Joe Lansdale - Bad Chili

“Thanks,” I said.

“Hey, what else can I do for my favorite patient?”

“Let me see…”

“Hap, get out of this bed before day after tomorrow, I’ll kill you.”

“Any news on the squirrel’s head?”

“Other than the fact there are tire marks on it, not much. It’ll be a while before we hear. They got boxes of heads at the lab in Austin. We’ve had several rabid dogs and raccoons since you came into the office. Goddamn woods are full of them this year. It’s epidemic. I’m leavin’.”

“Will you tuck me in before you go?”

Sylvan grunted and left. I closed my eyes, was surprised to discover that so early into the night I was sleepy. I suppose it was the cold, or the medicine I had taken before I left the house. Don’t take cold medicine and drive. I wasn’t driving. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was I was doing. I drifted off.

I came awake and checked my watch about eleven P.M. I was surprised. I felt as if I had been asleep for only moments. I used the bed-lift button, raised my back, turned the TV on again.

The entire television industry hadn’t revamped itself during my nap. Everything that was on the standard channels sucked the big ole donkey dick. I tried for some of the specialty channels. No luck. Didn’t have any. You’d think if you had to eat the food in the hospital, least they could do was get cable.

I turned off the television and sat in the dark. About fifteen minutes later Brett showed up pushing a metal table on wheels. She turned on the light beside my bed. She lifted a brown paper bag off the metal table. She smiled at me. God, I liked that smile.

“Well,” she said. “I heard you ran off.”

“Ssssshhhhhh,” I said. “Doc Sylvan and I like to think of it as a bit of a sabbatical.”

“Since you’re back, I figured you’d be needing this.”

She opened the brown paper bag, took out the copy of Boobs and Butts Charlie had given me, laid it on the nightstand beside my bed.

“One thing I like to see in a man,” she said, “is attention to culture.”

“That’s not really mine.”

“It was in the nightstand drawer here.”

“Yes, but Charlie, a friend of mine, gave it to me.”

“I see. Well, just so you’ll stay occupied, I brought you a little something.”

She reached back into the bag. She brought out a Playboy magazine and a Penthouse. “I thought you might as well move up to the classics. Though I’m afraid both of these have words in them.”

“Actually, Boobs and Butts is very precise. Very modern. They have words. It’s just minimalist. They choose what they have to say wisely and place the words under the photographs.”

“Yes. I read a few of those words. Did you know they misspelled pussy? They used one s.”

“No. I’ll have to drop them a line.”

“Let’s check the vital signs.”

She did the general routine, pronounced me a bit feverish.

“Doctor’s notes say you have a bit of a cold,” she said.

“I think I have more than a bit. In fact, when you’re in the room I think I gain a couple of degrees on the thermometer.”

“Is that a compliment, Hap Collins?”

“I hope so.”

She took a water pitcher from the table, poured me a plastic cup of water, gave me a couple of pills. I swallowed them. She said. “Those have plenty of saltpeter in them.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “In fact, maybe you could arrange for me to have an ongoing prescription.”

“I might be back later,” Brett said. “You’re not asleep, perhaps I can sit by the bed and read you the captions from the Boobs and Butts .”

“I wouldn’t sit too close.”

“Sleep tight, Hap Collins.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Wait. What’s your last name? I never caught it.”

“I never gave it. It’s Sawyer. Brett Sawyer. I’m in the phone book. I don’t have an answering machine. I don’t fuck on the first date, and some men find me forward.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“That I don’t fuck on the first date?”

“That some men find you forward. Hey, I’m gonna be busy some when I get out of here, but you think after that I could give you a call?”

“I’ve done everything but stick my butt in your face,” she said, “so I’ll leave some of the work to you. I’m in the phone book.”

She gave me that dazzling smile and went away. I lay for a while hoping the cold medicine she had given me would put me to sleep quickly and that it really did have saltpeter in it.

It didn’t. I turned off the light and lay there in the dark and looked at my dick making a pup tent of the blanket. I experienced all sorts of unclean thoughts. I certainly hoped Jesus wasn’t in the room with me right then. In fact, I might even have shocked the devil.

After a while the pup tent folded, and I fell asleep. If Brett came back, I never knew it. For the first time in a long time, the hospital let me sleep through the night.

After lunch the next day, Charlie came by. He was wearing a poorly cut brown suit with a light brown shirt and a dark brown tie. He had on tennis shoes, white socks, and his porkpie hat.

“When do you get out of this pit?” he asked.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Then maybe I ought not get you too excited before then.”

“My God, are you fixing to strip?”

“Be the best thing you’ve ever seen, but no. You got to tell Leonard to come in.”

“We been over that,” I said.

“No. You got to have him come in. Way it looks now, he’s in the clear.”

“How’s that?”

“Bikers at the bar. They all called Leonard a mean nigger and numerous names so foul that if I was to air them politically correct liberals would start to fall out the sky clutchin’ their hearts, and the fuckin’ super-conservatives would like it too much.”

“Get on with the meat.”

“They all agree he was too busy running from them, tryin’ to hide, to have killed McNee, who they call Horse.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“That they call him Horse?”

“That he’s called Horse and that his real name is McNee. But what about Leonard?”

“Leonard wouldn’t have had time to whack anybody. It’s not like they’re tryin’ to give him an alibi, it’s just their stories give him one anyway.”

“You wouldn’t pull me, would you? This isn’t some kind of trick?”

“You tell Leonard to come in. He’ll end up owin’ a fine for shootin’ up the place, assault charges, maybe. Might have to buy the Blazing Wheel a new sign. He’ll have to answer a lot of questions, but in the end he won’t have to hide out. We can say he was hiding from the bikers for fear of his life. Say he’s been in the woods all the time… Has he?”

I didn’t say anything.

“All right, have it your way,” Charlie said. “But, way it looks, his head is off the chopping block.”

“I’ll be goddamn.”

“Yeah, me too. You have him at the station no later than tomorrow morning after you get out of here.”

“It’ll be more like after lunch. Hospital has to process me out.”

“So you knew where he was all along?”

“Let’s just say I think I can get in touch with him.”

“Yeah. Right. After lunch tomorrow. No later. Hear?”

It went pretty smooth, all things considered. Leonard didn’t get off scot-free. A court date was set, and it was certain he’d be paying a fine, and he wasn’t entirely out of the woods on being a suspect in the death of Horse Dick, but no one was really trying to push him hard in that direction. Not with the bikers actually giving him an alibi. He got processed and out of the cop shop almost quicker than I got out of the hospital, and he didn’t have to ride in a wheelchair out to the curb like I did.