Joe Lansdale - Bad Chili

When all four spares were on, Jim Bob put the flats in the trunk along with the jack and drove us out of there. I couldn’t hold out any longer. The pain was too much. The activity had made it worse. I passed out on the car seat.

When I awoke, Jim Bob had my feet and Leonard had my arms. I looked up at Leonard. He said, “Take it easy, brother. You all right now.”

“Funny,” I said. “I don’t feel all right.”

I closed my eyes and they carried me away and put me on a cloud and the cloud was comfortable, except for a fire built between my legs, but I couldn’t move to get away from the fire; no matter how hard I tried it followed me, and finally I slept, fire or no fire, and in my dream heads kept exploding, and two rabid squirrels, one with a pocked face, the other one black with a shaved head, bit me repeated on the balls, while another squirrel, very plump with oversized feet and a beard and devil’s horns, turned a crank on a battery that threw sparks.

When I awoke it was early morning, still dark. There were strands of light in the darkness outside, but the strands seemed to be suffering against the night, as if blackness had decided to push the light back and hold it down until it stopped breathing.

And maybe it just seemed that way because I had witnessed two men killed and hadn’t had any breakfast and my balls felt as if someone had borrowed them during the night for a game of Ping-Pong and had put them back in reverse.

I went into Leonard’s kitchen, saw Jim Bob sitting at the table with Leonard. They were drinking beer. Jim Bob had his hat cocked back on his head, his legs resting on a chair.

“Breakfast of champions,” I said.

“There you have it,” Jim Bob said. “Pour these suds on a bowl of cornflakes, you get all the vitamins you need for a day.”

I got a glass and the milk jug out of the fridge and sat at the table. I poured milk in my glass. Even doing that made my balls hurt.

Leonard said, “Jim Bob here’s been tellin’ me about last night. Just started telling me some other stuff. Actually, now that I think about it, I been tellin’ him stuff, and I don’t know why.”

“I’m charmin’,” Jim Bob said.

“Yeah, and I could be fuckin’ up, talkin’ like that,” Leonard said. “I don’t even know you.”

Jim Bob grinned. “Like I said. I’m charmin’.”

“You saved my man’s life, here,” Leonard said. “That gives you some points. But it don’t give you the game. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“I think I’m pickin’ up the important parts,” Jim Bob said.

“Way I see it,” I said, “I could use lots of explanation. And let me throw in a tip, Jim Bob. Don’t try and follow people in a yellow Pontiac. It’s conspicuous.”

“Hell,” Jim Bob said. “I know that. I wasn’t all that worried you saw me or not. Not later on. I followed you lots you didn’t see me, yellow Pontiac or not. Actually, my preferred toolin’ vehicle is a red fifties Cadillac I call the Red Bitch, but right now it’s in the shop. Or to be more exact, it’s being rebuilt from the tires up. I fucked that baby up big-time. Ran it into a brick wall tryin’ to run over a sonofabitch tried to kill me.”

“You’re quick to take people out, aren’t you?” I said.

“Wooo,” Jim Bob said. “Now that he’s at the house all safe and sound with his balls in his drawers, he don’t want to like no killin’s. Let me tell you something, Collins. Wasn’t for me, you’d have charcoal briquets for nuts right now. You think I could have gone in there last night and them boys would have just challenged me to a paper-rock-scissors contest?”

“Ole Hap here,” Leonard said, “he swats a fly, he’s gonna brood on it for a couple days, maybe put out a little sugar on a dog turd for the relatives.”

“I’m just saying two men are dead. I’m not saying I’m against you saving my life or protecting your own. It had to be done, but I’m not proud of the fact.”

“Hell, I’m proud,” Jim Bob said. “Only thing I regret about drizzly shits like that is I can’t kill them three or four times apiece.”

“How do you know about us?” I asked.

“He’s a private detective,” Leonard said. “He also knows Charlie.”

“That certainly helps with the detective work, doesn’t it?” I said.

“That’s a fact,” Jim Bob said. “But I done told Leonard some of this stuff.”

“How about you go over it a little more?” I said.

Jim Bob upended his beer. “You got any more of this piss?”

“Fridge,” Leonard said.

Jim Bob got up, found himself a beer, sat down. He twisted off the top and took a deep jolt. He sounded like a pig sucking on a nursing bottle.

When he had slogged about half the beer down, he sat the bottle on the table, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, said, “I reckon I can give you the short sporty version.”

“I get the feeling nothing you say is going to be short,” I said.

Jim Bob grinned at me. “You got a point there. I won’t kid you, I like to hear myself talk, ’cause I’m so goddamn interestin’.”

“Then make me interested,” I said.

“Whoa, goddamn it, hold off,” Jim Bob said. “Incoming.”

Jim Bob lifted his hip and let a fart fly.

“I been saving that one,” he said.

“It was nice of you to share it with us,” Leonard said.

“Yeah, well, sniff deep and you can have a Mexican dinner secondhand,” Jim Bob said.

“Don’t you get a little tired working so hard to be folksy?” I said.

“Naw,” Jim Bob said. “I figure it’s kind of an edge. People don’t know what you’re really thinking. They think you’re just a shallow good ole boy.”

“But you aren’t?” I said.

Jim Bob gave me a dazzling smile. “Naw, Collins, I ain’t. But you can believe what you want.”

“Jim Bob’s here because of a kid named Custer Stevens,” Leonard said.

“That’s right,” Jim Bob said. “His parents live in Houston. I have my office over in Pasadena, Texas. Or I call it an office. It’s a little pig farm I own. These days you got to shoot the bad guys and raise your own meat, ’cause the pay for private detective work stinks.”

“You’re drifting again,” I said.

“So I am,” Jim Bob said. “Well, this Stevens, his boy come down here to go to the university. Damnedest thing was they sent him here to get him out of the big city, thought he’d be nice and safe here. Neither one of ’em knew Custer liked to suck dicks. Anyway, Stevens had a chum down here named Richard Dane. Few years back I did some work for ole Dane, and Dane recommended me to Stevens.”

“You get around, don’t you?” I said.

“I certainly do,” Jim Bob said. “There ain’t hardly a town in East Texas I ain’t worked in one way or another. There’s people all over the place got problems, and I’m a problem solver.”

“You left out what this Dane recommended you to do,” Leonard said.

“Well, this boy, Custer, he come down here and got in with boys liked to do the brown-eye express, and pretty soon he’s hanging out in the park shoppin’ for goober. He meets a guy, and this guy takes him into the middle of the park, then a bunch of guys jump out, beat him up, knock Custer’s teeth out, make him do a circle suck and a goober jerk for about fifteen minutes.”

“And they put it on film,” I said.

“Exactly. Custer decides to phone his parents about the fact he’s a Hershey highway kinda guy, tells them what happened. They get all bent out of shape about his sexual preference, but when they drive down to see him, see the beatin’ he’s took, hear about the video, they forget all that shit and do the right thing. They go to the police. They talk to the chief. He gives ’em a line of shit, but they can tell pretty quick-like he don’t give a fuck about a fag and they get vibes he thinks the whole thing serves the boy right.