Stories (2011)

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “You mean, Satan?”

  “Yep.”

  “I see him.”

  “Did you see some dancin’ soldiers?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you still see the horse?”

  “Yep, and he looks strong and rested. I figure he found a water hole and some grass, the sonofabitch.”

  Satan was trottin’ along, not lookin’ any worse for wear. He stopped when he seen us, and I tried to whistle to him, but my mouth was so dry, I might as well have been trying to whistle him up with my asshole.

  I put my rifle down and started walkin’ toward him, holdin’ out my hand like I had a treat. I don’t think he fell for that, but he dropped his head and let me walk up on him. He wasn’t saddled, as we had taken all that off when we went to cut wood, but he still had his bridle and reins. I took hold of the bridle. I swung onto his back, and then he bucked. I went up and landed hard on the ground. My head was spinnin’, and the next thing I know, that evil bastard was nuzzlin’ me with his nose.

  I got up and took the reins and led him over to where Cullen was leanin’ on his rifle. “Down deep,” he said, “I think he likes you.”

  * * * *

  We rode Satan double back to the fort, and when we got there, a cheer went up. Colonel Hatch come out and shook our hands and even hugged us. “We found what was left of you boys this mornin’, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. They’re all missin’ eyes and balls sacks and such. We figured you two had gone under with the rest of them. Was staked out on the plains somewhere with ants in your eyes. We got vengeful and started trailin’ them Apache, and damn if we didn’t meet them comin’ back toward us, and there was a runnin’ fight took us in the direction of the Pecos. We killed one, but the rest of them got away. We just come ridin’ in a few minutes ahead of you.”

  “You’d have come straight on,” Cullen said, “you’d have seen us. And we killed a lot more than one.”

  “That’s good,” Hatch said, “and we want to hear your story and Nate’s soon as you get somethin’ to eat and drink. We might even let you have a swallow of whiskey. Course, Former House Nigger here will have to do the cookin’, ain’t none of us any good.”

  “That there’s fine,” I said, “but, my compadre here, he ain’t The Former House Nigger. He’s Private Cullen.”

  Colonel Hatch eyeballed me. “You don’t say?”

  “Yes sir, I do, even if it hair lips the United States Army.”

  “Hell,” Hatch said. “That alone is reason to say it.”

  * * * *

  There ain’t much to tell now. We said how things was, and they did some investigatin’, and damn if we wasn’t put in for medals. We didn’t never get them, ‘cause they was slow about given coloreds awards, and frankly, I didn’t think we deserved them, not with us breakin’ and runnin’ the way we did, like a bunch of little girls tryin’ to get in out of the rain, leavin them men behind. But we didn’t stress that part when we was tellin’ our story. It would have fouled it some, and I don’t think we had much choice other than what we did. We was as brave as men could be without gettin’ ourselves foolishly killed.

  Still, we was put in for medals, and that was somethin’. In time, Cullen made the rank of Top Soldier. It wasn’t just me tellin’ him no more. It come true. He become a sergeant, and would have made a good one too, but he got roarin’ drunk and set fire to a dead pig and got his stripes taken and spent some time in the stockade. But that’s another story.

  I liked the cavalry right smart myself, and stayed on there until my time run out and I was supposed to sign up again, and would have too, had it not been for them Chinese women I told you about at the first. But again, that ain’t this story. This is the one happened to me in the year of 1870, out there on them hot West Texas plains. I will add a side note. The army let me keep Satan when I was mustered out, and I grew to like him, and he was the best horse I ever had, and me and him became friends of a sort, until 1872, when I had to shoot him and feed him to a dog and a woman I liked better.

  THE STARS ARE FALLING

  Before Deel Arrowsmith came back from the dead, he was crossing a field by late moonlight in search of his home. His surroundings were familiar, but at the same time different. It was as if he had left as a child and returned as an adult to examine old property only to find the tree swing gone, the apple tree cut down, the grass grown high, and an outhouse erected over the mound where his best dog was buried.

  As he crossed, the dropping moon turned thin, like cheap candy licked too long, and the sun bled through the trees. There were spots of frost on the drooping green grass and on the taller weeds, yellow as ripe corn. In his mind’s eye he saw not the East Texas field before him or the dark rows of oaks and pines beyond it, or even the clay path that twisted across the field toward the trees like a ribbon of blood.

  He saw a field in France where there was a long, deep trench, and in the trench were bloodied bodies, some of them missing limbs and with bits of brains scattered about like spilled oatmeal. The air filled with the stinging stench of rotting meat and wafting gun smoke, the residue of poison gas, and the buzz of flies. The back of his throat tasted of burning copper. His stomach was a knot. The trees were like the shadowy shades of soldiers charging toward him, and for a moment, he thought to meet their charge, even though he no longer carried a gun.

  He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, shook his head. When he opened them the stench had passed and his nostrils filled with the nip of early morning. The last of the moon faded like a melting snowflake. Puffy white clouds sailed along the heavens and light tripped across the tops of the trees, fell between them, made shadows run low along the trunks and across the ground. The sky turned light blue and the frost dried off the drooping grass and it sprang to attention. Birds began to sing. Grasshoppers began to jump.

