Stories (2011)

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I walked with him to the front door, and about the time we got there, a young woman, his wife, of course, opened the screen and looked out. She wore a tight green halter top that exposed a beautiful brown belly and a belly button that looked as if it had been made for licking. She had on white shorts and thongs. Her black hair was tied back, and some of it had slipped out of the tie and was falling over her forehead and around her ears, and it looked soft and sensual. In fact, she was quite the looker.

  It wasn’t that her face was all that perfect, but it was soft and filled with big brown eyes, and she had those kind of lips that look as if they’ve been bruised and swollen. But not too much. Just enough to make you want to put your lips on them, to maybe soothe the pain.

  "Oh, hi," she said.

  "Hi," I said.

  Jim introduced us. Her name was Sharon.

  "I’ve got some lemonade next door, if you two would like to come over and share it," I said. "Just made it."

  "Well, yeah," said Jim. "I’d like that. I’m hot as a pistol."

  "I guess so," said the girl, and I saw Jim throw her a look. A sort of, hey, don’t be rude kind of look. If she saw the look, she gave no sign of it.

  As we walked over to my house, I said, "You folks been married long?"

  "Not long," James said. "How long, honey?"

  "Eighteen months."

  "Well, congratulations," I said. "Newlyweds."

  We sat out on the patio and drank the lemonade, and James did most of the talking. He wanted to be a lawyer, and Sharon was working at some cafe in town putting him through. He tried to talk like he was really complimenting her, and I think he was, but I could tell Sharon wasn’t feeling complimented. There was something about her silence that said a lot. It said, Look what I’ve got myself into. Married this chatterbox who wants to be a lawyer and can’t make a dollar ‘cause he’s got to study, so I’ve got to work, and law school isn’t any hop, skip and a jump. We’re talking years of tips and pinches on the ass, and is this guy worth it anyhow?

  She said all that and more without so much as opening her mouth. When we finished off the lemonade, James got up and said he had to finish the lawn.

  "I’ll sit here a while," Sharon said. "You go on and mow."

  Kevin looked at her, then he looked at me and made a smile. "Sure," he said to her: "We’ll eat some lunch after a while."

  "I ate already," she said. "Get you a sandwich, something out of the box."

  "Sure," he said, and went back to mow.

  As he went, I noticed his back was red from the sun. I said, "You ought to tell him to get some lotion on. Look at his back."

  She swiveled in her chair and looked, turned back to me, said, "He’ll find out soon enough he ought to wear lotion. You got anything stronger than lemonade?"

  I went in the house, got a couple of beers and a bottle of Jack Daniels, and some glasses. We drank the beers out on the veranda, then, as it turned hotter, we came inside and sat on the couch and drank the whisky. While James’ mower droned on, we talked about this and that, but not really about anything. You know what I mean. Just small talk that’s so small it’s hardly talk.

  After about an hour, I finally decided what we were really talking about, and I put my hand out and touched her hand on the couch and she didn’t move it. "Maybe you ought to go on back."

  "You want me to."

  "That’s the problem, I don’t want you to."

  "I just met you."

  "I know. That’s another reason you ought to go back to your husband."

  "He’s a boring sonofabitch. You know that. I thought he was all right when we met. Good looking and all, but he’s as dull as a cheap china plate, and twice as shallow. I’m nineteen years old. I don’t want to work in any goddamn cafe for years while he gets a job where he can wear a suit and get people divorces. I want to get my divorce now."

  She slid over and we kissed. She was soft and pliant, and there were things about her that were better than Billie Sue, and for a moment I didn’t think of Billie at all. I kissed her for a long time and touched her, and finally the mower stopped.

  "Goddamn it," she said. "That figures."

  She touched me again, and in the right place. She got up and retied her halter top, which I had just managed to loosen.

  "I’m sorry," I said. "I let this get out of hand."

  "Hell, I’m the one sorry it didn’t get completely out of hand. But it will. We’re neighbors."

