A Pair of Aces

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Brian, manipulated by the dark shadow of the Lord, mince steps toward her, dragging his obscene tail. Blood is dripping from him all over the floor.

  Becky rushes Brian, wild as a bear with muscle balm on its balls. She tries to conk him in the head. Brian is too quick, he leans left and the pot misses, and he grabs her arm, pulls her to him, spins her around.

  He pushes at her, drives her toward the open window where Loony entered, popping the gig shaft along the floor. The Lord rises up above him, working those invisible strings.

  Becky is forced to lean way back through the window, glass fragments cutting into her back. She nearly goes over the sill.

  MONTY

  he's still on the floor, trying to crawl forward. He picks up a hammer from among the tools, and throws it.

  BRIAN

  The God of Thunder couldn't have done better. The hammer strikes Brian in the temple. Blood sprays. He lets go of Becky, staggers back. His mouth falls open. He looks as loose as a goose and the only thing holding him up are the invisible puppet strings of the Lord. The razor falls from his hand.

  The Lord lets out a fierce groan of agony and disappointment.

  THE RAZOR

  The Lord's reflection in it. The sudden ticking sound of the Lord's Clock.

  ANGLE BECKY

  she's in the scene now, and she still got that pot, and she comes forward in a rush, and beans Brian with all the force she can muster, right between the eyes. Once…Twice.

  ANOTHER ANGLE

  Brian staggers back. He stumbles and falls, leaning between sink and stove. The gig in his ass is holding him up like a tripod post. The Lord's Clock ticks like thunder. The Lord bursts in all directions, like dirty cotton torn apart.

  Becky strides in like she's ten feet tall. She grabs Brian by the hair, leaps up, pulling him down, slamming his face against the stove and hot burner. She holds his face against it.

  Sizzle. Smoke.

  She lets him go. Brian falls to his knees. Rolls over on the floor. He looks up at Becky. His face is a ruin. Burned. Dripping flesh and muscle. Clyde superimposes over Brian's face.

  CLYDE'S VOICE

  Good work, Brian. Now we're both…fucked…

  Becky stands over Brian, looks at him with a "what the hell" look. And then she kicks him in the head as hard as she can.

  Blood runs out of his ear and flows across the floor and swells and darkens and there is a sound like someone poking a hole in a semi-truck tire, and the Lord rises up from the flowing pool and the blood becomes the shadow that is the Lord, and it floats to the ceiling in its poisonous cloud state.

  THE LORD

  swelling up to almost fill the room, and he leans way forward and his arm reaches way out, and he snatches at the razor on the floor, and he's got it, and we can see the Clock swinging on its gut from his shadowy skin coat, and we go–

  CLOSE ON THAT CLOCK

  as it ticks onto what would be High Noon, and then there is an explosion like an elephant fart, and the room ripples, and we–

  GO BACK TO SCENE

  and away goes the Lord, past the Chevy, out of the remains of the lake side doorway, which he causes to crack and shatter even more, and as he passes out of the cabin, he swells, and the–

  CAMERA FOLLOWS

  as the Lord of the Razor becomes huge, roaring thunderously, and fills the night and blots out the stars, and then suddenly the razor falls, and we–

  FOLLOW THE RAZOR SLOW MO

  which hits hard, puffing up leaves, some of which cover it, and then we go back to–

  BACK TO SPEED–LORD IN THE SKY

  and he's coming apart as if ripped by invisible hands. The silvery eyes and thirty two shiny stick-pin teeth explode outward like stars, and fall, and fade. And the real stars The Lord's shape was hiding, jump into view, because suddenly there is nothing left of him, and what we see is a calm sky full of moon and stars and soft silver light.

  And THE RAZOR THEME which has hit a crescendo.

  Dies

  INT. CABIN

  BECKY'S WORN BUT SATISFIED FACE

  And then she gasps. Looks down. Brian has grabbed her ankle.

  The fear flows out of her. She takes a deep breath. And begins to kick with her other foot. Again and again. Hitting Brian hard, using his head like a soccer ball.

  The hand on her ankle releases.

  BECKY

  Trick or treat to you, motherfucker.

  FLASH ON BRIAN

  his eyes going cold, and then we have a melting of the scene into this sequence: Brian, tumbling down a long bloody corridor and we see all kinds of horrible things going on to his left and right. Mutilations. Decorations being made by threading eyes and chopping limbs and hanging testicles, and then he stops tumbling and is sliding, and a hole opens up big, and the hole pulses blood red at the edges, but beyond, darkness.

  And down he slides, and now we see that he's going to slide right across a giant razor blade. And he does. And pieces of him fall this way and that. Down these pieces fall and they gather together, and he is whole again, and below, another blade, and the same action, and he is whole again, and as he falls, his mouth wide open in a scream, we see on a rack, Clyde, and slowly his head is being pulled from his body, and there is the sound of the Clock, and we glimpse as Brian continues to fall, the Lord of The Razor's eyes and teeth, poking out of shadow, and then the fall continues, and we hear Clyde yell in a voice that echoes hoarsely as if from the bowels of the cosmos:

  CLYDE

  You fucked us, Brian!

