Savage Season

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Well,” he said, “you look like a man who’s had sex.”

  “And you act like a man who hasn’t. That’s why you got to pound a bag, to work off frustrations.”

  “Tell me about it. No, don’t. Just makes me feel bad.” He did a combination on the bag, then smiled at me. “Unlike you, I could have all the women I want.”

  “Go on, talk some shit.”

  “Could … lots of them, anyway. Ain’t that the shits? They want me and I don’t want them. They’re lined up for me, and me the way I am.”

  “Maybe you should try to be another way. It’s bound to beat jacking off.”

  “Don’t think it wouldn’t be easier, but it’s like taking up knitting or backgammon. Doesn’t work for me.”

  “Just saying how things could be easier.”

  He gave the bag a flurry, then winked at me. “You could always help me out, you know. A little relief for a friend.”

  “I’m not that friendly.”

  He flurried the bag again, caught it with his forearms and smiled at me. “Got you nervous, didn’t I? Tell you a truth, ole buddy. I like you, but you’re not my type.”

  “That shatters me. I want to go right on out of here crying.”

  He hit the bag with two hard lefts, one high, one low. “Work the bag with me. I like to see a peckerwood sweat.”

  I slipped off my jacket and shirt, got the spare bag gloves off a nail, put them on, and went over to the bag. I made some slow, soft moves on it to get the muscles loose. It felt awkward at first, way it always does when you start. Then my muscles began to warm and loosen and I got my rhythm and I was circling and exploding into the bag whenever the mood struck me. Leonard was circling too, staying directly across from me, the bag between us, and no sooner would my flurry end than he would hit with a series from his side, and pretty soon we were making conga music with that old canvas bag.

  When we stopped my hands ached slightly from clenching my fists, and I was beginning to breathe heavily. I took off the bag gloves, hung them up, flexed the tension out of my hands.

  “You’re getting soft,” Leonard said, taking off his gloves. “Haven’t been working out enough.”

  “I’m preferring my rest in my dotage.”

  “Want to spar some?”

  “Sure.”

  He went over to a shelf, got down the boxing gloves and kick guards and tossed a pair of each to me. I fastened the kick guards over my tennis shoes, then pulled on the gloves. They were the kind without laces; they slid on over your hands and tightened at the wrists with elastic, so you didn’t need help to get them on.

  We had been using the light from the open side door, but now Leonard went over and opened the big double doors and the sun flooded in and I could see dust motes rising from the barn’s dirt floor like little slow tornadoes.

  Leonard put on his equipment, shuffled his feet, put up his hands and made his way toward me.

  “Gonna suffer, honkie.”

  “Hope you know a home for invalid niggers, ’cause you’re gonna need it.”

  “Name-calling, huh? Racial slurs.”

  “Call ’em like I see ’em.”

  “Minute from now you aren’t gonna see anything.”

  Then we were at it.

  It was like Leonard turned into oil and flowed over me. I covered up, but the oil turned hard and the hardness hit my forearms and made them weak, hit the side of my head and ribs and made sounds on my hide like the sounds Leonard and I had made on the bag.

  When I got him away from me, I said, “Won’t lie to you, that was nice.”

  “I know,” he said, and came again.

  I let him think he had me. I jabbed out with a weak left and when he slipped it, I kicked with my forward foot in a roundhouse motion and caught him hard enough in the bread-basket to force his breath out. I swarmed him then, hit him with a right cross above the left eye and tried to hook him with my left, but all I got was one of his forearms. He flurried me, and he was fast, but I had his timing off now, and his blows skimmed across my face and slid on my sweaty chest and didn’t really hurt me. I kicked off my back leg this time and my kick caught him in the solar plexus again and drove him back and I came off the other leg and tried the same thing and glanced his side with the ball of my foot. He backed up fast, and I went after him. He turned his back on me as if to run. Instinctively I rushed in for the kill. He swiveled on his left foot and brought himself completely around to face me and his right leg arched into an outside crescent kick and the ridge of his foot caught me on the side of the head and I went down and dirt filled my nostrils.

