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

  “No,” Buddy’s mother said. “But I got to get up on my old tired feet and come in here and tell you to turn it down.”

  “I can hear you yelling from the bedroom good enough when your radio ain’t too high.”

  “But you still don’t turn it down.”

  “I turn it down anymore, I won’t be able to hear it.”

  “Your old tired mother, she ought to get some respect.”

  “You get about half my check,” LuWanda said, “ain’t that enough? I’m gonna get out of here when I have the baby.”

  “Yeah, and I bet that’s some baby, way you lay up with anything’s got pants.”

  “I hardly never leave the house to get the chance,” LuWanda said. “It was pa done it before he tried to knock over that liquor store.”

  “Watch your mouth, young lady. I know you let them in through the windows. I’ll be glad to see you go, way you lie around here an’ watch that old TV. You ought to do something educational. Read the Reader’s Digest like I do. There’s tips for living in those, and you could sure profit some.”

  “Could be something to that all right,” LuWanda said. “Pa read the Reader’s Digest and he’s over in Huntsville. I bet he likes there better than here. I bet he has a better time come night.”

  “Don’t you start that again, young lady.”

  “Way he told me,” LuWanda said, “I was always better with him than you was.”

  “I’m putting my hands right over my ears at those lies. I won’t hear them.”

  “He sure had him a thrust, didn’t he Mama?”

  “Ooooh, you…you little shit, if I should say such a thing. You’ll get yours in hell, sister.”

  “I been getting plenty of hell here.”

  Wilson leaned against the house under the window and whispered to Jake. “Where the hell’s Buddy?”

  This was answered by Buddy’s mother’s shrill voice. “Buddy, you are not going out of this house wearing them nigger shoes.”

  “Oh, Mama,” Buddy said, “these ain’t nigger shoes. I bought these over at K-Woolens.”

  “That’s right where the niggers buy their things,” she said.

  “Ah, Mama,” Buddy said.

  “Don’t you Mama me. You march right back in there and take off them shoes and put on something else. And get you a pair of pants that don’t fit so tight people can tell which side it’s on.”

  A moment later, a window down from Wilson and Jake went up slowly. A hand holding a pair of shoes stuck out. The hand dropped the shoes and disappeared.

  Then the screen door slammed and Wilson and Jake edged around to the corner of the house for a peek. It was Buddy coming out, and his mother’s voice came after him, “Don’t you come back to this house with a disease, you hear?”

  “Ah, Mama,” Buddy said.

  Buddy was dressed in a long-sleeved paisley shirt with the sleeves rolled up so tight over his biceps they bulged as if actually full of muscle. He had on a pair of striped bell-bottoms and tennis shoes. His hair was combed high and hard and it lifted up on one side; it looked as if an oily squirrel were clinging precariously to the side of his head.

  When Buddy saw Wilson and Jake peeking around the corner of the house, his chest got full and he walked off the porch with a cool step. His mother yelled from inside the house, “And don’t walk like you got a corncob up you.”

  That cramped Buddy’s style a little, but he sneered and went around the corner of the house trying to look like a man who knew things.

  “Guess you boys are ready to stretch a little meat,” Buddy said. He paused to locate an almost flat half-pack of Camels in his back pocket. He pulled a cigarette out and got a match from his shirt pocket and grinned and held his hand by his cheek and popped the match with his thumb. It sparked and he lit the cigarette and puffed.

  “Those things with filters, they’re for sissies.”

  “Give us one of those,” Wilson said.

  “Yeah, well, all right, but this is it,” Buddy said. “Only pack I got till I collect some money owed me.”

  Wilson and Jake stuck smokes in their faces and Buddy snapped another match and lit them up. Wilson and Jake coughed some smoke clouds.

  “Sshhhh,” Buddy said. “The old lady’ll hear you.”

  They went around to the back window where Buddy had dropped the shoes and Buddy picked them up and took off the ones he had on and slipped on the others. They were smooth and dark and made of alligator hide. Their toes were pointed. Buddy wet his thumb and removed a speck of dirt from one of them. He put his tennis shoes under the house, brought a fruit jar of clear liquid out from there.

