Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

“You mean like the ‘What If’ game?”

The “What If” game was something Jasmine and I had made up when she was little, and had never really quit playing, though our opportunities to play it had decreased sharply over the last couple of years. It grew out of my thinking I was going to be a writer. I’d see something and I’d extrapolate. An example was an old car I saw once where someone had finger-written in the dust on the trunk lid: THERE’S A BODY IN THE TRUNK.

Well, I thought about that and tried to make a story of it. Say there was a body in the trunk. How did it get there? Is the woman driving the car aware it’s there? Did she commit the murder? That sort of thing. Then I’d try to write a story. After fifty or so stories, and three times that many rejects, I gave up writing them, and Jasmine and I started kicking ideas like that back and forth, for fun. That way I could still feed my imagination, but I could quit kidding myself that I could write. Also, Jasmine got a kick out of it.

“Let’s play, Daddy?”

“All right. I’ll start. I saw those slashes on that fold-out, and I got to thinking, why are these lines drawn?”

“Because they look like cuts,” Jasmine said. “You know, like a chart for how to butcher meat.”

“That’s what I thought. Then I thought, it’s just a picture, and it could have been marked up without any real motive. Absentminded doodling. Or it could have been done by someone who didn’t like women, and this was sort of an imaginary revenge. Turning women into meat in his mind. Dehumanizing them.”

“Or it could be representative of what he’s actually done or plans to do. Wow! Maybe we’ve got a real mystery here.”

“My last real mystery was what finished your mom and I off.”

That was the body in the trunk business. I didn’t tell it all before. I got so into that scenario I called a friend of mine, Sam, down at the cop shop and got him geared up about there being a body in the trunk of a car. I told it good, with details I’d made up and didn’t even know I’d made up. I really get into this stuff. The real and the unreal get a little hard for me to tell apart. Or it used to be that way. Not anymore.

Bottom line is Sam pursued the matter, and the only thing in the trunk was a spare tire. Sam was a little unhappy with me. The cop shop was a little unhappy with him. My wife, finally tired of my make-believe, kicked me out and went for the oil man. He didn’t make up stories. He made money and had all his hair and was probably hung like a water buffalo.

“But say we knew the guy who marked this picture, Daddy. And say we started watching him, just to see —”

“We do know him. Kind of.”

I told her about Waldo the Great and his books and Martha’s reaction.

“That’s even weirder,” Jasmine said. “This bookstore lady —”

“Martha.”

“— does she seem like a good judge of character?”

“She hates just about everybody, I think.”

“Well, for ‘What If’s’ sake, say she is a good judge of character. And this guy really is nuts. And he’s done this kind of thing to a fold-out because… say…say…”

“He wants life to be like a Harlequin Romance. Only it isn’t. Women don’t always fit his image of what they should be — like the women in the books he reads.”

“Oh, that’s good, Daddy. Really. He’s gone nuts, not because of violent films and movies, but because of a misguided view about romance. I love it.”

“Makes as much sense as a guy saying he axed a family because he saw a horror movie or read a horror novel. There’s got to be more to it than that, of course. Rotten childhood, genetic makeup. Most people who see or read horror novels, romance novels, whatever, get their thrills vicariously. It’s a catharsis. But in the same way a horror movie or book might set someone off who’s already messed up, someone wound-up and ready to spring, the Harlequins do it for our man. He has so little idea what real life is like, he expects it to be like the Harlequins, or desperately wants it to be that way, and when it isn’t, his frustrations build, and —”

“He kills women, cuts them up, disposes of their bodies. It’s delicious. Really delicious.”

“It’s silly. There’s a sleeping bag in the closet. Get it out when you get sleepy. Me, I’m going to go to bed. I got a part-time job downstairs at Martha’s, and I start tomorrow.”

“That’s great, Daddy. Mom said you’d never find a job.”

On that note, I went to bed.

Next morning I went down to Martha’s and started to work. She had a storeroom full of books. Some of them were stuck together with age, and some were full of worms. Being a fanatic book-lover, it hurt me, but I got rid of the bad ones in the dumpster out back, then loaded some boxes of good-condition books on a hand truck and wheeled them out and began putting them up in alphabetical order in their proper sections.

About nine that morning, Jasmine came down and I heard her say something to Martha, then she came around the corner of the detective section and smiled at me. She looked so much like her mother it hurt me. She had her hair pulled back and tied at her neck and she was starting to sweat. She wore white shorts, cut a little too short if you ask me, and a loose red T-shirt and sandals. She was carrying a yellow pad with a pencil.

“What you doing?” I asked.

“Figuring out what Waldo the Great’s up to. I been working on it ever since I got up. I got lots of notes here.”

“What’d you have for breakfast?”

“Same as you, I bet. A Coke.”

“Right. It’s important we pay attention to nutrition, Baby Darling.”

“You want to hear about Waldo or not?”

“Yeah, tell me, what’s he up to?”

“He’s looking for a job.”

“Because he got fired for the dog-kicking business?”

“Yeah. So, he’s staying in the trailer park here, and he’s looking for a job. Or maybe he’s got some savings and he’s just hanging out for a while before he moves on. Let’s just say all that for ‘What If’s’ sake.”

“All right, now what?”

“Just for fun, to play the game all the way, let’s go out to the trailer park and see if he’s living there. If he is, we ought to be able to find him. He’s got all these dogs, so there should be some signs of them, don’t you think?”

“Wait a minute. You’re not planning on checking?”

“Just for the ‘What If’ game.”

“Like I said, he could have moved on.”

“That’s what we’ll find out. Later, we can go over to the trailer park and look around, play detective.”

“That’s carrying it too far.”

“Why? It’s just a game. We don’t have to bother him.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” It was Martha. She came around the corner of the bookshelves leaning on her golf putter. “It’s just a game.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be counting your money, or something?” I said to Martha. “Kill some of those roaches in your storeroom. That club would be just the tool for it.”

“I couldn’t help but overhear you because I was leaning against the other side of the bookshelf listening,” Martha said.

“That’ll do it,” I said, and shelved a Mickey Spillane.

“We’ve spoke, but I don’t think we’ve actually met,” Jasmine said to Martha. “I’m his daughter.”

“Tough to admit, I’m sure,” Martha said.

Jasmine and Martha smiled at each other and shook hands.

“Why don’t we go over there tonight?” Martha said. “I need something to do.”

“To the trailer park?” I asked.

“Of course,” Martha said.

“Not likely,” I said. “I’ve had it with the detective business, imaginary or otherwise. It’ll be a cold day in hell when I have anything else to do with it, in any manner, shape or form. And you can take that to the bank.”