Savage Season cap-1

by Joe R. Lansdale

  "Tell me about women's rights now. Toss in something about how the gays used to be more oppressed before people like these, people like you, came along. Tell me how you people ended the war."

  "All true."

  "Then why in hell didn't you go for what they wanted you to go for yesterday? They were fishing with every kind of bait they had."

  "I guess it's their posture. That holier than thou attitude that smacks more of a performance than anything else."

  "I thought you said it was heartfelt."

  I hate being caught in a contradiction. "Have you ever thought about fucking yourself, Leonard?"

  "Constantly. Want to have a relationship with a good man, figure I'd be prime pick. But my dick's about a half-inch too short to get the job done. I like to feel it all the way up in my liver."

  "You through jacking with me now?"

  "Almost. All I got to say is you can't be a professional bleeding heart. Yeah, things are better for blacks and women and gays, but it was the blacks and women and gays that did it, not fuck-ups like this bunch. Whites and straights came along to give help, all right, after the blacks said 'enough' and got their heads busted, and it's the same for the gays and the women. The whites and straights, they control things, and they could have changed it anytime."

  "Not all us whites and straights are in a position of power, or haven't you noticed?"

  "Let's save this for next time we're on Meet The Nation or something."

  "Gladly. I'm too cold to argue, and if I got up from here to kick your ass my foot would break off."

  "Or I'd break it off for you. Now that's settled, let's get out of here before the World Savers get up."

  Leonard looked at his watch. "It's six o'clock and I'm hungry. Paco said there's a pretty good place for breakfast in town."

  "Maybe they got something here we could fix."

  "Nothing in the fridge but a bag of uncooked spaghetti and three beers. Cabinets are mostly empty, except for some roaches."

  We left without disturbing anyone, went out to Leonard's car, and it cranked after a scary moment of the starter Bendix clicking. As we drove away, I thought of Trudy and Howard in bed together and felt like Howard must have felt when she was with me.

  Depressed.

  I thought of them lying there, her waking up, giving herself to him before she got cleaned up and went off to work (wherever she worked) and he went to his job (if he had one). Then I imagined them coming home from a hard day, planning to steal money that was already stolen to use for some noble cause. Ozzie and Harriet of the sixties set.

  I liked it. It was sweet. They were a great couple with high ideals.

  I hoped it was so cold back there her vagina was frozen shut.

  Sue me. I've got a juvenile streak.

  Chapter 11

  We drove in and found a little cafe called Bill's Kettle, the place Paco recommended. It hadn't been there when I was growing up. Back then that spot had been a magazine and cigar store. The lady who ran it used to let me read comics off the rack and not buy them. I was the only one she let do that.

  The building the cafe was in, though it had to be considerably younger than the one the magazine store had occupied, looked much older. It appeared to be held up with nothing more than the smoke and grease from the kitchen. The huge plate glass was so grimy you could hardly see movement behind it. Someone had made an attempt to wipe it clean on the outside but hadn't bothered rinsing the soap; it looked like the end result of a Halloween prank.

  The inside looked no better. The floors were scuffed and dirty and tables had been poorly wiped. There were two men at one table eating. They eyed us and nodded as we came in. In the back a young man sat staring into space, sipping coffee.

  There was a fat blond woman in thinning green stretch pants at the counter. She gave us a quick glance and went back to her coffee and cigarette, said something to the thin, oily-headed man behind the counter. He managed a laugh, like a leukemia patient trying to be cheery.

  We sat and kept our arms off the table. The fat blond woman got down off the stool and came over with menus. Pretty sneaky, the help blending in with the clientele that way.

  We ordered, and about the time our meal arrived, Paco came in. He had on faded khakis and a blue baseball cap today. The cap hid some of the ugliness of his head. No one stared; they all worked at not doing that, and you could tell.

  He saw us, smiled, and the smile was nice; the only part of him that wasn't ruined.

  He came over and Leonard made room and Paco sat down beside him. We went through the casual greeting bullshit you go through, and the waitress shrugged off the stool and came over with her cigarette in her mouth and asked around it for Paco's order, then went away.

