Stories (2011)

by Joe R. Lansdale

  He had two drinks. Then three. It was nearly dark by the time he came out of the bar and wobbled out to his car. He started it up and drove out onto the highway right in front of a speeding semi.

  The truck hit Longstreet's car and turned it into a horseshoe and sent it spinning across the road, into a telephone pole. The car ricocheted off the pole, back onto the road and the semi, which was slamming hard on its brakes, clipped it again. This time Longstreet and his car went through a barbed wire fence and spun about in a pasture and stopped near a startled bull.

  The bull looked in the open car window and sniffed and went away. The semi driver parked and got out and ran over and looked in the window himself.

  Longstreet's brains were all over the car and his face had lost a lot of definition. His mouth was dripping bloody teeth. He had fallen with his head against an open bible. Later, when he was hauled off, the bible had to go with him. Blood had plastered it to the side of his head, and when the ambulance arrived, the blood had clotted and the bible was even better attached; way it was on there, you would have thought it was some kind of bizarre growth Longstreet had been born with. Doctors at the hospital wouldn't mess with it. What was the point. Fucker was dead and they didn't know him.

  At the funeral home they hosed his head down with warm water and yanked the bible off his face and threw it away.

  Later on, well after the funeral, Longstreet's widow inherited what was left of Longstreet's car, which she gave to the junkyard. She burned the bibles and all of Longstreet's clothes. The box with the little box in it she opened and examined. She couldn't figure what was behind the glass. She used a screw driver to get the glass off, tweezers to pinch out the hair.

  She held the hair in the light, twisted it this way and that. She couldn't make out what it was. A bug leg, maybe. She tossed the hair in the commode and flushed it. She put the little box in the big box and threw it in the trash.

  Later yet, she collected quite a bit of insurance money from Longstreet's death. She bought herself a new car and some see-through panties and used the rest to finance her lover's plans to open a used car lot in downtown Beaumont, but it didn't work out. He used the money to finance himself and she never saw him again.

  STEPPIN' OUT, SUMMER, '68

  Buddy drank another swig of beer and when he brought the bottle down he said to Jake and Wilson, "I could sure use some pussy."

  "We could all use some," Wilson said, "problem is we don't never get any."

  "That's the way I see it too," Jake said.

  "You don't get any," Buddy said. "I get plenty, you can count on that."

  "Uh huh," Wilson said. "You talk pussy plenty good, but I don't ever see you with a date. I ain't never even seen you walking a dog, let alone a girl. You don't even have a car, so how you gonna get with a girl?"

  "That's the way I see it too," Jake said.

  "You see what you want," Buddy said. "I'm gonna be getting me a Chevy soon. I got my eye on one."

  "Yeah?" Wilson said. "What one?"

  "Drew Carrington's old crate."

  "Shit," Wilson said, "that motherfucker caught on fire at a streetlight and he run it off in the creek."

  "They got it out," Buddy said.

  "They say them flames jumped twenty feet out from under the hood before he run it off in there," Jake said.

  "Water put the fire out," Buddy said.

  "Uh huh," Wilson said, "after the motor blowed up through the hood. They found that motherfucker in a tree out back of old Maud Page's place. One of the pistons fell out of it and hit her on the head while she was picking up apples. She was in the hospital three days."

  "Yeah," Jake said. "And I hear Carrington's in Dallas now, never got better from the accident. Near drowned and some of the engine blew back into the car and hit him in the nuts, castrated him, fucked up his legs. He can't walk. He's on a wheeled board or something, got some retard that pulls him around."

  "Them's just stories," Buddy said. "Motor's still in the car. Carrington got him a job in Dallas as a mechanic. He didn't get hurt at all. Old Woman Page didn't get hit by no piston either. It missed her by a foot. Scared her so bad she had a little stroke. That's why she was in the hospital."

  "You seen the motor?" Wilson asked. "Tell me you've seen it."

  "No," Buddy said, "but I've heard about it from good sources, and they say it can be fixed."

  "Jack it up and drive another car under it," Wilson said, "it'll be all right."

