Miracles Ain't What They Used to Be

by Joe Lansdale

  I went up there to look, and Blackie, like any self-respecting dog, went there to dig in the flowerbed. I was watching him do it, probably about to join in, when the door opened and a big man came out and snatched my puppy up by the hind legs and hit him across the back of the head with a pipe, or stick, and then, as if my dog were nothing more than a used condom, tossed him into the creek.

  Then the man looked at me.

  I figured I was next and bolted down the hill and across the creek to tell my mother. She had to use the next-door neighbor’s phone, as this was long before everyone had one in their pocket. It seemed no sooner than she walked back home from making her call than my dad arrived like Mr. Death in our old black car.

  He got out wearing greasy work clothes and told me to stay and started toward the House of Flowers. I didn’t stay. I was devastated. I had been crying so hard my mother said I hiccupped when I breathed. I had to see what was about to happen. Dad went across the creek and to the back door and knocked gently, like a Girl Scout selling cookies. The door opened, and there was the Flower Man.

  My dad hit him. It was a quick, straight punch and fast as a bee flies. Flower Man went down faster than a duck on a june bug, but without the satisfaction. He was out. He was hit so hard his ancestors in the prehistoric past fell out of a tree.

  Dad grabbed him by the ankles and slung him through the flowerbed like a dull weed-eater, mowed down all those flowers, even made a mess of the dirt. If Flower Man came awake during this process, he didn’t let on. He knew it was best just to let Dad finish. It was a little bit like when a grizzly bear gets you; you just kind of have to go with it. When the flowers were flat, Dad swung the man by his ankles like a discus, and we watched him sail out and into the shallow creek with a sound akin to someone dropping wet laundry on cement.

  We went down in the creek and found Blackie. He was still alive. Flower Man didn’t move. He lay in the shallow water and was at that moment as much a part of that creek as the gravel at its bottom.

  Daddy took Blackie home and treated his wound, a good knock on the noggin, and that dog survived until the age of thirteen. When I was eighteen, Blackie and I were standing on the edge of the porch watching the sun go down, and Blackie went stiff, flopped over the edge, dead for real this time.

  Bless my daddy. We had our differences when I was growing up, and we didn’t see eye to eye on many things. But he was my hero from that day after. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t remember what he did that day, and how he made something so dark and dismal turn bright.

  No one sued. Then, events like that were considered personal. To pull a lawyer into it was not only embarrassing but just plain sissy. Today we’d be sued for the damage my dog did, the damage my dad did, and emotional distress, not to mention bandages and the laundry bill for the wet and dirty clothes.

  I know the man loved his flowers. I know my dog did wrong, if not bad. I know I didn’t give a damn at the time and thought about digging there myself. But I was a kid and Blackie was a pup, and if ever there was a little East Texas homespun justice delivered via a fast arm and a hard fist, that was it.

  Flower Man, not long after that, moved away, slunk off like a carnival that owed bills. A little later we moved as well, shortly after the drive-in was wadded up by a tornado. That’s another story.

  THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY AFTER

  I WAS FIVE YEARS old, and I lived in a house on top of a hill. Below it was a honky-tonk, and a highway ran in front of that. Across the highway was a drive-in theater. There were a few houses nearby, and there was a junkyard. This and my parents and my little black dog were my world.

  It was the 1950s, a time when our country feared the Russians and feared the Bomb. We were the first generation to grow up under the shadow of the Bomb, and it was a big Bomb, and from comic books and B movies we knew that if it were dropped we’d be knocked ass over teakettle, and that when the smoke cleared there would be nothing but radioactive bones left, except for those lucky few who could afford bomb shelters and plenty of canned goods and drinking water. Sometimes the builders forgot about toilets down there, but at the End of the World you can’t have everything.

  Of course, even if one did survive in a bomb shelter, then, as the B movies depicted, once the survivors were brave enough to come out of their holes and venture into the light of a new, bleak world, there would be that pesky problem of radiation, and, of course, giant lizards or ants or some guy with three eyes and a limp who wanted nothing better than to eat you and build a hut from your hair and bones.

  We believed that then—that, overnight, radiation could create critters that had never before existed and swell common household rodents and lizards and insects to giant size.

  I mention all this because a neighbor was building a shelter in his back yard, a deep hole in the ground where things could be stored in case of a nuclear attack. I don’t remember much about the building of it, but I remember my parents talking about it. Their conversation went something like this.

