Cold Cotton: A Hap and Leonard Novella (Hap and Leonard Series) Read online

  COLD COTTON

  A Hap and Leonard Novella

  By Joe R. Lansdale

  A Gordian Knot Production

  Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2017 Joe R. Lansdale

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  BIO: Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in eighteen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Hotep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” was adapted to film for Showtime’s “Masters of Horror.” He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

  Other Books by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Hap Collins and Leonard Pine” mysteries

  Savage Season

  Mucho Mojo

  Two-Bear Mambo

  Bad Chili

  Rumble Tumble

  Veil’s Visit

  Captains Outrageous

  Vanilla Ride

  Hyenas (a novella)

  Devil Red

  Blue to the Bone

  Dead Aim

  Briar Patch Boogie (long story)

  Honky Tonk Samurai

  The “Drive-In” series

  The Drive-In: A “B” Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas

  The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels

  The Drive-In: A Double-Feature

  The Drive-In: The Bus Tour (2005)

  The “Ned the Seal” trilogy

  Zeppelins West

  Flaming London

  Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal

  The Sky Done Ripped

  Other novels and novellas

  A Fine Dark Line

  Act of Love

  All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

  Blood Dance

  Bubba Ho-Tep

  Cold in July

  Dead in the West

  Edge of Dark Water

  Freezer Burn

  Leather Maiden

  Lost Echoes

  Something Lumber This Way Comes (Children’s book)

  Sunset and Sawdust

  Tarzan: the Lost Adventure (with Edgar Rice Burroughs)

  Texas Night Riders

  The Big Blow

  The Boar

  The Bottoms

  The Magic Wagon

  The Nightrunners

  Under the Warrior Star

  Waltz of Shadows

  Story collections

  A Fist Full of Stories (and Articles)

  Bestseller Guaranteed

  Bumper Crop

  By Bizarre Hands

  By Bizarre Hands Rides Again

  Deadman’s Road

  For a Few Stories More

  High Cotton

  Mad Dog Summer and Other Stories

  Private Eye Action, As You Like It

  Sanctified and Chicken-Fried

  The God of the Razor

  The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent

  The King and Other Stories

  The Long Ones: Nuthin’ But Novellas

  The Shadows, Kith and Kin

  Trapped at the Saturday Matinee

  Triple Feature

  Unchained and Unhinged

  Writer of the Purple Rage

  Written With a Razor

  Joe Lansdale’s Website

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  COLD COTTON

  Table of Contents

  (1)

  (2)

  (3)

  (4)

  (5)

  (6)

  (7)

  (8)

  (9)

  (10)

  (11)

  (12)

  (13)

  (14)

  (15)

  (16)

  (17)

  (18)

  (19)

  (20)

  (21)

  (22)

  (23)

  (24)

  (25)

  (26)

  (27)

  (28)

  (29)

  (30)

  (1)

  “You know I’ll love you, no matter what,” Brett said, “but I think maybe you ought to get something.”

  “Something?” I said.

  We were lying in bed. I had just made an attempt to make love to my wife and had failed. It was starting to be a regular thing. I had the urge, and just looking at her always warmed me up, but now my mind warmed, but the tool for the job didn’t.

  “You aren’t a spring chicken anymore,” Brett said.

  “But we aren’t that old, either,” I said.

  “I know I’m not,” Brett said, “but we’re talking about you.”

  “Oh, that’s nice.”

  “Okay, here’s the thing. You can’t get the sock to fill up, you can always do other things.”

  “I’m all for that,” I said, “and we already do other things, but what’s the end game for me?”

  “Yeah, I guess it ought to be good for you too.”

  “Ha, ha.” />
  “All I’m asking is you go see your doctor, ask him about it.”

  “Don’t think I need pills.”

  “You can be sure with a checkup.”

  “What’s he going to ask me do, get a hard on in his office, jack me off? I don’t think so. It’s all guess work.”

  “Right now, it’s not any kind of work.”

