Joe Lansdale - The Bottoms

“Dandy sees a chance to look even better. He lets this fella play. Figures that man ain’t gonna match what the debil’s done done for him, and if he sangs some, all that stutterin’, he’s bound to sound like a chicken workin’ on a ear of corn. It gonna make Dandy look even better, see.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“So now, Dandy, he ’sides to really polish the apple, so he brings up this here fella and says how he’s a man wants to play a song or two, sang a little. And he says how he ain’t never heard him, but always wants to give a fella a chance. So this nervous fella, who turns out is from a little ole town called Gilmer, gets up there, hits on his strangs with the bow, then cuts into it. And you know what, Little Man?”

“No ma’am.”

“He good. He can play that fiddle like he part of it. And sang. He sang real purty, ’cause when he sangs, he don’t stutter. So all them folks is dancin’ and start’n to happy hoot and holler, and after one tune, this here fella, who I heard was named Ormond, he plays him ’nuther, then a ’nuther, and it’s like one of the angels got hold of that fiddle bow, and pretty soon, ole Dandy, he done forgot. Ain’t nobody missin’ him.”

“Bet that made him mad.”

“Oooowweeeeee. All of a sudden, right in the middle of a breakdown, Dandy jump up with his fiddle and crack that Ormond fella right upside the head and knock him down. Then he go to beatin’ on him. And he beat him till he done broke that fiddle all apart, and then he start to choke Ormond, and pretty soon, Ormond, he’s dead.

“Well, now. People are starin’ at Dandy, and he got death on his hands, and no fiddle. Busted it all to pieces. So he snatch up Ormond’s fiddle and bow an run off through the back door ’fore folks can figure on what to do. Then they after ’em. But it’s too late. He know them bottoms like the back of his hand, and he gone. He done become a Travelin’ Man.

“Since it was a colored killin’ a colored, white law didn’t go after him none, and all the colored ’round here wasn’t in no place to do nothin’, so Dandy, he get off on the other side of the bottoms, and he start at it.”

“At what?”

“Travelin’. He kind of like a bum, you see. He go from house to house, tryin’ to beg him a little somethin’ to eat and such, and people hear about this fella travelin’ around with a fiddle, playin’ a tune or two for his dinner, but he ain’t no good on the fiddle. No good at all. So folks that hear this, they don’t figure on it being Dandy, ’cause Dandy, he can play good as a pig can eat. But it’s Dandy.”

“How come he can’t play?”

“Comin’ to that. You jumpin’ ahead.”

“Sorry, Miss Maggie.”

“Where this Travelin’ Man and his fiddle go, they’s womens start turnin’ up dead. You see, he got a bitter thing in him now. He always did want the womens to like him, but now he ain’t got that goin’ for him ’cause he ain’t got no fiddlin’ to draw them in, and it’s boilin’ him inside. Or, that’s how I figure on it. Ain’t no one really knows. But this is certain, for three years he wandered all over East Texas killin’ colored womens and girls, and to the white law it don’t mean a thing.

“But he finally gets him a little white girl, mistreats and kills her. Kluxers get on his tail, ’cause it ain’t just about niggers killin’ niggers anymore, you see. And he gettin’ bolder and bolder, and he kills a white woman over near them honky-tonks in Gladewater, and the Klan run him down and cut him where a man don’t want to be cut, tar and feather him, hang ’im and light him on fire. And that’s the end of Dandy on this here earth, and it one of the few times the Klan do us all a favor.”

I thought about that for a while. I said, “But why couldn’t he play the fiddle no more? If the devil gave him the power, wouldn’t he be able to play?”

“I done some thinkin’ on that. What I figure is that ole pumpkin head give him that fiddle and say you can play good on this here fiddle, that’s exactly what he meant. That fiddle. When he smashed it up, and took a dead man’s fiddle, a man learned to play it by hard work and not no pee in a bottle and a trip to the crossroads, he couldn’t play no mo’. You see?”

I did. But I still had questions. “If you didn’t see the devil, or the devil’s man, how do you know he had a pumpkin head?”

“I knowed how he looked ’cause there’s folks I know, includin’ cousins, seen the debil and know what he and all his men look like. They can look different ways too. Might not have a head like a pumpkin all the time. Might have horns. Might look like a banker or one of them polatickans, but I’m just figure’n on how he might have looked that night. I’m colorin’ the story some, but that don’t mean it ain’t true.”

“And this woman me and Tom found, you think it’s someone sold his soul to the devil done that to her? A Travelin’ Man?”

“If’n you ain’t sold your soul to the debil you wouldn’t do such a thing, Little Man. It could be the debil himself. Sometime he like to do his own work.”

“What about the Goat Man?”

“Little Man, I think the Goat Man might be the debil. I said he can look anyway he wants, and ain’t them goat horns and hoofs jes like the debil? If’n I was the debil, them bottoms is where I’d be a runnin’ ’cause they dark and wet and got all manner of thing in ’em. Let me gives you a word of smarts. You stay away from anything to do with what the debil likes, ’cause you get in with him he’ll trick on you. You hear?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Now you need to run on. I got me some washboard’n to do.”

“Yes ma’am. Thanks for the food.”

“You welcome. Now you draw some water out of the well and water that ole hog of mine. And you come back and see me.”

I went out, letting the screen door loose, not so that it would slam, but enough it would jar the flies that were on it.

I went out to the well, dropped the bucket and cranked it up, poured from it into the totin’ bucket. I made several trips with the bucket to fill the hog’s tub with water.

As I went away I remembered another time Miss Maggie told me about how flies are the devil’s eyes and ears, and that got me to thinking.

When I turned my head to look back at her house, the flies had already filled the screen again, and a big fat one was buzzing around my sweaty head.

I swatted at it, but it got away.

That night, back at the house, lying in bed, my ear against the wall, Tom asleep across the way in her own little bed made of crude lumber and nailed tight together by Daddy, I listened. The walls were thin. When it was good and quiet, and Mama and Daddy were talking, I could hear them.

“Doc Stephenson, the old pill roller, wouldn’t even look at her,” Daddy said. “Said if folks found out he’d had a colored in his office wouldn’t nobody use him no more.”

“That’s terrible. What about Doc Taylor?”

“Well, I figure he’s at least had some actual medical school. I guess they got medical schools in Arkansas or Oklahoma, wherever it is he’s from.”

“Missouri,” Mama said.

“Anyway, he’d have come looked at her. He wanted to real bad, like it was some kind of adventure, you know. But I didn’t want to take the chance on him gettin’ in trouble with Stephenson to do me a favor. Might go bad for him in the long run, mess up his doctorin’ career. He’s set up to take over Stephenson’s practice when he retires in a year or so, he seems like a nice enough fella. I drove the body over to Pearl Creek to see a doctor there.”

Pearl Creek was an all-colored town.

“She was in our car? I mean, didn’t it foul the car?”