High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “She’s got pants on,” Dave said. “You take them off, the part that counts won’t be dirty.”

  “That part’s always dirty. They pee and bleed out of it don’t they? Hell, hot as it is back here, she’s already starting to smell.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” Dave turned and looked over the seat at Merle. “You can’t get pleased, can you? She ain’t stinking. She didn’t even shit her pants when she checked out. And she ain’t been dead long enough to smell, and you know it. Quit being so goddamn contrary.” Dave turned back around and shook out a cigarette and lit it.

  “Blow that out the window, damnit,” Merle said. “You know that smoke works my allergies.”

  Dave shook his head and blew smoke out the window. He turned up the speaker. The ads and commercials were over. The movie was starting.

  “And don’t be looking back here at me neither,” Merle said.

  Merle rolled the woman out of the trunk, across the seat, on to the floor board and up against him. He pushed the seat back into place and got hold of the woman and hoisted her on to the back seat. He pushed her T-shirt up over her breasts. He fondled her breasts. They were big and firm and rubbery-cold. He unfastened her shorts and pulled them over her shoes and ripped her panties apart at one side. He pushed one of her legs onto the floorboard and gripped her hips and pulled her ass down a little, got it cocked to a position he liked. He unfastened and pulled down his jeans and boxer shorts and got on her.

  Dave roamed an eye to the rear-view mirror, caught sight of Merle’s butt bobbing. He grinned and puffed at his cigarette. After a while, he turned his attention to the movie.

  · · ·

  When Merle was finished he looked at the woman’s dead eyes. He couldn’t see their color in the dark, but he guessed blue. Her hair he could tell was blond.

  “How was it?” Dave asked.

  “It was pussy. Hand me the flashlight.”

  Dave reached over and got the light out of the glove box and handed it over the seat. Merle took it. He put it close to the woman’s face and turned it on.

  “She’s got blue eyes,” Merle said.

  “I noticed that right off when we grabbed her,” Dave said. “I thought then you’d like that, being how you are about blue eyes.” Merle turned off the flashlight, handed it to Dave, pulled up his pants and climbed over the seat. On the screen a worm like monster was coming out of the sand on a beach.

  “This flick isn’t half bad,” Dave said. “It’s kind of funny, really. You don’t get too good a look at the monster though…that all the pussy you gonna get?”

  “Maybe some later,” Merle said. “You feeling any better?”

  “Some.”

  “Yeah, well, why don’t you eat some popcorn while I get me a little. Want a cigarette? You like a cigarette after sex, don’t you?”

  “All right.”

  Dave gave Merle a cigarette, lit it. Merle sucked the smoke in deeply.

  “Better?” Dave asked.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Good.” Dave thumped his cigarette out the window. “I’m gonna take my turn now. Don’t let nothing happen on the movie. Make it wait.”

  “Sure.”

  Dave climbed over the seat. Merle tried to watch the movie. After a moment, he quit. He turned and looked out his window. Six speakers down he could see a Chevy rocking.

  “Got to be something more to life than this?” Merle said without turning to look at Dave.

  “I been telling you,” Dave said, “this is life, and you better start enjoying. Get you some orientation before it’s too late and it’s all over but the dirt in the face…talk to me later. Right now this is what I want out of life. Little later, I might want a drink.”

  Merle shook his head.

  Dave lifted the woman’s leg and hooked her ankle over the front seat.

  Merle looked at her foot, the ankle bracelet dangling from it. “I bet that damn foot’s more a size eleven than a ten,” Merle said. “Probably buys her shoes at the ski shop.”

  Dave hooked her other ankle over the back seat, on the package shelf. “Like I said, it’s not the feet I’m interested in.”

  Merle shook his head again. He rolled down his window and thumped out some ash and turned his attention to the Chevy again. It was still rocking.

  Dave shifted into position in the back seat. The Ford began to rock. The foot next to Merle vibrated, made little dead hops.

  From the back seat Dave began to chant: “Give it to me, baby. Give it to me. Am I your Prince, baby? Am I your goddamn King? Take that anaconda, bitch. Take it!”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Merle said.

