Savage Season

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Trudy had been ignoring me. She was about her business of sorting through the junk we’d pulled up, hoping to find some overlooked fragment that might resemble a boat. I couldn’t help but watch her, the way she moved was tantalizing.

  There was this mound of dirt and vines and scraggly growth not far from the water’s edge, and she took a break and went to lean on it, and the way she leaned, with her pelvis thrust forward, put a pain in both my heart and my groin. And I think she damn well knew it.

  She shifted her hips without looking at me, making it seem pretty natural, but not quite, and suddenly she moved away from the mound and put her hand to the small of her back and rubbed, then reached out and rubbed at what had poked her. “This looks like a bone,” she said to no one in particular.

  I went over and could see the edge of something poking through the mound of dirt. It looked more like a rock to me, but even if it was a woolly mammoth bone, I wasn’t greatly in the mood for paleontology. I felt she had used it as an excuse to get me over there so she could persecute me with her presence.

  She ignored me and began to dig around the edges of the thing and pretty soon it was clear what it was, and it was considerably more exciting than a rock or bone.

  It was the blade to a boat propeller.

  She looked toward the bank where Howard and Paco were standing, staring out at the water.

  She said, “There’s something here.”

  Howard and Paco came over. Leonard and Chub showed up.

  Howard looked at what was there, said, “Oh man, that means—”

  “Means it’s a boat propeller,” Leonard said. “But not necessarily the boat propeller.”

  “How would a boat get up here?” Chub said.

  “Water might have put it here and receded,” I said. “Since no one would have looked for the boat down here, it might have been sitting here, slowly gathering dirt over it.”

  “Or,” Paco said, “what we may have here is a propeller blade and a mound of dirt. But one thing’s certain. There’s a boat in there, we’re not going to talk it out.”

  Shovels came out then, and we were on that mound of dirt like worms on a corpse. Howard and Paco and Leonard on one side, me and Chub on the other, Trudy with a trowel working at the propeller. Chub was so frenzied he nearly whacked me twice with his shovel handle, and he nipped my ankle with the shovel blade once. I had to threaten to do him damage to make him watch what he was doing. But we were all a little frenzied, and when Trudy uncovered a large hunk of outboard motor, even more so. We dug and we dug and the sun went down and the cold became colder, but I wasn’t aware of it until I paused to relax and felt the sweat cooling on my face. The cold air cut at the rims and insides of my nostrils and sliced down my throat and hissed in my lungs and made them throb like a wound.

  But I kept digging.

  At some point Howard turned the wrecker toward us and pulled on the highbeams so we could see. We started digging even faster. We came to some thick twists of roots and we got the axe and Leonard elected himself Paul Bunyan. He cut at them with hard, precise strokes and the roots flew up and out, and we went back to digging. Finally Howard’s shovel hit something that sounded unlike root or rock. He dropped his shovel and dipped his hands into the dirt and came out with the crumpled top of an aluminum cooler.

  We all paused and looked at it. There in the cold highbeams and the splotchy moonlight, it had as much majesty as a silver shield. “Could be, could be,” Howard said, and then we were digging again, really digging. The mole population of the world couldn’t have been any busier. Wooden fragments that might have been boat pieces were found next. They were as crumbly as artificial fireplace logs.

  Then Howard’s shovel hit something else. He lifted out a long aluminum canister cracked in the middle. We all looked at it. I felt as if I had suddenly been filled with molten lava, that a little ice had gone out of my soul. Lost years were on the verge of being regained. Possibilities went through me, grew heads like a Hydra. The fact that this money might be partially mine for the taking, that it was stolen and illegal, filled me simultaneously with ecstasy and guilt, like I’d have felt if my mother had ever caught me jacking off to a girlfriend’s picture.

  Howard tried to loosen the lid, but couldn’t. He finally resorted to bending it at the break to work it apart. He managed that and wads of something dark fell out of it. Trudy was suddenly there with a flashlight and Howard grabbed what had come out of the canister and squeezed it between his fingers and cussed.

