The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

by Joe R. Lansdale

  a certain way and you held your mouth right and shifted your nuts to one side while you turned the antennae by hand.

  I snuck into the living room to watch it, and it scared the bejesus out of me, didn’t scar me, but tattooed me with deep, bright imagination ink leaking all the colors of the rainbow, and within the colors were dollops of delightful fear, sort you can get away from with the coming of sunlight, the passing of day, the immersion into something else. I liked this sensation.

  I’ve seen the movie since, and it’s still cool, but what’s really good is the first twenty minutes or so, and the last few minutes. The middle minutes, with the aliens is a little less terrifying than I remember. Now I see the zippers and the men from Mars look a lot like guys in suits, and the master mind, a telepathic, tentacle-sprouting head in a jar, is like a sad octopus battling depression. And, of course, there’s a portion lifted from what looks like an ad for the National Guard. Back then we believed the U.S. military could whip anybody and anything, including a bunch of zipper-suited Martians and their tentacle-headed leader.

  Still, I love that movie. The power of the mind is great, and there was less to compare it to. No fantastic Star Wars effects and beyond, just simple suggestion and shadow. And now that I think about it, the film was in color, and yet it had a magnificent hint of noir about it, a surrealistic edge that seeps into my work a lot of the time.

  Later on, a little older, I was hit the same way by the original black and white Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one that time doesn’t damage, but in fact, makes creepier.

  Wow! Got to get my breath. The memories are like arrows tipped with nostalgia, shooting straight through the heart.

  Mt. Enterprise didn’t have a library, though one was founded shortly before we moved, partly due to the interest of local women, like my mother, and the kind donation of someone with actual money. But before the library, there were only the occasional books given to me, or loaned to me, or on rare occasions, bought for me, due to their lack of availability in a town so small. There was the Bible, and I read it from cover to cover, and loved it, but realized rather quickly, like the Greek mythology I loved even more, it was nothing more than fantastic stories. Wonderful in their own way, but religion… I was suspicious, and by the time I was seventeen, having read the Bible from cover to cover numerous times, loving the lilt of the language in the same way I love Shakespeare, it was pretty clear to me that there wasn’t much reality in those pages. I liked the use of violence and horror and morality play, but for me it was a lot less fascinating and satisfying than the works of Homer. The old blind guy could tell a tale of foul and wounded and imperfect people and gods with the best of them. Better than the Bible. Better than Shakespeare. Homer, he was the bomb.

  I lived inside of books — Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, loaned me by a lady across the street — and moved about in them, as if they were living tissue and I was their aching guts. I was especially fond of Saturday mornings, which for a kid is the magic day. I would get up early on Saturdays, and nothing was more disappointing than sleeping late, losing that wonderful day of the week. I’d jump up and my mother would fix me eggs and toast, and sometimes bacon, and I’d watch things like Fury, a story about a horse and the boy who loved him, or better yet, serials like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, both starring Buster Crabbe, with different hair shades. And best of all, Tarzan. I came to love Tarzan as much as Batman.

  There were many Tarzans, but Johnny Weissmuller was my favorite, hands down. But I’d take any Tarzan I could get. Gordon Scott, Buster Crabbe (yep, same guy who played Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, and many other heroes), whichever Tarzan movie and actor that was on Saturday morning TV. It’s hard to see those movies now and think they were the same ones I saw. Because in my head, those black and white films, seen then, were in bright color and the jungles were rich and real and full of savagery. Tarzan, for me, was real. Lived in a cool tree house, had a funny chimpanzee for a pet named Cheeta, and a hot wife named Jane. I had some interesting dreams about that tree house and Jane. The chimp, Cheeta, I hasten to add, was not in those dreams.

  And then there was the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Loved those guys. I always wanted to be Tonto. Maybe because I had heard we had Indian blood in the family. To this day, I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s always been part of the family story, so perhaps it is; perhaps I am in fact Cherokee and Chickasaw, and perhaps Quanah Parker, the great Comanche War Chief, is kin to me by marriage.

