The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (58 page)

When finally it came his turn to do Big Red, Leonard had let her take the bag off as a gesture of goodwill. That was a mistake. He just hadn’t known a good thing when he had it. Stoney had had the right idea. The bag coming off spoiled everything. With it on, it was sort of like balling the Lone Hippo or some such thing, but with the bag off, you were absolutely certain what you were getting, and it wasn’t pretty.

Even closing his eyes hadn’t helped. He found that the ugliness of that face had branded itself on the back of his eyeballs. He couldn’t even imagine the sack back over her head. All he could think about was that puffy, too-painted face with the sort of bad complexion that began at the bone.

He’d gotten so disappointed, he’d had to fake an orgasm and get off before his hooter shriveled up and his Trojan fell off and was lost in the vacuum.

Thinking back on it, Leonard sighed. It would certainly be nice for a change to go with a girl that didn’t pull the train or have a hole between her legs that looked like a manhole cover ought to be on it. Sometimes he wished he could be like Farto, who was as happy as if he had good sense. Anything thrilled him. Give him a can of Wolf Brand Chili, a big moon pie, Coke and whiskey and he could spend the rest of his life fucking Big Red and lighting the gas out of his asshole.

God, but this was no way to live. No women and no fun. Bored, bored, bored. Leonard found himself looking overhead for spaceships and peppermint-colored boredom rays, but he saw only a few moths fluttering drunkenly through the beams of the DQ’s lights.

Lowering his eyes back to the highway and the dog, Leonard had a sudden flash. “Why don’t we get the chain out of the back and hook it up to Rex there? Take him for a ride?”

“You mean drag his dead ass around?” Farto asked.

Leonard nodded.

“Beats stepping on a tack,” Farto said.

They drove the Impala into the middle of the highway at a safe moment and got out for a look. Up close the mutt was a lot worse. Its innards had been mashed out of its mouth and asshole and it stunk something awful. The dog was wearing a thick, metal-studded collar and they fastened one end of their fifteen-foot chain to that and the other to the rear bumper.

Bob, the Dairy Queen manager, noticed them through the window, came outside and yelled, “What are you fucking morons doing?”

“Taking this doggie to the vet,” Leonard said. “We think this sumbitch looks a might peeked. He may have been hit by a car.”

“That’s so fucking funny I’m about to piss myself,” Bob said.

“Old folks have that problem,” Leonard said.

Leonard got behind the wheel and Farto climbed in on the passenger side. They maneuvered the car and dog around and out of the path of a tractor-trailer truck just in time. As they drove off, Bob screamed after them, “I hope you two no-dicks wrap that Chevy piece of shit around a goddamn pole.”

As they roared along, parts of the dog, like crumbs from a flaky loaf of bread, came off. A tooth here. Some hair there. A string of guts. A dew claw. And some unidentifiable pink stuff. The metal-studded collar and chain threw up sparks now and then like fiery crickets. Finally they hit seventy-five and the dog was swinging wider and wider on the chain, like it was looking for an opportunity to pass.

Farto poured him and Leonard Cokes and whiskey as they drove along. He handed Leonard his paper cup and Leonard knocked it back, a lot happier now than he had been a moment ago. Maybe this night wasn’t going to turn out so bad after all.

They drove by a crowd at the side of the road, a tan station wagon and a wreck of a Ford up on a jack. At a glance they could see that there was a nigger in the middle of the crowd and he wasn’t witnessing to the white boys. He was hopping around like a pig with a hotshot up his ass, trying to find a break in the white boys so he could make a run for it. But there wasn’t any break to be found and there were too many to fight. Nine white boys were knocking him around like he was a pinball and they were a malicious machine.

“Ain’t that one of our niggers?” Farto asked. “And ain’t that some of the White Tree football players that’s trying to kill him?”

“Scott,” Leonard said, and the name was dogshit in his mouth. It had been Scott who had outdone him for the position of quarterback on the team. That damn jig could put together a play more tangled than a can of fishing worms, but it damn near always worked. And he could run like a spotted-ass ape.

As they passed, Farto said, “We’ll read about him tomorrow in the papers.”

But Leonard drove only a short way before slamming on the brakes and whipping the Impala around. Rex swung way out and clipped off some tall, dried sunflowers at the edge of the road like a scythe.

