The Best of Joe R. Lansdale Page 14

  Cecil looked down. “So I am.”

  He pushed himself inside his pants and buttoned up as he talked. “Look here. I wasn’t gonna hurt her. Just feel her some. I was just gonna get my finger wet. I’ll go on, and everything will be all right.”

  “You’ll just go down the river and do it again,” I said. “Way you come down the river to us and did it here. You ain’t gonna stop, are you?”

  “There’s nothing to say about it, Harry. It just gets out of hand sometime.”

  “Where’s your chain and coin, Cecil?”

  He touched his throat. “It got lost.”

  “That woman got her hand chopped off, she grabbed it, didn’t she?”

  “I reckon she did.”

  “Move to the left there, Cecil.”

  He moved to the left, pointed at the machete. “She grabbed me, I chopped her with that, and her hand came off. Damndest thing. I got her down here and she got away from me and I chased her. And she grabbed me, fought back. I chopped her hand off and it went in the river. Can you imagine that… How did you know?”

  “The Goat Man finds things in the river. He hangs them on Mose’s shack.”

  “Goat Man?”

  “You’re the real Goat Man.”

  “You’re not making any sense, boy.”

  “Move on around to the side there.”

  I wanted him away from the exit on that other side, the one me and Tom had stumbled into that night we found the body.

  Cecil slipped to my left, and I went to the right. We were kind of circling each other. I got over close to Tom and I squatted down by her, still pointing the shotgun at Cecil.

  “I could be gone for good,” Cecil said. “All you got to do is let me go.”

  I reached out with one hand and got hold of the knot on the bandanna and pulled it loose. Tom said, “Shoot him! Shoot him! He stuck his fingers in me. Shoot him! He took me out of the window and stuck his fingers in me.”

  “Hush, Tom,” I said. “Take it easy.”

  “Cut me loose. Give me the gun and I’ll shoot him.”

  “All the time you were bringin’ those women here to kill, weren’t you?” I said.

  “It’s a perfect place. Already made by hobos. Once I decided on a woman, well, I can easily handle a woman. I always had my boat ready, and you can get almost anywhere you need to go by river. The tracks aren’t far from here. Plenty of trains run. It’s easy to get around. Now and then I borrowed a car. You know whose? Mrs. Canerton. One night she loaned it to me, and well, I asked her if she wanted to go for a drive with me while I ran an errand. And she liked me, boy, and I just couldn’t contain myself. All I had to do was bring them here, and when I finished, I tossed out the trash.”

  “Daddy trusted you. You told where Mose was. You told Mr. Nation.”

  “It was just a nigger, boy. I had to try and hide my trail. You understand. It wasn’t like the world lost an upstanding citizen.”

  “We thought you were our friend,” I said.

  “I am. I am. Sometimes friends make you mad, though, don’t they? They do wrong things. But I don’t mean to.”

  “We ain’t talkin’ about stealin’ a piece of peppermint, here. You’re worse than the critters out there with hydrophobia, ‘cause you ain’t as good as them. They can’t help themselves.”

  “Neither can I.”

  The fire crackled, bled red colors across his face. Some of the rain leaked in through the thick wad of briars and vines and limbs overhead, hit the fire and it hissed. “You’re like your daddy, ain’t you? Self-righteous.”

  “Reckon so.”

  I had one hand holding the shotgun, resting it against me as I squatted down and worked the knots free on Tom’s hands. I wasn’t having any luck with that, so I got my pocketknife out of my pants and cut her hands loose, then her feet.

  I stood up, raised the gun, and he flinched some, but I couldn’t cut down on him. It just wasn’t in me, not unless he tried to lay hands on us.

  I didn’t know what to do with him. I decided I had no choice but to let him go, tell Daddy and have them try and hunt him down.

  Tom was pulling on her clothes when I said, “You’ll get yours eventually.”

  “Now you’re talkin’, boy.”

  “You stay over yonder, we’re goin’ out.”

  He held up his hands. “Now you’re using some sense.”