  Perhaps not, but these were part of the family stories, along with frontier tales of my kin traveling in covered wagons, going by horse, being pursued by panthers, bitten by snakes, fighting the elements and belligerent people; some of my people perhaps being the most belligerent of all.

  Then came the building of that local library, and I read dog stories that told me dogs were noble and true and loyal and fine, and I believed it. I read adventure stories, and mystery stories, and horror stories, and finally, Edgar Rice Burroughs. The world really cracked open then, showed me dimensions that were sideways, threw me on a tilt-a-whirl full of magic that made all the magic before as small and dim as a birthday cake candle. It’s hard to beat a world where all the women are beautiful and go naked, and men carry swords, monsters are slain, and it’s all a simple morality tale. For boys, swords, naked women, and simple views are way cool. And did I mention naked women?

  So you get the idea. I was dipped and battered and buttered and way deep fried in the idea of the hero; the idea that what was noble could stand against anything what was not; that a good man need do no more than put his chest out, keep his eyes lifted, and plod forward; bullies were cowards and dogs were your friends. Right against wrong. Good against evil. America against them.

  And then, the sixties rose up over the horizon, head first, long-haired and skeptical, and things went topsy. I learned a valuable lesson. A lot of what I had been taught about right and wrong, the simplicity of it, the American view, was not exactly on the money. Certain dreams and illusions were crucified on the crosses of reality, and though some of those dreams climbed down from the cross, alive and breathing, if a little wounded, the dead ones remained dead, not risen, not reborn, just dead. Same as Jesus, I might add.

  So, like the Lone Ranger, I rode on into the shadow of change, the nineteen-sixties, and when I rode out, I was a different person, still masked, still riding, but my clothes were ripped and dirty and the hat was gone, the long-haired head I now possessed was bowed, and the horse, man, he was tired. My view on dogs, though, even tired and barely mounted, has never changed. They’re still way cool. And I suppose I have to mention cats in passing. I wish them the best, including my two, but I was never crazy about them.

  Backtrack.

  The wind of the sixties started to build after the death of John F. Kennedy, who gave our country a big dose of hope and respect for intelligence, education, and longer hairdos. When he was gone something ripped in the fabric of space and time, and from those dimensions something crawled free that could only be seen out of the corner of the eye during a certain moment in the day when the light was right (or wrong), and that something was a reality check.

  Even the good can die.

  Even the young can die.

  Nothing happens to you if you wear white after Labor Day.

  I started reading Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, bless her violent heart, and Carson McCullers and William S.

  Burroughs (interesting, but no fan here), and so many others, and they touched me, because they were about people, they were about ideas; and then came Chandler and Hammett and Cain with people who talked like people I knew. Complex stories, not necessarily always better, but different, and there was a bleed over in my mind between literary and pulp, comics and the art of Peter Max, Remington, and Dalí, men on horses and melting clocks.

  A wind started to blow, turned sour and hot, picked up in force. At first the wind just brought us tie-dyed T-shirts and longer hair than even Ke
nnedy wore, some cool music with loud guitars, The Beatles, by God, and there were good things in this strong wind, like civil rights, and recognition that the Viet Nam War might not be one of America’s good wars. For a brief romantic moment it looked as if the world could change, that we could be those brave and good and heroic people of our comic book dreams… But it was just a moment. That door slammed, and then came too many disappointments, the stupidity of drugs, and finally hate, on both sides, and the wind became a tornado of confusion. Our country split between straights and freaks, liberals and conservatives. Kind of the way it is now, only worse.

  I dropped out of college.

  I was drafted.

  I refused to go.

  I was told I’d go to prison.

  I didn’t. Thank goodness.