  I took hold of it too. It was paper, probably the money; it was black and the texture of wet tissue. Another year or so, it might make good garden mulch.

  “There’s supposed to be several containers,” Trudy said. “They can’t all be broken.”

  “Yes they can,” Leonard said.

  His words were anvils dropping on our heads. I felt a little dizzy and empty, as if hungry, but there wasn’t any food that was going to fill this gap. The boat and the canister had given us a moment full of dreams, and now those dreams threatened to grow wings and fly south and die among the bones of all our dreams.

  Yeah, that money could make up for a lot of missed ambitions, but without it we were nothing more than a batch of losers, standing cold and silly, empty-handed on the muddy bank of an unnamed creek.

  We went back to digging and sifted through some more wood and some metal and plastic and some chunks of glass. Eventually we came up with another canister. This one wasn’t broken open. Howard got a screwdriver and a wrench and with shaking hands went to work on the lid, popped it off.

  Inside was some money. It was in a plastic bag, in bundles, and looked in good shape. Howard tore open the bag and the money fell out. Trudy grabbed it, unfolded it, dropped to her knees, starting counting.

  I could hear her breathing, all of us breathing. We were puffing out white, cold smoke, chugging like little trains trying to make a last bad hill.

  It took a long time to count that money, longer than I would have imagined, and we all stood there watching those bills go off that wad and out of her hands and onto the ground, and after what seemed enough time for continents to sink beneath the waves and new ones to rise up out of the sea on the shoulders of volcanic eruption and for new life-forms to come into existence, she said, “A hundred thousand.”

  With the sharp voice of greed, Howard said, “There’s got to be more than that.”

  We went at it again, and before long uncovered another canister. Again the money was counted—this time we all took some of it and made little piles—and what we had in this one was just short of two hundred thousand. All of it was in good shape. We dug till we found two more canisters. Both held money. One had a few damaged bills on top, but the bulk of it was okay. We leveled the mound. No more money.

  We counted what was there, added it together. We had just over four hundred thousand. Trudy took the money and rolled it into tight little rolls and put it back in the bags and wrapped the bags firmly with some tape she had and put the spoils in the two best canisters.

  “That’s a lot less than a million,” Howard said.

  Though it looked as if my dream was going to be a smaller one than I had hoped for, I was glad to have anything. In fact, I felt a little giddy. I looked at Howard. He nodded. I said, “Seems to me this is a good tax-free haul. Might be another canister or two in the water, but personally I’ve had it. This could be all there ever was. Talk about money is like talk about fish. Both grow in the telling.”

  “Me and Hap,” Leonard said, “we’ll take our share now. I want to get back to my dogs and Hap wants to get on down to Mexico.”

  Howard looked at Paco, then Chub and Trudy. “Now, huh?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Well,” Howard said, “just a minute.” He stepped back and opened his coat and reached inside and pulled out something and pointed it at us. Even with his back to the headlights and there being only an occasional snatch of moonlight through the trees, I could
see well enough to make a fairly accurate guess at what he was holding.

  A flat little automatic.

  19

  Turned out they all had guns. When Howard pulled his, they produced theirs. It was pretty disconcerting, all those people standing there holding cheap automatics.

  Howard drove the wrecker. Trudy drove the mini-van. Chub drove Leonard’s car and Paco hung over the front seat and pointed a .32 automatic at us. The bottoms raced by us in black bands and twists of oak fingers and pines shaped like dunce hats. The moon crept through it all and faded in and out with the rolling of the clouds.

  I didn’t look at Leonard. I could sense he wanted me to, but I didn’t want to see that well-deserved I-told-you-so look.

  “You guys are some kidders,” I said to Paco. “I thought they wanted the money for a cause and you just wanted the money. Turns out you’re really in this together, and you all just want the money.”

  “No,” Chub said. “Not true. We have a purpose. Thing is, we require it all. We thought there would be more and we could give you some. But little as there is, we can’t afford it. We made a pact that if there wasn’t enough for our needs, we’d have to appropriate your share.”