  I tried to avoid Sharon after that, and managed to do so for a couple days. I even thought about trying to patch things up with Billie Sue, but just couldn’t. My goddamn pride.

  On the fourth night after they’d moved in, I woke up to the sound of dishes breaking. I got out of bed and went into the living room and looked out the window at my neighbor’s house, the source of the noise. It was Sharon yelling and tossing things that had awakened me. The yelling went on for a time. I got a beer out of the box and sat down with a chair pulled up at the window and watched. There was a light on in their living room window, and now and then their shadows would go across the light, then move away.

  Finally I heard the front door slam, and Kevin went out, got in their car and drove away. He hadn’t so much as departed when Sharon came out of the house and started across the yard toward my place.

  I moved the chair back to its position and sat down on the couch and waited. She knocked on the door. Hard. I let her knock for a while, then I got up and answered the door. I was in my underwear when I answered, but of course, I didn’t care. She was in a short black nightie, no shoes, and she didn’t care either.

  I let her in. She said, "We had a fight. I hope the sonofabitch doesn’t come back."

  She took hold of me then, and we kissed, and then we made our way to the bedroom, and it was sweet, the way she loved me, and finally, near morning, we fell asleep.

  When I awoke it was to Kevin’s voice. In our haste, we had left the front door open, and I guess he’d seen the writing on the wall all along, and now he was in the house, standing over the bed yelling.

  Sharon sat up in bed, and the sheet fell off her naked breast and she yelled back. I sat up amazed, more than embarrassed. I had to learn to lock my doors, no matter what.

  This yelling went on for a time, lots of cussing, then Kevin grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her out of the bed and onto the floor.

  I jumped up then and hit him, hit him hard enough to knock him down. He sat up and opened his mouth and a tooth fell out.

  "Oh my God, Kevin," Sharon said. She slid across the floor and took his head in her hands and kissed his cheek. "Oh, baby, are you all right?"

  "Yeah, I’m all right," he said.

  I couldn’t believe it. "What the hell?" I said.

  "You didn’t have to hit him," Sharon said. "You’re older, stronger. You hurt him."

  I started to argue, but by that time Kevin was up and Sharon had her arm around him. She said, "I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry. Let’s go home."

  Sharon pulled on her nightie, and away they went. I picked up the panties she’d left and put them over my head, trying to look as foolish as I felt. They smelled good though.

  Dumb asshole, I said to myself. How many times have they done this? There are strange people in this world. Some get their kicks from wearing leather, being tied down and pissed on, you name it, but this pair has a simpler method of courtship. They fight with each other, break up, then Sharon flirts and sleeps around until James discovers her, then they yell at each other and he forgives her, and he’s all excited to think she’s been in bed with another man, and she’s all excited to have been there, and they’re both turned on and happy.

  Whatever. I didn’t want any part of it.

  That night I decided to make up with Billie Sue. I got my shovel out of the garage and went out and dug her up from under the rose bushes. I got her out of there and brushed the dirt off and carried her inside. I washed her yellow body off in the sink. I fondled her bill and told
her I was sorry. I was so sorry I began to cry. I just couldn’t help myself. I told her I’d never bury her in the dirt again.

  I filled the bath tub with water and put Billie Sue in there and watched her float. I turned her in the water so that she could watch me undress. I stripped off my clothes slowly and got in the tub with her. She floated and bobbed toward me, and I picked her up and squeezed her and dirt puffed from the noise maker in her beak and the sound she made was not quite a squeak or a quack.

  I laughed. I squeezed her hard, the way she likes it, the way she’s always liked it since the first time my mother gave her to me when I was a child. I squeezed her many times. I floated her in the tub with me, moved her around my erection, which stuck up out of the water like a stick in a pond, and I knew then what I should have always known. Billie Sue was the love of my life.

  Perhaps we were not too unlike that silly couple next door. We fought too. We fought often. We had broken up before. I had buried her under the rose bushes before, though never for this long. But now, holding her, squeezing her hard, listening to her quack, I knew never again. I began to laugh and laugh and laugh at what she was saying. She could be like that when she wanted. So funny. So forgiving.

