The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (51 page)

“It ain’t her time.”

“My list says it is, and my list is never wrong.”

Alex felt something hard pressing against his hip, realized what it was. The pipe wrench. Even the throw Death had put on him had not hurled it from his coat pocket. It had lodged there and the pocket had shifted beneath his hip, making his old bones hurt all the worse.

Alex made as to roll over, freed the pocket beneath him, shot his hand inside and produced the pipe wrench. He hurled it at Death, struck him just below the brim of the bowler and sent him stumbling back. This time the bowler fell off. Death’s forehead was bleeding.

Before Death could collect himself, Alex was up and rushing. He used his head as a battering ram and struck Death in the stomach, knocking him to the ground. He put both knees on Death’s arms, pinning them, clenched his throat with his strong, old hands.

“I ain’t never hurt nobody before,” Alex said. “Don’t want to now. I didn’t want to hit you with that wrench, but you give Margie back.”

Death’s eyes showed no expression at first, but slowly a light seemed to go on behind them. He easily pulled his arms out from under Alex’s knees,

reached up, took hold of the old man’s wrists and pulled the hands away from his throat.

“You old rascal,” Death said. “You outsmarted me.”

Death flopped Alex over on his side, then stood up. Grinning, he turned, stooped to recover his bowler, but he never laid a hand on it.

Alex moved like a crab, scissoring his legs, and caught Death from above and behind his knees, twisted, brought him down on his face.

Death raised up on his palms and crawled from behind Alex’s legs like a snake, effortlessly. This time he grabbed the hat and put it on his head and stood up. He watched Alex carefully.

“I don’t frighten you much, do I?” Death asked.

Alex noted that the wound on Death’s forehead had vanished. There wasn’t even a drop of blood. “No,” Alex said. “You don’t frighten me much. I just want my Margie back.”

“All right,” Death said.

Alex sat bolt upright.

“What?”

“I said, all right. For a time. Not many have outsmarted me, pinned me to the ground. I give you credit, and you’ve got courage. I like that. I’ll give her back. For a time. Come here.”

Death walked over to the car that was not from Detroit. Alex got to his feet and followed. Death took the keys out of the ignition, moved to the trunk, worked the key in the lock. It popped up with a hiss.

Inside were stacks and stacks of matchboxes. Death moved his hand over them, like a careful man selecting a special vegetable at the supermarket. His fingers came to rest on a matchbox that looked to Alex no different than the others.

Death handed Alex the matchbox. “Her soul’s in here, old man. You stand over her bed, open the box. Okay?”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Now get out of here before I change my mind. And remember, I’m giving her back to you. But just for a while.”

Alex started away, holding the matchbox carefully. As he walked past Death’s car, he saw the dents he had knocked in the side with his wrecker were popping out. He turned to look at Death, who was closing the trunk.

“Don’t suppose you’ll need a tow out of here?”

Death smiled thinly. “Not hardly.”

Alex stood over their bed; the bed where they had loved, slept, talked and dreamed. He stood there with the matchbox in his hand, his eyes on Margie’s cold face. He ever so gently eased the box open. A small flash of blue light, like Peter Pan’s friend Tinkerbell, rushed out of it and hit Margie’s lips. She made a sharp inhaling sound and her chest rose. Her eyes came open. She turned and looked at Alex and smiled.

“My lands, Alex. What are you doing there, and half-dressed? What have you been up to…is that a matchbox?”

Alex tried to speak, but he found that he could not. All he could do was grin.

“Have you gone nuts?” she asked.

“Maybe a little.” He sat down on the bed and took her hand. “I love you, Margie.”

“And I love you…you been drinking?”

“No.”

Then came the overwhelming sound of Death’s horn. One harsh blast that shook the house, and the headbeams shone brightly through the window and the cracks lit up the shack like a cheap nightclub act.

“Who in the world?” Margie asked.

“Him. But he said…stay here.”

Alex got his shotgun out of the closet. He went out on the porch. Death’s car was pointed toward the house, and the headbeams seemed to hold Alex, like a fly in butter.

Death was standing on the bottom step, waiting.

Alex pointed the shotgun at him. “You git. You gave her back. You gave your word.”