  "That's the way I see it too," Jake said.

  "Listen to you two," Buddy said. "You know it all. You're real operators. I'll tell you morons one thing, I line up a little of the hole that winks and stinks, like I'm doing tonight, you won't get none of it."

  Wilson and Jake shuffled and eyed each other. An unspoken, but clear message passed between them. They had never known Buddy to actually get any, or anyone else to know of him getting any, but he had a couple of years on them, and he might have gotten some, way he talked about it, and they damn sure knew they weren't getting any, and if there was a chance of it, things had to be patched up.

  "Car like that," Wilson said, "if you worked hard enough, you might get it to run. Some new pistons or something . . . what you got lined up for tonight?"

  Buddy's face put on some importance. "I know a gal likes to do the circle, you know what I mean?"

  Wilson hated to admit it, but he didn't. "The circle?"

  "Pull the train," Buddy said. "Do the team. You know, fuck a bunch a guys, one after the other."

  "Oh," Wilson said.

  "I knew that," Jake said.

  "Yeah," Wilson said. "Yeah sure you did." Then to Buddy: "When you gonna see this gal?"

  Buddy, still important, took a swig of beer and pursed his lips and studied the afternoon sky. "Figured I'd walk on over there little after dark. It's a mile or so."

  "Say she likes to do more than one guy?" Wilson asked.

  "Way I hear it," Buddy said, "she'll do 'em till they ain't able to do. My cousin, Butch, he told me about her."

  Butch.

  The magic word. Wilson and Jake eyed each other again. There could be something in this after all. Butch was twenty, had a fast car, could play a little bit on the harmonica, bought his own beer, cussed in front of adults, and most importantly, he had been seen with women.

  Buddy continued. "Her name's Sally. Butch said she cost five dollars. He's done her a few times. Got her name off a bathroom wall."

  "She costs?" Wilson asked.

  "Think some gal's going to do us all without some money for it?" Buddy said.

  Again, an unspoken signal passed between Wilson and Jake. There could be truth in that.

  "Butch gave me her address, said her pimp sits on the front porch and you go right up and negotiate with him. Says you talk right, he might take four."

  "I don't know," Wilson said. "I ain't never paid for it."

  "Me neither," said Jake.

  "Ain't neither one of you ever had any at all, let alone paid for it," Buddy said.

  Once more, Wilson and Jake were struck with the hard and painful facts.

  Buddy looked at their faces and smiled. He took another sip of beer. "Well, you bring your five dollars, and I reckon you can tag along with me. Come by the house about dark and we'll walk over together."

  "Yeah, well, all right," Wilson said. "I wish we had a car."

  "Keep wishing," Buddy said. "You boys hang with me, we'll all be riding in Carrington's old Chevy before long. I've got some prospects."

  It was just about dark when Wilson and Jake got over to Buddy's neighborhood, which was a long street with four houses on it widely spaced. Buddy's house was the ugliest of the four. It looked ready to nod off its concrete blocks at any moment and go crashing into the unkempt yard and die in a heap of rotting lumber and squeaking nails. Great strips of graying Sherwin Williams flat-white paint hung from it in patches, giving it the appearance of having a skin disease. The roof was tin and loved the sun and pulled it
in and held it so that the interior basked in a sort of slow simmer until well after sundown. Even now, late in the day, a rush of heat came off the roof and rippled down the street like the last results of a nuclear wind.

  Wilson and Jake came up on the house from the side, not wanting to go to the door. Buddy's mother was a grumpy old bitch in a brown bathrobe and bunny rabbit slippers with an ear missing on the left foot. No one had ever seen her wearing anything else, except now and then she added a shower cap to her uniform, and no one had ever seen her, with or without the shower cap, except through the screen-wire door. She wasn't thought to leave the house. She played radio contests and had to be near the radio at strategic times throughout the day so she could phone if she knew the answer to something. She claimed to be listening for household tips, but no one had ever seen her apply any. She also watched her daughter's soap operas, though she never owned up to it. She always pretended to be reading, kept a Reader's Digest cracked so she could look over it and see the TV.

