The Killer's Game

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Jasmine had made out a list of the titles she was looking to collect, and I took the list with me just in case I came across something she needed. I thought if I did, I might buy it and get her a detective book too, or something like that, give it to her with the romance and maybe she’d read it. I’d done that several times, and so far, to the best of my knowledge, she hadn’t read any of the non-romance novels. The others might as well have been used to level a vibrating refrigerator, but I kept on trying.

  The stairs went down from my place and out into the street, and at the bottom, to the left of them, was Martha’s. The store was in front and she lived in back. During business hours in the summer the door was always open since Martha wouldn’t have put air conditioning in there if half the store had been a meat locker hung with prize beef. She was too cheap for that. She liked her mustache sweat-beaded, her bald head pink beneath her cap. The place smelled of books and faintly of boiled cabbage, or maybe that was some soured clothing somewhere. The two smells have always seemed a lot alike to me. It’s the only place I know hotter and filthier than my apartment, but it does have the books. Lots of them.

  I went in, and there on the wall was a flyer for a circus at three o’clock that day. Martha had this old post board just inside the door, and she’d let people pin up flyers if they wanted, and sometimes she’d leave them there a whole day before she tore them down and wrote out the day’s receipts on the back of them with a stubby, tongue-licked pencil. I think that’s the only reason she had the post board and let people put up flyers, so she’d have scratch paper.

  The flyer was for a circus called THE JIM DANDY THREE RING CIRCUS, and that should have clued me, but it didn’t. Truth is, I’ve never liked circuses. They depress me. Something about the animals and the people who work there strike me as desperate, as if they’re living on the edge of a cliff and the cliff is about to break off. But I saw this flyer and I thought of Jasmine.

  When she was little she loved circuses. Her mother and I used to take her, and I remembered the whole thing rather fondly. Jasmine would laugh so hard at the clowns you had to tell her to shut up, and she’d put her hands over her eyes and peek through her fingers at the wild animal acts.

  Back then, things were pretty good, and I think her mother even liked me, and truth to tell, I thought I was a pretty good guy myself. I thought I had the world by the tail. It took me a few years to realize the closest I was to having the world by the tail was being a dingleberry on one of its ass hairs. These days, I felt like the most worthless sonofabitch that had ever squatted to shit over a pair of shoes. I guess it isn’t hip or politically correct, but to me, a man without a job is like a man without balls.

  Thinking about my problems also added to me wanting to go to the circus. Not only would I get a chance to be with Jasmine, it would help me get my mind off my troubles.

  I got out my wallet and opened it and saw a few sad bills in there, but it looked to me that I had enough for the circus, and maybe I could even spring for dinner afterwards, if Jasmine was in the mood for a hot dog and a soda pop. She wanted anything more than that, she had to buy me dinner, and I’d let her, since the money came from her mother, my darling ex-wife, Connie—may she grow like an onion with her head in the ground.

  Mommy Dearest didn’t seem to be shy of the bucks these days on account of she was letting old Gerald the Oil Man drop his drill down her oil shaft on a nightly basis.

  Not that I’m bitter about it or anything. Him banging my ex-wife and being built like Tarzan and not losing any of his hair at the age of forty didn’t bother me a bit.

  I put my wallet away and turned and saw Martha behind the counter looking at me. She twisted on the stool and said, “Got a job yet?”

  I just love a small town. You fart and everyone looks in your direction and starts fanning.

  “No, not yet,” I said.

  “You looking for some kind of a career?”

  “I’m looking for work.”

  “Any kind of work?”

  “Right now, yes. You got something for me?”

  “Naw. Can’t pay my rent as it is.”

  “You’re just curious, then?”

  “Yeah. You want to go to that circus?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Is this a trick question too?”

  “Guy put up the flyer gave me a couple tickets for letting him have the space on the board there. I’d give them to you for stacking some books. I don’t really want to do it.”

  “Stack the books or give me the tickets?”

