Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

She was carrying a pack made of an animal skin. Wild dog. The head was still on the pack, and so was the tail, which she had turned into a kind of strap.

She said, “I want to go, too. I brought some dried meat and some dried fruit. I dried them good on the roof of my car. They’re a little chewy, and the fruit has got some bugs in it, but they make it a little tastier.”

“Protein is good,” Grace said.

Grace, who today was wearing clothes (more of a bikini, really) made of animal hides, looked marvelous. Considering the rest of us all looked like scarecrows, I don’t know how she did it. But she wore those skins great, like Raquel Welch in that movie, One Million Years B.C. Her hair was as shiny as the chrome on a brand new motorcycle, and that came from the fact she wasn’t afraid to go down to the river out back of the drive-in and bathe and wash her hair, and use some kind of weed that if rubbed together made a pretty good excuse for soap. Her hair was all combed out too, was real long, and when she moved, it moved, flowed around her, and was the color of scorched honey.

Looking at her, dressed like that, I thought about the time me and her hooked up, and right then I was thinking on how I’d like to do the trailer hitch thing again, and damn if she didn’t look at me and catch my eye, and give me a kind of grin, like, you know, you done had yours, and I pitied you, and it’s probably the best pussy, if not the only pussy you ever had, so you best think back on it a lot, ‘cause it’s not a repeater, if you know what I mean.

I got all that out of that little smile.

I smiled back, kind of a thank you, ma’am. Ain’t nothing else I’d rather have had, and in fact, it is my favorite present to date, and in memory sense, it’s a gift that keeps on giving. Then she turned away, and the old bad world came back, and there was Reba, looking at me like a dog confused by language.

“What’s your name?” I asked her, my mind still on Grace, fearing my thoughts would show on my forehead, or that she might notice my pecker had moved to the left of my worn pants, as if in search of prey.

“Reba.”

There were also James and Cory. They were buddies. Good ole boys meet Heavy Metal types. Cory was bulky. James was wiry. Cory said he wished we had some Black Sabbath cassettes.

Steve said it was a shame we didn’t. But he didn’t mean it.

When we were ready, I, as tour guide, I suppose, said to everyone: “Well, climb on in, and let’s shag ass on out of here.”

The trail was as bumpy as a teenager’s face, and there were places where there didn’t seem to be any trail at all.

The woods, or jungle to be more accurate, grew thick on both sides, and the vines wound in amongst the trees, and things moved out there. Sometimes we saw them, sometimes they watched us, and sometimes it was just shadows, falling between the trees, but fostered by nothing we could see.

There were lots of sounds. Cries and strangles, barks and growls, grunts and groans, and once, I thought I heard a fart.

I read a story once, a funny story, and I don’t remember who wrote it or what it was, but it had a line in it that I remember. It went: Somewhere, a toad farted ominously.

Out here, bumping along the trail, that kind of thing didn’t seem so funny anymore.

That fart from the bushes-larger than a toad, I might add-did seem ominous.

Hell, the wind, which had picked up our first day out (I call it a day because the sun went down and came up again), picked up even more, and it whistled through the jungle and shook the limbs and leaves and vines like dry peanut husks.

We drove and drove, and finally stopped so that we might take a bathroom break.

The seven of us hadn’t spoken much, had just bumped along, trying to figure on what the hell we were doing, but now, we began to talk.

There was me and Grace and Steve and Homer and Reba and the two rednecks, James and Cory. James talked about beer a lot, about how he’d like to have some, and about how he had brewed some from fruit, but it had just tasted like nasty fruit, and what he’d give for a Budweiser, that sort of thing. Cory was quiet, didn’t say much, except, “I got to go take a shit,” and wandered off into the jungle to do just that.

Grace and Steve seemed to have handled this whole lost in another world thing better than anyone else.

I think that’s because they had each other.

I don’t know if they loved one another, but they had each other, and it seemed to be working. It kept some bloom on the rose, especially on Grace’s rose, ‘cause like I said, she was the only one amongst us who looked fresh. Steve looked okay, though he had recently lost a tooth on the left side of his mouth, and if he grinned real big, you could see the gap.

“I get the creepy feeling,” Steve said, as we sat around, cooking up some of the dead animal he and Grace had brought, listening to the ants pop in the fire that we had stoked with flint and steel and bits of tinder, “that somethin’ is followin’ us.”

“Something always is,” I said. “You can count on it. If it isn’t following us, it’s running ahead. There’s things in the jungle. Both sides. I can feel eyes all over me.”

“I don’t mean like that,” Steve said. “Something weird even for here.”

“Considering the Popcorn King,” Reba said, “I don’t know how weird it could get. I ate some of his popcorn, and shit eyeballs, I did. I had a kid too. He was stolen from me and eaten. He was eaten raw. The savages. I guess it was for the best. I really didn’t want a kid covered in eyeballs.”

The maternal instinct is a lovely thing.

“Well,” Homer said, “long as we’re talking weird, how’s about them dinosaurs and such?”

“And Popalong Cassidy,” I said.

“I ain’t saying this ain’t the warehouse for weird,” Steve said, “just saying I been having this feeling something is following us that I don’t want to have catch up with us.”

“That could still be most anything,” I said.

“I was out with this fella that came to the drive-in with me,” Cory said. “Out with him looking for food, and no shit, he bent over and a little dinosaur rammed a dick through his cloth pants and got him some ass, and while he was gettin’ it, he bit my buddy’s head off. Blood went everywhere, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the dinosaur jerked, sprang around in happy circles, shooting his jism all over the place. I got some in my hair. I figured I was next to get butt-fucked and ate up, so I hooked ass to a tree and climbed it. And damn if that critter didn’t scuttle up after me. He was small enough for that. So, I kept climbing, and finally I got to the damn near top of that tree, where it was thin and starting to bend, and I was thinking, well, it’s either jump and get it over with, or get eaten while up in a goddamn tree, and maybe butt-fucked-though I couldn’t see that critter doing that while balancing on a limb-and damned if that critter didn’t miss his footing. Fell. Killed his ownself. When I got down he was lying in a puddle of blood and shit. I cut a big portion of meat out of him and took it home. I would have took my buddy home, but something had already dragged him off. Now, tell me that isn’t weird.”

“We’ve all seen shit like that, or sort of like that,” Steve said. “Though, the butt-fucking and head-eating simultaneously is high on the Holy Shit meter, but I mean something else. I’ve started having me some visions.”

“None of them have come true, by the way,” Grace said.

“Maybe they just haven’t had time, dear,” Steve said.

“Or maybe,” Grace said, “you’re full of shit.”

“I suppose it’s possible,” Steve said. “I always have been pretty full of it. But, I tell you, I’ve got me a feeling, and it’s not a feeling I like.”