Savage Season cap-1

by Joe R. Lansdale

  We were so excited about our bird, we dyed everything we owned black. On those occasions when we did buy new clothes, they were always black. That way Cheep stayed happy.

  Sweet alchemy was thicker in the air than radio waves then, and it seemed especially thick around Trudy and me. We thought it would last forever.

  But the best-looking apple can contain a worm.

  When 1970 rolled in just a few weeks after we were married, the Vietnam War still raged on. The relatively innocent smoking of grass had been exchanged by many for pills and shit-filled needles. The wonderful, if admittedly hokey, beauty of Woodstock had to stand shoulder to shoulder with the senseless tragedy at Kent State.

  Our bird continued to fly about the house, but the magic of the era was gone. A deep, dark awareness that perhaps it had never actually existed settled in; we had glimpsed some shopworn cards up the magician's sleeve, and with each passing moment, the glow of the act was dimming.

  The sixties were dead. They may never have lived.

  I began to feel guilty about hiding out in college with my deferment when so many were dying in Vietnam. Asking that everyone be peaceful and love one another wasn't enough. I wanted to make some statement against the war, and I didn't want to hide behind a deferment to do it. I was one of those who felt our original cause in Vietnam was just, but that it had become a political nightmare. The government we were

  defending, in spite of cries of "We are a democracy," showed little evidence of being different from the one we were fighting. Our role there was as aimless as the Flying Dutchman. We took a hill, we gave it back. The American dead stacked up. Seemed to me, we ought to have known when to cut our losses.

  I talked to Trudy long and hard, and it was the sort of thing she loved. Noble involvement. It lit her like a torch.

  With her blessing, I decided to quit college and allow myself to be drafted. When it came time to step forward and take the induction, I would refuse. I'd go the prison route instead. That would be my statement.

  This was the time of the lottery, and I was drafted almost immediately. I was disappointed my draft notice didn't say Greetings. I had always heard that it did.

  I went to Dallas, took my physical, passed, and refused to go.

  The army tried to give me outs. I give them that. One officer even suggested I make a break for Canada. The war had soured even his way of thinking, and he was a lifer.

  But I refused to run.

  It was suggested I sign as a conscientious objector, but again I refused. C.O. status meant you thought fighting for anything, even your life, was wrong. I didn't believe that. Had I been around during the fighting of World War I or II, I would have gone and done my bit. The causes were just and the wars were fought with a conclusion in mind. I was an idealist, not a coward.

  So I went to Leavenworth. Trudy and some of her friends came to see me from time to time and told me "right on" and how brave I was, and it felt good to hear it. They wrote me nice letters.

  But that good feeling didn't last. It didn't relax me at night when I could hear the cons snorting and coughing and crying and farting and sodomizing each other. And there were guys in there who had bludgeoned their grandmothers to death who thought it their patriotic duty to kill me for not signing up to shoot gooks. If I hadn't been a pretty tough country boy with iron foundry muscles, I might not have made it.

  Trudy kept coming to see me, but her friends dropped off. She kept writing, but the friends quit. She sent me clippings in her letters that told me what was going on outside, about the causes being fought for, the ground gained, the ground lost.

  Then her visits thinned, and finally stopped. Next to last letter I got from her went on about how brave I was again and compared me to a number of counterculture heroes. It said Cheep had died and had been buried in a cream corn can out back of the house, and that she had met a man named Pete who was big in the ecology movement and they had this thing going. The last letter told me that the thing she and Pete had going was now really going, and she was filing for divorce. Nothing personal. She thought I was the bravest man she knew. It was signed like all the others: Love Trudy.

  I did my time. Eighteen months altogether. I had planned the day they let me out for a long time. I thought I would come out on a bright warm day with my fist held high, and Trudy would be there looking sexy and soft in a short windblown dress that would give me a good view of her long brown legs, and as the music came up, sweet but triumphant, she would run to me with those legs flashing and throw her arms around my neck and give me a kiss that would knock me silly from head to toes. Then she would load me in a car and drive us away.

