The Bottoms

by Joe R. Lansdale

  He held up his hands. “Now you’re using some sense.”

  Tom said, “You can’t shoot him, I can.”

  “Go on, Tom.”

  She didn’t like it, but she turned down the tunnel and headed out. Cecil said, “Remember, boy. We had some good times.”

  “You ain’t never done nothing with me but cut my hair, and you didn’t know how to cut a boy’s hair anyway.” I turned and went out by the tunnel. “And I ought to blow one of your legs off for what you done to Toby.”

  “He hurt Toby?” Tom said. “Gimme that gun.”

  She made as if to grab it, and in the same moment Cecil stepped forward. I pushed Tom aside and brought the shotgun up.

  “I thought you was wantin’ to go your own way.”

  He smiled. “I am, Harry. You can’t fault a fella for tryin’.”

  “I can,” I said. “Tom. Go!”

  We hustled through the tunnel, and I listened for him following, looking back now and then, but I didn’t hear nor see any sign of him.

  We come out of the tunnel and went past the tree where the first body had been found, and down to where I’d pulled the boat on shore. I figured if we went through the woods he might get us, but if we took the boat downriver it would be hard for him to track us, if that was his notion.

  I was hoping it wasn’t.

  When we got down to the river, the boat, which I hadn’t been able to pull up completely on shore, had been washed into the river by the rain-dappled current. I could see it in the distance, flowing away at a rapid pace.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Was that Mose’s boat?” Tom asked.

  “We got to go by the bank, to the Swinging Bridge.”

  “It’s a long ways,” I heard Cecil say.

  I spun around, and there he was up on the higher bank next to the tree where me and Tom had found the body. He was just a big shadow next to the tree, and I thought of the devil come up from the ground, all dark and evil and full of bluff. Maybe Cecil wasn’t the Travelin’ Man after all, but in fact was Beelzebub himself, one Miss Maggie told me about.

  Cecil stepped out from behind the tree, and the moonlight caught the blade of the cane knife, made me think of a story I had read once about Death and his scythe.

  “You got a long ways to go, children. A long ways.”

  I pointed the shotgun at him and he slipped behind the tree out of sight, said, “A long ways.”

  I knew then I should have killed him. Or at least taken the cane knife. Now, without the boat, he could follow alongside us, back up in the woods there, and we couldn’t even see him.

  Me and Tom started moving brisk-like along the bank, and we could hear Cecil moving through the woods on the higher bank above us, and finally we didn’t hear him anymore. It was the same as that night when we heard the sounds near and in the tunnel. I figured it had been him, maybe come down to see his handiwork at the tree there, liking it perhaps, wanting it to be seen by someone. Maybe we had come down right after he finished doing it. He had been stalking us, or Tom maybe. Could be he had wanted Tom all along.

  We walked fast and Tom was cussing most of the time, talking about what Cecil had done with his fingers. The whole thing was making me sick.

  “Just shut up, Tom. Shut up.”

  She started crying. I stopped and got down on one knee, let the shotgun lay against me as I reached out with both hands and took hold of her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry, Tom, really. I’m scared too. We got to keep ourselves together, you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” she said.

  “We got to stay the course here. I got a gun. He don’t. He may have already given up.”

  “He ain’t give up, and you know it.”

  “We got to keep moving.”

  Tom nodded, and we started out again. Pretty soon the long dark shadow of the Swinging Bridge was visible across the river, and the wind was high, and the bridge thrashed back and forth and creaked and groaned like rusty hinges.

  “We could go on down a ways, Tom, but I think we got to cross by the bridge here. It’s quicker, and we can be home sooner.”

  “I’m scared, Harry.”

  “So am I. Can you do it?”

  Tom sucked in her top lip and nodded. “I can.”

  We climbed up the bank where the bridge began and looked down it. It swung back and forth. White foam rose from the dark water below, rolled away and crashed over the little falls into the broader, deeper, slower part of the river, but on this rainy, windy night, even that flowed fast.

