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

  “What’s with you, man?” Death asked.

  Alex wheezed, tried to catch his breath.”You…can’t…have…her.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play…dumb with me.” Alex raised up on one elbow, his wind returning. “You’re Death and you took my Margie’s soul.”

  Death straightened. “So you know who I am. All right. But what of it? I’m only doing my job.”

  “It ain’t her time.”

  “My list says it is, and my list is never wrong.”

  Alex felt something hard pressing against his hip, realized what it was. The pipe wrench. Even the throw Death had put on him had not hurled it from his coat pocket. It had lodged there and the pocket had shifted beneath his hip, making his old bones hurt all the worse.

  Alex made as to roll over, freed the pocket beneath him, shot his hand inside and produced the pipe wrench. He hurled it at Death, struck him just below the brim of the bowler and sent him stumbling back. This time the bowler fell off. Death’s forehead was bleeding.

  Before Death could collect himself, Alex was up and rushing. He used his head as a battering ram and struck Death in the stomach, knocking him to the ground. He put both knees on Death’s arms, pinning them, clenched his throat with his strong, old hands.

  “I ain’t never hurt nobody before,” Alex said. “Don’t want to now. I didn’t want to hit you with that wrench, but you give Margie back.”

  Death’s eyes showed no expression at first, but slowly a light seemed to go on behind them. He easily pulled his arms out from under Alex’s knees, reached up, took hold of the old man’s wrist and pulled the hands away from his throat.

  “You old rascal,” Death said. “You outsmarted me.”

  Death flopped Alex over on his side, then stood up to once more lord over the man. Grinning, he turned, stooped to recover his bowler, but he never laid a hand on it.

  Alex moved like a crab, scissored his legs and caught Death above and behind the knees, twisted, brought him down on his face.

  Death raised up on his palms and crawled from behind Alex’s legs like a snake, effortlessly. This time he grabbed the hat and put it on his head and stood up. He watched Alex carefully.

  “I don’t frighten you much, do I?” Death asked.

  Alex noted that the wound on Death’s forehead had vanished. There wasn’t even a drop of blood.

  “No,” Alex said. “You don’t frighten me much. I just want my Margie back.”

  “All right,” Death said.

  Alex sat bolt upright.

  “What?”

  “I said, all right. For a time. Not many have outsmarted me, pinned me to the ground. I give you credit, and you’ve got courage. I like that. I’ll give her back. For a time. Come here.”

  Death walked over to the car that was not from Detroit. Alex got to his feet and followed. Death took the keys out of the ignition, moved to the trunk, worked the key in the lock. It popped up with a hiss.

  Inside were stacks and stacks of match boxes. Death moved his hand over them, like a careful man selecting a special vegetable at the supermarket. His fingers came to rest on a matchbox that looked to Alex no different than the others.

  Death handed Alex the matchbox. “Her soul’s in here, old man. You stand over her bed, open the box. Okay?”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Now get out of here before I change my mind. And remember, I’m giving her back to you. But just for a while.”

  Alex started away, holding the matchbox carefully. As he walked past Death’s car, he saw the dents he had knocked in the side with his wrecker were popping out. He turned to look at Death, who was closing the trunk.

  “Don’t suppose you’ll need a tow out of here?”

  Death smiled thinly. “Not hardly.”

  · · ·

  Alex stood over their bed; the bed where they had loved, slept, talked and dreamed. He stood there with the matchbox in his hand, his eyes on Margie’s cold face. He ever so gently eased the box open. A small flash of blue light, like Peter Pan’s friend Tinker Bell, rushed out of it and hit Margie’s lips. She made a sharp inhaling sound and her chest rose. Her eyes came open. She turned and looked at Alex and smiled.

  “My lands, Alex. What are you doing there, and half-dressed? What you been up to…is that a matchbox?”

  Alex tried to speak, but he found he could not. All he could do was grin.

  “Have you gone nuts?” she asked.

  “Maybe a little.” He sat down on the bed and took her hand. “I love you Margie.”

