Briar Patch Boogie: A Hap and Leonard Novelette

  Briar Patch Boogie

  Joe Lansdale

  The Briar Patch

  “Whose idea was this?” Leonard said.

  “I think it was yours.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “You know it was,” I said.

  “Hap?”

  “What?”

  “Can I have a drink of water?”

  “If you get up and go get it,” I said. “There’s plenty water in the well. And probably snakes and dirt, and since the outhouse is up the hill, might be some of that in there as well. Who puts an outhouse at the top of a hill so the water might drain in the well? What kind of moron does that?”

  “We have bottled water?”

  “In the car,” I said. “You drank the last bottle we brought in.”

  “You won’t go out and get it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not thirsty.”

  We were lying in cots across from one another in a little fishing cabin out at Caddo Lake. It was not a nice cabin, but it was cheap. It was not near other cabins and there were a lot of woods around it. It was deep East Texas, near Louisiana, and it could pass for either state. The lake had a lot of good fish in it and there were alligators and all along the bank there were big drooping trees that made thick shadows.

  We had been there two days. We had caught a few fish and had fried them in butter with corn batter and had eaten them. The fishing had been so–so, and the boat we had rented had a leak in it. There were a couple of large tin cans, and we had no idea why they were in the boat until we were way out in the lake and the water began to ease in. We used the cans to bail it out. When we got back to the bank of the lake, we were so pissed at the guy who rented the boat to us, we pushed it back into the water and sat on the side of the lake and fished and watched the boat float out a ways and slowly take on water and sink.

  We cheered when it went down.

  “So, you won’t go get me a bottled water?”

  “No.”

  “I’d do it for you.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” I said.

  “Would too.”

  “No you wouldn’t.”

  “I bet I would.”

  “Okay. Go get me one.”

  “I asked you first. Look, if you were sick. Say you had a fever, or were dehydrated, and you asked me to go get you a water, I would.”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “But if you were, I’d get you a water.”

  “You’re not sick, so why should I get you a water?”

  Leonard thought about that for a moment.

  “I really don’t want to go get it,” he said.

  “Ah ha,” I said. “Now the truth comes out.”

  “This seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said. “I thought it would be fun. We used to do stuff like this.”

  “We have been civilized to some extent, Leonard.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I’m sick of eating fish, and small fish, I might add. We sunk the goddamn boat, and now all we got is bank fishing, and that hasn’t been good, and there’s not a proper toilet, and there’s no running water.”

  “It’s been really hot too.”

  “It’s the summer, Leonard. What did you expect? Seals and polar bears?”

  “That would have been nice. I like seals and polar bears.”

  “You have known neither.”

  “I’ve seen them on TV,” he said. “You know what would be cool? A goddamn penguin.”

  “All of them would die of heat stroke.”

  “Yeah. They would. I’m pretty warm myself. Maybe I have heat stroke.”

  “I am not going to go out to the car and get you a water. Besides, it would be warm water.”

  “But it would be water. Hell, its major hot. Devil’s butt–hole hot.”

  “We don’t need no air–conditioning, you said.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Yep.”

  “Maybe if there was at least a plug with electricity we could use the fan I brought. That would be okay. One plug. Might be nice too we didn’t have to shit through a hole in the outhouse.”

  “No electricity and you brought a fan?”

  “It’s a small one,” he said.

  “At least it won’t work any worse than a big one without electricity.”

  “See there, Hap. A bright side. Damn. I thought there’d be electricity. The brochure said it was a nice comfortable cabin. I didn’t think of it as nice without electricity.”

  “We used to sleep in tents out in the woods on ground cloths, fish, and camp for days,” I said. “We didn’t have electricity then.”

  “We were younger then.”

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “And remember, we had marshmallows on a stick?”

  “We did at that.”

  “I don’t guess you brought any marshmallows?”

  “Did not,” I said.

  “That would have been nice.”

  “Yep,” I said. “We could have set this shit hole cabin on fire and roasted them in the flames.”

  “You need a small simple blaze,” Leonard said. “That would have been too much. And very warm.”

  “Then the marshmallows would have burned,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Leonard said. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Guess it’s all right. It’s closer to nature.”

  “Lying under a tree on leaves and dirt with chiggers on our balls would be closer to nature,” I said. “I grew up with nature, and I love it. But I like going home to my house and my bed. That has become my true nature. And I miss Brett.”

  “She and Chance are probably having a good time,” Leonard said.

  “Don’t you know it,” I said. “They’re watching old science fiction movies and popping popcorn and the dog is on the couch with them. I think Brett said they were going to make hot chocolate too. I don’t know for sure, though, because my cell phone doesn’t work out here. Oh, wait. I lost my cell phone in the lake.”

  “Can’t blame that on me,” Leonard said.

  “I can, and I will.”

  “I don’t know,” Leonard said. “We used to get along fine without phones. I think it’s not having electricity that makes it suck out here.”

