The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Fuck,” Frank said.

  Now they were thundering around a bend, and there were lots of people there, along both sides. There had been a spot of people here and there, along the way, but now they were everywhere.

  Must be getting to the end of it, thought Frank.

  Dynamite had lost a step for a moment, allowing White Mule to move ahead, but now he was closing again. Frank looked up. He could see that a long red ribbon was stretched across in front of them. It was almost the end.

  Dynamite lit a fuse.

  He came up hard on the left, and began to pass. The axe-faced rider slapped out with the long reins and caught Frank across the face.

  “You goddamn turd,” Frank said, and slashed out with his own reins, missing by six inches. Dynamite and axe-face pulled ahead.

  Frank turned his attention back to the finish line. Thought: this is it. White Mule was any lower to the ground he’d have a belly full of gravel, stretched out any farther, he’d come apart. He’s gonna be second. And no prize.

  “You done what you could,” Frank said, putting his mouth close to the bobbing head of the mule, rubbing the side of his neck with the tips of his fingers.

  White Mule brought out the reinforcements. He was low and he was stretched, but now his legs were moving even faster, and for a long, strange moment, Frank thought the mule had sprung wings, like that horse he had seen on that book so long ago. It was as if he and White Mule were floating on air.

  Frank couldn’t believe it. Dynamite was falling behind, snorting and blowing, his body lathering up as if he were soaped.

  White Mule leaped through the red ribbon a full three lengths ahead to win.

  Frank let White Mule run past the watchers, on until he slowed and began to trot, and then walk. He let the mule go on like that for some time, then he gently pulled the reins and got out of the saddle. He walked the mule a while. Then he stopped and unbuttoned the belly band. He slid the saddle into the dirt. He pulled the bridle off of the mule’s head.

  The mule turned and looked at him.

  “You done your part,” Frank said, and swung the bridle gently against the mule’s ass. “Go on.”

  White Mule sort of skipped forward and began running down the road, then turned into the trees. And was gone.

  Frank walked all the way back to the beginning of the race, the viewers amazed he was without his mule.

  But he was still the winner.

  “You let him go?” Leroy said. “After all we went through, you let him go?”

  “Yep,” Frank said.

  Nigger Joe shook his head. “Could have run him again. Plowed him. Ate him.”

  Frank took his prize money from the judges and side bet from Crone, paid Leroy his money, watched Nigger Joe follow Crone away from the race’s starting line, on out to Crone’s horse and wagon. Dynamite, his head down,

  was being led to the wagon by axe-face.

  Frank knew what was coming. Nigger Joe had not been paid, and on top of that, he was ill tempered and grudge-minded. As Frank watched, Nigger Joe hit Crone and knocked him flat. No one did anything.

  Black man or not, you didn’t mess with Nigger Joe.

  Nigger Joe took his money from Crone’s wallet, punched the axe-faced rider in the nose for the hell of it, and walked back in their direction.

  Frank didn’t wait. He went over to where the hog lay on the grass. His front and back legs had been tied and a kid about thirteen was poking him with a stick. Frank slapped the kid in the back of the head, knocking his hat off. The kid bolted like a deer.

  Frank got Dobbin and called Nigger Joe over. “Help me.”

  Nigger Joe and Frank loaded the hog across the back of Dobbin as if he were a sack of potatoes. Heavy as the porker was, it was accomplished with some difficulty, the hog’s head hanging down on one side, his feet on the other. The hog seemed defeated. He hardly even squirmed.

  “Misses that mule,” Nigger Joe said.

  “You and me got our business done, Joe,” Frank asked.

  Nigger Joe nodded.

  Frank took Dobbin’s reins and started leading him away.

  “Wait,” Leroy said.

  Frank turned on him. “No. I’m through with you. You and me. We’re quits.”

  “What?” Leroy said.

  Frank pulled at the reins and kept walking. He glanced back once to see Leroy standing where they had last spoke, standing in the road looking at him, wearing the seed salesman’s hat.

  Frank put the hog in the old hog pen at his place and fed him good. Then he ate and poured out all the liquor he had, and waited until dark. When it came he sat on a large rock out back of the house. The wind carried the urine smell of all those out-the-window pees to his nostrils. He kept his place.

