Joe Lansdale: Devil Red

“I don’t think Fluffy is taking a nap,” Leonard said.

“Nope,” I said.

At her door, Marvin knocked, and after what seemed like time enough for a new species to have developed from a single cell, the door was answered by Mrs. Johnson. She looked like all the sap had been sucked out of her, she was so small and so wrinkled, but there was a hardness in her eyes that showed her life had been full of experience, and some of it might even have been good. She had a swollen right cheek and a cast on her hand.

“Marvin,” she said. “And your boys?”

We were all about the same age, so I found that comment amusing. But I really liked her voice. It was like high cane syrup with a touch of sulfur and a hint of gravel.

“Yes, ma’am,” Marvin said, suddenly about twelve years old. “Me and the boys, we got somethin’ for you.”

Marvin took out his wallet and removed the hundred-dollar bill and gave it to Mrs. Johnson. She took it and looked at it, said, “I ain’t got no change, son. But if you want to go change it, or wait until I can get someone to take it to town-”

“No, ma’am. The fella who stole it, he decided he’d pay a little interest.”

“He did, did he?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Marvin,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You think it’s right I take more than he stole?”

“I think you have a cast and that cost money and a hundred dollars doesn’t cover it.”

“Would you like to come in, sit a spell?”

Marvin said, “No, ma’am, we really can’t. We’ve got some work to do. I don’t think you’re gonna be bothered again. But, you see him around, or he gives you any reason to feel nervous, call us, and we’ll have a talk with him.”

“I always see him around,” she said. “He lives in the area.”

“Yes, ma’am. I know. But… Well, you have any cause to worry, you call me.”

“All right, dear,” she said. “And thank all of you.”

Leonard and I smiled and nodded, and turned away, and just before the door closed, Mrs. Johnson said to me and Leonard, “Did you boys hurt him?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Leonard said.

“So he didn’t like it much?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Did you break anything?”

“Yes, ma’am, I believe we did.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” Leonard said, “I broke his hand, and Hap here broke the other guy’s knee and maybe a rib.”

“I screamed when he broke my hand,” she said. “Did he scream?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Leonard said. “And he whimpered too.”

She grinned. “But you boys didn’t get hurt?”

“No, ma’am,” Leonard said. “We came out fine, though I may have strained my elbow a bit on a downswing.”

“That Thomas sonofabitch had it comin’, breakin’ an old lady’s hand like that,” she said, “and me knowing him all my life. And that Chunk just watchin’.”

We went to eat, and then Marvin took us to a coffee shop and showed us the file. It wasn’t what I expected. After coffee, Marvin took us to our car, and we didn’t say any more about it. Leonard drove me home and went home himself.

At home, I thought about what Marvin had shown us in the folder, what he had explained to us. I put my folder on the coffee table in the living room and left it there and walked around the house for a while, then tried to read and tried to watch television, and finally just sat on the couch and watched it get dark and start to rain in a way that made me feel sleepy and gloomy at the same time.

I didn’t open the folder again, but that didn’t make what was in it leave my head. I thought about it all the time. I was also thinking about that poor dead cat, lying out beside a house where people lived or had lived, and it bothered me they had left it that way.

I went upstairs and stripped down to my shorts and sat by the window. The rain plunked and splattered on the panes so hard I thought they might break. Lightning lit up now and again, and when it did I could see the house next door, appearing to stand behind a stream of bright blue beads, and then the lightning was gone, and it was as if the world had fallen down inside a pit.

I got dressed and went out to the carport and got a shovel from the shed, a rain slicker, an umbrella, and drove over to where the house with the dead cat was.

I got out of the car with my umbrella and shovel, and when I got to where the dead cat lay, I put the umbrella aside. A hard wind was blowing, and when I put it down, the wind rolled it across the yard.

It was maybe midnight and nothing was stirring. I started digging in the yard. I dug a good hole that was long and deep, and then I used the shovel to pry the cat up from the ground. I put it in the hole and carefully covered it and told the cat I was sorry. I got my umbrella and shovel and went back to the car. By the time I put the shovel away I was so wet, rain slicker or not, I was starting to sprout gills.

I still had the stuff Marvin had told us about to deal with. But I didn’t have to think about that poor cat anymore. It was down in the ground, wrapped in the earth, not just some hairy outline lying on the grass, pulverized by sunlight and moonlight and savage rain.

When I got home, I undressed and toweled off and lay on the bed naked. I finally slipped under the covers, listening to the rain, the thunder. It sounded good now, not as forlorn as before, but I couldn’t sleep.

I thought a little more about what Marvin had shown us, and then I thought about Brett, but that made me miss her. So I thought about something that soothed me as a kid. I was a man in a rocket ship, traveling through space, on my way to a brave new world. I was in a container with a mild unseen, odorless gas that was putting me into suspended animation. I would awake just before arrival and guide the ship in. It would be a world full of beautiful plants and weird animals, but there I would be strong. Like John Carter of Mars my Earth muscles would give me incredible strength and abilities on a world where there was lesser gravity. I would end up with a sword and I would kill monsters and get the girl in the end, and she would look like Brett.

Only problem was, that little trick didn’t work this time. I still couldn’t sleep.

I got up and put on a CD of selected doo-wop, but that wasn’t what I needed and I cut it off halfway through. I settled on Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, played them through, and when they were done, I turned off the CD player, settled in under the covers, hoping this time I could sleep.

And then I heard a noise. It was a slight noise, a snicking sound coming from downstairs, and then someone gently closing the front door. I got my gun out of the nightstand drawer, and still naked as birth, eased open the bedroom door. A light went on downstairs. I heard the refrigerator door open.

I eased down, slowly. When I got to the bottom stair, I turned and looked in the kitchen. Leonard, wet and dripping, was sitting at the table. He was eating a sandwich and had a glass of milk beside him. A bag of vanilla cookies was open and on the edge of the table. He looked at me, put his hand over his eyes, said, “For heaven sake. Put some clothes on, Hap. I’m trying to eat here. You could make a vulture throw up. That thing looks like a spoiled turkey neck.”

I went upstairs and put the gun in the drawer and pulled on my pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, slipped into my bunny ear slippers, and went downstairs. Leonard was at the kitchen counter with a loaf of bread and some fixin’s, making a fresh sandwich.

“I see my nudity didn’t put you off eating my deviled ham,” I said.

“Tuna fish,” Leonard said. “And I could suggest a better brand.”