All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  She explained to him about Strangler and the gangsters. She told it straight, but it sounded like a lie, it was so wild.

  “That’s some situation,” Junior said.

  “I know how it sounds,” I said. “But it’s real.”

  “I reckon it’s true,” Junior said. “Though I get this feeling that you, girl, you might stretch the blanket a little. You got some storyteller in you, which is sometimes a word for liar.”

  “Now and again,” she said, “even a true story needs a little something to spice it up.”

  42

  “Now,” Junior said, handing me the keys. “That ole pickup ain’t much, but it’ll run. I just don’t know for how long. You can take it and go find your man, and when you get through, you can bring the truck back if it’s still running.”

  I got in behind the wheel, and Jane and Tony went around to the other door and slid onto the seat, Jane in the middle. Junior was holding my door open. Nasty was sitting on the ground wagging his tail.

  “What’s that dog’s name?” I said. “I been calling him Nasty.”

  “Name?” Junior said, glancing back at the dog. “He ain’t got no name. I just call him Dog. But Nasty will do. It fits. He stinks.”

  “Thanks, Junior,” I said. “You’ll watch Gasper?”

  “He’ll be fine,” Junior said. “His fever is broke, and he’ll wake up hungry and thirsty, you can count on that.”

  “He don’t have a home or no people, besides us,” I said.

  “He can stay here long as he likes,” Junior said. “I could use the company. Here. You going to need a few dollars.”

  He gave me five dollars in coins.

  “You can’t do that, Junior,” I said.

  “Yes I can,” Junior said.

  I took the money and gave it to Jane.

  “Not many people would help strangers like this,” I said.

  “I’m not many people, son,” he said, “and the way I figure it, you ain’t either. I mean, didn’t the girl say you folks was on a mission? That makes you special, don’t it? Besides, I kept the good truck. This one goes to pieces, it’s no big loss. I was going to sell it, but I figure I wouldn’t get much for it anyway. So I’m not being as nice as you think.”

  “If you say so,” I said.

  “Watch your hands,” Junior said, and closed the door.

  A moment later, I was driving the truck up the little road that led out to where Junior told me I should go.

  As we rode along, Jane said, “We’re like Odysseus.”

  “Who?”

  “Odysseus. The Romans called him Ulysses.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “He was an ancient traveler who went to war, and then, after ten years of it, he decided to go home. On his way he ran into all kinds of problems, and it didn’t look like he was going to make it, but he got through them and finally did go home. Of course, he had to put a giant’s eye out with a sharp stick and kill a bunch of people, but he made it.”

  “We aren’t going home. We left home.”

  “So we did. Well, maybe it’s more like we’re Jason and the Argonauts. I’ll be Jason and you be somebody on the boat.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “She reads a lot,” Tony said.

  “Jason took a boat with heroes on it and went in search of the Golden Fleece.”

  “Did he find it?”

  “He did,” she said. “Point is, he left home, did a great deed, got the fleece, went back home.”

  “Are we going back home?” I asked.

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “Me neither,” I said. “So how’s that like Jason and the whatevers?”

  “Argonauts. You’re missing the point. We are having a great adventure. I’m speaking symbolically again.”

  “As you noted, I quit school before that lesson.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, grinning. “I did say that, didn’t I. Well. It’s true. But still, we’re having an adventure.”

  “Even if we are, we may not be in time to help this Strangler. He could have been dead for days now.”

  “Could be,” she said, “but sometimes it’s just about the quest.”

  “Strangler might think it’s about us telling him two gangsters who don’t like that he took their stolen money are going to kill him. So for Strangler, it’s not just the quest.”

  “That’s an excellent point,” Jane said.

  We rode on through the late afternoon until we came to the edge of Tyler. We stopped and got a dollar’s worth of gas at a station; then we stopped at a barbecue joint and got some sandwiches. We took them outside by the building, sat on the steps, and ate them.

  While we were eating, Tony got up and went over to look at a poster on a telephone pole near the street.

  “Ain’t Strangler spelled like this?” Tony said.

  We got up and went over to look at the poster. It was for a carnival. It said, COME DEFEAT OUR MAN AND MAKE SOME MONEY! COME BATTLE THE UNDEFEATED STRANGLER NUGOWSKI! Then there was a painted picture of him that made him look a little like a redheaded movie star.

  Underneath, it said there was a carnival that night, and it wasn’t actually in Tyler, but in Lindale. That was where Pretty Boy said the train would go if we didn’t get off. It was where Big Bill took his peas to be canned. I went inside the barbecue joint and asked for directions to Lindale. It wasn’t all that far. We got in the truck and I drove us out of there.

  “What luck,” I said.

  “No luck to it,” Jane said. “We’re looking for him. We know he’s in the area. His name is Strangler and he beats people up in carnivals.”

  “It’s still lucky,” I said. “We might never have seen that poster. Good job, Tony.”

  “I liked it. It was bright colored,” Tony said.

  As we drove along, we saw a lot of the posters on telephone and lamp poles, and even two big billboards talking about the carnival. Plastered across the billboards in big letters was Strangler’s name, and how he would take on all comers.