  The woods seemed quiet, yet full of something I couldn’t put a name to. Now and again, in spite of the rain, the clouds would split and the moon would shine down on us. The rain was growing stronger, and I knew before long there would be only clouds and lots of rain and little to no moonlight. That would only make matters worse.

  Like that other time, I decided to cross first, so if a board gave out Tom would know. When I stepped on the bridge, the wind and my weight made it swing wide, and I darn near tipped into the water. When I reached out to grab the cables, I let go of the shotgun. It went into the water, making no sound over the roar of the water.

  “You lost it, Harry,” Tom yelled from the bank.

  “Come on, just hang on to the cables.”

  Tom stepped onto the bridge. It swung violently, nearly tipped again.

  “We got to walk light,” I said, “and kind of together. When I take a step, you take one. But if a board goes, or I go, you’ll see in time.”

  “If you fall, what do I do?”

  “You got to go on across, Tom.”

  We continued, having gotten the movement right, because we weren’t wobbling as badly as before. Still, it was slow work, and I began to suspect we might have been better off traveling down the bank until we could cross in the shallows. But that route was dark, the trees grew close to the water, and it would have been easy for Cecil to have snatched us.

  But now, on this bridge, going slowly, the wind and rain blowing, I found myself reconsidering. But, of course, there was no going back. We had the same distance to go to cross that we did going back. And I no longer had the shotgun.

  I turned, looked down the length of the bridge, past Tom. I didn’t see anyone tryin’ to follow.

  It was slow going, but it wasn’t long before we were six feet from the other side. I began to breathe again. Then I realized after we crossed the bridge we still had a ways to go till we got to the wide trail, then the road. But there wasn’t any road would stop Cecil or anyone else. It was just a road. If we got that far, we still had more distance to travel, and Cecil would know where we were going, and Mama and Daddy might not even be home yet. As for Grandma, I didn’t know if she had gone back to the house, in search of Mama and Daddy, or driven off for help. For that matter, she could still be lying where I had left her.

  I thought if we got to the road, I might try and fool Cecil by going the other way. The drawback was it was a longer distance in that direction to anyone’s house, and if Cecil figured what we were doin’, we could be in worse trouble. I decided the only thing to do was to head straight home and stay cautious.

  While all this was on my mind, and we were about to reach the opposite bank, a chunk of the bank moved and the shadows that clustered around it moved too. Cecil, looking as if he had crawled through a working cotton gin, stepped into view holding the cane knife.

  The look on his face said it all. He had us. I tossed a glance over my shoulder at Tom. The look she gave me back was one that expected some kind of answer.

  I thought maybe we could turn back, but before I could make the decision, I glanced at Cecil, saw him stick the cane knife in the dirt beside him. Staying on solid ground, he took hold of both sides of the cables that held the Swinging Bridge, said, “I beat you across, boy. Hurried down and crossed in the shallows, like you should have done. Then I just waited. Now you and little Tom, you’re gonna have to take a dip. I didn’t want it this way, but tha
t’s how it is. You see that, don’t you? All I wanted was Tom. You give her to me right now, let her cross to this side, you can go. By the time you get home, me and her, we’ll be on our way, and I’ll keep goin’ from there. That’s all the deal I can offer, Harry.”

  “You ain’t got your dough done in the middle,” I said.

  Cecil clenched the cables hard and shook them. The bridge swung out from under me and I found my feet hanging out in midair. Only my arms wrapped around one of the cables was supporting me.

  I jerked a look at Tom. She had fallen and was grabbing at one of the board steps. As she clutched it, I could see bits of rotten wood splintering, throwing splinters into the moonlight. Tom’s feet swung out into nothingness. The board creaked. She groaned. The bridge sighed in the wind and the rusty old cables screeched like a rat being slowly crushed to death by a boot heel.

  Cecil shook the cables again. I hung tight, my feet swinging way out. I tried to pull up and get my feet back on the slats, but the bridge had tilted, and every time I tugged, it merely leaned with me, the cables being flexible, shaken, and wind-driven.