  “That certainly is a factor,” I said. “The only electricity nature likes to provide,” I said, “is a lightning bolt.”

  “How did we get used to a cell phone? How is that? Why is that?”

  “I didn’t want pussy until I had some, and then I wanted it from then on.”

  “A cell phone is like pussy?” Leonard said. “No wonder I’m queer.”

  “I admit that was a bridge too far as a comparison.”

  “Maybe if we were home and someone ran a bulldozer over this place and sent us a picture it would be all right. We have caught fish, though. You have to admit that.”

  “Some extremely small fish. Other fish don’t even recognize them as fish. You overcooked them too.”

  “I’m not used to a woodstove cooker.”

  “I can’t even read.”

  “You should have learned how,” he said. “You went to school.”

  “That’s some funny shit, Leonard. Reading by candle light is hard.”

  “Lincoln read by lamp light,” Leonard said.

  “He wasn’t used to anything else,” I said. “We’re spoiled. We’re back to the parable of the phone. Besides, you’re the one complaining about how bad things are and how it isn’t what you expected.”

  “Yeah,” Leonard said, “but you’re thinking it. And if yo
u play fair, you have to admit some of what you’re saying sounds like complaining too.”

  “I’m complaining about you. This was your idea.”

  “It seemed like fun. We haven’t gone off and done something like this in a long time.”

  “Might be a reason for that,” I said.

  “This can’t be the best cabin the guy has to offer.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, this place may be the pick of the litter.”

  “All the other places in the brochure cost the same.”

  “Then they’re all like this,” I said. “Of course, we may be special with the old spoiled well and the extra smoky woodstove.”

  “The picture looked good.”

  “They always do,” I said.

  “Next time I want to do something like this, will you kick my ass?” Leonard said.

  “How about I just kick it twice every Tuesday, just in case you’re thinking about doing something like this?”

  “That seems fair,” Leonard said.

  We lay there in the dark on our cots for a while. I kept trying to go to sleep, but that wasn’t working out. A mosquito about the size of a chicken hawk was buzzing around my head. I imagined I was a ninja master and I could catch it between two chop sticks. Actually, I wasn’t having much luck swatting it with my hand. He was a wily bugger.

  “Hap,” Leonard said.

  “What the hell now?” I said.

  “Can a mosquito be so big as to have a landing gear?”

  And so it went.

  Late in the night I fell asleep, and then the rain woke me up, but in a reverse way, it helped me go back to sleep. It rained well into the morning, keeping the sky black. Being tired from talking a lot of the night, we slept on. It was nearly noon when I woke up and got off the cot.

  Leonard was still sleeping. I considered smothering him with a pillow, but went out to the car in the rain and brought in a flat of bottled water and set it on the one table in the room, near the woodstove. The table wobbled under the weight.

  I used some tinder and got a fire going, put a few slivers of larger wood in the stove, and when that was blazing, I put in a larger, split piece of pine. It caught, and then I added more wood, larger pieces. At least the cabin had come with split wood. Eventually, I had even–burning fire. It made the room hot and sticky. I poured bottled water into the old fashioned coffee pot, and then dumped in some coffee grounds; that’s how old the pot was. It wasn’t even an old time percolator. It was one of those things that Davy Crockett would have had coffee out of. At home Brett had this coffee maker you stuck little pods of coffee into, then you pull down a lever, and that made the perfect cup, and fast. I missed her and I missed the perfect cup. I missed my daughter Chance. I missed our dog Buffy. I missed my books, television set, and my pantry with food in it. I even missed our cell phones. Mine was residing at the bottom of the lake and would have to be replaced. Maybe a perch was making a call to Brett right now, trying to find out if she was having fish for dinner. Leonard had let his run out of juice, and now there was no electricity, and he didn’t have a car charger.

  I wanted to cook with electricity, not wood, and have something to cook besides bad coffee. We didn’t even have fish for lunch now. A can of potted meat with a pull tab would have been exciting right then. I missed the refrigerator back home where I kept my pitcher of iced tea and my carton of Sharps non–alcoholic beer. I really had come a long ways from a fellow who lived in the country on the fringe of the woods into who I was now. A guy who wanted to go home.

  While the coffee was making, I looked over at Leonard, and could see under his cot a vanilla cookie bag. That bastard had eaten them all and hadn’t offered me one. I didn’t even know he had any with him, though I should have guessed. He was about those cookies like a druggie is about crack. He may have had them in a sealed bag stuffed up his ass for all I knew. Of course, it was far more likely he had brought them in with his sleeping bag.

  When the coffee was ready, I poured a bug out of one of the two cups we had, left two dead flies in the other, and poured that one full of coffee for Leonard. I poured myself a cup and sat on the cot and sipped it. It was god–awful, tasted as if it had been strained through a used jock strap owned by someone with a rampant venereal disease.

  “Leonard,” I said. “Rise and shine, easy money. The coffee’s ready.”

  He moved a little, rolled over, smacked his lips, and finally swung out of bed.

