Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

“You have a theater,” he said. “Don’t you get tired of movies?”

“No,” she said. “And that’s our theater. I think of it, I mostly think of work. Besides, I want to see the movie at the Palace.”

“It’s a love story,” I said.

“Well,” Drew said. “If you want to.”

I almost felt sorry for Drew, way Callie had him tied around her little finger. She could have asked him to take her to a ballet recital and have him watch while wearing a tutu and a beret, and he would have done it.

We went to the picture, and it bored me. I slept through most of it because the theater was air-conditioned. Back then, any place that was air-conditioned in the summer was a treat.

As we were going out, we saw James Stilwind at the candy and popcorn counter, leaning over it, talking to a young girl raking popcorn out of the popper into a bag.

“There’s James Stilwind,” Callie said.

“That’s him?” Drew said. I thought he sounded a little sour about the recognition. I had a feeling he had come up in their private conversations. For all I knew, Callie had blabbed about all the things I had told her.

’Course, I was kind of a blabbermouth myself.

Stilwind turned his head, saw Callie. He had a bright white smile that looked as if it belonged in a Pepsodent commercial. “Y’all enjoy the picture?”

“It was good,” Callie said.

“It was all right,” Drew said.

I remained silent.

James came over to us, leaving the girl behind the counter looking pouty, raking popcorn, shoving it into bags, stacking it at the back of the popper.

“Haven’t I seen you before?” James asked Callie.

“I believe so,” she said. “We were coming out of the drugstore, and I saw you with your wife.”

“Wife? No. You saw me with a date. I forget who it was, but she isn’t my wife.”

“You forget?” Callie said.

“Well, if it were you, I wouldn’t forget.”

“We have to go,” Drew said.

“Sure,” James said.

“And what’s your name?” he asked Callie.

She told him.

He asked ours. We told him. I don’t think he was listening.

“And you’re James Stilwind?” Callie said.

“You know my name?”

“I know you own the theater, so I suppose it must be you.”

“Come around anytime. Here . . .” He went back behind the candy counter, reached into a drawer, came back with three tickets. He gave us each one.

“Free passes,” he said. “On me. I own the place. If I’m here, I’ll see you get a free bag of corn and a soft drink.”

“Thanks,” Callie said.

“We got to go,” Drew said, and he took Callie by the arm.

Outside, Callie said, “Drew, you’re hurting my arm.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“That’s all right,” she said, rubbing it.

“What a creep,” Drew said.

“He seemed all right to me,” Callie said.

Drew sighed. Even his daddy’s Cadillac couldn’t trump a handsome grown-up with his own theater and a Thunderbird that didn’t belong to anyone’s daddy.

I thought: James Stilwind is someone who should be talked to if I’m going to truly investigate this murder. Buster couldn’t do it. Even the idea that a colored man might be quizzing a white man on something as sensitive as a sister’s death could get him beat or worse.

Problem was, I didn’t know how to do it either.

Drew drove us home. Except for Callie commenting on how much she liked what some girl walking along the sidewalk was wearing, it was a silent trip, the air thick enough to carve into shapes.

Drew let us out at the Dew Drop. Callie slid over and kissed him on the cheek. “See you soon, Drewsy?”

That kiss broke the ice. Drew smiled. “Sure. Real soon, I hope.”

“You can bet on it,” Callie said.

“See you, Drewsy,” I said.

Drew gave me a stony look.

We got out of the car and started inside. I said, “You sure know how to work them, don’t you, Callie?”

“Comes natural,” she said.

17

WHEN WE CAME into the house Rosy and Mom were sitting on the couch. Mom had her arm around Rosy, and Rosy was crying. Daddy was leaning against the corner of the wall where the living room led into the kitchen.

Callie said, “Rosy, are you okay?”

“Let her be for a moment,” Daddy said. “Y’all come in here.”

We went into the kitchen. There was no door between the kitchen and living room, just an opening, so when we sat at the table he spoke softly.

“Bubba Joe,” Daddy said. “They found him.”

“Where?” Callie asked.

“Dead,” Daddy said. “Washed up out of Dewmont Creek. They found him on the edge of a pasture. Creek had swollen during the rain, receded during the dry spell. He’d been dead awhile. Man owned the land where they found him didn’t go back there often. When he did, to check on a cow, he found Bubba Joe. He was so blowed up he thought he was a calf at first.”

“Yuck,” Callie said.

“But that’s good, isn’t it?” I said. “Not that he was blowed up, but that he’s dead.”

“Rosy still loves him,” Callie said. “That’s so sad.”

“He tried to kill her,” I said, and started to say he tried to kill me, but caught myself. “He might have tried to kill someone else. He might have killed someone else.”

“That’s true,” Daddy said. “I don’t miss him any.”

“Did he drown?” Callie asked.

“Throat was cut. They think he might have been in the water awhile, but mostly he’s been laid up in that pasture, going ripe.”

“How did you find out about it?” Callie asked.

“Barbershop.”

“It could just be a rumor,” she said.

“Man told me was the man who found him,” Daddy said. “And the police called to tell me too. I told Gal and Rosy.”

“Sorry as I am for Rosy,” Callie said, “it’s a relief.”

“True enough,” Daddy said.

Daddy went back into the living room.

Callie said, “You think that was him that chased us that night?”

“Sure of it,” I said.

“Then I guess it’s good he’s dead, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “It’s good.”

———

LATER THAT DAY I went out on the veranda where Rosy had retreated. She sat there looking out at the projection booth. I sat down in a chair beside her. I said, “Rosy, I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t no need to be, Mr. Stanley. He wasn’t no good man. He had it comin’. I don’t know why I feel like I do.”

“I’m sorry you and him didn’t work out better. That he wasn’t a better man.”

“Me too, Mr. Stanley.”

“Just Stanley,” I said.

“You know what your daddy done say?”

“No,” I said.

“He told me now Bubba Joe dead, it don’t matter none about stayin’ here. I don’t got to go nowhere. He gonna fix that top floor up and get me a fan, and cut me out a window right there above them cowboys and Indians.”

“That’s good, Rosy.”

“He say I can stay on and work and he gonna give me a wage and I gonna have weekends off if I want ’em. Gal didn’t say that, and she didn’t put him up to it. He tell me that, and he pat me on the back.”

There were tears in my eyes. I looked away from her, out toward the projection booth.

Rosy reached over, took my hand. I gently squeezed it. She bent her head and cried more deeply than before. I pulled my chair closer to hers. She put her head on my shoulder and kept crying. We sat that way until she was out of tears.

———

ON MONDAY, near dark, me and Nub went out to greet Buster as he came to work. In the projection booth I told him about Bubba Joe being found.

“I know,” Buster said. “I heard it through the grapevine. Ain’t nothin’ happens in this town, or the Section, gets by them birds on that porch over by my house. Word gets to them fast as if it come by telephone . . . It was just a matter of time . . . You didn’t say nothin’, did you?”