  “Hooch,” Buddy said, and winked. “Bought it off Old Man Hoyt.”

  “Hoyt?” Wilson said. “He sells hooch?”

  “Makes it himself,” Buddy said. “Get you a quart for five dollars. Got five dollars and he’ll sell to bottle babies.”

  Buddy saw Wilson eyeing his shoes appreciatively.

  “Mama don’t like me wearing these,” he said. “I have to sneak them out.”

  “They’re cool,” Jake said. “I wish I had me a pair like ’em.”

  “You got to know where to shop,” Buddy said.

  · · ·

  As they walked, the night became rich and cool and the moon went up and it was bright with a fuzzy ring around it. Crickets chirped. The streets they came to were little more than clay, but there were more houses than in Buddy’s neighborhood, and they were in better shape. Some of the yards were mowed. The lights were on in the houses along the street, and the three of them could hear televisions talking from inside houses as they walked.

  They finished off the street and turned onto another that was bordered by deep woods. They crossed a narrow wooden bridge that went over Mud Creek. They stopped and leaned on the bridge railing and watched the dark water in the moonlight. Wilson remembered when he was ten and out shooting birds with a BB gun, he had seen a dead squirrel in the water, floating out from under the bridge, face down, as if it were snorkeling. He had watched it sail on down the creek and out of sight. He had popped at it and all around it with his BB gun for as long as the gun had the distance. The memory made him nostalgic for his youth and he tried to remember what he had done with his old Daisy air rifle. Then it came to him that his dad had probably pawned it. He did that sort of thing now and then, when he fell off the wagon. Suddenly a lot of missing items over the years began to come together. He’d have to get him some kind of trunk with a lock on it and nail it to the floor or something. It wasn’t nailed down, it and everything in it might end up at the pawn shop for strangers to paw over.

  They walked on and finally came to a long street with houses at the end of it, and the lights there seemed less bright and the windows the lights came out of much smaller.

  “That last house before the street crosses,” Buddy said, “that’s the one we want.”

  Wilson and Jake looked where Buddy was pointing. The house was dark except for a smudgy porch light and a sick yellow glow that shone from behind a thick curtain. Someone was sitting on the front porch doing something with their hands. They couldn’t tell anything about the person or about what the person was doing. From that distance the figure could have been whittling or masturbating.

  “Ain’t that nigger town on the other side of the street?” Jake said. “This gal we’re after, she a nigger? I don’t know I’m ready to fuck a nigger. I heard my old man say to a friend of his that Mammy Clewson will give a hand job for a dollar and a half. I might go that from a nigger, but I don’t know about putting it in one.”

  “House we want is on this side of the street, before nigger town,” Buddy said. “That’s a full four foot difference. She ain’t a nigger. She’s white trash.”

  “Well…all right,” Jake said. “That’s different.”

  “Everybody take a drink,” Buddy said, and he unscrewed the lid on the fruit jar and took a jolt. “Wheee. Straight from the horse.”

  Buddy passed
the jar to Wilson, and Wilson drank and nearly threw it up. “Goddamn,” he said. “Goddamn. He must run that stuff through a radiator hose or something.”

  Jake took a turn, shivered as if in the early throes of an epileptic fit. He gave the jar back to Buddy. Buddy screwed the lid on and they walked on down the street, stopped opposite the house they wanted and looked at the man on the front porch, for they could clearly see now it was a man. He was old and toothless and he was shelling peas from a big paper sack into a little white wash pan.

  “That’s the pimp,” Buddy whispered. He opened up the jar and took a sip and closed it and gave it to Wilson to hold. “Give me your money.”

  They gave him their five dollars.

  “I’ll go across and make the arrangements,” Buddy said. “When I signal, come on over. The pimp might prefer we go in the house one at a time. Maybe you can sit on the porch. I don’t know yet.”

  The three smiled at each other. The passion was building. Buddy straightened his shoulders, pulled his pants up, and went across the street. He called a howdy to the man on the porch.

  “Who the hell are you?” the old man said. It sounded as if his tongue got in the way of his words.