  She wasn't friendly either. Times Wilson and Jake had come over before, she'd met them at the screen door and wouldn't let them in. She wouldn't even talk to them. She'd call back to Buddy inside, "Hey, those hoodlum friends of yours are here."

  Neither Wilson or Jake could see any sort of relationship developing between them and Buddy's mother, and they had stopped trying. They hung around outside the house under the open windows until Buddy came out. There were always interesting things to hear while they waited. Wilson told Jake it was educational.

  This time, as before, they sidled up close to the house where they could hear. The television was on. A laugh track drifted out to them. That meant Buddy's sister LuWanda was in there watching. If it wasn't on, it meant she was asleep. Like her mother, she was drawing a check. Back problems plagued the family. Except for Buddy's pa. His back was good. He was in prison for sticking up a liquor store. What little check he was getting for making license plates probably didn't amount to much.

  Now they could hear Buddy's mother. Her voice had a quality that made you think of someone trying to talk while fatally injured; like she was lying under an overturned refrigerator, or had been thrown free of a car and had hit a tree.

  "LuWanda, turn that thing down. You know I got bad feet."

  "You don't listen none with your feet, Mama," LuWanda said. Her voice was kind of slow and lazy, faintly squeaky, as if hoisted from her throat by a hand-over pulley.

  "No," Buddy's mother said. "But I got to get up on my old tired feet and come in here and tell you to turn it down."

  "I can hear you yelling from the bedroom good enough when your radio ain't too high."

  "But you still don't turn it down."

  "I turn it down anymore, I won't be able to hear it."

  "Your old tired mother, she ought to get some respect."

  "You get about half my check," LuWanda said, "ain't that enough? I'm gonna get out of here when I have the baby."

  "Yeah, and I bet that's some baby, way you lay up with anything's got pants."

  "I hardly never leave the house to get the chance," LuWanda said. "It was pa done it before he tried to knock over that liquor store."

  "Watch your mouth, young lady. I know you let them in through the windows. I'll be glad to see you go, way you lie around here an' watch that old TV. You ought to do something educational. Read the Reader's Digest like I do. There's tips for living in those, and you could sure profit some."

  "Could be something to that all right," LuWanda said. "Pa read the Reader's Digest and he's over in Huntsville. I bet he likes there better than here. I bet he has a better time come night."

  "Don't you start that again, young lady."

  "Way he told me," LuWanda said, "I was always better with him than you was."

  "I'm putting my hands right over my ears at those lies. I won't hear them."

  "He sure had him a thrust, didn't he Mama?"

  "Ooooh, you . . . you little shit, if I should say such a thing. You'll get yours in hell, sister."

  "I been getting plenty of hell here."

  Wilson leaned against the house under the window and whispered to Jake. "Where the hell's Buddy?"

  This was answered by Buddy's mother's shrill voice. "Buddy, you are not going out of this house wearing them nigger shoes."

  "Oh, Mama," Buddy said, "these ain't nigger shoes. I bought these over at K-Woolens."

  "That's right where the niggers buy their things," she said.

  "Ah, Mama," Buddy said.

  "Don't you Mama me. You march right back in there and take off them shoes and put on something else. And get you a pair of pants that don't fit so tight people can tell which side it's on."

  A moment later, a window down from Wilson and Jake went up slowly. A hand holding a pair of shoes stuck out. The hand dropped the shoes and disappeared.

  Then the screen door slammed and Wilson and Jake edged around to the corner of the house for a peek. It was Buddy coming out, and his mother's voice came after him, "Don't you come back to this house with a disease, you hear?"

  "Ah, Mama," Buddy said.

  Buddy was dressed in a long-sleeved paisley shirt with the sleeves rolled up so tight over his biceps they bulged as if actually full of muscle. He had on a pair of striped bell-bottoms and tennis shoes. His hair was combed high and hard and it lifted up on one side; it looked as if an oily squirrel were clinging precariously to the side of his head.

  When Buddy saw Wilson and Jake peeking around the corner of the house, his chest got full and he walked off the porch with a cool step. His mother yelled from inside the house, "And don't walk like you got a corncob up you."

