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

  George and Harry came together. Softly. They had their arms on each others shoulders and they leaned against one another, breathed each others breath.

  Above, the silence of the crowd was broken when a heckler yelled, “Start some music, the fuckers want to dance.”

  “It’s nothing personal,” George said.

  “Not at all,” Harry said.

  They managed to separate, reluctantly, like two lovers who had just copulated to the greatest orgasm of their lives.

  George bent slightly and put up his hands. The eye dangling on his cheek looked like some kind of tentacled creature trying to crawl up and into George’s socket. Harry knew that he would have to work on that eye.

  Preacher screamed. Harry afforded him a sideways glance. Sapphire was awake. And now she was dangling from Preacher’s face. She had bitten through his top lip and was hung there by her fangs. Preacher was saying something about the power to tread on serpents and stumbling about the pit. Finally his back struck the pit wall and he slid down to his butt and just sat there, legs sticking out in front of him, Sapphire dangling off his lip like some sort of malignant growth. Gradually, building momentum, the snake began to thrash.

  Harry and George met again in the center of the pit. A second wind had washed in on them and they were ready. Harry hurt wonderfully. He was no longer afraid. Both men were smiling, showing the teeth they had left. They began to hit each other.

  Harry worked on the eye. Twice he felt it beneath his fists, a grape-like thing that cushioned his knuckles and made them wet. Harry’s entire body felt on fire—twin fires, ecstasy and pain.

  George and Harry collapsed together, held each other, waltzed about.

  “You done good,” George said, “make it quick.”

  The black man’s legs went out from under him and he fell to his knees, his head bent. Harry took the man’s head in his hands and kneed him in the face with all his might. George went limp. Harry grasped George’s chin and the back of his head and gave a violent twist. The neck bone snapped and George fell back, dead.

  The copperhead, which had been poking its head out of Preacher’s pocket, took this moment to slither away into a crack in the pit’s wall.

  Out of nowhere came weakness. Harry fell to his knees. He touched George’s ruined face with his fingers.

  Suddenly hands had him. The ramp was lowered. The crowd cheered. Preacher—Sapphire dislodged from his lip—came forward to help Sheriff Jimmy with him. They lifted him up.

  Harry looked at Preacher. His lip was greenish. His head looked like a sun-swollen watermelon, yet, he seemed well enough. Sapphire was wrapped around his neck again. They were still buddies. The snake looked tired. Harry no longer felt afraid of it. He reached out and touched its head. It did not try to bite him. He felt its feathery tongue brush his bloody hand.

  They carried him up the ramp and the crowd took him, lifted him up high above their heads. He could see the moon and the stars now. For some odd reason they did not look familiar. Even the nature of the sky seemed different.

  He turned and looked down. The terriers were being herded into the pit. They ran down the ramp like rats. Below, he could hear them begin to feed, to fight for choice morsels. But there were so many dogs, and they were so hungry, this only went on for a few minutes. After a while they came back up the ramp followed by Sheriff Jimmy closing a big lock-bladed knife, and by Preacher who held George’s head in his outstretched hands. George’s eyes were gone. Little of the face remained. Only that slick, bald pate had been left undamaged by the terriers.

  A pole came out of the crowd and the head was pushed onto its sharpened end and the pole was dropped into a deep hole in the ground. The pole, like a long neck, rocked its trophy for a moment, then went still. Dirt was kicked into the hole and George joined the others, all those beautiful, wonderful heads and skulls.

  They began to carry Harry away. Tomorrow he would have Elvira, who could do more tricks with a six-inch dick than a monkey could with a hundred foot of grapevine, then he would heal and a new outsider would come through and they would train together and then they would mate in blood and sweat in the depths of the pit.

  The crowd was moving toward the forest trail, toward town. The smell of pines was sweet in the air. And as they carried him away, Harry turned his head so he could look back and see the pit, its maw closing in shadow as the lights were cut, and just before the last one went out Harry saw the heads on the poles, and dead center of his vision, was the shiny, bald pate of his good friend George.