  Buddy went boldly up to the house and stood at the porch steps. Wilson and Jake could hear him from where they stood, shuffling their feet and sipping from the jar. He said, “We come to buy a little pussy. I hear you’re the man to supply it.”

  “What’s that?” the old man said, and he stood up.When he did, it was obvious he had a problem with his balls. The right side of his pants looked to have a baby’s head in it.

  “I was him,” Jake whispered to Wilson, “I’d save up my share of that pussy money and get me a truss.”

  “What is that now?” the old man was going on. “What is that you’re saying, you little shit?”

  “Well now,” Buddy said, cocking a foot on the bottom step of the porch like someone who meant business, “I’m not asking for free. I’ve got fifteen dollars here. It’s five a piece, ain’t it? We’re not asking for anything fancy. We just want to lay a little pipe.” A pale light went on inside the house and a plump, blond girl appeared at the screen door. She didn’t open it. She stood there looking out.

  “Boy, what in hell are you talking about?” the old man said. “You got the wrong house.”

  “No one here named Sally?” Buddy asked.

  The old man turned his head toward the screen and looked at the plump girl.

  “I don’t know him, Papa,” she said. “Honest.”

  “You sonofabitch,” the old man said to Buddy, and he waddled down the step and swung an upward blow that hit Buddy under the chin and flicked his squirrel-looking hair-do out of shape, sent him hurtling into the front yard. The old man got a palm under his oversized balls and went after Buddy, walking like he had something heavy tied to one leg. Buddy twisted around to run and the old man kicked out and caught him one in the seat of the pants, knocked him stumbling into the street.

  “You little bastard,” the old man yelled, “don’t you come sniffing around here after my daughter again, or I’ll cut your nuts off.” Then the old man saw Wilson and Jake across the street. Jake, unable to stop himself, nervously lifted a hand and waved.

  “Git on out of here, or I’ll let Blackie out,” the old man said. “He’ll tear your asses up.”

  Buddy came on across the street, trying to step casually, but moving briskly just the same. “I’m gonna get that fucking Butch,” he said.

  The old man found a rock in the yard and threw it at them.

  It whizzed by Buddy’s ear and he and Jake and Wilson stepped away lively.

  Behind them they heard a screen door slam and the plump girl whined something and there was a whapping sound, like a fan belt come loose on a big truck, then they heard the plump girl yelling for mercy and the old man cried “Slut” once, and they were out of there, across the street, into the black side of town.

  They walked along a while, then Jake said, “I guess we could find Mammy Clewson.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Buddy said. “Here’s your five dollars back. Here’s both your five dollars back. The both of you can get her to do it for you till your money runs out.”

  “I was just kidding,” Jake said.

  “Well don’t,” Buddy said. “That Butch, I catch him, right in the kisser, man. I don’t care how big and mean he is. Right in the kisser.”

  They walked along the street and turned left up another. “Let’s get out of boogie town,” Buddy said. “All these niggers around here, it makes me nervous.”

  When they were well up the street and there were no houses, they turned down a short dirt street with a bridge in the middle of it that went over the Sabine river. It wasn’t a big bridge because the river was narrow there. Off to the right was a wide pasture. To the left a church. They crossed into the church back yard. There were a couple of wooden pews setting out there under an oak. Buddy went over to one and sat down.

  “I thought you wanted to get away from the boogies?” Wilson said.

  “Naw,” Buddy said. “This is all right. This is fine. I’d like for a nigger to start something. I would. That old man back there hadn’t been so old and had his balls fucked up like that, I’d have kicked his ass.”

  “We wondered what was holding you back,” Wilson said.

  Buddy looked at Wilson, didn’t see any signs of sarcasm. “Yeah, well, that was it. Give me the jar. There’s some other women I know about. We might try something later on, we feel like it.”

  But a cloud of unspoken resignation, as far as pussy was concerned, had passed over them, and they labored beneath its darkness with their fruit jar of hooch. They sat and passed the jar around and the night got better and brighter. Behind them, off in the woods, they could hear the Sabine river running along. Now and then a car would go down or up the street, cross over the bridge with a rumble, and pass out of sight beyond the church, or if heading in the other direction, out of sight behind trees.

