The Best of Joe R. Lansdale Read online

  “Poor thing,” Angelique said, gathering some towels from a chifforobe. “She’s more terrified than we are.”

  Bill removed the harness that remained on Bess, stroked her, tried to soothe her. When he went to the window and looked out, the horse went with him. The world had not miraculously dried up. The water was obviously rising.

  “Maybe we’ll be all right here,” Angelique said. She was drying Teddy, who was crying violently because he was cold and wet. “Water can’t get this high, can it?

  Bill idly stroked Bess’s mane, thought of the bridge. The way it had snapped like a wooden toy. He said, “Of course not.”

  8:15 P.M.

  The fight had started late, right after two one-legged colored boys had gone a couple of rounds, hopping about, trying to club each other senseless with oversized boxing gloves.

  The crowd was sparse but vocal. Loud enough that “Lil” Arthur forgot the raging storm outside. The crowd kept yelling, “Kill the nigger,” and had struck up a chorus of “All coons look alike to me” — a catchy little number that “Lil” Arthur liked in spite of himself.

  The yelling, the song, was meant to drop his spirits, but he found it fired him up. He liked being the underdog. He liked to make assholes eat their words. Besides, he was the Galveston Champion, not McBride, no matter what the crowd wanted. He was the one who would step through the ropes tonight the victor. And he had made a change. He would no longer allow himself to be introduced as “Lil” Arthur. When his name had been called, and he had been reluctantly named Galveston Sporting Club Champion by the announcer, the announcer had done as he had asked. He had called him by the name he preferred from here on. Not “Lil” Arthur Johnson. Not Arthur John Johnson, but the name he called him, the name he called himself. Jack Johnson.

  So far, however, the fight wasn’t going either way, and he had to hand it to McBride, the fella could hit. He had away of throwing short, sharp punches to the ribs, punches that felt like knife stabs.

  Before the fight, Jack, as McBride had surely done, had used his thumbs to rearrange as much of the cotton in his gloves as possible. Arrange it so that his knuckles would be against the leather and would make good contact with McBride’s flesh. But so far McBride had avoided most of his blows. The man was a master of slipping and sliding the punches. Jack had never seen anything like that before. McBride could also pick off shots with a flick of his forearms. It was very professional and enlightening.

  Even so, Jack found he was managing to take the punches pretty well, and he’d discovered something astonishing. The few times he’d hit McBride was when he got excited, leaned forward, went flat-footed, and threw the uppercut. This was not a thing he had trained for much, and when he had, he usually threw the uppercut by coming up on his toes, twisting his body, the prescribed way to throw it. But he found, against all logic, he could throw it flat-footed and leaning forward, and he could throw it hard.

  He thought he had seen a bit of surprise on McBride’s face when he’d hit him with it. He knew that he’d certainly surprised himself.

  It went like that until the beginning of the fourth round, then when McBride came out, he said, “I’ve carried you enough, nigger. Now you got to fight.”

  Then Jack saw stuff he’d never seen before. The way this guy moved, it was something. Bounced around like a cat, like the way he’d heard Gentleman Jim fought, and the guy was fast with those hands. Tossed bullets, and the bullets stunned a whole lot worse than before. Jack realized McBride had been holding back, trying to make the fight interesting. And he realized something else. Something important about himself. He didn’t know as much about boxing as he thought.

  He tried hooking McBride, but McBride turned the hooks away with his arms, and Jack tried his surprise weapon, the uppercut, found he could catch McBride a little with that, in the stomach, but not enough to send McBride to the canvas. When the fifth round came up, Jack was scared. And hurt. And the referee — a skinny bastard with a handlebar moustache — wasn’t helping. Anytime he tied McBride up, the referee separated them. McBride tied him up, thumbed him in the eye, butted him, the referee grinned like he was eating jelly.

  Jack was thinking maybe of taking a dive. Just going down and lying there, getting himself out of this misery next time McBride threw one of those short ones that connected solid, but then the bell rang and he sat on his bench, and Uncle Cooter, who was the only man in his corner, sprayed water in his mouth and let him spit blood in a bucket.