  “It’s needed for a buy,” Paco said.

  “Drugs?” I said.

  “Guns,” Chub said.

  “Guess you’re going to give them to some South American revolutionaries to fight their capitalistic oppressors,” I said. “Something like that.”

  “Something like that,” Chub said. “Only we’re not giving them to anyone. We’re the revolutionaries.”

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  “Great,” Leonard said. “Bozo the clown and his clown buddies with guns. Probably gonna have live ammunition too.”

  “We need all the money,” Chub said, “because the weapons we’re buying are state of the art. Right Paco?”

  “Sure,” Paco said.

  “Paco said if we found this money, he had connections and he could get to them right away. People he’s worked with before. Right, Paco?”

  “Right.”

  “He’s been checking with them all along, in case we got the money. He’s got them to quote us some prices. We theorized that we’d need quite a lot of them and plenty of ammunition, and we’d need money for when we went underground, so we could make payoffs, buy food, supplies, that sort of thing. Enough for us to get established before we started robbing banks.”

  “Banks?” Leonard said. “You’re going to rob banks?”

  “Not for the money. Of course, we’d have to have some of it to finance things. But we’ll give a lot of it to supporters of politically correct causes.”

  “Politically correct,” Leonard said. “I love that.”

  “We didn’t really intend to cheat you, but with so little money there, and our plans being as ambitious as they are, we had to. It’s nothing malicious or personal, it’s a matter of priorities.”

  “Ah,” Leonard said. “I see. For a moment there, I just thought we were getting fucked.”

  “We’re going to have to keep you awhile,” Chub said. “Until we make the buy and go underground. Let you loose now, you might spill the beans. We don’t want anyone knowing about us just yet. Soon everyone will be aware of us, and we’ll be glad for it.”

  “I wouldn’t tell a soul,” Leonard said. “Think I want the world to know I got snookered by you goofs? Some revolutionaries you’re gonna make. You couldn’t find your shitters with both hands.”

  “Paco’s done this sort of thing before,” Chub said.

  “Yeah,” Leonard said, “and all he got out of it was a burned-up head.”

  “Fooled you, didn’t we?” Paco said.

  “I’m afraid you did,” I said.

  “We have to do something,” Chub said. “This country is rapidly going the way of fascism. The spirit of the sixties can’t be lost—”

  “Christ,” Paco said. “I’m going to join the fucking capitalists you don’t shut up.”

  20

  Another cold night, but not as cold as it had been at the Sixties Nest. The heat worked well here and there was some of it in every room, and the rooms were slightly larger and better-looking, much less depressing. Logs crackled pleasantly in the living room fireplace. Still, it wasn’t comfortable. We’d slept sitting in armchairs, and to add insult to injury we were in Leonard’s house, Howard and Trudy having spent the night in Leonard’s bed, except when they took their turn sitting on the couch with their guns, watching us, looking as if at any moment a great shootout was inevitable.

  They had taken their watch together about midnight. I could see the clock on the fireplace mantel, could hear the bastard tick the minutes away as if dropping water on my head. Paco was sleeping somewhere in the kitchen and Chub was wrapped in blankets on the floor near the fireplace.

  For lovers, Trudy and Howard didn’t look at each other much. They sat on the couch at opposite ends. There didn’t seem to be any electricity between them. They had become, at least in their minds, hard-nosed professionals in the last twenty-four hours.

  They had all changed. With us prisoners, our captors had taken on an unconscious swagger. Maybe they hadn’t wanted this to happen, us being out of step with their plans, but since it had, they were eating it up. It gave them reason to tote their guns. They were having a taste of revolutionary foreplay. Orgasm was anticipated.

  I nodded in and out, watching Trudy and Howard watching me and Leonard, and came completely awake and reasonably rested to the sound of Chub groaning. Trudy was toeing him awake. “Your turn,” she said. “There’s coffee. Don’t go back to sleep.”

