Joe Lansdale - Bad Chili

“You’re kiddin’?”

“I am not.”

“You’re sayin’ you’d want me to jack a rooster off into a test tube?”

“Something like that.”

“You really do that?”

“Have you heard of such a thing for bulls? Horses?”

“Well, yeah. That’s bad enough, but you want to offer me a job jacking off chickens? You got to be out of your mind, man.”

“People do it.”

“Not me. I came to see about a night watchman job.”

Waggoner took my application, opened a drawer, and slipped it inside. “I believe that’ll be all the questions I need to ask, Mr. Collins. Something comes up, you fit the qualifications, I’ll give you a call.”

“You’re not going to call me, are you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. That being the case, let me tell you something. I think your fuckin’ chickens are second-rate. I wouldn’t wipe my ass on your chickens, let alone jack one of the sonofabitches off.”

“Good night, Mr. Collins.”

I drove home, sat around in my kitchen with a glass of milk and a Moon Pie, nibbled at it, felt blue. I couldn’t even get a job at the goddamn chicken plant being a night watchman. All they had for me was a position jerking a rooster’s dick. It didn’t get much worse than that.

I looked through my old record albums, my audiotapes, and the handful of CDs I owned. ’Course, I didn’t own a CD player, so I just sort of pretended I could play those if I wanted to.

Finally I found a tape Leonard had given me. It was Junior Brown. Junior Brown played an instrument of his own devising, a cross between a guitar and steel. He sounded like Ernest Tubb singing to music played by Chet Atkins, Jimi Hendrix, and a honkie-tonk drunk.

I listened to that a while. Took a shower. Went to bed. Looked at the ceiling. Squirmed in the covers. Listened to the rain outside. I kept checking my. 38 on the nightstand.

I tried to figure if Jim Bob was right, and this King Arthur was the mastermind. He seemed the most logical, but Big Man hadn’t said he was behind it. He hadn’t asked for videos. He had asked for a video and the book.

I churned all of this around for a while, got up, turned on the box fan, put a chair under the back doorknob to reinforce the lock. I put a chair under the front doorknob. I checked all the windows to make sure they were locked. I wanted them open to let in the cool, wet wind, but I was afraid. I kept visualizing Big Man Mountain slipping through one of the windows, that goddamn battery and crank generator under his arm.

I wished I had a vicious dog. I wished I was at Brett’s place, in bed with her, holding her close. I wished I’d win the lottery. I sort of wished I’d gotten the job at the chicken plant, even if I had to jack off roosters. I wished I was a thousand miles away.

I felt as if I had just closed my eyes, then morning light was in my face and I got up.

It was early yet. Brett was not off work. I decided to dress and drive over to the hospital, catch her as she came out, see if she wanted to go somewhere for breakfast.

The day had cleared, the air was almost sparkly, and the birds were out in force, singing various operas. The streets were shiny-slick with water and there were few cars moving about.

As I drove off the highway and into the parking lot, I saw a cop car. There were medical personnel rushing about. My stomach sank. I parked and leaped out. I started walking very fast toward the sirens, the lights, the commotion. Another cop car whipped into the lot and whirled over there. People were coming out of the hospital, across the way, from houses nearby.

I walked even faster, but now a crowd had sprung up, most of them from the hospital staff. I grabbed a guy by the elbow.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

Another man standing next to him said, “Some guy shotgunned some people in a car. Big guy. He shotgunned them. I talked to a guy saw it happen. The cops got the guy saw it over there, talking to him.”

I pushed through the crowd, got cussed, kept pushing. I made my way to the forefront. I could see Brett’s car. The windshield was blown away. There was glass all over the place. They were lifting a man onto a stretcher. Even from a distance, I could see it was Leon. Big bad Leon. Minus the top of his head.

Oh, Jesus.

They covered him quickly.

On the driver’s side of the car they were lifting someone else out. A woman in a nurse’s uniform. Suddenly I was right there. Looking down on a woman’s body. Her entire face was gone. Hell, her head was practically vaporized.

Shotgunned.

Both of them shotgunned.

I put my hand against a car and held myself up. A cop grabbed my elbow. “Hap,” he said.

I turned. It was Jake, a cop I knew a little. “Did you get the guy did it?” I asked.

Jake shook his head. “No, we got a pretty good description, but we didn’t get him. We will. You all right, man?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, Hap. You know these people?”

“Yeah. I got to go.”

“You’re all right?”

I ignored him.

“I might need to talk to you,” he yelled after me.

I shoved through the crowd and back to my car. I started it up. I drove away from there, nearly ran a half dozen people off the road. I drove over to Leonard’s. He wasn’t there. He’d be at Brett’s, waiting for her to come home. Waiting for me to stop by.

I used my key and got the door open. I went to Leonard’s closet, pulled his twelve-gauge out of there. I got the box of shells off the top shelf. My hands trembled as I pushed them into the loading chamber and put a handful in my front pants pocket.

I had been sleeping while Brett was murdered in the hospital parking lot. Sweet, beautiful, foul-mouthed Brett.

Brett and Leon.

I had been sleeping.

I had been stupid.

How could I think having a watch on her would matter? Not even Leon could handle Big Man Mountain. I could see it now. Mountain had merely waited until Brett got off work; then, as a punishment to me, he had shot her to death. Leon would have tried to stop him, but it didn’t matter. Big Man had shot them both, fast as he could pump a shotgun.

Leonard and Jim Bob had been right. I should have gone savage. I should have gone wild. Had I done that in the first place, gotten rid of Big Man Mountain’s employers, Brett and Leon would still be alive.

I was climbing in my truck with the shotgun when Jim Bob pulled into the drive. That’s right. Nine o’clock, me and him and Leonard were supposed to meet. I’d have to take a rain check.

“Hey, Hap, where you goin’?” Jim Bob yelled.

I didn’t answer. I backed out, drove very fast along the street toward the main highway, and when I reached it I drove even faster, toward King Arthur’s place.

The world grew smaller as I drove, the exterior of the truck becoming nonexistent. I didn’t remember the road at all. Just the world growing smaller, smaller, until it was nothing more than the cab of that truck, then my space on the seat, then the inside of my head. I drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on the shotgun stock, touching it as tenderly as a lonely man might touch his privates in the dark.

Thinking and wondering, how come the horrors happen to me and those I care about? What the hell have I done? Who’s throwing the dice?

Well, this one time, I was going to throw the dice. I was going to throw them right down King Arthur’s throat.

The driveway to King Arthur’s trailers was blocked by a metal gate. I got out of the truck with the shotgun, climbed over the gate, and started walking briskly toward the trailers.

As I neared the trailers, a huge rottweiler appeared. It barked at me once, started to run toward me in that menacing manner dogs have. I lifted the shotgun, shot it in the head. It did a flip, splattered and slid on the red clay and lay there, one back leg flexing.