Joe Lansdale: Bad Chili

I figured Hanson came out of it, you might as well plant him in the dirt and hope he grew. Chances were, he awoke, it would be as if he had never been. The world would be new to him. Amazing and beyond his comprehension. If he learned to play a passable game of checkers against himself without cheating and knew better than to shit in the kitchen sink it would be a feat of Olympian proportions.

Charlie was wearing his brown Mike Hammer hat, as I called it. Porkpie, I guess it’s really called, and he had on a blue silk Hawaiian shirt decorated with brightly colored palm trees, parrots, and hula girls. He wore his usual cheap brown suit coat, black plastic Kmart shoes, and his deadpan look. I tell you, there’s nothing better to view from a hospital bed than a Hawaiian shirt flashing out at you from between the lapels of a cheap suit coat, a porkpie resting on top of it all like a rusty bird feeder. He was also carrying a white grease-stained paper bag and another one, brown, minus the grease.

“I hear you had some squirrel trouble,” Charlie said.

“Some,” I said.

“Looks like he gave you hell.”

“Yeah. You oughta see him.”

“We’re checkin’ now to see the squirrel had an accomplice. You know, a spotter from the woods. We hope to make an arrest before the week’s out. A few other squirrels or blue jays talk, a possum comes in with a word, we might have the bastard’s partner by nightfall.”

“Hey, make fun. But this mad-squirrel business, it isn’t a light thing. Let me show you where he bit me. Look at that. There’s four stitches there.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“From a squirrel?”

“No. You got me there… You sound funny.”

“I have a cold.”

Charlie opened one of the bags and pushed it toward me. It contained a hamburger, french fries, and a malt. “I’ve spent a day or two in the hospital,” Charlie said, “so I thought you might want this – unless they’ve suddenly started hiring French chefs.”

“Oh, God,” I said, pulling out my sliding table and placing the food on it. “I never thought I’d look forward to a McDonald’s meal.”

“Stay in here a bit,” Charlie said, “you get so the idea of eatin’ out of trash cans is kind of appealing. By the way, I kept the Spider Man toy comes with it.”

“You’re welcome to it.”

“You say that now, but you see it, you’ll want it.”

“Then don’t let me see it.”

Charlie put the other sack on the bed and took off his hat and hung it on the back of the guest chair.

“What’s in the other bag?” I asked.

“Books. A magazine.”

“Whatcha got?”

He took out a magazine titled Boobs and Butts, tossed it at me.

“Oh, great,” I said.

“What’s the matter? Read that one?”

“Yeah. Right.”

“Well, at least you ain’t sharin’ the room. You can whack off without anyone seein’ you.”

“You can take this back,” I said. “I got enough on my mind without thinking about what I’m not gettin’ and haven’t been gettin’ for a long time.”

“Hey, I’m married and I’m not gettin’ it. Wife still wants me to quit smokin’ before she’ll give me the business, so to speak. I’m tryin’ to quit, but I haven’t beat it yet. I smoke three or four cigs a day now, but she knows. She’s got like this second sense. She smells smoke, her pussy closes up. So when she ain’t lookin’, I read the magazines. Stay in the bathroom a lot. Run the shower. Wife thinks I am one clean sonofabitch, but I’m in there whacking off.”

“Perhaps you should try and develop something more than just a sexual relationship, Charlie. You could meld with her mind, her emotions. Really attempt to understand what makes the both of you human beings. Appreciate her more as a woman, less as a sex object.”

“Yeah, well, that’s all right, but I still want to fuck her.”

“I hear that.”

“You know, I don’t get it. My wife, she’s into like saying the right thing. You know. I’m not supposed to say pussy ’cause it’s degrading. I call her a pussy, I can see that’s degrading. There’s some women I think are cunts, you know. Some guys that are dicks. I mean, you can have a cunt and not be a cunt, and you can have a cunt and be one. But I don’t get Amy’s reasoning. I say I want some pussy, I’m sayin’ I want some lovin’, I’m not calling her a pussy, I’m callin’ her pussy a pussy. And like, you know, that’s as good a slang for what’s down there as dick or cock is for what we got in our drawers. Someone called me a dick, I might get mad, but Amy told me she wanted a little dick, the reading is different, don’t you think?”

“When it comes to women, I don’t know which way to go. So you’re askin’ the wrong boy. I haven’t got anything against women or men in general. I just think some of them are assholes.”

“There you go. You just said assholes. Can you say that, or does that like go on your cosmic record?”

“Reckon it depends on who’s keepin’ score.”

“Yeah, that’s another trip, ain’t it. All this religious business. Christians think you got to do good ’cause you want to go to heaven, but if you do good ’cause you want to do good and don’t believe in that shit, then they figure it’s the slow oven for you anyway. They like a god that’s a bully, makes you want to do good ’cause he’s gonna rough you up. Life is just one big mess after another, ain’t it?”

“It’s funny how sex can make one philosophical, isn’t it, Charlie.”

“I’ll say, and while we’re being philosophical, that magazine you got there, let me tell you, there’s a redhead in there would make you write a hot check and rob a filling station pretty damn quick.”

“Skip the details.” I put the magazine on the bed table. “What are the books?”

Charlie took out a Harlequin romance and put it on top of the magazine.

“You’re kiddin’?”

“Hey, my wife tossed it out. She reads ’em by the handfuls. I don’t have a lot of money, you know. I made do with what I could get my hands on. Millions of readers can’t be wrong. I did nab you this one, however.”

He handed me a paperback western.

“We’ll, one out of three isn’t bad,” I said.

“Got it at a garage sale. There’s a few pages torn out, but it reads pretty good.”

“You see Leonard?”

“Nope. Not in a while. I thought he’d be up here nesting in a chair.”

“Hasn’t even come by. He’s been having boyfriend problems. I figure that has something to do with it.”

“Raul?”

“Yeah.”

“Leonard doesn’t have patience with that boy. Raul is all right.”

“I don’t like him. I get this feeling there isn’t much to him, and what there is to him isn’t much.”

“It’s a friend thing, you know. Hard to understand the girls or boys a friend picks. They all seem wrong. I was the same way with Hanson. Though I got to say, this ex-wife of his, Rachel, he shouldn’t have lost her. She’s all right, way she’s takin’ care of him. And she’s a looker too.”

“I don’t get it, Charlie. They been divorced for years. He throws his head through a windshield, bounces it off a tree, and suddenly she’s puttin’ a pee tube in his shank and feeding him processed green beans.”

“She ain’t feedin’ him shit. He gets his food through a tube. And maybe that ain’t such a bad marriage. She don’t have to put up with his bullshit, nor he with hers. He may be luckier than everybody. He don’t put up with no bullshit at all. And he gets his dick handled more than I do, and I’m awake. But I was talkin’ about you and Leonard. Close as you guys are, I think you’re kinda jealous of the time Raul steals from you and him. It’s almost like a marriage thing without the fuckin’. Well, actually, my marriage seems to be pretty much without the fuckin’. Still, you need a woman, Hap. Even like, you know, the local poke.”