  “Oh, for shit sakes, Leonard. Put on some drawers.”

  He got up and rummaged in his backpack and came up with a pair of sweatpants and pulled those on.

  “I’d known you’d gone to bed naked,” I said, “I’d have slept out in the rain. Your coffee’s on the table.”

  He got his cup and sat on his cot and sipped.

  Damn. You shit in this?”

  Not quite,” I said. “You know what would make this a lot better? A vanilla cookie. Oh, wait. You ate them all.”

  I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I just got started and couldn’t quit. You know, woke up hungry.”

  “You meant to.”

  He drank his coffee, then spit one of the flies on the floor.

  “You knew that sucker was in my cup,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you, Leonard.”

  “You might,” he said.

  “Okay. I might. Watch out for the other one.”

  · · ·

  We went outside. It was still raining. It was a misty rain, and we wore our slickers with hoods and our good boots that laced up high and tight and were oiled to help shed water.

  From where we stood we could see the lake and we could see the water sloshing against the shoreline.

  “If we had a boat we could have better fishing,” Leonard said.

  “Like the one we let sink out in the lake?”

  “That one precisely,” he said.

  “We can walk in the woods there, fish close to all those tree roots growing out in the water.”

  “Tangle our lines.”

  “Might. But I bet there’s some catfish there we could tie to a boat and have them pull us across the lake.”

  “If we had a boat.”

  “Yeah, if we had a boat.”

  “A boat like the one we sunk,” Leonard said.

  “That would be the one, yes.”

  We wandered into the woods. It grew dark with the shade from the trees and the clouds from the rain. The mist was nice, as it kept mosquitoes off a little and it made the air taste like greenery and dirt, but it lay on our faces like damp cobwebs. It made me think of when I was a kid growing up, and I’d go out in the mist and the rain until my mother caught me and called me in for fear of lightning.

  We walked on, and a few hours later we found a place where the land rose up and was sprinkled with trees and tangled undergrowth. Near our feet a water moccasin crawled out from under a wad of dead leaves and slithered toward the water. As it plopped into the lake, Leonard said, “Won’t be any fish there for a while.”

  “And I won’t be anywhere near there for awhile myself,” I said.

  As we topped the peak of the hill, a sound struck us.

  Someone was moaning.

  · · ·

  We left our fishing gear up on the rise and found her at the bottom of the hill lying in the leaves with her head on a rotting log. She was a young woman with long blonde hair, in her thirties I figured. She might have been pretty before, but the way she had been beat, it was hard to tell. She wasn’t wearing much, a formerly white blouse now mostly the color of the leaves and dirt. She wasn’t wearing pants or underwear. Her head was swollen and she was bruised on the arms and legs, and her bare feet were a bloody mess. She was lying in an ant bed and was covered with ant bites.

  All of that she could get over in time, but the wound in her side wasn’t something that merely required bed rest and a couple of aspirin. Something was sticking out of her. I looked. It was an arrow with plastic feathers on the end of th
e shaft.

  I brushed the ants off of her, and we picked her up, Leonard at her head, me at her feet. We carried her to a pile of leaves that was better than the ant bed.

  Her eyes were slits. She had taken such a beating she couldn’t quite open them, at least not completely. She looked up at me and cried.

  Leonard said to her, “We’ll get an ambulance.”

  “They’re out there,” she said, and when she opened her mouth I could see her front teeth were chipped.

  “Who’s out there?” I said.

  “Those men.”

  “How many?” I said.

  “Two men and two women. They rented me. Like a carnival ride.”

  “You saying you’re a working girl?” Leonard said.

  She nodded.

  “They’re after me. They’re hunting me.”

  “Who’s after you?” I said.

  “Them.” By then she hardly had the breath to speak.

  I took my canteen off my belt, slipped my hand under her head, lifted her up and gave her a drink of water. She gulped greedily. I only let her have a small amount to keep from making her sick, then I laid her head down gently on the leaves.

  “They took me off a Houston street,” she said. “I do it for my daughter.”

  “No judgment from us,” Leonard said.

  “They spent days raping and beating me, and then they took me out here, drove out onto a trail, made me walk deep in the woods. They raped me again and set me loose, said I had an hour. They caught up with me and shot me with an arrow, but I got away. I don’t know how I did it, but I got away. But they’re coming. They’ll find me.”

  “Take it easy,” Leonard said. “When did you last see them?”

  “I don’t know. It was night. That’s what helped me. Oh, Jesus, my head is swimming.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  She quit talking and lay still.

  “We got to get her back to the car, drive her to a hospital,” Leonard said.

  My thought was she wouldn’t make it that long. That wound in her side was bad and she had lost a lot of blood.

  “Hap,” Leonard said.

  She had stopped moving. One moment she had been talking and now she wasn’t saying anything or making any sounds, no moaning, no breathing. Her face was slack and her lips were turning blue.

  I put my head to her chest. No heartbeat. I touched her throat to feel a pulse. Nada.