  Suckered.

  Leonard bent down. “How are you, peckerwood?”

  “I been worse.… Barn’s moving, though.”

  “You’re always impatient. I set you up.” He patted me on the back. “Lay there a moment.”

  “No other plans.”

  A few minutes passed and Leonard helped me up. The barn was still a little wobbly, but starting to shape up. He helped me get the gloves and kick guards off. I weaved over and put on my shirt and coat while Leonard did the same, then I got the coffee cup off the two-by-four and Leonard put his arm around me and walked me to the house.

  Leonard put on a Patsy Cline album, turned it down low and started fixing breakfast. I took a seat at the kitchen table and dipped my head between my knees.

  “You eaten?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Able to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Eggs and toast sound okay?”

  “Fine.”

  He chuckled.

  “White boys in distress,” I said. “You love it.”

  He cracked an egg in the skillet. “You’re over here for a reason, Hap. You don’t get up this early on Sundays. What happened, that woman leave already?”

  “Nope. But I am here for a reason. An important reason.” I lifted my head. Nothing was spinning.

  “How important?”

  “You wouldn’t have to go back to the rose fields. Least not for a long time.”

  He stopped unwrapping the bread and looked at me. “How long a time?”

  “Quite a few years. You might start your own business. Understand you people do well with barbecue stands, stuff like that. Whatever you want.”

  “Barbecue sounds like work. You know us, loose shoes, tight pussy and a warm place to shit.”

  “Way I heard it.”

  “Come on Hap, quit dicking with me. What’s the deal?”

  “One hundred thousand dollars for each of us.”

  “Shit. What we got to do, shoot someone?”

  “Nope. We have to swim for it.”

  4

  I drove Leonard to my house and parked next to Trudy’s faded green Volkswagen with the Greenpeace sticker on the bumper. We went inside and found Trudy at the kitchen table drinking coffee. She was wearing one of my shirts, and it was much too large for her. That and her tousled hair made her look girlish. Less so when she crossed her legs and looked at me. “I was worried about you. I couldn’t find a note.”

  “Didn’t leave one. Thought I’d be back sooner.”

  She decided to notice Leonard. “Hi, Leonard.”

  Leonard nodded.

  “What you told me last night,” I said. “I want you to tell Leonard.”

  Her face showed me she didn’t like that. “No offense, Leonard. But that was between me and Hap. He shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “I’m dealing him in for half my share.”

  “There may not be a share if you keep this up, Hap.”

  “That’s okay, too. Find some other sucker.”

  “You’re awfully tough in the morning.”

  “Controls his glands better in the daytime,” Leonard said. “They tend to get overactive at night.”

  “I don’t care for the sound of your talk, Leonard,” Trudy said.

  “Wasn’t supposed to be music,” Leonard said. “Maybe you prefer a classical Negro dialect? A
little foot-shuffling?”

  “Can it, both of you,” I said. “This is coming off worse than I thought. I want to deal Leonard in. What’s it matter? It’s not costing you any more, and you’ll have an extra hand. Way you talk, we could use him. He’s had some diving experience, for one thing. We need that. I been in the water a few times with a suit on, but that’s about it.”

  She turned to stare out the window at the field. My mother did that when she was exasperated with me. I almost expected Trudy to threaten me with a paddling.

  She turned her coffee cup around on her saucer. The light from the window was on her face and showed some of her age.

  “Sometime today,” Leonard said. “After a couple minutes, pouting bores me.”

  She looked at us. “All right, but I don’t like being railroaded this way, Hap. You should have discussed it with me first. There’s enough between us you could have done that.”

  “I didn’t ask because I knew you’d say no, and I want Leonard in. It’s not anything I’m trying to put over on you. He stood by me through some tough times, some of them your fault. I want to see him profit the way you say you want to see me profit. You don’t want us both, no problem. Deal us out.”

