Stories (2011)

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I suppose I should give the vine credit for doing what I had not been able to do in years, Mr. Journal, and that's enter Mary. Oh God, that's a funny one, Mr.

  Journal. Real funny. Another little scientist joke. Let's make that a mad scientist joke, what say? Who but a madman would play with the lives of human beings by constantly trying to build the bigger and better boom machine?

  So what of Rae, you ask?

  I'll tell you. She is inside me. My back feels the weight. She twists in my guts like a corkscrew. I went to the mirror a moment ago, and the tattoo no longer looks like it did. They eyes have turned to crusty sores and the entire face looks like a scab. It's as if the bile that made up my soul, the unthinking, nearsightedness, the guilt that I am, has festered from inside and spoiled the picture with pustule bumps, knots and scabs.

  To put it in layman's terms, Mr. Journal, my back is infected. Infected with what I am. A blind, senseless fool.

  The wife?

  Ah, the wife. God, how I loved that woman. I have not really touched her in years, merely felt those wonderful hands on my back as she jabbed the needles home, but I never stopped loving her. It was not a love that glowed anymore, but it was there, though hers for me was long gone and wasted.

  This morning when I got up from the floor, the weight of Rae and the world on my back, I saw the vine coming up from beneath the door and stretching over to her.

  I yelled her name. She did not move. I ran to her and saw it was too late.

  Before I could put a hand on her, I saw her flesh ripple and bump up, like a den of mice were nesting under a quilt. The vines were at work. (Out goes the old guts, in goes the new vines.)

  There was nothing I could do for her.

  I made a torch out of a chair leg and old quilt, set fire to it, burned the vine from between her legs, watched it retreat, smoking, under the door. Then I got a board, nailed it along the bottom, hoping it would keep others out for at least a little while. I got one of the twelve-gauges and loaded it. It's on the desk beside me, Mr. Journal, but even I know I'll never use it. It was just something to do, as Jacobs said when he killed and ate the whale. Something to do.

  I can hardly write anymore. My back and shoulders hurt so bad. It's the weight of Rae and the world.

  * * *

  I've just come back from the mirror and there is very little left of the tattoo.

  Some blue and black ink, a touch of red that was Rae's hair. It looks like an abstract painting now. Collapsed design, running colors. It's real swollen. I look like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

  What am I going to do, Mr. Journal?

  Well, as always, I'm glad you asked that. You see, I've thought this out.

  I could throw Mary's body over the railing before it blooms. I could do that.

  Then I could doctor my back. It might even heal, though I doubt it. Rae wouldn't let that happen, I can tell you now. And I don't blame her. I'm on her side. I'm just a walking dead man and have been for years.

  I could put the shotgun under my chin and work the trigger with my toes, or maybe push it with the very pen I'm using to create you, Mr. Journal. Wouldn't that be neat? Blow my brains to the ceiling and sprinkle you with my blood.

  But as I said, I loaded the gun because it was something to do. I'd never use it on myself or Mary.

  You see, I want Mary. I want her to hold Rae and me one last time like she used to in the park. And she can. There's a way.

  I've drawn all the curtains and made curtains out of blankets for those spots where there aren't any. It'll be sunup soon and I don't want that kind of light in here. I'm writing this by candlelight and it gives the entire room a warm glow. I wish I had wine. I want the atmosphere to be just right.

  Over on Mary's bunk she's starting to twitch. Her neck is swollen where the vines have congested and are writhing toward their favorite morsel, the brain.

  Pretty soon the rose will bloom (I hope she's one of the bright yellow ones ' yellow was her favorite color and she wore it well) and Mary will come for me.

  When she does, I'll stand with my naked back to her. The vines will whip out and cut me before she reaches me, but I can stand it. I'm used to pain. I'll pretend the thorns are Mary's needles. I'll stand that way until she folds her dead arms around me and her body pushes up against the wound she made in my back, the wound that is our daughter Rae. She'll hold me so the vines and the proboscis can do their work. And while she holds me, I'll grab her fine hands and push them against my chest, and it will be we three again, standing against the world, and I'll close my eyes and delight in her soft, soft hands one last time.

