Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

The shadows huddling against the back of the tarp were fading. Popalong’s shadow was seeping into the ground at his feet like motor oil.

“They’re fraidy-cats of the light,” he said. “Roy, would you please get the gasoline.”

The man who had cut me free climbed on the wrecker and came down with a five-gallon can.

“You should feel honored,” Popalong said. “Rare as gasoline is. You know, this will be our last trip out from the church in the wrecker. When we get back we’ll be near empty. It’s a pisser not to be able to go out and spread the word, but what’s a fel la to do?”

“You’re no fella,” I said.

“You know, you’re right. Soak her, Roy.”

“Don’t we get to fuck her first?” Roy asked.

“Now that you mention it,” Popalong said, “I do seem to be ahead of myself. Everyone for fucking her?”

He held up his hand as an example. The four men put their hands up.

Popalong turned that sixteen-inch screen on me. “You’re popular, what can I say. But you know, I’m going to pass. You have such a nasty disposition, I’m afraid I’d end up having to fake an orgasm. Roy, would you like to be first to crack open the box?”

Roy smiled and put the can down. He got a pair of wire cutters out of his back pocket and went over and snipped what held me to the wrecker, but this didn’t free my hands. They were fastened together by a separate bond.

“You going to record this?” Roy said.

“Whatever I see is recorded,” Popalong said. “Bring her out from the wrecker, please, get her pants off, and get started. I’m sort of in a hurry to see her burn. Rest of you get that tarp down.”

The three in the back went straight to the tarp and pulled it up and flipped it over the antenna in the middle and tossed it onto the wrecker.

Roy led me so that I was in front of Popalong’s antenna. Popalong stepped up on his spokes and hung his arms in the rods. He looked at me and smiled his dials.

“Showtime,” he said.

There was no wind and the dead air had turned warm and humid. Sweat poured off of me and my hair stuck to the back of my neck. I needed to go to the ladies’ room.

Roy wasn’t taking me real serious. After all, I was a girl. Maybe I was supposed to beg and scream like in the horror movies.

What I did when Roy reached out to take hold of my pants was swivel on the ball of my left foot and whip my head around and get my hips shifting, and I brought my leg up fast and loose and snapped it back so that the heel caught Roy directly behind his right ear and made a sound like big hands clapping.

Before Roy filled his teeth with dirt, I was moving. One of the men tried to stop me, but I jumped up and snapped out my right leg and caught him in the throat with the edge of my foot. I could feel something in his neck give, then I was down and running, hitting the jungle hard as I could go, keeping my balance as best I could, which wasn’t easy with my hands tied the way they were. Then I was out of there, boys, prehistoric history.

At first I felt like Brer Rabbit in the brier patch, then I didn’t feel so good. This was where the film crawled and sucked on you, where the bad storms blew shadows and trees moved.

But nothing of the sort was happening then. The film lay still at my feet and still in the trees. There were no shadows and no storms. I supposed those things were reserved for night.

I heard footsteps behind me and I only paused long enough to jump up and pull my knees to my chest and whip my bound hands underneath me.

I saw that my hands were tied with a piece of wire that had been wrapped around them three or four times with the ends twisted together. I pulled at the wire with my teeth as I ran and got it loose. I crunched it up and put it in my pocket so I wouldn’t leave something on the ground for them to mark my passing.

Eventually I didn’t hear them anymore, but I kept running. I don’t know how long I went, and I had no idea which way I was going. I followed the path of least resistance.

When I felt certain they were no longer behind me, I stopped and found a tree with low branches and swung up in that and climbed as high as I could.

I was shocked. I had looped back until I was almost to the highway. In fact, I probably wasn’t far from where I had been captured. If I had kept running, I would have been out on the highway again in a matter of minutes.

I could see the wrecker at the edge of the highway and I could see Popalong’s antenna, but he wasn’t on it. I could see the Galaxy too. I couldn’t see Popalong, his men or Timothy or Sue Ellen. I could see some dark smoke, but I couldn’t tell what it was coming from. Its source was near the edge of the woods though.

I felt poorly, so I found a forked limb that had a lot of leafy cover and wedged my butt in the fork and put my back against a bigger limb and clutched a smaller one with the crook of my right arm. A wind began to stir, and that was all I needed to send me off to dreamland.

When I awoke my back hurt and my arm was stiff, but I felt rested. I had no idea how long I slept. It was still daylight.

I got out on the limb where I had been before and looked at the wrecker. Popalong’s antenna cross was in the back of the wrecker, fastened to the wench post somehow and Popalong was on it. He had this TV head turned in my direction, lifted slightly up, but I didn’t think he could see me. One of his men was coiled at his feet like a house cat.

The wrecker started to move. I watched until it was out of sight.

At this point, some of this is bound to be obvious. Yes, it was Timothy that was burning. I found the guy I had kicked in the head dead in the bushes. The one I had kicked in the throat had been impaled on a piece of television antenna. Popalong didn’t like failures much.

I guess I should have killed Timothy. That’s what he asked for. But I got the keys out of my pocket and opened up the trunk of the Galaxy and took the gas can and poured it into the tank. I got my arms under Timothy and got him loaded in the backseat of the Galaxy. His flesh came off on my hands and I had to go out to the side of the road and wipe my palms in the grass; it was as if I had been holding greasy pork chops.

I got the car going and made a U-turn and drove us away from there. I talked about anything that came to mind, and Timothy when he did speak, said, “Kill me.”

I didn’t seem to know how to do anything but drive, and I did that through the day and through the night, finally stopping to rest. I kept going like that, kept talking and singing and reciting poetry to myself, and I don’t remember eating or drinking at all.

There’s not much to tell after that. My throat got hoarse. The road pulled me on. When I was nearly out of gas I saw the lake-your lake-and I guess it made me realize how thirsty I was, and I went for it.

Next thing I knew Jack here was pulling me out and then I was in the back of your camper. I woke up and had to pee, and when I came back from that, you guys were here.

Bob said, “You’re welcome to stay with us.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. But tomorrow, or day after tomorrow, when I’m rested, I’m going to start after Sue Ellen. I owe her that. I went sort of nuts when I found Timothy, panicked, took off in the opposite direction. But I’ve got to go back now and find her.”

“You don’t have a car,” I said.

“If I can get to Shit Town, I think I can get a car and some gas. If not, I’ll go on foot.”