The Thicket

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Go fuck yourself,” Fatty said.

  “Who is that in there?” said the young man.

  “That there is a bank robber, a kidnapper, and probably a rapist,” said the sheriff. Then to us, he said, “This here, gentlemen, is my deputy, Harlis.”

  Harlis turned around and looked at us, said, “You got a big hog lying on the floor there.”

  “You noticed that, did you?” said the sheriff. “Stay away from him. Don’t let his snoozing mislead you. He’ll take right away to your nut sack.”

  “I wasn’t gonna pet him,” Harlis said.

  “You do, you might just draw back a nub,” Eustace said.

  Deputy Harlis had already turned his attention back to Fatty. “You’re behind bars, ain’t you?”

  “This is one smart fella, now, ain’t he?” Fatty said.

  “Nothing gets by him,” the sheriff said. “There ain’t a fly he don’t notice.”

  “You’re a fat one, ain’t you?” said Deputy Harlis.

  “Like you’re some kind of stretched-out rag,” Fatty said.

  “I’m big-boned,” Deputy Harlis said. “All my family are big-boned.”

  “I think what it is,” Fatty says, “is you and your whole damn family, right down to your hound-dog-fucking grandma, are fat like me.”

  “Give me them keys,” Deputy Harlis said. “I’m gonna whop him some.”

  “Forget it,” the sheriff said.

  “You ever watch your old hound dog mount your grandma?” Fatty said. “You ever do that?”

  “I’m gonna find something and hit you with it,” Deputy Harlis said. He drew his pistol quick-like. But not as quick as the sheriff picked the biscuit from his plate and threw it, hitting Deputy Harlis on his right cheek.

  When that biscuit struck, it sounded like when Papa used to take a hammer to a cow’s skull at slaughter time. Deputy Harlis stumbled, looked at the sheriff. “Damn, Winton. That hurt. You could have broke something.”

  “With a goddamn biscuit?” the sheriff said.

  “Café cooks them up hard from the start,” Deputy Harlis said, holstering his gun. “They sit awhile they might as well be a rock.”

  “You’ll live,” said the sheriff. “You’re gonna be in charge here for a spell, as I’m gonna be leaving, and you will not pistol-whip or hurt the prisoner unless I say so. He’s already had a good thrashing as it is.”

  “Oh, hell,” Shorty said. “There it is. Winton is definitely going with us.”

  “That’s right,” the sheriff said. “Just to see things are done right.”

  “Oh,” said Shorty. “That is a relief.”

  Deputy Harlis had finally fixed his eyeballs on Shorty, and as he looked at him, his mouth slowly came open. “I thought you was some kid sitting there.”

  “That there,” the sheriff said, “is what you call a bona fide goddamn midget, Harlis, you fucking ignoramus. Why the hell would I have a kid sitting in a chair there? This ain’t no barber shop. Damn, boy. I think Fatty might be right about that hound dog, only it wasn’t your grandma, it was your mama, and you are the result.”

  Eustace said, “Tell you what, Winton. Just so we know, why don’t you toss a stick and see if he fetches?”

  9

  Now, Shorty didn’t agree to let Sheriff Winton go right away, no matter if Winton said he was, but I was beginning to see the handwriting on the wall. Shorty was wearing down. I think it was because the sheriff was suggesting the papers for our reward might get misplaced, or someone else might get the credit for bringing Fatty in. Someone like the sheriff, which I figured would take some hard believing on the part of anyone who knew him, as I had him figured for quite the layabout.

  I am going to add right here that I would be well proved wrong on this, but right then there wasn’t much to see in him other than the fact he looked like he’d been through a fire and someone tried to put it out with a dull hatchet.

  Finally Shorty gave in. As I said, I think it had to do with him thinking he might not get anything without the sheriff’s proper help, but also I could tell they were actually right smart friends and trusted one another, at least as far as they could throw each other. I figured the sheriff might be able to throw Shorty pretty far, by the way. And there was Eustace, who wouldn’t easily be thrown if he cooperated and there was plenty of assistance. He was friends with that old burnt-up sheriff, too.

