Joe Lansdale: The Complete Drive-In

“My God,” Reba said. “What place is this?”

No one had an answer.

Beyond this pile was one great beam of the bridge. And it was very wide. We couldn’t see the edges of it. All we could see was the gold and silver metal that made up the bridge, and those huge black cables, twisted thick and numerous as armpit hairs on a French lady.

Way up, dead center of the pile, was a dark hole in the sky, like someone had burned the tip of a cigarette through red construction paper; a hole like the one that had pulsed and shat its refuse above the drive-in.

“It reminds me of some white trash fucker’s yard,” Reba said. “Throwing shit out the window. You know, food and cans and such. But here we got a waste disposal of giant toys and dead bodies. Still, the attitude, it’s the same.”

Grace moved over close to the pile. She said, “Look at this.”

We eased next to her. The stench was so strong I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to stand in front of the pile another second. My stomach did a flip-flop, gathered itself, and the feeling of nausea and light-headedness passed.

Grace reached out, took hold of a rancid, blackened arm, said, “This one has been here awhile. Look at it. Look close.”

The arm had rotted, and the crows had been at it, and though the arm was clearly meaty, inside it I could see a flexi-metal rod that served for bone, and twisted around this “bone” were wires-red, blue, white, and yellow.

“Part human,” Grace said. “Part machine.”

“Holy shit,” Steve said.

“Question now,” Grace said, “is do we still want to go up there?”

She pointed up at the wall of metal, the jungle of wires.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Reba said. “The world is caving in on itself. Whoever runs this crazed-ass shithole must be up there. I think it’s time to confront him. Beard God in his own goddamn cheap-ass Naugahyde, cheetahskin-decorated den, and kick his ass.”

“Hear, hear,” Steve said, and stuck out a hand.

We piled our hands on top of his.

“Up, up, and away,” Grace said.

“By the way,” I asked, “how do you know if there’s a God he’s got Naugahyde shit up there?”

“It fits his toss-out-the-window, white trash image,” Reba said.

“Ah,” I said.

Let me tell you how we did it, took that climb.

We decided, as we always knew we would, to go up that great beam, which was slanted slightly and had those multitudes of cables to cling to. From a distance those twists of wires had looked like one big dark cable on either beam of the bridge. Now, I could see it was not a bridge at all, but what it was, I was uncertain. The metal beam and its skin of tangled wires ascended into the red sky, disappearing, not into the waste hole, but advancing to the top to be wrapped in clouds like a precious possession in fluffy balls of cotton.

It was not a short trip, dear hearts.

It might not have been Everest, but it wasn’t a hill back home either. It was WAY THE FUCK up there.

So, we took the dried fruit from my pack, laid it out, determined it was not enough. We went about picking more fruit and drying it. It was a scary decision. Every moment we wasted meant the sky could fall, doing us in. But, if we were to take the climb unprepared, and if it was as high up and difficult to travel as we suspected, then we could die of thirst and starvation. Not to mention we might fall off and smash our asses.

Maybe that’s where the bodies and shapes of humans had come from. They had fallen, not been pushed.

But, shit, man. Did those wooden critters walk?

Or were they just prototypes?

And how were those great potato chips made so thin and vacuum-packed in a can without crushing all of them?

I wished I were home with a can of them, sitting in front of the television set watching a rerun of The Lone Ranger. Guns snapping, bad guys falling. But no blood, man. No blood. No real terror.

Of course, when we got to the top, we could find ourselves in worse shape. But again, it was that goal business, dear hearts.

The goal.

The reason to strive.

It’s what made us want to climb, and it beat standing around with our thumbs up our asses, waiting for the world to fall apart and the sun to blow down on our heads and cook us.

Steve found some gourds and we labored at hollowing those out by twisting off the narrow, blackened, umbilical-cord tops and working a sharp stick down into them. We wormed the stick about until we liquefied the gourd’s guts, then we poured the goo out. There were numerous pools of water about, and we dipped the gourds in those and rinsed them, filled them with sand and let them dry while the fruit dried.

We even went back to the beach and found some of the boiled fish. We ate some, and found that they were pretty good, considering we had been living off dog-urine fruit, which made for a very real and very regular bowel movement, dear hearts. I figured, way we had been eating and shitting, the woods were full of scat.

We cut the boiled fish open with scoops made of sharp sticks, wrapped them in leaves, and stuffed them in my pack. We made spears by twisting off limbs in such a way that a sharp piece was left on the end. It wasn’t a great weapon, but it was all we had.

On the day when fruit and gourds were dry, we packed my pack full of the withered dog-urine produce, filled the gourds with water, corked them with pieces of wood, made slings of vines to carry the gourds, made similar straps with vines so we could fasten them to and carry our spears on our backs, then we started out.

Our plan was to take turns with the pack. We all carried our own water gourds and spears. As for the pack, I carried it first. We took a hike around the pile of busted toys and rotting bodies, made our way to the shiny beam that rose up to heaven.

And with the red-stained sky dripping down frighteningly low, we did the pile-on hands thing again, made with a little one-for-all grunt, and started up.

It went well enough at first. The wires were thick, and they gave you something to cling to. The beam slanted enough you weren’t just hanging out in space, but it didn’t slant enough for you to be comfortable. It didn’t take long before I was tired. I thought it was just because it was my turn to tote the pack, but when Grace took it over, I found I was even worse off, as if the weight of all that food had given me what strength I had.

Finally we came to a great bolt in the beam, and the wires were nestled about it in a wad. We found we could crawl up in that wad, and the wires were bundled tight enough, very little light got in. We crawled in there and pressed up together, mostly in a sitting position, opened the pack, ate and drank sparingly, then rested.

Resting turned out to be a full-bore doze.

When I awoke, stars were in the sky, and I watched two of them drip off and fall. I could see way out there, dear hearts, and I watched as the stars hit the sea and the water rose up big-time, came crashing down on the island, washing trees away like matchsticks with a garden hose.

The drive-in mist, which was cruising the water below, was hit by the waves and disrupted. It curled and coiled and broke apart.

Reba, who I didn’t know was awake, said, “We left just in time.”

“It’s not going to wash the whole thing,” I said, “not this time. But what if the moon falls?”

“It’s all over,” she said. “Davy Jones’ Locker, baby.”