Stories (2011)

by Joe R. Lansdale

  While this went on, a fellow in the car to the right of us, oblivious to the action on the lot, wrapped up in Night of the Living Dead, and probably polluted on Thunderbird wine, was yelling in favor of the zombie, "Eat 'em, eat 'em!"

  Finally the fight moved on down the lot and eventually dissipated. About half an hour later I looked down the row and saw Hatless crawling out from under a white Cadillac festooned with enough curb feelers to make it look like a centipede. He sort of went on his hands and knees for a few yards, rose to a squatting run, and disappeared into a winding maze of automobiles. Them drive-in folks, what kidders.

  * * *

  The drive-in is also the source for my darkest fantasy--I refrain from calling it a nightmare, because after all these years it has become quite familiar, a sort of grim friend. For years now I've been waiting for this particular dream to continue, take up a new installment, but it always ends on the same enigmatic notes.

  Picture this: a crisp summer night in Texas. A line of cars winding from the pay booth of a drive-in out to the highway, then alongside it for a quarter mile or better Horns are honking, children are shouting, mosquitoes are buzzing. I'm in a pickup with two friends who we'll call Dave and Bob. Bob is driving. On the rack behind us is a twelve gauge shotgun and a baseball bat, "a badass persuader." A camper is attached to the truck bed, and in the camper we've got lawn chairs, coolers of soft drinks and beer, enough junk food to send a hypoglycemic to the stars.

  What a night this is. Dusk to Dawn features, two dollars a carload. Great movies like The Tool Box Murders, Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, Zombies and I Dismember Mama.

  We finally inch our way past the pay booth and dart inside. It's a magnificent drive-in, like the 145, big enough for 3,000 cars or better Empty paper cups, popcorn boxes, chili and mustard-stained hot dog wrappers blow gently across the lot like paper tumbleweeds. And there, standing stark-white against a jet-black sky is a portal into another dimension; the six story screen.

  We settle back on a place near the front, about five rows back. Out come the lawn chairs, the coolers and the eats. Before the first flick sputters on and Cameron Mitchell opens that ominous box of tools, we're through an economy size bag of "tater" chips, a quart of Coke and a half a sack of chocolate cookies.

  The movie starts, time is lost as we become absorbed in the horrifyingly campy delights of Tool Box. We get to the part where Mitchell is about to use the industrial nailer on a young lady he's been watching shower, and suddenly--there is a light, so red and bright the images on the screen fade. Looking up, we see a great, crimson comet hurtling towards us. Collision with the drive-in is imminent Or so it seems, then, abruptly the comet smiles. Just splits down the middle to show a mouth full of grinning, jagged teeth not too unlike a power saw blade. It seems that instead of going out of life with a bang, we may go out with a crunch. The mouth gets wider, and the comet surprises us by whipping up, dragging behind it a fiery tail that momentarily blinds us.

  When the crimson washes from our eyeballs and we look around, all is as before.

  At first glance anyway. Because closer observation reveals that everything outside the drive-in, the highway, the trees, the tops of houses and buildings that had been visible above the surrounding tin fence, are gone. There is only blackness, and we're talking BLACKNESS here, the kind of dark that makes fudge pudding look pale. It's as if the drive-in has been ripped up by the roots and miraculously stashed in limbo somewhere. But if so, we are not injured in any way, and the electricity still works. There are lights from the concession stand, and the projector continues to throw the image of Tool Box on the screen.

  About this time a guy in a station wagon, fat wife beside him, three kids in the back, panics, guns the car to life and darts for the EXIT. His lights do not penetrate the blackness, and as the car hits it, inch by inch it is consumed by the void. A moment later nothing.

  A cowboy with a hatful of toothpicks and feathers gets out of his pickup and goes over there. He stands on the tire-burst spears, extends his arm . . . And never in the history of motion pictures or real life have I heard such a scream.

