Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

“Yes, sir.”

“While ago”—he pulled a metal flask from inside his lunch sack as he talked—“I added me some of this to my RC. So I’m goin’ at it steady. I don’t know why I’m tellin’ this. You ain’t gonna tell your old man are you? He’d fire me. And maybe he ought to.”

“No, sir. I mean, I don’t plan to.”

Buster nodded, said, “Gonna be dark in about half hour. They be comin’ in here in droves see this John Wayne cowboy movie. I’m looking forward to it myself and I watch it every night. You don’t got no better seat than right here in the projection booth. You at the source here, son. Come on in. I ain’t gonna bite.”

Buster got up from the lawn chair and went inside the booth. I didn’t really want to go inside with him, drinking like he was, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings either. I crutched after him, Nub bringing up my heels.

Buster snapped open a round box, took out a reel, rolled it in his hands, flicked it onto the projector, smooth as a soldier loading a machine gun.

“When I ain’t been drinkin’, I can’t do that so smooth,” he said. “Stay here with me, I show you how to run the machine. I could keel over anyday. Then your daddy would need someone to do this. Hell, I don’t even think he knows how. I just do what I was doin’ before he bought this here picture show. You know, used to be a fine house right back of here, all this was a big front lawn. Wasn’t no drive-in picture show and no highway either.”

“Yes, sir, I knew that.”

“Say you did?”

I told him about the pieces of the house up in the trees behind us.

“That was a fine house. Burned down with that little Stilwind gal in it.”

“Did you know the Stilwinds?”

“Well, me and them didn’t exactly attend the same parties. Know what I’m sayin’? But I knew who they were. Was always somethin’ odd about that house burnin’, that girl in there. There was all kind of talk, but most of it was just that. Talk.”

There were a couple of chairs inside the projection booth, and we took to them.

“What was odd about it?” I asked.

“Heard tell from Jukes—he’s called that ’cause he plays the blues in juke joints sometimes. He’s a cousin and the night janitor over to the police station, high school, and newspaper. He picks up bits and pieces of a story from all them places. White people don’t notice a colored much. Jukes said that little girl got burned up, cops found wire around her wrists and ankles.”

“Wire?”

“Someone tied her to the bed, boy.”

“You’re sure?”

“No, I ain’t sure. Jukes overheard that when he’s cleanin’. If’n there was somethin’ to it, no one ever did nothin’ about it, said anything about it, ’cause that come down on the Stilwinds, and ain’t nobody wantin’ to come down on rich folk.”

“They think a Stilwind tied her to the bed, set the house on fire with her in it?”

“With everyone in it. Only all the others got out. ’Cept that little girl. She burned up ’cause the fire started in her room and she couldn’t get out. Those are the facts accordin’ to Jukes. I don’t know he heard right or told it right. But, they say you could hear her screamin’ while the house burned down. Sounded like an old wounded panther. Her mama tried to go in there after her. Flames was too high. Folks held her back, or she’d have run right through that fire and been burned up herself.”

“If the police thought one of the Stilwinds did it, why didn’t they arrest them?”

“Don’t get ahead of the facts. Just maybe one of the Stilwinds could have done it. Had they arrested a Stilwind, police force would have changed overnight. Back then Stilwinds was even more powerful than they are now, ’cause town wasn’t so big and they was all the big money that was in it.”

“How come the Stilwinds didn’t stay on the hill after they moved up there? Why did they move away?”

“Place supposed to be haunted by the ghost of that little girl burned up. Say she followed them up there to that house. Didn’t rebuild here ’cause they didn’t want bad memories, so they built up there on the hill. What I think, is memories followed them up that hill, not ghosts. They didn’t get far enough away. Maybe they can’t get nowhere far enough. What ghost mostly is, son, is memories.”

“Which Stilwind do you think set the fire?”

Buster laughed. “Boy, you is somethin’. I done told you no one got any proof any of them set a fire . . . ’Course, guess it don’t hurt to play with ideas. You got to consider all the angles of a thing. Lots thought it was James, because he was younger and might have been playin’ with fire. But, hell, he was a teenage fella, so he wasn’t playin’ if he done it. And if it was him, why did he tie his sister up? Was he just mean? Jealous? Had a grudge against her? Who knows? Families is like windows with curtains. Some folks keep the curtains pulled back. Most open and close them from time to time, and some don’t ever pull them back and you don’t never get no look inside. So, ain’t none of us outsiders really know what goes on in a family.

“Let’s see. There was an older sister, but she moved off before all this happened. Ain’t nobody thinks the mother did it, ’cause she was so overcome with it all. Story was, when they moved up on the hill, she seen her daughter at night at the foot of her bed, burnin’, holdin’ out her arms for help. It was more than the old lady could take. She lost her mind to save herself.

“Then there’s the father. The old man, though he ain’t old as me. He moved out of the house when his wife went nuts, started livin’ in the hotel downtown. The Griffith Hotel.”

“Does the father still live in the hotel?”

“Reckon he does. You real snoopy ’bout these people, ain’t you?”

“Did you know about a girl named Margret?”

“Margret? Who you talkin’ about, boy?”

I told him about the box, the letters, the ghost, the whole cloth of it. Once I started, I couldn’t shut up. You’d have thought I was drunk too.

“I remember ’bout that girl. I just didn’t remember the name. Them two things happenin’ in one night was big news. Fire and murder. Margret, well, she the daughter of a woman liked to take in men, you know what I mean?”

Being a recent sophisticate, I did know what he meant.

“Yes, sir.”

“I know that little girl’s mama in more ways than one. Me and her did business. She’s still living in the same house. She popular with the colored crowd, her being lighter. Mostly white and Mexican, I think. It’s a sad thing, boy, when a dark man got to feel better by bein’ with a light woman. Some kind of misery in all that somewhere.”

“Was that why you were with her?”

“You too young to talk about that. But I will say I ain’t seen her in years. And as to why I was with her, it was because she was cheap. That’s the God’s awful truth. I always did prefer me a woman black as midnight. But more than that, I like a good deal. Always get the best deal you can on somethin’. Don’t just jump at the first offer on any business come along . . . Winnie Wood, that was her name. It just come back to me.”

“Then her daughter was Margret Wood?”

“I think she used the Wood name. You a regular little investigator, ain’t you, boy? That’s good. You might be a policeman, you grow up.”

“Never thought about it.”

“You investigatin’ on this, ain’t you?”

“I’m curious.”

“That’s what it takes to be a law. And the good part is when a problem all comes together, click, click, click, like a tumbler in a safe . . . I used to be a law.”

“Really? A Texas Ranger?”

“Not any colored Rangers, son. But I was law.