“And I kept it. But I said for a while.”

“That wasn’t any time at all.”

“It was all I could give. My present.”

“Short time like that’s worse than no time at all.”

“Be good about it, Alex. Let her go. I got records and they have to be kept. I’m going to take her anyway, you understand that?”

“Not tonight, you ain’t.” Alex pulled back the hammers on the shotgun. “Not tomorrow night neither. Not anytime soon.”

“That gun won’t do you any good, Alex. You know that. You can’t stop Death. I can stand here and snap my fingers three times, or click my tongue, or go back to the car and honk my horn, and she’s as good as mine. But I’m trying to reason with you, Alex. You’re a brave man. I did you a favor because you bested me. I didn’t want to just take her back without telling you. That’s why I came here to talk. But she’s got to go. Now.”

Alex lowered the shotgun. “Can’t…can’t you take me in her place? You can do that, can’t you?”

“I…I don’t know. It’s highly irregular.”

“Yeah, you can do that. Take me. Leave Margie.”

“Well, I suppose.”

The screen door creaked open and Margie stood there in her housecoat. “You’re forgetting, Alex, I don’t want to be left alone.”

“Go in the house, Margie,” Alex said.

“I know who this is: I heard you talking, Mr. Death. I don’t want you taking my Alex. I’m the one you came for. I ought to have the right to go.”

There was a pause, no one speaking. Then Alex said, “Take both of us. You can do that, can’t you? I know I’m on that list of yours, and pretty high up. Man my age couldn’t have too many years left. You can take me a little before my time, can’t you? Well, can’t you?”

Margie and Alex sat in their rocking chairs, their shawls over their knees. There was no fire in the fireplace. Behind them the bucket collected water and outside the wind whistled. They held hands. Death stood in front of them. He was holding a King Edward cigar box.

“You’re sure of this?” Death asked. “You don’t both have to go.”

Alex looked at Margie, then back at Death.

“We’re sure,” he said. “Do it.”

Death nodded. He opened the cigar box and held it out on one palm. He used his free hand to snap his fingers.

Once.
(the wind picked up, howled)

Twice.
(the rain beat like drumsticks on the roof)

Three times.
(lightning ripped and thunder roared)

“And in you go,” Death said.

The bodies of Alex and Margie slumped and their heads fell together between the rocking chairs. Their fingers were still entwined.

Death put the box under his arm and went out to the car. The rain beat on his derby hat and the wind sawed at his bare arms and T-shirt. He didn’t seem to mind.

Opening the trunk, he started to put the box inside, then hesitated.

He closed the trunk.

“Damn,” he said, “if I’m not getting to be a sentimental old fool.”

He opened the box. Two blue lights rose out of it, elongated, touched ground. They took on the shape of Alex and Margie. They glowed against the night.

“Want to ride up front?” Death asked.

“That would be nice,” Margie said.

“Yes, nice,” Alex said.

Death opened the door and Alex and Margie slid inside. Death climbed in behind the wheel. He checked the clipboard dangling from the dash. There was a woman in a Tyler hospital, dying of brain damage. That would be his next stop.

He put the clipboard down and started the car that was not from Detroit.

“Sounds well-tuned,” Alex said.

“I try to keep it that way,” Death said.

They drove out of there then, and as they went, Death broke into song. “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream,” and Margie and Alex chimed in with, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

Off they went down the highway, the taillights fading, the song dying, the black metal of the car melting into the fabric of night, and then there was only the whispery sound of good tires on wet cement and finally not even that. Just the blowing sound of the wind and the rain.

I got off the plane at Atlanta and caught the shuttle to what I thought was my hotel. But there was some kind of mix-up, and it wasn’t my hotel at all. They told me I could go out to the curb and catch this other shuttle and it would take me over to another hotel in their chain, and that it was a short walk from there to where I wanted to go. I thought that was okay, considering I had gotten on the wrong shuttle in the first place.

I sat outside the hotel on a bench and waited for the shuttle. It was October and kind of cool, but not really uncomfortable. The air felt damp.