  He flops back, his arm gone from the hand to elbow. He rolls on the ground. By the time we get over there the rest of his arm is collapsing, as if bone and tissue have gone to mush. His hat settles down on a floppy mess that a moment before was his head. His whole body folds in and oozes out of his clothes in what looks like sloppy vomit. I carefully reach out and take hold of one of his boots, upend it, a loathsome mess pours out and strikes the ground with a plopping sound.

  We are trapped in the drive-in.

  Time goes by, no one knows how much. It's like the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories about Pellucidar. Without the sun or moon to judge by, time does not exist.

  Watches don't help either. They've all stopped. We sleep when sleepy, eat when hungry. And the movies flicker on. No one even suggests cutting them off. Their light and those of the concession stand are the only lights, and should we extinguish them, we might be lost forever in a void to match the one outside of the drive-in fence.

  At first people are great. The concession folks bring out food. Those of us who have brought food, share it. Everyone is fed.

  But as time passes, people are not so great. The concession stand people lock up and post guards. My friends and I are down to our last kernels of popcorn and we're drinking the ice and water slush left in the coolers. The place smells of human waste, as the restrooms have ceased to function altogether. Gangs are forming, even cults based on the movies. There is a Zombie Cult that stumbles and staggers in religious mockery of the "dead" on the screen. And with the lack of food an acute problem, they have taken to human sacrifice and cannibalism.

  Bob takes down the shotgun. I take down the baseball bat. Dave has taken to wearing a hunting knife he got out of the glove box.

  Rape and murder are wholesale, and even if you've a mind to, there's not much you can do about it. You've got to protect your little stretch of ground, your automobile, your universe. But against our will we are forced into the role of saviours when a young girl runs against our truck while fleeing her mother, father and older brother. Bob jerks her inside the truck, holds the family-who are a part of the Zombie Cult and run as if they are cursed with a case of the rickets--at bay with the shotgun. They start to explain that as the youngest member of the family, it's only right that she give herself up to them to provide sustenance. A chill runs up my hack. Not so much because it is a horrible thing they suggest, but because I too am hungry, and for a moment they seem to make good sense.

  Hunger devours the family's common sense, and the father leaps forward. The shotgun rocks against Bob's shoulder and the man goes down, hit in the head, the way you have to kill zombies. Then the mother is on me, teeth and nails. I swing the bat and down she goes, thrashing at my feet like a headless chicken.

  Trembling, I hold the bat before me. It is caked with blood and brains. I fall back against the truck and throw up. On the screen the zombies are feasting on bodies from an exploded pickup.

  Rough for the home team. Time creeps by. We are weak. No food. No water. We find ourselves looking at the rotting corpses outside our pickup far too long. We catch the young girl eating their remains, but we do nothing. Somehow, it doesn't seem so bad. In fact, it looks inviting. Food right outside the truck, on the ground, ready for the taking.

  But when it seems we are going to join her, there is a red light in the sky. The comet is back, and once again it swoops down, collision looks unavoidable, it smiles with its jagged teeth, peels up and whips its bright tail. And when the glow burns away from our eyes, it is daylight and there is a world outside the drive-in.

  A sort of normalcy returns. Engines are tried. Batteries have been unaffected by the wait. Automobiles start up and begin moving toward the EXIT in single file, as if nothing has ever happened.

  Outside, the highway we come to is the same, except the yellow line has faded and the concrete has buckled in
spots. But nothing else is the same. On either side of the highway is a great, dark jungle. It looks like something out of a lost world movie.

  As we drive along--we're about the fifth automobile in line--we see something move up ahead, to the right. A massive shape steps out of the foliage and onto the highway. It is a Tyrannosaurus Rex covered in bat-like parasites, their wings opening and closing slowly, like contented butterflies sipping nectar from a flower.

  The dinosaur does nothing. It gives our line of metal bugs the once over, crosses the highway and is enveloped by the jungle again.

  * * *

  The caravan starts up once more. We drive onward into this prehistoric world split by a highway out of our memories.

  I'm riding shotgun and I glance in the wing-mirror on my side. In it I can see the drive-in screen, and though the last movie should still be running, I can't make out any movement there. It looks like nothing more than an oversized slice of Wonder Bread.

