Fat and ugly.
There, he’d thought it clearly. But he did like her. He knew that. There was something so wonderfully Christian about her. She could recite from heart dozens of Bible verses, and he’d heard her give good argument against them that thought white man came from monkey, and a better argument that the nigger did. But he wished God had packaged her a little better. Like in the body of his next-door neighbor’s wife for instance. Now there was a Godly piece of work.
It seemed to him, a man like himself, destined for great things in God’s arena, ought to at least have a wife who could turn heads toward her instead of away from her. A woman like that could help a man go far.
There wasn’t any denying that Louise had been a big help. When he married her she had all that insurance money, most of which they’d used to buy their place and build a church on it. But the settlement was almost run through now, and thinking on it, he couldn’t help but think Louise had gotten cheated.
Seemed to him that if your first husband got kicked to death by a wild lunatic that the nut house let out that very afternoon calling him cured, they ought to have to fork up enough money to take care of the man’s widow for the rest of her life. And anyone she might remarry, especially if that person had some medical problems, like a trick back, and couldn’t get regular work anymore.
Still, they had managed what she had well; had gotten some real mileage out of the four hundred thousand. There was the land and the house and the church and the four hundred red-jacketed, leatherette Bibles that read in gold, gilt letters on the front: THE MASTER’S OWN BAPTIST MINISTRIES INC., SONNY GUY OFFICIATING. And there were some little odds and ends here and there he couldn’t quite recall. But he felt certain not a penny had been wasted. Well, maybe those seven thousand bumper stickers they bought that said GO JESUS on them was a mistake. They should have made certain that the people who made them were going to put glue on the backs so they’d stick to something. Most folks just wouldn’t go to the trouble to tape them on the bumpers and back glasses of their automobiles, and therefore weren’t willing to put out four-fifty per sticker.
But that was all right. Mistakes were to be expected in a big enterprise. Even if it was for God, The Holy Ghost, and The Lord Jesus Crucified.
Yet things weren’t going right, least not until he started visiting the elephant. Now he had him some guidance and there was this feeling he had that told him it was all going to pay off. That through this creature of the Lord he was about to learn God’s grand-doise plan for his future. And when he did learn it, he was going to start seeing those offering plates (a bunch of used hubcaps bought cheap from the wrecking yard) fill up with some serious jack.
Candy came back with the electric heater, extension cord and tarp. He had a paper bag in one back pocket, his harmonica in the other. He looked toward the entrance, just in case Butch should decide for the first time in his life to come back early.
But no Butch.
Candy smiled and opened the stall’s gate.
“Here we go, Mr. Sonny, you ready to get right with God and the elephant?”
Sonny took hold of the tarp and pulled it over his head and Candy came in and found places to attach all four corners to the fence near the ground and draped it over the old elephant who squeaked its skin and turned its head ever so slightly and rolled its goo-filled eyes.
“Now you just keep you seat, Mr. Bull Elephant,” Candy said, “and we all gonna be happy and ain’t none of us gonna get trampled.”
Candy stooped back past Sonny on his stool and crawled out from under the tarp and let it fall down Sonny’s back to the ground. He got the electric heater and pushed it under the tarp next to Sonny’s stool, then he took the extension cord and went around and plugged it into one of the barn’s deadly-looking wall sockets. He went back to the tarp and lifted it up and said to Sonny, “You can turn it on now, Mr. Sonny. It’s all set up.”
Sonny sighed and turned the heater on. The grill work went pink, then red, and the fan in the machine began to whirl, blowing the heat at him.
Candy, who still had his face under the tarp, said. “You got to lean over it now to get the full effects, Mr. Sonny. Get that heat on you good. Get just as hot as a nigger field hand.”
“I know,” Sonny said. “I remember how to do it.”
“I knows you do, Mr. Sonny. You great for remembering, like an elephant. It heating up in there good?”
“Yeah.”