  · · ·

  Five minutes later Dave climbed into the front seat, said, “Damn. Damn good piece.”

  “You act like she had something to do with it,” Merle said.

  “Her pussy, ain’t it?”

  “We’re doing all the work. We could cut a hole in the seat back there and get it that good.”

  “That ain’t true. It ain’t the hole does it, and it damn sure ain’t the personality, it’s how they look. That flesh under you. Young. Firm. Try coming in an ugly or fat woman and you’ll see what I mean. You’ll have some troubles. Or maybe you won’t.”

  “I don’t like ’em old or fat.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t see the live ones like either one of us all that much. The old ones or the fat ones. Face it, we’ve got no way with live women. And I don’t like the courting. I like to know I see one I like, I can have her if I can catch her.”

  Merle reached over and shoved the woman’s foot off the seat. It fell heavily into the floorboard. “I’m tired of looking at that slat. Feet like that, they ought to have paper bags over them.”

  · · ·

  When the second feature was over, they drove to Dave’s house and parked out back next to the tall board fence. They killed the lights and sat there for a while, watching, listening.

  No movement at the neighbors.

  “You get the gate,” Dave said, “I’ll get the meat.”

  “We could just go on and dump her,” Merle said. “We could call it a night.”

  “It’s best to be careful. The law can look at sput now and know who it comes from. We got to clean her up some.”

  Merle got out and opened the gate and Dave got out and opened the trunk and pulled the woman out by the foot and let her fall on her face to the ground. He reached in and got her shorts and put them in the crook of his arm, then bent and ripped her torn panties the rest of the way off and stuffed them in a pocket of her shorts, and stuffed the shorts into the front of his pants. He got hold of her ankle and dragged her through the gate.

  Merle closed the gate as Dave and the corpse came through. “You got to drag her on her face?” he said.

  “She don’t care,” Dave said.

  “I know, but I don’t like her messed up.”

  “We’re through with her.”

  “When we let her off, I want her to be, you know, okay.”

  “She ain’t okay now, Merle. She’s dead.”

  “I don’t want her messed up.”

  Dave shrugged. He crossed her ankles and flipped her on her back and dragged her over next to the house and let go of her by the water hose. He uncoiled the hose and took the nozzle and inserted it up the woman with a sound like a boot being withdrawn from mud, and turned the water on low.

  When he looked up from his work, Merle was coming out of the house with a six-pack of beer. He carried it over to the redwood picnic table and sat down. Dave joined him.

  “Have a Lone Star,” Merle said.

  Dave twisted the top off one. “You’re thinking on something, I can tell.”

  “I was thinking we ought to take them alive,” Merle said.

  Dave lit a cigarette and looked at him. “We been over this. We take one alive she might scream or get away. We could get caught easy enough.”

  “We could kill her when we’re finished. Way we’re doing, we
could buy one of those blow-up dolls, put it in the glove box and bring it to the drive-in.”

  “I’ve never cottoned to something like that. Even jacking off bothers me. A man ought to have a woman.”

  “A dead woman?”

  “That’s the best kind. She’s quiet. You haven’t got to put up with clothes and makeup jabber, keeping up with the Jones’ jabber, getting that promotion jabber. She’s not gonna tell you no in the middle of the night. Ain’t gonna complain about how you put it to her. One stroke’s as good as the next to a dead bitch.”

  “I kind of like hearing ’em grunt, though. I like being kissed.”

  “Rape some girl, think she’ll want to kiss you?”

  “I can make her.”

  “Dead’s better. You don’t have to worry yourself about how happy she is. You don’t pay for nothing. If you got a live woman, one you’re married to even, you’re still paying for pussy. If you don’t pay in money, you’ll pay in pain. They’ll smile and coo for a time, but stay out late with the boys, have a little financial stress, they all revert to just what my mama was. A bitch. She drove my daddy into an early grave, way she nagged, and the old sow lived to be ninety. No wonder women live longer than men. They worry men to death.