  “Neither one. But you stack them Harlequins for me, I’ll give you the tickets.”

  I looked at my wrist where my watch used to be before I pawned it. “You got the time?”

  She looked at her watch. “Two o’clock.”

  “I like the deal,” I said, “but the circus starts at three and I wanted to take my daughter.”

  Martha shook out one of her delicate little cigarettes and lit it, studied me. It made me feel funny. Like I was a shit smear on a laboratory slide. Most I’d ever talked to her before was when I asked where the new detective novels were and she grumped around and finally told me, as if it was a secret she’d rather have kept.

  “Tell you what,” Martha said, “I’ll give you the tickets now, and you come back tomorrow morning and put up the books for me.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said.

  “Not really. I know where you live, and you don’t come put up my romance novels tomorrow, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

  I looked for a smile, but I didn’t see any.

  “That’s one way to do business,” I said.

  “The only way. Here.” She opened a drawer and pulled out the tickets and I went over and took them. “By the way, what’s your name, boy? See you in here all the time, but don’t know your name.”

  Boy? Was she talking to me?

  “Plebin Cook,” I said. “And I’ve always assumed you’re Martha.”

  “Martha ain’t much of a name, but it beats Plebin. Plebin’s awful. I was named that I’d get it changed. Call yourself most anything and it’d be better than Plebin.”

  “I’ll tell my poor, old, gray-haired mother what you said.”

  “You must have been an accident and that’s why she named you that. You got an older brother or sister?”

  “A brother.”

  “How much older?”

  Earning these tickets was getting to be painful. “Sixteen years.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jim.”

  “There you are. You were an accident. Jim’s a normal name. Her naming you Plebin is unconscious revenge. I read about stuff like that in one of those psychology books came in. Called KNOW WHY THINGS HAPPEN TO YOU. You ought to read it. Thing it’d tell you is to get your name changed to something normal. Right name will give you a whole nuther outlook about yourself.”

  I had a vision of shoving those circus tickets down her throat, but I restrained myself for Jasmine’s sake. “No joke? Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Eight o’clock sharp. Go stacking ‘em after nine, gets so hot in here you’ll faint. A Yankee visiting some relatives came in here and did just that. Found him about closing time over there by the historicals and the Gothic romances. Had to call an ambulance to come get him. Got out of here with one of my Gothics clutched in his hand. Didn’t pay me a cent for it.”

  “And people think a job like this is pretty easy.”

  “They just don’t know,” Martha said.

  I said thanks and goodbye and started to turn away.

  “Hey,” Martha said. “You decide to get your name changed, they’ll do stuff like that for you over at the court house.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

  I didn’t want any more of Martha, so I went over to the drug store and used the payphone there and called Jasmine. Her mother answered.

  “Hi, Connie,” I said.

  “Get a job yet?”


  “No,” I said. “But I’m closing in on some prospects.”

  “Bet you are. What do you want?”

  “Jasmine in?”

  “You want to talk to her?”

  No, I thought. Just asking for the hell of it. But I said, “If I may.”

  The phone clattered on something hard, a little more violently than necessary, I thought. A moment later Jasmine came on the line. “Daddy.”

  “Hi, Baby Darling. Want to go to the circus?”

  “The circus?”

  “The Jim Dandy Circus is in town, and I’ve got tickets.”

  “Yeah. Really.” She sounded as if I’d asked her if she wanted to have her teeth cleaned.

  “You used to like the circuses.”

  “When I was ten.”

  “That was just seven years ago.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Only when you’re seventeen. Want to go or not? I’ll even spring for a hot dog.”

  “You know what they make hot dogs out of?”

  “I try not to think about it. I figure I get some chili on it, whatever’s in the dog dies.”

  “Guess you want me to come by and get you?”

  “That would be nice. Circus starts at three. That’s less than an hour away.”

  “All right, but Daddy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t call me Baby Darling in public. Someone could hear.”

  “We can’t have that.”

