Bad Chili

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “You mean I have to quit screwin’ the entire medical staff and the patients at the hospital?”

  “Yep. And I’m giving up farm animals for you, baby.”

  She snuggled in close. “Wow. Now that’s dedication of purpose. You know, there’s still several rubbers in the box.”

  “I hate leaving a partial box, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” Brett said.

  “It’s so untidy.”

  “Absolutely. By the way, Hap. Did I tell you that I used to be a man?”

  I hit her with a pillow and she laughed and we made love again.

  * * *

  I guess it must have been around five o’clock when the phone rang and Brett stirred and got up and walked nude into the kitchen. After a moment she came back. “It’s for you, hon.”

  “Thanks. I hope you don’t mind. I told a friend I’d be here.”

  “Not at all,” she said. She was standing in the doorway, one leg cocked forward, showing me what I wanted to see. I got out of bed and went by her and she took hold of me and said, “I still got supplies in that box.”

  I kissed her and she held me where I wanted her to hold me. I put my hand on her and said, “Did you shave it just for me, or do you keep it like that?”

  “I shaved it just for you,” she said. “I thought it might be a little different. Besides, it keeps the lice out. You like it?”

  “If you don’t know by now,” I said, “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  After a moment I broke loose, went into the kitchen, practically having to walk around my dick. I picked up the phone.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “It’s me,” Leonard said, as if I were expecting someone else.

  “I’m so glad,” I said.

  “That lady I was talkin’ to? Is she the one?”

  “She’s the one.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  “Did you call to congratulate me?”

  “No, I called because your note said to call.”

  “I was feeling very brotherly then. Right now I’m not so sure I want to waste my time with you. This woman, I think she could make me take a tire iron to Minnie Mouse.”

  “That’s great . . . hey . . . really, Hap. Peace, man.”

  “Peace, Leonard.”

  “I was pissed. I’d had a few drinks. I’m fucked up over all this.”

  “Nothing more needs to be said.”

  “I love you, man.”

  “And I love you. Listen up. Let’s find out what we can. I’m with you, but . . .”

  “I have to behave myself.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I can only promise that up to so far.”

  “We look around,” I said. “We find something. See how the police can be made to do something, we keep the blood off our hands. Got it?”

  “What if we can’t?”

  “We cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “When do we get started?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “The place where Raul got his hair-cutting experience. What’s it called?”

  “Antone’s.”

  “I’ll pick you up at your place at nine o’clock.”

  “See you then,” Leonard said.

  I went back to the bedroom. Brett was holding the box of prophylactics. She shook it.

  “I say we tap the box out,” she said.

  We didn’t quite manage that, but when we were finished, Brett pushed up tight against me and closed her eyes. “Spoons,” she said.

  I held her, and soon she was asleep. While she slept, I looked at her and thought about her ex-husband beating her, raping her. How could he?

  I thought about those nice long fingers of hers coiling around a shovel, squirting lighter fluid, striking matches. I kissed her cheek and lay against her and felt her warmth, and soon I too was asleep.

  15

  We awoke in the late afternoon and had dinner out of Brett’s fridge. Ham on white. While we sat naked, eating sandwiches and crunching potato chips, there was a knock on the door, and we had to rush to put on clothes.

  Brett finished first by pulling on a long T-shirt. She went to the door while I continued dressing in the bedroom. I was having trouble finding my pants but finally located them under the bed in a wad. Found a sock behind a chair.

  I finished dressing, went into the living room area. Ella was there. She grinned at me. She really did look like Brett’s younger sister.

  “Well, I see you two have hit it off,” she said.

  “We’re not doing much hittin’,” Brett said, “but we are gettin’ off.”

  “Brett!” Ella said. But I could tell she wasn’t all that offended.

  I smiled at Ella. Close up, I could see her very pretty face wore a black eye, partially hidden by makeup.

  “You just come by to annoy us?” Brett said.

  “No. I came by to talk to you about switchin’ shifts with me next week. Can it happen?”