  Not from Detroit

  This was inspired by a scene in The Nightrunners. When I wrote the book in the early eighties and it went out to sell, no one bought it. I thought it was dead, so I began to cobble stories out of it. Some were merely lifted, most were inspired by scenes in the book. This one is one of the inspirations, though there are many lines and moments taken directly from the book. As I recall, Richard Christian Matheson told me his father, the great Richard Matheson, was story editor for the television show Amazing Stories, and I should try something on him. I did a synopsis of a story I had written based on a scene in The Nightrunners and sent it to him. He liked it, suggested the song at the end of the story. But the powers that be didn’t like the story. Maybe Spielberg axed it himself, as he was the producer for Amazing Stories. I like to think I was accepted by one of the best, and rejected by one of the best.

  Whatever, it didn’t become an episode of Amazing Stories, though I still feel it would have been excellent for that show. I decided to use the synopsis and revise the original story which I had titled A Car Drives By. The reason for the complete revision was I didn’t like the original story, which had appeared in a literary magazine called Mississippi Arts and Letters. The result of the rewrite, based on a scene from The Nightrunners—the original story and the synopsis—was a better story. I kept Matheson’s idea of the song at the end of the tale. I think it adds a nice touch.

  The Nightrunners, the inspiration for so many of my stories, as well as a children’s book (Go figure!) eventually did sell, and as of this writing is still in print in paperback.

  OUTSIDE IT WAS COLD AND WET and windy.

  The storm rattled the shack, slid like razor blades through the window, door and wall cracks, but it wasn’t enough to make any difference to the couple. Sitting before the crumbling fireplace in their creaking rocking chairs, shawls across their knees, fingers entwined, they were warm.

  A bucket behind them near the kitchen sink collected water dripping from a hole in the roof. The drops had long since passed the noisy stage of sounding like steel bolts falling on tin, and were now gentle plops.

  The old couple were husband and wife; had been for over fifty years. They were comfortable with one another and seldom spoke. Mostly they rocked and looked at the fire as it flickered shadows across the room.

  Finally Margie spoke. “Alex,” she said. “I hope I die before you.”

  Alex stopped rocking. “Did you say what I thought you did?”

  “I said, I hope I die before you.” She wouldn’t look at him, just the fire. “It’s selfish, I know, but I hope I do. I don’t want to live on with you gone. It would be like cutting out my heart and making me walk around. Like one of them zombies.”

  “There are the children,” he said. “If I died, they’d take you in.”

  “I’d just be in the way. I love them, but I don’t want to do that. They got their own lives. I’d just as soon die before you. That would make things simple.”

  “Not simple for me,” Alex said. “I don’t want you to die before me. So how about that? We’re both selfish, aren’t we?”

  She smiled thinly. “Well, it ain’t a thing to talk about before bedtime, but it’s been on my mind, and I had to get it out.”

  “Been thinking on it too, honey. Only natural we would. We ain’t spring chickens anymore.”

  “You’re healthy as a horse, Alex Brooks. Mechanic work you did all your life kept you strong. Me,
I got the bursitis and the miseries and I’m tired all the time. Got the old age bad.”

  Alex started rocking again. They stared into the fire. “We’re going to go together, hon,” he said. “I feel it. That’s the way it ought to be for folks like us.”

  “I wonder if I’ll see him coming. Death, I mean.”

  “What?”

  “My grandma used to tell me she seen him the night her daddy died.”

  “You’ve never told me this.”

  “Ain’t a subject I like. But grandma said this man in a black buggy slowed down out front of their house, cracked his whip three times, and her daddy was gone in instants. And she said she’d heard her grandfather tell how he had seen Death when he was a boy. Told her it was early morning and he was up, about to start his chores, and when he went outside he seen this man dressed in black walk by the house and stop out front. He was carrying a stick over his shoulder with a checkered bundle tied to it, and he looked at the house and snapped his fingers three times. A moment later they found my great-grandfather’s brother, who had been sick with the smallpox, dead in bed.”

