The Complete Drive-In Page 27

  There didn’t seem to be anyone on sentry duty, and the closer we got the more dummies and real people there were on the antenna poles. The air was full of the odor of rotting bodies and spoiled candy and stale soft drinks.

  We went around the edge of the fence and worked our way toward the back, and as we went, we could hear the sounds of television—laugh tracks and voices—and the thought of actually seeing Popalong began to get to me.

  Around back, I got Grace up on my shoulders and she looked over the fence, sat there on my shoulders for a while, taking it in.

  “Well,” Bob said.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” Grace said.

  I put her down then and made Bob let me up on his shoulders. I was goddamned too.

  What I saw was this vast circle of people gathering around this throne made of television sets, and on the throne was Popalong, the flickerings of some show or another throbbing on his face. And below him and to the left, on another throne of busted sets, was a young girl with her long hair loose. Sue Ellen, I figured.

  At the bottom of the double throne were two men. They sat on televisions, well out in front of those behind them. They had ringside seats. I took them for two of the four thugs that had helped Popalong capture Grace and her friends.

  But the thing that got to me were the people. You see, from where I was you could get a good view of that part of the lot, and after my eyes had adjusted and I’d taken in the scene, I began to realize that most of the people were pregnant women. There were a few men, but not many. Most of the crowd was not a crowd at all.

  Dummies tied to antennas. Lobby cards of actors. Posters with pictures of men and women on them wrapped around stacked television sets. A skeleton here and there with clothes on, or a skull stuck on top of a speaker.

  The truth was, Popalong didn’t really have many followers. Perhaps he had exaggerated to Grace to sound impressive, or maybe many of them were decorating the poles along the way, or had been eaten.

  Didn’t his followers demand constant entertainment? What was Father Knows Best compared to a public burning? And even if that burning was filmed and shown again and again, could it suffice? New things needed to be filmed and shown so they could be made real. Then fresh realities had to be created. Time after time after time.

  Popalong and his followers seemed to be killing themselves out of an audience. The harder Popalong worked for ratings, the fewer people he had to poll.

  I got down and Bob and Steve had looks, then we huddled. Grace went over first and I followed. Then Bob. Bob got on my shoulders and gave Steve a hand over.

  We began to work our way through the crowd of posters and dummies and skeletons and lobby cards, and sometimes when we came to a real person, they looked at us without curiosity if they looked at us at all; the real stuff was on the TV set.

  Grace moved ahead of us, and came out at the front of the crowd and looked up at Popalong.

  I saw that Sue Ellen (it had to be her) was dead. Had been for a while. Her face and hands were the color of pee-stained sheets. Her knucklebones punched out of her papery flesh like volcanic eruptions. Her eyes were holes filled with popcorn. One kernel dangled from her left socket like a booger in a nostril.

  A tremor went up Grace’s back. She yelled at Popalong, “Remember me?”

  “It’s like a movie,” Popalong said. “You coming into my lair.”

  There was a surge of wind and a mass of paper and popcorn and soft drink slush blew through the drive-in and passed on.

  When the wind was gone and the paper had quit rustling, Grace said, “You and this place look all worn out. Your church is light in the pews. I think you’re nothing more than a walking TV set with a line of shit.”

  “It’s good of you to come,” Popalong said. “Of course, you know what comes next.”

  The two toughs got up and turned toward Grace. They didn’t look as weak as the others. Better diet. More human flesh maybe.

  “Good to see you boys.” Grace said. “I think about you lots.”

  The one on Grace’s left got to her first. He had a piece of glass wedged into a short stick and he tried to stab her in the stomach.

  Before we could make any kind of move to help her, Grace sidestepped the glass, slapped the thug’s hand down and kicked him between the eyes so hard his head went back more than his neck allowed. He folded up like an accordion at her feet.

  The other tough bolted.

  He was a good runner. We didn’t chase him. He headed for the exit. He wouldn’t last long out there. Not at night, not with the film crawling.