  “It might,” Brett said. “I’ll have to think on it, though. Sometimes Ole Head Nurse Meanie doesn’t like changes, and honey, I don’t know she’ll like you.”

  “Yeah?” Ella said. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Same thing’s wrong with me and a couple of the other girls.” Brett gave me a soulful look. “We’re just too good-lookin’ for her. She thinks everybody ought to be uglier than her.”

  “Is that possible?” Ella said.

  “I don’t think so,” Brett said. “’Course, you take a few more shots to the head like that one, you might be in the runnin’.”

  Ella looked embarrassed. She said, “Brett . . . I . . .”

  “Sorry,” Brett said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Hap here, he understands.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said.

  “Hap Collins!” Brett said. “You do too understand.”

  “I don’t mean to embarrass you either, but now that Brett’s said something, I don’t understand why you’d take this shit.”

  “Brett, you shouldn’t have said anything to anyone,” Ella said. “That wasn’t right.”

  “You can’t keep hidin’ it, girl,” Brett said. “That’s the worst thing to do. You hide it, you’re helpin’ him do it.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “Dump the bum.”

  “He’s been going to counseling,” Ella said.

  “Bullshit on counseling,” Brett said. “The guy’s a turd. Flush him.”

  “I love him,” Ella said.

  “I loved that shit-ass husband of mine, too,” Brett said. “But one day I didn’t and I had to set his head on fire.”

  “I’m not like you,” Ella said. “I got to go.”

  “Ella,” Brett said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . .”

  “No,” Ella said. “You’re right. Think about the shift, will you?”

  “Sure,” Brett said.

  Ella left quickly.

  When she was gone, Brett said, “Bless her.”

  We were about to finish eating when there was yet another knock on the door. Brett answered. It was Ella. She was in tears. “My car won’t start. I’m going to be late. He hates it when I’m late. I thought maybe . . . he . . . I’m sorry. What’s your name again?”

  “Hap,” I said.

  “Hap, I thought you might help me with my car?”

  “Honest truth is I can’t fix a wheelbarrow.”

  “Kevin will be so mad,” Ella said.

  “We’ll drive you home,” Brett said. “Okay, Hap?”

  “Sure.”

  * * *

  We took my pickup. We drove out to the east side of town. It was a beautiful day and the rain of earlier had given it a kind of glow, like the world had been washed down and polished.

  About a mile and a half outside the city limits we came to a spot where an old country store had stood. I had stopped there once and bought a barbecue sandwich. It had tasted like shit. Now the store was just a shell of
a building. Windows knocked out. A door halfway down. That’s what happens when you make lousy barbecue.

  We turned down a dirt road along a row of mailboxes and lights on poles, drove past a dog kennel where a half dozen hot-looking Siberian huskies watched us pass.

  Shortly thereafter, we drove onto as ugly a stretch of land as I’ve seen. You could tell right off that not too many years ago woods had stood here. Someone had clear-cut it, sold off the lumber, then made a mobile-home park out of it. In this case, they hadn’t even bothered to scrape it down to the clay. Some of the stumps still remained, burned black but still standing. Between clumps of stumps and pools of rainwater, trailers stood.

  We drove past a row of run-down trailers with broken toys in the yard, sad dogs on chains, and finally drove around to a fairly nice little white trailer with pink trim. The yard was clean, except for the standard redneck signpost—any kind of black car on blocks. This one was a Ford Mustang. When I was in high school I had wanted one of those. Thought I’d die if I didn’t get one. I didn’t get one and I was still living.

  We parked and let Ella out. She thanked us, and as she started toward the trailer the door opened and a man came out. He had on jeans and was shirtless and barefoot. He was a stocky guy with a slightly protruding but solid-looking belly. He was about my height. Good-looking fella with a crewcut.

  “Where the hell you been, Ella?” he said. “I been sittin’ here waitin’ on my goddamn dinner.”

  “My car, honey,” Ella said. “It wouldn’t start.”