  “Stories, hon. Stories. Don’t get yourself worked up over a bunch of old tall tales. Here, I’ll heat us some milk.”

  Alex stood, laid the shawl in the chair, went over to put milk in a pan and heat it. As he did, he turned to watch Margie’s back. She was still staring into the fire, only she wasn’t rocking. She was just watching the blaze, and Alex knew, thinking about dying.

  After the milk they went to bed, and soon Margie was asleep, snoring like a busted chainsaw. Alex found he could not rest. It was partly due to the storm, it had picked up in intensity. But it was mostly because of what Margie had said about dying. It made him feel lonesome.

  Like her, he wasn’t so much afraid of dying, as he was of being left alone. She had been his heartbeat for fifty years, and without her, he would only be going through motions of life, not living.

  God, he prayed silently. When we go, let us go together.

  He turned to look at Margie. Her face looked unlined and strangely young. He was glad she could turn off most anything with sleep. He, on the other hand, could not.

  Maybe I’m just hungry.

  He slid out of bed, pulled on his pants, shirt and house shoes; those silly things with the rabbit face and ears his granddaughter had bought him. He padded silently to the kitchen. It was not only the kitchen, it served as den, living room and dining room. The house was only three rooms and a closet, and one of the rooms was a small bathroom. It was times like this that Alex thought he could have done better by Margie. Gotten her a bigger house, for one thing. It was the same house where they had raised their kids, the babies sleeping in a crib here in the kitchen.

  He sighed. No matter how hard he had worked, he seemed to stay in the same place. A poor place.

  He went to the refrigerator and took out a half-gallon of milk, drank directly from the carton.

  He put the carton back and watched the water drip into the bucket. It made him mad to see it. He had let the little house turn into a shack since he retired, and there was no real excuse for it. Surely, he wasn’t that tired. It was a wonder Margie didn’t complain more.

  Well, there was nothing to do about it tonight. But he vowed that when dry weather came, he wouldn’t forget about it this time.

  He’d get up there and fix that damn leak.

  Quietly, he rummaged a pan from under the cabinet. He’d have to empty the bucket now if he didn’t want it to run over before morning. He ran a little water into the pan before substituting it for the bucket so the drops wouldn’t sound so loud.

  He opened the front door, went out on the porch, carrying the bucket. He looked out at his mud-pie yard and his old, red wrecker, his white logo on the side of the door faded with time: ALEX BROOKS WRECKING AND MECHANIC SERVICE.

  Tonight, looking at the old warhorse, he felt sadder than ever. He missed using it the way it was meant to be used. For work. Now it was nothing more than transportation. Before he retired, his tools and hands made a living. Now nothing. Picking up a Social Security check was all that was left.

  Leaning over the edge of the porch, he poured the water into the bare and empty flower bed when he lifted his head and looked at his yard again, and beyond Highway 59 he saw a light. Headlights, actually, looking fuzzy in the rain, like filmed-over amber eyes. They were way out there on the highway, coming from the South, winding their way toward him, moving fast.

  Alex thought that whoever was driving that crate was crazy. Cruising like that on bone-dry highways with plenty of sunshine would have been dangerous, but in this weather, they were asking for a crackup.

  As the car neared, he could see it was long, black and strangely shaped. He’d never seen anything like it, and he knew cars fairly well. This didn’t look like something off the assembly line from Detroit. It had to be foreign.

  Miraculously, the car slowed without so much as a quiver or a screech of brakes and tires. In fact, Alex could not even hear its motor, just the faint whispering of rubber on wet cement.

  The car came even of the house just as lightning flashed, and in that instant, Alex got a good look at the driver, or at least the shape of the driver outlined in the flash, and he saw that it was a man with a cigar in his mouth and a bowler hat on his head. And the head was turning toward the house.

  The lightning flash died, and now there was only the dark shape of the car and the red tip of the cigar jutting at the house. Alex felt stalactites of ice dripping down from the roof of his skull, extended through his body and out the soles of his feet.