  “It’s something else to explain to Howard. He wasn’t keen on me asking you in, Hap.”

  “I’ve got faith you can wrap this Howard around your big toe,” Leonard said, “and I don’t even know the poor sap.”

  “You know what’s wrong with you, Leonard?” Trudy said. “You’re jealous. You’re in love with Hap here and you’re jealous of me.”

  “Hap’s all right,” Leonard said. “He’s got a nice, perky ass, but he’s not my type.”

  “You two be friends,” I said. “It’s easier that way.”

  “I’ll put a lid on it,” Leonard said, “but with me and her it’s business associates, not friends.”

  “It couldn’t be any other way,” Trudy said.

  Leonard and I sat at the table, Leonard by the wall and me across from Trudy. She glared at Leonard, then me. “One hundred thousand is a lot less than two hundred thousand, Hap. Sure you want to do this?”

  “Yep, and I want him to hear the story from you. I haven’t told him anything except there’s some money to be made. He hears what you got to say, he may not want in.”

  Trudy got up, poured another cup of coffee and came back to the table. She sipped it and started her story.

  “My last husband, Howard, was involved in nuclear protests. Traveled across the country speaking against nuclear reactors, leading marches against their sites. During a protest in Utah, he was responsible for cutting a fence and getting inside a compound and damaging government property. He felt it was his responsibility as a human being—”

  “No politics,” Leonard said. “It affects my heart. Just the straight goods.”

  “All right,” she said, and told it.

  It was a pretty simple story. The judge made an example out of Howard. Gave him two years at my alma mater, Leavenworth, later cut it to eighteen months for good behavior. I wondered if she left Howard while he was in prison, and if he got more letters and visits than I had.

  While Howard was in prison he met a man called Softboy McCall, who fancied himself a gangster. He had been in the can a while and wasn’t getting out soon.

  When he found out Howard was from Texas he took immediate interest in him. He was a Texan too. Waco, Texas, to be exact.

  Softboy and Howard got close. Softboy told Howard what he was in for—this time anyway. He had robbed a small East Texas bank (are there any other kind?), and the day they robbed it, it was chockful of money. More money than a bank that size ought to have, even if it was a weekend and the payrolls were in.

  Softboy thought it was laundered money, loot being processed through the bank by big shots. He was more certain of that later when a lesser amount than he stole was reported. Softboy claimed to have made a take just over a million.

  During the robbery, there was a shootout with a guard at the bank. The police were somehow alerted, and they got there before Softboy and his two accomplices could escape, and there was more shooting. The guard and a policeman were wounded, and all three of the robbers were injured.

  Still, they got in their getaway car and drove away.

  Day before, the driver of the car had gone to the bottoms and found a place to hide the motorboat, and they had made for that.

  Before they got to it, one of the robbers died, and when they got there, the driver went toes up. All that was left was Softboy and the money.

  Softboy managed to push the car off into the water to hide it and he managed to load the money in the boat and get it going. But he didn’t get far. He hit a stump or something and was thrown out.

  He made it to shore, into the woods, and crawled around through the underbrush for the next three days, feverish and hallucinating. Didn’t know if he was going in circles or what.

  Eventually he came across a trail and followed that. Next thing he knew, he was on the highway leading to Marvel Creek. He passed out, and when he awoke he was in the Marvel Creek hospital with a policeman sitting in a chair beside his bed. Seemed some motorist had discovered him and pulled him out of the highway and called the law.

  When he got better, the police tried to get him to show them where the boat had wrecked, but he couldn’t.

  He didn’t know. He didn’t even know how he and his partners had gotten the boat in the first place. He hadn’t been the one who stashed it, and hadn’t been along when it was stashed. After the robbery, he’d been too out of his mind with pain to notice.

  The police searched the river for days, but didn’t find evidence of the boat, the car, or the bodies.

  Never did.

  Softboy told Howard he had bad dreams about all that money underwater and the fish eating it. Said he wanted it spent, and that if Howard found it, he’d split it with him.