  “And l love you…you been drinking?”

  “No.”

  Then came the overwhelming sound of Death’s horn. One harsh blast that shook the house, and the head beams shone brightly through the window and the cracks and lit up the shack like a cheap nightclub act.

  “Who in the world?” Margie asked.

  “Him. But he said…stay here.”

  Alex got his shotgun out of the closet. He went out on the porch. Death’s car was pointed toward the house, and the headbeams seemed to hold Alex, like a fly in butter.

  Death was standing on the bottom porch step, waiting.

  Alex pointed the shotgun at him. “You git. You gave her back. You gave your word.”

  “And I kept it. But I said for a while.”

  “That wasn’t any time at all.”

  “It was all I could give. My present.”

  “Short time like that’s worse than no time at all.”

  “Be good about it, Alex. Let her go. I got records and they have to be kept. I’m going to take her anyway, you understand that?”

  “Not tonight, you ain’t.” Alex pulled back the hammers on the shotgun. “Not tomorrow night neither. Not anytime soon.”

  “That gun won’t do you any good, Alex. You know that. You can’t stop Death. I can stand here and snap my fingers three times, or click my tongue, or go back to the car and honk my horn, and she’s as good as mine. But I’m trying to reason with you, Alex. You’re a brave man. I did you a favor because you bested me. I didn’t want to just take her back without telling you. That’s why I came here to talk. But she’s got to go. Now.”

  Alex lowered the shotgun. “Can’t…can’t you take me in her place? You can do that can’t you?”

  “I…I don’t know. It’s highly irregular.”

  “Yeah, you can do that. Take me. Leave Margie.”

  “Well, I suppose.”

  The screen door creaked open and Margie stood there in her housecoat. “You’re forgetting, Alex I don’t want to be left alone.”

  “Go in the house, Margie,” Alex said.

  “I know who this is. I heard you talking, Mr. Death, I don’t want you taking my Alex. I’m the one you came for, I ought to have the right to go.”

  There was a pause, no one speaking. Then Alex said, “Take both of us. You can do that, can’t you? I know I’m on that list of yours, and pretty high up. Man my age couldn’t have too many years left. You can take me a little before my time, can’t you? Well, can’t you?”

  · · ·

  Margie and Alex sat in their rocking chairs, their shawls over their knees. There was no fire in the fireplace. Behind them the bucket collected water and outside the wind whistled. They held hands. Death stood in front of them. He was holding a King Edward cigar box.

  “You’re sure of this?” Death asked. “You don’t both have to go.”

  Alex looked at Margie, then back at Death.

  “We’re sure,” he said. “Do it.”

  Death nodded. He opened the cigar box and held it out on one palm. He used his free hand to snap his fingers.

  Once. (the wind picked up, howled)

  Twice. (the rain beat like drumsticks on the roof)

  Three times. (lightning ripped and thunder roared)

  “And in you go,” Death said.

  A little blue light came out of the couple’s mouths and jetted into the cigar box
with a thump, and Death closed the lid.

  The bodies of Alex and Margie slumped and their heads fell together between the rocking chairs. Their fingers were still entwined.

  Death put the box under his arm and went out to the car. The rain beat on his derby hat and the wind sawed at his bare arms and T-shirt. He didn’t seem to mind.

  Opening the trunk, he started to put the box inside, then hesitated.

  He closed the trunk.

  “Damn,” he said, “if I’m not getting to be a sentimental old fool.”

  He opened the box. Two blue lights rose out of it, elongated, touched ground. They took on the shape of Alex and Margie. They glowed against the night.

  “Want to ride up front?” Death asked.

  “That would be nice,” Margie said.

  “Yes, nice,” Alex said.

  Death opened the door and Alex and Margie slid inside. Death climbed in behind the wheel. He checked the clipboard dangling from the clash. There was a woman in a Tyler hospital, dying of brain damage. That would be his next stop.

  He put the clipboard down and started the car that was not from Detroit.

  “Sounds well-tuned,” Alex said.

  “I try to keep it that way,” Death said.