  “My car wouldn’t start,” Kevin said in a mocking tone. “It’s always somethin’, ain’t it, bitch?”

  Ella turned to us. “Thanks. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “You sure you want to stay?”

  “Yes,” Ella said.

  “Hey,” Kevin said, “who you talkin’ to?”

  “Ella . . .” I said.

  “What do you mean, ‘do you want to stay?’”

  “I mean you sound a little drunk, and maybe she ought not to stay.”

  “You keep your nose out of my business, old man.”

  “Old man?”

  “Yeah. Old man.”

  Ella took hold of Kevin’s shoulder. “Don’t, honey. They gave me a ride.”

  Kevin pushed Ella down on the wet ground. Brett rushed over to help her up. “You get back in the truck, cunt,” Kevin said.

  “That’s it,” I said. I had been standing outside the truck with the door open, leaning on it. I closed it and started toward Kevin.

  Kevin said, “What you gonna do, fuckhead?”

  “I can either sit you down and have a nice talk, or punch your lights out. Since I figure you’ll be a boring conversationalist, I like the second idea.”

  “Punch my lights out?” Kevin said. “I’ll have you know I was a goddamn good boxer. I almost went pro.”

  “Then I’m sure you’ve seen a left jab,” I said, and jabbed him. I hit him solid on the right eye and his head snapped back. Then I kicked hard off my back leg and caught him in the balls. I half-leaped then, caught his head as he bent over, drove it down with an elbow and lifted my knee into his face. When he came back up, his face bloody, I skipped in and caught hold of his arm and his shoulder, brought my right leg behind his right leg, and reared backwards hard as I could.

  He went down quick and smacked his head against the dirt. Spittle flew out of his mouth and gleamed like a string of diamonds in the sunlight.

  Ella rushed over, draped herself over him, held one hand toward me. “Don’t, Hap! Don’t hit him anymore.”

  “Why not?” I said. “I’m just startin’ to enjoy myself.”

  “He doesn’t mean it,” Ella said. “He can’t help himself. It’s not like him. He’s not himself.”

  “Then who the hell is he?” I said. “Was he that other fella when he blacked your eye?”

  “I pushed him into it,” Ella said.

  “Jesus,” I said. “You better get straight, Ella. I can see a couple having a spat, even taking a slap at one another in a moment of anger. But this. Him punchin’ you around . . .”

  Kevin had gotten up on one elbow. “You better go, man.”

  “Why?” I said. “You going to whip my ass, big man?”

  Brett came over and took my arm. She said, “Let’s go, Hap. Your testosterone is showing. Ella. You want to go with us, you can. You want to call someone about this. The women’s shelter. Whatever. We’ll make sure you get to do it.”

  Ella shook her head. She started helping Kevin to his feet.

  “You want to see the left jab again?” I said to him.

  “You caught me by surprise,” he said.

  “Looked to me I caught you in the eye,” I said.

  “Then you kicked, like a sissy,” he said.

  “Tell everybody a sissy kicked your ass, then,” I said.

  Ella started helping Kevin toward the trailer. She paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Thank you, but it’s not your business. Really. It’s not your business.”

  Ella went up the steps with her arm around Kevin. They went inside the trailer and closed the door. We got in the pickup and drove away.

  * * *

  Once we were out on the highway, Brett slid over close to me.

  “You were magnificent, Hap.”

  “I think I got a little John Wayne.”

  “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I just loved his movies. Will you take me home and seduce me?”

  “Because I beat Kevin up you’re hot?”

  “No. Because you got pissed when he called me a cunt. I am sometimes, but I thank you anyway.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I like what you tried to do for Ella. But she doesn’t change, Hap. She never does. I’ve tried to get her to leave him, but she keeps going back. Someday he’ll kill her.”

  “I fear you’re right,” I said.

  16

  We drove back to Brett’s place, went to bed and made love, then showered together. I dressed and got ready to leave so she could have time to herself before going off to work.