  I turned on my side and looked at her. She showed me a Bugs Bunny grin.

  “Love you,” she said.

  Who would have thought me worrying about my erection problem was going to lead to murder?

  (2)

  “I think I’m okay, just tired,” I said.

  I was in the doctor’s office and he had me sitting on the end of one of those tables they have, a paper cover stretched over it. I was only wearing my shorts and socks, as he’d given me an overall exam. I noticed one of my socks had a hole where the big toe goes.

  “You’re okay, but you can’t get it up?” Doctor Sylvan asked.

  “I haven’t been able to get it up lately. It’s a phase.”

  “How long is lately?”

  “I don’t know, couple months.”

  “You are older, but you know, we can fix that.”

  “You can make me young again?”

  “Very funny. All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, they couldn’t put your ass together again.”

  “You mean Viagra?”

  “Perhaps. You know, Hap, been your doctor a long time, and we’re close. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had my finger up your ass feeling your prostate—”

  “Always my favorite part of an exam,” I said.

  “And mine. You are about as affable as anyone I know, a little smart mouthed, but considering I have that disease, I let that go. Thing is, though, there’s rumors all over town about you and Leonard.”

  “About our clandestine sexual encounters in the men’s restroom at the bus station?”

  “No. About how maybe you two have done some things that are, shall we say, on the dark side.”

  “Rumors. Said it yourself.”

  “Lot of rumors, and some from good sources, and listen here, any of what I’ve heard is true, you’re doing what a lot of us would like to do.”

  “Really?”

  “I too would love to fuck sheep, but, you know, I have to be careful, being a doctor.”

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  “Look. Not kidding. I know you and Leonard have had your moments with miscreants. I tend to believe those stories. Some of the scars you got, I didn’t sew those up, and some of the work looks like it might have been done by a veterinarian.”

  “Their work looks different?”

  “Not so much, but I can spot a different kind of stitch, also, some of those scars you got, they look to me to have been from knives, and gun shots.”

  “I’ve been in the hospital for being stabbed, Doc. You know that. You were there.”

  “Uh huh, but a lot of those wounds, don’t remember those.”

  “I was out of town. I live a clumsy life.”

  “Here’s what I’m getting at, Hap. I’m all for giving you a pill that will turn your pecker into a Zeppelin, but I’m not eager to give out things like that if I think there might be another reason.”

  “You’re buying that whole thing about me being tired?”

  “Nope. You look pretty perky to me, and you’re in good health for someone your age.”

  “I think Micky Mantle said if he knew he was going to live this long he’d taken better care of himself.”

  “What I’m going to suggest is you see a therapist.”

  “A therapist? What the hell for?”

  “If, and I say if, you have done what I think you’ve done, you might ought to talk to someone. Things like I think you might have done, and we’ll say it in code, killing a lot of fucking people, might build on your conscience. This tough guy thing, I don’t buy it.”

  “I’m not really trying to sell that image. And by the way, that wasn’t code.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Gonna give you a name. See her a couple times, and there doesn’t seem to be something under the surface, we’ll talk about Viagra. Thing is, though, if it is something other than needing lead in your pencil, and this other stuff is causing it, it’s probably affecting you in other ways as well.”

  He leaned over and tapped my head with his finger.

  “Might be a lot of stuff in there you’re dealing with and you just don’t know it. Little therapy might help you do more than get a stiff one back.”

  “I don’t know Doc.”

  “I’ll go get her card.”

  (3)

  The name on the card was Carol Cotton.

  I sat out in the car in front of the doctor’s office for a few minutes and looked at the card and thought about things. I could go see her, spend money I didn’t want to spend, and really, what could she tell me that I didn’t actually already know?

  I had killed a lot of people.

  I’m mixed on the whole idea of therapy. I think it’s more of an art than a science, and I felt like I would be a kind of art project. Still, I knew of people therapists had helped, but I wasn’t sure I was one of those it would do much for. As for those people who went to see them because they had been named after a successful father, and just couldn’t live up to the name, or some such problem, fuck it. Get over yourself.

