Joe Lansdale - High Cotton - Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale

But before Dog can reach Baby, Cat jumps.

Cat been hiding behind couch.

Cat goes after Dog, tears Dog's face with teeth, with claws. Dog bleeds, tries to run. Cat goes after him.

Dog turns to bite.

Cat hangs claw in Dog's eye.

Dog yelps, runs.

Cat jumps on Dog's back, biting Dog on top of head.

Dog tries to turn corner into bedroom. Cat, tearing at him with claws, biting with teeth, makes Dog lose balance. Dog running very fast, fast as he can go, hits the edge of doorway, stumbles back, falls over.

Cat gets off Dog.

Dog lies still.

Dog not breathing.

Cat knows Dog is dead. Cat licks blood from claws, from teeth with rough tongue.

Cat has gotten rid of Dog.

Cat turns to look down hall where Baby is screaming.

Now for other one.

Cat begins to creep down hall.

This was my attempt to write a story of one of life's innocents besieged by a considerably less innocent world. Saying the main character is an innocent is not the same as saying he's a swell guy. He just doesn't have a clue.

Also, this story is based on a true incident. Our next door neighbors really did have a blind groundskeeper, at least for one day, and some of the incidents I've portrayed in the story are also true. Fortunately, I never had to suffer like the protagonist of my story, and in no way does the family in the story mirror my own. But the fact that a blind groundskeeper asked me to come over and help him find the spots he missed got this tale a whirlin'. The descriptions of the groundskeeper, and my first encounter with him are fact, not fantasy. From there on out, well, it's a story. A good one, I hope. And like most of the stories in this collection, a personal favorite.

These folks who lived next door to me were the inspiration, and I say inspiration, nothing more, for a few other stories I wrote. When they moved, other oddball activities in that neighborhood came along to fill their void. Finally, fed up with all the weirdness that went on there, we moved. I missed it for about a month. Whenever I needed a story idea. But, I got over it.

MR. JOB HAROLD WAS IN HIS LIVING ROOM WITH his feet on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune when his five-year-old son came inside covered with dirt. "Daddy," said the boy dripping dirt, "there's a man outside want to see you."

Mr, Harold got up and went outside, and there standing at the back of the house next to his wife's flower bed, which was full of dead roses and a desiccated frog, was, just like his boy had said, a man.

It was over a hundred degrees out there, and the man, a skinny sucker in white T-shirt and jeans with a face red as a baboon's ass, a waterfall of inky hair dripping over his forehead and dark glasses, stood with his head cocked like a spaniel listening for trouble. He had a bright-toothed smile that indicated everything he heard struck him as funny.

In his left hand was a new weed-eater, the cutting line coated in greasy green grass the texture of margarita vomit, the price tag dangling proudly from the handle.

In the other hand the man held a blind man's cane, the tip of which had speared an oak leaf. His white T-shirt, stained pollen-yellow under the arms, stuck wetly to his chest and little pot belly tight as plastic wrap on a fish head. He had on dirty white socks with played-out elastic and they had fallen over the tops of his tennis shoes as if in need of rest.

The man was shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Mr. Harold figured he needed to pee and wanted to use the bathroom, and the idea of letting him into the house with a weed-eater and pointing him at the pot didn't appeal to Mr. Harold cause there wasn't any question in Mr. Harold's mind the man was blind as a peach pit, and Mr. Harold figured he got in the bathroom, he was gonna pee from one end of the place to the other trying to hit the commode, and then Mr. Harold knew he'd have to clean it up or explain to his wife when she got home from work how on his day off he let a blind man piss all over their bathroom. Just thinking about all that gave Mr. Harold a headache.

"What can I do for you?" Mr. Harold asked.

"Well, sir," said the blind man in a voice dry as Mrs. Harold's sexual equipment, "I heard your boy playin' over here, and I followed the sound. You see, I'm the groundskeeper next door, and I need a little help. I was wonderin' you could come over and show me if I've missed a few spots?"

Mr. Harold tried not to miss a beat. "You talking about the church over there?"

"Yes, sir. Just got hired. Wouldn't want to look bad on my first day."

Mr. Harold considered this. Cameras could be set in place somewhere. People in trees waiting for him to do something they could record for a TV show. He didn't want to go on record as not helping a blind man, but on the other hand, he didn't want to be caught up in no silliness either.

Finally, he decided it was better to look like a fool and a Samaritan than a cantankerous asshole who wouldn't help a poor blind man cut weeds.

"I reckon I can do that," Mr. Harold said. Then to his five-year-old who'd followed him outside and was sitting in the dirt playing with a plastic truck: "Son, you stay right here and don't go off."

"Okay, Daddy," the boy said.

The church across the street had been opened in a building about the size of an aircraft hanger. It had once been used as a liquor warehouse, and later it was called Community Storage, but items had a way of disappearing. It was a little too community for its renters, and it went out of business and Sonny Guy, who owned the place, had to pay some kind of fine and turn up with certain items deemed as missing.

This turn of events had depressed Mr. Guy, so he'd gotten religion and opened a church. God wasn't knocking them dead either, so to compensate, Sonny Guy started a Gospel Opry, and to advertise and indicate its location, beginning on their street and on up to the highway, there was a line of huge orange Day-Glo guitars that pointed from highway to Opry.

The guitars didn't pull a lot of people in though, bright as they were. Come Sunday the place was mostly vacant, and when the doors were open on the building back and front, you could hear wind whistling through there like it was blowing through a pipe. A special ticket you could cut out of the newspaper for five dollars off a fifteen dollar buffet of country sausages and sliced cantaloupe hadn't rolled them in either. Sonny and God most definitely needed a more exciting game plan. Something with titties.

Taking the blind man by the elbow, Mr. Harold led him across the little street and into the yard of the church. Well, actually, it was more than a yard. About four acres. On the front acre sat Sonny Guy's house, and out to the right of it was a little music studio he'd built, and over to the left was the metal building that served as the church. The metal was aluminum and very bright and you could feel the heat bouncing off of it like it was an oven with bread baking inside.

Behind the house were three more acres, most of it weeds, and at the back of it all was a chicken wire fence where a big black dog of undetermined breed liked to pace.

When Mr. Harold saw what the blind man had done, he let out his breath. The fella had been all over that four acres, and it wasn't just a patch of weeds now, but it wasn't manicured either. The poor bastard had tried to do the job of a lawn mower with a weed-eater, and he'd mostly succeeded in chopping down the few flowers that grew in the midst of brick-lined beds, and he'd chopped weeds and dried grass here and there, so that the whole place looked as if it were a head of hair mistreated by a drunk barber with an attitude.

At Mr. Harold's feet, he discovered a mole the blind man's shoe had dislodged from a narrow tunnel. The mole had been whipped to death by the weed-eater sling. It looked like a wad of dirty hair dipped in red paint. A lasso loop of guts had been knocked out of its mouth and ants were crawling on it. The blind had slain the blind.