  “Really, Daddy. I’m getting to be a woman now. It’s… I don’t know… kind of….”

  “Hokey?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Gotcha.”

  The circus was not under the big top, but was inside the Mud Creek Exhibition center, which Mud Creek needs about as much as I need a second dick. I don’t use

  the first one as it is. Oh, I pee out of it, but you know what I mean.

  The circus was weak from the start, but Jasmine seemed to have a pretty good time, even if the performing bears were so goddamned old I thought we were going to have to go down there and help them out of their cages. The tiger act was scary, because it looked as if the tigers were definitely in control, but the overweight Ringmaster got out alive, and the elephants came on, so old and wrinkled they looked like drunks in baggy pants. That was the best of it. After that, the dog act, conducted by Waldo the Great, got out of hand, and his performing poodles went X-rated, and the real doo-doo hit the fan.

  Idiot trainer had apparently put one of the bitches to work while she was in heat, and in response, the male dogs jumped her and started poking, the biggest male finally winning the honors and the other five running about as if their brains had rolled out of their ears.

  Waldo the Great went a little nuts and started kicking the fornicating dogs, but they wouldn’t let up. The male dog kept his goober in the slot even when Waldo’s kicks made his hind legs leave the ground. He didn’t even yip.

  I heard a kid behind us say, “Mommy, what are the puppies doing?”

  And Mommy, not missing a beat, said, “They’re doing a trick, dear.”

  Children were screaming. Waldo began kicking at the remaining dogs indiscriminately, and they darted for cover. Members of the circus rushed Waldo the Great. There were disappointed and injured dogs hunching and yipping all over the place. Waldo went back to the horny male and tried once more to discourage him. He really put the boot to him, but the ole boy really hung in there. I was kind of proud of him. One of the other dogs, innocent, except for confusion, and a gyrating ass and a dick like a rolled-back lipstick tube, made an error in geography and humped air past Waldo and got a kick in the ass for it.

  He sailed way up and into the bleachers, went so high his fleas should have served cocktails and dinner on him. Came down like a bomb, hit between a crack in the bleachers with a yip. I didn’t see him come out from under there. He didn’t yip again.

  The little boy behind me, said, “Is that a trick too?”

  “Yes,” Mommy said. “It doesn’t hurt him. He knows how to land.”

  I certainly hoped so.

  Not everyone took it as casually as Mommy. Some dog lovers came out of the bleachers and there was a fight. Couple of cowboys started trying to do to Waldo what he had done to the poodles.

  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, so to speak, the two amorous mutts were still at it, the male laying pipe like there was no tomorrow.

  Yes sir, a pleasant afternoon trip to the circus with my daughter. Another debacle. It was merely typical of the luck I had been experiencing. Even a free ticket to the circus could turn to shit.

  Jasmine and I left while a cowboy down from the bleachers was using Waldo the Great as a punching bag. One of the ungrateful poodles was biting the cowboy on the boot.

  Me and Jasmine didn’t have hot dogs. We ended up at a Mexican place, and Jasmine paid for it. Halfway through the meal Jasmine looked up at me and frowned.

  “Daddy, I can always count on you for a good time.”

  “Hey,” I said, “what were you expecting for free tickets? Goddamn Ringling Brothers?”

  “Really, Daddy. I enjoyed it. Weirdness follows you around. At Mom’s there isn’t anything to do but watch television, and Mom and Gerald always go to bed about nine o’clock, so they’re no fun.”

  “I guess not,” I said, thinking nine o’clock was awful early to be sleepy. I hoped the sonofabitch gave her the clap.

  After dinner, Jasmine dropped me off and next morning I went down to Martha’s and she grunted at me and showed me the Harlequins and where they needed to go, in alphabetical order, so I started in placing them. After about an hour of that, it got hot and I had to stop and talk Martha into letting me go over to the drugstore and buy a Coke.

