Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

“You want me to bring you some more funny books? I want ’em back, but you can borrow ’em.”

“Got anymore Batman ?”

“Naw, just them. I got some Superman funny books, though. I can’t buy the new ones. They’re a dime. But in the back of Mr. and Mrs. Greene’s store, they got them with half the cover cut off. There might be some Batman there. They’re just a nickel. I’ll be checking when I get a nickel.”

“Why are they cut like that?”

“They don’t sell after a time, they cut off half the cover, send it back, they get their money back, then they sell the funny book anyway. For a nickel. Ain’t supposed to, but they do. I got to hide all mine ’cause my daddy will tear them up. Actually, he takes them out to the outhouse and wipes his ass on ’em. He says they’re devil’s stuff. I thought about that, and I couldn’t picture no devil reading a Batman comic book.”

“He won’t let you read comics?”

“He don’t think you ought to read nothin’ but the Bible. He calls all them books man-made book learnin’. He wants me to drop out of school when I get a little older, go to work. He says that’s what a man does. Reckon I will drop out.”

“I’m surprised your dad doesn’t want you to be a preacher.”

“He don’t want nobody but him to be a preacher. What’s your daddy want you to be?”

“Whatever I want. He always tells me to find something I’d like to do for free and learn to make a living at it. I don’t know what that is yet. Mama wants me to be a teacher.”

“Your daddy lets her contradict him like that, tellin’ you what to be after him sayin’ do what you want?”

I was a little taken aback.

“Sure. He doesn’t care.”

“In our house my daddy runs things and what he says is how it is.”

“I guess Mama runs things here.”

“Your mama?”

“Daddy thinks he runs things, but Mama runs them.”

“My mama don’t run a thing. Daddy’ll hit her in the mouth if she sasses back. He told me you got to treat a woman like a nigger sometimes.”

“That doesn’t sound right to me,” I said. “No one should be treated that way.”

“Well, I’m just sayin’ what he said. Mama, she reads that Bible all the time, and that’s the only thing Daddy gives her credit for. Hey, do you know Elvin Turner?”

“No.”

“He beat up a nigger with a stick. It was just a little nigger, but Elvin beat him anyway because he said the nigger looked at him funny.”

“I’m sure Elvin is proud,” I said.

“He’s pretty proud, all right, but I don’t know how Elvin could beat up much if he didn’t have a stick. Even with that, that little nigger put up a pretty good fight . . . Got to go. My old man is gonna whup the tar out of me with a razor strap or that darn belt of his I don’t get back in time to do chores.”

“Thanks for loaning me the funny books, Richard.”

“That’s okay.”

“Richard. Don’t say nigger here. Rosy Mae might hear it and it might hurt her feelings.”

“Oh. Well, okay.”

“Something else. You ever heard about a ghost in the house on the hill?”

“Naw.”

“What about by the railroad track?”

“The girl lookin’ for her head? My daddy mentions her and her mother from time to time, and ain’t none of what he mentions is good. Then again, he ain’t got a lot of good to say about nobody less it’s Jesus. I been down there at night couple of times, and it’s spooky, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you.”

“See any ghost?”

“Naw. But they say it’s like a light that bounces around.”

“I got this mystery going,” I said. “It seems to have something to do with this girl.”

“What kind of mystery?”

I briefly outlined it for him.

“I heard about that Stilwind house burnin’ down from my daddy. He’s talked about it several times. He worked for the Stilwinds, odd chores and stuff. But I didn’t know the house used to be back there behind the drive-in.”

“There wasn’t any drive-in then. On your way home, go to the trees out back and look up. You’ll see.”

“I’ll do that.”

Richard left, scratching at the lice in his hair.

Rosy Mae came up a few minutes after Richard left. She had been living with us ever since the night she came in hurt and confused. She was still sleeping on the couch. She smiled big, said, “I swear, that Mr. Richard’s momma need to hold him down and pour kerosene on his head and get rid of them bugs. Or get him some lye soap. I got me some I made from hog fat and lye and boiled mint leaves, and I’ll give him a right smart piece, if’n he’ll use it.”

“He’s all right,” I said.

“He come to see you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You is so polite. He bring them funny books?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then he all right, ain’t he? He better than his daddy.”

“How do you mean?”

“His daddy, he all the time nervous as a corn-fed duck on Christmas Day.”

“Nervous?”

“Uh huh. He got that religion, and ain’t a bit of it the way he understands it good to nobody but him. You know, twenty years ago, he a handsome man. But not now. He done let all that bitterness eat him up.”

“What’s he bitter about?”

“Lord if anyone knows. There’s just some people like persimmons, they bitter when they born, sweet for a short time, then they go fast rotten.”

Rosy Mae sat down in the chair Richard had occupied, picked up one of the comics from my nightstand, thumbed through it a bit. “I can read this and them movie magazines pretty good, but there’s words I ain’t never learned that throws me in books.”

“I can help you learn to read better,” I said.

“Can you now?”

“I can.”

“I don’t think I got the brains to learn more than I done learned.”

“Sure you do.”

Rosy Mae brightened. “Guess I can learn I want to. Learned to read them magazines, didn’t I? Even if I got to skip and guess at some words. Learned to read what I read now so I’d know prices at stores and such. Had to learn so the white man down at the store, Mr. Phillips, don’t overcharge me. He always adds a bit to colored people’s stuff. ’Course, since we got to buy through the back door, it’s hard to know he don’t mark them prices up before we sees ’em.”

Rosy Mae scratched at her woolly head.

“Either I gots me Mr. Richard’s bugs, or I’m thinkin’ I gots ’em. I’m gonna go down, wash up, and fix lunch. You want me to bring yours up?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I will. And don’t you lay up here now and starts to feel sorry for yo’self. You jes’ got a broken leg. There’s boys can’t and ain’t never been able to walk. You okay. You gonna heal up. You a little white boy with a good home and good mama and daddy. You could’a been me.”

“All right, Rosy Mae. I won’t feel sorry for myself. But there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I thank you for that, Mr. Stanley.”

“Just Stanley.”

“Uh huh. You know your daddy done fixed your bike. He straightened out some of them spokes, got another bike from some junk, and he used them parts to fix yours. He done painted it up for you too. But it ain’t that rust color no more. Now it’s blue.”

“That’s great.”

Rosy Mae went out, and contrary to her suggestion and my agreement, I lay there feeling sorry for myself, Nub lying across my chest, his eyes closed, one of his legs kicking as if he were having a bad dream.

Probably about the car that passed over him.

———

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS I mostly stayed in my room with Nub. Daddy had Buster run Vertigo for a week, but never did have anyone over for a special showing.