  They drove out of there then, and as they went, Death broke into song. “Row, row row your boat, gently down the stream,” and Margie and Alex chimed in with, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

  Off they went down the highway, the taillights fading, the song dying, the black metal of the car melting into the fabric of night, and then there was only the whispery sound of good tires on wet cement and finally not even that. Just the blowing sound of the wind and the rain.

  Booty and the Beast

  A gaming company decided to produce a hard-boiled anthology to go with one of their games, and they asked me if I’d like to do a story.

  I decided to do something really dark and nutty. They liked it, but wanted the word “cunt” taken out of it. Since the story is filled with pretty nasty stuff I wondered why. On rereading I saw that the cunt hair in question belonged to the Virgin Mary.

  So that was it. I guess the Virgin Mary was all smooth down there; maybe she was an early proponent of waxing.

  Oh well, it didn’t bother me. I’ve returned the cunt hair to its rightful place. Should I have said pubic hair? Maybe that’s what they replaced it with. Don’t remember. Could have said pussy hair. Or snatch hair, but I didn’t. I could have said all kinds of things, but I didn’t, I said cunt hair.

  Funny, the stuff you remember about some stories.

  The idea for the story came from reading about Nazi theft during and after World War II, and how some Allied soldiers decided to steal from the thieves. Among the items supposedly missing was some sort of icon that contained a hair from the Virgin Mary. If this hair was from her head, or another part of her anatomy, it was not determined. I, of course, made my own determination.

  “WHERE DO YOU KEEP THE SUGAR?” Mulroy said, as he pulled open cabinet doors and scrounged about.

  “Go to hell,” Standers said.

  “That’s no way to talk,” Mulroy said. “I’m a guest in your house. A guest isn’t supposed to be treated that way. All I asked was where’s the sugar?”

  “And I said go to hell. And you’re not a guest.”

  Mulroy, who was standing in the kitchen part of the mobile home, stopped and stared at Standers in the living room. He had tied Standers’s hands together and stretched them out so he could loop the remainder of the lamp cord around a doorknob. He had removed Standers’s boots and tied his feet with a sheet, wrapped them several times. The door Standers was bound to was the front door of the trailer and it was open. Standers was tied so that he was sitting with his back against the door, his arms stretched and strained above him. Mulroy thought he ought to have done it a little neater, a little less painful, then he got to thinking about what he was going to do and decided it didn’t matter, and if it did, tough.

  “You got any syrup or honey?”

  This time Standers didn’t answer at all.

  Mulroy neatly closed the cabinet doors and checked the refrigerator. He found a large plastic see-through bear nearly full of syrup. He squeezed the bear and shot some of the syrup on his finger and tasted it. Maple.

  “This’ll do. You know, I had time, I’d fix me up some pancakes and use this. I taste this, it makes me think pancakes. They got like an IHop in town?”

  Standers didn’t answer.

  Mulroy strolled over to Standers and set the plastic bear on the floor and took off his cowboy hat and nice Western jacket. He tossed the hat on the couch and carefully hung his jacket on the back of a chair. The pistol in the holster under his arm dangled like a malignancy.

  Mulroy took a moment to look out the open door at the sun-parched grass and the fire ant hills in the yard. Here was a bad place for a mobile home. For a house. For anything. No neighbors. No trees, just lots of land with stumps. Mulroy figured the trees had been cut down for pulp money. Mulroy knew that’s what he’d have done.

  Because there were no trees, the mobile home was hot, even with the air conditioner going. And having the front door open didn’t help much, way it was sucking out what cool air there was.

  Mulroy watched as a mockingbird lit in the grass. It appeared on the verge of heat stroke. It made one sad sound, then went silent. Way, way out, Mulroy could hear cars on the highway, beyond the thin line of pine trees.

  Mulroy reached down and unbuckled Standers’s pants. He tugged down the pants and underwear, exposing Standers. He got hold of the bear and squeezed some of the syrup onto Standers’s privates.

  Standers said, “Whatcha doin’, fixin’ breakfast?”