  They ended up giving me a rating called I-Y, which meant they drafted criminals before they drafted me. I didn’t think right. I didn’t agree. There was, according to them, something wrong with my head. I was against America’s absolute and certain rightness, which, I no longer believed. Not because I had lost the ethics I had learned from my heroes, but because I suddenly realized our country, not as a whole, but in many places and a variety of ways, didn’t abide by the ethics, the goodness that it presented in its comics and TV shows. I was shocked to discover that life was more complicated and full of liars and back-stabbing assholes. Not just the obvious villains, but the folks we were supposed to respect.

  I learned from my mother that racial hatred was wrong. That women could be trained to do what men could do; that they weren’t inferior, just different. My father taught me to be a skeptic, not a paranoid, but someone who wasn’t afraid to question the “facts.” I dropped out. I didn’t drink and didn’t take drugs, but I did find a place to farm and relax and to avoid the world for a while. I went back to the land with a stack of books and a wonderful wife. I love

  my country, but not blindly. I love my wife blindly. I love my family blindly. And, of course, the dog.

  I began to write. I found it to be the best way to deal with life, all of my anger and disappointment went into the work; a reason so much of it is violent and weird, dear hearts.

  Life and literature and film and comics and race relations (or lack there of) and my disappointment over lying politicians and stupid wars and hatred of anything different or strange or not of America all rolled together with my new found interests in anthropology and archeology and sociology and psychology, surrealism and experimental ideas, and what first came out was just some rehash of things that had gone before, and then at some point, the scab popped off and the pus that was me leaked out, and it produced…

  Stories… so many stories. It’s hard to believe that it was me who wrote them. Or some version of me, the me that was me at the time.

  I apologize for the trip to get you here, to tell you some of the things that I loved that led to these stories based on my crucified dreams. Many of my early truths were sabotaged, but not entirely lost. Some, like a broken boat, are still floating on the surface of the water, but amidst a howling storm with nothing left but the devil and the deep blue sea.

  This is some of the refuse left from my boat, scooped out with a net. My childhood passions remain in the fragments, sometimes in the ripped cloth of the sails, and even those pieces of the boat that are intact are not without stains. This then is an overview of my work over the past thirty-five years. Little is presented here from the very early years, but nothing here is without the experience of those years. These stories are all of me and I am all of them. They are not the totality of my life, but they are a portion of my life, and my life is often expressed in them, if only metaphorically and symbolically. I hope at least some of them will appeal to you, that in many cases sparks will fly and they will serve as some kind of fuel for your internal combustion engine. I hope there might be an insight, an occasional profundity. And if there are none of these things, may they at least entertain you, the most important part of any story.

  These stories are only a few of the stories I have produced. There are many more out there, some good, some better, a few, if you’ll pardon the conceit, that are very good, and a few that are like obnoxious relatives whose kinship you’d rather not admit to. But these are the ones we have chosen. These are the ones that allow readers interested in my work to stand back and look at the variety.

  How should you feel about them? Obviously, I leave that to you. I hope you will like them enough to seek out others, and I hope, there will be many more to come.

  And so the paint mixer winds down and the nostalgia dries up, and in the end, what I have written is probably nothing more than the old saw about the sound and the fury signifying nothing.

  But it’s my nothing.

  Godzilla’s Twelve-Step Program

  ONE: HONEST WORK

  Godzilla, on his way to work at the foundry, sees a large building that seems to be mostly made of shiny copper and dark, reflecting solar glass. He sees his image in the glass and thinks of the old days, wonders what it would be like to stomp on the building, to blow flames at it, kiss the windows black with his burning breath, then dance rapturously in the smoking debris.

  One day at a time, he tells himself. One day at a time.

  Godzilla makes himself look at the building hard. He passes it by. He goes to the foundry. He puts on his hard hat. He blows his fiery breath into the great vat full of used car parts, turns the car parts to molten metal. The metal runs through pipes and into new molds for new car parts. Doors. Roofs. Etc.

  Godzilla feels some of the tension drain out.