  Pretty soon they were discussing how many there were that we were after, and then Sheriff Winton afforded there were probably a damn sight more of them that needed arresting for bounty than we were looking for. He said the whole woods was full of them, thick as seed ticks, and they had done all manner of crimes, and if we just shot them as we come to them, we could have a regular nest of dead folks that would generate a passel of dollars. He thought we might need a couple to three pack horses to tote them out.

  I said, “Sheriff, there’s a dead boy in a ditch that’s maybe part eaten by Hog, and he needs a proper burial.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Shorty said. “The young one here has been agitated to a remarkable degree ever since we found the dead boy, and he cannot quite get into his head that the boy will get no deader.”

  The part about the dead boy had been left out of my story previously, but now Shorty explained it. When he was finished, the sheriff said, “Now, that does present a problem, but I figure I can get someone to go out there and see if they can find him and box him up and bury him with the understanding he might have to be dug up and buried again, once it’s figured who he belongs to.”

  “He needs digging up,” Eustace said, “I can do that for a fee. I ain’t got time to go get him and put him down, though.”

  “We’ll find someone,” the sheriff said.

  “Does that please you?” Shorty asked me.

  “Once I know for a fact it’ll be done,” I said, “I’ll be covered with contentment.”

  After the papers were filled out, coffee was made, but no matter how hard I tried to get them into a mode of haste, nothing came of it. I said, “We should move on. Time is wasting and my sister is with them, and maybe not doing well.”

  “If they’ve already gotten the cherry from the box,” said the sheriff, “then she is as well off as she is going to be.”

  “What the heck does that mean?” I said.

  “If they’ve been at her,” the sheriff said, “then they’ve had their fun, and if they don’t want her anymore she’ll be found dead as that boy back there you said Hog was nosing at. But if they liked her well enough and she didn’t scratch out no one’s eye, then they probably kept her. Which means she’s alive and with them.”

  “They could change their minds,” I said. “They could decide to kill her now or tomorrow, so we ought to get.”

  “Since you got information where they’re going, we got just as much of a chance of finding her tomorrow as today.”

  “She’s gonna do laundry,” Fatty said.

  He was standing up now, looking through the bars.

  “Laundry?” I said.

  “We first had an old woman done it,” he said. “Someone’s mother that we passed around between washings, but one night she run off, so we got this part-Indian gal, but she tried to stick Cut Throat with a butcher knife, and he stove her head in with a stick of firewood. That caused the laundry to pile up. He don’t like doing laundry, likes to have a woman do it. You better hope, son, your sister knows how to do laundry, cause if she don’t, once they get her to the Thicket, she ain’t gonna last any longer than it takes for a tear to dry.”

  “Don’t pay him no mind,” Eustace said. “He was so smart and knew everything, he wouldn’t be in that goddamn jail having been pistol-whipped by a midget. Now, you think on that.”

  The sheriff made plans with Harlis to see someone was sent for the boy’s body, then he said he was going to throw some things together and off we could go. A short while later Eustace took the dead chickens out of his saddlebag and fed them to Hog, who gobbled them up as ea
sily as a toothless man might eat a wet biscuit.

  “I didn’t want them to waste, and I figured he’s hungry as us,” Eustace said. “I was going to fry them up for us tonight, but I reckon in all this heat they might be on the spoiled side. I had an uncle ate a chicken that had gone a little ripe, and he said he had a fever and felt like he was trying to shit an anvil for a week. A hog, though, if there’s enough gravy on it, can eat an anvil. Chickens don’t need no gravy.”

  We watched Hog eat and cough feathers while Shorty and the others finished getting their stuff together—all but Jimmie Sue, who stood with us and watched the eating of the chickens.

  “He likes them with the feathers on?” she asked.

  “He likes them in tar with a stick up their butt,” Eustace said. “He don’t have a picky bone in his body about food, though he doesn’t much care for the smell of fresh-cut hay, which I can’t ponder a reason to. It causes him to move on. I think it makes his nose stuffy.”