  Fade out.

  That's the dream. And even now when I go to a drive-in, be it the beat up LUMBERJACK here with its cheap, tin screen, or anywhere else, I find myself occasionally glancing at the night sky, momentarily fearing that out of the depths of space there will come a great, red comet that will smile at me with a mouthful of sawblade teeth and whip its flaming tail.

  * * *

  Postscript:

  The part of this article dealing with my continuing dream, eventually became my novel, The Drive-In: A B Movie with Blood and Popcorn, and later led to a sequel, The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels, and a third is in the mill, due whenever I get around to finishing it.

  As to another matter, I have to reveal how poor a prophet I was concerning matters pertaining to the drive-in.

  Almost immediately after I wrote my article, Joe Bob Briggs (John Bloom), was fired from The Dallas Times Herald. This was due to a scathing bit of inspired satire he wrote in his column. Satire that was taken literally, and led to him branching out on his own to become even more popular and successful than ever before, not only column-wise, but in books, and as a film-host. He also got a few bit acting parts out of it. So, sometimes, there is justice.

  But for the drive-in, alas, there was no justice. Not even in Texas.

  It wasn't making a comeback after all. It was merely screaming a death scream so loud I thought it was the voice of triumph. Video and cable gave it the coup de grace, and I have not driven past a drive-in m years that isn't closed or has been turned into some other enterprise, like THE REDLAND DRIVE-IN near me. It tried to hang on by showing porno movies, then finally, just said "the hell with it," and became a metal scrap yard. Probably best. It lost the spirit of the drive-in long before it ceased being one.

  THE LUMBERJACK, formerly down the road from me, is also gone, and a new jail stan4s on the spot where many a lover got their first dose of wet romance, or perhaps their first dose of clap. Where once cars rocked, cons now pull their meat come late at night, or spend their time trying to figure on that big jail break.

  The pole and sign that once held the humble LUMBERJACK drive-in marquee is still there, but instead of reading Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Night of the Living Dead, it announces that this is the local jail, and buddy, ain't nothing show'n.

  Kida sad, really.

  But hey, the spirit of the drive-in is still with us. Even if it is in video boxes, or weekends at festivals celebrating the drive-in.

  Joe Bob was right. "The drive-in will never die." Not really.

  So, rent a low-budget gem. Turn out the lights. Get some popcorn. Get your best girl or guy, and one of you sit on the left side of the couch like you would if you were in the car, and the other, well, slide on over there close, and when you get to the slow part, like where the scientist is talking some bull about how the Z-ray works, maybe you could neck a little or do something a little more ambitious. Because, hell, even if you are indoors, if you've got the right movie on the tube, got the right state of mind about you, you're at the goddamned drive-in.

  Enjoy.

  And remember, when it comes to prophecy, Nostradamus, I'm not.

  SIX-FINGER JACK

  Jack had six fingers. That’s how Big O, the big, fat, white, straw-hatted son of a bitch, was supposed to know he was dead. Maybe by some real weird luck a guy could kill some other black man with six fingers, cut off his hand, and bring it in and claim it belonged to Jack, but not likely. So he put the word out that whoever killed Jack and cut off his paw and brought it back was gonna get $100,000 and a lot of goodwill.

  I went out there after Jack just like a lot of other fellas, plus one woman I knew of, Lean Mama Tootin’, who was known for shotgun shootin’ and ice-pick work.

  But the thing I had on them was I was screwing Jack’s old lady. Jack didn’t know it, of course. Jack was a bad dude, and it wouldn’t have been smart to let him know my bucket was in his well. Nope. Wouldn’t have been smart for me, or for Jack’s old lady. If he’d known that before he had to make a run for it, might have been good to not sleep, ’cause he might show up and be most unpleasant. I can be unpleasant too, but I prefer when I’m on the stalk, not when I’m being stalked. It sets the dynamics all different.

  You see, I’m a philosophical kind of guy.

