satellite dishes, and long, redwood docks that stuck out over the water and begged for boats. The smell of fish and storm-stirred waters drifted into the pickup and settled on us like a damp cloud.

  On our right, the Christmas tree farm continued, then dwindled away and the pines grew up tall and wild again. Finally we came to the driveway I wanted. It had been black-topped at one point, but the years had worn the topping away. A little gully cut across the drive and sharp stones heaved out from under the black-top in spots, like subterranean monsters poking their snouts through the dirt in search of air.

  Some bushes had grown up in the drive. I drove over them, and we came to a cabin much smaller than I remembered. It sagged a little to the right and had a long front porch with an old weathered swing glider on it. The cabin was at the top of a slope that fell off dramatically behind it. To the left, where the trees were thin, you could see the lake. The water was rolling and tumbling, as if on a high boil.

  I parked near the front porch, got out and went up and felt for a key at the top of the door jamb, but didn’t find one. I went around back and was a little stunned to find a creosote fencepost sticking out of the ground with nails driven into it and empty wine and beer bottles with their necks stuck over the nails. The wind made a noise in the bottles like a big man blowing air through wide-spaced teeth.

  A completely artificial bottle tree. Arnold’s old girlfriend had been here as well.

  Farther down the bank, jutting over the lake, was a short, weathered dock. I remembered fishing off the dock with my Dad.

  I tried the back door with no better success. I picked a pane in one of the windows and took the .38 out of my coat and beat the pane out with the butt of it and found that the back of the window had been covered with sturdy screen wire. I used the butt of the .38 to hammer on and loosen the wire at one corner, pushed it up and peeled it back enough that I could get to the latch and raise the window and work myself through.

  I went through the house banging myself against things. I tried a light switch by the front door, but it didn’t work. I felt around the door until I found a latch. I threw it and opened up.

  Bev brought the kids onto the porch. I went back to the truck and got the flashlight I should have carried in the first place, pulled the shotgun down, and even the ball bat. I removed the shells from the glove box and carried all of the stuff inside the cabin, and my family trailed behind me.

  I put the shotgun, ball bat and ammunition on the floor next to the door, turned on the flashd oly traillight and poked it around. The place was dusty and smelled like mold. “Where are we?” JoAnn said.

  “My Daddy’s old cabin,” I said. “Arnold’s place now.”

  “Who’s Arnold?” Sammy asked.

  “Your uncle,” I said.

  “I have an uncle?”

  “Shush,” I said. “Let me look around.”

  I pooled the light around the front room, which was a combination den, dining room and kitchen. Everything had been redone from the way I remembered it, and I didn’t remember it that well. The linoleum buckled near the sink cabinet, and a spiderweb large enough to have supported one of those radioactive spiders in the kinds of movies Snake liked, was stretched from a wagon wheel light fixture over the warped table all the way to a moldy corner.

  I opened a cabinet and discovered a row of ancient rust-rimmed cans with loose labels. The labels bore out that these were the last of the food goods. They read: Beets, Green Beans, Spinach and Pumpkin.

  A midnight snack did not seem in order.

  I went into the bedroom through which I had entered. The place was a mess. Old newspapers lay about along with a few beer cans. The blankets and sheets on the unmade bed were covered with dust and smelled dank. There were more blankets stacked on a dresser acr
oss the way.

  The bathroom was off the bedroom, and the door to it hung slightly ajar off its hinges. The sink had a rust-colored stain around the drain. The toilet bowl was dark with dried urine stains and there was no water in it; there was the faint aroma one associates with unattended filling station restrooms. I pulled back the shower curtain and flashed my light into the tub. Enough thumb-sized roaches to have fed the reptile community of East Texas scurried down the drain. I tried the tub faucets and nothing happened. I tried the bathroom sink. Same results. I made an attempt to flush the commode. No water to flush.

  I came back to the kitchen where Bev stood with a kid on either side. They were leaning against her.

  “Daddy,” Sammy said. “What happened to the house? Why’d it burn down?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll worry about that another time. Right now you got to go to bed.”

  “Daddy,” Sammy said. “Did all my stuff burn up? My comics and things?”

  “Yes, son. Most likely.”

  “Wylie?” Sammy asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He tried not to cry, but didn’t make it, and JoAnn followed suit.

  “It’ll be all right,” I said.

  I bent and hugged them, then Bev took over. I flashed the light on a door that led into a little storage room. I went inside and left the door open so Bev and the kids could see my flashlight jumping around in there. I figured any kind of light right now was a reassurance.a rins The room contained a box of bed clothes, cooking utensils and some rat shit. Against the wall was a hot water heater. Built into the opposite wall was a metal box. I opened the box. It contained electrical switches, a screw driver and a few fuses. I remembered Arnold said he kept the electric bill paid out here, so I made a little wish before I replaced a missing fuse and flipped a couple switches. The lights came on in the storage room and the kitchen.

  I heard Sammy cheer.

  Under one of the switches was a piece of white tape with faded black writing on it that read: pump. I flipped it and was rewarded with a humming noise.