  “Like my uncle I was talking about. All that worry…hell, that was his wife put it on him. Wanting this and wanting that. When he got sick, had that operation and had to dip into his savings, she was out of there. They’d been married thirty years, but things got tough, you could see what those thirty years meant. He didn’t even come out of that deal with a place to put his dick at night.”

  “Ain’t all women that way.”

  “Yeah they are. They can’t help it. I’m not blaming them. It’s in them, like germs. In time, they all turn out just the same.”

  “I’m talking about raping them, though, not marrying them. Getting kissed .”

  “You’re with the kissing again. You been reading Cosmo or something? What’s this kiss stuff? You get hungry, you eat. You get thirsty, you drink. You get tired, you sleep. You get horny, you kill and fuck. You use them like a product, Merle, then when you get through with the product, you throw out the package. Get a new one when you need it. This way you always got the young ones, the tan ones, no matter how old or fat or ugly you get. You don’t have to see a pretty woman get old, see that tan turn her face to leather. You can keep the world bright and fresh all the time. You listen to me, Merle. It’s the best way.”

  Merle looked at the woman’s body. Her head was turned toward him. Her eyes looked to have filled with milk. Water was running out of her and pooling on the grass and starting to spurt from between her legs. Merle looked away from her, said, “Guess I’m just looking for a little romance. I had me a taste of it, you know. It was all right. She could really kiss.”

  “Yeah, it was all right for a while, then she ran off with a sand nigger.”

  “Arab, Dave. She ran off with an Arab.”

  “He was here right now, you’d call him an Arab?”

  “I’d kill him.”

  “There you are. Call him an Arab or a sand nigger, you’d kill him, right?”

  Merle nodded.

  “Listen,” Dave said. “Don’t think I don’t understand what you’re saying. Thing I like about you, Merle, is you aren’t like those guys down at the plant, come in do your job, go home, watch a little TV, fall asleep in the chair dreaming about some magazine model cause the old lady won’t give out, or you don’t want to think about her giving out on account of the way she’s got ugly. Thing is, Merle, you know you’re dissatisfied. That’s the first step to knowing there’s more to life than the old grind. I appreciate that in you. It’s a kind of sensitivity some men don’t like to face. Think it makes them weak. It’s a strength, is what it is, Merle. Something I wish I had more of.”

  “That’s damn nice of you to say, Dave.”

  “It’s true. Anybody knows you, knows you feel things deeply. And I don’t want you to think that I don’t appreciate romance, but you get our age, you got to look at things a little straighter. I can’t see any romance with an old woman anyway, and a young one, she ain’t gonna have me…unless it’s the way we’re doing it now.”

  Merle glanced at the corpse. Water was spewing up from between her legs like a whale blowing. Her stomach was a fat, white mound.

  “We don’t get that hose out of her,” Merle said, “she’s gonna blow the hell up.”

  “I’ll get it,” Dave said. He went over and turned off the water and pulled the hose out of her and put his foot on her stomach and began to pump his leg. Water gushed from her and her stomach began to flatten. “She was all right, wasn’t she, Merle?”

  “’Cept for them feet, she was fine.”

  · · ·

  They drove out into the pines and pulled off to the side of a little dirt road and parked. They got out and went around to the trunk and Dave unlocked it. They looked at the young woman’s body for a moment, then they each took a leg and jerked her from the trunk, and with her legs spread like a wishbone, they dragged her into the brush and dropped her on the edge of an incline coated in blackberry briars.

  “Man,” Dave said. “Taste that air. This is the prettiest night I can remember.”

  “It’s nice,” Merle said.

  Dave put a boot to the woman and pushed, she went rolling down the incline in a white moon-licked haze and crashed into the brush at the bottom. Dave pulled her shorts from the front of his pants and tossed them after her.

  “Time they find her, the worms will have had some pussy too,” Dave said.

  They got in the car and Dave started it up and eased down the road.

  “Dave?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re a good friend,” Merle said. “The talk and all, it done me good. Really.”