  Oh, Billie Sue. Billie Sue. My little rubber duckie poo.

  NAKED ANGEL

  Deep in the alley, lit by the beam of the patrolman’s flashlight, she looked like a naked angel in midflight, sky-swimming toward a dark heaven.

  One arm reached up as if to pull air. Her head was lifted and her shoulder-length blond hair was as solid as a helmet. Her face was smooth and snow white. Her eyes were blue ice. Her body was well shaped. One sweet knee was lifted like she had just pushed off from the earth. There was a birthmark on it that looked like a dog paw. She was frozen in a large block of ice, a thin pool of water spreading out below it. At the bottom of the block, the ice was cut in a serrated manner.

  Patrolman Adam Coats pushed his cop hat back on his head and looked at her and moved the light around. He could hear the boy beside him breathing heavily.

  “She’s so pretty,” the boy said. “And she ain’t got no clothes on.”

  Coats looked down at the boy. Ten, twelve at the most, wearing a cap and ragged clothes, shoes that looked as if they were one scuff short of coming apart.

  “What’s your name, son?” Coats asked.

  “Tim,” said the boy.

  “Whole name.”

  “Tim Trevor.”

  “You found her like this? No one else was around?”

  “I come through here on my way home.”

  Coats flicked off the light and turned to talk to the boy in the dark. “It’s a dead-end alley.”

  “There’s a ladder.”

  Coats popped the light on again, poked it in the direction the boy was pointing. There was a wall of red brick there, and, indeed, there was a metal ladder fastened up the side of it, all the way to the top.

  “You go across the roof?”

  “Yes, sir, there’s a ladder on the other side, too, goes down to the street. I come through here and saw her.”

  “Your parents know you’re out this late?”

  “Don’t have any. My sister takes care of me. She’s got to work, though, so, you know—”

  “You run around some?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You stay with me. I’ve got to get to a call box, then you got to get home.”

  ____________________

  Detective Galloway came down the alley with Coats, who led the way, his flashlight bouncing its beam ahead of them. Coats thought it was pretty odd they were about to look at a lady in ice and they were sweating. It was hot in Los Angeles. The Santa Ana winds were blowing down from the mountains like dog breath. It made everything sticky, made you want to strip out of your clothes, find the ocean, and take a dip.

  When they came to the frozen woman, Galloway said, “She’s in ice, all right.”

  “You didn’t believe me?”

  “I believed you, but I thought you were wrong,” Galloway said. “Something crazy as this, I thought maybe you had gone to drinking.”

  Coats laughed a little.

  “Odd birthmark,” Galloway said.

  Coats nodded. “I couldn’t figure if this was murder, vice, or God dropped an ice cube.”

  “Lot of guys would have liked to have put this baby in their tea,” Galloway said.

  The ice had begun to melt a little, and the angel had shifted slightly.

  Galloway studied the body and said, “She probably didn’t climb in that ice all by herself, so I think murder will cover it.”

  When he finished up his paperwork at the precinct, Coats walked home and up a creaky flight of stairs to his apartment. Apartment. The word did more justice to the place than it deserved. Inside, Coats stripped down to his underwear, and, out of habit, carried his holstered gun with him to the bathroom.

  A few years back a doped-up goon had broken into the apartment while Coats lay sleeping on the couch. There was a struggle. The intruder got the gun, and though Coats disarmed him and beat him down with it, he carried it with him from room to room ever since. He did this based on experience and what his ex-wife called trust issues.

  Sitting on the toilet, which rocked precariously, Coats thought about the woman. It wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t a detective. He didn’t solve murders. But still, he thought about her through his toilet and through his shower, and he thought about her after he climbed into bed. How in the world had she come to that? And who had thought of such a thing, freezing her body in a block of ice and leaving it in a dark alley? Then there was the paw print. It worried him, like an itchy scar.