  The moon was near full that night and it had risen high above the world and its light was bright and silver. Even the old ugly place looked good under that light.

  Frank sat there for a long time, finally dozed. He was awakened by the sound of wood cracking. He snapped his head up and looked out at the hog pen. The mule was there. He was kicking at the slats of the pen, trying to free his friend.

  Frank got up and walked out there. The mule saw him, ran back a few paces, stared at him.

  “Knew you’d show,” Frank said. “Just wanted to see you one more time. Today, buddy, you had wings.”

  The mule turned its head and snorted.

  Frank lifted the gate to the pen and the hog ran out. The hog stopped beside the mule and they both looked at Frank.

  “It’s all right,” Frank said. “I ain’t gonna try and stop you.”

  The mule dipped its nose to the hog’s snout and they pressed them together. Frank smiled. The mule and the hog wheeled suddenly, as if by agreed signal, and raced toward the rickety rail fence near the hill.

  The mule, with one beautiful leap, jumped the fence, seemed pinned in the air for a long time, held there by the rays of the moon. The way the rays fell, for a strange short instant, it seemed as if he were sprouting gossamer wings.

  The hog wiggled under the bottom rail and the two of them ran across the pasture, between the trees and out of sight. Frank didn’t have to go look to know that the mule had jumped the other side of the fence as well, that the hog had worked his way under. And that they were gone.

  When the sun came up and Frank was sure there was no wind, he put a match to a broom’s straw and used it to start the house afire, then the barn and the rotten out-buildings. He kicked the slats on the hog pen until one side of it fell down.

  He went out to where Dobbin was tied to a tree, saddled and ready to go. He mounted him and turned his head toward the rail fence and the hill. He looked at it for a long time. He gave a gentle nudge to Dobbin with his heels and started out of there, on down toward the road and town.

  On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks

  1

  After a month’s chase, Wayne caught up with Calhoun one night at a little honky-tonk called Rosalita’s. It wasn’t that Calhoun had finally gotten careless, it was just that he wasn’t worried. He’d killed four bounty hunters so far, and Wayne knew a fifth didn’t concern him.

  The last bounty hunter had been the famous Pink Lady McGuire — one mean mama—three hundred pounds of rolling, ugly meat that carried a twelve-gauge Remington pump and a bad attitude. Story was, Calhoun jumped her from behind, cut her throat, and as a joke, fucked her before she bled to death. This not only proved to Wayne that Calhoun was a dangerous sonofabitch, it also proved he had bad taste.

  Wayne stepped out of his ‘57 Chevy reproduction, pushed his hat back on his forehead, opened the trunk, and got the sawed-off double barrel and some shells out of there. He already had a .38 revolver in the holster at his side and a bowie knife in each boot, but when you went into a place like Rosalita’s it was best to have plenty of backup.

  Wayne put a handful of shotgun shells in his shirt pocket, snapped the flap over them, looked up at the red-and-blue neon
sign that flashed ROSALITA’S: COLD BEER AND DEAD DANCING, found his center, as they say in Zen, and went on in.

  He held the shotgun against his leg, and as it was dark in there and folks were busy with talk or drinks or dancing, no one noticed him or his artillery right off.

  He spotted Calhoun’s stocky, black-hatted self immediately. He was inside the dance cage with a dead buck-naked Mexican girl of about twelve. He was holding her tight around the waist with one hand and massaging her rubbery ass with the other like it was a pillow he was trying to shape. The dead girl’s handless arms flailed on either side of Calhoun, and her little tits pressed to his thick chest. Her wire-muzzled face knocked repeatedly at his shoulder and drool whipped out of her mouth in thick spermy ropes, stuck to his shin, faded and left a patch of wetness.