“Real hot?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good. Make you wonder how anyone wouldn’t want to do good and stay out of hell, don’t it, Mr. Sonny? I mean it’s hotter under here than when I used to work out in that hot sun for folks like you, and I bet when I drop this here tarp it just gonna get hotter, and then that heat and that stink gonna build up in there and things gonna get right for you…here’s you paper bag.”
Candy took the bag out of his back pocket and gave it to Sonny. “Remember now,” Candy said, “when you get good and full of that shit-smell and that heat, you put this bag over you face and you start blowing like you trying to push a grapefruit through a straw. That gonna get you right for the ole elephant spirit to get inside you and do some talking at you cause it’s gonna be hot as Africa and you gonna be out of breath just like niggers dancing to drums, and that’s how it’s got to be.”
“Ain’t I done this enough to know, Candy?”
“Yes suh, you have. Just like to earns my five dollars and see a good man get right with God.”
Candy’s head disappeared from beneath the tarp and when the tarp hit the ground it went dark in there except for the little red lines of the heater grate, and for a moment all Sonny could see was the lumpy shape of the elephant and the smaller lumps of his own knees. He could hear the elephant’s labored breathing and his own labored breathing. Outside, Candy began to play nigger music on the harmonica. It filtered into the hot tent and the notes were fire ants crawling over his skin and under his overalls. The sweat rolled down him like goat berries.
After a moment, Candy began to punctuate the harmonica notes with singing. “Sho gonna hate it when the elephant dies. Hot in here, worse than outside, and I’m sho gonna hate it when the elephant dies.” A few notes on the harmonica. “Yes suh, gonna be bad when the pachyderm’s dead, ain’t gonna have five dollars to buy Coalie’s bed.” More notes. “Come on brother can you feel the heat. I’m calling to you Jesus, cross my street.”
Sonny put the bag over his face and began to blow viciously. He was blowing so hard he thought he would knock the bottom out of the bag, but that didn’t happen. He grew dizzy, very dizzy, felt stranger than the times before. The harmonica notes and singing were far away and he felt like a huge hunk of ice cream melting on a hot stone. Then he didn’t feel the heat anymore. He was flying. Below him the ribs of the heater were little rivers of molten lava and he was falling toward them from a great height. Then the rivers were gone. There was only darkness and the smell of elephant shit, and finally that went away and he sat on his stool on a sunny landscape covered in tall grass. But he and his stool were taller than the grass, tall as an elephant itself. He could see scrubby trees in the distance and mountains and to the left of him was a blue-green line of jungle from which came the constant and numerous sounds of animals. Birds soared overhead in a sky bluer than a jay’s feathers. The air was as fresh as a baby’s first breath.
There was a dot in the direction of the mountains and the dot grew and became silver-grey and there was a wink of white on either side of it. The dot became an elephant and the closer it came the more magnificent it looked, its skin tight and grey and its tusks huge and long and porcelain-white. A fire sprang up before the elephant and the grass blazed in a long, hot line from the beast to the stool where Sonny sat. The elephant didn’t slow. It kept coming. The fire didn’t bother it. The blaze wrapped around its massive legs and licked at its belly like a lover’s tongue. Then the elephant stood before him and they were eye to eye; the tusks ext
ended over Sonny’s shoulders. The trunk reached out and touched his cheek; it was as soft as a woman’s lips.
The smell of elephant shit filled the air and the light went dark and another smell intruded, the smell of burning flesh. Sonny felt pain. He let out a whoop. He had fallen off the stool on top of the heater and the heater had burned his chest above the bib of his overalls.
There was light again. Candy had ripped off the tarp and was pulling him up and sitting him on the stool and righting the electric heater. “Now there, Mr. Sonny, you ain’t on fire no more. You get home you get you some shaving cream and put on them burns, that’ll make you feel right smart again. Did you have a good trip?”
“Africa again, Candy,” Sonny said, the hot day air feeling cool to him after the rancid heat beneath the tarp. “And this time I saw the whole thing. It was all clearer than before and the elephant came all the way up to me.”
“Say he did?” Candy said, looking toward the barn door.