  He continued down the path that crossed the field and split the trees. As he went, he tried to remember exactly where his house was and how it looked and how it smelled, and most important, how he felt when he was inside it. He tried to remember his wife and how she looked and how he felt when he was inside her, and all he could find in the back of his mind was a cipher of a woman younger than he was in a long, colorless dress in a house with three rooms. He couldn’t even remember her nakedness, the shape of her breasts and the length of her legs. It was as if they had met only once, and in passing.

  When he came through the trees and out on the other side, the field was there as it should be, and it was full of bright blue and yellow flowers. Once it had been filled with tall corn and green bursts of beans and peas. It hadn’t been plowed now in years, most likely since he left. He followed the trail and trudged toward his house. It stood where he had left it. It had not improved with age. The chimney was black at the top and the unpainted lumber was stripping like shedding snakeskin. He had cut the trees and split them and made the lumber for the house, and like everything else he had seen since he had returned, it was smaller than he remembered. Behind it was the smokehouse he had made of logs, and far out to the left was the outhouse he had built. He had read many a magazine there while having his morning constitutional.

  Out front, near the well, which had been built up with stones and now had a roof over it supported on four stout poles, was a young boy. He knew immediately it was his son. The boy was probably eight. He had been four years old when Deel had left to fight in the Great War, sailed across the vast dark ocean. The boy had a bucket in his hand, held by the handle. He set it down and raced toward the house, yelling something Deel couldn’t define.

  A moment later she came out of the house and his memory filled up. He kept walking, and the closer he came to her, standing framed in the doorway, the tighter his heart felt. She was blond and tall and lean and dressed in a light-colored dress on which were printed flowers much duller than those in the field. But her face was brighter than the sun, and he knew now how she looked naked and in bed, and all that had been lost came back to him, and he knew he was home
again.

  When he was ten feet away the boy, frightened, grabbed his mother and held her, and she said, “Deel, is that you?”

  He stopped and stood, and said nothing. He just looked at her, drinking her in like a cool beer. Finally he said, “Worn and tired, but me.”

  “I thought…”

  “I didn’t write cause I can’t.”

  “I know…but…”

  “I’m back, Mary Lou.”

  * * * *

  They sat stiffly at the kitchen table. Deel had a plate in front of him and he had eaten the beans that had been on it. The front door was open and they could see out and past the well and into the flower-covered field. The window across the way was open too, and there was a light breeze ruffling the edges of the pulled-back curtains framing it. Deel had the sensation he’d had before when crossing the field and passing through the trees, and when he had first seen the outside of the house. And now, inside, the roof felt too low and the room was too small and the walls were too close. It was all too small.

  But there was Mary Lou. She sat across the table from him. Her face was clean of lines and her shoulders were as narrow as the boy’s. Her eyes were bright, like the blue flowers in the field.

  The boy, Winston, was to his left, but he had pulled his chair close to his mother. The boy studied him carefully, and in turn, Deel studied the boy. Deel could see Mary Lou in him, and nothing of himself.

  “Have I changed that much?” Deel said, in response to the way they were looking at him. Both of them had their hands in their laps, as if he might leap across the table at any moment and bite them.

  “You’re very thin,” Mary Lou said.

  “I was too heavy when I left. I’m too skinny now. Soon I hope to be just right.” He tried to smile, but the smile dripped off. He took a deep breath. “So, how you been?”

  “Been?”

  “Yeah. You know. How you been?”

  “Oh. Fine,” she said. “Good. I been good.”

  “The boy?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Does he talk?”

  “Sure he talks. Say hello to your daddy, Winston.”

  The boy didn’t speak.

  “Say hello,” his mother said.

  The boy didn’t respond.

  “That’s all right,” Deel said. “It’s been a while. He doesn’t remember me. It’s only natural.”

  “You joined up through Canada?”

  “Like I said I would.”

  “I couldn’t be sure,” she said.

  “I know. I got in with the Americans, a year or so back. It didn’t matter who I was with. It was bad.”

  “I see,” she said, but Deel could tell she didn’t see at all. And he didn’t blame her. He had been caught up in the enthusiasm of war and adventure, gone up to Canada and got in on it, left his family in the lurch, thinking life was passing him by and he was missing out. Life had been right here and he hadn’t even recognized it.

  Mary Lou stood up and shuffled around the table and heaped fresh beans onto his plate and went to the oven and brought back cornbread and put it next to the beans. He watched her every move. Her hair was a little sweaty on her forehead and it clung there, like wet hay.

  “How old are you now?” he asked her.

  “How old?” she said, returning to her spot at the table. “Deel, you know how old I am. I’m twenty eight, older than when you left.”

  “I’m ashamed to say it, but I’ve forgotten your birthday. I’ve forgotten his. I don’t hardly know how old I am.”

  She told him the dates of their births.

