Joe Lansdale: The Complete Drive-In

“So we are the android’s androids,” Reba said.

“No,” said Little Billy. “You are the android’s dream. The android, Little Billy, is a beautiful creation like his mother and his father and his now-dead sister. He could procreate. He was as human as a human. And like a human, he dies.”

“Can’t you like jump him off?” Steve asked. “You know, battery cables or something?”

“He is an android,” Little Billy said, “but he is too human to be fixed like a machine. He ages. He dies. That’s the short and the long and the abbreviated middle. He created your world and all of you to give him life inside his head, since life no longer exists outside of it. On the bed, inside his head, he knows the truth now, that he is an android. He didn’t even know, until now. All the secrets of the universe, his own and others’, are revealed. And he sends me to you, in his younger form, to talk to you. He’s sorry you’ve been through what you’ve been. But not really. He had fun believing it all. Believing for a time he was a great creator of aliens and androids and of a marvelous dark world. In his head, images nestled in a little speck of chip smaller than a virus, he enjoyed the idea that he carved you first, and wound you up, then wired you up, and made you all, put you in the drive-in world, created problems, and let you go. You see. But he did that all in his head. He never put a knife to wood or a wire to chip, flesh to machine. He/me loves movies. A man of unseen wires and parts loves the dreams of the machine, the camera, the devices, the effects. And you, are in fact, the dreams of a machine.”

Little Billy glitched, cut out, came back.

“I haven’t long. Old age… or what we think of as old age, has caught up with us. Me/him. And when I go, the world as I know it goes, and the world I have created goes. And our knowledge of who we are and why we are, goes with us. And by the way, Grace, three points for not wearing a top.”

“Now let me get a handle on this shit,” Steve said. “We ain’t really androids neither. We ain’t nothing but a dream?”

“You are what you are,” Little Billy said, and there was a glitch, and his image jumped away, jumped back, then faded.

And was gone.

We stood stunned, and when I looked back at the way we had come, there was only the table, and I could see the end of it, and beyond it, the dimly lit wall of the room. Finally, I said, “I’m as real as I want to be, friends. And I say we do what we’ve always done. Charge on. Live what life we have for as long as we have it.”

This was considered. Grace stuck out her hand, palm down. I put mine on top of hers. Steve and Reba joined in. We said, “Hooyah!”

“Now,” I said, “might I suggest transportation? The toy plane? It’s a four-seater.”

“What the hell?” Steve said. “Why not?”

We made our way over there. The plane was pointed toward the back wall. Steve and I had Reba and Grace climb up on the checker box and step inside the plane. Grace took the little wheel in her hands.

“Do you think it works?” she said.

“Don’t know,” I said, peeling off my tied-up clutch of spears, tossing them on the ground. “We’re gonna turn it so it faces the window. Then we’re gonna wind it up, climb in, and let it go.”

“How?” Grace said.

“I have an idea. A spark inside my little brain that is neither flesh nor computer chip, but the makings of an old man’s dream. His brain is my brain. And that brain tells me we are going to turn the plane around, me and Steve.”

We struggled to do it, but managed, then shoved it up close to the checker box again, pointed it in the direction of the window.

Steve and I went around front, got hold of the propeller, and began to wind it, grabbing each new propeller blade as it came to us, winding it tight.

“When we have it wound tight,” I yelled up at Grace, “take your bundle of spears from your back, and stick the whole bundle between the blades, and you and Reba hold the propeller in place till we get inside.”

We kept winding, and soon it was as tight as we could wind.

“Now,” I said.

Grace stuck the bundle of five spears between the blades, and with Reba helping her hold them, we let go. One of the spears snapped, the propeller moved a bit, then held.

Steve and I scrambled on top of the checker box, slipped into the back seat of the plane.

“When I say,” I said, “jerk up the spears and toss them away.”

Grace nodded.

“Now,” I said.

She and Reba jerked them back and tossed them loose of the plane, and the little toy rattled and roared and wheeled across the table, came to the edge of it, and launched. It dipped at first, then rose up and glided, wobbled a bit, then headed straight on toward the open window.

“How long do we last?” Steve said.

“As long as the old man,” I said. “As long as life gives us. As much as life gives us. Hell, nothing’s promised to human or android or dark little dream, so goddamnit, we’ll live what’s there.”

The plane sailed smoothly out of the window and into the moonlight and into a cool fall breeze that swept under the plane and lifted it higher. White moths burst in front of us and beat wings to the sky and became white flakes in the darkness. Above us, stars-real stars as my false memories remembered them-shone above us, bright and sharp. And there was the moon. A great silver plate lying on the black fabric of night. The air smelled of fresh-mowed lawns, and there were warm lights in house windows and a long dark yard where grass grew, and I knew instantly, that this was the world I had come from; this was my East Texas as created for me by my android sire who lived here in his East Texas created for him by… Whoever.

I took in a deep breath of cool night air and felt good and strong and strangely alive.

I thought: There’s no reason to write anymore, so I will not. I tore open my pack, took out my journal of composition books and pages, tossed them high to the sky.

The fluttering pages evaporated in the air like cotton candy birds licked wet, then the front of the plane faded, and I laughed, and I saw Grace and Reba fade, and Steve looked at me, and smiled, and faded, and so did EPILOGUE

The end ain’t the end, and the mystery ain’t the mystery, and the grooves of the pseudo-mind are dark and, well… groovy.

We were back.

“What the fuck was that?” Grace said.

“I thought the old man died,” I said, “taking us with him.”

“He must have had a moment,” Reba said. “A mild stroke.”

“Don’t matter,” Grace said. “Tree!”

The plane, which really had no guidance system other than windup, aim, and point, went straight for a large oak. I threw my hands over my face, and the plane hit the tree and knocked me loose of the seat.

I woke up lying on the fresh-cut lawn.

I sat up slowly. Nothing seemed broken. I eased my pack off my back, tossed it aside, made it to my feet, staggered toward the wreckage. I saw Grace crawling out of the cockpit. There was a thin line of blood across her forehead.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” It was Reba, calling from the other side of the plane.

When I got there, Reba was on her knees, bending over Steve.

“He’s dead,” she said. “His neck.”

Steve’s neck was twisted in such a way it reminded me of a neck-wrung chicken. His teeth littered the moonlit grass around his head.

Grace came around the plane slowly, her forehead bleeding more now, running over her pretty features like a flood. She looked at Steve, then eased toward him. “Goddamnit,” she said. “Goddamnit.”

She dropped down on her ass, cradled his head in her lap. It rolled over as easy as a sock puppet’s head. Blood ran out of her mouth and onto her bare legs. Her naked breasts heaved in the light.