Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

“We’re going to see her now?”

“Of course not. Not in this weather. And though she’s used to seein’ men with little or no clothes on, I don’t think you’d be all that anxious to go over there in your drawers. Now am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What we need to do now is get you dressed and home.”

“You’ll be at work tonight?”

“If I can stay away from the liquor.”

“Daddy told me you don’t come to work . . . he’s gonna make me the projectionist. I don’t want that.”

“I know you don’t. You’re a true friend. And I ain’t much of one.”

“It doesn’t get any truer than what you did for me.”

“You go on home and don’t think about this no more. You ain’t at fault no kind of way. And Bubba Joe, he’s about as important to the world as a flea. Another thing. I don’t do what I’m supposed to do, you ain’t doin’ me no shame takin’ my job. A man’s responsible for what he does or doesn’t do. Hear what I’m sayin’?”

“Yes, sir . . . But, Buster . . . Please be there.”

“I will. I really do try to keep my word, but that old alcohol gets on me sometimes. You ever been coon huntin’, boy?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, you get dogs runnin’ a coon, and you get down in the bottoms, and that ole coon, when he’s bein’ chased, he’ll lead those dogs out into the wetlands, deep water if he can, then he’ll jump on a dog’s head and try and drown him. I ain’t a lyin’. That’s what he’ll do. And that dog, he’s done committed himself to that deep water, and he’s got this coon on him with teeth and claws, and a coon’s strong for its size, and it’s pushin’ down on him, and it’s all that dog can do to swim and fight and keep his head above water. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he don’t. Alcohol is like that. It’s like I’m out in deep water, and that stuff is jumpin’ on my head, tryin’ to hold me under. I keep fightin’. One day, I don’t shake it, that ole coon is gonna win. Gonna push me under for good . . . Good thing, though, is, I’m out of whiskey and ain’t got money for more.”

———

THE RAIN HAD DIED, but it was still misty. I decided I had to go home anyway. I got dressed. My clothes felt strange, toasty in spots, damp in others.

“You get home. You pet that dog good, you hear?”

“I will,” I said.

As I tentatively stepped off the steps, started away, Buster, who had followed me as far as the porch, said, “You ain’t got no worry about him anymore. Trust me on that. But that storm ain’t through yet. You just got a lull. You get on. Hear?”

I nodded at him, and kept walking.

With the wind gone and the sky less black, it was no longer cold and the summer heat began to make things steam and soon I was sweating like a staked goat at a Fourth of July picnic.

I walked by where Bubba Joe had bought the farm. I saw his knife lying there. Buster had forgotten to pick it up.

I looked around. No one was in sight. I went over and kicked the knife against a tree, used the toe of my shoe to knock dirt over it.

As I did this, a tremble went through me. I thought of Bubba Joe chasing us the other night, earlier today when he had his hand twisted in my shirt, his breath beating me with tobacco and liquor. I thought about the way Buster had drawn his own knife across Bubba Joe’s throat, quick and simple like a teacher drawing a chalk line. I thought too of the creek where Buster had tossed Bubba Joe like so much rotten wood.

I could hear the creek water rushing, full of the power of the rain. I thought of Bubba Joe lying down there, the crawdads working at him like they work at bacon on a string. I had the urge to go over for a look. But didn’t.

15

I ARRIVED HOME in the late afternoon. When I stepped inside the house, I tried my best to act as if nothing had happened. At first, somehow, I thought my family knew. They were as excited to see me as Lazarus’s family was to see him step from the tomb.

Rosy Mae started in with, “We been worried ’bout you, Mr. Stanley. We thought you’d have enough sense to come home right away, way that storm was goin’.”

Callie laughed. “But you didn’t.”

“I got stranded in town,” I said. “I sat it out in the drugstore.”

I felt sick to my stomach lying like that, but didn’t know what else to do. Telling them I had gone to Buster’s and that Buster was stone drunk, and Bubba Joe had tried to kill me, and Buster had cut his throat, just didn’t seem like the kind of information they needed to hear right then. In fact, it was information I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Ever.

“We should never have let you go out with that storm brewing,” Mom said. “I get so mad at myself when I allow my common sense to be overridden by my desire to make you happy.”

“I bet there won’t be any use opening the drive-in tonight,” Dad said, standing at the front door, looking out. “I got a feeling the rain will start up again.”

Mom hustled me through the kitchen, into their bathroom, pulled a big towel out of the cabinet and gave it to me. I was still damp, and so were my clothes, but compared to how wet I had been, I thought of myself as comfortable.

“Go upstairs and put on some dry clothes,” Mom said. “Come down and I’ll have you some cocoa warmed up . . . Is Nub bleeding?”

She had eyeballed a streak of blood running down his fur, and she bent down to examine him.

“Yeah,” I said. “He sort of run off for a while. I guess he got in a fight.”

Now I was compounding my lie.

Daddy came into the kitchen, bent over Nub, examined the wound. “Looks like a knife cut. Must have been a cat he got into it with. I’ll put some alcohol on it.”

“He won’t like that,” I said.

“He won’t even notice.”

Since Buster had poured alcohol on Nub, and Nub had yelped, I knew he minded.

Upstairs, I put on some dry clothes, combed my hair in front of the mirror. I looked at my face, thinking somehow it looked different. Older. Scared. Confused maybe.

I sat for a moment, just breathing. Trying to get my strength and courage back. I felt as if something living inside of me had been stolen, taken away and mistreated, then returned without all of its legs.

Downstairs, I found Nub dried off and doctored. He was lying on the floor on a thick towel Mom had laid down.

“How did he like the alcohol?” I asked.

“You were right,” Daddy said. “He didn’t like it.”

I had the cocoa while Mom clucked over me.

Callie had said very little. She sat at the far end of the table with her own cup of cocoa, looking at me with those woodburner eyes of hers.

Finally, everyone but myself moved into the living room. They planned to watch television, but the storm had come back and was so fierce, they knew that was pointless. With only three channels, and one of them brought in only by judicious turning of the outside antenna, it would have been nothing but a crackling noise and a screenful of electric snow.

I sat in the kitchen and sipped my cocoa. Rosy Mae came in from the living room to start dinner. She said, “You look like you done seen a ghost, Mr. Stanley.”

“Just Stanley. Remember?”

“You ain’t been in no kind of trouble, have you, Stanley?”

I shook my head. Rosy Mae didn’t push it. She got a cup, went to the stove, poured the remaining hot milk from the pan into her cup, then stirred in cocoa.

“It works better you put the cocoa in first,” I said.

“I didn’t know that, and me bein’ a cook. But I don’t drink me no cocoa much.”

She sat down at the table and studied me. “You sure you’re all right? I read one of them Sherlock Holmes stories from that book. He sure smart, ain’t he?”