  Mom: “He’ll be safe and we won’t.” Dad: “It’ll fill up with water.” Mom: “What if the Russians drop the Bomb?” Me: “What Bomb? What’s a Russian?” Mom: “Don’t worry about it, Joey. Russians are people. They are evil communists who live on the other side of the world.” Me: “What’s a communist? How do they live on the other side of the world? Won’t they fall off?” Mom: “It’s okay, Joey. Don’t worry about it.” Dad: “Russians drop the Damn Bomb, you can bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.” Me: “Bomb?” Mom: “It’s okay, Joey. No one is going to drop the Bomb.” Mom to Dad: “He’ll be safe down there and we won’t, and we have Joey to think about.” Me: “Bomb?” Mom: “We’ll be fine, Joey.” Dad: “I tell you, the son of a bitch’ll fill up with water.”

  And so it went.

  There I was, an imaginative and, dare I say it, precocious little kid, and I had that Damn Bomb to worry about, and believe me, I did worry. But the idea of it was kind of cool too, because if a bomb was dropped, and I got under the bed with my dog and survived—because it was pretty safe down there—I could come up and live in an exciting world with radioactive lizards and a lot of abandoned stores with candy bars in them.

  I thought it made perfect sense.

  But here we were, waiting on the Bomb, and one day my dad was at work and Mom and I were home with my dog, and the sky turned green. No joke. Green. At least that’s how I remember it. I also remember that my mom suddenly went quiet, an unusual thing, because she was usually entertaining me with stories, or talking to herself and answering, so when she turned silent I knew something was wrong.

  Green sky. Quiet mother. Oh, my goodness, I thought. It’s the Damn Bomb. In less than a day radioactive lizards would be tramping over our back yard and licking clean our busted mayonnaise jars and nosing through my comic books.

  Mom went about opening all the windows in the house, even the doors to the outside. The air was as still as an oil painting and felt heavy as a wet blanket. There was no sound. No birds were chirping. Not even blue jays, and they never shut up. You had the impression even a frog feared to fart.

  Mom kept staring out the window, and then I saw what she was staring at: a big black cloud, and there was a little piece of it hanging down like a fish hook, near the drive-in theater screen, and then the hook extended and started toward the ground. Then came a sound like a freight train and it was as if an invisible hand reached down and wadded up that screen like a piece of aluminum foil. My mother snatched my hand, and we were out the door and she was dragging me across the yard toward the neighbor’s house, the one with the bomb shelter. My little dog, Blackie, was hot on our heels.

  I thought: I have seen the Damn Bomb, and it’s a big black cloud that wads up things. The neighbor met us halfway, as he was on his way to get us, thank goodness, and we ran with him toward the shelter.

  I doubt that at this point I was thinking about getting under the bed, radioactive lizards, or free candy bars. But even to this day I remember b
eing scared. I remember all four of us, three humans and a dog, running for that shelter, and then the trapdoor was opening and we went down some steps and sat on them, halfway between the bottom step and the trapdoor, me clutching my dog to my chest.

  The trap was closed, and it was dark down there, and the train I had heard moments before was immediately running right over us, there in the dark. The neighbor pulled a cord, and there was light, powered by I know not what. In that light I saw shelves full of canned goods, and by canned goods I mean jars full of self-preserved foods. I seem to remember other people there, probably his family, but that’s a dim memory. What I mostly remember is this: The shelter was ankle-deep in water, and there was a snake swimming in the water.

  Someone screamed. The neighbor took hold of something and splashed about in that water and chased that snake all over the place, whacked at it like a madman. Then the light went out.

  The train rumbled and the ground shook and the trapdoor trembled like an old man with palsy. I remember thinking maybe the lizards were up there, and maybe the Russians. I envisioned the Russians with one big eye in the middle of their foreheads, and the word, Russian, was to my young mind a key to their comic-book abilities. And then the great lizard, train, Russians, whatever, passed, and there was silence.

  A light eventually came on. Maybe the light inside the shelter, or maybe the light from the open trapdoor, but the next thing I remember was seeing that dead snake on the bottom step of the wooden stairs, and all that water.

  Out in the light, we looked toward the drive-in. It was gone, of course, and the honky-tonk was missing its roof. Pieces of this and that were scattered all about.

