Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

Moment by moment I felt worse. Got so bad Bob had to decide when it was time for me to sleep. He’d come get me from my chair and guide me over to the truck and put me inside to lie down. Randy and Willard had gotten even chummier, and they didn’t have anything to do with us anymore. They took to sleeping under the truck.

Willard had given up his underwear and now went around naked. Randy had tattooed Willard’s buttocks so that it looked as if black dahlias were blooming out of the crack of his ass. When he walked, the flower arrangement wiggled as if moved by the wind.

Black blooms on a white-marble ass. I should have seen it as some kind of omen.

The last time the concession was open, I almost didn’t make it. We were having one of those electrical storms, and it was the wildest ever; blue fuzz-bolts slamming across the sky (what served as our sky anyway), colliding, blowing patterns like neon quilt designs against the blackness.

Bob got me out of my chair, said something to me that I don’t remember, and started leading me. All I recall was that there was lots of light from overhead and I was as crazy as a blind mouse in a paint shaker. I leaned against him and walked, tilted my head up to watch the raging electricity. I remembered my dreams about the B-string gods and thought if they were real, they were pretty worked up this time.

Close as we were to the concession, when we got there, a line had formed, and a long one. There were a lot of naked people. It seemed to be the fashion. Not far up in line was Willard, naked, of course, his knife on a strip of cloth around his neck. His black tattoos were flat and dull in the bad light. He had Randy on his shoulders, and Randy was naked too, except for that silly popcorn container on his head.

Since no one was bathing, it stunk there in line and it was hard to breathe. It made me feel worse than I already felt, and I hadn’t thought that possible. A moment later, when we actually entered the concession and the stink of bodies was intensified, mingled with body heat, it was even more intense. I kept wondering in an absent sort of way if the air in the drive-in was limited, if, like rats under glass, we could use it all up.

“Breathe through your mouth,” Bob said.

I was leaning against him, and he was holding me up. I turned and noticed for the first time that he had a light beard. There was a band of sweat between the brim and the crown of h is hat. All the toothpicks and feathers were gone. H is face was hard and there was something different about his eyes. I wondered idly what I looked like.

The Candy Girl looked worse than ever, her movements were automatic. Her mouth hung open and there was chocolate drool running out of the corners and a spot of it was beaded between her teeth. She slapped the candy onto the counter with ill humor.

The counter boy seemed to be having a hard time getting the hot dogs on the buns, and he kept squirting mustard on the outside of the bread. After dropping his third weenie, he threw the bread and mustard squirter down, walked toward the back. The manager yelled at him, “You’re fired. You hear? That’s it. Fired!”

“That’s good,” said the counter boy. “I won’t have to quit. I was looking for a job when I found this one, so it’s no big deal.” He disappeared into the storage room.

The manager was wild-eyed and his hair looked spiked from having gone greasy and uncombed for so long. His lips were purple, and there was something on his shirt that might have been dried vomit. He was mumbling under his breath about “freeloaders and sorry no-goods.”

Willard was next in line with the manager, who was doling out the popcorn, and when he got his little sack handed to him, he said, “Hell, that ain’t half what you’re supposed to give.”

“Think not?” the manager said.

“No, it ain’t half.”

“That right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Yeah,” Randy said.

“Who asked you, you four-eyed nigger?”

And then the chili hit the fan.

Willard may have lost some pounds off his frame, but unlike me, he still had some stamina. His right hand flicked out and hit the manager in the nose, flicked out again, grabbed the manager by the throat. Willard applied both hands then, and the bag of popcorn went flying. A woman dropped to her knees and scuttled after it, chased the bag across the floor. A man stepped on her hand, hard, and she screamed. A kid grabbed for the bag, but his foot was ahead of his hand, and he accidentally kicked it, and it was like a hockey puck going into play. The line broke, folks went after the bag. It sailed past us, then sailed back our way. No one could quite lay a hand on it until the girl with the poodle cape nabbed it with “I got it, I got it,” but a man behind her slammed a fist into the back of her head and knocked her to the ground. “No you don’t,” he said triumphantly.

The bag and the little girl both were now in play, getting kicked up and down the length of the aisle. The bag burst and pops of corn rolled every which way. People scuttled after them on their hands and knees, shoving what they could grab into their mouths. I wanted that corn too, but I was too weak to let go of Bob.

Meanwhile, back to Willard, who was choking the manager.

Willard had the guy pulled across the counter, and he quit choking him long enough to grab him by the back of the hair and slam his face into the glass display case. The manager’s face went through with a crack of glass and skull, and a shard of glass went through his throat, spraying the candy boxes and wrappers below with blood. The Candy Girl said, “Oh wow.”

Randy, who was still miraculously on Willard’s shoulders, was yelling, “Four-eyed nigger, my ass. That’ll show him, that’ll show him.”

The little girl with the poodle cape had become open season. She was surrounded by people who were kicking her, including her mother, who was screeching, “I told you not to jerk on that leash.”

“Time to shake out of here,” Bob said. He grabbed me and steered me away from the line, headed me toward the door. A fist caught me in the side of the head, and it hurt, but I was already so dizzy and messed up, it didn’t make much difference.

A woman with a nail file tried to stab Bob, and Bob kicked her kneecap with the toe of his boot. She went yipping and hopping along the wall, past the rows of horror-movie posters. She clutched at a strand of black-and-orange confetti strung across the window and pulled it down, along with some paper bats and skulls. Finally she tripped over a foot and fell down. The crowd that had been kicking the little girl moved in mass over to the woman and went at it. I could see the shape of the little girl beneath her dog cape. Her body was the color of the red ribbon in her hair, but the ribbon didn’t flow.

Then I saw Willard. He had his knife out. He was spinning around and around with Randy on his shoulders, slashing out at anyone in reach. For a moment Randy’s eyes caught mine, held recognition, then went savage.

Bob pulled me out of there, outside into the storm.

Bob sat me on the tailgate of the truck and went away. He came back with the shotgun, pushed me inside, pulled up the tailgate and locked it. He sat me over by one of the camper windows, then hunkered down by me. From there we could see the concession and the lightning that was sparking across the sky. The truck rocked against the wind, paper bags and cups fluttered across the lot. It was the strongest wind yet.

People were fleeing out of the concession, jamming in the door. There were fights out front of the place. Lots of biting and kicking.

Bob moved over to the trap that held the spare tire and pulled it up. There was a cardboard box next to the spare. He took it out, opened it. It was full of homemade jerky wrapped in cellophane. I had forgotten about that. Something tried to click together in the back of my mind. but it wouldn’t. All I could do was say “But-”