“We gonna go back and watch?” Farto asked. “I don’t think them White Tree boys would bother us none if that’s all we was gonna do, watch.”

“He may be a nigger,” Leonard said not liking himself, “but he’s our nigger and we can’t let them do that. They kill him, they’ll beat us in football.”

Farto saw the truth of this immediately. “Damn right. They can’t do that to our nigger.”

Leonard crossed the road again and went straight for the White Tree boys, hit down hard on the horn. The White Tree boys abandoned beating their prey and jumped in all directions. Bullfrogs couldn’t have done any better.

Scott stood startled and weak where he was, his knees bent in and touching one another, his eyes as big as pizza pans. He had never noticed how big grillwork was. It looked like teeth there in the night and the headlights looked like eyes. He felt like a stupid fish about to be eaten by a shark.

Leonard braked hard, but off the highway in the dirt it wasn’t enough to keep from bumping Scott, sending him flying over the hood and against the glass where his face mashed to it then rolled away, his shirt snagging one of the windshield wipers and pulling it off.

Leonard opened the car door and called to Scott who lay on the ground, “It’s now or never.”

A White Tree boy made for the car, and Leonard pulled the taped hammer handle out from beneath the seat and stepped out of the car and hit him with it. The White Tree boy went down to his knees and said something that sounded like French but wasn’t. Leonard grabbed Scott by the back of the shirt and pulled him up and guided him around and threw him into the open door. Scott scrambled over the front seat and into the back. Leonard threw the hammer handle at one of the White Tree boys and stepped back, whirled into the car behind the wheel. He put the car in gear again and stepped on the gas. The Impala lurched forward, and with one hand on the door Leonard flipped it wider and clipped a White Tree boy with it as if he were flexing a wing. The car bumped back on the highway and the chain swung out and Rex cut the feet out from under two White Tree boys as neatly as he had taken down the dried sunflowers.

Leonard looked in his rear-view mirror and saw two White Tree boys carrying the one he had clubbed with the hammer handle to the station wagon. The others he and the dog had knocked down were getting up. One had kicked the jack out from under Scott’s car and was using it to smash the headlights and windshield.

“Hope you got insurance on that thing,” Leonard said.

“I borrowed it,” Scott said, peeling the windshield wiper out of his T-shirt. “Here, you might want this.” He dropped the wiper over the seat and between Leonard and Farto.

“That’s a borrowed car?” Farto said. “That’s worse.”

“Nah,” Scott said. “Owner don’t know I borrowed it. I’d have had that flat changed if that sucker had had him a spare tire, but I got back there and wasn’t nothing but the rim, man. Say, thanks for not letting me get killed, else we couldn’t have run that ole pig together no more. Course, you almost run over me. My chest hurts.”

Leonard checked the rear-view again. The White Tree boys were coming fast. “You complaining?” Leonard said.

“Nah,” Scott said, and turned to look through the back glass. He could see the dog swinging in short arcs and pieces of it going wide and far. “Hope you didn’t go off and forget your dog tied to the bumper.”

“Goddamn,” said Farto, “and him registered too.”

“This ain’t so funny,” Leonard said. “Them White Tree boys are gaining.”

“Well speed it up,” Scott said.

Leonard gnashed his teeth. “I could always get rid of some excess baggage, you know.”

“Throwing that windshield wiper out ain’t gonna help,” Scott said.

Leonard looked in his mirror and saw the grinning nigger in the back seat. Nothing worse than a comic coon. He didn’t even look grateful. Leonard had a sudden horrid vision of being overtaken by the White Tree boys. What if he were killed with the nigger? Getting killed was bad enough, but what if tomorrow they found him in a ditch with Farto and the nigger? Or maybe them White Tree boys would make him do something awful with the nigger before they killed them. Like making him suck the nigger’s dick or some such thing. Leonard held his foot all the way to the floor; as they passed the Dairy Queen he took a hard left and the car just made it and Rex swung out and slammed a light pole then popped back in line behind them.

The White Tree boys couldn’t make the corner in the station wagon and they didn’t even try. They screeched into a car lot down a piece, turned around and came back. By that time the tail lights of the Impala were moving away from them rapidly, looking like two inflamed hemorrhoids in a dark asshole.