  That cramped Buddy's style a little, but he sneered and went around the corner of the house trying to look like a man who knew things.

  "Guess you boys are ready to stretch a little meat," Buddy said. He paused to locate an almost flat half-pack of Camels in his back pocket. He pulled a cigarette out and got a match from his shirt pocket and grinned and held his hand by his cheek and popped the match with his thumb. It sparked and he lit the cigarette and puffed. "Those things with filters, they're for sissies."

  "Give us one of those," Wilson said.

  "Yeah, well, all right, but this is it," Buddy said. "Only pack I got till I collect some money owed me."

  Wilson and Jake stuck smokes in their faces and Buddy snapped another match and lit them up. Wilson and Jake coughed some smoke clouds.

  "Sshhhh," Buddy said. "The old lady'll hear you."

  They went around to the back window where Buddy had dropped the shoes and Buddy picked them up and took off the ones he had on and slipped on the others. They were smooth and dark and made of alligator hide. Their toes were pointed. Buddy wet his thumb and removed a speck of dirt from one of them. He put his tennis shoes under the house, brought a fruit jar of clear liquid out from there.

  "Hooch," Buddy said, and winked. "Bought it off Old Man Hoyt."

  "Hoyt?" Wilson said. "He sells hooch?"

  "Makes it himself," Buddy said. "Get you a quart for five dollars. Got five dollars and hell sell to bottle babies."

  Buddy saw Wilson eyeing his shoes appreciatively.

  "Mama don't like me wearing these," he said. "I have to sneak them out."

  "They're cool," Jake said. "I wish I had me a pair like 'em."

  "You got to know where to shop," Buddy said.

  * * *

  As they walked, the night became rich and cool and the moon went up and it was bright with a fuzzy ring around it. Crickets chirped. The streets they came to were little more than clay, but there were more houses than in Buddy's neighborhood, and they were in better shape. Some of the yards were mowed. The lights were on in the houses along the street, and the three of them could hear televisions talking from inside houses as they walked.

  They finished off the street and turned onto another that was bordered by deep woods. They crossed a narrow wooden bridge that went over Mud Creek. They stopped and leaned on the bridge
railing and watched the dark water in the moonlight. Wilson remembered when he was ten and out shooting birds with a BB gun, he had seen a dead squirrel in the water, floating out from under the bridge, face down, as if it were snorkeling. He had watched it sail on down the creek and out of sight. He had popped at it and all around it with his BB gun for as long as the gun had the distance. The memory made him nostalgic for his youth and he tried to remember what he had done with his old Daisy air rifle. Then it came to him that his dad had probably pawned it. He did that sort of thing now and then, when he fell off the wagon. Suddenly a lot of missing items over the years began to come together. He'd have to get him some kind of trunk with a lock on it and nail it to the floor or something. It wasn't nailed down, it and everything in it might end up at the pawn shop for strangers to paw over.

  They walked on and finally came to a long street with houses at the end of it, and the lights there seemed less bright and the windows the lights came out of much smaller.

  "That last house before the street crosses," Buddy said, "that's the one we want."

  Wilson and Jake looked where Buddy was pointing. The house was dark except for a smudgy porch light and a sick yellow glow that shone from behind a thick curtain. Someone was sitting on the front porch doing something with their hands. They couldn't tell anything about the person or about what the person was doing. From that distance the figure could have been whittling or masturbating.

  "Ain't that nigger town on the other side of the street?" Jake said. "This gal we're after, she a nigger? I don't know I'm ready to fuck a nigger. I heard my old man say to a friend of his that Mammy Clewson will give a hand job for a dollar and a half. I might go that from a nigger, but I don't know about putting it in one."

  "House we want is on this side of the street, before nigger town," Buddy said. "That's a full four foot difference. She ain't a nigger. She's white trash."

  "Well . . . all right," Jake said. "That's different."

  "Everybody take a drink," Buddy said, and he unscrewed the lid on the fruit jar and took a jolt. "Wheee. Straight from the horse."