A Fine Dark Line Read online

  Bless her.

  My wife and I have plans to retire to Dewmont, maybe open the drive-in again, as a kind of retirement lark. That’s down the road a way. We’ll see.

  Chester, he who was slapped by Daddy in an attempt to raise his IQ, never did get any smarter. He married Jane Jersey, the girl who had slipped the prophylactic into Callie’s room. They had a couple of kids. One night he came home drunk and set out to beat her, a regular occurrence, and she shot him. The law called it self-defense.

  Nub is long gone, of course. But I think about him at least once a day. He was a good dog and lived a long life. I have another dog now, but I don’t like him much. He’s my wife’s dog, actually. A poodle with a pink bow in his hair. He bites me at least once a week.

  My wife and I wanted children. But it didn’t work out. We put it off too long. I guess the poodle is her baby. Nonetheless, I love her. She loves me. It’s a good life. The poodle’s name is François. I want a German shepherd.

  ———

  ONE CURIOUS NOTE, and I read this in the Austin paper, just a little piece in the back section. It was about my old hometown, so I was drawn to it. It was more of a curiosity item than anything else.

  It said an old sawmill in Dewmont, or what was left of one, a wobbly piece of rotted wood and rusted tin, had fallen down and been removed. There was a blackened mound of sawdust there too, washed down to where it was nearly flat.

  When the sawdust was scooped up, a skeleton was found. I thought of that black kid Richard told me about at first, but I thought different when I read on.

  Along with the skeleton, all that remained that was identifiable were some boots with one pull-up strap that had Roy Rogers written on it in silver paint.

  It’s all over now. Some things answered, some things not.

  As I grow older, and frankly, I’m not that old, late fifties, but still, the past is more important than the present. That may not be good, but that’s the truth. Things were more intense then. The sun warmer. The wind cooler. Dogs better understood.

  Buster wasn’t always right, and he gave mixed answers sometimes, but the thing that sticks with me, the thing that always seems right, was what he said about how life isn’t always satisfactory, and that in the end, dirt and flesh are pretty much the same.

  Visit THE ORBIT, the official drive-in theater of champion MOJO STORYTELLER Joe R. Lansdale, located on the web at www.joerlansdale.com. Free stories changed weekly.

  Contents

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  PART TWO

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  PART THREE

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25