  When I came back with it, there was a guy in there with a box of Harlequin romances. He was tall and lean and not bad-looking, except that he had one of those little pencil-line mustaches that looked as if he’d missed a spot shaving or had a stain line from sipping chocolate milk. Except for a black eye, his face was oddly unlined, as if little that happened to him in life found representation there. I thought he looked familiar. A moment later, it came to me. He was the guy at the circus with the performing dogs. I hadn’t recognized him without his gold lamé tights. I could picture him clearly now, his foot up in the air, a poodle being launched from it. Waldo the Great.

  He had a box of books on the desk in front of Martha. All Harlequin romances. He reached out and ran his fingers over the spines. “I really hate to get rid of these,” he was saying to Martha, and his voice was as sweet as a cooing turtle dove. “Really hate it, but see, I’m currently unemployed and extra finances, even of a small nature, are needed, and considering all the books I read, well, they’re outgrowing my trailer. I tell you, it hurts me to dispense with these. Just seeing them on my shelves cheers me…. Oh, I take these books so to heart. If life could be like these, oh what a life that would be. But somebody always messes it up.” He touched the books. “True love. Romance. Happy endings. Oh, it should be that way, you know. We live such a miserable existence. We—”

  “Hey,” Martha said. “Actually, I don’t give a shit why you want to get rid of them. And if life was like a Harlequin romance, I’d put a gun in my mouth. You want to sell this crap, or not?”

  Martha always tries to endear herself to her customers. I reckon she’s got a trust fund somewhere and her mission on earth is to make as many people miserable as possible. Still, that seemed blunt even for her.

  “Well, now,” Waldo said. “I was merely expressing a heartfelt opinion. Nothing more. I could take my trade elsewhere.”

  “No skin off my rosy red ass,” Martha said. “You want, that man over there will help you carry this shit back out to the car.”

  He looked at me. I blushed, nodded, drank more of my Coke.

  He looked back at Martha. “Very well. I’ll sell them to you, but only because I’m pressed to rid myself of them. Otherwise, I wouldn’t take twice what you want
to give for them.”

  “For you, Mister Asshole,” Martha said, “just for you, I’ll give you half of what I normally offer. Take it or leave it.”

  Waldo, Mr. Asshole, paused for a moment, studying Martha. I could see the side of his face, and just below his blackened eye there was a twitch, just once, then his face was smooth again.

  “All right, let’s conduct our business and get it over with,” he said.

  Martha counted the books, opened the cash register and gave Waldo a handful of bills. “Against my better judgment, there’s the whole price.”

  “What in the world did I ever do to you?” Waldo the Great, alias, Mr. Asshole, said. He almost looked really hurt. It was hard to tell. I’d never seen a face like that. So smooth. So expressionless. It was disconcerting.

  “You breathe,” Martha said, “that’s enough of an offense.” With that, Waldo, Mr. Asshole, went out of the store, head up, back straight.

  “Friend of yours?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Martha said. “Me and him are fuckin’.”

  “I thought the two of you were pretty warm.”

  “I don’t know. I really can’t believe it happened like that.”

  “You weren’t as sweet as usual.”

  “Can’t explain it. One of those things. Ever had that happen? Meet someone right off, and you just don’t like them, and you don’t know why.”

  “I always just shoot them. Saves a lot of breath.”

  She ignored me. “Like it’s chemistry or something. That guy came in here, it was like someone drove by and tossed a rattlesnake through the door. I didn’t like him on sight. Sometimes I think that there’s certain people that are predators, and the rest of us, we pick up on it, even if it isn’t obvious through their actions, and we react to it. And maybe I’m an asshole.”

  “That’s a possibility,” I said. “You being an asshole, I mean. But I got to tell you, I don’t like him much either. Kind of makes my skin crawl, that unlined face and all.”

  I told her about the circus and the dogs.

  “That doesn’t surprise me any,” Martha said. “I mean, anyone can lose their cool. I’ve kicked a dog in my time—”

  “I find that hard to believe.”