Joe Lansdale - Bad Chili

I’ve never really figured that. You go to the hospital, they check you out, no matter if you’re skipping rope and climbing the walls, they got to take you out in a wheelchair. It’s one of life’s little mysteries, like UFOs and the Loch Ness monster.

The morning after Leonard was set free it was hot and bright, but there was a cool wind with it. We met at his house to clean up the mess there, but finally said to hell with it.

I drove out to my house and he followed in the rented Chevy he was driving. We got cane poles and some fishing goods, walked through the woods to where the creek widened, sat there fishing for perch.

“I just couldn’t face that mess today,” Leonard said. “Besides, it makes me think about Raul.”

“The mess?”

“No. The house, stupid.”

“Any idea about the mess?” I asked.

“I figure it was the bikers. They found out where I lived, went looking for me, didn’t find me, trashed the place. That fits in with you finding the motorcycle tire prints.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know,” I said. “The bikers have been pretty candid about stuff. They didn’t admit to that.”

“They’ve only been candid when they could say what an asshole I was. And you know what, they’re right.”

“I never doubted that. Thing is, that mess bothers me. I think you ought to seriously watch your ass for a while. Those footprints out there don’t belong to the tooth fairy.”

“Yeah, all right,” Leonard said, but he didn’t sound too sincere. “You think Raul’s alive?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t a clue. I got to say this. Seems to me he’d have shown up by now. I’m sure you’re aware with you in the clear he’s considered the prime suspect in the murder of Horse.”

“I figured as much. They’re just replacing me with him. You know I can’t let that stand. Raul couldn’t murder anyone… Shit, Hap. I love that kid. He’s a dip, but I love him.”

We caught a couple of perch, put them in a can of water, sat and talked. Leonard told me about Raul, and how things had gone sour, and how the kid was wilder than he’d realized. It was a pretty standard story. I’d heard it before, but it had been men talking about their women. Love was love, however, and the problems didn’t seem to change much, even if the lover was of the same sex, except there was a lot more fucking. Gay or not, men are men, and men seriously love to fuck, and you can write that down in your little black book, tear out the page, crumple it up, and smoke it.

When Leonard finished telling me his woes, I told him about Brett. Then we talked about Hanson, and how we had to go see him and watch him do his coma.

Next Leonard told me how he had gotten a tick on his balls while staying in the woods. He said he still had it. He couldn’t get it off.

“It’s in a hard-for-me-to-reach place,” he said. “Maybe you could pull it off for me.”

“Not on your life. I’m a pretty good shot, though. I could shoot it off.”

“I’m serious here. This is a problem.”

“Use a match. You light it, blow it out, then stick the hot end against the tick’s butt, and he’ll back out.”

“You’ve done this?”

“No, but I’ve heard about it.”

“You’ve had ticks on your nuts?”

“Yep.”

“But you didn’t try this method?”

“Nope.”

“Why didn’t you?

“Afraid I’d burn my balls.”

“Some help you are. I think you just don’t want to be handlin’ no queer’s balls.”

“I don’t want to be handling anybody’s balls but my own.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll be sorry, I get that tick disease. You’ll wish you’d pinched that tick off.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Way this sonofabitch is swellin’ up, I’m gonna have to put a camp chair beside the bed so my balls and the tick got a place to sleep.”

“Hey, you want, I’ll get your balls and the tick a blanket and a fluffy pillow, but I’m not pulling nothing off your balls.”

As usual, the conversation degenerated from there, finally drifted, and we just sat there silently and fished. The wind stopped and turned hard and hot and the air was difficult to breathe, but still we sat, and finally the heat began to fade, and it was cool again, without the wind, and the air was fresh and the brightness of the day fell down amongst the trees, and the sky turned purple, then black, and the stars came out, big and bright and splendid.

We walked home through the dark with our gear, a can of perch and a flashlight, arrived at my house in time to clean the fish by porch light, fry them up, and have a good supper.

After supper we watched a little TV. Then Leonard left early. I promised to come over the next morning and help him clean. He drove off and I watched something on TV I wasn’t really paying attention to for about an hour, then cut it off, went to bed, and read a science fiction novel for a while.

Next morning, early, I got up and drove to town and bought some sausage and biscuits at the drive-through of a fast-food joint, went over to Leonard’s place.

When he let me in, the house smelled of coffee, and most of the living room had been picked up, and the kitchen porcelain was shiny and the kitchen floor in front of the refrigerator was bright and damp from a recent mopping.

“You’ve been busy,” I said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Couldn’t sleep last night. Stayed up cleaning. Come in the kitchen, just step careful. Floor’s still damp.”

I did that. Put the sack on the table, pulled up a chair. I said, “You pour us some coffee, and I’ll give you a sausage and biscuit.”

“That’s a good-enough deal,” Leonard said. “You know what’s odd? I discovered something missing.”

“Oh?”

“Videotapes. The blank ones, and the ones with movies on them. They’re all gone.”

“You mean someone broke into the house and stole movies?”

“Looks that way,” Leonard said. “I got to figuring, and thought, well, the Gilligan tapes are gone, so it could have been Raul. Maybe he’s the one wrecked the house. You know, pissed at me. Maybe thinks I did Horse Dick in. So he comes here, throws stuff around, and takes his Gilligan tapes. But the thing is, why would he take The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and a bunch of others?”

“They’re good movies?”

“He didn’t think so. Anything that had gunfire in it he was against. I’m not sayin’ my tastes run to Battleship Potemkin, but all of Raul’s taste was in his mouth, and besides for my dick, which spent a goodly amount of time in his mouth, I don’t think he knew good taste.”

“Maybe he stole them because you liked them? A kind of revenge.”

“I thought of that,” Leonard said. “But why did he steal the blank videotapes?”

“So he could tape stuff on them.”

“All right. All that works, but why just the videotapes? There’s music CDs here he liked, and he didn’t take those. He didn’t take anything else I think would have interested him. And this mess doesn’t strike me as vandalism. There’s a lot of things could have been broken for fun, but weren’t. Most of the stuff is just tossed around. What’s broken seems to have been the result of a search. It wasn’t a vandal. I think someone was looking for something, and that doesn’t fit in with Raul. He knew where everything was, so why would he throw stuff around?”

“He was mad at you.”

“Could be. But, I don’t think he took the videos at all.”

“Someone else took the Gilligan tapes?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Man, a crime like that, it shows you what the world is coming to. Fucking crooks are like bottom feeders now. Who the fuck in their right mind would want a tape of Gilligan’s Island, let alone the whole series?”