  The board Tom clung to didn’t give, just shed more wood; she was holding nothing more than a thin fragment bolted to the lower cables on either side.

  I glanced toward Cecil, saw another shape lurch out of the shadows; a huge one, with what looked like horns on its head.

  Mose’s boy, Telly.

  Telly grabbed Cecil around the neck and jerked him back. Cecil spun loose, hit him in the stomach. They grappled for a moment, holding each other’s biceps, pushing and pulling.

  Cecil got loose, losing some of his shirtsleeve in the process. He snatched up the cane knife, slashed it across Telly’s chest. Telly let out with a wail, leaped against Cecil and the both of them went flying onto the bridge.

  When they hit, boards splintered, and the bridge swung violently. There was a snapping sound, followed by a hiss as one of the cables broke in two, whipped out and away from us like a lash, then dropped into the water.

  Cecil and Telly plummeted past us into the Sabine. Tom dangled for a moment from the bridge slat, then it cracked, but before it could break all the way and drop her, the remaining cable snapped, and we tumbled into the fast-rushing water after them.

  I went deep, surfaced in choking foam, bumped into Tom. She bellowed and I grabbed her shirt collar. The water churned us under again. I struggled to bring us up, all the while clinging to Tom’s collar. When I broke the surface of the water, I saw Cecil and Telly in a clench, riding the blast of the Sabine over the little falls, shooting out into deeper, calmer waters.

  Then we were part of the falls, and over we went, and the water covered us, and I clung hard to Tom’s shirt collar. I felt as if I blacked out for a moment, then we rose up and I came to as the night air hit me.

  I tightened my grip on Tom, started trying to swim toward shore. It was hard in our wet clothes, our clinging shoes, tired as we were, and that damn current.

  Tom wasn’t helping herself a bit. She had gone limp, letting the water pull her. I thought several times I wasn’t going to make it, or that, worse, I would let go of Tom to save myself, but I clung to her until my fingers lost feeling.

  Eventually my feet were touching sand and gravel. I waded onto shore, Tom in tow. I collapsed on my knees. Tom rolled over and puked.

  I fell forward and rolled on my back and gasped in cool draughts of air. My head was spinning. Absently, I realized it had quit raining.

  I raised my head, glanced out at the water. The moon, happy to be shed of rain clouds, cast a glow on the Sabine like grease starting to shine on a hot skillet. I could see Cecil and Telly gripped together, a hand flying up now and then to strike, and I could see something else all around them, something that rose up in a dozen silvery knobs that gleamed in the moonlight.

  Cecil and Telly had washed into that school of water moccasins, or another just like them. Had stirred them up. Now it was like bullwhips flying from the water, lashing the two of them time after time.

  They washed around a muddy bend in the river struggling with each other, accompanied by the lashing snakes, and even before they had completely gone from sight the clouds came again and the moon went away and in the shadows of the trees overhanging the river, they were lost from sight.

  When I was able to stand, I realized I had lost a shoe. I got hold of Tom, pulled her farther up the bank. We lay there for a moment, still recovering.

  Finally we felt strong enough to move, and we staggered toward the gap in the trees that led to the road. My bare foot found every sticker in existence.

  When we got to the Preacher’s Road, I stopped, sat down, and picked the stickers out of my foot as best I could. I took off my other shoe, and we started walking toward home. The rain came in earnest now, not letting up at all. No more moonlight, just night and rain so dark it was hard to stay on the muddy road.

  It took us a long time, but as we neared home, we heard Mama in the yard, calling our names.

  When she saw us she let out a roar of relief, ran toward us with her hair wet in her face, her nightgown clinging to her like a satin glove.

  When we arrived that night, Daddy was off in the woods looking for us, and Grandma was in bed, ill from excitement. Toby, who I thought had died, was in the house, lying on a makeshift pallet Mama had made for him. She had also bandaged his head. She called him a hero. When he saw us, his poor pathetic body managed to make his tail work, and he beat it a few times to let us know he was glad to see us.