  And then it all dissolves, and we're–

  BACK TO SCENE

  Becky is on the floor, hugging Monty. They look toward Brian, lying dead on the floor.

  MONTY

  You did it.

  HOLD ON BECKY

  BECKY

  We did it.

  And we gradually–

  PULL UP TO

  the ceiling, and now we are above it all, above the cabin and the forests and the lake. We can see cop lights flashing, hear sirens, and we can see Moses and Buffy down there, standing in the middle of the road. And Moses is waving his arms, and the cop cars are slowing, and he is pointing down the tree-lined drive, and we see Becky beside Monty, each of them helping the other down the drive.

  FADES

  Momentarily. Because we gradually–

  FADE BACK IN

  to show a couple of teenagers, a BOY and a GIRL. They are in outdoor clothing. It's a calm, autumn day. The girl carries a stick. They chatter to one another.

  They are out by the lake, and they are walking, and they see the cabin where Becky and Monty fought the great battle. It's clear a very long time has passed, as the house is boarded up, some shingles have fallen, the porch has sagged. A very barren scene.

  The girl runs ahead of the boy, laughing.

  BOY

  I'm not chasing you again.

  She kind of bounds ahead, looking back over her shoulder. The leaves rattle, a slight wind comes up.

  GIRL

  You're getting old.

  She does a series of stiff-legged wild deer leaps, acting foolish, gets ahead of him. Then stops.

  A DUST DEVIL

  swirling amongst the leaves.

  BACK TO SCENE

  Girl walks over to it and the dust devil plays out.

  HER POV

  Something shiny from under the leaves.

  BACK TO SCENE

  She picks up a stick. Pokes at it, leans down closer, and when she does, we–

  GO CLOSE ON THE LORD'S RAZOR

  amongst the leaves, and as the stick pokes again, it POPS OPEN LOUDLY, and we–

  POP OUT

  THE MAGIC WAGON

  All of the characters in this hook are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This is for Phyllis and Harlie Morton, and Ann and Herman Kasper, for their faith, love, and support.

  CHAPTER 1

  Wild Bill Hickok,
some years after he was dead, came to Mud Creek for a shoot-out of sorts.

  I was there. Let me tell you about it.

  About an hour before sunrise, mid-July, 1909, we came rolling into Mud Creek in the Magic Wagon—Billy Bob Daniels, Old Albert, Rot Toe the Wrestling Chimpanzee, the body in the box, and me.

  Night before we'd sort of snuck out of Louisiana and made the Texas border on account of some medicine Billy Bob sold this fella, telling him it would cure the piles. Which it hadn't. Not that any of us thought it would. It was just some water, coloring, and a little whiskey. Well, mostly whiskey.

  But the fella who bought the stuff was a teetotaler and it made him drunk enough to hit his wife some and have a bellyache. And later when he passed out on the bed drunk, she sewed him up in the bedsheets, got herself a broom, and whaled the tar out of him till he was bruised enough to pass for a speckled pup.

  When his wife finally did let him out from beneath the sheets he had sobered considerable, and he got to figuring on what he'd done and the fact that he had the piles bad as ever, and he came looking for Billy Bob.

  Normally we'd have been long gone, as that was the smart thing in our business. Talk the crowd up good, sell them some watered whiskey, smile big, wave a lot, and soon as we had their money and they were walking away, we'd pack up and hightail it out of town like a jackass with his tail on fire. Avoided a lot of unhappy customers that way.

  But now and then we didn't get on our way soon enough, like this evening I'm telling you about, and usually that was because Billy Bob had spotted some gal in the crowd he'd taken a hankering to, and with the way he looked, they often took a hankering back. He was tall and lean with gray eyes and he wore his blond hair long like them old gunfighters you read about in the dime novels. Lot of times he wore guns and did trick shooting, which was something he was darned good at. But this time he didn't have no guns, and that was for the best.

  He was spruced up and leaning against the wagon, ready to go gal'n, when this fella with the piles and the broom bruises shows up with a piece of cordwood in his hand and a converted .36 Navy revolver stuck in his belt. Since Billy Bob was the one who had given the talk on the medicine, told him how it could shrink them piles, it was him he wanted. He tells Billy Bob the whole sad story about how he took the medicine and it made him drunk, how he hit his wife, got sewed up in the sheets and beat, and how his piles weren't any better. In fact, he thought they might be considerable worse. Told Billy Bob the whole shooting match. If he'd had any sense he'd have just walked up and conked Billy Bob on the head with that stove wood, but I figure he was aiming to talk him into giving him his money back before he took to raising knots.

  Well, all the time this fella is telling Billy Bob his story, Billy Bob is leaning up against the Magic Wagon with a hand-rolled hanging out of his mouth unlit. When the fella finished, Billy Bob brought a match out from somewhere, lit the hand-rolled and puffed up a little cloud, squinted his eyes and said, "Ain't nothing to me."

  That Billy Bob always was a considerate sort.

  "It's either my money back," says the speckled pup, "or I'm going to take this here stove wood and work you up a new hat size."

  "I reckon not," Billy Bob said.