“Yeah, and I had a revelation.”
“That’s good you did, Mr. Sonny. I was afraid you wasn’t gonna have it before Mr. Butch come back. You gonna have to get out of here now. You know how Mr. Butch is, ’specially since his wife done run off with that ole ’diller purse and the money that time. Ain’t been a fit man to take a shit next to since.”
Candy helped Sonny to his feet and guided him out of the stall and leaned him against it.
“A firewalking elephant,” Sonny said. “Soon as I seen it, it come to me what it all meant.”
“I’m sho glad of that, Mr. Sonny.”
Candy looked toward the open door to watch for Butch. He then stepped quickly into the stall, jammed the paper bag in his back pocket and folded up the tarp and put it under his arm and picked the heater up by the handle and carried it out, the cord dragging behind it. He sat the tarp and the heater down and closed the gate and locked it. He looked at the elephant. Except for a slight nodding of its head it looked dead.
Candy got hold of the tarp and the heater again and put them in their place. He had no more than finished when he heard Butch’s truck pulling up to the gate. He went over to Sonny and took him by the arm and smiled at him and said, “It sho been a pleasure having you, and the elephant done went and gave you one of them rav’lations too. And the best one yet, you say?”
“It was a sign from God,” Sonny said.
“God’s big on them signs. He’s always sending someone a sign or a bush on fire or a flood or some such thing, ain’t he, Mr. Sonny?”
“He’s given me a dream to figure on, and in that dream he’s done told me some other things he ain’t never told any them other preachers.”
“That’s nice of him, Mr. Sonny. He don’t talk to just everyone. It’s the elephant connection does it.”
Butch drove through the open gate and parked his truck in the usual spot and started for the ticket booth. He had the same forward trudge he always had, like he was pushing against a great wind and not thinking it was worth it.
“The Lord has told me to expand the minds of Baptists,” Sonny said.
“That’s a job he’s given you, Mr. Sonny.”
“There is another path from the one we’ve been taking. Oh, some of the Baptist talk is all right, but God had shown me that firewalking is the correct way to get right with the holy spirit.”
“Like walking on coals and stuff?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“You gonna walk on coals, Mr. Sonny?”
“I am.”
“I’d sho like to see that, Mr. Sonny, I really would.”
Candy led Sonny out to the pickup and Sonny opened the door and climbed in, visions of firewalking Baptists trucking through his head.
“You gonna do this with no shoes on?” Candy asked, closing the pickup door for Sonny.
“It wouldn’t be right to wear shoes. That would be cheating. It wouldn’t have a purpose.”
“Do you feet a mite better.”
Sonny wasn’t listening. He found the keys in his overalls and touched the red furrows on his chest that the heater had made. He was proud of them. They were a sign from God. They were like the trenches of fire he would build for his Baptists. He would teach them to walk the trenches and open their hearts and souls and trust their feet to Jesus. And not mind putting a little something extra in the offering plate. People would get so excited he could move those red leatherette Bibles.
“Lord be praised,” Sonny said.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Candy said.
Sonny backed the truck around and drove out of the gate onto the highway. He felt like Moses must have felt when he was chosen to lead the Jews out of the wilderness. But he had been chosen instead to lead the Baptists into a new way of Salvation by forming a firewalking branch of the Baptist church. He smiled and leaned over the steering wheel, letting it touch the hot wounds on his chest. Rows of rich converts somewhere beyond the horizon of his mind stepped briskly through trenches of hot coals, smiling.
The Phone Woman
This one was based on a true incident. A woman very much like the one described in this story arrived at my house on a day very much like the one described in the story, and then the events, up to a point, occurred as they do in the story.
Obviously, the woman and the events were only the catalyst, as the protagonist of this story has a kind of, well, uh, adventure with the Phone Woman that certainly didn’t occur. Least not at my house. Not with me. I just write crazy stories. I try not to perform them.