  “I’ll be,” he said. “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “I…I thought you were dead.”

  She had said it several times since he had come home. He said, “I’m still not dead, Mary Lou. I’m in the flesh.”

  “You are. You certainly are.”

  She didn’t eat what was on her plate. She just sat there looking at it, as if it might transform.

  Deel said, “Who fixed the well, built the roof over it?”

  “Tom Smites,” she said.

  “Tom? He’s a kid.”

  “Not anymore,” she said. “He was eighteen when you left. He wasn’t any kid then, not really.”

  “I reckon not,” Deel said.

  * * * *

  After dinner, she gave him his pipe the way she used to, and he found a cane rocker that he didn’t remember being there before, took it outside and sat and looked toward the trees and smoked his pipe and rocked.

  He was thinking of then and he was thinking of now and he was thinking of later, when it would be but he hadn’t been with her for years, and now he was home, and he wanted it to be like before, but he didn’t really remember how it was before. He knew how to do what he wanted to do, but he didn’t know how to make it love. He feared she would feel that he was like a mangy cat that had come in through the window to lie there and expected petting.

  He sat and smoked and thought and rocked.

  The boy came out of the house and stood to the side and watched him.

  The boy had the gold hair of his mother and he was built sturdy for a boy so young. He had a bit of a birthmark in front of his right ear, on the jawline, like a little strawberry. Deel didn’t remember that.

  The boy had been a baby, of course, but he didn’t remember that at all. Then again, he couldn’t remember a lot of things, except for the things he didn’t want to remember. Those things he remembered. And Mary Lou’s skin. That he remembered. How soft it was to the touch, like butter.

  “Do you remember me, boy?” Deel asked.

  “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No.”

  “’Course not. You were very young. Has your mother told you about me?”

  “Not really.”

  “Nothing.”

  “She said you got killed in the war.”

  “I see…Well, I didn’t.”

  Deel turned and looked back through the open door. He could see Mary Lou at the washbasin pouring water into the wash pan, water she had heated on the stove. It steamed as she poured. He thought then he should have brought wood for her to make the fire. He should have helped make the fire and heat the water. But being close to her made him nervous. The boy made him nervous.

  “You going to school?” he asked the boy.

  “School burned down. Tom teaches me some readin’ and writin’ and cipherin’. He went eight years to school.”

  “You ever go fishin’?”

  “Just with Tom. He takes me fishin’ and huntin’ now and then.”

  “He ever show you how to make a bow and arrow?”

  “No.”

  “No, sir,” Deel said. “You say, no, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Say yes, sir or no, sir. Not yes and no. It’s rude.”

  The boy dipped his head and moved a foot along the ground, piling up dirt.

  “I ain’t gettin’ on you none,” Deel said. “I’m just tellin’ you that’s how it’s done. That’s how I do if it’s someone older than me. I say no, sir and yes, sir. Understand, son?”

  The boy nodded.

  “And what do you say?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Manners are important. You got to have manners. A boy can’t go through life without manners. You can read and write some, and you got to cipher to protect your money. But you got to have manners too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There you go…About that bow and arrow. He never taught you that, huh?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, that will be our plan. I’ll show you how to do it. An old Cherokee taught me how. It ain’t as easy as it might sound, not to make a good one. And then to be good enough to hit somethin’ with it, that’s a whole nuther story.”

  “Why would you do all that when you got a gun?”

  “I guess you wouldn’t need to. It’s just fun, and huntin’ with one is real sportin’, com
pared to a gun.

  And right now, I ain’t all that fond of guns.”

  “I like guns.”

  “Nothin’ wrong with that. But a gun don’t like you, and it don’t love you back. Never give too much attention or affection to somethin’ that can’t return it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The boy, of course, had no idea what he was talking about. Deel was uncertain he knew himself what he was talking about. He turned and looked back through the door. Mary Lou was at the pan, washing the dishes; when she scrubbed, her ass shook a little, and in that moment, Deel felt, for the first time, like a man alive.

  * * * *

  That night the bed seemed small. He lay on his back with his hands crossed across his lower stomach, wearing his faded red union suit, which had been ragged when he left, and had in his absence been attacked by moths. It was ready to come apart. The window next to the bed was open and the breeze that came through was cool. Mary Lou lay beside him. She wore a long white nightgown that had been patched with a variety of colored cloth patches. Her hair was undone and it was long. It had been long when he left. He wondered how often she had cut it, and how much time it had taken each time to grow back.

  “I reckon it’s been a while,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” she said.

  “I’m not sayin’ I can’t, or I won’t, just sayin’ I don’t know I’m ready.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You been lonely?”

  “I have Winston.”

  “He’s grown a lot. He must be company.”

  “He is.”

  “He looks some like you.”

  “Some.”

  Deel stretched out his hand without looking at her and laid it across her stomach. “You’re still like a girl,” he said. “Had a child, and you’re still like a girl…You know why I asked how old you was?”

  “’Cause you didn’t remember.”

  “Well, yeah, there was that. But on account of you don’t look none different at all.”