  For all Wayne knew, the girl was Calhoun’s sister or daughter. It was that kind of place. The kind that had sprung up immediately after that stuff had gotten out of a lab upstate and filled the air with bacteria that brought dead humans back to life, made their basic motor functions work and made them hungry for human flesh; made it so if a man’s wife, daughter, sister, or mother went belly up and he wanted to turn a few bucks, he might think: “Damn, that’s tough about ole Betty Sue, but she’s dead as hoot-owl shit and ain’t gonna be needing nothing from here on out, and with them germs working around in her, she’s just gonna pull herself out of the ground and cause me a problem. And the ground out back of the house is harder to dig than a calculus problem is to work, so I’ll just toss her cold ass in the back of the pickup next to the chain saw and the barbed-wire roll, haul her across the border to sell her to the Meat Boys to sell to the tonics for dancing.

  “It’s a sad thing to sell one of your own, but shit, them’s the breaks. I’ll just stay out of the tonics until all the meat rots off her bones and they have to throw her away. That way I won’t go in some place for a drink and see her up there shaking her dead tits and end up going sentimental and dewy-eyed in front of one of my buddies or some ole two-dollar gal.”

  This kind of thinking supplied the dancers. In other parts of the country, the dancers might be men or children, but here it was mostly women. Men were used for hunting and target practice.

  The Meat Boys took the bodies, cut off the hands so they couldn’t grab, ran screws through their jaws to fasten on wire muzzles so they couldn’t bite, sold them to the honky-tonks about the time the germ started stirring.

  Bar owners put them inside wire enclosures up front of their joints, staffed music, and men paid five dollars to get in there and grab them and make like they were dancing when all the women wanted to do was grab and bite, which, muzzled and handless, they could not do.

  If a man liked his partner enough, he could pay more money and have her tied to a cot in the back and he could get on her and at some business. Didn’t have to hear no arguments or buy presents or make promises or make them come. Just fuck and hike.

  As long as the establishment sprayed the dead for maggots and kept them perfumed and didn’t keep them so long hunks of meat came off on a man’s dick, the customers were happy as flies on shit.

  Wayne looked to see who might give him trouble, and figured everyone was a potential customer. The six foot two, two-hundred-fifty-pound bouncer being the most immediate concern.

  But, there wasn’t anything to do but to get on with things and handle problems when they came up. He went into the cage where Calhoun was dancing, shouldered through the other dancers and went for him.

  Calhoun had his back to Wayne, and as the music was loud, Wayne didn’t worry about going quietly. But Calhoun sensed him and turned with his hand full of a little .38.

  Wayne clubbed Calhoun’s arm with the barrel of the shotgun. The little gun flew out of Calhoun’s hand and went skidding across the floor and clanked against the metal cage.

  Calhoun wasn’t outdone. He spun the dead girl in front of him and pulled a big pigsticker out of his boot and held it under the girl’s armpit in a threatening manner, which with a knife that big was no feat.

  Wayne shot the dead girl’s left kneecap out from under her and she went down. Her armpit trapped Calhoun’s knife. The other men deserted their partners and went over the wire netting like squirrels.

  Before Calhoun could shake the girl loose, Wayne stepped in and hit him over the head with the barrel of the shotgun. Calhoun crumpled and the girl began to crawl about on the floor as if looking for lost contacts.

  The bouncer came in behind Wayne, grabbed him under the arms and tried to slip a full nelson on him.

  Wayne kicked back on the bouncer’s shin and raked his boot down the man’s instep and stomped his foot. The bouncer let go. Wayne turned and kicked him in the balls and hit him across the face with the shotgun.

  The bouncer went down and didn’t even look like he wanted up.

  Wayne couldn’t help but note he liked the music that was playing. When he turned he had someone to dance with.

  Calhoun.

  Calhoun charged him, hit Wayne in the belly with his head, knocked him over the bouncer. They tumbled to the floor and the shotgun went out of Wayne’s hands and scraped across the floor and hit the crawling girl in the head. She didn’t even notice, just kept snaking in circles, dragging her blasted leg behind her like a skin she was trying to shed.

  The other women, partnerless, wandered about the cage. The music changed. Wayne didn’t like this tune as well. Too slow. He bit Calhoun’s earlobe off.

  Calhoun screamed and they grappled around on the floor. Calhoun got his arm around Wayne’s throat and tried to choke him to death.