  And our house?

  Wasn’t touched. Neither was the neighbor’s house. The tornado had come and gone, jumping over our homes like a cloudy kangaroo, leaving us with nothing more than a fearful memory and stained underwear.

  I learned several things that day, and I have taken them all to heart.

  First: The world is an uncertain place. One moment you can be slapping sandwich meat on bread, and the next moment they can find your ass in a ditch.

  The second was that if a tornado scared me that bad, maybe being a survivor after the Damn Bomb had been dropped might not be as exciting as I thought.

  And most important I knew this: As Dad had said, if you build a bomb shelter, root cellar, or storm shelter in East Texas, the son of a bitch will fill up with water.

  Oh yeah, one thing Dad didn’t think about. Sometimes a snake, no matter how tight you think you’ve built things, will get down there with you, and the lights might go out.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  (A work in progress)

  “Hap Collins and Leonard Pine” mysteries

  Savage Season, 1990

  Mucho Mojo, 1994

  Two-Bear Mambo, 1995

  Bad Chili, 1997

  Rumble Tumble, 1998

  Veil’s Visit, 1999 (includes the eponymous story, written with Andrew Vachss)

  Captains Outrageous, 2001

  Vanilla Ride, 2009

  Hyenas, 2011 (a novella)

  Devil Red, 2011

  Dead Aim, 2013 (a novella)

  The “Drive-In” series

  The Drive-In: A “B” Movie with Blood and Popcorn, Made in Texas, 1988

  The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels, 1989

  The Drive-In: A Double-Feature, 1997 (omnibus compiling the first two)

  The Drive-In: The Bus Tour, 2005

  The “Ned the Seal” trilogy

  Zeppelins West, 2001

  Flaming London, 2006

  Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal, 2010

  Other novels

  Act of Love, 1980

  Texas Night Riders, 1983 (originally published under the pseudonym Ray Slater)

  Dead in the West, 1986 (written in 1980)

  Magic Wagon, 1986

  The Nightrunners, 1987 (written in 1982 as Night of the Goblins)

  Cold in July, 1989

  Tarzan: The Lost Adventure, 1995 (with Edgar Rice Burroughs)

  The Boar, 1998 (initially a limited edition, later republished)

  Freezer Burn, 1999

  Waltz of Shadows, 1999 (written in 1991)

  Something Lumber This Way Comes, 1999 (children’s book)

  The Big Blow, 2000

  Blood Dance, 2000 (written in the early ’80s)

  The Bottoms, 2000

  A Fine Dark Line, 2002

  Sunset and Sawdust, 2004

  Lost Echoes, 2007

  Leather Maiden, 2008

  Under the Warrior Sun, 2010

  All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky, 2011

  Edge of Dark Water, 2012

  In Waders from Mars, 2012 (children’s book)

  The Thicket, 2013

  Hot in December, 2013

  Screenplays collected

  Shadows West, 2012

  The Nightrunners, 2012 (with Neal Barrett Jr., in Written with a Razor: Short Stories and a Screenplay)

  Mark Stone: MIA Hunter series

  These are a few novels Lansdale wrote under the pseudonym Jack Buchanan, probably cowritten with Stephen Mertz. Some people erroneously report that Lansdale is responsible for the entire series, which is definitely not true.

  Hanoi Deathgrip (Stone: MIA Hunter #3)

  Mountain Massacre (Stone: MIA Hunter #4)

  Saigon Slaughter (the consensus seems to be that this is #7, though some claim #8)

  SHORT STORIES

  Collections

  By Bizarre Hands, 1989

  Stories by Mama Lansdale’s Youngest Boy, 1991 (aka Author’s Choice Monthly #18)

  Bestsellers Guaranteed, 1993

  Electric Gumbo: A Lansdale Reader, 1994 (Quality Paperback Book Club exclusive)

  Writer of the Purple Rage, 1994

  A Fist Full of Stories (and Articles), 1996

  The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent, 1997

  Private Eye Action, As You Like It, 1998 (with Lewis Shiner)

  Triple Feature, 1999

  The Long Ones: Nuthin’ but Novellas, 2000

  High Cotton, 2000

  For a Few Stories More, 2002 (limited edition “Lost Lansdale” vol. 4; the “ultra-limited” edition of this book included a previously unpublished young adult vampire novel titled Shadow Time, which has not appeared anywhere else)

