Joe Lansdale - The Bottoms

Grandma pushed me along the wall and left the door open, the startled coon didn’t want to leave. Grandma took a chair and poked it and it ran out the open door, disappeared into the rain and hail. I almost felt sorry for it.

After Grandma closed and bolted the door with the wood bar, she poked the flashlight around. The place had been turned inside out. Mose’s few clothes were strewn about. There was flour dumped and a few tins and broken jars of food lying on the floor. I didn’t know if the mob or animals had done that after Mose’s death.

Lying on the floor, next to a broken jar of food that had gone rotten, was a photo of a colored woman in a frame. There was also a loose picture of what I figured was Mose’s son, the one that had gone out and never come back. It was stuck in the frame with the picture of the woman, just pushed into the edge of it. The picture had faded considerable. The boy appeared to be about eleven. I looked at the picture real close, realized it was a white boy’s picture cut from a Sears and Roebuck catalogue, the features colored dark with pencil. I wasn’t exactly sure what that was about. Not then. Not now. The woman was very dark and her features were not particularly distinguishable. I set the frame on the table.

In the corner of the room was a simple wood frame with a mattress on it and some covers strewn across it.

“Kind of smells in here,” Grandma said.

“Well, it ain’t Mose’s fault. It didn’t stink when he lived here.”

Grandma put her arm around my shoulders. “I know, Harry.”

The storm grew more violent, dark and thundery with cuts of lightning slashing through Mose’s two windows.

“I’m exhausted and cold, Harry,” Grandma said. “It’s gonna be a little wait. I’m gonna to lay down. There’s room for two.”

Grandma sat on the edge of the bed, gave me the flashlight. She suddenly looked her age.

“You all right, Grandma?”

“Of course. I’m just old. And my heart gets kind of tired now and then. Beats funny. I rest a bit, I’ll be all right.”

Without another word, she lay on the bed and pulled a cover over her. I took the spare one and put it over my shoulders and sat in a chair at the little table. After a while I got up and picked up the canned goods and put them in the shelf. I put the photo and the Sears and Roebuck cutout in the center of the table. I sat in the chair again with the blanket around me, turned out the flashlight, and closed my eyes.

I hadn’t been sleepy, it being midday and all, but there was something hypnotic about the pounding rain and hail, the darkness. I could hear water leaking through the roof as well, dripping in a far corner of the shack.

I focused on that sound and fell asleep to it.

I was dreaming of Mose. Of how they must have beat on his door until he opened it, and then they pulled him out. Then Daddy showed up and he thought he was going to be all right, but he wasn’t. The fear he must have felt, the pain of strangling, feeling his life flying away from him, and for no reason at all, other than the color of his skin.

I jumped awake to a knocking sound.

I jerked my head around, looked at the rain-streaked window, and yelled, “Grandma!”

Grandma came awake. “Harry? Harry?”

“The window.”

She looked. There was a dark face in the window, horns on its head. It was looking in the glass at us, tapping with its knuckles. Rivers of rain fled down the glass, blurring the face.

The Goat Man.

Grandma sprang awake, tried to get hold of the box she had placed by the bed. She managed to kick it and slide it under the table.

The face went away. The door shook. The wooden bar held. There came a noise from outside like someone trying to talk with a mouthful of mush. The door was tugged harder, and for a moment I thought it might break free.

I crawled under the table, got the box, opened it, gave it to Grandma. She pulled out the. 38. “Go away, goddamnit! Go away or I’ll start shootin’ through the door.”

This didn’t discourage the Goat Man. He shook the door some more, and Grandma, in spite of her threat, did not start blasting through the door.

Finally the door ceased to shake. I got a glimpse of him as he passed the window. A heartbeat later I turned to a sound behind me. The second window was without a glass. There was only a yellow oilcloth pulled over it. A dark hand with long broken nails worked its way through, past the oilcloth, moved about as if trying to get a hold by which to pull himself inside. Grandma stepped forward and whacked the hand with the gun barrel.

There was a howl. The hand leaped away and was gone. We listened for a while. Nothing. Grandma eased over to the window, pulled back the oilcloth. Wet wind whipped inside and chilled the room. Grandma cautiously leaned against the wall and looked out the window. She went to the other side of the oilcloth, lifted it again, looked out that way, and hopped back with a scream.

“Damn!”

She had hold of her chest as she backed toward the table.

“He was out there. Soon as I looked he ran away.”

“The Goat Man,” I said.

“I almost believe it,” Grandma said.

“He had horns, didn’t he?”

“He had… He had somethin’.”

Grandma pulled up a chair and we both sat at the table, the little revolver lying in the center next to the frame with the pictures in it.

I suppose it was an hour later when the hailstorm stopped, and a little later after that when the rain slowed and the sky lightened.

“It could have been Root,” Grandma said.

“With horns on his head?”

Grandma didn’t respond to that. We waited a while longer, then, carefully, Grandma had me lift the bolt on the front door and open it. She stood with the pistol ready.

The Goat Man didn’t jump in on us. We both breathed a sigh of relief. Grandma got her box, and we went out of there, back into the rain. The rain was softer now and the sky was much lighter. The air smelled fresh, like a baby’s first breath. The bottoms themselves were beautiful. The trees lush, the leaves heavy with rain, the blackberry vines twisting and tangling, sheltering rabbits and snakes. Even the poison ivy winding around the oak trees seemed beautiful and green and almost something you wanted to touch.

But like the poison ivy, looks could be deceptive. Under all the beauty, the bottoms held dark things, and I tell you true, I felt greatly relieved when we reached the Preacher’s Road.

We stopped at the car, tried it another time, but no deal. It was stuck and proud of it.

There was nothing to do but walk home. The rain quit and the sunlight turned hot. It was very muddy. My shoes and pants bottoms were caked with it. So were Grandma’s shoes and the hem of her dress.

“Next time I’m wearin’ pants,” she said.

And she meant it. It was just the sort of thing she’d do and it would start a scandal. Back then, the idea of a female, unless they were a kid like Tom or some movie actress, wearing pants wasn’t even considered.

When we finally walked onto the porch the sun was starting to slip on the other side of high center. Mama opened the door. She was beside herself.

“Are you okay?” she said. “Where you been?”

“We run off the road,” Grandma said.

“You shouldn’t have walked all that far, Mama. How’s your heart?”

“Fine. I ain’t an invalid, you know.”

Both us changed clothes while Mama fixed us something to eat, a couple of rewarmed biscuits and some salt pork. Grandma even told Mama part of the truth. She said we had gone for a ride and ended up sliding off the road and staying in Mose’s old shack. She didn’t mention we had gone to Pearl Creek, that we had seen Root, and his root. She didn’t mention the Goat Man.