Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

Odder than the dreams was me wanting to see someone. Meaning not someone from the drive-in. They were on my shit list. But I wanted to see someone out there, someone who could make me feel this was more than a movie set. I think I might have felt better if I’d at least seen some beer cans or Frito wrappers lying out beside the road or thrown up in the trees. It would assure me that humanity was out there, ready to start fucking up anything it could get its hands on. There’s nothing like pristine wilderness to incite in human beings the need to start chopping down trees, tromping grass, killing animals and throwing down beer cans, so I was pretty certain there wasn’t a human being within a hundred miles of us.

Not counting the folks who left the drive-in ahead of us, of course. They hadn’t had time to respond to natural tendencies, and after our ordeal, it was doubtful anyone had a beer can or a wrapper to toss. Everything that could be eaten or drunk had been consumed at the drive-in and the containers and wrappers tossed down there.

So the people ahead of us were forced to fight their instincts to litter, though I figured in time the urge would become too strong, and they’d start throwing their clothes out, or pulling over to the side of the road to bum their spare tires and leave the blackened, rubber-dotted rims to mark their passing.

We drove on for quite a time, and when it was getting near dark, Crier said, “Think we ought to find a place to hole up for the night?”

“I doubt we’re going to come across many motels,” I said.

The sun was going down in what struck me as the north, and I mention this because when we went into the drive-in the highway ran north and south, and when we came out we were heading in what was formerly a northerly direction. But being a creature of habit, and not wishing to give any alien movie-makers the satisfaction of letting on I noticed, I reoriented myself and called the direction in which the sun was falling west.

Besides, you never knew when someone might ask you directions.

Crier found a place off the highway where the jungle cleared out and there was some tall grass that went on for a ways, and he pulled over and parked, came around and helped me out of the truck.

My feet were sore and stiff from the crucifixion and I couldn’t walk, but I could lean a little when propped against the camper.

As our duds had been stripped off us by the mad drive-in crowd, Crier had cut holes in blankets for me, Bob and Sam, and slipped them over our heads to serve as clothes, and I took this moment to lift my stylish wardrobe’s hem and take a whiz.

Crier went around and opened the back of the camper and helped Bob out, and that’s when Crier and I found out about Sam.

“We hadn’t no more than gotten started back there,” Bob said, “when he snorted once, shit on himself and went on to glory. Or wherever assholes like him go. I won’t miss him.”

Bob was sentimental like that.

When Crier got Bob propped up next to me, Bob lifted his blanket and took a leak too. If I had waited a minute or two, we could have gone together.

Crier had gone back to the rear of the camper, and Bob called to him, “I know it’s a bother, and I hate to ask, you having been so nice to us and all, but-”

“Would I clean Sam’s shit out of the back?” Crier said.

“And they say there’s no evidence for ESP,” Bob said.

Crier took Sam by the heels and dragged him bumpity-bumpity out of the camper and onto the ground. Sam hit hard enough to make me wince. Crier pulled him over to the grass and dropped his hold on the old boy’s heels. He peeled Sam’s blanket off and went back to the truck and used it to clean the mess up as best he could. It still wasn’t going to smell like the perfume counter at J.C. Penney’s back there, but it had to beat leaving things the way they were.

Bob began to ease down so he could sit, and I did the same. We managed our legs out in front of us without wincing and moaning too awful much.

Bob looked over at Sam’s body in the grass and made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Hell of a thing, ain’t it Jack? Life’s hard, then you die, then you shit yourself. There’s just no dignity in dying, no matter how you look at it…”

“Might not be any dignity,” I said. “But at least you don’t have to get phone calls from aluminum siding salesmen anymore.”

“Got news for you,” Bob said. “We won’t be getting those anyway, and we’re alive.”

“It’s because we don’t have a phone,” I said. “If we come across a phone, you can bet we’ll be hearing from them.”

Bob called to Crier. “You’re gonna bury the old fart, ain’t you?”

Crier came around from the back of the camper. He was a sight. He was scrawny as a month-old corpse, but didn’t have as nice a complexion. He still had his clothes and shoes, but they seemed to be held together by little more than body odor and hope. His hair was long and shaggy and thinning. His beard looked like a nest. He had the shit-stained blanket in his hand, and he gracelessly tossed it into the grass, an act that gave me some hope. Humanity was once again on the roll.

“You’re kind of pushy, Bob,” Crier said.

“I ain’t saying you have to bury him-”

“That’s big of you.”

“-I’m suggesting it. If I had two good hands and two good feet, I might do it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Let your conscience be your guide.”

Crier said something under his breath, then went to the back of the truck and came out with a tire tool.

“Hey, forget it,” Bob said.

Crier used the tool to pop the hubcap off the rear right tire. He took the cap out to the grass and tossed it down next to Sam. He began pulling the grass and cussing while he did it. It was pretty interesting to watch. Once in a while he’d toss a wad of grass, dirty roots still intact, toward Bob, and it would land near his sore feet or slam into the truck beside him. Bob started moving his head like a nervous anaconda.

Actually, I think Crier could have hit him if he’d wanted to. It wasn’t that far a shot. Instead, he was trying to make Bob nervous, which I could kind of understand. Bob didn’t always bring out the best in a person.

As for me, I tried to sit casual with my punctured biscuit hooks in my lap, looking at the crusty wounds on the backs of my hands where the nails had come out and gone into the wood of my cross.

When Crier had a good patch of grass pulled, he took the hubcap and used it to dig with and his mouth to cuss with. He worked the dirt between his legs like a dog burying a bone.

It was almost solid dark when he finished the grave. It wasn’t much, more of a shallow trench, really. The moon came up in the north, right where the sun had gone down, the place I had decided to call west before, and I had a vision of my real or imagined multiple-eyed, many-tentacled, bladder-shaped aliens pulling levers and pushing buttons and causing gears to creak and crank and start the final descent of the sun and the rise of the moon, which spilled its light into Sam’s final resting place like thin cream.

Crier hooked his hands under Sam’s chin and pulled him over to the trench. Sam’s body rustled through the grass like a snake. Crier rolled him into the hole face first. Sam’s legs stuck out at one end, and his left arm flopped from the grave and lay in a manner that suggested he was about to push up and get out of that hole as soon as he gathered his strength.

“You’re gonna have to dig some more,” Bob said.

Crier turned slowly and looked at Bob. The moonlight on his face made him look like the man most likely not to give an ax. I hoped he knew that Bob’s sentiments were his own and that I was an independent.