High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale Read online

  High Cotton

  Selected Stories of

  Joe R. Lansdale

  For Karen, Keith and Kasey

  years of mental madness consigned to paper.

  Contents

  Foreword

  The Pit

  Not from Detroit

  Booty and the Beast

  Steppin’ Out, Summer ’68

  Incident On and Off a Mountain Road

  My Dead Dog, Bobby

  Trains Not Taken

  Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back

  Dog, Cat and Baby

  Mister Weed-Eater

  By Bizarre Hands

  The Fat Man and the Elephant

  The Phone Woman

  Letter from the South, Two Moons West of Nacogdoches

  By the Hair of the Head

  The Job

  Godzilla’s Twelve Step Program

  Drive-in Date

  Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland

  The Steel Valentine

  Night They Missed The Horror Show

  Foreword

  GROWING UP IN EAST TEXAS, I knew early on that I wanted to be a professional writer, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what a professional writer was. I began to write stories at a very early age. Perhaps as early as seven, though I can’t be certain of that, as family stories vary. I know that when I was nine I was seriously trying to understand how stories were told, and I even put together a book of stories, poems, and my interpretations of Greek and Norse myths. I also included, for some unknown reason, the ancient Greek alphabet that I had copied out of an encyclopedia.

  When I was old enough to sort of understand what a writer did to make a living, and I began to entertain the idea seriously, I thought that I would be a science fiction writer. I read all the time, and not just science fiction, but there was a time in my life where science fiction—and keep in mind I lumped fantasy, horror, science fantasy, weird adventure, ghost stories, anything odd, under that label—was my main source of reading matter, coupled with supposedly non-fiction books about things like flying saucers, Big Foot, ghost, and Fortean activity.

  When I finally began to write a true novel, it was in the Edgar Rice Burroughs vein. Somewhere, I hope, those efforts still exist.

  They are either in the library where my work is kept, or in my study, or, heaven forbid, I may have destroyed them. I remember thinking about it. I feel sentimental about those old pieces, and about ten years ago, when I last saw them, I took them out and was surprised to find they weren’t really too bad, considering a kid, not even teenage yet, had written them.

  But they were never finished. They just sort of went on and on in composition notebooks, but I didn’t know how to reach a peak in the books, and then wrap them up. When I began to write novels with serious intent in my mid-twenties, I discovered I still hadn’t learned that trick. The idea of novels became daunting. I decided I’d write something shorter, and in my mind easier, so I turned to short stories.

  I had always read short stories, but for some reason it had never occurred to me to pursue them seriously. I had written a few, but none were any good, and I just assumed novels were where it was at. I began to review stories I had read and loved. Stories by Poe, Doyle, Bradbury, Bloch, others, and I began to read them more carefully, and I expanded my reading. I had read stories by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others of that ilk that I had enjoyed, but now I began to study them seriously. And then, I began to write.

  I once spent about three months writing a story a day—no kidding. I sent each one out to several markets, and all of them came back. Over a period of time—more than three months—I probably got a thousand rejects. I kept the stories and the rejects for years, and then, when we moved from Starrville, Texas to Nacogdoches, Texas, I had a ritualistic burning of stories and rejects. A few of the rejected stories survived, and were revised later and published, and some were published in a book I did of early writings, designed for the fan of this sort of thing; a book designed primarily to show that everyone has to begin somewhere.

  But I got hooked on the short story, and pretty soon, they were all I wanted to write. They were much harder than I ever expected. In fact, harder than novels. But still, there was less of an investment in time, and therefore I could get something to market relatively soon; I could see an end in sight when I was working on them, and I could change moods and genres rapidly. That was appealing to me, since, essentially, I have a short attention span.

  I became enraptured with short stories, and no longer just science fiction. I had expanded my reading, and now I expanded the type of stories I liked to write. When I finally began to sell my stories, I found I no longer wanted to write novels. I found short stories just too satisfying.

  Still, since I wanted to be a full-time freelance writer, I knew I had to eventually write novels. I almost regretted when the novels began to sell; my excuse to write short stories began to evaporate. By the early nineties I was writing fewer and fewer short stories. Some of the energy I had invested in them went into the novels, and into comic book and film scripts. It wasn’t that I had lost interest in short stories, but it was as if I got up one day feeling like I had met certain goals in the short story world, and now I was ready to see what I could do elsewhere.

  Short stories, and novellas, are still favorites of mine, but I have really learned to appreciate the novel. And since I get paid more for novels these days than I used to, it has allowed me to return a little more frequently to short stories.

  I doubt I will ever be a full-time short story writer again. That was hard, though I did pull it off for a time. But it wasn’t exactly more than a hand-to-mouth living. Now that I can get more for my short stories, I also make more for the novels, so it’s easy to see which one I give the time. Besides, I like doing novels as much as short stories now. That said, I think short stories taught me how to write tighter, better novels.

  These stories are the ones that I think taught me the most. They are personal favorites of mine. I could have added a few stories to this collection, replaced one with another in some cases, but these stories are the ones I think best reflect my work.

