Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

“Maybe you’re thinking about going out there and giving a speech on the unity of mankind?” Bob asked.

“No,” I said. “Guess not.”

“That’s wise. Now take one more piece of meat, chew it slowly, and be a happy animal.”

We sat there for a time, not talking. I was thinking, watching the storm out there, and the people. I didn’t want to watch them fight and kill one another, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them. It was sort of like watching the Dallas Cowboys play when they were bad. You hated looking at it, but you had to see it through.

Physically, I felt better. Not ready to do any hurdles or anything, but it seemed my senses had floated to the top once more. A lot of things I’d seen while lost in the ozone clicked together now, and I could see them in a truer light. The little girl with the cape getting kicked to death, for one. Seemed to me I had wanted to kick her too. I could remember thinking that, but for the life of me couldn’t remember why. Had I really watched her father get shotgunned out of the air and thought it funny? And hadn’t there been something about eating a baby? (Raw as opposed to grilled.)

I thought about the jerky I had eaten and remembered what my father’s friend had said about it, how it was like chewing on a dead woman’s tit. The thought of that and what was happening out there, people eating one another now and then, made me feel weak and dizzy.

Maybe Bob was right. Animals. That’s what we were. No different from the animals except for an opposable thumb and a desire to make popcorn and hit each other over the head with rocks, or whatever instrument was available.

Outside, it looked as if things had calmed down. No one was fighting and there were only gawkers. Standing and looking at the bodies on the ground (there were a few of those) and maybe considering them as steaks, but not quite ready to make the move.

But the calm didn’t last long. A guy came walking up, and he had a revolver in his hand, a. 357 Magnum. He had a big, loud voice and he was using it.

“Can’t do this crap to Merve Kinsman. Merve Kinsman don’t take this off anybody. I come here to get my food, real polite like, and I’ll be damned if a punk without any drawers with a nigger on his back is gonna tell me dip. I don’t take that crap, nosireebob. I’ll blow their heads off, is what I’ll do. Knife or no knife. I’ll not have it, I tell you.”

Merve didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone in particular, but he was turning his head from side to side as he talked, as if those who were still milling about were hanging on his every word.

I looked at the concession itself. There wasn’t any more activity there, and I hadn’t seen Willard or Randy come out. It seemed pretty obvious that they were the “punk without any drawers” and the “nigger.”

Merve Who-Didn’t-Take-That-Off-Anybody stopped outside the concession and waved the revolver and talked to the air some more. “Ain’t nobody gonna talk to my ass like that, you hear. I’ll pull their damn head off and piss an ocean down their throat is what I’m trying to tell you.”

Merve looked at one of the closest bystanders, an aging hippie dressed in old blue jeans and high-top tennis shoes and no shirt. The hippie tried to look casual.

He tried a friendly smile.

“Don’t you be looking at me like that, you weird little fart.” Merve grabbed the hippie and gave him a rapid pistol-whipping about the head and ears and threw him down on the ground. The hippie lay on his side and tried to look dead, but I could see he was blinking. Blood was dribbling down his face. This was a long ways from sixties flower power. I imagined he was trying to figure exactly how he had looked at Merve, so if the situation came up again be could play his cards differently.

Merve pulled open the concession door and put a foot in there quick as a door-to-door salesman. He threw his chest out and stepped inside, saying, “Got some bullets here with your names on them, assholes. Come and get ‘em.”

Then he moved to the right inside the concession, out of view. Patrons who had been hanging around, and still had enough functioning gray matter, sauntered briskly off. A few lay down on the ground like whipped dogs. The aging hippie remained stone-still.

A shot was fired inside the concession.

More patrons scrambled. More briskly this time.

When no more shots followed, the hippie rolled quickly to his right, came to his feet and darted off. He looked to have been taking lessons from the guy Willard had hit with the baseball bat.

The moments moved by slower than dental work, then Merve Kinsman made his appearance. He came out of the concession walking like a drunk trying to look sober. He had Willard’s knife in his right eye. It was buried halfway to the hilt. Merve Kinsman Who-Didn’t-Take-That-Off-Anybody was complaining, though not as loud as before. He was now Merve Kinsman Who-Would-Not-Be-Messed-With, By-God, and he wanted every damn one of us to know it. He said something about hell to pay when he found his gun, then he went face down on the lot, the knife point punching up through the back of his head.

Willard came out then. Randy was still on his shoulders, wearing the popcorn container. Willard had to duck to let Randy through the door. Willard had the. 357. He looked real happy. He smiled. There was blood on his teeth (or maybe chocolate). Maybe he had been hit in the mouth or had bitten somebody. (Or had eaten an Almond Joy.)

“The concession is ours, you sapsuckers,” Willard screamed. “Hear me? Ours!”

Nobody made with an argument. A few people who had been too dull to run shuffled their feet.

Merve Kinsman Who-Didn’t-Take-That-Off-Anybody, alias Merve Kinsman Who-Would-Not-Be-Messed-With, By-God, didn’t come back from the dead to debate the point, and I figured if anybody could, or would, it would be that guy.

Willard stepped forward a couple more steps, waved the. 357 around. Randy beat his chest and let out with an anemic Tarzan yell. Away from the direct light of the concession, shadows falling across them, it was hard to see where one body quit and the other began, especially with Willard covered in those asphalt-black tattoos.

“We’re in charge now,” Randy screamed.

Willard waved the. 357 around some more, turned, ducked back through the concession door and closed it. He pressed his nose against the glass door and looked out. You could only see Randy’s legs. The rest of him was above the door, behind solid wall, that popcorn-cup hat damn near scraping the ceiling, I imagined.

Willard went away; the smudge circle of his nose remained to mark his passing.

“Reckon that concession is theirs,” Bob said, “until someone with more firepower shows up.”

“You got intentions?” I asked.

“Not me, but you can bet someone does.”

The blackness above grew cluttered with electric blue veins, and pretty soon there was more blue than black, and the thunder and the snake-hiss of lightning was tough on the ears, even inside the camper.

Bob got brave enough to open up the back and look out. He said, “Will you look at this?”

I did. The Orbit symbol and the marquee were drawing lightning like decay draws germs. The lightning was hopping through the symbol, kicking out dark blue lights that mingled with the fairy blue and white. The marquee’s red letters looked like bright blood blisters about to pop.

We watched as the electric bolts from the symbol expanded, reached out toward the concession and touched it (like God giving the spark to Adam). The concession glowed blue and white, and those bat and skull symbols in the windows looked almost alive.

“Look at that,” Bob said.

He was referring to the symbol again, or rather what was above it. Sticking out of the black was what looked like a green-black tentacle, though it could have been a trick of the lightning, a dipping rent in the blackness like a tornado tail. Out of the tentacle (I preferred to think of it that way as it went along with my dreams of something up there, something in control) the lightning was flowing faster than ever, zeroing in on the Orbit symbol, jetting from that to the strained marquee. The word “Massacre” exploded in a flutter of glass, fizzled. The rest of it looked ready to go, but held.