  Popalong’s followers seemed uncertain. This was the sort of thing they saw a lot of, but in this case it was short and sweet and not nearly melodramatic enough. They shuffled their feet. Maybe they wanted to see it on film.

  If any of them had it in their heads to go for Grace, it was an idea that went away when she turned and glared at them.

  Popalong’s followers were now no more than a pack of pregnant women and skinny men, their brains no better than straw. They might as well have been the dummies that the sky kept raining.

  We pushed to the front. I looked up at Popalong. A Western was playing on his face. Just as a Hollywood Indian took a bullet and fell off his horse, Popalong made the tube go black. “You’re just a television set,” I said. “We can turn you off anytime we want.”

  Grace grabbed at one of the dummies and pulled at it. It came loose of the antenna that held it. She grabbed the antenna and pulled it out of the asphalt and stepped up on the base of the television throne and poked at Popalong with it.

  “Come down so I can change your channels,” she said. “Come down so I won’t have to bring you down. I want to see you come down, King Popalong. Come on down where you belong.”

  “Stop it,” Popalong said. “You fools are ruining things. I’ve got anything you want to see. There’s not a show so exotic that I don’t have it. Anything happens to me and you’ll be back in darkness. You’ll have to talk to entertain yourselves.”

  Grace poked him again. He stood up. She poked his knee and his knee buckled and he went down and tried to get up again, but the knee twisted under him and he came tumbling down the sets. As he went, he grabbed out and got hold of Sue Ellen’s hand. She came off her throne and tumbled after him.

  Popalong hit with a crunch and a smash of glass. Sue Ellen lay on top of him.

  Popalong tried to get his hands underneath him. Steve went over and straddled him and pulled Sue Ellen off, then took the guns out of Popalong’s holster and stepped back.

  Popalong folded his knees under him and lifted his body upright. A chunk of glass fell out of his face. There was a gap dead center of the set and dozens of hairline fractures went out from it. The entire thing pulsed like an asshole straining to shit. Something sparked in the ruined depths, and the sparks jumped about like little red rats trying to abandon ship.

  He tried to get up again, but his legs weren’t having it. A rope of smoke twisted out of the hole in his face and rose up. The rabbit ears under his hat pushed it back and felt the air, as if searching for signals. But nothing was on that face but wreckage.

  The rabbit ears went away and the hat fell back into place.

  “It’s all over now,” Grace said, and started forward.

  I grabbed her elbow. “That’s enough.”

  “Not hardly,” she said.

  “Don’t be his high priestess,” I said. “You’re giving him a TV or movie ending. Kind where the wronged person deals out revenge on the bad guy. He’s too messed up to be a bad guy. He’s pathetic. He’s out of it, through. Don’t martyr him for yourself and these people. It won’t do a thing for Timothy or Sue Ellen.”

  “It’s not like he’s got anything left to hurt anyone with,” Bob said.

  “Guess you got two cents to put in on this, Steve,” Grace said.

  “It was me, I’d take him out. Hell, I’ll shoot him for you if you like. It won’t bother me none. But this is your show. Yo
u name the channel.”

  Grace looked at Popalong’s ruptured face, at the scrawny body that held up the massive head, the black cowboy suit that hung off of him like a kid wearing daddy’s clothes.

  She went over and picked up Sue Ellen and walked away. Popcorn dribbled out of Sue Ellen’s eye sockets, sprinkled the ground like snow.

  Steve sighed. “This is kind of disappointing. Kind of like a cowboy movie without a final showdown, ain’t it?”

  “It’s exactly like that,” I said.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  EPILOGUE

  We used some of the drier pieces of cardboard and paper we could find and built a mound and put Sue Ellen on it and covered her with some more pieces. Then Steve lit it with a match he’d found in one of the derelict cars, and after a while, most of Sue Ellen was cremated. What was left over we scooped up in Coke cups and took it off in the woods and tossed it around.

