Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

I had never seen him before. I eased up to the crack, got down on my knees, and looked out. He was big and tall and wore a wide-brimmed hat, work shirt, and overalls. He just stood there looking, smoking a cigarette. Perhaps he was taking in the mural, the cavalry and the Indians.

After a while, he tossed the butt of his cigarette and walked away. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

———

DOWNSTAIRS, Rosy greeted me, waddled about the living room, slapping about with a duster. I went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of milk.

Through the sliding glass door I saw Buster out back. He was carrying a paint can and brush. It was hours before he was supposed to be at work and it surprised me to see him.

As I went out, Nub eyeballed me like he might get up, but this time he held his place on the cool tile floor of the kitchen. Even a loyal dog needed a break now and then.

I made my way to the projection booth, tried to strike up a conversation, but he wasn’t having any. It was as if a dark cloud full of thunder and lightning had fallen over him. He was in no mood to talk, and said so.

“This ain’t my birthday, little boy, and I ain’t been drinkin’. I got work to do. No offense, but I really don’t want company.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, just leave me alone.”

I crutched back to the drive-in, went inside, and sat down at the table. Rosy Mae came over, said, “He hurt your feelin’s, that old man did, didn’t he?”

“No.”

“Yes he did. I can tell way yo’ face is hangin’. Don’t pay that old buzzard no mind no how. He jes’ a messed-up old man. He happy one day, mad the next.”

“He was nice yesterday.”

Rosy Mae sat down at the table. “Mr. Stanley . . . Stanley, he like that. Just as moody as an old milk cow, only worse. He thinks he’s a high-falutin nigger. Heard tell he supposed to been some kind’a law in the Indi’n nations. Supposed to be part Indi’n or somethin’.”

“He told me that.”

“I don’t even know it true. He could just be one of them red niggers from over Louisiana. He drinks, one time it make him friendly, next time it make him like a poison snake you done shook up and let go.”

“He’s not drinking today.”

“Maybe it’s when he’s not drinking he is who he is. Or maybe it’s the want of a drink that makes him like that. That’s how them drinkers are, and it ain’t never they fault if’n they tell it. Hear them say: ‘Don’t never trust no person don’t drink,’ and that’s the silliest thing ever did hear. You better off not to trust them drinkers, ’cause drink is for the miserable. ’Course, that the truth, I ought to be swiggin’ me a gallon jug.”

“Thanks, Rosy. I feel better.”

“Good. Yo’ mama and daddy done went to town with Callie to buy her some school clothes. They say they gonna take you tomorrow. I’m gonna read me some of my magazines, you don’t tell.”

“You know I won’t.”

“All right then. I read the same ones over and over ’cause I ain’t been nowhere to buy none. I got some words I run acrost though, and I don’t know ’em. Marked them so you could help me.”

“Let me see them.”

She pulled a couple from her big bag of a purse, put them on the table, carefully opened them to dog-eared pages. She showed me the words that she had underlined with a pencil. They were words I knew. I told her how to say them and what they meant.

She darted to the living room, kicked off her shoes, lay on the couch, and began to read. Nub climbed up next to her feet, pressed himself to her. She wiggled her toes in his fur.

I looked out at the projection booth. Buster was painting it a fresh green color. It occurred to me he might be the one who painted the fence in the first place. If so, I wondered if he had been the artist who made the paintings of the aliens and such.

I watched him work. Unlike Rosy Mae, he seemed packed with endless energy and in need of a way to burn it off. I wanted to ask him about the paintings on the fence, but didn’t dare. Not after the way he acted.

I crutched upstairs, got my Tarzan book, went outside, and sat on the long porch that faced the drive-in lot. Pretty soon I was lost in Tarzan’s world.

I was near the end of the book when a shadow fell over me. I looked up. It was Buster.

“Stan, think you could get that ole fat gal to get me some lemonade or somethin’?”

“I heard that,” Rosy Mae called from the living room. She had the windows up to let in what wind there was, and the screens certainly didn’t block voices.

“I don’t care you heard it,” Buster said. “I care I get some lemonade or somethin’.”

Rosy Mae appeared at the screen door. “I ain’t got no lemonade, nigger.”

“Whatcha got that I’d want?”

“I got some ice tea, but you ain’t gonna come in the house. Mr. Big Stanley wouldn’t like that.”

“Maybe there’s other things you got I’d want. And they ain’t any of Mr. Big Stanley’s business.”

“Well, you only gonna get ice tea.”

Rosy Mae disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a large fruit jar full of ice cubes and ice tea.

“This is what you drink out of,” she said. “I don’t want your lips on none of Miss Gal’s dishes.”

Buster took the tea, drank a long draught of it. “Ain’t nothin’ like ice tea for coolin’ you, next to good spring or sweet well water that is. I do like good sweet water. You got any cookies, woman?”

“What makes you think I got cookies I’m gonna give you any?”

“You look like a gal wouldn’t want a man to do without. Something sweet and dark . . . like this tea. Maybe somethin’ sweeter . . . Like a cookie.”

“Like a cookie?”

“You hear me.”

Rosy Mae, still behind the screen, grinned. “It gonna be a cookie, on that you can be certain.”

She went away, came back with a fistful of chocolate chips she had baked the day before. “Now you go on back to work, nigger.”

Buster took the cookies, sat in the chair next to me, eating them, drinking the tea. He said, “Let me tell you somethin’, boy. I kinda got my ways, and they ain’t that good. But I want you to know, I don’t mean nothin’ by ’em.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m what you call one moody nigger.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t much care someone gets mad at me, but I don’t want to hurt no one I didn’t mean to, and that’s all I’m gonna say on the matter.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You want to talk now, I’ll talk. I done painted most of my buildin’.”

“No, sir. I don’t believe I have anything to say.”

“Suit yourself.”

He drank his tea, crunched his cookies. We sat in the shade of the veranda and watched heat waves run across the drive-in lot.

Finally, I said, “Did you do the artwork on the fence? The space creatures?”

“I did. I oncet met a man told me he seen one of them flyin’ saucers.”

He crunched another cookie.

“Really?”

“Said he seen a little man too. It was in a place called Aurora, Texas. About 1894. He and some other cowboys seen a big flyin’ thing crash. Now’days they call it a flyin’ saucer. He said he saw this little man that was knocked out of it. Told me this when I was workin’ on the 101 Ranch.”

“Didn’t Tom Mix work on that ranch?”

“How you know about an old movie cowboy like that?”

“My dad.”

“He told you about him?”

“Yes, sir. Did you know Tom Mix?”

“No. I seen him oncet or twicet, but I didn’t really know him. I liked that ranch. They pretty well treated a man same as any other if he could do his job. As for Tom Mix, he was a real cowboy, but one impressed me was Bill Pickett, and I did know him right well.”