  Thing was, though, I’d been laying the pipeline to his lady for about six weeks, because Jack had been on the run ever since he’d tried to muscle in on Big O’s whores and take over that business, found out he couldn’t. That wasn’t enough, he took up with Big O’s old lady like it didn’t matter none, but it did. Rumor was Big O put the old lady under about three feet of concrete out by his lake-boat stalls, buried her in the hole while she was alive, hands tied behind her back, staring up at that concrete mixer truck dripping out the goo, right on top of her naked self.

  Jack hears this little tidbit of information, he quit fooling around and made with the jackrabbit, took off lickety-split, so fast he almost left a vapor trail. It’s one thing to fight one man, or two, but to fight a whole organization, not so easy. Especially if that organization belongs to Big O.

  Loodie, Jack’s personal woman, was a hot flash number who liked to have her ashes hauled, and me, I’m a tall, lean fellow with a good smile and a willing attitude. Loodie was ready to lose Jack because he had a bad temper and a bit of a smell. He was short on baths and long on cologne. Smellgood juice on top of his stinky smell, she said, created a kind of funk that would make a skunk roll over dead and cause a wild hyena to leave the body where it lay.

  She, on the other hand, was like sweet, wet sin dipped in coffee and sugar with a dash of cinnamon; God’s own mistress with a surly attitude, which goes to show even He likes a little bit of the devil now and then.

  She’d been asked about Jack by them who wanted to know. Bad folks with guns, and a need for dough. But she lied, said she didn’t know where he was. Everyone believed her because she talked so bad about Jack. Said stuff about his habits, about how he beat her, how bad he was in bed, and how he stunk. It was convincing stuff to everyone.

  But me.

  I knew that woman was a liar, because I knew her whole family, and they was the sort, like my daddy used to say, would rather climb a tree and lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth and be given free flowers. Lies flowed through their veins as surely as blood.

  She told me about Jack one night while we were in bed, right after we had toted the water to the mountain. We’re laying there looking at the ceiling, like there’s gonna be manna from heaven, watching the defective light from the church across the way flash in and out and bounce along the wall, and she says in that burnt-toast voice of hers, “You split that money, I’ll tell you where he is.”

  “You wanna split it?”

  “Naw, I’m thinkin’ maybe you could keep half and I could give the other half to the cat.”

  “You don’t got a cat.”

  “Well, I got another kind of cat, and that cat is one you like to pet.”

  “You’re right ther
e,” I said. “Tellin’ me where he is, that’s okay, but I still got to do the groundwork. Hasslin’ with that dude ain’t no easy matter, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you. So, me doin’ what I’m gonna have to do, that’s gonna be dangerous as trying to play with a daddy lion’s balls. So, that makes me worth more than half, and you less than half.”

  “You’re gonna shoot him when he ain’t lookin’, and you know it.”

  “I still got to take the chance.”

  She reached over to the nightstand, nabbed up a pack, shook out a cigarette, lit it with a cheap lighter, took a deep drag, coughed out a puff, said, “Split, or nothin’.”

  “Hell, honey, you know I’m funnin’,” I said. “I’ll split it right in half with you.”

  I was lying through my teeth. She may have figured such, but she figured with me she at least had a possibility, even if it was as thin as the edge of playing card.

  She said, “He’s done gone deep into East Texas. He’s over in Gladewater. Drove there in his big black Cadillac that he had a chop shop turn blue.”

  “So he drove over in a blue Caddy, not a black one,” I said. “I mean, if it was black, and he had it painted blue, it ain’t black no more. It’s blue.”

  “Aren’t you one for the details, and at a time like this,” she said, and rubbed my leg with her foot. “But technically, baby, you are so correct.”

  That night Loodie laid me out a map written in pencil on a brown paper sack, made me swear I was gonna split the money with her again. I told her what she wanted to hear. Next morning, I started over to Gladewater.

  Jack was actually in a place outside of the town, along the Sabine River, back in the bottom land where the woods was still thick, down a little trail that wound around and around, to a cabin Loodie said was about the size of a postage stamp, provided the stamp had been scissor-trimmed.