  Popalong’s dead bodyguard was hauled off during all the commotion by one of the drive-in people, and I guess he got eaten.

  Next morning, we went to look for Crier’s body. It was gone. Something had dug him out. Whatever it was got his dick too.

  As for Popalong, in time he crawled back up that stack of TVs and found his place on the throne. He sat there with his tongue of blue and red wires hanging out and the inside of his face popping sparks and fizzling from time to time. But finally that quit.

  He grew thin inside that cowboy suit, and when the flesh went away, there were no bones in him, just cable wire and rods of antenna held together with tightly wrapped film.

  Steve brought his car into the drive-in, and he and Grace took up together and went to living out of it. I tell you, I never expected that to happen. Maybe all those bangs Grace got on the head had clouded her sense of judgment.

  Bob and I built our place out of TV sets. Walls and ceiling. We used antenna pieces and part of an old car to make it work. In the mornings we wake up and watch Grace come out of the Plymouth and do her martial arts exercises. In the nude.

  The bending over stuff is dynamite.

  She’s got a big round tummy now. She says I didn’t pull out fast enough and the baby’s mine. She says it’s pretty far along, but isn’t showing much because she’s tall. Since I didn’t eat the King’s popcorn and neither did she, she thinks the baby has a good chance to be healthy. I don’t know how I feel about that.

  The other women have had their babies and—

  Yes, I’m talking about you guys. But hold up, I’m almost through here. Just be polite and let me get through this.

  —they look like the Popcorn King. Two bodies welded together, one on the other’s shoulders, to make a single unit. Unlike the King, they are covered in eyes. The eyes look like the eyes that were on the corn the King puked up. Each eye blinks at a different time. I feel like I’m constantly receiving Morse code.

  They’re all sexless. I mean there’s no equipment that I can see. Keeps from having to wipe a lot of asses. They came out of the cannon practically walking. They can put simple sentences together already. They’re almost as tall as me. They like to listen to me read, and though they understand a lot of the words, a lot of sentences, I don’t think they get the gist of it all—

  Okay, Leroy. I take it back. You do understand. That’s all for today, guys, girls, whatever. Go find a car to tear up. I was kidding about there being a test at the end of this ...

  What test?

  Forget it, Leroy. Bye now.

  That was about all I had written. I’m back inside the hut now and I’m sitting here finishing this out as best I can, which is just as well. I’m running out of things to write with. I’ve looked everywhere, glove boxes, the concession stand over in B Lot, you name it. I’ve written this in pen and pencil, crayon and eyeliner.

  But it doesn’t matter, I’m also running out of things to say. I guess I can mention that the mothers of those kids, or whatever they are, don’t love them. But I’m not sure that’s all their fault. How can they be mothers after all they’ve seen and done?

  I see some of the drive-in people looking up at the corpse of Popalong, almost wistfully, I think. At night they wander about in the storms, nothing to do. They’ve forgotten how to talk to one another. It’s a good thing those weird kids were born practically grown.

  Sometimes I take the kids hunting with me. They chase down the game on foot. Bob says he thinks he saw one throw a stick without touching it the other day. Kid just willed it up and there it went, hit a rabbit in the back of the head and killed it.

  Bob admits he saw this out of the corner of his eye, and it may not be like that, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

  Well, like I said we hunt a lot. Thought a better diet might help the people here, help them get a better frame of mind. But all it does is help them get around faster.

  Sometimes I think I’ll start back down the highway, but I’d have to go on foot and I don’t like the idea of those storms or that film out there at night. Still, I think about it. Shit Town might be a better life than this. Hell, getting back to Jungle Home wouldn’t be too bad.