Journal Entries
WEEK TO REMEMBER…
After this, my little white page friend, you shall have greater security, kept under not only lock and key, but you will have a hiding place. If I were truly as smart as I sometimes think I am, I wouldn’t write this down. I know better. But, I am compelled.
Compulsion. It comes out of nowhere and owns us all. We put a suit and tie and hat on the primitive part of our brain and call it manners and civilization, but ultimately, it’s just a suit and tie and a hat. The primitive brain is still primitive, and it compels, pulses to the same dark beat that made our less civilized ancestors and the primordial ooze before them throb to simple, savage rhythms of sex, death and destruction.
Our nerves call out to us to touch and taste life, and without our suits of civilization, we can do that immediately. Take what we need if we’ve muscle enough. Will enough. But all dressed up in the trappings of civilization, we’re forced to find our thrills vicariously. And eventually, that is not enough. Controlling our impulses that way is like having someone eat your food for you. No taste. No texture. No nourishment. Pitiful business.
Without catering to the needs of our primitive brains, without feeding impulses, trying instead to get what we need through books and films and the lives of the more adventurous, we cease to live. We wither. We bore ourselves and others. We die. And are glad of it.
Whatcha gonna do, huh?
· · ·
Saturday morning, June 10th through Saturday 17th:
I haven’t written in a while, so I’ll cover a few days, beginning with a week ago today.
It was one of those mornings when I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, feeling a little out of sorts, mad at the wife over something I’ve forgotten and she probably hasn’t forgotten, and we grumbled down the hall, into the kitchen, and there’s our dog, a Siberian Husky—my wife always refers to him as a Suburban Husky because of his pampered lifestyle, though any resemblance to where we live and suburbia requires a great deal of faith—and he’s smiling at us, and then we see why he’s smiling. Two reasons: (1) He’s happy to see us. (2) He feels a little guilty.
He has reason to feel guilty. Not far behind him, next to the kitchen table, was a pile of shit. I’m not talking your casual little whoopsie-doo, and I’m not talking your inconvenient pile, and I’m not talking six to eight turds the size of large bananas. I’m talking a certified, pure-dee, goddamn prize-winning SHIT. There were enough dog turds there to
shovel out in a pickup truck and dump on the lawn and let dry so you could use them to build an adobe hut big enough to keep your tools in and have room to house your cat in the winter.
And, right beside this sterling deposit, was a lake of piss wide enough and deep enough to go rowing on.
I had visions of a Siberian Husky hat and slippers, or possibly a nice throw rug for the bedroom, a necklace of dog claws and teeth; maybe cut that smile right out of his face and frame it.
But the dog-lover in me took over, and I put him outside in his pen where he cooled his dew claws for a while. Then I spent about a half-hour cleaning up dog shit while my wife spent the same amount of time keeping our two-year-old son, Kevin, known to me as Fruit of My Loins, out of the shit.
Yep, Oh Great White Page of a Diary, he was up now. It always works that way. In times of greatest stress, in times of greatest need for contemplation or privacy, like when you’re trying to get that morning piece off the Old Lady, the kid shows up, and suddenly it’s as if you’ve been deposited inside an ant farm and the ants are crawling and stinging. By the time I finished cleaning up the mess, it was time for breakfast, and I got to tell you, I didn’t want anything that looked like link sausage that morning.
So Janet and I ate, hoping that what we smelled while eating was the aroma of disinfectant and not the stench of shit wearing a coat of disinfectant, and we watched the kid spill his milk eighty lebben times and throw food and drop stuff on the floor, and me and the wife we’re fussing at each other more and more, about whatever it was we were mad about that morning—a little item intensified by our dog’s deposits—and by the time we’re through eating our meal, and Janet leaves me with Fruit of My Loins and his View Master and goes out to the laundry room to do what the room is named for—probably went out there to beat the laundry clean with rocks or bricks, pretending shirts and pants were my head—I’m beginning to think things couldn’t get worse. About that time the earth passes through the tail of a comet or something, some kind of dimensional gate is opened, and the world goes weird.
High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale Page 21