  But when I came out it was cold and drizzling. I had to talk a guard into calling someone to drive me to the bus station. Between paying for the car and the bus, the money I had when I went in and the money the government gave me for the non stimulating manual labor I did inside was almost gone. Needless to say, I didn't feel like raising my fist.

  I went back to East Texas and found out I didn't want to help the underprivileged anymore. I realized I was one of them. I got a job in the rose fields outside of LaBorde, and that's where I met Leonard. He was a Vietnam vet and a certified hardhead. He didn't like my views on a lot of things, but he didn't hold them against me either; I gave him someone to argue with. He was a martial artist, boxing, kenpo, hapkido, and he revived my interest. When I was in high school, until the time I met Trudy, I had been heavily involved in that sort of thing. Guess I dropped it later because I didn't feel it fit my new peace and love image or something. Anyway, I had been away from it for a time. I was glad to get at it again. I got better than ever before. It helped me work out some frustrations.

  After a while, Trudy started coming around, and each time she went away she left me a bigger wreck than before. Built me up with promises, then left me sudden and flat. She always found a new man who was big in some movement or another. Supporting lettuce workers or saving seals from the business end of a Louisville Slugger.

  Each time she left, I told Leonard I was through with her. And each time it was a lie. But the last time, after the Great Drunk, even I believed it.

  And now she was back.

  All this was going around and around in my head when she came in buck naked and put her arms around my neck and bent and kissed me on the ear. The minty clean soap smell and the aroma of sex came off of her in waves. I reached up and touched her hand where it rested on my chest.

  "I woke up and you were gone," she said.

  "I got thirsty."

  "I got horny. Come back to bed."

  I stood and took her in my arms and kissed her. She was shaking from the cold. I opened my robe and stretched it around her as far as it would go and held her to me. Her hands played at my sides and rump, and finally around front where she took hold of me.

  "You're pretty ruthless," I said, "treating an old man this way."

  "You don't feel old, sugar."

  We went back to bed, but this time she didn't let loose with the laugh I liked. She lay there when we were finished and finally eased out of bed and picked up her panties and pulled them on. I hated that. I liked the view. Covering that downy crotch of hers with panties was as vile an act as tossing a wet bath towel over the face of the Mona Lisa.

  "It's cold," I said. "Come back to bed,"

  "Hap, I haven't been entirely truthful with you."

  "Not that you ever are. But this time, don't feel too bad. You haven't had a lot of time to lie."

  She walked to the window and stood with her back to me, looking out, hugging herself. She turned slowly, her arms crossed over her breasts. "You sound pretty vindictive."

  "Guess I was starting to pretend again. But you've put me back on track."

  "It was always good for us, wasn't it, Hap? The sex, I mean."

  "For a little while, more than the sex."

  She picked up my robe where I had dropped it on the floor and put it on. She climbed on the bed, crossed her legs, and
sat looking at me.

  "Hap, I need your help."

  "I'm tapped out for money. I got maybe fifty dollars, that's it. Fifty cents in change."

  "I didn't come for money."

  "But you always come for something, don't you? Long as it doesn't have anything permanent to do with me."

  "I don't want to argue. It's just that I need your help. I couldn't think of anyone else to ask."

  "Maybe I can."

  "I want you to do it, because this time you'll profit. This time will make up for all the other times."

  "Nothing can make up for those times."

  "This might go a long way toward it." She put her hand on my shoulder. "Hap, my love, how would you like to make an easy two hundred thousand dollars? Tax free."

  Chapter 3

  Early next morning I left Trudy asleep and rattled my old green Dodge pickup over to Leonard's place. He had a little house off the same dirt road I lived off of, and he was only about five miles away.

  I parked up close to the house, got out into the cold morning air, and tried the front door. It was locked. I got the key from its hiding place beneath the porch and let myself in.

  There was a fire in the fireplace, though it had dwindled considerably, and the house smelled like coffee. I followed my nose to the kitchen and found the pot and poured a cup. I called Leonard's name, but he didn't answer.

