Joe Lansdale - The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

Off they went down the highway, the taillights fading, the song dying, the black metal of the car melting into the fabric of night, and then there was only the whispery sound of good tires on wet cement and finally not even that. Just the blowing sound of the wind and the rain.

I got off the plane at Atlanta and caught the shuttle to what I thought was my hotel. But there was some kind of mix-up, and it wasn’t my hotel at all. They told me I could go out to the curb and catch this other shuttle and it would take me over to another hotel in their chain, and that it was a short walk from there to where I wanted to go. I thought that was okay, considering I had gotten on the wrong shuttle in the first place.

I sat outside the hotel on a bench and waited for the shuttle. It was October and kind of cool, but not really uncomfortable. The air felt damp.

I had a Western paperback and I got it out of my coat pocket and read a few pages. From time to time I looked up for the shuttle, then at my watch, then back at the paperback. It wasn’t a very good Western.

While I was sitting there a little black boy on skates with an empty toy pistol scabbard strapped around his waist went by. He looked at me. His head was practically shaved and his snap-button cowboy shirt was ripped in front. I guess he was about eleven.

I looked back at my book and started reading, then I heard him skate over in front of me. I looked up and saw that he was looking at the picture on the front of the paperback.

“That a cowboy book?” he said.

I told him it was.

“It any good?”

“I don’t care much for it. It’s a little too much like the last three or four I read.”

“I like cowboy books and movies but they don’t get some things right.”

“I like them too.”

“I’m a cowboy,” he said, and his tone was a trifle defiant.

“You are?”

“You was thinking niggers can’t be cowboys.”

“I wasn’t thinking that. Don’t call yourself that.”

“Nigger? It’s okay if I’m doing it. I wouldn’t want you to say that.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Anyone says that they got me to fight.”

“I don’t want to fight. Where’s your pistol?”

He didn’t answer that. “A black boy can be a cowboy, you know.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“They weren’t all cooks.”

“Course not.”

“That’s way the movies and books got it. There any black cowboys in that book?”

“Not so far.”

“There gonna be?”

“I don’t know,” I said. But I did know. I’d read a lot of cowboy books.

“White boys at school said there weren’t any black cowboys. They said no nigger cowboys. They said we couldn’t fight Indians and stuff.”

“Don’t listen to them.”

“I’m not going to. I went over to the playground at the school and they took my pistol. There was three of them.”

It came clear to me then. His shirt being ripped and the gun missing.

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t nice.”

“They said a nigger didn’t need no cowboy gun. Said I needed me a frying pan or a broom. I used to ride the range and rope steers and stuff. They don’t know nothing.”

“Is that all you did on the range, rope steers?”

“I did all kinds of things. I did everything cowboys do.”

“Was it hard work?”

“It was so hard you wouldn’t believe it. I did all kinds of things. Cowboys don’t call one another nigger.”

“Do your mom and dad work on the range with you?”

“No, my mama has a job. She does clean-up work. My daddy he got killed in Vietnam. He got some medals and stuff. He wasn’t a cowboy like me.”

I looked up and saw the shuttle. I picked up my suitcase and stood.

“I got to go now,” I said. “I hope you get your gun back. Lot of good cowboys lose fights from time to time.”

“There was three of them.”

“There you are. Adios.” As an afterthought I gave him the Western book.

“It hasn’t got any black cowboys in it I bet,” he said, and gave it back to me.

“I want one with black cowboys in it. I’m not reading any more of ‘em unless they got black cowboys in them.”

“I’m sure there are some,” I said.

“There ought to be.”

I got on the shuttle and it carried me to the other hotel. I got off and walked to where I was supposed to be, and on the way over there I put the book in one of those wire trash baskets that line the streets.

Buddy drank another swig of beer and when he brought the bottle down he said to Jake and Wilson, “I could sure use some pussy.”

“We could all use some,” Wilson said, “problem is we don’t never get any.”

“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.

“You don’t get any,” Buddy said. “I get plenty, you can count on that.”

“Uh huh,” Wilson said. “You talk pussy plenty good, but I don’t ever see you with a date. I ain’t never even seen you walking a dog, let alone a girl. You don’t even have a car, so how you gonna get with a girl?”

“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.

“You see what you want,” Buddy said. “I’m gonna be getting me a Chevy soon. I got my eye on one.”

“Yeah?” Wilson said. “What one?”

“Drew Carrington’s old crate.”

“Shit,” Wilson said, “that motherfucker caught on fire at a streetlight and he run it off in the creek.”

“They got it out,” Buddy said.

“They say them flames jumped twenty feet out from under the hood before he run it off in there,” Jake said.

“Water put the fire out,” Buddy said.

“Uh huh,” Wilson said, “after the motor blowed up through the hood. They found that motherfucker in a tree out back of Old Maud Page’s place. One of the pistons fell out of it and hit her on the head while she was picking up apples. She was in the hospital three days.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “And I hear Carrington’s in Dallas now, never got better from the accident. Near drowned and some of the engine blew back into the car and hit him in the nuts, castrated him, fucked up his legs. He can’t walk. He’s on a wheeled board or something, got some retard that pulls him around.”

“Them’s just stories,” Buddy said. “Motor’s still in the car. Carrington got him a job in Dallas as a mechanic. He didn’t get hurt at all. Old Woman Page didn’t get hit by no piston either. It missed her by a foot. Scared her so bad she had a little stroke. That’s why she was in the hospital.”

“You seen the motor?” Wilson asked. “Tell me you’ve seen it.”

“No,” Buddy said, “but I’ve heard about it from good sources, and they say it can be fixed.”

“Jack it up and drive another car under it,” Wilson said, “it’ll be all right.”

“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.

“Listen to you two,” Buddy said. “You know it all. You’re real operators. I’ll tell you morons one thing, I line up a little of the hole that winks and stinks, like I’m doing tonight, you won’t get none of it.”

Wilson and Jake shuffled and eyed each other. An unspoken but clear message passed between them. They had never known Buddy to actually get any, or anyone else to know of him getting any, but he had a couple of years on them, and he might have gotten some, way he talked about it, and they damn sure knew they weren’t getting any, and if there was a chance of it, things had to be patched up.

“Car like that,” Wilson said, “if you worked hard enough, you might get it to run. Some new pistons or something… What you got lined up for tonight?”

Buddy’s face put on some importance. “I know a gal likes to do the circle, you know what I mean?”