  HELL THROUGH A WINDSHIELD

  We are drive-in mutants.

  We are not like other people.

  We are sick.

  We are disgusting.

  We believe in blood.

  In breasts.

  And in beasts.

  We believe in Kung Fu City.

  If life had a vomit meter.

  We'd be off the scale.

  As long as one single drive-in remains On the planet Earth.

  We will party like jungle animals.

  We will boogie till we puke.

  Heads will roll.

  The drive-in will never die.

  Amen.

  THE DRIVE-IN OATH

  The drive-in theater may have been born in New Jersey, but it had the good sense to come to Texas to live. Throughout the fifties and sixties it thrived here like a fungus on teenage lusts and families enticed by the legendary “Dollar Night” or “Two Dollars A Carload”.

  And even now--though some say the drive-in has seen its heyday in the more populated areas, you can drive on in there any night of the week-particularly Special Nights and Saturday-and witness a sight that sometimes makes the one on the screen boring on comparison.

  You'll see lawn chairs planted in the backs of pickups, or next to speakers, with cowboys and cowgirls planted in the chairs, beer cans growing out of their fists, and there'll be the sputterings of barbecue pits and the aromas of cooking meats rising up in billows of smoke that slowly melts into the clear Texas sky.

  Sometimes there'll be folks with tape decks whining away, even as the movie flickers across the three-story screen and their neighbors struggle to hear the crackling speaker dialogue over ZZ Top doing "The Tube Snake Boogie." There'll be lovers sprawled out on blankets spread between two speaker posts, going at it so hot and heavy they ought to just go on and charge admission. And there's plenty of action in the cars too. En route to the concession stand a discerning eye can spot the white moons of un-Levied butts rising and falling to a steady, rocking rhythm just barely contained by well-greased shocks and four-ply tires.

  What you're witnessing is a bizarre subculture in action. One that may in fact be riding the crest of a new wave.

  Or to put it another way: Drive-ins are crazy, but they sure are fun.

  * * *

  The drive-in theater is over fifty years old, having been spawned on Camden, New Jersey June 6th, 1933 by a true visionary--Richard Milton Hollingshead.

  Camden, as you may know, was the last home of Walt Whitman, and when one considers it was the death place of so prestigious an American poet, it is only fitting that it be the birthplace of such a poetic and all-American institution as the drive-in theater Or as my dad used to call them, "the outdoor picture show."

  Once there was over 4,000 drive-ins in the United States, now there are about

  3,000, and according to some experts, they are dropping off fast. However, in Texas there is a re-emergence and new interest in the passion pits of old. They have become nearly as sacred as the armadillo.

  The LoneStarState alone has some 209 outdoor theaters in operation, and many of these are multi-screen jobs with different movies running concurrently alongside one another. Not long ago, Gordon McLendon, "The Drive-in Business King," erected the 145 in Houston, a drive-in capable of holding up to three thousand automobiles. In fact, it claims to be the biggest
drive-in in existence.

  * * *

  Why does the drive-in thrive in Texas when it's falling off elsewhere?

  Three reasons:

  (1) Climate. Generally speaking, Texas has a pretty comfortable climate year round.

  (2) A car culture. Texas is the champion state for automobile registration, and Texans have this thing about their cars.

  The automobile has replaced the horse not only as a mode of transportation, but as a source of mythology. If the Texan of old was supposedly half-human and half-horse, the modern Texan is half-human and half-automobile. Try and separate a Texan from his car, or mass transit that sucker against his will, and you're likely to end up kissing his grillwork at sixty-five miles an hour.

  (3) Joe Bob Briggs.