  I checked to see how his handiwork was coming. He was rebuilding his sink cabinet due to termite damage. He had precut boards stacked by the sink, a hammer and a bag of little facing nails and a bag of long nails for the wall boards. He'd been doing the work a bit at a time, and as usual with that kind of thing, his craftsmanship was excellent. Me, I couldn't put on a rubber without directions, then I might get it inside out.

  I took the cup with me out the back way and walked down to the dog pens and the barn. The bam was an old-fashioned affair, once bright red and now rust-colored with big double doors and a hayloft. The pens were six long steel wire runs, and each held a spotted bird dog, and at the end of each run was a large dog house, built against heat or cold or terrific winds, and they had flap doors that closed off when the dogs went in or out. The dog in the pen closest to the barn was called Switch for some reason, and he was Leonard's favorite. Which is not to say Leonard wasn't crazy about all those big dumb bastards. He went hunting with them as often as he could, not so much to hunt, but to see those spotted beauties run.

  I went by the pens and the dogs barked and leaped. I put my fingers through the wire as I came to each run, and the dogs licked them in turn, wagged their tails and yipped.

  When I got to Switch's run, I knelt down and spent more time with him. I hated to play favorites, but hell, there was something special about Switch. There was a kind of sad nobility in his eyes, like maybe he had seen some things he'd rather not have, but was the wiser for it. Which was damn silly, of course. Even a smart bird dog is a pretty dumb variety of dog. But he did have some class. He was protective of Leonard, too, and if he didn't know you and he was loose and you were standing too close to Leonard, you had to watch yourself. He'd leap at you and try to tear your face off, without so much as a bark or a warning growl.

  From the barn I could hear a steady thumping and knew Leonard was making that sound. He was regular about that sort of thing, even if the night before he had been up until two A.M. drinking.

  I downed the rest of my coffee, finished petting Switch, stood up and leaned forward on the pen and looked out at the thick dark woods back there; they seemed to be expanding as the sunlight widened and redefined them. Leonard had a beautiful place here. The creek was maybe a little too close to the house and he'd steadily been losing his land to erosion, something his having trenches of gravel put in alongside the creek hadn't helped. For a while it was okay, but soon it broke down and the gravel started to wash away, and now sometimes in the summer we'd go stand out there on the bank and throw the gravel at the water and later sit on his porch scraping it and the clay out of the treads of our shoes.

  When we were really in a Huck Finn mood, we'd go down to the Robin Hood Tree, a big oak in a clearing in the woods behind Leonard's house. I don't know who all that woods belonged to, but in our minds that tree belonged to us. We'd named it that a few years back, after the big tree Robin Hood held his conferences under in Sherwood Forest. We sometimes went there to talk and enjoy the woods. Occasionally Leonard brought his rifle so he could pretend to be scouting for squirrels. But we always ended up at the Robin Hood tree, sitting with our backs against it, talking until nightfall.

  My place was nice but I had to admit, I preferred Leonard's to mine. I let the look of the place soothe me while I thought about what Trudy had told me last night, and tried to figure some way to convince Leonard to go in with me. Leonard hadn't been part of Trudy's thinking, but he was damn sure part of mine. I tried to tell myself it was because I liked Leonard and wanted to see him make some money, and though this was true, I knew too it was because I had come to depend on him so much. He had bailed me out of hell so many times, he had become my spirit guide through life.

  Inside the barn the light was weak, but I could see Leonard working over the heavy bag he kept hanging from a rafter beneath the hayloft. He was stripped to the waist, wearing a pair of gray sweatpants, low-cut tennis shoes with white socks and a pair of worn bag gloves. His face and hard upper torso looked like wet chocolate, and when the light caught him right, the thick beads of sweat gave the impression of greasy boils covering his skin. He was snorting plumes of cold exhaust.

  He had the bag rocking, pounding it with combinations and kicking the sides of it. When he hit the bag it moved a good distance and never quite came back to rest before he hit it again with another round of combinations and kicks.

  I put the coffee cup on one of the two-by-fours that helped support the unadorned wall, leaned back and watched. I guess I stood there a full five minutes before he noticed me.

  "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 that 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, ol' 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.

  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 h
is 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 over your hands and tightened at the wrist 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 breadbasket 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.