Joe Lansdale: The Bottoms

“You ought to know better than to stay out this late. And scaring Tom with stories about seeing a body.”

“I wasn’t all that scared,” Tom said.

“Hush, Tom,” Mama said.

“I wasn’t.”

“I said hush.”

“It ain’t a story, Mama,” I said.

I told her about it, making it brief.

When I finished, she asked, “Where’s your Daddy?”

“He took Toby out to the barn. Toby’s back is broken.”

“I heard. I’m real sorry.”

I listened for the blast of the shotgun, but after fifteen minutes it still hadn’t come. Then I heard Daddy coming down from the barn, and pretty soon he stepped out of the shadows, onto the porch and into the lantern light. He was carrying the shotgun, smoking his pipe.

“I don’t figure he needs killin’,” Daddy said. I felt my heart lighten, and I looked at Tom, who was peeking under Mama’s arm as Mama scrubbed her head with lye soap. “He could move his back legs a little, lift his tail. You might be right, Harry. He might be better. Besides, I wasn’t any better doin’ what ought to be done than you, son. He takes a turn for the worse, stays the same, well… In the meantime, he’s yours and Tom’s responsibility. Feed and water him, and you’ll need to manage him to do his business somehow.”

“Yes sir,” I said. “Thanks, Daddy.”

“I fixed him up a place in the barn.”

Daddy sat down on the porch swing with the shotgun cradled in his lap. “You say the woman was colored?”

“Yes sir.”

Daddy sighed. “That’s gonna make it some difficult,” he said.

Next morning just as it grew light, I led Daddy to the Swinging Bridge. I didn’t want to cross the bridge again. I pointed out from the bank the spot across and down the river where the body could be found.

“All right,” Daddy said. “I’ll manage from here. You go home. Better yet, get into town and open up the barbershop. Cecil will be wondering where I am.”

I went home by the slightly long way, not frightened of the Goat Man during the day, feeling, in fact, somewhat brave. Hadn’t I encountered him and lived?

I went by Old Mose’s shack, but I didn’t stop in to visit. He was sitting on the bank of the river in his dry-docked boat wearing a straw hat that was starting to unravel. He was whittling a stick. I called out, “Mr. Mose.” He turned his face toward me and waved.

I had no idea how old Mose was, but I knew he was ancient. His red-black skin was wrinkled like a raisin and most of his teeth were gone. His eyes were red-streaked from strain and cigarette smoke. He was always smoking cigarettes, mostly the kind he made from rolling paper and corn silk. They burned up fast and another had to be rolled almost as fast as the first was lit. Mose used to take me fishing, and Daddy said that when he was a boy Mose had taught him to fish.

I went along the bank of the river, stopping long enough to poke a dead possum with a stick so as to stir the ants on it, then I hurried on to our place.

I went out to the barn to check on Toby. He was crawling around on his belly, wiggling his back legs some. I gave him a pat, carried him to the house, and left Tom with the duty to look after him being fed and watered, then I got the barbershop key, saddled up Sally Redback, and rode her the five miles into town.

Marvel Creek wasn’t much of a town really, not that it’s anything now, but back then it was mostly two streets. Main and West. West had a row of houses. Main had the general store, courthouse, post office, doctor’s office, the barbershop my Daddy owned, a drugstore with a nice soda fountain, a newspaper office, and that was about it. There were potholes on Main Street, and there was limited electricity in the courthouse, doctor’s office, drugstore, and general store.

Another staple of Marvel Creek was a band of roving hogs that belonged to Old Man Crittendon.

The hogs were tolerated most of the time, but once a big one got after Mrs. Owens and chased her down West all the way into her house. Being how she was a little on the fat side, the general talk of the men around town – who didn’t care much for Mrs. Owens because she was a Yankee and apt to remind folks constantly that the North won the war – named this momentous event the Race of Two Hogs.

Anyway, Mrs. Owens’s husband, Jason, who wore a beard and dressed in stiff clothes, shot the hog on his front porch with a shotgun, but not before he blew off the porch steps, knocked down a support post, and dropped the roof on the hog and himself. The hog recovered, Mr. Owens didn’t.

Mr. Owens was missed, and Old Man Crittendon missed his hog, but Mrs. Owens, who moved back up North with the rest of the Yankees, was not. Mr. Crittendon made a special effort to keep the hogs home for a week or two, but soon they were loose again, roaming about, getting yelled at and chased off by rock-tossing pedestrians. The hogs accepted this, and had perfected a kind of sideways jump upon hearing anything that might be a missile whizzing in their direction.

Our barbershop was a little one-room white building built under a couple of oaks. It was big enough for one real barber chair, and a regular chair with a cushion on the seat and a cushion fastened to the back. Daddy cut hair out of the barber chair, and Cecil used the other.

During the summer the door was open, and there was just a screen door between you and the flies. The flies liked to gather on the screen, which was the only barrier between you and them. Daddy preferred the main door open. The reason for this was simple. It was hot and the wind came through and cooled you some. Though that time of year the wind was often hot. It’s the kind of weather where you learn to move as little as possible, seek shade, and stay low to the ground.

Cecil was sitting on the steps reading the weekly newspaper when I arrived. There wasn’t any set time for opening the barbershop, but usually Daddy opened it around nine. It was most likely later than that when I showed up.

Cecil looked up, said, “Where’s your Daddy?”

I tied Sally to one of the oaks, went over to unlock the door, and as I did, I gave Cecil a bit of a rundown, letting him know what Daddy was doing.

Cecil listened, shook his head, made a clucking noise with his tongue, then we were inside.

I loved the aroma of the shop. It smelled of alcohol, disinfectants, and hair oils. The bottles were in a row on a shelf behind the barber chair, and the liquid in them was in different colors. Red and yellow and a blue one that smelled faintly of coconut. When the sunlight shone through and hit the bottles, it lit them up like the jewels from King Solomon’s mines.

There was a long bench along the wall near the door and a table with a stack of magazines with bright covers. Most of the magazines were detective stories. I read them whenever I got a chance, and sometimes Daddy brought the worn ones home.

When there weren’t any customers, Cecil read them too, sitting on the bench with a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth, looking like one of the characters out of the magazines. Hardboiled, careless, fearless.

Cecil was a big man, and from what I heard around town and indirectly from Daddy, ladies found him good-looking. He had a well-tended shock of reddish hair, bright eyes, and a nice face with slightly hooded eyes. He had come to Marvel Creek not too long ago, a barber looking for work. Daddy, realizing he might have competition, put him in the extra chair and gave him a percentage.

Daddy had since halfway regretted it. It wasn’t that Cecil wasn’t a good worker, nor was it Daddy didn’t like him. It was the fact Cecil was too good. Daddy had learned his barbering by hit or miss, but Cecil had actually had training and had some kind of certificate that said so. Daddy let him pin it to the wall next to the mirror.