Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

After we had talked a while about this and that, Crier said, “I’m one tired sonofabitch, boys. Let’s call it a night.”

Crier got us in the camper and stood at the tailgate. He said, “I’m in no hurry to leave. I like that water. What say we stick around a while? The highway’s out there when we decide to try it again.”

Sounded good to me, and I said so.

“Yeah,” Bob said. “The idea of going off and leaving all that water doesn’t excite me right now. Maybe just because I been thirsty for so long. But yeah, let’s wait a while.”

Crier nodded and went around to the cab to sleep. I lay down on my bedroll, and for the first time since before the big red comet, I felt a stirring of hope. Or maybe I had drunk too much water.

Whatever, it wasn’t so exciting it kept me awake.

Next day Crier drove the truck to the other side of the lake, near the jungle, and that became our home. In spite of the water, we hadn’t planned to stay as long as we did, but one day rolled into the next.

The jungle provided all kinds of fruit, and in defiance of the age of dinosaurs, all manner of recognizable animals from rabbits to squirrels to monkeys to snakes. All of these were good to eat, but in the beginning we left them alone. Not out of any respect for the lesser species, but simply because we couldn’t catch the little bastards and had nothing suitable to kill or trap them with. Also, Bob and I were still crips, and you’ve got to have legs to run critters down.

Crier made a spear by breaking off a long, thin limb in such a way that it left a point. He put fruit rinds in the lake and stood in the water with them floating around him. He waited for fish to come and nibble at the rinds, then he tried to spear them.

Sometimes it took all day for him to get one, but he stayed with it. He was so determined that sometimes dinosaurs would come and stand off in the distance and watch. I think they were amused.

As time went by Crier got better, and later he changed to a more successful method. He got some strong vine and whittled a hook out of wood with a beer can opener he flattened and sharpened with a file from Bob’s tool box. He used bugs and worms for bait. By the end of the day, he’d have a pretty nice mess of fish.

I was the fire builder. I’d pull grass and let it dry for a day or two, always keeping the supply ahead of the demand. When the grass looked brittle, I’d take two files from the tool box and knock them together until they made a spark, which I directed into the grass. By blowing on the spark, I could get a blaze going, and then I would feed it twigs, then larger kindling, and finally big hunks of wood. Before long, I’d have a good fire going.

Bob cleaned the fish and cooked them by spitting them on a green limb and hanging the limb between two upright forked sticks. The fish tasted pretty good. Every night, before bed, we ended up with a pile of fish bones and fruit rinds around us.

In time, Bob and I healed, and once we could get around, we turned industrious.

With what we had in the toolbox, we managed to make some simple tools for cutting and splitting wood. And damn if we weren’t making crude lumber, notching it and pegging it and building a two-story house at the edge of the jungle. It wasn’t anything to impress Better Homes and Gardens, but it was all right. We managed to use the limbs of this big tree as part of it, and the tree’s foliage was so thick the house blended into it. We christened the place Jungle Home. It made me feel like I was a relative of the Swiss Family Robinson. A poor relation, to be sure, but a relation.

The upper floor was the sleeping nest, and by stuffing it with leaves and dried grass and putting the sleeping bags and blankets on top of that, we had a pretty comfortable place,

We also built a deck of split wood and bamboo on either side of the top floor, and it gave us a place to sit and feel the wind.

It wasn’t paradise, but it beat being jabbed in the eye with a number two pencil.

But, as a great philosopher once wrote over the urinal in Buddy’s Fill-up, “Things will go and change on you.”

Crier and Bob had gone off hunting, since Crier had finally made a bow and a few arrows, and from here on out the animal populace was no longer safe. It was going to be roast rabbit and roast squirrel to go with the fish from now on.

Or so said Crier.

I had my doubts, since I had seen Crier practicing with that thing. It didn’t look to me that he could have hit the side of a barn with a cannon, let alone a squirrel with a dull arrow. Still, I was hoping for him. I was beginning to tire of fish and fruit, fine as it had once seemed.

Isn’t that the way of humans? They’re never happy. One day I’m living off sardines and jerky with no water, and the next thing you know, I’m complaining about having fresh water, fish and fruit. Before long, I’d probably want a sauna in Jungle Home and someone to cater my meals.

Anyway, Crier and Bob went off on safari, and I was home filling some water containers we had made out of thick cylinders of hol lowed-out bamboo.

I finished the job, stripped off my blanket, and went out and sat on the deck and dangled my feet over the edge.

I had no more than gotten comfortable, when I heard a car out on the highway, the engine straining and knocking as if it were about to explode.

I found me a good spot between the limbs and leaves, zeroed in on the highway, and saw a battered green Galaxy. It was coughing gouts of black smoke from under its hood and puffing a matching concoction from its tailpipe.

The driver hit down on the horn for some reason, and the horn hung.

This wasn’t the Galaxy’s day.

It slowed, turned off the highway onto the grassland, started weaving and picking up speed again.

I could see a figure in the front seat, fighting the wheel as if it were some rare breed of poisonous hoop snake. Then the driver lost it or quit, because the Galaxy veered to the left toward the lake.

The closer it got to the lake, the more speed it lost. It got down to a crawl. But it still made the water and dipped its nose in. Hot black smoke hissed up in a cloud, and the Galaxy began to slide languidly into the water.

And I was moving.

I had minded my own business so long, I was somewhat surprised when my Good Samaritan urges came back to me like a return bout of malaria fever. I went down the ladder two steps at a time and started running across the grassland toward the lake.

Owing to the gradual slope of the shore, the Galaxy had still not eased all the way in. The back right window was open, and I climbed through that.

The backseat was little more than springs and foam rubber. On the floorboard was something that looked like burnt sticks and brush. Another look and I knew it was human. Its skin was burned the color of neglected bacon. There was no hair, features or genitals. One of its arms was lifted, fingers extended and frozen in a pose that made the hand look like a miniature weed rake.

Water began to trickle in the back window. Already the front seat was filled. The thing on the floor didn’t look alive, so I was about to go over the seat for the driver when the garden rake took hold of my ankle.

I jerked and flesh came off of the ruined hand and ran down my ankle like dirty Jell-O. I looked at the thing and it opened its mouth, made a croaking noise that sounded like “Kill me.”

The water would take care of that. I couldn’t. I went over the seat and into the water and found the driver, fearing he or she would be like the burned creature on the floorboard.

I got the driver’s head out of the water, saw it was a woman. I started pulling her into the backseat by the chin. The rising water helped me.