Joe Lansdale: The Bottoms

After the stories we took turns going to the outhouse, Tom having Grandma walk out with her, and me wanting her to walk with me, but being too proud to ask. I did my business quickly, in the dark, in the stink, an owl hooting somewhere, a Sears and Roebuck catalogue clutched in my hand.

Finally, we washed up, said our good nights, and went to bed.

As I lay on my pallet that night, I decided to slide over and put my ear to the wall. I hadn’t done that in some time, but this night I wanted to hear my Mama’s and Daddy’s voices; I wanted to feel that they were once again connected, and that all was right with the world.

I listened for a while, and they talked of this and that, then they begin to talk softer and I heard Mama say: “The children will hear, honey. These walls are paper-thin.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“Of course. Sure.”

“The walls are always paper-thin.”

“You’re not always like you are tonight. You know how you are when you’re like this.”

“How am I?”

Mama laughed. “Loud.”

“Listen, honey. It’s been a while since I been right… You know… And really, you know, I need to. Don’t you want to?”

“Sure.”

“I want to be loud. What say we take the car down the road a piece? I know a spot.”

“Jacob. What if someone came along?”

“I know a spot they won’t come along.”

“Well, we don’t have to do that. We can do it here. We’ll just have to be quiet.”

“I don’t want to be quiet. And even if I did, it’s a great night. I’m not sleepy.”

“What about the children?”

“It’s just down the road, hon. Grandma’s here with them. It’ll be fun.”

“All right… All right. Why not?”

Thunder rumbled. I heard Mama say, “Oh, Jacob. Maybe that’s a warnin’. You know, we ain’t supposed to.”

“Be fruitful and multiply.”

“I don’t think multiplying is what we need.”

I heard Daddy laugh, and Mama giggled.

I lay there wondering what in the world had gotten into my parents. Their room went silent, and not long after I heard the car start up, and glide away down the road.

Where could they be going?

And why?

It was really some years later before I realized what was going on. I had begun to learn about sex, of course, but I wasn’t so well versed in it that I understood what was going on between grown-ups, especially my own parents. I just couldn’t imagine that, them making love. I suppose the main reason they drove off that night was that the idea of doing something a little different, making love in a car appealed to them. That way, for a moment they were just two lovers enjoying each other’s bodies in a romantic setting.

I contemplated it for a time, then nodded off, the wind turning from warm to cool by the touch of oncoming rain.

Some time later I was awakened by Toby barking, but it didn’t last and I went back to sleep. After that, I heard a tapping sound. It was as if some bird were pecking corn from a hard surface. I gradually opened my eyes and turned in my bed and saw a figure through the screen door. It was just standing there, looking in.

Though it was cool, the storm was still in the distance, and there was no cloud cover, and the moon was bright. In that moment of awakening, in the glow of the moonlight, I realized there was a huge hole cut in the screen and that the latch had been undone.

It was then that sleep wore away completely and I realized it wasn’t a dream. I sat bolt upright on my pallet, looking at the shape beyond the screen.

It was dark with horns on its head, and one hand was tapping on the screen’s frame with long fingernails. The Goat Man was making a kind of grunting sound.

“Go away!” I said.

But the shape remained and its gruntings changed to whimpers. The wind blew, and the shape seemed to blow with it, coast to the right of the screened porch and out of sight.

I jerked my head toward Tom’s pallet, and saw she was gone.

I got up quickly and ran over to the screen, looked at the hole that had been cut in it. I pushed the screen open, stepped out on the back steps.

Out by the woods I could see the Goat Man. He lifted his hand and summoned me.

I hesitated. I ran to Mama and Daddy’s room, but they were gone. I dimly remembered before dropping off to sleep they had driven off in the car, for God knows what.

I opened the door into Grandma’s room. “Grandma!”

She sat upright as if jerked up on a string. “What in hell?”

“The Goat Man, he got Tom.”

Grandma tossed back the covers and rolled out of bed. She had on her nightgown and her long hair fell well below her shoulders, framing her face like a helmet.

She ran out on the porch. She saw the empty pallet, the cut-open screen.

“Get your Daddy,” she said.

“He and Mama ain’t here.”

“What?”

“They went off in the car.”

Grandma was considering that, trying to put it together. I said, “Look Grandma, out by the woods.”

The Goat Man was still there.

“Keep an eye on ’im. I’m grabbin’ my shotgun and my shoes.”

Moments later Grandma reappeared with her shotgun, her shoes on her feet. I had slipped into my overalls and pushed my feet in my shoes while I was waiting. The Goat Man had not moved. He was waving us on.

“The sonofabitch is taunting us,” Grandma said.

“Yeah, but where’s Tom?” I said.

I could see Grandma’s face drop, and there in the moonlight, netted by the shadow of the screen, she suddenly looked ancient, almost hag-like.

“Come on,” she said.

She pushed open the screen door with the stock of the rifle, started racing toward the Goat Man. She moved very fast. The wind caught at her white gown and flicked it about her and the moon danced blue beams off the barrel of the shotgun. She looked like a wraith burst loose from hell.

I rushed after Grandma, and found it hard to keep up. The Goat Man ducked into the shadows, silent as thought.

As I ran, I began calling for Tom, and Grandma picked up on it and started doing the same, but Tom didn’t answer. I tripped and went down. When I rose to my knees I saw that I had tripped over Toby. He lay still on the ground, just inside the woods. I picked him up. His head rolled limp to one side. He whimpered softly, his back legs kicked desperately. Blood leaked from his head where he had been whacked.

After all he had been through he had had his head battered, and was probably dying. He had barked earlier, to warn me about the Goat Man, and I hadn’t listened. I had rolled over and gone to sleep, and the Goat Man had come for Tom. Now Toby was injured and dying and Tom was missing, and Mama and Daddy had gone off somewhere in the car, and the Goat Man was no longer in sight.

And for that matter, neither was Grandma.

I didn’t want to leave him to bleed and die, but I had to help Grandma find the Goat Man and Tom. I put Toby down easy, pushed back the tears, ran blindly into the woods, down the narrow path Grandma had taken in her pursuit of the Goat Man. I fully expected at any moment to fall over Grandma’s or Tom’s body, but that didn’t happen. I finally began to catch up with Grandma. She wasn’t moving so fast now. She was limping, breathing hard. Her nightgown had been ripped by limbs, and so had her hair. She looked absolutely crazed.

“Hon, you got to follow,” she said. “I can’t go another step… I got to sit and rest… I ain’t as tough as I thought. He went through them brambles there. You got to hurry… Take the shotgun.”

“I don’t want to leave you here.”

“You got to follow him, find Tom. You got the gun. He ain’t got none, but I seen he’s got a knife. A big’n, strapped to his side. You make him tell where Tom is, hear? Oh, Jesus, I feel like I’m gonna die. My heart’s actin’ up. Go… go, Harry.”