  When Hog finished, he made a coughing noise, then spat up some chicken bones and feathers and something that didn’t look like anything we had seen him eat. That coughing up of his meal seemed to be our signal, and we mounted up and set out. The deputy had said he would like to go, too, but Shorty threatened to kill him, and Harlis appeared to believe him. I know I did.

  What we were trying to do was cut a trail that would get us where Fatty said his comrades were, and I kept wondering if he was telling it true or if we were on a wild goose chase. Shorty felt certain he and his pistol and the butt of Eustace’s shotgun had helped Fatty be accurate in his directions, but I was still unconvinced.

  We went along until night came, and by then we were deep down the trail that led through the woods and was supposed to be a shortcut. I was heartened a bit when Sheriff Winton said he knew the path and claimed he had a pretty good idea where Fatty was talking about. He said it was a place where a lot of the bad and the unwashed gathered, as if the sheriff himself were any example of fine grooming. I made sure I didn’t ride behind him, because when I did, and there was a wind blowing back at me, I got about what I figured to be a few months’ body stink, some rancid hair oil, and some onion-stink breath, not to mention the pack horse he was tagging behind him was about the foulest-stinking creature I have ever encountered, way it cut wind and dropped turds. Compared to them, Hog’s stench was even refreshing.

  I looked over at Jimmie Sue, and she was fanning herself. I couldn’t help but wonder how she had dealt with him as a customer. Later I would ask when we took a stop for the horses to blow, and she’d say she put a lot of smell-pretty on him, which I reckon was some kind of perfume.

  But at this time we rode up past him, found position near Eustace and Shorty, placing us upwind of the stink. Still, it didn’t improve my spirits all that much. By the time night come falling in through the timber I was about as low as I had been since Lula was stolen away and Grandpa was killed. Fact was, I felt so low I could have crawled under a peanut hull and called it home.

  We stopped now and then to make water in the bushes—or, as I said earlier, to let the horses blow, but mostly we rode on. We went along a little ways even after night, cause the trail was clear and there was some moonlight and the stars were as bright as candles. But finally we stopped and put together a rough camp. It was hot weather, even at night, but we made a rope line for the horses, built a fire and heated up some beans with weevils in it, and, disgusting as it was, for a few moments with hot food in my belly, I felt better about things. We sat around the fire and I amused myself by pushing a small log I had chopped up for firewood into the flames. When I did this the fire would crackle and there would be a few sparks, but nothing serious enough to catch the woods on fire. There were lots of fireflies out, and they glowed their tails all around us. Once I looked over at Shorty, and he had a halo of the things around his hat. The minute I looked and saw them, it was like they were embarrassed about it and flew off.

  While we sat the weather cooled a might, and a wind kicked up. It had a smell about it that was mixed with water and pine needles and forest dirt. It wasn’t a bad smell. It made me think of when me and Lula was kids and we’d dig in the dirt together looking for fishing worms. I could close my eyes and picture us out back of the house near the woods, digging with a shovel or a garden trowel. She would have loved being here in front of the fire, thinking her strange thoughts about the woods and what was in it. Everything to her was a mystery.

  I took off my boots and laid out my blanket and crawled under another and let my head rest on my saddle. Jimmie Sue pulled her dress over her head right in front of everyone, kicked off her shoes, and got under the blanket with me. The men didn’t hesitate to turn their heads and look, and I could even hear them breathing heavy. Jimmie Sue wanted to snuggle up, but I wouldn’t have it, not with them others watching. Finally she said, “Suit your ownself,” and turned her butt into me and went to sleep. After about five minutes, Hog come along and nestled on the other side of me, squeezing me up like a sandwich.

  Eustace said, “Me and Hog used to be right smart buddies till you came along.”

  “That so,” I said.

  “That’s so, but you know,” Eustace said and laughed, “I don’t miss his smelly self none.”

