Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

According to the story, somewhere beneath that huge mountain of sawdust were his bones, and maybe the bones of others as well.

I always wondered how people knew he was there if no one had seen it happen. And if he was there, surely someone would have dug his body out by now.

When I brought this up to Richard, he said, “That boy’s mama had twelve other kids. She wasn’t missin’ one little nigger much.”

When we got to his property, Richard’s demeanor changed. He lost a step and his shoulders sagged.

He said, “I think me havin’ these crawdads will calm Daddy’s temper, since I been gone so long.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so we just kept walking into his yard. According to Richard, their house had been handed down to them by his mother’s parents. It was huge and once grand, but that grandness was gone.

The yard was lush with high weeds divided by a cracked concrete walk. The porch sagged and the front door hung crooked on its hinges. One side of the porch roof had a hole in it and the lumber was hanging down, black and wet-looking, soft, as if you could tear it apart with your bare hands.

Out back of the house I could hear their big black dog barking, running on its chain attached to the clothesline.

Richard paused, studied the dog as it ran back and forth.

“Daddy loves that dog,” Richard said. “He’s crazy about him.”

Back and beyond the clothesline and the dog was the twenty acres or so Mr. Chapman farmed in potatoes and peas. There too were the crumbling outbuildings, the ill-fed plow mule contained within a rickety fence, and an anemic-looking hog in a mud hole surrounded by closely driven posts made of hoss apple wood. The hog lived on day-old toss-away cakes Mr. Chapman got from the bakery, scraps from the kitchen.

As we stepped on the porch, the door opened, and Mr. Chapman came out. He was a tall lean man who looked as if he had once been wet and wrung out too hard in a wash wringer. There didn’t seem to be a drop of moisture in him or his hair, and his eyes were as dark and dry as pine nuts.

He looked at me, then at Richard.

“You got in that bucket, boy?”

“Crawdads,” Richard said. “Enough for supper, I think.”

“You think. Do you or don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You been gone all day, boy. I had some work for you to do.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Get in the house, give ’em to your mama. Your friend can’t stay.”

“See you, Stanley,” Richard said. The expression in his eyes was like a suicide note.

“Sure,” I said.

Behind me, I heard the door slam, followed by a flat whapping sound. Richard cried out shrilly from behind the door and his father said something sharp. Then I was gone, on out to the road, walking fast, the sunlight warmer and cleaner out there, away from the weeds and the trees and the big rotting Chapman place.

———

I ARRIVED at the drive-in to find Mom in a state. She had been shopping with Callie and had had an adventure.

She was dressed in a black dress with a black hat with a red bow on it; it looked like something Robin Hood would wear if he were in mourning and was a sissy.

Mom removed the hat, which was somehow fastened with a couple of pins, put it on the drainboard by the sink. Her hands were shaking.

“He was pacing us, across the street,” she told me and Rosy Mae.

“Shu it was him, Miss Gal?”

“Well, no. I’ve never seen him. But I think it was. He was big and very black. Had a fedora, pulled down just above his eyebrows. A longish coat. He looked strong.”

“What kind of shoes was he wearin’?” Rosy Mae asked.

“I didn’t think to look at his shoes,” Mom said. “He could have been wearing ballet slippers for all I know. I have to sit down. Stanley, will you get me a glass of water?”

“He had on army style boots with red laces,” Callie said. “I noticed it. I’ve never seen a man with red laces before.”

I brought Mom a glass of water. She sat at the table, and after a few sips, she set the glass down and took a deep breath.

I hadn’t noticed if the man out front of the drive-in the other day, smoking a cigarette, was wearing army boots with red laces, but the rest of it, the clothes, the hat, fit.

Daddy, who had been out back, picking up trash from the drive-in yard, came in, said, “Stanley, I want you out here right now, picking up trash. You can’t go off fishing when there’s work to . . . What’s going on here?”

“I’m not sure if anything is,” Mom said. “I think it may be my imagination.”

“Well,” Daddy said, “am I going to have to imagine what happened?”

“No,” Mom said. “I just don’t know it was anything. You see, me and Callie, we were in town shopping. Going to Phillips’s Grocery, but had to park down from the store a ways. It’s coupon day for the store. They’ve started this thing with their own coupons—”

“Gal, for heaven’s sake,” Daddy said.

“Okay. Anyway. We were walking back to the car, and across the street was this big colored man wearing a brown fedora. He looked so scary. He . . . Well, I didn’t like the way he was looking at us. As we walked back to the car, he paced us on the other side of the street. When we stopped, he stopped, and he glared at us. I didn’t imagine that, did I, Callie?”

“No. He was watching us, Daddy.”

“He followed us all the way to the car, and when we got inside, and I was starting to back out, he came next to the window and looked in. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. But he had the strangest look on his face. And his eyes, they were so . . .”

“Scary,” Callie said. “Like something out of a monster movie.”

“Yes. Something out of a monster movie. I froze with my foot on the brake.”

“It was him, Miss Gal,” Rosy Mae said. “He wear them red laces all the time. I bought them for him. And he got that look. I seen that look many times, right before he hit me so hard my clothes changes colors.”

Rosy Mae pulled up a chair, sat down.

“He done gone to followin’ you, and it’s all my fault.”

“I invited you here,” Mom said.

“Yes,” Daddy said. “You did.”

“I can get my stuff and be gone in jes’ fifteen minutes,” Rosy Mae said. “Ain’t no one been nicer than you, Miss Gal. But I don’t want to bring nothin’ on your fambly.”

“You hush up, Rosy,” Mom said. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

“Maybe I should, Miss Gal.”

“You go out there, roam those streets, he’s going to hurt you,” Mom said. “I guarantee it.”

“And what about you?” Daddy said. “Sounds to me like he’s going to hurt you. Or Callie.”

Mom glared at him. “And what do you suggest?”

Daddy thought it over, said, “I suggest we leave things like they are. You’re welcome here, Rosy. I don’t want you roaming the streets. You really don’t have anyplace to go . . . Do you?”

“No, sir, Mr. Stanley, I don’t.”

“Well, then, you got to stay. But this old dog ain’t gonna hunt. Where did you see this nig . . . this fella?”

“On Main Street,” Callie said. “But he’d be gone by now. You should have seen him, Daddy, lookin’ in the car, scary-like.”

“Where’s he live, Rosy?” Daddy asked.

“Down in the Section.”

“Where in the Section?”

She told him.

“I’ll check by there,” he said. “I don’t find him, I’ll call the police.”

“No, Stanley,” Mom said. “The man is dangerous. He might have a gun.”

“He might not have no gun,” Rosy said. “But he carry a knife or a razor all the time, and he cut you too, you can bet on that.”

“Go to the police right away,” Mom said.