  “It’s like Bad Tiger and Timmy got a map straight to him,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Jane said, “he might as well paint a bull’s-eye on his forehead and send them telegrams. What I want to know is why a thief that’s supposed to be hiding from gangsters is working in a carnival, just like nothing ever happened. What is he thinking?”

  “Maybe the answer is simple,” I said.

  “And what would that be?” Jane said.

  “He’s an idiot.”

  43

  It was late afternoon when we got to Lindale, and I had to drive around and ask a couple of people before someone could tell me where the carnival was going to take place. Turned out it was out near the Lindale canning factory, and that made me think of peas and Sheriff Big Bill.

  When we got there, the carnival was setting up for the night. There were people pulling ropes for tents, and there were people putting together stands for places where you tossed balls at bowling pins or tried to flip rings over bottles, and there were carnival rides going up.

  I parked the truck on one side of the highway and we went over to the carnival.

  When we were on the lot, a man by a Ferris wheel, who looked like his last bath had been taken about the time of his birth came over to us. He walked like he had one leg in a ditch, and the other was short.

  “You ain’t supposed to be here till tonight,” said the carny. “You could get hurt around here before then, things going up and all.”

  Jane eyed one of the rides not far from the Ferris wheel. It was some kind of ride that looked as if it would swing way out and high and then swing back close to the ground. It was fastened down by ropes and stakes. A couple of men were positioning and tightening bolts that held the ride in place. She said, “Looks to me like we could get hurt tonight, way those bolts are being fastened. They could come loose and throw the whole lot of the riders out there in the street, not to mention
puncturing them to death with all those spokes, dropping the seats on them. I’ll tell you now, I’m not going to ride that stuff.”

  “Then don’t,” said the carny, “it’s no skin off my nose.”

  “We’re looking for Strangler,” she said. “I’m the captain of his fan club, and he promised an interview for our newsletter. We send it out to thousands.”

  “He’s got a fan club?” the carny said.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “He’s modest, and probably didn’t tell you about it. And I’m going to tell you something I shouldn’t, ’cause it might take away from how you feel about him having a fan club. But I’m his cousin.”

  “Cousin?”

  “That’s right. Truth is, he hired me to come up with the club, but then it caught on. Who knew? But the main thing is, that interview should promote the carnival in the next town, wherever that might be.”

  “Atlanta, Texas.”

  “Good. Now, where is he?”

  “Do you really know Strangler?”

  “Boy, do I,” Jane said. “All right. I’m not his cousin, and there’s no fan club.”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said.

  “Can I speak to you privately?” she said.

  “I suppose so.”

  Jane walked off with the carny and whispered something and came back to join us. The carny, looking a little stunned, went back to the rickety rides.

  “I got directions to Strangler’s trailer,” she said.

  “What did you tell him?” I said.

  “That I was pregnant with Strangler’s baby.”

  “And he believed you?”

  “It’s a better story than the fan club one.”

  Strangler’s trailer was a colorful one with a painting of him on the side. In the painting he had on wrestling shorts and shoes and he was bare-chested and well muscled. He had bright red hair.

  The door to the trailer was open, and we could see Strangler sitting inside on a stool reading a comic book. He had on wrestling shorts, wrestling shoes, and a big gray sweatshirt.

  Jane knocked on the side of the trailer, “Knock, knock, Mr. Strangler.”

  Strangler looked up. He resembled the painting on the side of the trailer enough you could tell it was him, but he had gone a little to fat. His red hair was touched with gray around the ears.

  “Who are you?” he said, without getting up.

  “We’ve come to see you don’t get killed by a couple of gangsters,” Jane said. “Do Bad Tiger and Timmy ring a bell?”

  Strangler tossed the comic on the floor. “Come in,” he said.

  We went inside. There was a couch and a chair, and through an open door I could see a bed.

  “What do you know about them guys?” he said.

  “What we know,” said Jane, “is that they have guns, they are mean, they don’t like you, and they want some money back.”

  “They do, huh?”

  “Listen here,” Jane said. “We know why you stole it, and we get it. We do. The money, that’s not any of our business, not with what you had in mind about your daughter, but they really are serious.”

  “I ain’t got no daughter,” Strangler said.

  “No?” I said.

  He shook his head. “I told them that so my reasons for stealing the money would be better than theirs. I just wanted the money.”

  “You lied to a couple of gangsters to feel better about yourself?” Jane said.

  I was thinking this was exactly what Jane did all the time. She’d rather climb a tree and lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to just be a criminal. I’m no criminal.”

  “Actually,” Jane said, “you are the definition of a criminal. You stole money from a bank.”

  “I know, but I mailed it back. I mailed it back the second day after it was stolen. It took four good-sized boxes. I used the address on the money bags. I sent it from a post office in some little town. I forget the name.”

  “You seem pretty open about it,” I said.

  “If you know I had the money, and you know Bad Tiger and Timmy, what’s the use lying?”

  Okay, he wasn’t exactly like Jane.

  “Well,” Jane said. “You may not see yourself as a criminal, but Bad Tiger and Timmy are criminals, and they see you as one. A crook that took their money. They want it back, and then they want to shoot you. They’ll do it. We saw Timmy kill a man.”