  "She didn't even bother with a menu," Leonard said.

  "I always get the same thing," Paco said. "Pancakes. Her asking me is simply a ritual."

  Surprise. The food was great. I was wiping up the last of my eggs with a piece of toast when Paco smiled at me and said, "Place looks like a toilet, but what comes out of the kitchen could pass for ambrosia. They got someone back there knows what cooking is all about."

  When Paco's order came and he finished eating, I said, "How do you live, you and the guys? Trudy the only one working?"

  "I don't get too many indoor jobs with this face," Paco said. "Nobody in a store wants to look at me all day. I do some jobs here and there. Move across country doing different things, farm and yard work mostly. Sometimes things that aren't legal or aren't quite legal. Right now, you could say I'm between jobs.

  "Trudy works at the Dairy Palace east of town. She doles out hamburgers. I'll tell you now. Don't eat there. The food's for shit.

  "Howard's got a job at a gas station. Pumps gas, changes tires, fixes flats, runs the wrecker service. He's getting in good with the owner so he can get use of the wrecker. Told the guy that way his wife—Trudy's going as his wife—won't have to pick him up. He thinks they're gonna let him have the wrecker soon and we can use it to pull the boat out some afternoon."

  "If there is a boat," Leonard said.

  "I don't let myself think any other way," Paco said. "There's a boat."

  "You got Trudy's kind of dedication," I said.

  "I don't know she's so dedicated," Paco said. "She wants to be, but I don't know she is. I don't know her like Howard knows her, or maybe you know her, but I know her type. I've heard her talk about you two, and I've heard Howard talk, and I see how burned out you are, Hap, and I got to draw some conclusions. I think she's a quitter. She likes to get all the sticks and tinder for the fire, likes to light it, but doesn't want to be there when it starts to smoke too much and get too hot. By then, she's out of there, gathering new sticks, starting new fires, then she's away from that one before it gets going good. Leaves someone else to mind the blaze, lets them take the heat and smoke and get all burned up. She's got a knack for picking guys who'll martyr for her, ones who think she's gonna come back and burn up with them."

  "I been trying to tell this clown that for years," Leonard said. "I know a goddamn succubus when I see one."

  "What about you, Paco?" I asked. "What's your story? You just dedicated to their cause, or what?"

  "Me, I'm not dedicated at all. Except to myself. I'm just looking to score as big as I can."

  "I hear that," Leonard said. "But what are you doing with these bozos?"

  "I'm a bozo too. Or have been. I'm just not dedicated anymore. I'm like a big truck with momentum and no brakes, the gearshift knob off in my hand, going downhill on a narrow grade. I want to stop but can't. I got to ride things out. Either go over the side or make it to the bottom of the grade and coast out smooth and easy, hope I don't wreck."

  "Chub?" I asked.

  "He was born with money. He hung around with ill-contents. It gave him a club. He's still eighteen or twenty in his head. Never really gets up against the hub, just likes to think he does. Always been a weekend rebel, but he's gone and got married to getting
this money. He wants to use it to fight some injustice. Anyway, folks back home in Houston disowned him, but not before they gave him a bundle they thought he'd use on becoming a doctor. Over the years, he's spent most of it on good causes, got some in the bank here to live on. He's got degrees aplenty. Knows medicine, even though he never became a doctor. Wouldn't go the final business because he thought that was becoming part of the establishment. He's got idealism like nerds got religion or Star Trek."

  "I still don't have you figured in all this," I said.

  "Maybe when I see that money I won't do what they think. But I don't see any cause to rock the boat until we got the boat. We work together, we might can bring that money up. They think I got other plans, they might fade on me. It's not like I can go to the police and complain I been welched on. Besides, if I could, I wouldn't. I got some problems there already."

  "Suppose you're going to tell us about it?" Leonard said.

  "We're gonna break the law together, so why not?" Paco got out a cigarette and lighter and lit up. He looked around. The fat blond waitress was gone from the counter—somewhere in the back, most likely. The fella behind the cash register was leaning on it, looking out that grimy glass. We were the only customers left in the place.

