Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

We checked a couple of other rooms. Same situation.

Finally, we entered a room and found a bed inside. There was also a nightstand with a mirror and the mirror was broken, only one piece of glass still in it. It was in the right-hand corner and was a very small piece. The rest of the mirror was on the floor, spread out like pieces of silver.

There was a brush on the nightstand, and there were long gray hairs in it. The bed had wrinkled dirty sheets on it and looked as if someone had been sleeping there. Up close, we saw there were gray hairs on the pillows.

“Wow,” Drew said. “Maybe she does come back here.”

“Come on,” Callie said. “Those bats make me nervous.”

“They’re gone,” Drew said.

“Come on,” Callie said again, and there was no sweetness in her voice.

We left out of there, half expecting to meet Mrs. Stilwind at the door.

Drew drove us home, Callie moving to the passenger position as we came closer to the Dew Drop.

———

UP IN MY ROOM, me and Richard went to bed early, preparing for school the next day. I was both excited and worried. At least I had one friend there. Richard. And he’d be going to school with me.

I was thinking about all this, lying wide awake, when Richard raised up on one elbow from his pallet, said, “Stanley?”

“Yes.”

“Your family has been good to me. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“But I’ve got to go.”

“Do what?”

I sat up in bed. So did Nub. He seemed annoyed. He didn’t like his sleep disturbed.

“What do you mean go?” I asked.

“I have to go home.”

“You can’t go there. Your father doesn’t want you there.”

“Not to see him. Or my mama. I was thinkin’ about that story you told about that old woman wandering back to her house, looking for her daughter’s ghost. My daddy and mama don’t even care about me and I’m alive. I’m not going there to see them, you can bet on that.”

“Then why?”

“I want my bike. That’s the main reason. I’m going to go over there and get it. I don’t get it, Daddy’s gonna sell it or throw it away for spite.”

“Do you have to do it tonight?”

“During the day they’ll see me, and if I wait too long, he’ll get rid of it. May have already.”

“You could get another bike.”

“I made that one out of old bikes I got down at the dump. He didn’t give it to me. They ain’t never give me much of anything besides a beatin’ and hard work. I’ve had more clothes give me since I been here than I got all them years from them. I didn’t even have no underwear till your mama gave me some.”

He stood up, took off the pajamas Mom had given him, started pulling on his clothes.

“You’re just going to go over there and get your bike?”

“Yeah. At least that.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll be back.”

I don’t know what I feared he might do, why I thought he might need a backup, but I said, “Wait up, and I’ll go with you. Just wait until it’s later and we’re sure everyone’s asleep, then we’ll both go. You’ll have to hide the bike nearby. Out behind the house in the woods. We’ll get it tomorrow, say we went over and got it after school. They see it tomorrow, they’ll know we went out tonight.”

“Ain’t no need in you going,” Richard said.

“I know. But I’m going.”

———

I GOT MY HOPALONG CASSIDY flashlight and snuck silently out the back way. In fact, any noise we might have made was covered by Rosy’s snoring.

With only one bike, we walked. Nub went with us, trotting along, sniffing the ground. There was a cool, late August wind, and it gently shook the trees on either side of us and made the shadows of their boughs cut back and forth across the road as if they were sawing the earth in half.

When we could see the old sawmill, we stopped. Nub sat down in the road and let his tongue hang out, dripping drool onto the ground.

Richard said, “I feel like that little colored boy under all that sawdust and nobody giving a damn. ’Cept I ain’t dead. If’n I was dead, maybe it would be easier. Maybe he’s got it lots better now.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said.

“I don’t know any other way to talk. Come on, we’ll go behind the sawmill, slip over to the house, out to the barn. There ain’t no dog to bark, so we can get up there pretty easy. I can get a shovel there.”

“A shovel?”

“Yeah. I want to dig Butch up.”

“Say what?”

23

WHAT IN THE WORLD are you talking about? You came here to get your bike.”

“That too,” he said.

“Why would you dig up a dead dog . . . Your daddy’s dead dog?”

“That’s the one. I’m gonna dig it up because it meant so much to him. He cried over that dog. I ain’t never seen him cry over nothin’. He sure ain’t cried over me. I ain’t never seen him like nothin’ enough to even say so ’cept that dog. You know I oncet pulled cotton all day, and I filled bags good as a grown man, and I was only nine, and he didn’t even say good boy, but he always told that dog how damn good it was. He never said nothin’ to me. Not a thing.”

We walked on toward the sawmill. Nub deserted us, ran off into the woods to pursue dog business.

“Sometimes people don’t know how to say those things,” I said.

“He knew how to say it to his dog.”

“What good will digging up the dog do?”

We passed the sawmill, turned in the direction of the Chapman home.

“I want to put that dog on the back porch. Want to dig it up ’cause he cried over it and he ain’t never cried over me. He went to all that trouble to bury it, and I’m going to unbury it.”

“Richard, this is weird.”

“It ain’t weird to me. Now be quiet.”

We were near his house. We stopped for a moment and looked at it, bathed in shadow from the trees that surrounded it.

“Daddy sleeps light. Used to claim he could hear a dog run across the yard, and I reckon he can.”

“That doesn’t sound promising,” I said.

“We’re gonna go out to the barn. There’s a shovel there.”

“I don’t know, Richard.”

“Listen here, Stanley. I didn’t ask you to come. I appreciate you did. But I didn’t ask you.”

“You said we were going to get your bike.”

“I am.”

“You didn’t say anything about this dog business.”

“I didn’t know I was gonna do it till I was standing out there in front of the old sawmill. It just come to me. You want to go home. Go. Ain’t gonna hold it against you. But I’m gonna dig that dog up, and I’m gonna drag it on that screen porch. He’ll know I done it, and that’s enough.”

“How will he know?”

“Because I’ll leave him somethin’ that lets him know.”

“What?”

“Well, I ain’t figured that yet. But I will. And even if he don’t know, I’ll know I done it.”

I sighed. “All right. Let’s do it.”

———

THE BACKYARD WAS BRIGHT with moonlight, so bright you could even see where chickens had been scratching in the dirt. Out by the barn, the hog snorted once at us, then lay down in its wallow and went silent.

Richard and I removed the bar from the barn doors and heaved them open. Inside, the light from the moon was full in the doorway, but the back of the barn was as black as the devil’s thoughts.

I pulled the small flashlight out of my pants pocket, and flashed it around. On the far wall of the barn hung a large cross. It looked to be splashed with dark paint. On either side of the cross were pages torn from the Bible and pinned to the wall. I remembered now what Richard had told me about the barn being a kind of church and Mr. Stilwind thinking he was a preacher.