  * * *

  Okay, start the background music. Softly please, a humming version of "The Eyes of Texas." And will all true Texans please remove your hats while we have 5 short discussion of Joe Bob Briggs, The Patron Saint of Texas Drive-Ins, He Who Drives Behind The Speaker Rows, and columnist for The Dallas Times Herald. In fact, his column, "Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-in," is the most popular feature in the paper. As it should be, because Joe Bob--who may be the pseudonym for the Herald's regular film critic John Bloom-don't talk no bullcorn, and he don't bother with "hardtop" movie reviews. He's purely a drive-in kind of guy, and boy does he have style.

  Here's an example, part of a review for The Evil Dead: "Five teenagers become Spam-in-a-cabin when they head for the woods and start turning into flesh-eating zombies. Asks a lot of moral questions, like 'If your girlfriend turns zombie on you, what do you do? Carve her into itty-bitty pieces or look the other way?'

  One girl gets raped by the woods. Not in the woods. By the woods. The only way to kill zombies:

  Total dismemberment. This one could make Saw eligible for the Disney Channel."

  Single-handedly, with that wild column of his-which not only reports on movies, but on the good times and bad times of Joe Bob himself-he has given the drive-in a new mystique. Or to be more exact, made the non-drive-in goers aware of it, and reminded the rest of us just how much fun the outdoor picture show can be.

  Joe Bob's popularity has even birthed a yearly Drive-in Movie Festival--somewhat sacrilegiously held indoors this year-that has been attended in the past by such guests as Roger Corman, King Of The B's, and this year by "Big Steve," known to some as Stephen King. (If you movie watchers don't recognize the name, he's a writer-feller) "Big Steve" was given the solemn honor of leading off the 1984 ceremonies with Joe Bob's "drive-in oath" and arrived wearing his JOE BOB BRIGGS IS A PERSONAL FRIEND OF MINE T-shirt.

  The festival has also sported such features as The Custom Car Rally, Ralph the Diving Pig (sure hate I missed the boy's act), the stars of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Miss Custom Body of 1983, "unofficial custom bodies" and Joe Bob his own self. And last, but certainly not least, along with this chic gathering, a number of new movies like Bloodsuckers From Outer Space and Future-Kill made their world premieres.

  What more could you ask from Joe Bob?

  Kill the music. Hats on.

  * * *

  The drive-ins I grew up with went by a number of names: THE APACHE, THE rim PINES, THE RIVERROAD being a few examples. And though they varied somewhat in appearance, basically they were large lots filled with speaker posts--many of which were minus their speakers, due to absent-minded patrons driving off while they were still hooked to their windows, or vandals--a concession stand, a screen at least three stories high (sometimes six), a swing, see-saw and merry go-round up front for the kiddies, all this surrounded by an ugly six-foot moon shimmering tin fence.

  They all had the same bad food at the concessions. Hot dogs that tasted like rubber hoses covered in watery mustard, popcorn indistinguishable from the cardboard containers that held it, drinks that were mostly water and ice, and candy so old the worms inside were dead either of old age or sugar diabetes.

  And they all came with the same restroom. It was as if THE APACHE, RIVERROAD and TWIN PINES were equipped with warping devices that activated the moment you stepped behind the wooden "modesty fence." Suddenly, at the speed of thought, you were whisked away to a concrete bunker with floors either so tacky your shoes stuck to it like cat hairs to honey, or so flooded in water you needed skis to make it to the urinals or the john, the latter of which was forever doorless, the hinges hanging like frayed tendons. And both of these public conveniences were invariably stuffed full of floating cigarette butts, candy wrappers and used prophylactics.

  Rather than take my life into my own hands in these rather seedy enclosures, I often took my chances battling constipation or urinating into a Coke cup and pouring the prize out the window. The idea of standing over one of those odoriferous urinals--and there was always this item of crayoned wisdom above them: REMEMBER, CRABS CAN POLE VAULT--and having some ugly, fuzzy, multi-legged and ravenous leap out on me was forever foremost in my mind. Nor did I find those initialed and graffiti-carved seats-when there were seats at all-the more inviting. I figured that no matter how precariously I might perch myself, some nameless horror from the pits of sewerdom would find access to that part of my anatomy I most prized.