  As she kissed me ’bye at the door, I said, “I’ll be back.”

  “Hell, I know that,” she said. “You done had a taste.”

  I drove home, read until late, slept fitfully. Next morning I picked up Leonard and we cruised over to Antone’s.

  The air was sweet-smelling after yesterday’s rain, but you could tell already it was going to be hot. It was going to be that kind of April where spring, except for an hour or so in the morning, was mostly forgotten. Ozone-layer problems, perhaps. I liked to blame it on all those evangelists and their goddamn hair spray. Hadn’t they heard of spritzers?

  Antone’s was what used to be called a barber college and hairdressing salon. It did business, but it mostly trained people for business. It was located where Main crossed Universal Street. Below Universal was a poor section of town, but on the opposite side of the street things began to look up. Drive a short distance and you were on the town square, where things were clean and bright.

  Go the other way, you were descending into a toilet that might flush at any moment. A place where Those in Power liked to keep the people they thought of as rejects.

  We parked in the parking lot next to Antone’s and a recreation center that used to be a 7-Eleven before it got robbed so often it was sort of like a free-money drop for the thugs of LaBorde. Through the glass you could see folks who ought to have jobs, or kids that ought to be in school, shooting pool. There were a number of motorcycle types in there as well. I hoped none of them recognized Leonard from his little escapade at the Broken Wheel.

  Leonard glanced through the glass at the pool players. He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face told me plenty. Leonard thought most of these folks were lazy shits and worthless, and I suppose he was right to some degree. Many of them were just that. Plain sorry. But I never found that life worked that way,
black and white. Good and evil. Most of the time it was a mixture. That’s what made it so hard. You couldn’t generalize and be a thinker. There were assholes on both sides of the coin, but there were good people shouldering bad breaks as well. Miss two paychecks, have the car break down, and you could go from lower middle class to living in a cardboard box under the river bridge, eating out of Dumpsters and pushing a shopping cart.

  Inside Antone’s there was a lot of activity, people cutting hair and doing perms on folks with a desire for cheap haircuts, coloring, and curls. Always a scary proposition to get a haircut at a beauty and barber college.

  I used to get my hair cut that way before I decided three bucks was too much for what they did to me, and eight bucks downtown at a real barber shop was just right. When I got my cheap haircuts it wasn’t at Antone’s. It was the original barber college, and it was located in another poor part of LaBorde back when we called LaBorde a town, not a city. The place was cleverly named Bob’s Barber College, and it smelled of hair oil, shaving cream, and men’s sweat. That’s all you saw there. Men. It didn’t do beauty cuts and it didn’t do anything fancy, so it didn’t attract women. It was a place where men talked the kind of talk that used to be called man talk. Hunting and fishing, cars and dogs and women. Usually in that order.

  Got your hair cut there, way it was done was limited. There was the Dust Bowl Oakie cut, which seemed mostly a kind of hand-on-top-of-head-and-cut-around-it style, shaving from about the middle of your head to below your ears. Then there was the cut called by many of us the Mental Health and Mental Retardation cut. Same style they gave the mentally handicapped at the state school. This translated as cut what you see, and all you want, long as there’s some hair left on the top of the head like a topknot. Got through with you on that, you looked a little bit like a turnip. There was also the GI cut, which was a shaved head. This was mostly given to those suspected of insects. And finally, there were standard jobs, like Little Man Number One. This was almost passable unless you wanted it blocked in the back. That didn’t exist. The head got cut pretty good, but when it came to the back of the neck, it got shaved slicker than a snot-covered doorknob. There was Little Man Number Two as well. This one you got a haircut and a shave, as well as a few deep cuts soaked in some alcohol-based stink-water that made flies light on your face. Lastly, there was Little Man Number Three, but it was so dreadful it’s difficult to talk about. This was the specialty of Bob himself, guy who taught the others. He gave all his haircuts while drunk and with a palsied hand, and many of us suspected his tools of trade were the Weed Eater and the garden snips.