Joe Lansdale - Cold in July

Jim Bob laughed. “Lady, I like you, I really do.”

“If we run, won’t the cops be laying for us?” I said.

“Well, we ain’t gonna just run, we’re gonna lose him legal like. But before I do, could you folks tell me where the hell this graveyard is?”

“The other direction,” Russel said.

“Figures,” Jim Bob said, and he took a left in the Safeway parking lot just in front of a big tractor trailer rig. The car that was tailing us went by. Or I assume it was the one. When I got the chance to look, I saw a sporty blue Plymouth slow down and fall over to the left-turn lane. But the traffic was thick and he couldn’t make the left.

Jim Bob got back on the highway by rushing out front of a yellow Volkswagen that honked its horn and flashed its lights. It whipped around on the left and came even with Jim Bob. A husky college boy on the right-hand side rolled down his window and flipped Jim Bob the bird and yelled something.

Jim Bob waved at him friendly like, put his foot to the floor and the Red Bitch jumped forward. Jim Bob whipped in front of the Volkswagen again, went around another car and made the right lane. We went fast like that for two blocks, then Jim Bob took a right, then a left, then a right and a left again.

“Am I going in the general direction?” Jim Bob asked.

“General,” Russel said.

“Good enough.”

“We lose the cop?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Them and their little toy cars. Whatever happened to the good ole days when it was the biggest, meanest car on the road, not the smallest and the cheapest?”

“The Arabs is what happened,” Russel said.

· · ·

We finally got out to the graveyard, and Jim Bob killed the Red Bitch and went around and opened the trunk. I stood there wondering if we were about to be killed, but the trunk was just like he said. Full of tools. He got out two shovels and a long canvas bag and put them on the ground. He gave Ann the keys.

“You take the Red Bitch on down the road a piece and kill the lights but leave the motor running. Turn it facing this way, though, so you can see what’s going on in case something goes on. We’re gonna try and make this quicker than a bunny fucks-pardon me again.”

“Would you quit saying that?” Ann said.

“You know, I’d rather,” Jim Bob said. “What say if we’re gonna be waltzing partners I just let fly when I need to and consider me sorry for what I say. If I don’t cuss I get all filled up inside just like I was constipated and I don’t feel worth a damn.”

“I sure wouldn’t want you all constipated with cuss words,” Ann said. “But listen, I’m not a taxi.”

“No, ma’am, you ain’t, but we’re gonna do the digging and someone’s got to do the driving, and I’m running this shindig, so do what I say.”

“But we’re paying,” Ann said.

“And it’s money well spent,” Jim Bob said. “You can’t do no better than me. Now let’s get on with this.”

Ann looked at me and I shrugged.

“Okay,” she said.

“Take it easy on the clutch,” Jim Bob said as Ann got in.

“I can drive,” Ann said. She closed the door and started the car and drove down the road a ways, backed around, pointed the lights at us and killed them. The Caddy was just off the road and under an oak. When the lights were out, you couldn’t see it. It was that kind of night.

“They can wrap you up for quite a few years for grave stealing, can’t they?” Russel said.

“Hell, they can throw away the key,” Jim Bob said.

We went over to the graveyard fence and found the gate unlocked. “Reckon they don’t expect folks to come in much,” Jim Bob said, “and the ones here ain’t going nowhere.”

Russel located the grave and I took a shovel and Russel took one.

“What about you?” Russel asked Jim Bob.

Jim Bob opened the canvas bag and took out a long flashlight. “Hell, someone’s got to hold the light.”

Russel and I started digging. While we were at it, it began to turn off cool and it got darker. You could smell rain in the air. When we were about halfway down to the coffin, it began to sprinkle.

“Better get with it,” Jim Bob said. “I think it’s gonna come a real frog strangler, and if it does, you’re gonna have to bail as well as dig.”

“How’s your back?” Russel asked Jim Bob.

“Fine,” Jim Bob said. “How’s yours?”

“Hurts. I’m using a shovel,” Russel said.

“And you use it so well.”

Russel began digging faster, and as we got close to the box, his digging became more frenzied. I looked over at him once, and what light was on him made him look like a corpse. He was afraid of what we would find down there. His son and his hopes in a box.

I looked over at Jim Bob, and since he was holding the light, I couldn’t make out his features too well, but he seemed more solemn than I’d yet seen him. He was also quiet for a change.

Russet’s shovel scraped the coffin.

We began cleaning the dirt off. and around it. Throwing it up high and over. It was getting to be harder work. The rain was coming down faster and the clods were sticking together and becoming heavy.

“All right,” Jim Bob said, and he jumped down on the coffin with his light and canvas bag. He stepped off the box and found a place to stand between the coffin and the grave wall, and he opened the bag.

“There’s more to tapping these babies than just opening a lid,” Jim Bob said. “They seal these fuckers but good nowadays. You got to have the right tools. Fortunately, I got them.”

He pulled some strange instruments out of the bag and turned to look at Russel. “Whatever’s in here, I don’t want nothing crazy out of you. If it’s your boy, I’m sorry, but you move to cause Dane here trouble, and I’ll wrap this damn tool around your head.”

Russel smiled grimly. “You’ll try… but don’t worry. I haven’t got nothing against Dane anymore.”

“Well, just in case you get something suddenly,” Jim Bob said, “remember what I told you.”

Jim Bob applied the tools to the coffin and in a moment the lid popped up with a whoosh of air, like one of those cans of vacuum-packed peanuts, and there was the body. It was in a hell of a shape. It looked like someone had taken a can opener to it and stitched it up with black cord while drunk. The eye I had shot out was stuffed with what looked like, wax, and it hadn’t been done neatly; the body looked like something out of a monster movie.

“Ain’t much to look at,” Jim Bob said, and he put a hand on Russel’s shoulder.

Russel looked quickly at the face and said, “Hold the light on his right hand.”

Jim Bob did that and Russel picked up the corpse’s right hand and looked at it. “You remember my boy, don’t you Jim Bob?”

“When he was little,” Jim Bob said. “He was blond, wasn’t he?”

“Hair can be dyed… but this isn’t him. Freddy had a cluster of little, pale moles on the back of his right hand that looked like a four-leaf clover… like these.” He let go of the corpse’s hand and held his own in the light. I could see the faint pattern of moles on the back of his powerful hand. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed them before.

“You’re sure?” Jim Bob asked. “More than sure,” Russel said.

I was feeling sick. “From the looks of him,” I said, “you’d think they purposely tried to mess him up.”

“I think that was the idea exactly, sport,” Jim Bob said.

That hadn’t occurred to me seriously, and now that Jim Bob said it, I felt that this whole thing was even deeper than I expected. A conspiracy. Little obstacles all along the way. Maybe they expected the body might get dug up at some point, and wanted to make it hard to identify. And maybe an autopsy on a body that no one is expected to see isn’t performed for points on neatness.