  Tom said, “You can’t shoot him, I can.”

  “Go on, Tom.”

  She didn’t like it, but she turned down the tunnel and headed out. Cecil said, “Remember, boy. We had some good times.”

  “We ain’t got nothin’. You ain’t never done nothing with me but cut my hair, and you didn’t know how to cut a boy’s hair anyway.” I turned and went out by the tunnel. “And I ought to blow one of your legs off for what you done to Toby.”

  We didn’t use the opening in the tunnel that led to the woods because I wanted to go out the way I’d come and get back to the boat. We got on the river it would be hard for him to track us, if that was his notion.

  When we got down to the river, the boat, which I hadn’t pulled up good on the shore, had washed out in the river, and I could see it floating away with the current.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Was that Mose’s boat?” Tom asked.

  “We got to go by the bank, to the swinging bridge.”

  “It’s a long ways,” I heard Cecil say.

  I spun around, and there he was up on the higher bank next to the tree where me and Tom had found the body. He was just a big shadow next to the tree, and I thought of the Devil come up from the ground, all dark and evil and full of bluff. “You got a long ways to go, children. A long ways.”

  I pointed the shotgun at him and he slipped behind the tree out of sight, said, “A long ways.”

  I knew then I should have killed him. Without the boat, he could follow alongside us easy, back up in the woods there, and we couldn’t even see him.

  Me and Tom started moving brisk like along the bank, and we could hear Cecil moving through the woods on the bank above us, and finally we didn’t hear him anymore. It was the same as that night when we heard the sounds near and in the tunnel. I figured it had been him, maybe come down to see his handiwork at the tree there, liking it perhaps, wanting it to be seen by someone. Maybe we had come down right after he finished doing it. He had been stalking us, or Tom, maybe. He had wanted Tom all along.

  We walked fast and Tom was cussing most of it, talking about what Cecil had done with his fingers, and the whole thing was making me sick.

  “Just shut up, Tom. Shut up.”

  She started crying. I stopped and got down on one knee, let the shotgun lay against me as I reached out with both hands and took hold of her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry, Tom, really. I’m scared too. We got to keep ourselves together, you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” she said.

  “We got to stay the course here. I got a gun. He don’t. He may have already given up.”

  “He ain’t give up, and you know it.”

  “We got to keep moving.”

  Tom nodded, and we started out again, and pretty soon the long, dark shadow of the swinging bridge was visible across the river, and the wind was high, and the bridge thrashed back and forth and creaked and groaned like hinges on rusty doors.

  “We could go on down a ways, Tom, I think we got to cross by the bridge here. It’s quicker, and we can be home sooner.”

  “I’m scared, Harry.”

  “So am I.”

  “Can you do it?”

  Tom sucked in her top lip and nodded. “I can.”

  We climbed up the bank where the bridge began and looked down on it. It swung back and forth. I looked down at the river. White foam rose with the dark water and it rolled away and crashed over the little falls into the broader, deeper, slower part of the river. The rain came down on us and the wind was chilly, and all around the woods seemed quiet, yet full of somet
hing I couldn’t put a name to. Now and again, in spite of the rain, the clouds would split and the moon would shine down on us, looking as if it were something greasy.

  I decided to cross first, so if a board gave out Tom would know. When I stepped on the bridge, the wind the way it was, and now my weight, made it swing way up and I darn near tipped into the water. When I reached out to grab the cables, I let go of the shotgun. It went into the water without any sound I could hear and was instantly gone.

  “You lost it, Harry,” Tom yelled from the bank.

  “Come on, just hang to the cables.”

  Tom stepped onto the bridge, and it swung hard and nearly tipped again.

  “We got to walk light,” I said, “and kind of together. Where I take a step, you take one, but if a board goes, or I go, you’ll see in time.”

  “If you fall, what do I do?”

  “You got to go on across, Tom.”

  We started on across, and we seemed to have gotten the movement right, because we weren’t tipping quite so bad, and pretty soon we were halfway done.

