Joe Lansdale - Edge of Dark Water

“That’s not a very forward way of looking at things,” I said.

“No. But it’s a way that often comes to pass.”

“I hope that isn’t true.”

“By the way,” Jinx said, grinning at me, “you giving them back?”

“What?”

“The legs your mama borrowed.”

Terry lived in town, which wasn’t much more than a handful of buildings that looked to have been stolen away by a tornado and set down on a crooked street so that they didn’t line up good. His house was off the main street and down a blacktop road. It was a pretty nice house, good as Jinx’s, and larger. There was a house on either side of it, and unlike the downtown, they were lined up even and similar in the way they looked. All the houses along there had a little front yard and a backyard and some flowers out front, and on this day, in Terry’s front yard, there was a kid. He was a short, fat kid with carrot-colored hair and green snot on his face that had dried in a long trail that reached to the corner of his mouth, like the runoff from an outhouse.

There was a white fence around the yard and a swinging gate. I pushed through the gate and waved at the kid. It was one of Terry’s stepbrothers. Terry hated all his step-kin. I think what he mostly hated was that he was no longer the center of attention since his mama got remarried. After that, he always had a feeling of being left out in the rain without a hat. I didn’t think he had it so bad myself, but I guess it’s what you compare it to.

The kid in the yard was called Booger by Terry and most everyone else, including his daddy and his stepmother. I figure it was a thing that would follow him even when he was grown up, like a cousin of mine who was called Poot. I suppose it beat being called Turd, especially if the tag had some kind of truthful connection.

“Is Terry here?” I asked Booger.

Booger eyed me as if he was sizing me up for a meal. “He’s out back with a nigger.”

The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Terry said his new daddy was the sort of man that was still upset he had to pay colored people a nickel for a couple hours’ work and thought he should be able to find them for jobs at the same place he bought mules.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Did you know boys and girls got different thangs?” the boy said.

“Yep,” I said.

I went out back. There was a big pile of wood near the fence, and next to the wood was Terry. Closer to it yet, with ax in hand, was a big colored man. He was splitting a piece of stove wood in half over a log, and he was doing it with the ease of a fish swimming in water. I stood and watched while he did it, it was such good work. He had his shirt off and he was well muscled, and his skin was the color of sweaty licorice. I had been noticing a lot of things about men lately, white and colored, and some of what I noticed made me nervous and anxious.

Terry wasn’t wearing a shirt, either, and I noticed that right off as well. He wasn’t as muscled as the colored man, but he looked pretty good, and I remember thinking in that moment that it wasn’t such a good thing he was a sissy.

Terry was grabbing the pieces as they were halved and piling them on a wheelbarrow. He was doing this quickly and with great skill to avoid the rising and swinging of the ax. He looked around and saw me and nodded. I knew he had chores to finish, so I went and sat on the back porch. I heard the door open behind me, and Terry’s mama came out. She was a fine-looking person with dark, short hair that had a perm in it. She sat down on the steps beside me, said, “Sue Ellen, how are you?”

“I’m fine, ma’am.”

I didn’t look at her direct, as I figured if I did I would look guilty, considering the plans I had might include her son.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I had to look at her now. It was manners. I put on my best lying face and turned it to her. When I did I saw she looked a little less full of juice than when I had seen her last; still pretty, but something she needed had been sucked out of her, and I had the impression that if I touched her hard she might fall apart, like a vase that had been badly glued back together. Still, compared to my mama, she was as solid as a mountain.

According to Terry, what was sucking out the juice was his stepdaddy, who he said was well-heeled but had all the personality of a nasty dishrag. He told me once, “Stepdad didn’t become rich by charm. He became rich by discovering oil on some land he bought and by building a brick-firing company that hires most of the people in town that are being hired. After that, he didn’t need to be charming. He just had to have his wallet with him.”

“How do you think Terry is?” she asked me.

“Ma’am?”

“Do you think he’s okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. I guess so.”

“I think the new arrangements bother him.”

That was like saying I think the selling of one of our children to buy a pig might have been a bad idea. But since I was thinking about even newer arrangements for him, I didn’t know what to reply, other than, “I suppose that’s so.”

After a bit, the colored man stopped chopping and picked his shirt off the woodpile and wiped his face and chest with it and then put it on. Terry pushed the wheelbarrow over to the porch and started unloading it, piling wood under the porch’s overhang.

The colored man came over, smiling and shuffling. Jinx said that was how colored did if they didn’t want to have a visit from the Ku Klux Klan. She said you never knew when it would be decided you were being uppity in the presence of a white, and being uppity could cause you to come to grief. To add to that, it was probably pretty well known that Terry’s stepdad had a white robe and hood hanging in his closet.

The colored man didn’t say anything, just stood there smiling, like a jackass waiting for a carrot. It made me feel funny, seeing a grown man act like that.

Terry’s mama stood up and smiled and handed him something she had in her hand. He took it without looking to see what it was, and went away. When he was gone, she looked down at me and said, “I think that was worth more than a nickel, don’t you? He chopped a lot of wood and it’s hot.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“I gave him a quarter.”

“Well worth it,” I said.

Terry finished up with the wood and came over and sat by me on the porch steps. I could feel the heat off his body and I could smell his sweat.

“Well,” his mama said, still standing on the steps. “I’ll leave you two to visit. But don’t forget your other chores, Terry. You know how your daddy gets when they’re not done.”

“He’s not my real father,” Terry said.

“You don’t mean that,” she said.

“I do mean it.”

“Well, it’ll take a little time to adjust.”

“By the time I adjust, the world will be made anew,” Terry said.

“We won’t discuss it right now…Sue Ellen, it’s good to see you.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She went in the house.

I said, “You hurt her feelings.”

“I know,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. It’s not her I don’t like. It’s that man she married and all his kids. The smartest one of them barely knows to get in out of the rain, and only does so with considerable encouragement.”

“I’m wanting to look at that map again,” I said. “I’m wanting to find that money.”

“You sure?”

“I am. Jinx might come, and she might not. But I want to go.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“I think I got in too big a hurry the other day,” Terry said.

“You don’t want to go now?”

“No. I want to go. But I think we should find the money, and then we have to dig up May Lynn and burn her, and I need to do some work on that barge so it can run cleaner down the river.”