  That fella moved pretty quick then, swung that wood at Billy Bob's head, and Billy Bob caught his wrist with one hand and hit him in the stomach with the other, just above where that old Navy stuck out of his belt. When Billy Bob pulled his hand back, the Navy was in it and the fella was on the ground making noises like a loose treadle on a sewing machine.

  Billy Bob pointed the gun and cocked back the hammer. That old cap and ball had been converted over to a cartridge loader, but it looked worn and dangerous, like it was just as likely to blow up in Billy Bob's hand as shoot that fella on the ground.

  "Figure I ought to put a hole in your head," Billy Bob said.

  I tensed when I heard that. Billy Bob of late had lost his sense of humor, which before had been about like a kicked badger's anyway.

  But right when I thought things were going to get their ugliest, Albert said, "Mr. Billy Bob, don't reckon you ought to do that."

  Albert was colored. About fifty, with snow in his short kinky hair and shoulders so wide he had to turn sideways to get inside the wagon. He looked a little bit like a bear that had been trained to wear clothes.

  All the while things had been going on between Billy Bob and the fella, Albert had been standing quietly by with his arms crossed, showing about as much interest as a cow watching a couple of stumps.

  "You talking to me?" Billy Bob said, glancing at Albert. Billy Bob reckoned the war wasn't over yet, and he'd never cottoned to a colored fella telling him anything. Hated it worse than anyone I'd ever seen. Once, in Kansas, I saw him beat a little colored man to his knees just because the fella brushed up against him and didn't say pardon me with enough feeling. But when he talked to Albert like that, the talk seemed mostly just talk. Somehow, Albert had the Indian sign on him, and Billy Bob, who didn't seem afraid of nothing as far as I could tell, didn't give Albert a whole lot of trouble, in spite of Albert being hired help. I sort of got the feeling there was something between them I didn't understand. Something going on I didn't have no sense about.

  Even if Billy Bob wasn't scared of Albert, he wasn't shy of brains at that moment. A man Albert's size and strength—I'd once seen him set the Magic Wagon upright after it had been turned over in a storm—could take a .36 Navy slug pretty good and still get his hands on you and rip you apart like so much pine bark.

  Albert's voice, which had been sharp as a knife edge, now went firm and flat. "Ain't got no right shooting this here fella on account of some stuff we sold him didn't work. It don't never work on nothing besides sober. Kill this fella and you won't have a minute's peace from the law.”

  "And if I decide to go ahead and do what I want?" Billy Bob asked.

  "Then I'm going to have to take that pistol away from you and tie it around your neck and you'll just have to tell folks it's a bow tie."

  Billy Bob looked at Albert and smiled.

  Albert smiled back. They were just a couple of friendly grinners now.

  I could never tell about those two. Didn't know if they were really smiling or possum smiling. But Billy Bob said, "Ah hell, I wasn't going to shoot nobody."

  "No sir," Albert said, "didn't reckon you was."

  Billy Bob unloaded the gun, tossed it in the street. He looked down at the fella in the dirt who was looking up. "Good drunk didn't hurt you none," Billy Bob said. "Any old battle-axe who'd put up with you deserves a hitting, and a broom whipping didn't do you no harm neither."

  Billy Bob turned around and climbed in the back of the wagon, yelling, "Albert, get us out of here."

  "Yes sir, Mister Billy Bob," Albert said. Billy Bob was in control again, and Albert was like a plantation slave. I couldn't figure it. I didn't say nothing. Just climbed up on the wagon beside Albert and watched him take the lines. He looked over at me and winked. "Guess Mister Billy Bob going to be leaving him another little gal hanging."

  "Reckon so," I said.

  "Git up there, Ishmael," Albert called to the head mule, and off we went.

  I leaned over the side and looked back at the fella in the street. He was standing now, holding his stomach. He stooped to pick up his hat and gun. I turned back to watch the road.

  Albert had the mules talked up pretty good now, and they were stepping on out. Which was a good thing. I figured we'd darn near seen a shooting, one way or another. And after that fella spread word around about what we'd done, it would be right wise of us to be a fair piece on down the road.

  That Billy Bob seemed determined to get himself in trouble, and for some reason, Albert seemed determined to keep him out of it. Me, I was just determined and didn't know what for. From time to time I figured on leaving the Magic Wagon, going my own way. But truth was, I didn't know nothing else. And me and Albert were friends, good friends.

  On the other hand, Billy
Bob and me never had got along. We wasn't even friendly. All I knew about Billy Bob was that he'd taken me in after my parents were killed, fed me, clothed me, given me a job and some spending money. All this was on account of Albert pushed him to do it, but nonetheless, it was Billy Bob's wagon and I figured I owed him. That's all the feeling I had for Billy Bob, nothing else. Least that's the way it was until we got to Mud Creek and some new light got shed on things. Then I knew damn good and well how I felt about him.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

  So Albert drove the mules through the night, stopping only twice to let them blow, and then just for a few minutes.

  Finally, just after sunup, we made Mud Creek. Good thing. The mules were tuckered out, and so were we. All that fast moving had my guts jostled something terrible, and both my legs were near asleep.