  TWO: RECREATION

  After work Godzilla stays away from downtown. He feels tense. To stop blowing flames after work is difficult. He goes over to the BIG MONSTER RECREATION CENTER.

  Gorgo is there. Drunk from oily seawater, as usual. Gorgo talks about the old days. She’s like that. Always the old days.

  They go out back and use their breath on the debris that is deposited there daily for the center’s use. Kong is out back. Drunk as a monkey. He’s playing with Barbie dolls. He does that all the time. Finally, he puts the Barbies away in his coat pocket, takes hold of his walker and wobbles past Godzilla and Gorgo.

  Gorgo says, “Since the fall he ain’t been worth shit. And what’s with him and the little plastic broads anyway? Don’t he know there’s real women in the world?”

  Godzilla thinks Gorgo looks at Kong’s departing walker-supported ass a little too wistfully. He’s sure he sees wetness in Gorgo’s eyes.

  Godzilla blows some scrap to cinders for recreation, but it doesn’t do much for him, as he’s been blowing fire all day long and has, at best, merely taken the edge off his compulsions. This isn’t even as satisfying as the foundry. He goes home.

  THREE: SEX AND DESTRUCTION

  That night there’s a monster movie on television. The usual one. Big beasts wrecking havoc on city after city. Crushing pedestrians under foot.

  Godzilla examines the bottom of his right foot, looks at the scar there from stomping cars flat. He remembers how it was to have people squish between his toes. He thinks about all of that and changes the channel. He watches twenty minutes of Mr. Ed, turns off the TV, masturbates to the images of burning cities and squashing flesh.

  Later, deep into the night, he awakens in a cold sweat. He goes to the bathroom and quickly carves crude human figures from bars of soap. He mashes the soap between his toes, closes his eyes and imagines. Tries to remember.

  FOUR: BEACH TRIP AND THE BIG TURTLE

  Saturday, Godzilla goes to the beach. A drunk monster that looks like a big turtle flies by and bumps Godzilla. The turtle calls Godzilla a name, looking for a fight. Godzilla remembers the turtle is called Gamera.

  Gamera is always trouble. No one liked Gamera. The turtle was a real asshole.

  Godzilla grits his teeth and holds back the flames. He turns his back and walks along the beach. He mutters a secret mantra given him by his sponsor. The giant turtle follows aft
er, calling him names.

  Godzilla packs up his beach stuff and goes home. At his back he hears the turtle, still cussing, still pushing. It’s all he can do not to respond to the big dumb bastard. All he can do. He knows the turtle will be in the news tomorrow. He will have destroyed something, or will have been destroyed himself.

  Godzilla thinks perhaps he should try and talk to the turtle, get him on the twelve-step program. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Help others. Maybe the turtle could find some peace.

  But then again, you can only help those who help themselves. Godzilla realizes he cannot save all the monsters of the world. They have to make these decisions for themselves. But he makes a mental note to go armed with leaflets about the twelve-step program from now on.

  Later, he calls in to his sponsor. Tells him he’s had a bad day. That he wanted to burn buildings and fight the big turtle. Reptilicus tells him it’s okay. He’s had days like that. Will have days like that once again.

  Once a monster, always a monster. But a recovering monster is where it’s at. Take it one day at a time. It’s the only way to be happy in the world. You can’t burn and kill and chew up humans and their creations without paying the price of guilt and multiple artillery wounds.

  Godzilla thanks Reptilicus and hangs up. He feels better for a while, but deep down he wonders just how much guilt he really harbors. He thinks maybe it’s the artillery and the rocket-firing jets he really hates, not the guilt.

  FIVE: OFF THE WAGON

  It happens suddenly. He falls off the wagon. Coming back from work he sees a small doghouse with a sleeping dog sticking halfway out of a doorway. There’s no one around. The dog looks old. It’s on a chain. Probably miserable anyway. The water dish is empty. The dog is living a worthless life. Chained. Bored. No water.