Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

“Lil” Arthur stopped doing push-ups, looked to the ceiling. Pigeons were thick on the rafters. So was pigeon shit. The sky was very visible through the roof. And very black. It looked venomous.

“Shit,” “Lil” Arthur said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Leave ‘em be. They scared. So am I.”

“Lil” Arthur stood up, said, “Ain’t nothin’ be scared of. We been through all kinda storms. We’re on a rise here. Water don’t never get this high.”

“I ain’t never liked no storm. I be glad when yo daddy and the young’uns gets home.”

“Papa’s got an old tarp I might can put over that hole. Keep out the rain.”

“You think you can, go on.”

“I already shoulda,” “Lil” Arthur said.

“Lil” Arthur went outside, crawled under the upraised porch, and got hold of the old tarp. It was pretty rotten, but it might serve his purpose, at least temporarily. He dragged it into the yard, crawled back under, tugged out the creaking ladder and a rusty hammer. He was about to go inside and get the nails when he heard a kind of odd roaring. He stopped, listened, recognized it.

It was the surf. He had certainly heard it before, but not this loud and this far from the beach. He got the nails and put the ladder against the side of the house and carried the tarp onto the roof. The tarp nearly took to the air when he spread it, almost carried him with it. With considerable effort he got it nailed over the hole, trapping what pigeons didn’t flee inside the house.

2:30 P.M.

Inside the whorehouse, the madam, a fat lip added to her black eyes, watched from the bed as McBride, naked, seated in a chair before the dresser mirror, carefully oiled and combed his hair over his bald spot. The windows were closed, and the wind rattled them like dice in a gambler’s fist. The air inside the whorehouse was as stuffy as a minister’s wife.

“What’s that smell?” she asked.

It was the tonic the Chinaman had given him. He said, “You don’t want your tits pinched, shut the fuck up.”

“All right,” she said.

The windows rattled again. Pops of rain flecked the glass.

McBride went to the window, his limp dick resting on the windowsill, almost touching the glass, like a large, wrinkled grub looking for a way out.

“Storm coming,” he said.

The madam thought: No shit .

McBride opened the window. The wind blew a comb and hairbrush off the dresser. A man, walking along the sandy street, one hand on his hat to save it from the wind, glanced up at McBride. McBride took hold of his dick and wagged it at him. The man turned his head and picked up his pace.

McBride said, “Spread those fat legs, honey-ass, ‘cause I’m sailing into port, and I’m ready to drop anchor.”

Sighing, the madam rolled onto her back, and McBride mounted her. “Don’t mess up my hair this time,” he said.

4:30 P.M.

The study smelled of stale cigar smoke and sweat, and faintly of baby oil. The grandfather clock chimed four-thirty. The air was humid and sticky as it shoved through the open windows and fluttered the dark curtains. The sunlight, which was tinted with a green cloud haze, flashed in and out, giving brightness to the false eyes and the yellowed teeth of a dozen mounted animal heads on the walls. Bears. Boar. Deer. Even a wolf.

Beems, the source of much of the sweat smell, thought: It’s at least another hour before my wife gets home. Good.

Forrest drove him so hard Beems’s forehead slammed into the wall, rocking the head of the wild boar that was mounted there, causing the boar to look as if it had turned its head in response to a distant sound, a peculiar sight.

“It’s not because I’m one of them kind I do this,” Beems said. “It’s just, oh yeah, honey…. The wife, you know, she don’t do nothing for me. I mean, you got to get a little pleasure where you can. A man’s got to get his pleasure, don’t you think…Oh, yes. That’s it…. A man, he’s got to get his pleasure, right? Even if there’s nothing funny about him?”

Forrest rested his hands on Beems’s naked shoulders, pushing him down until his head rested on top of the couch cushion. Forrest cocked his hips, drove forward with teeth clenched, penetrating deep into Beems’s ass. He said, “Yeah. Sure.”

“You mean that? This don’t make me queer?”

“No,” Forrest panted. “Never has. Never will. Don’t mean nothin’. Not a damn thing. It’s all right. You’re a man’s man. Let me concentrate.”

Forrest had to concentrate. He hated this business, but it was part of the job. And, of course, unknown to Beems, he was putting the meat to Beems’s wife. So, if he wanted to keep doing that, he had to stay in with the boss. And Mrs. Beems, of course, had no idea he was reaming her husband’s dirty ditch, or that her husband had about as much interest in women as a pig does a silver tea service.

What a joke. He was fucking Beems’s old lady, doing the dog work for Beems, for a good price, and was reaming Beems’s asshole and assuring Beems he wasn’t what he was, a fairy. And as an added benefit, he didn’t have to fight the nigger tomorrow night. That was a big plus. That sonofabitch hit like a mule kicked. He hoped this McBride would tap him good. The nigger died, he’d make a point of shitting on his grave. Right at the head of it.

Well, maybe, Forrest decided, as he drove his hips forward hard enough to make Beems scream a little, he didn’t hate this business after all. Not completely. He took so much crap from Beems, this was kinda nice, having the bastard bent over a couch, dicking him so hard his head slammed the wall. Goddamn, nutless queer, insulting him in public, trying to act tough.

Forrest took the bottle of baby oil off the end table and poured it onto Beems’s ass. He put the bottle back and realized he was going soft. He tried to imagine he was plunging into Mrs. Beems, who had the smoothest ass and the brightest blonde pubic hair he had ever seen. “I’m almost there,” Forrest said.

“Stroke, Forrest! Stroke, man. Stroke!”

In the moment of orgasm, Beems imagined that the dick plunging into his hairy ass belonged to the big nigger, “Lil” Arthur. He thought about “Lil” Arthur all the time. Ever since he had seen him fight naked in a Battle Royale while wearing a Sambo mask for the enjoyment of the crowd.

And the way “Lil” Arthur had whipped Forrest. Oh, God. So thoroughly. So expertly. Forrest had been the man until then, and that made him want Forrest, but now, he wanted the nigger.

Oh God, Beems thought, to have him in me, wearing that mask, that would do it for all time. Just once. Or twice. Jesus, I want it so bad I got to be sure the nigger gets killed. I got to be sure I don’t try to pay the nigger money to do this, because he lives after the fight with McBride, I know I’ll break down and try. And I break down and he doesn’t do it, and word gets around, or he does it, and word gets around, or I get caught… I couldn’t bear that. This is bad enough. But a nigger…?

Then there was McBride. He thought about him. He had touched McBride’s balls and feigned disgust, but he hadn’t washed that hand yet, just as McBride suggested.

McBride won the fight with the nigger, better yet, killed him, maybe McBride would do it with him. McBride was a gent that liked money, and he liked to hurt whoever he was fucking. Beems could tell that from the way the redhead was battered. That would be good. That would be all right. McBride was the type who’d fuck anyone or anything, Beems could tell.

He imagined it was McBride at work instead of Forrest. McBride, naked, except for the bowler.

Forrest, in his moment of orgasm, grunted, said, “Oh yeah,” and almost called Mrs. Beems’s name. He lifted his head as he finished, saw the hard, glass eyes of the stuffed wild boar. The eyes were full of sunlight. Then the curtains fluttered and the eyes were full of darkness.