  The driver hit down on his horn; three sharp blasts that pricked at Alex’s mind.

  Honk. (visions of blooming roses, withering going black)

  Honk. (funerals remembered, loved ones in boxes, going down)

  Honk. (worms crawling through rotten flesh)

  Then came a silence louder than the horn blasts. The car picked up speed again. Alex watched as its taillights winked away in the blackness. The chill became less chill. The stalactites in his brain and mind melted away.

  But as he stood there, Margie’s words of earlier that evening came at him in a rush: “Seen Death once…buggy slowed down out front…cracked his whip three times… man looked at the house, snapped his fingers three times… found dead a moment later…”

  Alex’s throat felt as if a pine knot had lodged there. The bucket slipped from his fingers, clattered on the porch and rolled into the flowerbed. He turned into the house and walked briskly toward the bedroom,

  (Can’t be, just a wive’s tale) his hands vibrating with fear, (just a crazy coincidence) his stomach churning.

  Margie wasn’t snoring.

  Alex grabbed her shoulder, shook her. Nothing.

  He rolled her on her back and screamed her name. Nothing.

  “Oh, baby. No.”

  He felt for her pulse. None.

  He put an ear to her chest, listening for a heartbeat (the other half of his life bongos), and there was none.

  Quiet. Perfectly quiet.

  “You can’t…” Alex said. “You can’t…we’re supposed to go together…got to be that way.”

  And then it came to him. He had seen Death drive by, had seen him heading on down the highway.

  He came to his feet, snatched his coat from the back of the chair, raced toward the front door. “You won’t have her,” he said aloud. “You won’t.”

  Grabbing the wrecker keys from the nail beside the door, he leaped to the porch and dashed out into the cold and the rain.

  A moment later he was heading down the highway, driving fast and crazy in pursuit of the strange car.

  The wrecker was old and not built for speed, but since he kept it well tuned and it had new tires, it ran well over the wet highway.

  Alex kept pushing the pedal gradually until it met the floor. Faster and faster and faster.

  After an hour, he saw Death.

  Not the man himself but the licen
se plate. Personalized and clear in his headlights. It read: DEATH EXEMPT.

  The wrecker and the strange black car were the only ones on the road. Alex closed in on him, honked his horn. Death tootled back (not the same horn sound he had given in front of Alex’s house), stuck his arm out the window and waved the wrecker around.

  Alex went, and when he was alongside the car, he turned his head to look at Death. He could still not see him clearly, but he could make out the shape of his bowler, and when Death turned to look at him, he could see the glowing tip of the cigar, like a bloody bullet wound.

  Alex whipped hard right into the car, and Death swerved to the right, then back onto the road. Alex rammed again. The black car’s tires hit roadside gravel and Alex swung closer, preventing it from returning to the highway. He rammed yet another time, and the car went into the grass alongside the road, skidded and went sailing down an embankment and into a tree.

  Alex braked carefully, backed off the road and got out of the wrecker. He reached a small pipe wrench and a big crescent wrench out from under the seat, slipped the pipe wrench into his coat pocket for insurance, then went charging down the embankment waving the crescent.

  Death opened his door and stepped out. The rain had subsided and the moon was peeking through the clouds like a shy child through gossamer curtains. Its light hit Death’s round, pink face and made it look like a waxed pomegranate. His cigar hung from his mouth by a tobacco strand.

  Glancing up the embankment, he saw an old, but strong looking black man brandishing a wrench and wearing bunny slippers, charging down at him.

  Spitting out the ruined cigar, Death stepped forward, grabbed Alex’s wrist and forearm, twisted. The old man went up and over, the wrench went flying from his hand. Alex came down hard on his back, the breath bursting out of him in spurts.

  Death leaned over Alex. Up close, Alex could see that the pink face was slightly pocked and that some of the pinkness was due to makeup. That was rich. Death was vain about his appearance. He was wearing a black T-shirt, pants and sneakers, and of course his derby, which had neither been stirred by the wreck or by the ju-jitsu maneuver.