Joe Lansdale - Bad Chili

Jim Bob talked about King Arthur for a while, depressing me. Then somehow he and Leonard veered off into politics.

While they generally agreed on issues, I went into the lobby, used the pay phone to call Brett’s house.

She and Clinton had just watched a late-morning talk show.

“This was a rerun about people who stole stuff out of stores to give as wedding gifts,” Brett said. “Whole family. Had ’em on television talkin’ about it, like they’re some kind of celebrities.”

“These days they are.”

“Bunch of white-trash thieves gettin’ their fifteen minutes. And funnier yet, or sadder yet, while they’re on the show, host gets a call from the hotel where these skunks are stayin’, and they’ve taken the towels and sheets and ripped the hair dryer off the wall. They found all the stuff in their luggage backstage, and now they’re in trouble again. I got access to all these channels, and this is the shit on them. It’s scary.”

“You watched it,” I said.

“Clinton made me.”

“Hell, Clinton likes game shows,” I said.

“All right,” she said, “you caught me… How’s things?”

“Right now they aren’t happening. But they will. We have a plan.”

“What?”

“We’re gonna beat up King Arthur and his goons.”

“That’s well thought out.”

“We might even steal his chili recipe.”

“Make him eat it,” she said.

“Say what?”

“You had any of that stuff? I don’t know it could be a whole lot worse to put shit in your mouth.”

“Trust me,” I said. “It would.”

“All right, you win,” she said. “But not by much. You’re kidding about beating King up, aren’t you? Not that I mind, I just don’t know that’ll be such a good idea.”

“I reckon we’ll do what we do when we come to it,” I said.

“It’s good to know I got you fellas setting up a complicated sting,” Brett said.

“Yeah. Must be comforting. Take it easy, baby.”

“You too, hon.”

I rang off, joined Jim Bob and Leonard. They were talking about muzzle velocity in rifles.

I had another cup of coffee, listened till they wore down and we went to Jim Bob’s room.

We watched television and jawed until noon, then headed for King Arthur’s.

Jim Bob drove my truck with the three of us crowded in it. We had Jim Bob’s shiny black twelve-gauge pump on the floorboard. I could smell the gun oil as we drove. I kept pushing my hand against my shirt, so I could feel the. 38 beneath it in my waistband. Leonard was fumbling with the radio, trying to pick up a country station.

I had been in a lot of encounters, more than anyone had a right to believe. I had grown up in a rough town and fought dozens of fights until I graduated high school. Most of them were simple, not life-or-death battles, but a couple or three had been heavy-duty. During the sixties I had grown my hair long, and there was plenty of redneck opposition to that, so I was on the line daily, arguing or fighting with someone.

I had worked a number of blue-collar jobs, and the length of my hair had been an issue. More fights. I didn’t pick fights, and tried diplomacy first, but I was still too quick to use my fists, and though I don’t like to admit it, there was a time when I had enjoyed it. I didn’t lose my temper easy, but once I did, it was savage, and afterwards I felt a strange hollowness that made me feel dirty and inferior to people around me.

Once, late at night, Leonard and I discussed our physical encounters. Not only those that had happened to us together, but individual events. It was a strange moment, a mix of brag and fact, shame and pride, remorse mixed with euphoria.

And here I was again, on my way to what would most likely turn into a confrontation, and perhaps more than a couple of punches. We weren’t carrying our guns to plunk at cans. My stomach boiled. My head throbbed. Yet, at the same time, I felt disconnected from my body; seized by a combination of fear and anticipation.

We parked behind a closed-up fireworks shack down the road from King Arthur’s red clay nightmare, got out of the car and sat on the hood so we could watch when he drove by.

Jim Bob said he knew the car, so his eyes were the ones on the highway. While we waited, he told us some funny stories and some bad jokes, then said, “All right, get in the truck.”

We looked and saw a big silver Lincoln with dark windows cruising down the highway. A moment later we were behind it, hauling as fast as my little pickup would go.

“Driver usually turns here,” Jim Bob said.

Jim Bob was right. The car veered to the right, headed down a blacktop road that I knew would meet Old Pine Road, and finally onto the highway that would lead to King Arthur’s chili works.

Jim Bob gunned the truck and started around. The Lincoln tried to be helpful, pulled hard right, but Jim Bob pulled hard right too. Next thing I knew, he was nosing my truck into the side of the Lincoln. Sparks flew up. Paint flecks flicked by the window.

“Hey,” I said.

Jim Bob paid no attention. He rammed hard with the pickup and the Lincoln began to veer. I realized it was starting to veer near the great oak where Horse Dick and Raul’s bodies had been found.

Irony or accident? I had to remember to ask Jim Bob, provided I didn’t end up with the dashboard in my teeth, the motor sticking out of my chest.

The Lincoln sailed onto the grass beside the road. The driver fought the wheel, missed the tree, but went over the edge of the incline, down the hill, clattered and bumped and slid into the weeds and slid again, this time sideways into the trees at the bottom. The Lincoln hit the trees with a solid whack and a crunch, and the sunlight caught taillight fragments flying into the air.

I could see all this because Jim Bob had driven the pickup after them. He hadn’t let off a bit. We bumped and bopped, striking our heads on the roof, lurching toward the dash, and finally we skidded sideways to a stop just before the hill got really steep and dropped off toward the trees where our road partners had collided with a patch of wilderness.

Jim Bob jerked the door open, grabbed the shotgun, and yelled, “Showtime!”

Leonard and I got out quick. I slid in the grass but managed to keep my footing and get my gun drawn without shooting myself. We hurried down the hill toward the Lincoln.

The driver, a fat man in a black suit, and two other water buffaloes in black suits were staggering out of the car. One of them, the guy from the backseat, had his gun, a nine millimeter, drawn. The car door was open behind him, and I could see King Arthur sitting in the backseat, or at least I assumed it was King Arthur. I had seen his likeness on cans of his chili. Way he was sitting there, you would have thought he was waiting on a bus.

The man with the drawn gun lifted it and Jim Bob fired the shotgun, sprayed dirt in front of the guy.

Jim Bob said, “Mine’s bigger than yours. Toss it!”

The man tossed the gun.

The other two – and one of them was on the far side of the car, having exited from the front passenger side – had their hands in their coats, and Leonard and I pointed our guns at them. Jim Bob said, “You guys lose the hardware before it gets you hurt.”

They looked at one another, eased their weapons out of their coats and dropped them.

Jim Bob said, “You, on the other side there, mosey on around here where I can see you good and make sure you ain’t got a bazooka in your sock.”

The man, who was large with hair so thin and gray on the sides he looked completely bald at first glance, came around slow-like, his teeth, wet from saliva, shining like greased piano keys in the sunlight.