  Let’s see ... Oh yeah, Grace has a shadow now, and Steve is starting to have one. Bob and I still don’t. I’m not sure what this means, but it worries me a little, especially when I see Grace working out and popping the air with her punches, and right behind her, capering like a chimp, making fun of her moves, is her shadow. Maybe I’ll stop getting up in the morning to watch her. That shadow takes the joy out of it.

  BOOK THREE

  THE DRIVE-IN

  The Bus Tour

  INTRODUCTION

  I never expected to write a Drive-in 2, so I darn sure didn’t plan on writing, The Drive-in: The Bus Tour, which is The Drive-in 3.

  Not long after the first two came out, I was asked by a small publisher to do just that, and thought, well, okay. But there was nothing there. Just wouldn’t come, so I had to pass on the deal.

  A lot of years passed. A lot. Fifteen, seventeen. I’m a little uncertain. Enough that now I was certain there would never be a Drive-in 3. Besides, the other two, considered humorous books, hadn’t been that much fun to write. Not all writing is supposed to be fun, but as I have said before, I’m not one of those writers who loves having written. I love writing. I can’t wait to get at it. When my feet hit the floor in the morning I take our dog out, have coffee, look at the email, and then, better than nine out of ten times I’m on my work like syrup on a pancake. Oh, there’s a day here and there when my mind is as limp as an octogenarian monk’s dick. But that’s rare, and is really my mind telling me to take a rest, or that the subconscious hasn’t been quite up to par, or whatever. But nearly every morning I go downstairs and go to work and turn out three to five pages a day, and some days more. Well, some mornings more. I usually work about three hours in the morning, and that’s it, five days a week. But now and again I work weekends, and every now and again, I work more than those hours in the morning. Now is an example. It’s after two thirty in the morning on the day of my birthday, October 28, and I’m writing this because I have to leave town in the next day or so and need to get it done, along with some other writing before I head off to a film festival where Bubba Ho-tep is showing, and then the Texas Book Festival.

  So, here I am, telling you this: I had no plans to write a third novel about the Drive-in world, but Bill Schafer and I began to discuss it. He wanted me to do it for Subterranean. And then, one day, out of nowhere, the novel caught fire and I was back in that world. It was easier this time, and fun.

  I wrote the novel very quickly.

  It had been so long since I had written the last, I didn’t realize I had left out one of the main characters from the other novels. Just plain forgot him. A couple of readers called me out. I solved that problem with a small revision.

  I’ll let the novel speak for itself on that matter.

  Also, I realized when I finished this novel, I didn’t give a pure and perfect answer to the world of the Drive-in, and
it’s left open for yet another that need not exist. I left it that way for the reader. But I won’t go into that anymore. My telling you that doesn’t spoil the book or have any effect on the reading of it, but I won’t explain beyond that. I will say this. What I’ve said about the other two.

  Enjoy.

  —Joe R. Lansdale, 2009

  “God bless the children of this picture, this movie book. I’m going on into the Shade.”

  —Jack Kerouac (Doctor Sax)

  “God ain’t nothing but the mind working over time.”

  —Anonymous

  FADE-IN PROLOGUE

  In which the Great Jack, during a hypoglycemic high, ponders the universe beneath God’s asshole while writing The Drive-in Bible and contemplating a journey by school bus.

  1

  They all lived in the great Orbit Drive-in beneath a hole in the sky that swirled with shadows and on occasion squeezed out, sphincter-style, dark sticky goo.

  The goo reeked.

  The goo stuck to your feet.

  Some thought it edible, because once upon a time it had rained chocolate almonds and such, but this wasn’t chocolate almonds. Not by a long shot. The eaters grabbed their bellies and screamed, and they were outta there.

  For awhile their bodies lay stacked by the drive-in fence, ready to go. And go they would, but not far.

  (More on that later.)

  The stuff, the god turds, was finally shoveled with makeshift scoopers made of car hoods, deposited up against the drive-in fence to reinforce it. This worked well. Turned hard as cement. When you piled fresh stuff on the old stuff, it stuck. And so the wall grew.