  “Oh ho,” Mulroy said. “I am cut to the quick. Listen here. No use talkin’ tough. This isn’t personal. It’s business. I’m going to do what I got to do, so you might as well not take it personal. I don’t have anything against you.”

  “Yeah, well, great. I feel a hell of a lot better.”

  Mulroy eased down to Standers’s feet, where his toes were exposed. He put the syrup on Standers’s toes. He squirted some on Standers’s head.

  Mulroy went outside then. The mockingbird flew away. Mulroy walked around and looked at the fire ant hills. Fire ants were a bitch. They were tenacious bastards, and when they stung you, it was some kind of sting. There were some people so allergic to the little critters, one bite would make them go toes up. And if there were enough of them, and they were biting on you, it could be Goodbye City no matter if you were allergic or not. It was nasty poison.

  Mulroy reached in his back pocket, pulled out a half-used sack of Red Man, opened it, pinched some out and put it in his mouth. He chewed a while, then spit on one of the ant hills. Agitated ants boiled out of the hill and spread in his direction. He walked off a ways and used the toe of his boot to stir up another hill, then another. He squirted syrup from the bear on one of the hills and ran a thin, dribbling stream of syrup back to the mobile home, up the steps, across the floor and directed the stream across Standers’s thigh and onto his love apples. He said, “A fire ant hurts worse than a regular ant, but it isn’t any different when it comes to sweets. He likes them. They like them. There’re thousands of ants out there. Maybe millions. Who the hell knows. I mean, how you gonna count mad ants, way they’re running around?”

  For the first time since Mulroy first surprised Standers pretending to be a Bible salesman, then giving him an overhand right, followed by a left uppercut to the chin—he saw true concern on Standers’s face.

  Mulroy said, “They hurt they bite you on the arm, leg, foot, something like that. But they get on your general, crawl between your toes, where it’s soft, or nip your face around the lips, eyes and nose, it’s some kind of painful. Or so I figure. You can tell me in a minute.”

  Suddenly, Mulroy cocked his head. He heard a car coming along the long road that wound up to the trailer. He went and looked out
the door, came back, sat down on the couch and chewed his tobacco.

  A few moments later the car parked behind Mulroy’s car. A door slammed, a young slim woman in a short tight dress with hair the color of fire ants came through the door and looked first at Mulroy, then Standers. She pivoted on her high heels and waved her little handbag at Standers, said, “Hey, honey. What’s that on your schlong?”

  “Syrup,” Mulroy said, got up, pushed past the woman and spat a stream of tobacco into the yard.

  “Bitch,” Standers said.

  “The biggest,” she said. Then to Mulroy: “Syrup on his tallywhacker?”

  Mulroy stood in the doorway and nodded toward the yard. “The ants.”

  The woman looked outside, said, “I get it. Very imaginative.” She eyed the plastic bear where Mulroy had placed it on the arm of the couch. “Oh, that little bear is the cutest.”

  “You like it,” Mulroy said. “Take it with you.” Then to Standers he said, “You think maybe now you want to talk to us?”

  Standers considered, decided either way he was screwed. He didn’t tell, he was going to suffer, then die. Maybe he told what they wanted, he’d just die. He could make that part of the deal, and hope they kept their side of the bargain. Not that there was any reason they should. Still, Mulroy, he might do it. As for Babe, he couldn’t trust her any kind of way.

  Nonetheless, looking at her now, she was certainly beautiful. And his worms-eye view right up her dress was exceptional, considering Babe didn’t wear panties and was a natural redhead.

  “I was you,” Mulroy said, “I’d start talking. Where’s the loot?”

  Standers took a deep breath. If he’d only kept his mouth shut, hadn’t tried to impress Babe, he wouldn’t be in this mess.

  During World War II his dad had been assigned to guard Nazi treasure in Germany. His dad had confiscated a portion of the treasure, millions of dollars worth, and shipped it home to East Texas. A number of religious icons had been included in the theft, like a decorated box that was supposed to contain a hair from the Virgin Mary’s head.