  Growing up in the South, there’s an expression you hear. “He’s in high cotton now.”

  “I felt like I was in high cotton.”

  This is taken from the fact that in the Old South, when cotton was good, it stood rich and tall and full. It was called high cotton. If you made your living from cotton, this was a good thing. The expression has carried over to include things that have nothing to do with farming or cotton.

  Short stories, for example.

  I can’t say that this is the best cotton grown. But in my personal field, this is the best cotton I’ve grown in the short form.

  I hope, that as you pluck it from my field, you will enjoy the work better than those who pluck actual cotton, and I hope the product, once plucked, is satisfying.

  I have been a published writer for nearly twenty-seven years now, and these stories were written in the last seventeen. They are fewer and farther between these days, but I hope that long before another twenty-seven years, there will be yet another book produced from my field, and if talent, luck, ambition, and hard work stay with me, perhaps the cotton produced will stand even higher.

  Joe R. Lansdale

  Nacogdoches, Texas

  February, 2000

  The Pit

  I read an article in GEO magazine—a magazine I believe has come and gone—about dog fighting. It struck me as horrible and cruel. I had heard it compared to boxing, a comparison I don’t buy. Boxers can choose to get in the ring or not, and they
are taught how to protect themselves and there are referees. Dogs do it for the love of their masters and for something to eat. For a reward, when they lose, they are most often killed or abandoned. These dog-fighting guys don’t want losers.

  I thought about that, added in another story told me by a friend. Supposedly, back in the late fifties or early sixties, there was a small town where a black man’s car broke down and he was captured and made to pull a wagon around the town square, and was fed axle grease on crackers. Finally, he escaped.

  Swear. That’s the story. I’m not saying it’s true, but it was told to me as the truth and it was given to the teller as the truth. If it did happen, I have no idea where this took place. North, South, East, or West. But it got the story wheels turning. My thoughts about dog fighting, boxing, and this supposed incident, all came crashing together, and became The Pit. This was about 1982 or 1983. I sent it out, and no one bought it. They didn’t know what the hell it was. All the standard horror markets—there were a number of them then—thought it wasn’t horror, and they were probably right. Some wanted it to have a twist ending, or another ending. One editor wanted me to give it a positive spin. I wouldn’t. I pulled it. It lay in a file drawer for several years.

  By the mid-eighties I was beginning to develop a name, and when I was asked for a story for a crime/mystery anthology being published by Black Lizard, I sent the editor this. He accepted it and later it appeared in my first short story collection, By Bizarre Hands. That’s been many years ago and though it’s been reprinted several times, it still hasn’t gotten the exposure I modestly think it deserves. Maybe this collection will help.

  SIX MONTHS EARLIER they had captured him. Tonight Harry went into the pit. He and Big George, right after the bull terriers got through tearing the guts out of one another. When that was over, he and George would go down and do their business. The loser would stay there and be fed to the dogs, each of which had been starved for the occasion.

  When the dogs finished eating, the loser’s head would go up on a pole. Already a dozen poles circled the pit. On each rested a head, or skull, depending on how long it had been exposed to the elements, ambitious pole-climbing ants and hungry birds. And of course how much flesh the terriers ripped off before it was erected.

  Twelve poles. Twelve heads.

  Tonight a new pole and a new head went up.

  Harry looked about at the congregation. All sixty or so of them. They were a sight. Like mad creatures out of Lewis Carroll. Only they didn’t have long rabbit ears or tall silly hats. They were just backwoods rednecks, not too unlike himself. With one major difference. They were as loony as waltzing mice. Or maybe they weren’t crazy and he was. Sometimes he felt as if he had stepped into an alternate universe where the old laws of nature, and what was right and wrong did not apply. Just like Alice plunging down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

  The crowd about the pit had been mumbling and talking, but now they grew silent. Out into the glow of the neon lamps stepped a man dressed in a black suit and hat. A massive rattlesnake was coiled about his right arm. It was wriggling from shoulder to wrist. About his left wrist a smaller snake was wrapped, a copperhead. The man held a Bible in his right hand. He was called Preacher.

  Draping the monstrous rattlesnake around his neck, Preacher let it hang there. It dangled that way as if drugged. Its tongue would flash out from time to time. It gave Harry the willies. He hated snakes. They always seemed to be smiling. Nothing was that fucking funny, not all the time.

  Preacher opened his Bible and read:

  “Behold, I give unto you the power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing will by any means hurt you.”

  Preacher paused and looked at the sky. “So God,” he said, “we want to thank you for a pretty good potato crop, though you’ve done better, and we want to thank you for the terriers, even though we had to raise and feed them ourselves, and we want to thank you for sending these outsiders our way, thank you for Harry Joe Stinton and Big George, the nigger.”

  Preacher paused and looked about the congregation. He lifted the hand with the copperhead in it high above his head. Slowly he lowered it and pointed the snake-filled fist at George. “Three times this here nigger has gone into the pit, and three times he has come out victorious. Couple times against whites, once against another nigger. Some of us think he’s cheating.

