Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

“I’m going too,” I said.

“What?” Bob said.

“I can’t sit here the rest of my life.”

“See a set of titties and you go all to pieces, don’t you?” Bob said.

“If what she says is true, we know what’s at the end of the highway,” Crier said. “So why go?”

“Let Grace be the White Knight,” Bob said. “She’s into that kind of shit. Kung fu lady and all that. We’re into surviving.”

“I may have to do some ugly things when I catch up to Popalong,” Grace said. “It won’t be an easy trek, especially if I end up on foot.”

“Listen to her,” Bob said.

“This isn’t living,” I said. “This is existing. It’s giving up. I did that once before. Won’t do it again. You’re the one made me do something last time, Bob. You’re the one pulled me of out just getting by.”

“But this isn’t so bad,” Bob said.

“Maybe we can find a way home at the end of the highway,” I said. “Maybe there’s something more than what Popalong told her about. And there’s that little girl, Sue Ellen.”

“I’m not asking anything of you,” Grace said.

“Not much you’re not, lady,” Bob said.

“Shit,” Crier said. “We’ve been through some things together, the three of us. I feel like we’re the three musketeers or something.”

“Oh hell,” Bob said. “Here it comes.”

“We’re all we got,” Crier said. “I’d like to see us stick together. Hell, fellas, you’re the first real friends I ever had.”

“Well, fuck,” Bob said. “Guess we could use a change of scenery. We can take the camper to Shit Town and get some gas there.”

“Hey,” Grace said. “I’m not asking-”

“Hush,” Bob said. “I might come to my senses.”

Up in Jungle Home I tried to sleep, but no dice. I got out of bed and slipped on my blanket and left Bob and Crier sleeping and went out on the deck where a warm breeze was blowing.

I went on down and walked over to the camper and touched it. It was cool to my touch and I got a mild sexual charge out of it, which made me feel pretty damn silly. I thought about what Grace had said about fucking the ocean in case there was a shark in there that had swallowed a girl, and suddenly it made a lot of sense.

I went around to the end of the camper. The tailgate was down. My mouth filled with saliva. I knew then that I was going to at least look inside.

I looked.

She wasn’t there. There was just a basket of fruit. I guess my sexual charge had come from that or a horny spare tire.

Then I heard splashing. I think I had heard it before, but now it registered.

I walked around on the other side of the camper and looked out at the lake.

The moon was high and bright and it made the lake slick as a mirror. Not too far out in it, halfway submerged, was Grace. She was slapping her arms on the surface of the water. Playing.

I went down there, and when I was fifty feet from the water, I stopped and looked at her sleek, marble-white back sticking out of the water like a flooded Grecian statue.

She looked over her shoulder and smiled.

“Out for a walk, Jack?”

“Sort of.”

“Excited about tomorrow?”

“I guess.”

“You saved my life today.”

“That’s all right.”

“Of course it is. I got hot in the camper. Funny, Timothy’s down at the other end of the lake and here I am playing in the water at this end. I never made love to him, you know.”

“Did you want to?”

“I think I saw him as a brother.”

“You telling me this for a reason?”

“I don’t know.”

She turned and started to shore. She came out of the water like Venus being born. The moon hit the sheen of water on her breasts and made them bright as moons themselves. The little pink stripes on her skin looked like birthday ribbons.

“You’re going to go blind,” she said.

“I don’t make you go naked.”

“I didn’t make you come down here.”

I put my hands in front of me and clasped them together.

She came to me and kissed me lightly on the lips. Her breath smelled of fruit. She took hold of my arms, lifted them over her head and around her neck, said, “You’ll have to pull out, you know. I don’t have any birth control. And don’t make more of this than it is.”

I pulled her to me and kissed her. Our tongues made war.

She looked down. “Goodness, Jack. There’s something in your blanket.”

“You’ve already seen it. You weren’t much impressed.”

She took hold of the edges of the blanket and pulled it over my head, knocking my arms off of her. She threw the blanket down on the grass and took hold of me.

“My,” she said, “how the little fella’s grown.”

After we made love on my blanket, we stumbled giggling to the camper and smeared fruit on one another and licked it off. Between licking and giggling, we made love again. Every time we moved apart our bodies made a sound like two sheets of flypaper being pulled apart.

When we finished we went down to the lake and rinsed off again and tried to make love again, but neither of us was up to it. We went back to the camper and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

I dreamed good for a time. Kind of dreams a man dreams when he’s holding a woman in his arms. But the dreams didn’t last. I thought about my aliens and I thought about Grace’s story about Popalong Cassidy and the Producer and the Great Director. I thought about all that movie junk on down the highway. I tried to make everything add up but nothing would.

It all went away and folded into a cloud the color and texture of Grace’s pubic hair.

Next morning Bob woke me by pulling on my foot. I got my head out from between Grace’s legs and looked up.

“That’s disgusting, you know,” Bob said.

I picked up Grace’s shirt from the floorboard and draped it over her. I got my clothes and sat out on the tailgate and put them on.

“Well, I hope we enjoyed ourselves,” Bob said.

“We did.”

Bob went away and I woke Grace up and she got dressed and we helped Crier and Bob load some fruit and bamboo water containers in the camper. Then we were off.

After a few days we came to Shit Town. The post Grace had told us about was gone, and now there was an official sign made of crude lumber. On it was: SHIT TOWN, POPULATION: WHO GIVES A FUCK.

Civic pride.

Shit Town wasn’t much. Some shacks made of sticks and crooked lumber mostly. It looked like a place the Big Bad Wolf would blow down.

Out next to the road was a line of cars, and people were living in those too. Some of the cars were fixed up with huts connected to them. Snazzy stuff.

We parked on the opposite side of the highway, locked up and walked over to Main Street, which was a dirt track, and went down it.

A few people ogled us, and we ogled them back.

No one offered us the Key to the City.

In spite of Shit Town not looking like much, I suppose by present standards it’s pretty prosperous. There were a lot of people moving about and there was an aura of industry in the air.

Down at the end of the street was a well house. Most likely it had been built over an open spring, as I figured that was what had attracted folks to this spot in the first place, as the lake had attracted us to Jungle Home.

Beyond this I could see a lot of stumps leading to the jungle. In a short time, with only their hands and crude tools, these people had cut a lot of trees.

I figured eventually this kind of industry would lead to Shit Town having burger joints that served dinosaur and rabbit burgers, and eventually the place might move up the evolutionary line to having a kind of thrift store where you could get shower curtains, house shoes, bird feeders and Bermuda shorts.