  I turned and looked down the length of the bridge, past Tom. I didn’t see anyone tryin’ to follow.

  It was slow going, but it wasn’t long before we were six feet from the other side. I began to breathe a sigh of relief. Then I realized I still had a ways to go yet till we got to the wide trail, then the road, and now I knew there wasn’t any road would stop Cecil or anyone else. It was just a road. If we got that far, we still had some distance yet, and Cecil would know where we were going, and Mama and Daddy might not even be home yet.

  I thought if we got to the road I might try and fool him, go the other way, but it was a longer distance like that to someone’s house, and if he figured what we were doin’, we could be in worse trouble.

  I decided there wasn’t nothing for it but to head home and stay cautious. But while all this was on my mind, and we were about to reach the opposite bank, a shadow separated from the brush and dirt there and became Cecil.

  He held the machete in his hand. He smiled and stuck it in the dirt, stayed on solid ground, but took hold of both sides of the cables that held up the swinging bridge. He said, “I beat you across, boy. Just waited. Now you and little Tom, you’re gonna have to take a dip. I didn’t want it this way, but that’s how it is. You see that, don’t you? All I wanted was Tom. You give her to me, to do as I want, then you can go. By the time you get home, me and her, we’ll be on our way.”

  “You ain’t got your dough done in the middle,” I said.

  Cecil clutched the cables hard and shook them. The bridge swung out from under me and I found my feet hanging out in midair. Only my arms wrapped around one of the cables was holding me. I could see Tom. She had fallen and was grabbing at one of the board steps, and I could see bits of rotten wood splintering. The board and Tom were gonna go.

  Cecil shook the cables again, but I hung tight, and the board Tom clung to didn’t give. I glanced toward Cecil and saw another shape coming out of the shadows. A huge one, with what looked like goat horns on its head.

  Mose’s boy, Telly.

  Telly grabbed Cecil around the neck and jerked him back, and Cecil spun loose and hit him in the stomach, and they grappled around there for a moment, then Cecil got hold of the machete and slashed it across Telly’s chest. Telly let out with a noise like a bull bellowing, leaped against Cecil, and the both of them went flying onto the bridge. When they hit, boards splintered, the bridge swung to the side and up and there was a snapping sound as one of the cables broke in two, whipped out and away from us and into the water. Cecil and Telly fell past us into the Sabine. Me and Tom clung for a moment to the remaining cable, then it snapped, and we fell into the fast rushing water after them.

  I went down deep, and when I came up, I bumped into Tom. She screamed and I screamed and I grabbed her. The water churned us under again, and I fought to bring us up, all the while clinging to Tom’s collar. When I broke the surface of the water I saw Cecil and Telly in a clench, riding the blast of the Sabine over the little falls, flowing out into deeper, calmer waters.

  The next thing I knew, we were there too, through the falls, into the deeper, less rapid flowing water. I got a good grip on Tom and started trying to swim toward shore. It was hard in our wet clothes, tired like we were; and me trying to hang on to and pull Tom, who wasn’t helping herself a bit, didn’t make it any easier.

  I finally swam to where my feet were touching sand and gravel, and I waded us on into shore, pulled Tom up next to me. She rolled over and puked.

  I looked out at the water. The rain had ceased and the sky had cleared momentarily, and the moon, though weak, cast a glow on the Sabine like grease starting to shine on a hot skillet. I could see Cecil and Telly gripped together, a hand flying up now and then to strike, and I could see something else all around them, something that rose up in a dozen silvery knobs that gleamed in the moonlight, then extended quickly and struck at the pair, time after time.

  Cecil and Telly had washed into that school of water moccasins, or another just like them, had stirred them up, and now it was like bull whips flying from the water, hitting the two of them time after time.

  They washed around a bend in the river with the snakes and went out of sight.

  I was finally able to stand up, and I realized I had lost a shoe. I got hold of Tom and started pulling her on up the bank. The ground around the bank was rough, and then there were stickers and briars, and my one bare foot took a beating. But we went on out of there, onto the road and finally to the house, where Daddy and Mama were standing in the yard yelling our names.

