Joe Lansdale - Bad Chili

“Always an important point,” I said.

“His family sent me a Christmas card for a few years after I moved away,” Brett said. “All this happened over in Gilmer, and I can’t say I’ve missed the place much or looked back, though I do miss the Yamboree now and then. You know, the big sweet tater celebration they have over there every year?”

“I’ve been to it.”

“What kills me is the main float they make. It’s always this big yam, or sweet tater, but it looks like this big brown turd. I rode on it back when I was in high school. I was the Yamboree Queen one year. I remember I drank some Boone’s Farm apple wine and rode on that turd down Main Street waving at people, got so goddamn tickled I nearly fell off. People thought I was just hysterically happy that I was that year’s turd queen. That’s back when I first was datin’ Earl. He wasn’t so bad then, and I’ve got some good memories, but the best one is the last one, when Earl was running across the yard with his head on fire, just before the neighbor tripped him and put out the blaze with a water hose.”

“Did he beat the flames out with the hose, or did he have the water on?”

Brett laughed. “He had the water on. When I think about that day I get a kind of warm feelin’ inside. Not as warm as Earl’s head got. But warm.”

“I don’t suppose any of your other relationships have ended in tragedy?”

“Don’t worry. Earl’s the only one I ever set on fire, and I haven’t taken up a shovel since, unless it was to plant flowers. It was just one of them things. Enough was enough. I burned up his car too. I was so goddamn angry after he got his head fire put out, I pulled his car into the drive, poured gasoline on it, and set it ablaze. I did that ’cause he treated that car better than me.”

“You certainly had a big day that day.”

“You betcha,” Brett said. “And you know what? I got a friend goin’ through that shit right now. You met Ella, didn’t you?”

“She’s a nurse too?”

“That’s the one,” she said. “She told me she talked to you. Her husband beats her regular, and she won’t leave. I’ve tried to get her to leave, but she won’t, and she ain’t for settin’ his head on fire.”

“Actually, that’s for the best, Brett.”

“I reckon, but she ought to do somethin’.”

“I wish her luck,” I said.

“Luck ain’t gonna have a goddamn thing to do with it,” Brett said.

After dinner I drove Brett back to her place and she made coffee, then dressed for work. While she dressed I sat on the sofa and drank my coffee and looked around the living room. It was neat and simple. She had a row of books, mostly nursing text books and a few bestsellers. A few knickknacks. No shovels or lighter fluid. There were photographs of her two kids. They were probably in their teens in the photos. Handsome kids. The girl looked as if she were going to grow up to resemble her mother. Probably did by now. Except for the scar and the limp. The boy was nice-looking. Probably wowed a lot of women in the aikido class during his discussions of Taoism. I wondered what he could do with a left jab to the nose, a swift kick to the gonads.

Brett came out wearing her nurse duds. “I’m sorry I had to deflate my titties,” she said, “but duty calls.”

“That’s all right. Would you like me to run you to work?”

“No. I got to come home sometime, and I don’t want to be dependent on you. I had a good time, really. I hope you did, even if you didn’t get any nookie.”

“Listen, Brett. You don’t need to keep that up. I like sex. Really. But I like you too. I want to know you better. I’d prefer not to spend a lot of time with you around shovels and lighter fluid, but I do want to know you better. You don’t have to come on so strong.”

“I guess you’re right. But I got to tell you, sweetie, when you been fending for yourself long as I have, you use ever’ tool you got in your toolbox. I guess I bring out the monkey wrench sometimes when a pair of pliers would do.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll see you again if you’ll let me.”

“You bet. And soon.”

“One thing,” I said. “You got any photos of you riding that turd in the Yamboree?”

“Somewhere. Next time we get together I’ll let you see ’em. I even got one of me when I was a baby on a fake bearskin rug I’ll show you.”

“Great. Good night, then.”

“Wait,” she said. “Come here.”

I went to her and she started to kiss me. I said, “I’m on the tail end of a cold.”

“I’ve had colds before,” she said. We kissed. It was very nice. I kissed her again.

“I got to go,” she said.

We went out and she locked the house and we kissed again and I walked her out to her car. She drove away in her Ford and I got in my truck and left her place tasting the lingering sweetness of her on my lips and tongue.

When I got home Leonard’s rented Chevy was in the front yard and I could see the glow of the TV through the windows. Inside, he was sitting in my recliner watching a true-crime show. His face was drawn and his skin looked gray. There was a Jiffy bag package by the chair.

I said, “I thought you wanted to be alone?”

“I did,” Leonard said. “But when I got alone, I decided I didn’t want to be alone. Where you been?”

I told him.

“Glad to hear it. I thought you’d given up dating.”

“So did I,” I said.

“How’d it go?”

“Good. I think.”

Leonard grew silent. I could tell something was wrong, that he was trying to maintain a front of control, so I didn’t throw off his game plan. I let him lead. Eventually, he said, “I have something I’d like to tell you, something I’d like to show you.”

I sat down on the couch and waited. Leonard had his pipe with him, the one he smokes now and then. He packed it carefully because his hands were shaking. He lit it and puffed. He used the remote to turn off the television.

He said, “So I’m sittin’ home alone, thinking, always a dangerous thing for me, and I ask myself, this videotape business, it’s obvious someone is looking for something, and it’s on video. What could it be?”

“And the answer is?”

“I didn’t come up with anything. I asked myself another question. Why would they come to my place to look for the video? That one seemed obvious.”

“Raul,” I said. “We’ve determined that possibility already.”

“That’s right. Raul got a video belongs to someone else, and whoever it belongs to, they go looking for it.”

“So why didn’t they check Horse Dick’s place instead of yours?”

“I thought of that. I called Charlie and said, ‘You know my place was trashed because someone was looking for something. What about Horse Dick’s joint?’ Charlie tells me, yeah, it was wrecked. I tell him about my videos missin’, and we get to talkin’, and he says he was the one inspected Horse’s place and didn’t remember seeing any videotapes there. Didn’t think about it at the time. Wasn’t looking for any. But he recalled a VCR, and now that he thought about it, that didn’t make sense. Could be that way, you know, like Horse Dick only rents videos, but usually where there’s a VCR there’s a videotape or two. You know what else Charlie told me?”

“No.”

Leonard took a deep breath on this one. “This is hard, man. Raul, he didn’t die from hitting that tree. Wasn’t shot either. Charlie, he got back to headquarters after the funeral, and he’s bawlin’ his men out, ones looked over the hill, and they showed him pictures and video, Hap. Pictures of the tree, the hill, and Horse Dick’s body, and all along the woods, and guess what?”