  “That would be Buddy,” Strangler said. “He was hit in the robbery. And pretty bad.”

  “Did you shoot anyone?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I was outside in the car. I was the driver. A bank guard shot Buddy. We hadn’t no more than driven out of there with the loot than Timmy was looking at Buddy like he had to go. He didn’t want to play nursemaid, drag him around. I could see it in his eyes. I was certain of it.”

  “Good call,” Jane said. “He shot him, all right, and you’re next. We found you easy, and so will they. I’m surprised they haven’t already. They’re bound to show eventually.”

  “I figure the same,” Strangler said. “My guess is they didn’t find me ’cause the carnival has been in Missouri and Arkansas. This is the first week we been in Texas. So if they been in East Texas, they been having to wait on me.”

  “It’s not exactly sneaky,” Jane said, “to go back to your old line of work in a trailer with your name and likeness on the side of it.”

  “I ain’t running. I sent the money back. I’m no criminal.”

  “Yeah,” Jane said. “You keep saying that.”

  “I’m through running,” Strangler said. “I’m just going to hit people in the ring.”

  “And those bad boys are going to shoot you,” she said, “and when they find out you gave the money back, they’re going to shoot you a lot.”

  “Let them,” Strangler said. “I don’t care. I ain’t running. I gave the money back. I just got sideways for a time there. This Great Depression, as they call it, it got to me. Not having any money and thinking my future wasn’t nothing but twisting people in knots and throwing them around. What do I do when I get old? So I got in with some bad people who wanted my muscle. I guess I’d seen too many gangster movies. My mama didn’t raise me that way, and I come to that conclusion after we robbed that bank and I saw Buddy take a bullet. We could have killed some of them citizens. I decided it was better to starve. Thanks for trying to help me, but you kids go away.… Wake him up.”

  Tony was asleep on the couch. He had sort of wadded up there and gone right out.

  “We’ve had a rough few days,” Jane said. “All because we were coming here to help you.”

  “That was some of it,” I said. “Don’t forget the adventure part. Speaking symbolically, of course.”

  “Oh, go to hell,” Jane said, and went out of the trailer.

  “She likes you,” Strangler said.

  “You think?”

  “Oh yeah. Can’t say how much, but the ones you irritate like that, they like you. They got to like you to get that mad.”

  “No daughter, huh?” I said.

  “Nope,” he said. “Made it up.”

  44

  I woke Tony and pulled him off the couch, and we caught up with Jane as she was leaving the carnival lot. The carny we had first spoke to crossed our path on the way out.

  He said, “He going to treat you right?”

  “No,” Jane said, pausing. “I don’t believe he is.”

  “I’m sorry,” the carny said. “That isn’t very stand-up.”

  “No,” Jane said, “it isn’t.”

  “I know it don’t help much, but here,” said the carny, and gave her a handful of tickets. “These will get you and your friends in, and give you all the rides you want.”

  “Thanks,” said Jane, and she stuffed them in her pants pocket, headed across the street to where the truck was parked.

  When we were all in the truck, I said, “I didn’t mean to make you mad back there.
”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “It isn’t you. I figured it was going to be like in a picture show where we save someone’s life, and his kid gets her foot fixed, and so on. I was expecting a happy ending. Now he’ll just get shot and nobody’s foot got fixed.”

  “None to fix,” I said.

  “That’s what’s disappointing,” Jane said. “Strangler is just like you said. He’s a big idiot. Let’s get out of here. He’s made his bed, now he can lie in it. Let’s go back to Tyler.”

  “We going to look for your relatives now?” I said.

  Jane sighed. “About that. We don’t really have any relatives here in East Texas.”

  “We don’t?” Tony said.

  “No, we don’t,” Jane said. “I made that up.”

  “That ain’t right, Jane,” said Tony. “I knew that, I’d have stayed with that nice lady.”

  “I wanted us to all go together,” Jane said. “I wanted there to be a place we were going.”

  “That’s pretty low, Jane,” I said.

  “I know,” Jane said. “I’m pretty low.”

  “You’re the worst sister ever,” Tony said.

  “I’m sure someone can find someone worse,” Jane said, “but certainly I’ll be getting no rewards for my sisterly manners.”

  I stopped at a store between Lindale and Tyler with a Coca-Cola machine out front. Jane gave me three nickels, and I used them to get us each a Coca-Cola. We sat on the curb and drank them. Across the street, we could see a billboard with Strangler’s name on it. This one also had his picture, same one that was on the side of his trailer.

  “They probably been all over East Texas looking for him,” I said, “and Strangler has been out of town. But a carnival ain’t hard to follow. Might as well be a brass band. If they’re going to catch up with him, this would be the place.”

  “If they’re smart,” Jane said, “they haven’t been following him at all. They know the carnival is going to come through this area eventually, so all they got to do is hole up and wait, and it’s all over but the dirt in the face.” She took a big swig of her Coca-Cola. “Dang it,” she said. “We ought to go back and talk to him again. Get him to run or go to the cops. We can’t just leave him, and us knowing what’s going to happen. We got to convince him.”