Authors: Joe R Lansdale
Here's what happened.
It was cold last night. Must be getting along winter. I had
rolled off my pallet onto the cold floor Maybe that's what brought me awake.
The cold. Or maybe it was just gut instinct.
It had been a particularly wonderful night with the tattoo.
The face had been made so clear it seemed to stand out from my back. It had
finally become more defined than the mushroom cloud. The needles went in hard
and deep, but I've had them in me so much now I barely feel the pain. After
looking in the mirror at the beauty of the design, I went to bed happy, or as
happy as I can get.
During the night the eyes ripped open. The stitches came out
and I didn't know it until I tried to rise from the cold, stone floor and my
back puckered against it where the blood had dried.
I pulled myself free and got up. It was dark, but we had a
good moonspill that night and I went to the mirror to look. It was bright
enough that I could see Rae's reflection clearly, the color of her face, the
color of the cloud. The stitches had fallen away and now the wounds were spread
wide, and inside the wounds were eyes. Oh God, Rae's blue eyes. Her month
smiled at me and her teeth were very white.
Oh, I hear you, Mr. Journal. I hear what you're saying. And
I thought of that. My first impression was that I was about six bricks shy a
load, gone around the old bend. But I know better now. You see, I lit a candle
and held it over my shoulder, and with the candle and the moonlight, I could
see even more clearly. It was Rae all right, not just a tattoo.
I looked over at my wife on the bunk, her hack to me, as
always. She had not moved.
I turned back to the reflection. I could hardly see the
outline of myself, just Rae's face smiling out of that cloud.
"Rae," I whispered, "is that you?"
"Come on, Daddy," said the mouth in the mirror,
"that's a stupid question. Of course, it's me."
"But. . . You're. . . you're. . ."
"Dead?"
"Yes... Did... did it hurt much?"
She cackled so loudly the mirror shook. I could feel the
hairs on my neck rising. I thought for sure Mary would wake up, but she slept
on.
"It was instantaneous, Daddy, and even then, it was the
greatest pain imaginable. Let me show you how it hurt."
The candle blew out and I dropped it. I didn't need it
anyway. The mirror grew bright and Rae's smile went from ear to
ear-literally-and the flesh on her bones seemed like crepe paper before a
powerful fan, and that fan blew the hair off her head, the skin off her skull
and melted those beautiful, blue eyes and those shiny white teeth of hers to a
putrescent goo the color and consistency of fresh bird shit. Then there was
only the skull, and it heaved in half and flew backwards into the dark world of
the mirror and there was no reflection now, only the hurtling fragments of a
life that once was and was now nothing more than swirling cosmic dust.
I closed my eyes and looked away.
"Daddy?"
I opened them, looked over my shoulder into the mirror.
There was Rae again, smiling out of my back.
"Darling," I said, "I'm so sorry."
"So are we," she said, and there were faces
floating past her in the mirror Teenagers, children, men and women, babies,
little embryos swirling around her head like planets around the sun. I closed
my eyes again, but I could not keep them closed. When I opened them the
multitudes of swirling dead, and those who had never had a chance to live, were
gone. Only Rae was there.
"Come close to the mirror, Daddy."
I backed up to it. I backed until the hot wounds that were
Rae's eyes touched the cold glass and the wounds became hotter and hotter and
Rae called out, "Ride me piggy, Daddy," and then I felt her weight on
my back, not the weight of a six-year-old child or a teenage girl, but a great
weight, like the world was on my shoulders and bearing down.
Leaping away from the mirror I went hopping and whooping
about the room, same as I used to in the park. Around and around I went, and as
I did, I glanced in the mirror. Astride me was Rae, lithe and naked, her red
hair fanning around her as I spun. And when I whirled by the mirror again, I
saw that she was six years old. Another spin and there was a skeleton with red
hair, one hand held high, the jaws open and yelling, "Ride 'em,
cowboy."
"How?" I managed, still bucking and leaping,
giving Rae the ride of her life.
She bent to my ear and I could feel her warm breath.
