Joe Lansdale - The Bottoms

It took me a long time to fall back asleep, and in the morning I awoke exhausted, as if I had been pursued all night by the devil himself.

After a while, things drifted back to normal for Tom and me. Time is like that. Especially when you’re young. It can fix a lot of things, and what it doesn’t fix, you forget, or at least push back and only bring out at certain times, which is what I did, now and then, late at night, just before sleep claimed me.

Daddy looked around for the killer awhile, but except for some tracks along the bank, signs of somebody scavenging around down there, he didn’t find anyone. I heard him telling Mama how he felt he was being watched when he was in the bottoms, and that he figured there was someone out there knew the woods and river well as any animal and was keeping an eye on him.

But that’s about all he said. There was nothing about it that led me to believe he thought those tracks were actually of the Goat Man or that the tracks belonged to the murderer. They could have been anyone fishing, hunting, or just fooling around. I didn’t get the impression his sensation of being watched meant much either.

In time Daddy no longer pursued it. I don’t think it was because he didn’t care, or that he was concerned with what Red Woodrow thought, but more like there was nothing to find, and therefore, nothing to do.

Making a living took the lead over any kind of investigation, and my Daddy was no investigator anyway. He was just a small-town constable who mainly delivered legal summonses, and picked up dead bodies with the justice of the peace. And if the bodies were colored, he picked them up without the justice of the peace.

So, with no real leads, in time the murder and the Goat Man moved into our past.

The thing I was interested in was what had interested me before. Hunting and fishing and reading books loaned me by Mrs. Canerton, who was a kind of librarian, though it wasn’t anything official. There wasn’t an official library in Marvel Creek until some years later. Mrs. Canerton was just a nice widow lady that kept a lot of books and loaned them out and kept records on them to make sure you gave them back. She would even let you come to her house and sit and read. She nearly always had cookies or lemonade on hand, and she wasn’t adverse to listening to our stories or problems.

I continued to read pulp magazines down at the barbershop and talked with Daddy and Cecil, though as usual, it was Cecil I enjoyed talking to the most. He certainly loved talking, and seemed to like my company. He was especially fond of Tom, always giving her a penny or a piece of candy, letting her sit on his knee while he told her some kind of whopper about wild Indians, people at the center of the earth, planets where the moon was blue and men lived in trees and apes rode in boats.

Daddy wasn’t as much fun to talk to because he always led his conversation around to telling me how I was supposed to live life and giving me lectures on this and that. I figured I knew all that and he could save his breath. I had learned the best thing to do was to just sort of look interested until he ran out of steam.

Although the murder wasn’t on my mind much anymore, one day at home something came up about it and the talk Daddy had with Red Woodrow. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but Daddy said something about him, as if he were baiting some kind of hook, and Mama said he shouldn’t be so hard on Red, and though Daddy didn’t say anything to that, I could tell he didn’t like any kind of defense of Mr. Woodrow. I could also tell my mother regretted she had said anything.

Daddy began working at home a lot, going into the barbershop now and then. He had left the key to Cecil, who he had come to rely on heavily.

On this day, he had me and Tom go out and set Sally Redback to harness and plow. After a bit he came and ran the middles, had me and Tom walk behind him and pick up chunks of grass that didn’t get rolled good, turn them over, mash them with our feet so the roots would be exposed to the sun and die out.

He brooded for an hour or so over the thing with Red Woodrow, then gradually he ceased to mope and began to whistle. Lunchtime he told me to go to the house and bring back something to eat, as he was going to continue plowing.

Back at the house Mama packed a lard bucket with some cornbread and fried chicken, filled a fruit jar with pinto beans and put the lid on it. She put a couple bowls and some spoons with it all, jammed it in the bucket, had me go out to the well and draw up the buttermilk.

When I brought it back she poured the buttermilk into a couple of fruit jars and screwed rings and rubber toppers on them. Out of the clear blue, I said, “Daddy don’t like Red Woodrow, does he?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mama said. “They used to be best friends.”

I felt like I’d been poleaxed. “Best friends. You don’t mean that, do you, Mama?”

“I do.”

“They didn’t sound like best friends when they was talking that day over at Pearl Creek.”

“Daddy told me they talked. I think Red felt Daddy was horning in on his business.”

“Was he?”

“Not really.” She dried her hands and put the two jars of buttermilk into another lard bucket. “Daddy saved Red from drowning once.”

“They talked about that,” I said. “Daddy said how he had saved him from a suck hole.”

“Yes. I was there. We were on a barge. I wasn’t supposed to be there. Girls weren’t supposed to do that sort of thing. Be out late swimming with boys. I shouldn’t have been there.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing really. Red jumped off in the water, got in a suck hole, your Daddy jumped in and pulled him out, was nearly drowned himself. He was a strong swimmer back then.”

“How come they don’t like one another?”

“Me, I guess.”

“What about you?”

“Red was my beau, then I met your Daddy, and he became my beau. It happened on that barge trip. That was long ago. We were very young then.”

“So he didn’t like that you liked Daddy better?”

“That’s pretty much it. But I’ve felt bad about it some.”

“Because you didn’t go with him?”

“Oh, heavens no. But I hear tell all the time about how I broke his heart and it hardened him. About how he don’t like women no more. Won’t have anything to do with them. I don’t mean he’s funny or anything.”

“Funny?”

Mama suddenly realized what she had said and that it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with me. Back then such matters were hardly mentioned, let alone discussed. Least not within family or polite company.

“Oh, nothing, honey. I just mean he got kind of mean-spirited about women and quit having anything to do with any of the decent ones.”

“What about the not decent ones?”

I knew what I was doing, but I tried to present it in an innocent way.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Mama said, and I noticed her face had gone red. “Now you run on. Take this on out to your Daddy before the food gets cold and the buttermilk gets warm. Tom don’t like buttermilk, so let me get her some cold water.”

I knew Tom didn’t like buttermilk. Why was she telling me that?

Mama went out to the well with a fruit jar. I followed carrying the two lard buckets filled with food and drink. Mama dropped the bucket in the well, started winching it up.

I said, “So Mr. Woodrow liked you, but you liked Daddy, and Daddy don’t like that you liked Mr. Woodrow, and Mr. Woodrow don’t like you didn’t like him, and now he don’t like other women?”

“Something like that,” Mama said. “I liked Red. I just, well, it just didn’t work out between me and him.”