  At this point in the story, Trudy paused and Leonard said, “Trusting sort of guy, wasn’t he?”

  “Suppose he thought Howard was honest enough,” Trudy said. “Assumed Howard felt about him the way he felt about Howard.”

  “Or wanted Howard to think he felt that way.” I said. “Make a guy feel wanted, he’ll do things for you. Get Howard to find and coordinate the dough, and old Softboy could use it to bribe guards and prison officials. Make life a little easier in the joint. Considering his situation, it’d be a worthwhile gamble.”

  “Three days before they let Howard out,” Trudy said, “Softboy was killed by an inmate with a knife made out of a spoon. The fight was over something silly. A dessert, I think.”

  “So there goes Howard’s obligation to Softboy,” Leonard said. “He decided to get the money, and he dealt you in, and Hap dealt me in. Well, this is all good and everything, but I see some problems here. First of all, I take it Howard’s already tried to find the money. Am I right?”

  Trudy nodded.

  “The police have looked and Howard’s looked and they’ve come up with nothing, so what makes anyone think we can do better?” Leonard said.

  “That’s where I come in,” I said. “I grew up in Marvel Creek, and I know those bottoms.”

  “Bet a lot of folks who knew the bottoms helped the police search, and they still didn’t find it,” Leonard said.

  “There’s something else,” Trudy said. “Softboy didn’t tell the police about the Iron Bridge, but he told Howard.”

  “The Iron Bridge?” Leonard said.

  “When Hap and I were married he used to talk about it some, that it was this place in the bottoms … How does it go, Hap?”

  “It was an uncompleted bridge. Stuck out over a wide place in the water. Oil companies had started it back in the fifties before the oil ran out. All sorts of stories about that place. Lovers parked by it. There was a story about this guy went down there and hung himself off the bridge because of some girl, or some such thing. Said his ghost was still down there. That when the moon was ri
ght, you could see him hanging from the bridge. Also there’s a story about this couple went down there to park, and some men came up on them, raped the girl and tied the spare tire to the guy and threw him off in the water. Lots of stories.”

  Trudy said, “Softboy told Howard, last thing he remembered after the wreck was lying on the bank, looking downriver and seeing the Iron Bridge.”

  “Thing is,” I said, “the bridge isn’t on the river. It’s down a narrow creek that comes off of it. Don’t even know if the creek’s got a name. Pretty junglelike down there. Softboy could have been wounded so bad he got off the river without realizing it, but I figure they were never on it, just thought they were. They were on this creek all the time, and the only place that creek could have been wide enough and deep enough for a boat is a stretch near the Iron Bridge.”

  “That dough would have long dissolved and washed away by now,” Leonard said. “You might find some coins, but that’s about it.”

  “Softboy and his partners were going to carry the money downriver a ways and bury it,” Trudy said. “They had another car stashed a little further on, and they thought they could get away, go back when things cooled off and recover the money. Softboy told Howard they had the money in waterproof cylinders and those were in a big aluminum cooler fastened down in the front of the boat. Chances are, the waterproof containers are still there, and so is the money.”

  “When was the last time you saw this bridge?” Leonard asked me.

  “Eighteen, nineteen … maybe twenty years ago.”

  Leonard shook his head. “Hell, man, I’ve come to pick you up for work and you couldn’t even find the shoes you took off the night before, let alone find something you haven’t seen in twenty years.”

  “True … but my shoes didn’t have a million dollars in them.”

  5

  When we finished talking, Trudy said she was going to take a shower and lie down for a while. After being up most of the night thinking, talking, and screwing, I needed a nap too, but I refrained. I like to think it was because I had strong character. It was, of course, because I didn’t want to be anywhere alone with Trudy right then. I had a hunch she would have harsh words to say about me and Leonard, and I wasn’t up to it. I didn’t want her to get me near a bed, either. She could really talk in bed, and if she talked long enough and moved certain parts of her body just right, I might agree to have Leonard shot at sunset.