Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

“Communion,” Sam said. He took a tin of sardines out of his rumpled coat, and that made me aware suddenly of what was filling that shabby coat of Mable’s. More sardine tins. “We been sharing these with the congregation,” Sam said. “Folks have been real nice about it too, especially since they know I got the bus rigged up with a bomb, and they mess where they ain’t supposed to be messin’ when we’re away from there, and BLAM!”

“That’s got nothing to do with me… Tell these people to let me go.”

“It’s got everything to do with you. We also drink a little of each other’s blood.”

“Like this,” Mable said, and she put her knee over my ankle to hold me down and produced a penknife from the pocket of her coat. She opened it smoothly and drew it across her palm. A line of blood appeared there and she held her hand up without looking and a man who was standing above her grabbed it and put his mouth to the wound and sucked. He trembled he was so excited. Mable’s tongue worked from one corner of her mouth to the other and her eyes closed.

A man in the crowd began speaking softly. “Yeah, brother, get it, get it, go, go.”

“Oh yes,” Mable said, “Oh yes, yes, yes. Suck, suck, oh God in Heaven, suck, yes, oh yes.”

Then other knives and razors flashed and flesh was opened and mouths were pleased. It sounded like a convention of leeches, or an orgy-or, to be more precise, both.

Sam squatted down close to my face. There was blood on his lips. “You see,” he said, patting my chest. “We made a pact. We wouldn’t let nobody else in. We would convert them if they wanted, but they couldn’t join us, and we’d eliminate competition. It’s a tough thing to do, but the Lord moves in mysterious ways his miracles to perform. .. and food lasts longer this way.”

A man took Mable’s place holding my leg and she inched down to me and held the penknife where I could see it. “And we have to take advantage of any food that comes our way,” she said. “It would be sinful to waste… and we’ve had our eyes on you and your friend for a while.”

“We just didn’t want to get shot,” Sam said. “Your pal never seems to leave his shotgun.”

“But you’re Christians,” I said.

“That we are,” Sam said, “and that should make you feel proud and special. You’ll be with God in Heaven in a short time now. He’ll embrace you and-”

“Then why don’t you go join him,” I said. “You’re holier than me, you should go first.”

Sam smiled. “It isn’t my time.”

“It’s a little thing,” Mable said. “Nothing to it, really. We got to do this thing, and you’ve got to accept it… And this here knife may be small, but it’s sharp. It won’t hurt much. They say the blood goes out of you fast when it’s done right, that you just get terrible sleepy, then it’s all over. I’ve cut many a hog’s throat in my day, and though couldn’t none of them tell me if it was sleepy or not, they seemed to go pretty peaceful, wouldn’t you say, Sam?”

“I would,” Sam said.

“But I’m no hog,” I said.

“Cut the gab,” a man said, and he dropped a rusty looking hubcap beside my head; it clanged, rattled, stopped.

“Turn him,” Sam said.

The two holding my legs let go, and the men who had my arms flipped me onto my knees, pulled my arms back so hard behind my back my shoulder blades met. They pushed me forward so that my face was over the hubcap.

“Won’t none of you waste,” Mable said. “I thought you’d like to know that. We’ll take the blood to drink, then we’ll have us a little ole cookout with the rest of you.”

“Mable can cook like the dickens; don’t matter what it is, she can cook it.”

The greasy-haired girl who had held one of my legs earlier came around and bent down to look me in the face. “I’m gonna love you, sugar. I’m gonna just love you to death. Gonna wrap my lips around you, and chew and chew and chew.”

“Get on with it, for Pete’s sake,” the man who had dropped the hubcap said.

Mable grabbed my hair. “Just think about something pleasant, like good ole turnip greens and black-eyed peas. It’ll be over quick-like.”

I closed my eyes, but I didn’t think of turnip greens and black-eyed peas. I tried to remember how things were before the drive-in, but nothing would come. There was only the dark behind my eyelids, the sound of all those hungry Christians breathing, the smell of their bodies. Mable lifted my head more to expose my neck. I hoped it would be quick and that I would not have to hear my blood draining into the hubcap for very long.

And just when I expected to feel the blade, there was an explosion, a thud in the hubcap and I was warmly wet from chin to forehead.

I thought my throat had been cut and the blood from the wound had sprayed my face, and that simultaneously there had been a loud clap of thunder, though it didn’t sound right, not even for the artificial thunder of the drive-in.

Against my will I opened my eyes, saw lying in the hubcap beneath me a hand, and lying next to it in a little pond of blood was the penknife.

The men had let go of my arms and I was able to rock up on my knees and see Mable. She was still on her knees, but now she was holding her arm in front of her, minus her hand, and watching blood leap from the wound like freshly tapped oil.

Mable looked at me and said, “Oh my.”

A number of the congregation dropped down to try and suck at the stump of her arm, and the girl with the greasy hair began lapping at the blood that had sprayed my face. Her tongue was rough and dry, like a cat’s.

“Who’s next?” a voice called, and I turned to see Bob standing there with the shotgun, a wreath of gunsmoke about his head. With his hair and beard grown long, his sweaty hat drooping, he looked like an old-time desperado. At his feet two men lay holding their heads. He had apparently cleared himself a path into the huddle with the stock of his gun.

“Mess with me,” he said, “and I’ll shoot you just to check the pump action on this baby.”

Mable said, “Sam, Sam, my hand’s done come off. Do you think we can get me an artificial one?”

“They cost too much,” Sam said, and Mable fainted forward on her face. The stump-suckers stayed with her, working on her arm, pushing and shoving each other out of the way, tongues darting and colliding as they pursued the taste of the hot blood.

“Quit that sucking on her,” Bob said. “Get away from there.” He stepped in and gave one of the lappers a quick kick to the seat of the pants. “Spread the hell out.”

They did.

“And you,” he said, giving the greasy-haired girl a kick in the ribs, “you quit licking his face.”

She scrambled away. I sort of hated that. I was beginning to like her.

A guy tried to pull a pistol on Bob, and Bob saw him out of the corner of his eye and gave him the stock of the shotgun to eat. The man went down and the gun slid across the asphalt. Bob looked at the greasy-haired girl and said, “Do me a favor, sugar, hand me that gun. Easy-like.”

She gave it to him without protest and he put it in his belt.

“All right, all other weapons hit the deck,” Bob said, “or I’m gonna start opening up heads.”

Another pistol dropped to the ground. Can openers, knives, clubs, coins in socks. A condom full of marbles.

Bob nodded at the pistol. “I’d like that one too, sugar. Okay?”

The greasy-haired girl gave it to him. He put it in his belt next to the other one. Now he did look like a desperado.