  Uncle Cooter said, “I was you, son, I’d play possum. Just hit that goddamn canvas and lay there like you axed. You don’t, this shithead gonna cut you to pieces. This way, you get a little payday and you don’t die. Paydays is all right. Dyin’ ain’t nothin’ to rush.”

  “Jesus, he’s good. How can I beat him?”

  Uncle Cooter rubbed Jack’s shoulders. “You can’t. Play dead.”

  “There’s got to be a way.”

  “Yeah,” Uncle Cooter said. “He might die on you. That’s the only way you gonna beat him. He got to just die.”

  “Thanks, Cooter. You’re a lot of help.”

  “You welcome.”

  Jack feared the sound of the bell. He looked in McBride’s corner, and McBride was sitting on his stool as if he were lounging, drinking from a bottle of beer, chatting with a man in the audience. He was asking the man to go get him a sandwich.

  Forrest Thomas was in McBride’s corner, holding a folded towel over his arm, in case McBride might need it, which, considering he needed to break a good sweat first, wasn’t likely.

  Forrest looked at Jack, pointed a finger, and lowered his thumb like it was the hammer of a revolver. Jack could see a word on Forrest’s lips. The word was: POW!

  The referee wandered over to McBride’s corner, leaned on the ring post, had a laugh with McBride over something.

  The bell rang. McBride gave the bottle of beer to Forrest and came out. Jack rose, saw Beems, eyes blacked, looking rough, sitting in the front row. Rough or not, Beems seemed happy. He looked at Jack and smiled like a gravedigger.

  This time out, Jack took a severe pounding. He just couldn’t stop those short, little hooks of McBride’s, and he couldn’t seem to hit McBride any kind of blow but the uppercut, and that not hard enough. McBride was getting better as he went along, getting warmed up. If he had another beer and a sandwich, hell, he might go ahead and knock Jack out so he could have coffee and pie.

  Jack decided to quit trying to hit the head and the ribs, and just go in and pound McBride on the arms. That way, he could at least hit something. He did, and was amazed at the end of the round to find McBride lowering his guard.

  Jack went back to his corner and Uncle Cooter said, “Keep hittin’ him on the arms. That’s gettin’ to him. You wreckin’ his tools.”

  “I figured that much. Thanks a lot.”

  “You welcome.”

  Jack examined the crowd in the Sporting Club bleachers. They were not watching the ring. They had turned their heads toward the east wall, and for good reason. It was vibrating. Water was seeping in, and it had filled the floor beneath the ring six inches deep. The people occupying the bottom row of bleachers, all around the ring, had been forced to lift their feet. Above him, Jack heard a noise that sounded like something big and mean peeling skin off an elephant’s head.

  By the time the bell rang and Jack shuffled out, he noticed that the water had gone up another two inches.

  8:46 P.M.

  Bill held the lantern in front of him at arm’s length as he crouched at the top of the stairs. The water was halfway up the steps. The house was shaking like a fat man’s ass on a bucking bronco. He could hear shingles ripping loose, blowing away.

  He went back to the bedroom. The wind was screaming. The windows were vibrating; panes had blown out of a couple of them. The baby was crying. Angelique sat in the middle of the bed, trying to nurse the child, but Teddy wouldn’t have any of that. Bess was facing a corner of the room, had her head pushed agains
t the wall. The horse lashed her tail back and forth nervously, made nickering noises.

  Bill went around and opened all the windows to help take away some of the force of the wind. Something he knew he should have done long ago, but he was trying to spare the baby the howl of the wind, the dampness.

  The wind charged through the open windows and the rain charged with it. Bill could hardly stand before them, they were so powerful.

  Fifteen minutes later, he heard the furniture below thumping on the ceiling, floating against the floor on which he stood.

  9:00 P.M.

  My God, thought Jack, how many rounds this thing gonna go? His head ached and his ribs ached worse and his insides felt as if he had swallowed hot tacks and was trying to regurgitate them. His legs, though strong, were beginning to feel the wear. He had thought this was a fifteen-round affair, but realized now it was twenty, and if he wasn’t losing by then, he might get word it would go twenty-five.