  Paco said, "I got a record. It's the sixties' fault. Well, my fault and the sixties with it, but it's no fun blaming yourself even if you think you're guilty. So I'm gonna say it's the sixties' fault and you can know better if you want.

  "But when it was '68 I graduated and went off to the University of Texas, and things were heated up good, what with the war and all. Back then I had a face. I wasn't a Greek god or nothing, but I wasn't so bad. Now I scare crows at a hundred yards. But the face was all right, and I guess I was all right too. Full of lies about life and all, like we all were then. But I started figuring out some things. Came to the conclusion what we been told about things, about life, is just talk. You act a certain way to gain a certain thing, and that's all there is to it. I know that now, but then, I was full of love and peace and end the war, civil rights and women's rights. Thought I could make everyone look at these things and see that's the way it ought to be, that it would hit them like a thunderbolt from Zeus.

  "I got a feeling you know what I'm saying, Hap. I know a disfranchised sixties guy when I see one."

  "You pegged him right," Leonard said.

  "Silence in the gallery," I said.

  "So, anyway, I'm off to college, and I'm Mr. Big Shot. I'm gonna do some things. I know how the world works and I'm gonna rip off the lid and let everyone look inside and see the gears, and once they do, it's all gonna go smooth. We'll put a little oil in there, but once the machinery of a thing is understood, there goes the mystery. Everyone can live together and love one another, no sweat.

  "But when I finally got the lid off, looked down there, I saw the machinery was a lot more complex than I originally thought. You couldn't glance at it and see how it worked. I had to go down in the machine and study it, become a mechanic. Change some things around so it was simple. I figured I could do that. Figured when I came up out of the machine, it would be smooth and well oiled and would run the way it was supposed to. Without prejudice and wars and sexism. People would be kind to animals, loan their tools, and locks would come off doors."

  I nodded. "Peace, brother."

  "You got it. So I decided to team up with these other mechanics. People who had the right ideas, you know, wanted to get down in that machinery with me, do some work. This machinery analogy was theirs, and they started calling themselves the Mechanics. You don't hear much about them some reason or another, but they were active as ants."

  "I heard of them," I said. "Started out getting people to register to vote. Pushing the ideas of a democracy, then they splintered. The ones that continued to call themselves the Mechanics were kind of like the radical branch that split off from the Students for a Democratic Society and called themselves the Weathermen."

  "You got it. The splinters all died out pretty quick without their original leader. He was a charismatic kind of guy. Had come into the group as one of the Indians, but in no time was chief. A few of the Indians split, tried to form their own tribes, but the diehards stayed with him. And it took him to hold things together, keep the Mechanics on track.

  "So the Mechanics got their monkey wrenches and went to work. Said to hell with this democratic society shit, the answers are in the street. You got to wreck some things to get them built up new and different. We went underground. Got guns, started hitting anyplace we thought didn't jive with human rights or supported the war in Vietnam. There were lots of targets. We bombed a few ROTC buildings throughout the state. Moved on to other states. Traveled all over and didn't get caught. We were a different kind of criminal than the FBI had dealt with before. Smart people with a smart leader. We had a cause, and there's no one more dangerous than the zealot, and we were that in spades."

  "How many of you were there?" Leonard asked.

  "Twelve at first. Took in a few more here and there off college campuses. Did some sneaky recruiting. We had been students, so we knew where to go to talk to the right people— people with a similar political mind. We hooked them in, fed them radicalism like pudding. The leader of the Mechanics was especially good at talking that shit. Thought he was one of life's poets, one enlightened sonofabitch. Didn't hurt either that back then every college kid wanted to be Che Guevara.

  "We were good at what we did. Knew how to forge documents, make new identities. Worked what jobs we could get, spent very little, moved often. Stayed near college campuses mostly; all kinds of free stuff you can get at the bigger ones. Play it right and live simple, you can do well mostly on the labors of others. And that struck us as right. We saw ourselves as ripping off a capitalistic society."

