Joe Lansdale: The Bottoms

Finally Root made a bigger mistake in the eyes of white society than the rape of colored girls. I don’t know where it happened, or the circumstances around it, but he exposed himself to a white woman, and he was done in. Daddy once said he estimated Root had the mind of a five-year-old.

Old Man Nation lived a drunken life and made trouble throughout it. It didn’t catch up with him, though. He lived until he was eighty or more and died in his sleep.

His wife, long run off, was never replaced, and the two boys… Well, I don’t exactly know what came of them. They moved off. I heard tell that one of them died in a fishing accident, but I don’t know that’s the truth, and if it is, I don’t know which one of them it was.

Doc Stephenson, I have no memory of him going. Just one day he wasn’t there, and Dr. Taylor was. When I was twenty-two I became marshal of Marvel Creek. Its first. Before that there had just been a constable for the area, but the place, though never big, had grown and felt it needed its own personal law.

When World War Two started up I enlisted, but they wouldn’t take me. Years earlier, Sally Redback, stung by a hornet one day while I was plowing her, had kicked back in terror, catching me on the side of the cheek, causing damage to my right eye. I recovered with only a small scar, but it affected my vision. It was presumed I wouldn’t be able to shoot a rifle. I tried to explain I could shoot left-handed, but at that point in time they weren’t scrambling for soldiers, so I ended up staying home.

In the course of my marshaling duties, I met a lovely young woman named Eleanor Piggle – no joke. She ended up in Marvel Creek after her folks arrived from California. They had fled the Dust Bowl from Oklahoma and had come to East Texas, having found no Promised Land in California.

Doc Taylor delivered both our children, and pronounced Eleanor dead eleven years ago. Her big sweet heart just gave out.

James, my first boy, grew up to fight in Vietnam. He died there. William, who was a little younger, went to law school and does well. He helps pay for a lot of my care; he moved me to his home in Houston, then when I decided I was too much of a burden, he helped me find a rest home to finish off my days. He didn’t like the idea, but to tell the truth I prefer it.

The family comes to see me twice a week, and more if I want. His wife, Coreen, is like a daughter to me, and my grandchildren are wonderful.

But time is wearing. It takes away the spirit. And though I love my son, his wife, and my grandchildren, I have no desire to lie here day after day with this tube in my shank, waiting on mashed peas and corn, and some awful thing that will pass for meat, all to be handfed to me by a beautiful nurse who reminds me of my long dead wife.

So now I close my eyes with my memories of those times. The bad things that happened aren’t nearly as memorable as the good. When I sleep I find myself in our little house next to the woods and the Sabine River. I can hear the crickets and the frogs and the moon is bright and the night is cool. I’m young and strong, full of piss and vinegar.

Each time I visit now, close my eyes to go there, I hope when I awake I will no longer be of this world, but one where Mama and Daddy, Tom and Grandma, perhaps even Mose and the Goat Man, and of course good old Toby, will be waiting for me.