  Near dawn, wet and tired, Daddy arrived, found us sitting at the table telling Mama and Grandma all about it. When he saw us, and we came to him, he dropped to his knees, took us both in his arms and began to cry.

  Next morning they found Cecil on a sandbar. He was bloated up and swollen from water and snake bites. His neck was broken, Daddy said. Telly had taken care of him before the snake bites.

  Caught up in some roots next to the bank, his arms spread and through them, his feet wound up in vines, was Telly. The cane knife wound had torn open his chest and side. Daddy said that sad old straw hat was still on his head; it had somehow gotten twisted up in his hair, and that the part that looked like horns had washed down and was covering his eyes.

  I wondered what had gotten into Telly, the Goat Man. He had led me out there to save Tom, but he hadn’t wanted any part of stopping Cecil. Maybe he was afraid. But when we were on the bridge, and Cecil was getting the best of us, he had come for him.

  Had it been because he wanted to help us, or was he just there already and frightened? I’ll never know. I thought of poor Telly living out there in the woods all that time, only his Daddy knowing he was there, and keeping it secret just so folks would leave him alone, not take advantage of him because he was addle-headed.

  In the end, I remember mostly just lying in bed in what had become Grandma’s room, our old room, for two days after, nursing all the wounds in my foot from stickers and such, thinking about what had almost happened to Tom, trying to get my strength back.

  Mama stayed by our side for the next two days, leaving us only long enough to make soup. Daddy sat up with us at night. When I awoke, frightened, thinking I was still on the Swinging Bridge, he would be there, and he would smile and put out his hand and touch my head, and I would lie back and sleep again.

  During the day he took a side of the barn down and used the planks to close in the sleeping porch. He said he’d never feel safe with anyone sleeping out there again. I missed the old porch, but it was best he did what he did. I could have never lain out there again, closed my eyes for a good night’s sleep.

  It was nearly two years later before he replaced the boards he had taken from the barn.

  Over a period of years, picking up a word here and there, we would learn that there had been more murders like those in our area, all the way down from Arkansas and over into Oklahoma and some of North Texas. Back then no one pinned those on one murderer. The law just didn’t think like that in t
hem days. The true nature of serial killers was unknown.

  It’s all done now, those long-ago events of the nineteen thirties.

  Epilogue

  A little side note. About six months after the conclusion of these events, a hunter, a man my Daddy knew named Jimmy St. John, discovered a strange thing. Interestingly enough, it was near where Red’s car had been abandoned, but the only way you could have found what he found was if you dropped your flashlight while out coon hunting, climbed down the riverbank where it had been dropped, and discovered there was a gap in a clutch of trees, and if you looked up just right, you could see it.

  It was what looked like a tar baby; a scarecrow thickened with tar hanging from a rope fastened to a limb over the river.

  Next day he told Daddy about it, and Daddy drove over there. I didn’t get all the facts then, but over the years they were pieced together.

  A body covered thick in pitch, the eyes open, but gone, of course, just sockets filled with insects, had a rope embedded in its tar-covered neck, and the other end was fastened around a limb. Daddy said he could see that the man had thrown the rope over the limb, fastened it around his neck, and leaped off the riverbank. He said he wondered what it was like for someone to decide such a thing, to do it in that manner.

  I think Daddy, during his darkest hours, might have considered death himself, but doing it like that, so lonely and so strange …

  There were two huge barrels of tar there, and they were on what had once been a fire, but was now nothing more than washed gray ash. The cans were blackened and the lids were off, and there was a flat board covered with the stuff.

  Daddy determined that the man had heated the tar, and then, deliberately, plastered the scalding hot stuff to himself, put the rope around his neck, and swung out over the river.

  Having come to trust him, Daddy took the body to Doc Tinn, who did his best to clean it up. A large part of the flesh had been preserved by the tar, so that when it was taken off with paint remover and such, it was easy to see that one arm was self-tattooed with a list of women’s names. I never asked Daddy if Mama’s name was actually listed there, but I had my suspicions.