  Dave smiled, clapped Merle’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s all right. I been seeing this coming in you for a time, since the girl before last…you’re all right now, though. Right?”

  “Well, I’m better.”

  “That’s how you start.”

  They drove a piece. Merle said, “But I got to admit to you, I still miss being kissed.”

  Dave laughed. “You and the kiss. You’re some piece of work buddy…I got your kiss. Kiss my ass.”

  Merle grinned. “Way I feel, your ass could kiss back, I just might.”

  Dave laughed again. They drove out of the woods and onto the highway. The moon was high and bright.

  Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland

  My wife, as a joke, bought a rubber blow-up Godzilla for me, or maybe it was just a dinosaur. I put a Mickey Mouse cap on its head, and suddenly, a story idea was born. I think I probably ate popcorn the night I got the dinosaur, thought about that hat, had a bellyache, and it all came together. It has certainly been one of my more popular stories.

  FOR A BIRTHDAY PRESENT, Fred’s wife, Karen, bought him a plastic, inflatable dinosaur—a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It was in a cardboard box, and Fred thanked her and took the dinosaur downstairs to his study and took it out of the box and spent twenty minutes taking deep breaths and blowing air into it.

  When the dinosaur was inflated, he sat it in front of his bookshelves, and as a joke, got a mouse-ear hat he had bought at Disneyland three years before, and put it on the dinosaur’s head and named it Bob.

  Immediately, Bob wanted to go to Disneyland. There was no snuffing the ambition. He talked about it night and day, and it got so the study was no place to visit, because Bob would become most unpleasant on the matter. He scrounged around downstairs at night, pacing the floor, singing the Mouseketeer theme loud and long, waking up Fred and Karen, and when Fred would come downstairs to reason with Bob, Bob wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t have a minute’s worth of it. No sir, he by golly wanted to go to Disneyland.

  Fred said to Karen, “You should have bought me a Brontosaurus, or maybe a Stegosaurus. I have a feeling they’d have been easier to reason with.”

&n
bsp; Bob kept it up night and day. “Disneyland, Disneyland, I want to go to Disneyland. I want to see Mickey. I want to see Donald.” It was like some kind of mantra, Bob said it so much. He even found some old brochures on Disneyland that Fred had stored in his closet, and Bob spread them out on the floor and lay down near them and studied the pictures and wagged his great tail and looked wistful.

  “Disneyland,” he would whisper. “I want to go to Disneyland.”

  And when he wasn’t talking about it, he was mooning. He’d come up to breakfast and sit in two chairs at the table and stare blankly into the syrup on his pancakes, possibly visualizing the Matterhorn ride or Sleeping Beauty’s castle. It got so it was a painful thing to see. And Bob got mean. He chased the neighbor’s dogs and tore open garbage sacks and fought with the kids on the bus and argued with his teachers and took up slovenly habits, like throwing his used Kleenex on the floor of the study. There was no living with that dinosaur.

  Finally, Fred had had enough, and one morning at breakfast, while Bob was staring into his pancakes, moving his fork through them lazily, but not really trying to eat them (and Fred had noticed that Bob had lost weight and looked as if he needed air), Fred said, “Bob, we’ve decided that you may go to Disneyland.”

  “What?” Bob said, jerking his head up so fast his mouse hat flew off and his fork scraped across his plate with a sound like a fingernail on a blackboard. “Really?”

  “Yes, but you must wait until school is out for the summer, and you really have to act better.”

  “Oh, I will, I will,” Bob said.

  Well now, Bob was one happy dinosaur. He quit throwing Kleenex down and bothering the dogs and the kids on the bus and his teachers, and in fact, he became a model citizen. His school grades even picked up.

  Finally, the big day came, and Fred and Karen bought Bob a suit of clothes and a nice John Deere cap, but Bob would have nothing to do with the new duds. He wore his mouse-ear hat and a sweatshirt he had bought at Goodwill with a faded picture of Mickey Mouse on it with the word Disneyland inscribed above it. He even insisted on carrying a battered Disney lunchbox he had picked up at the Salvation Army, but other than that, he was very cooperative.