  The next morning they found Cecil on a sandbar. He was bloated up and swollen from water and snakebites. His neck was broken, Daddy said. Telly had taken care of him before the snakebite.

  Caught up in some roots next to the bank, his arms spread and through them and his feet wound in vines, was Telly. The machete wound had torn open his chest and side. Daddy said that silly hat was still on his head, and he discovered that it was somehow wound into Telly’s hair. He said the parts that looked like horns had washed down and were covering his eyes, like huge eyelids.

  I wondered what had gotten into Telly, the Goat Man. He had led me out there to save Tom, but he hadn’t wanted any part of stopping Cecil. Maybe he was afraid. But when we were on the bridge, and Cecil was getting the best of us, he had come for him.

  Had it been because he wanted to help us, or was he just there already and frightened? I’d never know. I thought of poor Telly living out there in the woods all that time, only his daddy knowing he was there, and maybe keeping it secret just so folks would leave him alone, not take advantage of him because he was addleheaded.

  In the end, the whole thing was one horrible experience. I remember mostly just lying in bed for two days after, nursing all the wounds in my foot from stickers and such, trying to get my strength back, weak from thinking about what almost happened to Tom.

  Marna stayed by our side for the next two days, leaving us only long enough to make soup. Daddy sat up with us at night. When I awoke, frightened, thinking I was still on the swinging bridge, he would be there, and he would smile and put out his hand and touch my head, and I would lie back and sleep again.

  Over a period of years, picking up a word here and there, we would learn that there had been more murders like those in our area, all the way down from Arkansas and over into Oklahoma and some of North Texas. Back then no one pinned those on one murderer. The law just didn’t think like that then. The true nature of serial killers was unknown. Had communication been better, had knowledge been better, perhaps some, or all, of what happened that time long ago might have been avoided.

  And maybe not. It’s all done now, those long-ago events of nineteen thirty-one and -two.

  Now, I lie here, not much longer for the world, and with no desire to be here or to have my life stretched out for another moment, just lying here with this tube in my shank, waiting on mashed peas and corn an
d some awful thing that will pass for meat, all to be hand-fed to me, and I think of then and how I lay in bed in our little house next to the woods, and how when I awoke Daddy or Mama would be there, and how comforting it was.

  So now I close my eyes with my memories of those two years, and that great and horrible mad dog summer, and I hope this time when I awake I will no longer be of this world, and Mama and Daddy, and even poor Tom, dead before her time in a car accident, will be waiting, and perhaps even Mose and the Goat Man and good old Toby.

  Fire Dog

  When Jim applied for the dispatcher job the fire department turned him down, but the Fire Chief offered him something else.

  “Our fire dog, Rex, is retiring. You might want that job. Pays good and the retirement is great.”

  “Fire dog?” Jim said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I don’t know…”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Jim considered. “I suppose I could give it a try —”

  “Actually, we prefer greater dedication than that. We don’t just want someone to give it a try. Being fire dog is an important job.”

  “Very well,” Jim said. “I’ll take it.”

  “Good.”

  The Chief opened a drawer, pulled out a spotted suit with tail and ears, pushed it across the desk.

  “I have to wear this?”

  “How the hell you gonna be the fire dog, you don’t wear the suit?”

  “Of course.”

  Jim examined the suit. It had a hole for his face, his bottom, and what his mother had called his pee-pee.

  “Good grief,” Jim said. “I can’t go around with my…well, you know, my stuff hanging out.”

  “How many dogs you see wearing pants?”

  “Well, Goofy comes to mind.”

  “Those are cartoons. I haven’t got time to screw around here. You either want the job, or you don’t.”

  “I want it.”

  “By the way. You sure Goofy’s a dog?”

  “Well, he looks like a dog. And he has that dog, Pluto.”

  “Pluto, by the way, doesn’t wear pants.”

  “You got me there.”