Joe Lansdale: Cold in July

“Come on,” he said to me. “Let’s get to work.”

The car was parked next to a telephone booth and it was pointing in the direction of the video store. We got in it and I said, “Exactly what is our work, Jim Bob?”

“Highway Department. We’re supposed to count how many tractor-trailer trucks come by here in a given hour.”

“Any reason?”

“Road damage. Gives some clue to the wear and tear on the road. Big trucks like that are hard on the concrete. You count about three hours a day, for a few y, for a days, and you can get some kind of idea as to what kind of beating the highway’s taking. You can average that out and make plans for when to have the road repaired. That way you don’t wait until it’s in awful shape and there’s craters out there big enough to lose a Volkswagen in, though it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if all them foreign sonofabitches fell off in a hole. I think you should buy American.”

“Where did you learn all that, Jim Bob?”

“I made it up yesterday.”

We stayed there a couple of hours, and it got bloody hot. I felt as if my brain was boiling and about to run out my ears. Jim Bob told some jokes that weren’t any good and we sang “The Great Speckled Bird” together. We weren’t half-bad. We did every television theme song we knew and we even hummed some hymns.

Finally I didn’t want to sing anymore. Jim Bob got a magazine out of the backseat and read it and eyeballed the video store over it from time to time. It was one of those hog-raising magazines. I wondered if it had an article on ear mites too.

The Caravan did a brisk trade. People went in and out all day, renting and perhaps buying videos. A couple of times I wondered if maybe someone had gone in there to buy a snuff film, but ruled that out. That was too easy. Those things would be sold to special people in special places, for big money.

And maybe not. Maybe if the right person had the money, they could get it across the counter. One Porky’s, a Bugs Bunny Cartoon, and oh yeah, your latest snuff film.

Jim Bob gave me the magazine. I thumbed through it. There were some good photographs of hogs.

“Here’s one I bet you don’t know,” Jim Bob said, and he began to hum the theme to “Secret Agent Man.”

“Secret Agent Man, and shut up.”

About eleven-fifteen the Nova came around the corner with the Mex driving and Freddy on the front passenger side.

“Lunchtime,” Jim Bob said, and started the Rambler. We followed them to the Pizza Hut and cruised on by.

“Creatures of habit,” I said.

“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Let’s go down here and get a burger and see if we can pick them back up at the store. I have a feeling they keep a pretty regular schedule. Man, how would you like to eat pizza every day?”

“Thing that gets me,” I said, “is they’re so normal acting. They go to work and eat pizza, and murder women. Do you think they’ll do it again?”

“I think they’ll do it until we put a stop to it. If they’d done it only once, that would be enough for me. I’d as soon the law come down on them, but since they, won’t, it’s up to me and Russel.”

We got a greasy burger and a Coke and took our time. When we were finished, we went back to the station and bought a couple of Cokes from the machine inside and sat out in the Rambler, our home away from home, and sipped them. My Coke turned hot before I was halfway finished with it, and I opened the door and poured it out. I got bored enough to actually count the tractor- trailer trucks that went by; Jim Bob’s theory had come to make a certain type of sense to me. It was that hot.

About three I opened the door and threw up my hot Coke. Jim Bob went in the station and bought me some peanut butter crackers and a Sprite. “Here,” he said, “this will go well with an upset stomach.”

I doubted it, but I nibbled on a cracker and sipped the Sprite. I began to envy Russel at home in the air-conditioning. Nothing to do but watch monster movies and look at girly magazines and read about ear mites.

“It’s the glamour that keeps me in this kind of work,” Jim Bob said. “Good hours and scenery. Chance to meet fascinating people, and of course there’s the retirement plan.”

At four o’clock, the Nova came out from behind The Caravan. The Mexican was the only one on board. Jim Bob cranked up the Rambler and we found a lull in traffic and drove on across to the video store parking lot.

“Just the Mex has seen us, so you go in and have a look around. Get the lay of the land. This may be where we do it.”

“Here?”

“It’s either here or the house,” Jim Bob said. “If the Mex comes back, I’ll start honking my horn like I’m out here waiting on you and I’m impatient. Note the back door, anything like that.”

Inside there were rows and rows of videos. There was a little thin guy behind the counter. He was wearing a white suit that looked ten years old. It had gone slightly yellow, and was more yellow still under the arms. He had on a white shirt with it and no tie. He needed a shave.

There wasn’t much to see. The usual videos. No section for snuff films. I was about to leave, when a door opened at the back behind the counter, and Freddy came out. I felt tension beating its wings in my stomach.

He had on a very expensive gray suit and it was cut to hide his belly and it did the job well. He had on a gray tie with little blue stripes in it and there was some kind of gold designed tie tac stuck through it and into his dark shirt. I bet his shoes were shiny. He and Price could have competed for best dressed.

I couldn’t help myself. I went over to the counter and looked right at Freddy. I said, “Have you got Murmur of the Heart? It’s a French film.”

“We don’t carry nothing foreign but the Jap and Mex stuff,” the skinny guy answered for him. “People go for the Jap stuff. Lots of action, all that swords and kicking and jumping stuff.”

Freddy smiled at me, and damned if it wasn’t a nice smile. He was a nice looking guy when he wasn’t raping and killing someone. It gave me a chill. He looked so normal. The kind of guy that might coach your kid in football or teach social studies. “That’s right, mister,” he said. “Only Japanese and Mexican films. The rest are American and maybe some British.”

“We got Limey films?” the thin guy said.

Freddy looked at him and smiled. It was, as I said, a nice smile, but I could recall seeing it on his face the moment before he shot that girl and licked her blood from the wound. “These are modern times,” Freddy said to the thin guy. “I’d prefer you not use offensive terms like Jap and Limey if you’re going to work for me. Okay?”

“Sure,” the thin man said. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, really.” He seemed desperate to convince.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Freddy said, “but I’d prefer not to hear those kind of racist remarks in my presence, customers or no customers.”

Freddy smiled at me, and I found I couldn’t quit staring. I was looking for some sign of the beast, something that would alert me to his madness or meanness, or whatever you call the bile in a man like Freddy, but all I saw was a regular human being. He wasn’t the sort of guy the movies would pick to play the kind of guy he was; he was more the kind to be typecast as a film hero’s best buddy.

“Well, thanks anyway,” I said.

“Maybe next time,” Freddy said. “We intend to expand our line.”

I nodded and started out, and even though the air-conditioning in there worked quite well, before I could get outside, sweat beads had formed on my forehead and my palms had turned sticky.

· · ·

We got our place back at the station, and about fifteen minutes later the Mexican returned and parked behind the video store again. He’d probably gone out for a 7-Eleven Slurpee.