  I had some real shit in my lunch pail.

  I had done my killing in self-defense, and in some cases for justice. Saying that was the way I made myself feel better about it, but all of it haunted me from time to time, though I had learned as of late to deal with it better. It didn’t quite settle the reptilian stirrings and the dark red memories at the back of my brain.

  Recently, I had died and come back, gone way down there in the big deep dark, and had resurfaced, seeming whole, and feeling whole for quite some time. Then the deep dark rose up again.

  That was the problem. I knew that as I sat there in my car in front of the doctor’s office and wondered how I could explain that to anyone who had not been there. Leonard had been there, and talking to him helped. Both of us had been close to death a number of times, but the thing about Leonard was when something was over with, it was over for him. Oh, I can’t say I know what all went on deep down in his brain, what memories he carried from being in a war, and what memories he carried since we had been friends, but whatever they were, he could tote that water better than me.

  How do you tell those things to a shrink, let them in on your inner-most thoughts? Tell them you have killed and nearly been killed, and that things would be fine for long periods of time, and then one day you can’t get it up because you are riding the nightmares while solid awake. How did you do that?

  I decided I couldn’t.

  I drove home.

  (4)

  Me and Brett had finished up a light dinner of salad and ice tea, and were about to sit on the couch and snuggle and watch television with bowls of popcorn, when my cell phone rang.

  I picked it up and went into the living room and sat on the couch.

  It was my doctor.

  “Did you call her?” he asked.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Hap. You know who. Carol Cotton.”

  “Are you minding my business after your business hours?”

  “I am. I contacted her, didn’t tell her a damn thing about what your problem might be, didn’t mention the rumors, but told her you might call and set up an appointment.”

  “That is nosey of you,” I said.

  “I told her you’re a smart ass.”

  “So are you?”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t recommending me, I was recommending you.”

  “I thought about it, but I didn’t call her.”

  “You should. She’s good. I had a time or two when I talked with her.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I got a fe
w war memories.”

  “It helped?”

  “It did. It’s not like a headache, you go in and take one session like you take an aspirin and the headache quits. But it helps.”

  I listened to the microwave humming in the kitchen as Brett popped corn. I turned my head and watched her move about, filling our tea glasses up while the popcorn popped.

  “You still there, Hap?”

  “Yeah. Thinking. I hear you. I’m not miserable, but I’m not good either,” I said.

  “Call her.”

  Brett came into the living room as I clicked off the phone. She was carrying two bags of popped microwave corn. She gave me one, sat the other on the coffee table. She went back into the kitchen and came back with two glasses of ice tea. She placed them on the coffee table, sat down and tore open her bag of corn. The aroma of it filled the air, and the memory of trips to the theater in Marvel Creek filled my head, then faded away.

  “Anything important?” Brett asked.

  “The doctor. He gave me a card today. A shrink.”

  “Oh. How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, do I tell a stranger about what I’ve done, what we’ve all done, and let her ride around with the guilt of being my doctor and not being able to say a thing about it to the law, and then me worry she might anyway. I don’t know.”

  “Draw a line.”

  “What?”

  “Decide you will tell only so much, and don’t tell the stuff like that. Hint at it maybe. I don’t know, but don’t tell it all.”

  “Wouldn’t that go against what I’d be trying to accomplish?”

  “It could. Hell, Hap. I don’t know. But I can tell you’re aren’t quite yourself, and I’m not just talking about sex. Doctor says you seem fine physically, then it might be in your head. You might need to get it out, or learn to find some place comfortable inside your head to put it, some way of dealing with it.”

  “I’ll think it over,” I said.

  We watched an old silent film on a movie classics channel, The General with Buster Keaton.

  I laughed a lot. Maybe a little too loudly.

  (5)

  I didn’t call Carol Cotton after all, but she called me two days later.