  In spite of these unpleasantries, come Saturday night, a bunch of us guys--the ones who couldn't get dates--would cruise over there, stopping a quarter mile outside the place to stuff one member of our party m the trunk, this always the fellow who had the least money to pool toward entrance fees, having blown it on beer, Playboy magazines and prophylactics that would certainly rot in his wallet. Then we would drive up to the pay booth and promptly be asked, "Got anybody in the trunk?"

  Obviously we were a suspicious looking lot, but we never admitted to a body in the trunk, and for the same reason we were never forced to open up. After we had emphatically denied that we would even consider it, and the ticket seller had eyed us over for a while, trying to break our resolve, he would take our money and we would drive inside.

  My Plymouth Savoy was rigged so that the man in the trunk could push the back seat from the inside, and it would fold down, allowing our unthrifty, and generally greasy, contortionist to join our party.

  That Savoy, what a car, what a drive-in machine. What a death trap. It took a two man crew to drive it. The gas pedal always stuck to the floor, and when you came whizzing up to a red light you had to jerk your foot off the gas, go for the brake and yell "Pedal." Then your copilot would dive for the floorboards, grab the pedal and yank it up just in time to keep us from plowing broadside into an unsuspecting motorist. However, that folding back seat made the sticking pedal seem like a minor liability, and the Savoy was a popular auto with the drive-in set.

  The drive-in gave me many firsts. The first sexual action I ever witnessed was there, and I don't mean on the screen. At the APACHE the front row was somewhat on an incline, and if the car in front of you was parked just right, and you were lying on the roof of your car, any activity going on in the back seat of the front row car was quite visible to you, providing it was a moonlit night and the movie playing was a particularly bright one.

  The first sexual activity that included me, also occurred at a drive-in, but that is a personal matter, and enough said.

  The first truly vicious fight I ever saw was at the RIVERROAD A fellow wearing a cowboy hat got into some kind of a shindig with a hatless fellow right in front of my Savoy. I've no idea what started the fight, but it was a good one, matched only by a live Championship Wrestling match at the Cottonbowl.

  Whatever the beef, the fellow with the hat was the sharper of the two, as he had him a three foot length of two-by-four, and all the other fellow had was a bag of popcorn. Even as the zombies of The Night of the Living Dead shuffled across the screen, The Hat laid a lick on Hatless's noggin that sounded like a beaver's tail slapping water. Popcorn flew and the fight was on.

  The Hat got Hatless by the lapel and proceeded to knock knots on his head faster than you could count them, and though Hatl
ess was game as all-get-out, he couldn't fight worth a damn. His arms flew over The Hat's shoulders and slapped his back like useless whips of spaghetti, and all the while he just kept making The Hat madder by calling him names and making rude accusations about the man's family tree and what members of it did to one another when the lights were out.

  For a while there, The Hat was as busy as the lead in a samurai movie, but finally the rhythm of his blows--originally akin to a Ginger Baker drum solo-died down, and this indicated to me that he was getting tired, and had I been Hatless, that would have been my cue to scream sharply once, then flop at The Hat's feet like a dying fish, and finally pretend to go belly up right there in the lot. But his boy either had the I.Q. of a can of green beans, or was in such a near-comatose state from the beating, he didn't have the good sense to shut up. In fact his language became so vivid, The Hat found renewed strength and delivered his blows in such close proximity that the sound of wood to skull resembled the angry rattling of a diamond back snake.

  Finally, Hatless tried to wrestle The Hat to the ground and then went tumbling over my hood, shamelessly knocking loose my prized hood ornament, a large, inflight swan that lit up when the lights were on, and ripping off half of The Hat's cowboy shirt in the process.

  A bunch of drive-in personnel showed up then and tried to separate the boys.

  That's when the chili really hit the fan. There were bodies flying all over that lot as relatives and friends of the original brawlers suddenly dealt themselves in. One guy got crazy and ripped a speaker and wire smooth off a post and went at anyone and everybody with it. And he was good too. Way he whipped that baby about made Bruce Lee and his nunchukas look like a third grade carnival act.