  I had been sitting there trying to remember a name, and suddenly it came to me. "Gabriel Lane," I said. "That's who the leader of the Mechanics was. Goddamn! That's you, isn't it, Paco?"

  "Long ago. I'm Paco now, and Paco I'll be till they find me somewhere dead in a cheap motel and cart me off to a pauper's grave."

  "I think you guys were fucked up," Leonard said. "Doing what you did."

  "Our hearts were in the right place, but we got caught up, and pretty soon our hearts shifted. An innocent bystander dies when we bomb some capitalistic bank, some ROTC building, boy that's tough, we hated it, but hey, it happens. The end justifies the means. We'd blow you up for peace and love."

  "General consensus is you're dead," I said. "You were supposed to have gotten killed in an explosion, if I remember right."

  "I may look blown up," Paco said, "but here I am. Talking and smoking and making your morning bright and gay."

  "I'm gay," Leonard said, "but I don't know about the day and what you're doing for it."

  "Gay?" Paco said. "You saying what I think you're saying?"

  "I fuck men," Leonard said. "Does that clear it up for you?"

  "I believe it does."

  "You say people died because of what you were doing?" I said.

  "That's right," Paco said. "Toward the end we lost some of our own. Cops—or the pigs, as they were popularly referred to then—cornered four of the Mechanics in a house in Chicago. I was out at the time. Making a gun trade. Had two of the group with me. I forget what the rest were doing. But the bottom line is the cops got wind of where we were, hit the house, and killed four of us. Bobbie Remart among them. She was a top radical at that time. On the FBI list right under me. She was kind of my lieutenant. My lover too. After that, things went from being political to being personal."

  "You got to feel bad about that shit," Leonard said. "I mean, I killed gooks in Nam, and I was supposed to kill them. Thought I was fighting for my country, doing what was necessary. Still feel that way. But I hate I had to do it. But you guys ... I don't know."

  "You don't look to me like somebody who could do that kind of thing," I said.

  "You kidding," Paco said. "I look like death warme
d over . . . but I know what you mean. Listen here. You been around, you should know better. Can't judge things by what you see. Look at something long enough, and it'll start to look like something else. Watch me long enough, you might see something you don't see now. Whatever, there won't be any of the old me to look at. That's a guarantee.

  "Back then, I thought what we were doing was right. Like you thought what you were doing was right in Nam, Leonard. Felt we were patriots. Least until what happened to Bobbie, After that, I was like something taxidermied that moved. Right and wrong were words. I couldn't see the line of difference anymore, couldn't tell if I was crossing it or not. For me, that line has long been gone and nothing's going to bring it back.

  "Anyway, what happened was we were hiding out in this house in Chicago, and I had the Mechanics building a bomb to blow something or another to hell, and I was supervising. I was the one taught them how to build bombs, see, and I wanted to be sure they knew I was still the big daddy. Sasha was the one actually working on it, and the rest of the group were gofering for her. Way they were treating her was making me a little jealous. Sasha was strong-willed and kind of new to us, and the Mechanics weren't turning to me quite as often as before. She was starting to get some of my thunder. I wanted to make sure she knew her place, you know. I looked over her shoulder, and she was doing all right, working safe, but like I said, I had to be big daddy, and I said something to her about how she needed to work smoother, and she didn't take to it. She was the only one had my number. Knew my ego. Knew how fucked up I was over Bobbie's death. She planned to take things over. I could tell that. She could have done it too. Still had the cause in her. She knew my days as leader were numbered, that I was burned out, just doing by rote. She wouldn't take shit from me. She turned around and started telling me what I could do with my advice, got her mind off what it ought to have been on. Must have let the wrong wires touch. Next thing I knew, the world was bright and hot, full of stone and glass, and I was rolling around in rubble. Ego and explosion had kicked my ass.

  "I awoke outside, down in a pit, the house all around me, ears ringing, cold air cooling me down. Somehow the blast had brought the whole place down, and by a goddamn miracle, maybe because Sasha was in front of me, the explosion had thrown me away, caught me on fire, but not burned me up or blown me up.