Joe Lansdale: Devil Red

“You pay for it, I’ll buy it,” I said, taking a place at the table. “So, what are you doing up at three in the morning eating my food and drinking my milk, and for all I know wearing my underwear and using my downstairs toothbrush? I knew I should have got that key back. I forgot all about it.”

“You want a sandwich?”

“Yeah. There’s some chips in the cabinet.”

“Left side?”

“Yep.”

Leonard got the chips down and another plate and made me a tuna sandwich with cheese, light on the mayonnaise, just the way I like it. He made his with mayonnaise and mustard, got the jug of milk out of the fridge, put it on the table and then the sandwiches. He got a diet cola out for me and sat down.

I said, “Just for the record, you are the only one in the universe that has mustard and mayonnaise on tuna, and you don’t drink milk with a tuna fish sandwich. Starving people all over the world wouldn’t eat mustard on tuna.”

“I like milk and mustard on tuna.”

“I’m just saying that makes you an alien and universally wrong and you’re keeping me up.”

He chewed carefully. “I figured since I couldn’t sleep you shouldn’t, so I came over. Your car, the hood was steaming from the rain. You went out recently. So my guess is you haven’t been sleeping so good either.”

“Is that really your business?”

“Of course.”

I sighed and put down my sandwich. “You remember that dead cat by Mrs. Johnson’s house?”

“Yeah.”

“I buried it.”

“You went out in the rain and buried a dead cat? Anyone see you do it?”

“Don’t know, and don’t care.”

Leonard nodded. “Cookie?” he said, pushing the cookie bag toward me.

I took a vanilla cookie from the bag. Leonard moved the bag to his side of the table, and got up and removed a Dr Pepper bottle from the fridge, sat back down, and twisted off the cap. He took a long swig. “Man,” he said. “These are the good ones.”

“Right from the warehouse where the originals were made,” I said.

“You are the man. Have I ever told you that, Hap? You are the man?”

“Whenever I have something you want me to keep having around, yes, you have told me that.”

“Like Dr Pepper?”

“Like that.”

“And vanilla cookies.”

“Yes.”

“Then that whole ‘you are duh man’ bit has power?”

“A little.”

The rain was brutal now. It hit the house hard and the windows rattled. We got ourselves more to drink, turned out the lights, and went into the living room and sat in the dark.

“Isn’t this where we say something like ‘Well, the farmers need the rain?’ ” Leonard said.

“I suppose it is.”

The file Marvin had given me was still lying on the coffee table. I glanced at it. Leonard glanced at it. We both glanced at it. Neither of us picked it up.

“You ain’t been quite yourself for a while, Hap.”

“Nope,” I said. “I haven’t. And you haven’t been all that hot since John has been gone.”

“Guilty as charged. John’s brother is trying to convince him that God can make him straight. His brother says being gay goes against tradition.”

“I don’t always have turkey on Thanksgiving. That’s a tradition. But the world keeps spinning even if I don’t eat turkey.”

“Yep. It’s silly.”

A peal of thunder made the house shake.

“Okay,” I said. “That makes me think God is on the side of the traditionalist.”

Leonard laughed.

Here’s how it had gone down the day before.

At the coffeehouse, Marvin took out his big folder and gave us each a small folder from inside of it. He had asked that the information be prepared, and Mrs. Christopher, with Cason’s help, had done just that.

Marvin said, “Before we open them, let me lay some things out. General information that may or may not be important. Mrs. Christopher is a widow. She has been rich all her life. But not so it shows. She lives simply. Nice home, but nothing flashy. Drives a standard automobile. Inherited money from her husband, who died of a heart attack. She had a nervous breakdown after her son’s death, spent some time in a mental institution. Nothing severe. Just there to be watched and evaluated. She came out a couple months later. As far as the death of her son goes, the police believe this is a done deal. That whoever did it is long gone and there’s no way to find them. Mrs. Christopher obviously doesn’t believe the police know what they’re talking about. She believes it wasn’t what it appears to be.”

“Do you think she’s wrong?” I said.

“I’m open to another view if there’s evidence to suggest it,” Marvin said.

“This Cason Statler,” Leonard said. “He seems to believe her.”

“Yeah,” Marvin said. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“He seems solid enough,” Leonard said.

“You just liked the way he looked,” I said.

“If he’s that pretty, he’s honest, and noble, loyal, and trustworthy,” Leonard said.

“That’s a lot of the Boy Scout oath,” I said.

“He wears tight pants and has broad shoulders and is really nice-looking,” Leonard said, “so, I thought I’d give him some good attributes.”

“I can show you some things in this,” Marvin said, tapping his folder, “that are definitely true. So let’s pretend this is our first day at school, and we’ve got our supplies in front of us, and one of those is a nice folder like this one, and I’m gonna be the teacher, and I’m gonna say, Shut up, and open ’em up.”

We each opened our folder. There was a photo on top.

“Damn,” Leonard said.

The photo had been snapped near a run of water, and at first I couldn’t decide what water it was, and then I realized it was the creek that ran by the university at Camp Rapture, wound its way through a very nice park of pecan trees and oaks, and twisted on through the poorer part of town and went on to somewhere beyond my knowledge.

Brett and I had actually gone over to Camp Rapture once to look at a used car. We ended up buying it. I drove our old car, and she drove the one we bought to that park to have a picnic. Brett knew the place and told me about it. I remembered it well. I even remembered that we had tuna sandwiches with bananas cut up in them, along with crushed potato chips. Something Brett came up with. I thought it was a terrible idea until I ate one.

The park was along the edge of a hiking and jogging trail. The trail was wooded on both sides, and beautiful. There were wide spots with picnic tables, and there were big hickory and pecan trees there. We took a walk along the trail. There was a large Hoss apple tree near the edge of the creek. Its thick limbs twisted in unusual ways. We stopped next to it and kissed. The tree was in the photo.

Near the tree, there was woman lying facedown by the side of the trail, not far from the creek. Her hair was dark as sin and her body was pale as bone and she was amazingly thin. Her ribs stuck against her flesh like the framework of a canoe. Her clothes, what looked like shorts, underwear, a bra, and T-shirt, were heaped nearby. All of her clothes were black. Including the underwear.

“Shot in the back of the head,” Marvin said. “Name’s Mini Marchland. She was on her last outing with Ted Christopher, Mrs. Christopher’s son. Turn your page, class.”

I lifted up the photo and placed it aside. There was another. A man lying dead on the trail with his face turned to the side. The creek was not visible. He was wearing black jogging shoes, jogging pants, and a dark green T-shirt.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“Two years ago,” Marvin said. “The couple had gone jogging, and when their car was found in the park driveway, and no one came to claim it, people went looking. The bodies lay there for half a day maybe.”