  A Little Green Book of Monster Stories, 2003

  Bumper Crop, 2004

  Mad Dog Summer and Other Stories, 2004 (initially a limited edition, reissued in paperback)

  The King and Other Stories, 2005

  God of the Razor and Other Stories, 2007

  The Shadows, Kith and Kin, 2007

  Sanctified and Chicken-Fried: The Portable Lansdale, 2009

  Unchained and Unhinged, 2009

  The Best of Joe R. Lansdale, 2010

  By Bizarre Hands Rides Again, 2010

  Deadman’s Road, 2010

  Trapped in the Saturday Matinee, 2012

  Bleeding Shadows, 2013

  Deadman’s Crossing, 2013

  Chapbooks

  On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks, 1991

  The Steel Valentine, 1991 (Pulphouse Hardback Magazine #7)

  Steppin’ Out, Summer ’68, 1992

  God of the Razor, 1992

  Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back, 1992

  Mister Weed-Eater, 1993

  My Dead Dog Bobby, 1995

  Bubba Ho-Tep, 2003 (novella, published standalone as a movie tie-in)

  Duck Footed, 2005 (novella)

  Christmas with the Dead, 2010 (novella)

  The Cases of Dana Roberts, 2011

  The Ape Man’s Brother, 2012 (novella)

  Uncollected Short Stories

  “Castle of Shadows” from Weirdbook #21, 1985 (with Ardath Mayhar)

  “Boo Yourself!” from Whispers VI, 1987 (ed. Stuart David Schiff; republished in 100 Tiny Tales of Terror, ed. Martin H. Greenberg) />
  “Dead in the West: Screenplay,” from Screamplays, 1997

  “Disaster Club,” from Cemetery Dance #32, 1999

  “Bullets and Fire,” 2011

  COMIC BOOK–RELATED WRITINGS

  Novels and stories with Batman

  Batman: Captured by the Engines, 1991 (novel)

  Batman: Terror on the High Skies, 1992 (junior novel; illustrated by Edward Hannigan and Dick Giordano)

  “Belly Laugh, or The Joker’s Trick or Treat,” short story in The Further Adventures of the Joker, ed. Martin H. Greenberg, 1989 (reprinted in Adventures of the Batman, ed. Greenberg, 1995)

  “Subway Jack,” short story in The Further Adventures of Batman, ed. Greenberg, 1989 (features Lansdale’s character the God of the Razor, reprinted in Tales of the Batman, ed. Greenberg, 1994)

  Graphic novels and comic books

  Lone Ranger & Tonto, 1993, 4 issues and trade paperback (art by Tim Truman and Rick Magyar)

  Jonah Hex: Two-Gun Mojo, 1993, 5 issues, and 2014 trade paperback (art by Tim Truman)

  Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such, 1995, 5 issues (art by Tim Truman)

  Blood and Shadows, 1996, 4 issues (art by Mark A. Nelson)

  The Spirit: The New Adventures #8, 1998 (art by John Lucas)

  Red Range, 1999 (art by Sam Glanzman)

  Jonah Hex: Shadows West, 1999, 3 issues (art by Tim Truman)

  Conan and the Songs of the Dead, 2006, 5 issues, and 2007 paperback (art by Tim Truman)

  Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four #32, Jan. 2008 (art by Ronan Cliquet)

  Pigeons from Hell, 2008 (adaptation of the Robert E. Howard short story; art by Nathan Fox)

  Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper, 2010, 3 issues (with John L. Lansdale; art by Kevin Colden)

  30 Days of Night: Night, Again, 2011, 4 issues and trade paperback (art by Sam Kieth)

  H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, 2011, 4 issues (art by Peter Bergting)

  That Hell-Bound Train, 2011, 3 issues (with John L. Lansdale, based on a story by Robert Bloch; art by Dave Wachter)

  Crawling Sky, 2013 (with Keith Lansdale and Brian Denham)

  Short stories

  Drive-By, 1993 (adapted from a story by Andrew Vachss; art by Gary Gianni; originally published in Andrew Vachss, Hard Looks #5; reprinted in Andrew Vachss, Hard Looks and as a limited-edition trade paperback containing Vachss’s original story, Lansdale’s comic script, and the as-published illustrated story)