  “Hog does stink,” Jimmie Sue said, then went silent. After a short spell I could hear her breathing evenly in sleep. Eustace took first watch with his four-gauge, up on a rise between some trees overlooking the trail we had come down, near the tied-out horses.

  I eventually drifted off and dreamed. It was one of those dreams that seems to make a lot of sense when you’re having it, but talking about it now, it seems pretty silly and not worth mentioning. When I come out of it, it was still night, and I rolled over and glanced out and seen that Shorty was awake and sitting by the fire, leaning toward it, reading a book. The way the fire popped and waved, it made Shorty’s shadow throw up against the trees, and it was much larger than Shorty.

  I watched for a little while, and then weariness took me over and when I awoke it was to Jimmie Sue’s shoe in my ribs.

  “They done gone on ahead,” she said.

  “What?” I said, sitting up. Jimmie Sue was dressed, wearing some loose pants and a man’s old blue shirt. She had her regular shoes on.

  “Where’d you get those clothes?”

  “Winton gave them to me. He brought them along in his saddlebag for me. Thought I’d be more comfortable. I am. He said they belonged to some fella got shot and got buried, but not in these pants. They don’t smell the way Winton does. They’re pretty clean.”

  “That stands to reason,” I said.

  “That they don’t smell?”

  “No—that whoever owned those pants didn’t get buried in them. You’re wearing them.”

  “Yeah. Winton said that dead fella, his parents put a nice new suit on him that was bought with two pair of pants, and these was left over. Somehow Winton ended up with them after the funeral. And though all that is just as interesting as it can be, Jack, I thought you might be more interested in knowing everyone, including Hog, has gone on without us.”

  “Damn them,” I said.

  “They ain’t left us for good,” Jimmie Sue said, “just gone on ahead. I know how they’re going. Eustace said he figured you needed a sound rest, since you hadn’t really had a good one in the last day or so.”

  “He did, did he?”

  “You saying you wasn’t tired?”

  “I’m feeling all right,” I said.

  “That why didn’t you want to ride me last night?”

  “No spurs.”

  “That’s funny, Jack. Right firmly hilarious. All them men done seen what I got, or someone who’s got something similar. It wouldn’t have been no big surprise to them.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not all that anxious for them to see what I got.”

  “I thought we was gonna have fun,” she said.

  “This isn’t a holiday,” I said.

  “We
got to go somewhere and it takes a while, we might as well make the best of it. I mean, I could try and tell funny stories, but as you’ve seen I ain’t as funny as I thought. But I know I’m good at the other, so that seems the right choice, don’t you think?”

  While she was talking, I had shook out my boots in case a scorpion had crawled up in them. I put them on, rolled up my bedroll, and went to saddling my horse. Jimmie Sue had hers saddled. She said, “Don’t expect no breakfast in bed or me in your bed if you ain’t willing to do your manly duties.”

  “I have duties now?”

  “Ain’t we kind of together?”

  “Kind of. Yeah.”

  “Then you act like it.”

  There was really nothing to say. It was like she was a bottle of something with fizz that had been shook up and uncorked, and she wasn’t going to stop talking until her bottle run out.

  We got on horseback and Jimmie Sue reached in her saddlebags and pulled out a couple of biscuits. She gave me one. She said, “You ought to kind of suck around it before you bite, cause you might lose some teeth. Woman at the café makes them.”

  “One of the biscuits that the sheriff hit Harlis with?”

  “Yep,” she said. “And maybe the same batch. Winton gave me some this morning.”

  We started out then, sucking on our biscuits, following the trail, going the way Jimmie Sue said to go. I never could do more than get my biscuit to flake a little, and the flake lay in my mouth for a long time like a metal shaving before it was gooey enough to be swallowed.

  10

  The morning was hot as a rabid dog in an overcoat. The way I fit in that saddle made me chafe and burn, had me wanting to cinch up my manhood so it wouldn’t rub. About noon we stopped and let the horses blow and had another one of them biscuits, which was enough work for an hour and gave you the impression you had eaten more than you had, because they lay in your stomach pretty much like a stone.