  “Tonight, we bring you another white feller, one of your chosen people, though you might not know it on account of the way you been letting the nigger win here, and we’re hoping for a good fight with the nigger being killed at the end. We hope this here business pleases you. We worship you and the snakes in the way we ought to. Amen.”

  Big George looked over at Harry. “Be ready, sucker. I’m gonna take you apart like a gingerbread man.”

  Harry didn’t say anything. He couldn’t understand it. George was a prisoner just as he was. A man degraded and made to lift huge rocks and pull carts and jog mile on miles every day. And just so they could get in shape for this—to go down into that pit and try and beat each other to death for the amusement of these crazies.

  And it had to be worse for George. Being black, he was seldom called anything other than “the nigger” by these psychos. Furthermore, no secret had been made of the fact that they wanted George to lose, and for him to win. The idea of a black pit champion was eating their little honkey hearts out.

  Yet, Big George had developed a sort of perverse pride in being the longest-lived pit fighter yet.

  “It’s something I can do right,” George had once said. “On the outside I wasn’t nothing but a nigger, an uneducated nigger working in rose fields, mowing big lawns for rich white folks. Here I’m still the nigger, but I’m THE NIGGER, the bad ass nigger, and no matter what these peckerwoods call me, they know it, and they know I’m the best at what I do. I’m the king here. And they may hate me for it, keep me in a cell and make me run and lift stuff, but for that time in the pit, they know I’m the one that can do what they can’t do, and they’re afraid of me. I like it.”

  Glancing at George, Harry saw that the big man was not nervous. Or at least not showing it. He looked as if he were ready to go on holiday. Nothing to it. He was about to go down into that pit and try and beat a man to death with his fists, and it was nothing. All in a day’s work. A job well done for an odd sort of respect that beat what he had had on the outside.

  The outside. It was strange how much he and Big George used that term. The outside. As if they were enclosed in some small bubble-like cosmos that perched on the edge of the world they had known; a cosmos invisible to the outsiders, a spectral place with new mathematics and nebulous laws of mind and physics.

  Maybe he was in hell. Perhaps he had been wiped out on the highway and had gone to the dark place. Just maybe his memory of how he had arrived here was a false dream inspired by demonic powers. The whole thing about him taking a wrong turn through Big Thicket country and having his truck break down just outside of Morganstown was an illusion, and stepping onto the Main Street of Morganstown, population sixty-six, was his crossing the river Styx and landing smack dab in the middle of a hell designed for good old boys.

  God, had it been six months ago?

  He had been on his way to visit his mother in Woodville, and he had taken a shortcut through the Thicket. Or so he thought. But he soon realized that he had looked at the map wrong. The short cut listed on the paper was not the one he had taken. He had mistaken that road for the one he wanted. This one had not been marked. And then he had reached Morganstown and his truck had broken down. He had been forced into six months hard labor alongside George, the champion pit fighter, and now the moment for which he had been groomed had arrived.

  They were bringing the terriers out now. One, the champion, was named Old Codger. He was getting on in years. He had won many a pit fight. Tonight, win or lose, this would be his last battle. The other dog, Muncher, was younger and inexperienced, but he was s
trong and eager for blood.

  A ramp was lowered into the pit. Preacher and two men, the owners of the dogs, went down into the pit with Codger and Muncher. When they reached the bottom, a dozen bright spotlights were thrown on them. They seemed to wade through the light.

  The bleachers arranged about the pit began to fill. People mumbled and passed popcorn. Bets were placed and a little fat man wearing a bowler hat copied them down in a note pad as fast as they were shouted. The ramp was removed.

  In the pit, the men took hold of their dogs by the scruff of the neck and removed their collars. They turned the dogs so they were facing the walls of the pit and could not see one another. The terriers were about six feet apart, butts facing.

  Preacher said, “A living dog is better than a dead lion.”

  Harry wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything.

  “Ready yourselves,” Preacher said. “Gentlemen, face your dogs.”

  The owners slapped their dogs across the muzzle and whirled them to face one another. They immediately began to leap and strain at their masters’ grips.

  “Gentlemen, release your dogs.”

  The dogs did not bark. For some reason, that was what Harry noted the most. They did not even growl. They were quick little engines of silence.

  Their first lunge was a miss and they snapped air. But the second time they hit head-on with the impact of .45 slugs. Codger was knocked on his back and Muncher dove for his throat. But the experienced dog popped up its head and grabbed Muncher by the nose. Codger’s teeth met through Muncher’s flesh.

  Bets were called from the bleachers.

  The little man in the bowler was writing furiously.

  Muncher, the challenger, was dragging Codger, the champion, around the pit, trying to make the old dog let go of his nose.

  Finally, by shaking his head violently and relinquishing a hunk of his muzzle, he succeeded.

  Codger rolled to his feet and jumped Muncher. Muncher turned his head just out of the path of Codger’s jaws. The older dog’s teeth snapped together like a spring-loaded bear trap, saliva popped out of his mouth in a fine spray.