  Jack slammed a glove against McBride’s left elbow, saw McBride grimace, drop the arm. Jack followed with the uppercut, and this time he not only hit McBride, he hit him solid. McBride took the shot so hard, he farted. The sandwich he’d eaten between rounds probably didn’t seem like such a good idea now.

  Next time Jack threw the combination, he connected with the uppercut again. McBride moved back, and Jack followed, hitting him on the arms, slipping in the uppercut now and then, even starting to make contact with hooks and straight rights.

  Then every light in the building went out as the walls came apart and the bleachers soared up on a great surge of water and dumped the boxing patrons into the wet darkness. The ring itself began to move, to rise to the ceiling, but before it tilted out from under Jack, McBride hit him a blow so hard Jack thought he felt past lives cease to exist; ancestors fresh from the slime rocked from that blow, and the reverberations of it rippled back to the present and into the future, and back again. The ceiling went away on a torrent of wind, Jack reached out and got hold of something and clung for dear life.

  “You stupid sonofabitch,” Uncle Cooter said, “you got me by the goddamn head.”

  9:05 P.M.

  Captain Slater thought they would be at the bottom of the Gulf by now, and was greatly surprised they were not. A great wave of water had hit them so hard the night before it had snapped the anchor chain. The ship was driven down, way down, and then all the water in the world washed over them and there was total darkness and horror, and then, what seemed like hours later but could only have been seconds, the water broke and the Pensacola flew high up as if shot from a cannon, came down again, leaned starboard so far it took water, then, miraculously, corrected itself. The sea had been choppy and wild ever since.

  Slater shook shit and seawater out of his pants legs and followed the rope around his waist to the support post. He got hold of the post, felt for the rest of the rope. In the darkness, he cried out, “Bernard. You there?”

  “I think so,” came Bernard’s voice from the darkness. And then they heard a couple of bolts pop free, fire off like rifle blasts. Then: “Oh, Jesus,” Bernard said. “Feel that swell? Here it comes again.”

  Slater turned his head and looked out. There was nothing but a great wall of blackness moving toward them. It made the first great wave seem like a mere rise; this one was bigger than the Great Wall of China.

  10:00 P.M.

  Bill and Angelique lay on the bed with Teddy. The water was washing over the edges of the feather mattress, blowing wet, cold wind over them. They had started the Edison and a gospel record had been playing, but the wind and rain had finally gotten into the mechanism and killed it.

  As it went dead, the far wall cracked and leaned in and a ripple of cracking lumber went across the floor and the ceiling sagged and so did the bed. Bess suddenly disappeared through a hole in the floor. One moment she was there, the next she was gone, beneath the water.

  Bill grabbed Angelique by the arm, pulled her to her feet in the knee-deep water. She held Teddy close to her. He pulled them across the room as the floor shifted, pulled them through the door that led onto the unfinished deck, stumbled over a hammer that lay beneath the water, but managed to keep his feet.

  Bill couldn’t help but think of all the work he had put in on this deck. Now it would never be finished. He hated to leave anything unfinished. He hated worse that it was starting to lean.

  There was one central post that seemed to stand well enough, and they took position behind that. The post was one of several that the house was built around; a support post to lift the house above the normal rise of water. It connected bedroom to deck.

  Bill tried to look through the driving rain. All he could see was water. Galveston was covered by the sea. It had risen up and swallowed the city and the island.

  The house began to shake violently. They heard lumber splintering, felt it shimmying. The deck swayed more dynamically.

  “We’re not going to make it, are we, Bill?” Angelique said.

  “No, darling. We aren’t.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  He held her and kissed her. She said, “It doesn’t matter, you and I. But Teddy. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand. God, why Teddy? He’s only a baby… How do I drown, darling?”

  “One deep breath and it’s over. Just one deep pull of the water, and don’t fight it.”

  Angelique started to cry. Bill squatted, ran his hand under the water and over the deck. He found the hammer. It was lodged in its spot because it was caught in a gap in the unfinished deck. Bill brought the hammer out. There was a big nail sticking out of the main support post. He had driven it there the day before, to find it easily enough. It was his last big nail and it was his intent to save it.

