Joe Lansdale: Waltz of Shadows

“What now?” I asked. “Spooky noises, a flashlight under our chins?”

“I’m depressed and scared, Uncle Hank. Too much light makes me feel kind of sick. Don’t jack with me, all right?”

“What have you done?” I asked. “Cut through the bullshit and get to it.”

“It’s not that easy, Uncle Hank. There’s a lot to it… First, look at this. Tell me what you think it is.”

He went on the other side of the bed and picked a long, narrow, black photo album off the nightstand and tossed it to me.

I caught it and looked at it. There was no writing on the outside. It had a copper-colored clasp holding it together, and I unsnapped that.

Inside were cellophane windows and about a third of the book w Cof eigas filled with photographs. Two wide, six deep. At the top of the page was a photograph of a young man smiling, and beside that photograph was another of the same man, only he wasn’t smiling. He had a small hole in the center of his forehead and his right eye bulged out of its socket. His face was as white as bleached rice. His mouth was closed, but one broken top tooth hung over his bottom lip like a stalactite.

Below those photos, on the left, was one of a middle-aged man, very much alive. On the right was, I presume, the same man, only you couldn’t tell for sure. His face was a hole. A human jelly doughnut. Shotgun blast, I figured.

Below those, an elderly sour-mouthed woman sitting in a wheel chair, and on the right, the wheel chair overturned, the woman beside it in a pool of blood and scattering of brains.

Next page, a man’s face on one side, the other a close up rear view of a naked man with his ass facing out, something jammed up it. A poker, or a thin, lead pipe maybe. I couldn’t make it out. The object and the guy’s ass were smeared with blood.

The rest of the book was the same sort of thing.

I said, “What in the hell is this?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Bill said. “It’s how I got it that’s important. I mean, does that look like special effects to you?”

“No.”

“Because it isn’t. That woman on the bottom of the first page. Recognize her?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Maude Page.”

“The heiress?”

“Yeah. Remember, she was murdered? Pushed down a concrete embankment about a mile from her house. The house was burglarized. Happened a year ago.”

“I remember something about it. But why is her picture in here? Wait a minute! I know. This is a book of shots from the newspaper morgue. Or more likely the police morgue. Somebody is collecting this stuff. A ghoulish personality. Maybe had a contact at the police department. Gets them to steal the stuff for them… Isn’t you, is it?”

“No. That’s not what it is.”

“Well, what is it?”

“First, will you help me, Uncle Hank?”

“I don’t know. I’m getting a little nervous here. Tell me how you came by the book.”

“I been taking a few classes over at the college-”

“I paid for them, didn’t I?”

“I’m trying to get an education, Uncle Hank. Do something with my life.”

“Like when I paid for that goddamn trucker school for you.”

“I thought it was a good idea, but those trucks get boring.”

“You never made a run, Bill. You didn’t even finish the cour Cnisff for se. And remember when you were going to raise those Australian birds? What were they?”

“Emus. There’s a growing market moving into East Texas. Ten years from now everyone will be eating Emu steaks.”

“Not raised by you.”

“Want to hear this or not?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Tell it.”

“I guess it begins with Sharon.”

“Figures. A woman.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, shook slightly, as if chilled, got a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, put it between his lips, produced a folder of matches from his shirt pocket, peeled off one, scratched it to life and lit up.

“Since when do you smoke?” I said.

“Since a pretty short time ago.”

He took another deep drag and held it in for a long time before he let it out. The cigarette was burned half way down.

He began to talk.

First of this semester, Uncle Hank, when you loaned me the money to start college, I decided then and there I wasn’t going to disappoint you this time. I started going to the University library to study nights.

Well, all right. I’m not going to bullshit you. It was a place to meet women. I admit it. I don’t think that’s so bad. I was doing some studying too.

So, I was sitting at a table near the elevator, eyeing the gals getting out of the car, and I saw this good looking blonde step out and start roaming the stacks.

I made my move, went over where I’d seen her go behind a stack of books, and as I was coming around the corner of the shelves, I came up on her. Just standing there. Not really looking for anything, you know. Just hanging.

So I keep going down the row, moving my finger over the book spines, working my lips like I’m reading titles, you know, and when I’m kind of close to her, she says: “You don’t give a fuck about books, do you?”

Well, I look at her with a full view, and man, she’s better yet. The fucking Goddess of Love. About twenty-two, twenty-three years old. Long, blond hair, kind of wavy. She was wearing this short black skirt that made you want to lie on the floor between her legs and worship.

I said something like, “Beg your pardon.” I don’t remember exactly, because I was, to say the least, startled. She said, “You aren’t looking for a book. You came down this row with one thing in mind. Me. Look at the bulge you got.”

I swear, Uncle Hank, she talked just like that, and it was turning me on. I mean, I had a dick hard enough to pop a tire off the rim. So I said, “Yeah, you’re right. I thought I could talk to you. I wanted to meet you.”

She said. “You thought you might get a little jelly roll, that’s what you thought.”

“That wouldn’t hurt my feelings,” I said, and she said, “Well goddamn it, let’s cut the crap and go over to my place and screw.”

She had this apartment off campus, The Village Apartments. Nice place. Kind of expensive. We went over there, and I tell you, there wasn’t any shucking or jiving or let’s-have-a-drink business when we got there.

Inside her apartment she hiked her skirt and got on the kitchen table, spread her legs and said, “Bon appetite.”

She wasn’t wearing any panties. I mean there was just the ole wet moon pie looking at me. I stuck my face between her thighs and started licking. After that I got her top off and my pants down, put the meat to her right there on the table. Half-hour later we were rubbing salad oil over each other and then we were in the bedroom rolling around on the bed. Fell off the night stand and broke the lamp. I got glass in my ass.

We finished in the tub, me with my butt in the air, and her getting the glass out of my ass with some tweezers, licking the blood off when she was through.

We showered and she put a Band-Aid on my ass. We got back in bed and lay there while she smoked a cigarette and poured beer on her belly for me to lick up, and while I’m doing this, I’m thinking: Damn, this is something. Then I’m thinking: Hey, why me? What did I do to deserve a babe like this? And about the time I’m thinking this, she says, “By the way, do you have AIDS?”

Now, I tell you. I could have gone all week without being asked that. This was the first time in a long time I’d made love without a rubber. Or put my head between a girl’s legs and licked her. I’m not normally a fool, but this one, it was like I was a starving wolf and she was a pork chop.

I said, “No, I don’t have AIDS. Do you?”