  “Don’t talk to me like a kid,” Chub said. Coming awake like that, he’d momentarily forgotten the lessons of analysis. How he wasn’t bothered by anything.

  “They got no respect for you because you’re fat,” Leonard said.

  I looked at Leonard. I hadn’t noticed him coming awake, and he had awakened as grumpy and sarcastic as ever. No wonder he didn’t have any lovers. Who’d want to wake up to Groucho Marx every morning?

  “You get thick,” Leonard continued, “everyone treats you like you’re a talking pork chop.”

  “You don’t bother me,” Chub said. I doubted that. Earlier, before he bedded down, during one of my awake moments, I had seen him standing near the living room window, examining his reflection in the dark glass, and I could tell from the way his shoulders slumped that what he saw was not what he wanted to see. He got up, washed his face at the kitchen sink, drank a cup of coffee, got his gun from under his pillow, and took to the couch.

  “We’re going for a walk,” Trudy told him.

  “Outside?” Chub said.

  “No,” Howard said. “We thought we’d circle the fucking couch.”

  “Just asking. It’s cold out there.”

  “Say it is?” Howard said.

  “You’re all jumpy,” Chub said. “Come on, we’re in this together.” Chub’s face wore the same sad look it had in that photo of him as a kid. He so desperately wanted to be treated like an equal, he couldn’t help but act inferior.

  Howard took a deep breath. “Yeah, well listen, we get back, we’ll help you take them for a bathroom break.”

  “I got a big dick,” Leonard said, “but it don’t take but me to hold it while I piss.”

  “We wouldn’t want you to be lonely,” Howard said.

  “What if we got to pee now?” Leonard said.

  “Hold it,” Howard said.

  “Is a number two, a doodie, any different?” Leonard asked.

  “Hold that too,” Howard said.

  Leonard looked at me. “He’s just too tough. When he talks I get this little rush in my loins, don’t you?”

  During this exchange Trudy had disappeared into the bedroom. She came out now wearing a bundle of clothes, her big lumberjill coat topping it off. “Put something warm on,” she said to Howard.

  He went into the bedroom and came out a few minutes later bu
ndled as heavily as she was. They went out the front door. I closed my eyes and dozed.

  Next time I came awake, it was to the sound of the back door opening and closing.

  Trudy and Howard came in through the kitchen, red-faced from the cold. The bottoms of Howard’s pants were spotted with wet dirt and the toes of his shoes were tipped with it. Trudy looked as clean and desirable as ever, even decked out like a little she bear in her winter coat.

  I looked at the clock in spite of myself. Two-forty-eight. Time flies when you’re having a good time.

  Howard got his pretty little automatic out and pointed Leonard to the bathroom. When Leonard finished, I took my turn and went back to my chair.

  It was three A.M.

  Moving right along.

  Leonard went right back to sleep. He even snored. For me it was more nodding in and out. Once I awoke and Chub had gone back to his place on the floor and Paco was on the couch, gun in his lap. There was a saucer on the arm of the couch and it was full of cigarette butts and there was a cigarette in his mouth and a cloud of smoke hung over his head. He looked a little twitchy. It was the first time I’d seen him that way. There were beads of sweat on his wrecked face and that studied cool he’d had was on vacation. When he saw I was awake he called some of the cool home, smiled, gave a slice-hand wave and picked up his gun with the other hand.

  I thought about jumping him, but I also thought about getting shot. If Leonard were awake, I might signal to him, and we could jump him at the same time. The bastard couldn’t get both of us.

  Or maybe he could. And if he only got one of us, I didn’t want it to be me, and I assumed Leonard felt the same way about himself. And if we did take him, it probably wouldn’t be without a noisy struggle, and that would bring the rest of them awake, and they all had guns.

  I gave Paco the foulest look I could muster, twisted in my chair, and was about to close my eyes when Trudy came out of the bedroom. She was carrying a flashlight, wearing her lumberjill outfit again, only this time with less bundling under the coat.