  Buddy began to see the night’s fiasco as funny. He mellowed. “That Butch, he’s something, ain’t he? Some joke, huh?”

  “It was pretty funny,” Jake said, “seeing that old man and his balls coming down the porch after you. That thing was any more ruptured, he’d need a wheelbarrow to get from room to room. Shit, I bet he couldn’t have turned no dog on us. He’d had one in there, it’d have barked.”

  “Maybe he calls Sally Blackie,” Wilson said. “Man, we’re better off she didn’t take money. You see that face. She could scare crows.”

  “Shit,” Buddy said, sniffing at the jar of hooch. “I think Hoyt puts hair oil in this. Don’t that smell like Vitalis to you?” He held it under Wilson’s nose, then Jake’s.

  “It does,” Wilson said. “Right now, I wouldn’t care if it smelled like sewer. Give me another swig.”

  “No,” Buddy said, standing up, wobbling, holding the partially filled jar in front of him. “Could be we’ve discovered a hair tonic we could sell. Buy it from Hoyt for five, sell it to guys to put on their heads for ten. We could go into business with Old Man Hoyt. Make a fortune.”

  Buddy poured some hooch into his palm and rubbed it into his hair, fanning his struggling squirrel-do into greater disarray. He gave the jar to Jake, got out his comb and sculptured his hair with it. Hooch ran down from his hairline and along his nose and cheeks.

  “See that,” he said, holding out his arms as if he were styling. “Shit holds like glue.”

  Buddy seemed an incredible wit suddenly. They all laughed.

  Buddy got his cigarettes and shook one out for each of them. They lipped them. They smiled at one another. They were great friends. This was a magnificent and important moment in their lives. This night would live in memory forever.

  Buddy produced a match, held it close to his cheek like always, smiled and flicked it with his thumb. The flaming head of the match jumped into his hair and lit the alcohol Buddy had combed into it. His hair flared up, and a cir
cle of fire, like a halo for the devil, wound its way around his scalp and licked at his face and caught the hooch there on fire. Buddy screamed and bolted berserkly into a pew, tumbled over it and came up running. He looked like the Human Torch on a mission.

  Wilson and Jake were stunned. They watched him run a goodly distance, circle, run back, hit the turned-over pew again and go down.

  Wilson yelled, “Put his head out!”

  Jake reflexively tossed the contents of the fruit jar at Buddy’s head, realizing his mistake a moment too late. But it was like when he waved at Sally’s pa. He couldn’t help himself.

  Buddy did a short tumble, came up still burning; in fact, he appeared to be more on fire than before. He ran straight at Wilson and Jake, his tongue out and flapping flames.

  Wilson and Jake stepped aside and Buddy went between them, sprinted across the church yard toward the street.

  “Throw dirt on his head!” Wilson said. Jake threw down the jar and they went after him, watching for dirt they could toss.

  Buddy was fast for someone on fire. He reached the street well ahead of Wilson and Jake and any discovery of available dirt. But he didn’t cross the street fast enough to beat the dump truck. Its headlights hit him first, then the left side of the bumper clipped him on the leg and he did a high complete flip, his blazing head resembling some sort of wheeled fireworks display. He landed on the bridge railing on the far side of the street with a crack of bone and a barking noise. With a burst of flames around his head, he fell off the bridge and into the water below.

  The dump truck locked up its brakes and skidded.

  Wilson and Jake stopped running. They stood looking at the spot where Buddy had gone over, paralyzed with disbelief.

  The dump truck driver, a slim white man in overalls and a cap, got out of the truck and stopped at the rear of it, looked at where Buddy had gone over, looked up and down the street. He didn’t seem to notice Wilson and Jake. He walked briskly back to the truck, got in, gunned the motor. The truck went away fast, took a right on the next street hard enough that the tires protested like a cat with its tail in a crack. It backfired once, then there was only the distant sound of the motor and gears being rapidly shifted.