Joe Lansdale - The Bottoms

“My Daddy would run them off.”

She cackled. “He might at that.” She studied me for a long moment. “You best stay out of them woods, boy. Man do something like that, he ain’t got nothin’ ’gainst hurtin’ chil’ren. You hear me?”

“Why would someone do something like that, Miss Maggie?”

“Ain’t no one but Gawd knows reason ’hind that. I think what we got there is a Travelin’ Man.”

“Travelin’ Man?”

“That’s what they calls a man like that, does them kind of things to womens. Anyways, what my Daddy called ’em.”

“What’s a Traveling Man?”

Miss Maggie eased out of her chair, walked over to the cabinet, took out a little green tin and brought it to the table. She opened the tin, removed a pinch of snuff and poked it between cheek and gum.

I knew she was about to tell me a story. The snuff, the comfortable position, it was her way. It was how she had first told me tales about the tar baby and the big snake of the bottoms that was killed in nineteen and ten. It was said to be a water moccasin forty-five feet long, and when it was split open a child was found inside. When I told my Daddy that one, he just snorted.

Outside a cloud moved over the sun and darkened the greasy windows and the light through the screen door. I watched as the flies regrouped on the screen, lighting slowly, clustering together in a dusky wad, as if they too wanted to hear Miss Maggie’s story; their accumulation made a shadow on the floor and across the table, like a rain cloud.

Off in the distance I heard a wagon clatter, followed by the sound of a car. It was a hot day and even warmer in the shack because of the stove and the tight space. I felt cozy and almost sleepy.

“Dat ole Travelin’ Man, he someone you don’t want no truck with, boy. They’s folks wants to have anything at any ole price. Wants it so bad, they makes ’em a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“With the debil.”

“Uh uh. No one would do that.”

“Would too. They was this colored man named Dandy back in the time the numbers turned to nineteen and ought. It was the year that big ole hur’a’cun blowed Galveston away. I had a sister down there and she was drowned durin’ that.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh. They gathered up all them bodies and burned ’em, boy. I don’t know nothin’ other than she had to have drowned, and if her body got found, then she got burned up. That’s what they had to do, was so many dead’ns. Coloreds. Whites. Womens and chil’ren.”

This was interesting, but I didn’t want her to stray too far away from her story about the Travelin’ Man and Dandy. I said, “What about Dandy?”

“Dandy,” she said. “Well, he loved to play a fiddle, but he weren’t no good at it. He couldn’t make that fiddle talk. He wanted to be like them could, but ’ceptin’ for a tune or two he could play to kinfolks, and them puttin’ up with it, he weren’t no good at all. So you know what he done, Little Man?”

“No ma’am.”

“He got him some whiskey, and he drank him a little of it, then made water in it. You know, pee-peed in it.”

“In the whiskey?”

“That’s what I done said. Just let it go in that bottle till it fill on back up. Put back what he drunk, guess you could say. He put the cap on it and shook it up. You know why he done that?”

“No.”

“ ’Cause they says that’s the way the Old Man likes it. He think a man’s water spices it up.”

“The Old Man?”

“Old Man got other names. Satan. Beezlebubba. The debil. Thing is, you don’t know you call him up you really talkin’ to him or one of dem soldiers he got, but that don’t matter none. Dandy, you see, was tryin’ to become a Travelin’ Man.”

Miss Maggie paused to spit. She had a big cracked cup she kept for the purpose, and now she reached it off the little shelf by the stove behind her and spat snuff juice into it. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, said, “You gonna do this right, thing Dandy wanted to do, you got to gets down in them bottoms where it’s the thickest, and there’s a crossroads.”

“There’s crossroads everywhere, Miss Maggie.”

“Uh huh. But the best place to meet the debil or one of his soldiers is down in the deepest part of them bottoms, on a walkin’ trail that crosses. And you got to be there right when it’s gonna turn both hands up.”

“Both hands up?”

“Hands on the clock, boy. Twelve midnight. You got to have you a good pocket watch keeps the right time. ’Cause you got to be on time. You got to be standin’ right there in the center where the crossroads cross, and you got to be havin’ you that peed-in whiskey with you.”

“That what Dandy did?”

“They say he did. Say he went down in them bottoms with his peed-in whiskey and his fiddle and bow, stood at them crossroads, and sure ’nuff, right when he’s checkin’ the face of his turnip watch with a match, there’s a tap on his shoulder.

“Now he jerks ’round fast, and there’s the debil. He got a big ole pumpkin head and wear him a little black suit with shiny black shoes, and got a big ole smile, and he says to Dandy, noddin’ at that whiskey bottle, ‘’At for me?’ And Dandy, he says, ‘Yeah it is, if’n youse the debil.’ And this pumpkin head, he say, ‘I’m what you might call his lead man, Bubba.’ ”

“Bubba?”

Miss Maggie paused to spit in her cup again. “Uh huh. Bubba. I always figured Bubba was probably Beezlebubba. You gets it. BeezleBUBBA.”

“Oh, yes ma’am… Who’s Beezlebubba?”

“It’s just another name for the debil, Little Man. Like Scratch. It’s probably a Northern name or somethin’. But this here fella, whether he’s really the debil or the debil’s man, I can’t tell you. But whoever he was, he got the power to make the deal. So he takes that peed-in whiskey and drinks him a big jolt, and he say to Dandy, ‘What is it you want?’ and Dandy, he say, ‘I want I can play this here fiddle better’n anyone they is.’ And Bubba tell him, that’s fine, he can do that, but Dandy gonna have to write his mark on a line.”

“His mark?”

“Them can’t write they name, they use they mark.”

“Oh.”

“So Bubba pulls out of his coat this big long paper, which is what them lawyers, who is a lot like the debil, calls a contact.”

“Contact?”

“Yes suh, Little Man. A contact.”

“Oh, a contract.”

“All righty then, then it’s that. But don’t be correctin’ me now. Ain’t polite.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then Bubba, he jerks the fiddle bow out of Dandy’s hand, and it cuts him on the tip of one of his fangers. Then he has Dandy make his mark on the line with the blood on his fanger, and he says, ‘Now here’s your fiddle bow back. You done give me your soul for what I done give to you.’

“That’s good with Dandy, and he goes to play right there, and danged if that ain’t a different bow in his hand than the one jerked from him, and a different fiddle. I mean it’s the same, but it ain’t. You follow me?”

I didn’t entirely, but I said I did.

“So Dandy, he gets to playin’ right there, and it’s the most beautifullest sound you ever done heard. And when he looks up from hittin’ a few notes, Bubba and that blood-marked contact… contract, is done gone.

“Now Dandy a happy man. He got the best fiddle playin’ ’round. And the womens love him. He goes to dances, and them womens all around. He gets give free drinks and lots of folks tell him how good he is. It’s the life for Dandy. Then he goes to this barn dance over’n Big Sandy, and he’s playin’ and people are dancin’, and when he pauses to get him some rest, this stutterin’ fella with a fiddle comes up and asks can he play and sang a bit. A song or two, you see.