“Take the next right coming up,” Scott said, “then you’ll see a little road off to the left. Kill your lights and take that.”

Leonard hated taking orders from Scott on the field, but this was worse. Insulting. Still, Scott called good plays on the field, and the habit of following instructions from the quarterback died hard. Leonard made the right and Rex made it with them after taking a dip in a water-filled bar ditch.

Leonard saw the little road and killed his lights and took it. It carried them down between several rows of large tin storage buildings, and Leonard pulled between two of them and drove down a little alley lined with more. He stopped the car and they waited and listened. After about five minutes, Farto said, “I think we skunked those father rapers.”

“Ain’t we a team?” Scott said.

In spite of himself, Leonard felt good. It was like when the nigger called a play that worked and they were all patting each other on the ass and not minding what color the other was because they were just creatures in football suits.

“Let’s have a drink,” Leonard said.

Farto got a paper cup off the floorboard for Scott and poured him up some warm Coke and whiskey. Last time they had gone to Longview, he had peed in that paper cup so they wouldn’t have to stop, but that had long since been poured out, and besides, it was for a nigger. He poured Leonard and himself drinks in their same cups.

Scott took a sip and said, “Shit, man, that tastes kind of rank.”

“Like piss,” Farto said.

Leonard held up his cup. “To the Mud Creek Wildcats and fuck them White Tree boys.”

“You fuck ‘em,” Scott said. They touched their cups, and at that moment the car filled with light.

Cups upraised, the Three Musketeers turned blinking toward it. The light was coming from an open storage-building door and there was a fat man standing in the center of the glow like a bloated fly on a lemon wedge. Behind him was a big screen made of a sheet and there was some kind of movie playing on it. And though the light was bright and fading out the movie, Leonard, who was in the best position to see, got a look at it. What he could make out looked like a gal down on her knees sucking this fat guy’s dick (the man was visible only from the belly down) and the guy had a short, black revolver pressed to her forehead. She pulled her mouth off of him for an instant and the man came in her face then fired the revolver. The woman’s head snapped out of frame and the sheet seemed to drip blood, like dark condensation on a window pane. Then Leonard couldn’t see anymore because another man had appeared in the doorway, and like the first he was fat. Both looked like huge bowling balls that had been set on top of shoes. More men appeared behind these two, but one of the fat men turned and held up his hand and the others moved out of sight. The two fat guys stepped outside and one pulled the door almost shut, except for a thin band of light that fell across the front seat of the Impala.

Fat Man Number One went over to the car and opened Farto’s door and said, “You fucks and the nigger get out.” It was the voice of doom. They had only thought the White Tree boys were dangerous. They realized now they had been kidding themselves. This was the real article. This guy would have eaten the hammer handle and shit a two-by-four.

They got out of the car and the fat man waved them around and lined them up on Farto’s side and looked at them. The boys still had their drinks in their hands, and sparing that, they looked like cons in a lineup.

Fat Man Number Two came over and looked at the trio and smiled. It was obvious the fatties were twins. They had the same bad features in the same fat faces. They wore Hawaiian shirts that varied only in profiles and color of parrots and had on white socks and too-short black slacks and black, shiny, Italian shoes with toes sharp enough to thread needles.

Fat Man Number One took the cup away from Scott and sniffed it. “A nigger with liquor,” he said. “That’s like a cunt with brains. It don’t go together.

Guess you was getting tanked up so you could put the old black snake to some chocolate pudding after a while. Or maybe you was wantin’ some vanilla and these boys were gonna set it up.”

“I’m not wanting anything but to go home,” Scott said. Fat Man Number Two looked at Fat Man Number One and said, “So he can fuck his mother.”

The fatties looked at Scott to see what he’d say but he didn’t say anything. They could say he screwed dogs and that was all right with him. Hell, bring one on and he’d fuck it now if they’d let him go afterwards.

Fat Man Number One said, “You boys running around with a jungle bunny makes me sick.”

“He’s just a nigger from school,” Farto said. “We don’t like him none. We just picked him up because some White Tree boys were beating on him and we didn’t want him to get wrecked on account of he’s our quarterback.”