  It was too hot to sleep. He got up and poured water in a glass and came back and splashed it around on the bedsheet. He opened a couple of windows over the street. It was louder but cooler that way. He lay back down.

  And then it hit him.

  The dog paw.

  He sat up in bed and reached for his pants.

  ____________________

  Downtown at the morgue the night attendant, Bowen, greeted him with a little wave from behind his desk. Bowen was wearing a white smock covered in red splotches that looked like blood but weren’t. There was a messy meatball sandwich on a brown paper wrapper in front of him, half eaten. He had a pulp-Western magazine in his hands. He laid it on the desk and showed Coats some teeth.

  “Hey, Coats, you got some late hours, don’t you? No uniform? You make detective?”

  “Not hardly,” Coats said, pushing his hat up on his forehead. “I’m off the clock. How’s the reading?”

  “The cowboys are winning. You got nothing better to do this time of morning than come down to look at the meat?”

  “The lady in ice.”

  Bowen nodded. “Yeah. Damnedest thing ever.”

  “Kid found her. Came and got me,” Coats said, and he gave Bowen the general story.

  “How the hell did she get there?” Bowen said. “And why?”

  “I knew that,” Coats said, “I might be a detective. May I see the body?”

  Bowen slipped out from behind the desk and Coats followed. They went through another set of double doors and into a room lined with big drawers in the wall. The air had a tang of disinfectant about it. Bowen stopped at a drawer with the number 28 on it and rolled it out.

  “Me and another guy, we had to chop her out with ice picks. They could have set her out front on the sidewalk and it would have melted quick enough. Even a back room with a drain. But no, they had us get her out right away. I got a sore arm from all that chopping.”

  “That’s the excuse you use,” Coats said. “But I bet the sore arm is from something else.”

  “Oh, that’s funny,” Bowen said, and patted the sheet-covered body on the head. The sheet was damp. Where her head and breasts and pubic area and feet pushed against it there were dark spots.

  Bowen pulled down the sheet, said, “Only time I get to see something like that and she’s de
ad. That don’t seem right.”

  Coats looked at her face, so serene. “Roll it on back,” he said.

  Bowen pulled the sheet down below her knees. Coats looked at the birthmark. The dog paw. It had struck a chord when he saw it, but he didn’t know what it was right then. Now he was certain.

  “Looks like a puppy with a muddy foot stepped on her,” Bowen said.

  “Got an identity on her yet?” Coats asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Then I can help you out. Her name is Megdaline Jackson, unless she got married, changed her last name. She’s somewhere around twenty-four.”

  “You know her?”

  “When she was a kid, kind of,” Coats said. “It was her older sister I knew. That birthmark, where I had seen it, came to me after I got home. Her sister had a much smaller one like it, higher up on the leg. It threw me because I knew she wasn’t the older sister, Ali. Too young. But then I remembered the kid, and that she’d be about twenty-four now. She was just a snot-nosed little brat then, but it makes sense she would have inherited that mark same as Ali.”

  “Considering you seem to have done some leg work in the past, that saves some leg work of another kind.”

  “That ice block,” Coats said. “Seen anything like it?”

  “Nope. Closest thing to it was we had a couple of naked dead babes in alleys lately. But not in blocks of ice.”

  “All right,” Coats said. “That’ll do.”

  Bowen pulled the sheet back, said, “Okay I turn in who this is, now that you’ve identified her?”

  Coats studied the girl’s pale, smooth face. “Sure. Any idea how she died?”

  “No wounds on her that I can see, but we got to cut her up a bit to know more.”

  “Let me know what you find?”

  “Sure,” Bowen said. “But that five dollars I owe you for poker—”

  “Forget about it.”

  ____________________

  Coats drove to an all-night diner and had coffee and breakfast about the time the sun was crawling up. He bought a paper off the rack in the diner, sat in a booth, and read it and drank more coffee until it was firm daylight; by that time he had drank enough so he thought he could feel his hair crawling across his scalp. He drove over where Ali lived.