Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

Two of them sat on the curb and started crying and the other one rolled around on the lawn and whimpered like a dog with glass in his belly. A fireman came over and yelled at him and kicked him in the butt. The guy crawled off and joined his comrades at the curb and they cried in trio.

I hoped like hell there wasn’t anyone inside that house. If so, they wouldn’t be graduating.

I was about to leave when I was touched lightly on the elbow and a voice said, “You start this one, baby?”

“Nope. I’m all out of matches.”

“Then you got nothing to worry about.”

I turned and looked at Timothy. I had known him all my life, had been over to his house to play when we were kids, and he had been over to mine. There had never been anything romantic between us, though when I was twelve I talked him into playing doctor and discovered what I’d heard about boys was true: They were fixed up different from girls.

“Good to see you,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

One of the firemen came coughing out to the curb across from us and sat down next to one of the frat boys. The one who had been rolling on the ground sobbed and said, “They gonna save it?”

The fireman took off his smoke-stained hat, coughed, and looked at the frat the way some people look at retarded children. “Son, we’ll be lucky if we save the mineral rights on that sonofabitch.”

The three frats really started to cry.

The roof collapsed then and the sparks from it rose up to heaven and turned clear like the souls of fireflies gone off to meet their just rewards.

“Last time I heard,” Timothy said, “you were digging holes in the ground or something. Had some night classes too.”

“A lab,” I said. “Archaeology in the daytime, labs at night. I had to let it go.”

Then I told him the whole story.

“I quit too,” he said.

“I never knew you started.”

“It was the math fixed me. Never could understand how X could be some other number. It always looked like X to me. I couldn’t make sense of it. If X was ten one time, how could it be fifteen the next? Who the hell could keep up with what X was if it could be anything?

“What I should have taken was all P. E. courses and majored in golf. I can’t make X and Y add up, but by God, I can knock those little white balls to Dallas.”

And he could. I had played golf with him before. My golfing style was akin to a frightened matron trying to beat a rat to death with a curtain rod, but I had played enough to know the good stuff when I saw it, and Timothy had the good stuff. A number of pro golfers had made the same observation, and Timothy had mentioned more than once that he was thinking about taking his clubs on the road and seeing what he could do.

“We’re on our way to the Orbit,” Timothy said. “Want to go?”

“We?”

“Sue Ellen. She loves that horror stuff.”

Sue Ellen was Timothy’s little sister. She was twelve. Last time I’d seen her was two years back, and she wanted me to explain why Barbie and Ken were smooth allover. I didn’t remember having any answers.

“I doubt she even remembers me,” I said. “She might feel uncomfortable.”

“She remembers you quite well.”

“She’s sort of young for blood and guts, isn’t she?”

“Tell me about it. Mom and Dad think I’m taking her over to see Bambi, Cinderella, The Fox and the Hound and assorted cartoons in a Disney dusk-todawn extravaganza.”

“Wonder how they got that idea,” I said.

I took my car home, told my parents where I was going, not mentioning that Sue Ellen was waiting in the car with Timothy, and we went over there in the Galaxy.

When we got there, the line was as long as the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, and, of course, we got a place near the end of it. The flashing blue-and-white Saturn symbol of the Orbit was far enough away to look like a Ping-Pong ball with an oversized washer around it.

It was warm and the air was full of mosquitoes. Rolling up the windows made you hotter, and rolling them down fed you to the mosquitoes. Timothy talked about giving it up and going home, and I was for it. But not Sue Ellen.

“You promised me, Timmy. You said you’d take me. You know I want to see The Toolbox Murders. ”

I turned and looked at Sue Ellen perched in the middle of the backseat. She was blonde and fair and had moist blue eyes and a freckled pug nose and a red bow mouth. Course, it was dark enough you couldn’t see all this, but you knew it was there, and telling her no was a lot like kicking a puppy for licking your hand.

“We’ll be miserable,” Timothy said. “Besides, The Toolbox Murders ? How’d I let you talk me into that?”

“You promised, Bubba. And if any of it bothers me, you can explain it to me.”

“That’s choice. I might need you to explain it to me.”

“See, I’m old enough.”

“One word about mosquitoes, one complaint, and we’re out of here.”

“Deal.”

Had the weather been hotter, the mosquitoes thicker, or if Sue Ellen had had all the charm of Dr. Frankenstein’s hunchback assistant, we might have cut for home right then. Sue Ellen would have grown up to break hearts, Timothy would have gone on to hit little white balls across great expanses of greenery for unreasonable amounts of money, and I might have ended up with my own karate studio.

All right, I’m going to stop with Grace’s story now. For all you dipshits in the back row who haven’t been listening-Leroy, quit playing in that pile of shit. Put that stick down. Yeah, well, screw you too, little buddy. I hope your balls get covered in ants.

Now, all you bozos keep interrupting my relating here and I’m tired of it. You all keep saying, “What about the comet? What about the comet?” Well, I’ve got no new news on the comet, okay? You’ve heard it all before. I’ve told you that story half a dozen times. I started this story with the comet. Remember?

No, I don’t change it as I go along Leroy. Look, I don’t make you come and listen, do I, huh?

Why did all this happen?

We’ve been over this part, Leroy, back when I read you the first half of this story, the one I call THE DRIVE-IN, A B-MOVIE WITH BLOOD AND POPCORN. Yes, the one written on the Big Chief tablets. But to answer your question why… I don’t know. It’s like why do turds come in different shapes and colors. I can’t answer that. It’s one of life’s big mysteries, and the comet is an even bigger one.

Here, listen. Do you remember those sayings I taught you? The ones the Christians are fond of. Remember, we talked about Christians. Good? Now those sayings. Let’s use them to get things on the roll and because they’re all purpose. Repeat after me: THERE ARE SOME THINGS MAN WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW, and I FEEL IT IN MY HEART. Later I’ll teach you about Faith, that way if you don’t know how to explain something, say, you’ve got faith. That covers a lot of bases and cuts down on argument.

What do you mean that doesn’t work for you? Is this going to be like yesterday’s conversation, Leroy? The one about Why Is There Air and Why Do Boys Have a Pecker and Girls Don’t? Good, because I’m not going to get into that. I’ve got a story written down here and it’s the story I’m going to read. It’s a good story and I’ve recorded it as best I can, and it’s almost the truth. If you want to hear it, fine, if not, I’ll read to myself. I do this for me, not you, so you want to hear the story you got to listen. What, Leroy?

Uh huh, that’s right. Why don’t you go ahead and find your stick again and stir the shit pile. At least you were quiet. I wish I hadn’t disturbed you.

Yeah. That’s okay, use your finger. Let me get back to Grace Okay. Maybe I don’t remember what Grace said word for word, but this is pretty close. Trust me.