Joe Lansdale - Edge of Dark Water

“Ma’am,” I said. “Me and this little girl would love to eat almost anything, if you got it to spare. We could gather some wood for you, jobs like that and such. We’re terrible hungry.”

I thought it best not to mention Mama and Terry just yet.

The old woman studied us. “How about dirt?” she said.

“Ma’am?”

“Would you eat dirt?”

I glanced back at Jinx.

Jinx said, “We got to draw the line at dirt.”

“Then you ain’t that terrible hungry,” said the old woman. “You was hungry, you’d eat dirt.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Well, we want to thank you for your time and wish you a good day.”

I started to turn, but the door opened wider, and I saw then she had a big pistol in her hand. My first thought was if she pulled the trigger the firing of the gun would knock her down. She lifted it and held it at us with both hands. She held it steady, considering the size of her, and there was about her a kind of hard knowledge that changed my mind. Right then I decided she could not only shoot that pistol and not be knocked down but she could probably hit what she was aiming at.

“I ain’t got no one to chop wood,” she said. “I reckon you can chop wood.”

“We can do that,” I said, looking at the pistol.

“I wouldn’t mind servants,” she said.

She waved the pistol at us, had us come inside. The place was a wreck. Chairs was turned this way and that, a table was on its side, the legs poking out like a dead animal’s legs. There was all manner of junk in there, and it smelled kind of ripe, like old food.

“I ain’t straightened the place up lately,” she said.

Since the dawn of creation, I thought.

“Before you chop wood, I thought you ought to help me set things right in here. After you’re done, I’ll see I can feed you.”

“Set things right?” Jinx said.

The old woman studied Jinx. “When I was a child, my family had its own niggers. They gave me one to play with. You remind me of her.”

“How old was you then, about a hundred?” Jinx said.

“I was four or five,” the old woman said. “I’ve lost some count on my age. But I’m near eighty. And you want to sass, you ought to know that little girl they gave me got to thinking she was going to be one with the Lincoln thinkers. Me and her got into a tussle, and my daddy sold her to a traveling house of sin.”

“A what?” Jinx said.

“They made her a whore,” said the old woman.

“She was probably relieved,” Jinx said.

“Just start cleaning,” said the old woman.

Just as we started cleaning, the old woman sat in a rocking chair and let the pistol rest in her lap. She was far enough away from us she could bring it up fast.

“You don’t want to throw out nothing precious,” said the old woman.

“And what would that be?” Jinx said. She seemed determined to get shot.

“That would be anything precious, you little smart mouth,” said the old woman.

“Jinx, help me set the table up,” I said, hoping to take the conversation on a different journey.

We set the table up, straightened the chairs, got a broom, and swept up broken plates. Everything was covered in dust, and there was enough of it you could have easily copied out the King James Bible with a finger and some dedicated intention.

I reckoned there had been a fight in there, and whoever it was that was fighting had been serious about it. Stuff was slung everywhere, and there was even some dried turds on the floor. From the heavy coating of dust, and the dryness of the turds, it was easy to figure that the fight had taken place a long time before and things had been left as they were.

There was a shelf dangling by one nail over the fireplace mantel. A hatchet and an ax was leaning up against the wall near the hearth. There was a metal rod in the fireplace, and it went from one side of it to the other, and had a big black pot hanging on it. There was a little fire under the pot. I could see where the old woman had chopped up some furniture for firewood.

While we cleaned, I watched the old woman out of the corner of one eye, and I watched that ax and hatchet with the other. I didn’t want to add murder to my criminal activities, but more than that, I didn’t want to be murdered, which was a thing I thought might be in the planning.

The old woman pointed out a broom to Jinx, and Jinx took it and went to sweeping. The old woman opened the door so she could sweep the dust and such out. It was an old broom, handmade from a slightly crooked stick, some twine, and straw. I figured she probably rode it around the room on full-moon nights.

This went on for some time, this cleaning. I was wondering how it was with Mama and Terry, and this wondering got answered for me about the time we had the place mostly straightened up.

Mama, having not listened to me about staying where she was, or going on without us, come up to the open door just as Jinx was sweeping out some dirt. Mama stuck her pretty head inside. When she did, the old woman pressed the pistol to her nose and without so much as a howdy-do said, “Come on in. There’s plenty of work.”

Mama looked at the gun and the old woman behind it, then she looked at Jinx holding the broom, and then at me. I had just finished righting all the chairs and was standing there with my face hanging out.

“You didn’t stay so good, did you?” I said.

“I got worried,” Mama said.

“And I got the gun,” said the old woman. “Come in this house.”

Mama came in and went right to work. The old woman went back to the rocker and rocked back and forth, pointing the pistol at us.

I managed to get close to Mama and say, “Where’s Terry?”

“Down by the river,” she said. “I thought he’d be fine until I found you.”

“I told you to go on,” I said.

“You can tell me as you choose,” she said. “And I can do as I choose.”

“Y’all shut up,” said the old woman.

We washed dishes and straightened up both rooms of the house. Then the old woman guided us outside with the pistol at our backs, and we came to a woodpile. There was an ax with a rusty blade sticking up in a log. There was some pieces of kindling lying around. Some of it was cut in two, but most of it was big stuff with little limbs still on it. You could see where it had been whittled at now and again. There was a wooden wheelbarrow next to the log, and there was grass grown up around it.

“It takes me too long to get anything done anymore,” she said. “Used to I could cut down a whole tree and turn it into boards, or firewood, or shingles, or a box of toothpicks. I ain’t got the strength no more to push the wheelbarrow, let alone cut wood.”

She had Jinx take the ax and start chopping. She made me and Mama gather up firewood and stack it in the wheelbarrow. She was wily enough not to get too close to any of us, especially Jinx, who was swinging the ax with an enthusiasm that had little to do with splitting wood. Every time Jinx brought the ax down, you could imagine her splitting that old woman’s head from crown to jaw.

While we worked, the old woman kept looking at me and Mama, and eventually she said, “You two some kind of kin?”

“Mother and daughter,” Mama said.

“You look alike plenty in the face, except the girl’s got a stouter jaw,” the old woman said.

I can’t say as any of this was meant as a compliment, but I was surprised to have any part of Mama recognized in myself, and it made me feel kind of good, even if I had a stout jaw. That said, the whole thing with Terry lying down there by the river was starting to get to me, and I decided I had to say something about it, take a chance, because if we didn’t get him away from there before long, he might be dead. Or Skunk might come up and finish him off.