I had a Western paperback and I got it out of my coat pocket and read a few pages. From time to time I looked up for the shuttle, then at my watch, then back at the paperback. It wasn’t a very good Western.

While I was sitting there a little black boy on skates with an empty toy pistol scabbard strapped around his waist went by. He looked at me. His head was practically shaved and his snap-button cowboy shirt was ripped in front. I guess he was about eleven.

I looked back at my book and started reading, then I heard him skate over in front of me. I looked up and saw that he was looking at the picture on the front of the paperback.

“That a cowboy book?” he said.

I told him it was.

“It any good?”

“I don’t care much for it. It’s a little too much like the last three or four I read.”

“I like cowboy books and movies but they don’t get some things right.”

“I like them too.”

“I’m a cowboy,” he said, and his tone was a trifle defiant.

“You are?”

“You was thinking niggers can’t be cowboys.”

“I wasn’t thinking that. Don’t call yourself that.”

“Nigger? It’s okay if I’m doing it. I wouldn’t want you to say that.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Anyone says that they got me to fight.”

“I don’t want to fight. Where’s your pistol?”

He didn’t answer that. “A black boy can be a cowboy, you know.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“They weren’t all cooks.”

“Course not.”

“That’s way the movies and books got it. There any black cowboys in that book?”

“Not so far.”

“There gonna be?”

“I don’t know,” I said. But I did know. I’d read a lot of cowboy books.

“White boys at school said there weren’t any black cowboys. They said no nigger cowboys. They said we couldn’t fight Indians and stuff.”

“Don’t listen to them.”

“I’m not going to. I went over to the playground at the school and they took my pistol. There was three of them.”

It came clear to me then. His shirt being ripped and the gun missing.

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t nice.”

“They said a nigger didn’t need no cowboy gun. Said I needed me a frying pan or a broom. I used to ride the range and rope steers and stuff. They don’t know nothing.”

“Is that all you did on the range, rope steers?”

“I did all kinds of things. I did everything cowboys do.”

“Was it hard work?”

“It was so hard you wouldn’t believe it. I did all kinds of things. Cowboys don’t call one another nigger.”

“Do your mom and dad work on the range with you?”

“No, my mama has a job. She does clean-up work. My daddy he got killed in Vietnam. He got some medals and stuff. He wasn’t a cowboy like me.”

I looked up and saw the shuttle. I picked up my suitcase and stood.

“I got to go now,” I said. “I hope you get your gun back. Lot of good cowboys lose fights from time to time.”

“There was three of them.”

“There you are.
Adios.”
As an afterthought I gave him the Western book.

“It hasn’t got any black cowboys in it I bet,” he said, and gave it back to me.

“I want one with black cowboys in it. I’m not reading any more of ‘em unless they got black cowboys in them.”

“I’m sure there are some,” I said.

“There ought to be.”

I got on the shuttle and it carried me to the other hotel. I got off and walked to where I was supposed to be, and on the way over there I put the book in one of those wire trash baskets that line the streets.

Buddy drank another swig of beer and when he brought the bottle down he said to Jake and Wilson, “I could sure use some pussy.”

“We could all use some,” Wilson said, “problem is we don’t never get any.”

“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.

“You
don’t get any,” Buddy said. “I get plenty, you can count on that.”

“Uh huh,” Wilson said. “You talk pussy plenty good, but I don’t ever see you with a date. I ain’t never even seen you walking a dog, let alone a girl. You don’t even have a car, so how you gonna get with a girl?”

“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.

“You see what you want,” Buddy said. “I’m gonna be getting me a Chevy soon. I got my eye on one.”

“Yeah?” Wilson said. “What one?”

“Drew Carrington’s old crate.”

“Shit,” Wilson said, “that motherfucker caught on fire at a streetlight and he run it off in the creek.”

“They got it out,” Buddy said.

“They say them flames jumped twenty feet out from under the hood before he run it off in there,” Jake said.

“Water put the fire out,” Buddy said.

“Uh huh,” Wilson said, “after the motor blowed up through the hood. They found that motherfucker in a tree out back of Old Maud Page’s place. One of the pistons fell out of it and hit her on the head while she was picking up apples. She was in the hospital three days.”