"You want to know how I'm here, Daddy-dear? I'm here because you created
me. Once you laid between Mother's legs and thrust me into existence, the two
of you, with all the love there was in you. This time you thrust me into
existence with your guilt and Mother's hate . Her thrusting needles, your
arching back. And now I've come back for one last ride, Daddy-o. Ride, you
bastard, ride."
All the while I had been spinning, and now as I glimpsed the
mirror, I saw wall to wall faces, weaving in, weaving out, like smiling stars,
and all those smiles opened wide and words came out in chorus, "Where were
you when they dropped The Big One?"
Each time I spun and saw the mirror again, it was a new
scene. Great flaming winds scorching across the world, babies turning to fleshy
jello, heaps of charred bones, brains boiling out of the heads of men and women
like backed-up toilets overflowing, The Almighty, Glory Hallelujah, Ours Is
Bigger Than Yours Bomb hurtling forward, the mirror going mushroom white, then
clear, and me, spinning, Rae pressed tight against my back, melting like butter
on a griddle, evaporating into the eye wounds on my back, and finally me alone,
collapsing to the floor beneath the weight of the world.
* * *
Mary never awoke.
The vines outsmarted me.
A single strand found a crack downstairs somewhere and wound
up the steps and slipped beneath the door that led into the tower. Mary's bunk
was not far from the door, and in the night, while I slept and later while I
spun in front of the mirror and lay on the floor before it, it made its way to
Mary's bunk, up between her legs, and entered her sex effortlessly.
I suppose I should give the vine credit for doing what I had
not been able to do in years, Mr. Journal, and that's enter Mary. Oh God,
that's a funny one, Mr.
Journal. Real funny. Another little scientist joke. Let's
make that a mad scientist joke, what say? Who but a madman would play with the
lives of human beings by constantly trying to build the bigger and better boom
machine?
So what of Rae, you ask?
I'll tell you. She is inside me. My back feels the weight.
She twists in my guts like a corkscrew. I went to the mirror a moment ago, and
the tattoo no longer looks like it did. They eyes have turned to crusty sores
and the entire face looks like a scab. It's as if the bile that made up my
soul, the unthinking, nearsightedness, the guilt that I am, has festered from
inside and spoiled the picture with pustule bumps, knots and scabs.
To put it in layman's terms, Mr. Journal, my back is
infected. Infected with what I am. A blind, senseless fool.
The wife?
Ah, the wife. God, how I loved that woman. I have not really
touched her in years, merely felt those wonderful hands on my back as she
jabbed the needles home, but I never stopped loving her. It was not a love that
glowed anymore, but it was there, though hers for me was long gone and wasted.
This morning when I got up from the floor, the weight of Rae
and the world on my back, I saw the vine coming up from beneath the door and
stretching over to her.
I yelled her name. She did not move. I ran to her and saw it
was too late.
Before I could put a hand on her, I saw her flesh ripple and
bump up, like a den of mice were nesting under a quilt. The vines were at work.
(Out goes the old guts, in goes the new vines.)
There was nothing I could do for her.
I made a torch out of a chair leg and old quilt, set fire to
it, burned the vine from between her legs, watched it retreat, smoking, under
the door. Then I got a board, nailed it along the bottom, hoping it would keep
others out for at least a little while. I got one of the twelve-gauges and
loaded it. It's on the desk beside me, Mr. Journal, but even I know I'll never
use it. It was just something to do, as Jacobs said when he killed and ate the
whale. Something to do.
I can hardly write anymore. My back and shoulders hurt so
bad. It's the weight of Rae and the world.
* * *
I've just come back from the mirror and there is very little
left of the tattoo.
Some blue and black ink, a touch of red that was Rae's hair.
It looks like an abstract painting now. Collapsed design, running colors. It's
real swollen. I look like the hunchback of Notre Dame.
What am I going to do, Mr. Journal?
Well, as always, I'm glad you asked that. You see, I've
thought this out.
I could throw Mary's body over the railing before it blooms.
I could do that.