  He used the claw of the hammer to pull it out. He looked at Angelique. “We can give Teddy a chance.”

  Angelique couldn’t see Bill well in the darkness, but she somehow felt what his face was saying. “Oh, Bill.”

  “It’s a chance.”

  “But…”

  “We can’t stand against this, but the support post —”

  “Oh Lord, Bill,” and Angelique sagged, holding Teddy close to her chest. Bill grabbed her shoulders, said, “Give me my son.”

  Angelique sobbed, then the house slouched far to the right — except for the support post. All the other supports were washing loose, but so far, this one hadn’t budged.

  Angelique gave Teddy to Bill. Bill kissed the child, lifted him as high on the post as he could, pushed the child’s back against the wood, and lifted its arm. Angelique was suddenly there, supporting the baby. Bill kissed her. He took the hammer and the nail, and placing the nail squarely against Teddy’s little wrist, drove it through the child’s flesh with one swift blow.

  Then the storm blew more furious and the deck turned to gelatin. Bill clutched Angelique, and Angelique almost managed to say, “Teddy,” then all the powers of nature took them and the flimsy house away.

  High above it all, water lapping around the post, Teddy, wet and cold, squalled with pain.

  Bess surfaced among lumber and junk. She began to paddle her legs furiously, snorting water. A nail on a board cut across her muzzle, opening a deep gash. The horse nickered, thrashed its legs violently, lifted its head, trying to stay afloat.

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 4:00 A.M.

  The mechanism that revolved the Bolivar lighthouse beam had stopped working. The stairs that led up to the lighthouse had gradually filled with people fleeing the storm, and as the water rose, so did the people. One man with a young boy had come in last, and therefore was on the constantly rising bottom rung. He kept saying, “Move up. Move up, lessen’ you want to see a man and his boy drown.” And everyone would move up. And then the man would soon repeat his refrain as the water rose.

  The lighthouse was becoming congested. The lighthouse tower had begun to sway. The lighthouse operator, Jim Marlin, and his wife, Elizabeth, lit the kerosene lamp and placed it in t
he center of the circular magnifying lens, and tried to turn the beam by hand. They wanted someone to know there was shelter here, even though it was overcrowded, and might soon cease to exist. The best thing to do was to douse the light and hope they could save those who were already there, and save themselves. But Jim and Elizabeth couldn’t do that. Elizabeth said, “Way I see it, Jim. It’s all or nothing, and the good Lord would want it that way. I want it that way.”

  All night long they had heard screams and cries for help, and once, when the lighthouse beam was operating, they had seen a young man clinging to a timber. When the light swung back to where the young man had been, he had vanished.

  Now, as they tried to turn the light by hand, they found it was too much of a chore. Finally, they let it shine in one direction, and there in the light they saw a couple of bodies being dragged by a large patch of canvas from which dangled ropes, like jellyfish tentacles. The ropes had grouped and twisted around the pair, and the canvas seemed to operate with design, folded and opened like a pair of great wings, as if it were an exotic sea creature bearing them off to a secret lair where they could be eaten in privacy.

  Neither Jim nor Elizabeth Marlin knew the bloated men tangled in the ropes together, had no idea they were named Ronald Beems and Forrest Thomas.

  5:00 A.M.

  A crack of light. Dawn. Jim and Elizabeth had fallen asleep leaning against the base of the great light, and at the first ray of sunshine, they awoke, saw a ship’s bow at the lighthouse window, and standing at the bow, looking in at them, was a bedraggled man in uniform, and he was crying savagely.

  Jim went to the window. The ship had been lifted up on piles of sand and lumber. Across the bow he could see the letters PENSACOLA. The man was leaning against the glass. He wore a captain’s hat. He held out his hand, palm first. Jim put his hand to the glass, trying to match the span of the crying captain’s hand.

  Behind the captain a number of wet men appeared. When they saw the lighthouse they fell to their knees and lifted their heads to the heavens in prayer, having forgotten that it was in fact the heavens that had devastated them.