  Wayne coughed out the earlobe, lifted his leg and took the knife out of his boot. He brought it around and back and hit Calhoun in the temple with the hilt.

  Calhoun let go of Wayne and rocked on his knees, then collapsed on top of him.

  Wayne got out from under him and got up and kicked him in the head a few times. When he was finished, he put the bowie in its place, got Calhoun’s .38 and the shotgun. To hell with the pigsticker.

  A dead woman tried to grab him, and he shoved her away with a thrust of his palm. He got Calhoun by the collar, started pulling him toward the gate.

  Faces were pressed against the wire, watching. It had been quite a show. A friendly cowboy type opened the gate for Wayne and the crowd parted as he pulled Calhoun by. One man felt helpful and chased after them and said, “Here’s his hat, Mister,” and dropped it on Calhoun’s knee and it stayed there.

  Outside, a professional drunk was standing between two cars taking a leak on the ground. As Wayne pulled Calhoun past, the drunk said, “Your buddy don’t look so good.”

  “Look worse than that when I get him to Law Town,” Wayne said.

  Wayne stopped by the ‘57, emptied Calhoun’s pistol and tossed it as far as he could, then took a few minutes to kick Calhoun in the ribs and ass. Calhoun grunted and farted, but didn’t come to.

  When Wayne’s leg got tired, he put Calhoun in the passenger seat and handcuffed him to the door.

  He went over to Calhoun’s ‘62 Impala replica with the plastic bull horns mounted on the hood — which was how he had located him in the first place, by his well known car — and kicked the glass out of the window on the driver’s side and used the shotgun to shoot the bull horns off. He took out his pistol and shot all the tires flat, pissed on the driver’s door, and kicked a dent in it.

  By then he was too tired to shit in the back seat, so he took some deep breaths and went back to the ‘57 and climbed in behind the wheel.

  Reaching across Calhoun, he opened the glove box and got out one of his thin, black cigars and put it in his mouth.

  He pushed the lighter in, and while he waited for it to heat up, he took the shotgun out of his lap and reloaded it.

  A couple of men poked their heads outside of the tonk’s door, and Wayne stuck the shotgun out the window and fired above their heads. They disappeared inside so fast they might have been an optical illusion.r />
  Wayne put the lighter to his cigar, picked up the wanted poster he had on the seat, and set fire to it. He thought about putting it in Calhoun’s lap as a joke, but didn’t. He tossed the flaming poster out of the window.

  He drove over close to the tonk and used the remaining shotgun load to shoot at the neon Rosalita’s sign. Glass tinkled onto the tonk’s roof and onto the gravel drive.

  Now if he only had a dog to kick.

  He drove away from there, bound for the Cadillac Desert, and finally Law Town on the other side.

  2

  The Cadillacs stretched for miles, providing the only shade in the desert. They were buried nose down at a slant, almost to the windshields, and Wayne could see skeletons of some of the drivers in the cars, either lodged behind the steering wheels or lying on the dashboards against the glass. The roof and hood guns had long since been removed and all the windows on the cars were rolled up, except for those that had been knocked out and vandalized by travelers, or dead folks looking for goodies.

  The thought of being in one of those cars with the windows rolled up in all this heat made Wayne feel even more uncomfortable than he already was. Hot as it was, he was certain even the skeletons were sweating.

  He finished pissing on the tire of the Chevy, saw the piss had almost dried. He shook the drops off, watched them fall and evaporate against the burning sand. Zipping up, he thought about Calhoun, and how when he’d pulled over earlier to let the sonofabitch take a leak, he’d seen there was a little metal ring through the head of his dick and a Texas emblem dangling from that. He could understand the Texas emblem, being from there himself, but he couldn’t for the life of him imagine why a fella would do that to his general. Any idiot who would put a ring through the head of his pecker deserved to die, innocent or not.

  Wayne took off his cowboy hat and rubbed the back of his neck and ran his hand over the top of his head and back again. The sweat on his fingers was thick as lube oil, and the thinning part of his hairline was tender; the heat was cooking the hell out of his scalp, even through the brown felt of his hat.