Then I could doctor my back. It might even heal, though I
doubt it. Rae wouldn't let that happen, I can tell you now. And I don't blame
her. I'm on her side. I'm just a walking dead man and have been for years.
I could put the shotgun under my chin and work the trigger
with my toes, or maybe push it with the very pen I'm using to create you, Mr.
Journal. Wouldn't that be neat? Blow my brains to the ceiling and sprinkle you
with my blood.
But as I said, I loaded the gun because it was something to
do. I'd never use it on myself or Mary.
You see, I want Mary. I want her to hold Rae and me one last
time like she used to in the park. And she can. There's a way.
I've drawn all the curtains and made curtains out of
blankets for those spots where there aren't any. It'll be sunup soon and I
don't want that kind of light in here. I'm writing this by candlelight and it
gives the entire room a warm glow. I wish I had wine. I want the atmosphere to
be just right.
Over on Mary's bunk she's starting to twitch. Her neck is
swollen where the vines have congested and are writhing toward their favorite
morsel, the brain.
Pretty soon the rose will bloom (I hope she's one of the
bright yellow ones ' yellow was her favorite color and she wore it well) and
Mary will come for me.
When she does, I'll stand with my naked back to her. The
vines will whip out and cut me before she reaches me, but I can stand it. I'm
used to pain. I'll pretend the thorns are Mary's needles. I'll stand that way
until she folds her dead arms around me and her body pushes up against the
wound she made in my back, the wound that is our daughter Rae. She'll hold me
so the vines and the proboscis can do their work. And while she holds me, I'll
grab her fine hands and push them against my chest, and it will be we three
again, standing against the world, and I'll close my eyes and delight in her
soft, soft hands one last time.
We are drive-in mutants.
We are not like other people.
We are sick.
We are disgusting.
We believe in blood.
In breasts.
And in beasts.
We believe in Kung Fu City.
If life had a vomit meter.
We'd be off the scale.
As long as one single drive-in remains On the planet Earth.
We will party like jungle animals.
We will boogie till we puke.
Heads will roll.
The drive-in will never die.
Amen.
The drive-in theater may have been born in New Jersey, but
it had the good sense to come to Texas to live. Throughout the fifties and
sixties it thrived here like a fungus on teenage lusts and families enticed by
the legendary “
Dollar Night
” or “
Two Dollars A Carload
”.
And even now--though some say the drive-in has seen its
heyday in the more populated areas, you can drive on in there any night of the
week-particularly Special Nights and Saturday-and witness a sight that
sometimes makes the one on the screen boring on comparison.
You'll see lawn chairs planted in the backs of pickups, or
next to speakers, with cowboys and cowgirls planted in the chairs, beer cans
growing out of their fists, and there'll be the sputterings of barbecue pits
and the aromas of cooking meats rising up in billows of smoke that slowly melts
into the clear Texas sky.
Sometimes there'll be folks with tape decks whining away,
even as the movie flickers across the three-story screen and their neighbors
struggle to hear the crackling speaker dialogue over ZZ Top doing "The
Tube Snake Boogie." There'll be lovers sprawled out on blankets spread
between two speaker posts, going at it so hot and heavy they ought to just go
on and charge admission. And there's plenty of action in the cars too. En route
to the concession stand a discerning eye can spot the white moons of un-Levied
butts rising and falling to a steady, rocking rhythm just barely contained by
well-greased shocks and four-ply tires.
What you're witnessing is a bizarre subculture in action.
One that may in fact be riding the crest of a new wave.
Or to put it another way: Drive-ins are crazy, but they sure
are fun.
* * *
The drive-in theater is over fifty years old, having been
spawned on Camden, New Jersey June 6th, 1933 by a true visionary--Richard
Milton Hollingshead.
Camden, as you may know, was the last home of Walt Whitman,
and when one considers it was the death place of so prestigious an American
poet, it is only fitting that it be the birthplace of such a poetic and
all-American institution as the drive-in theater Or as my dad used to call
them, "the outdoor picture show."