Joe Lansdale - Hyenas

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Hyenas marks the always-welcome return of Joe R. Lansdale’s most indelible fictional creations: Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. Once again, the embattled but resilient duo find themselves enmeshed in a web of danger, duplicity, and escalating mayhem. The result is a tightly compressed novella that is at once harrowing, hilarious, and utterly impossible to put down.
The story begins with a barroom brawl that is both brutal and oddly comic. The ensuing drama encompasses abduction, betrayal, robbery, and murder, ending with a lethal confrontation in an East Texas pasture. Along the way, readers are treated to moments of raucous, casually profane humor and to scenes of vivid, crisply described violence, all related in that unmistakable Lansdale voice. An essential addition to an already imposing body of work, Hyenas shows us both the author and his signature characters at their inimitable best. It doesn’t get better than this.
Hyenas also includes the bonus Hap Collins short story, “The Boy Who Became Invisible”.
From Publishers Weekly
In Lansdale's wry, casually violent novella about roughneck buddies Hap Collins (white and straight) and Leonard Pine (African-American and gay), the two knights-errant befriend a hapless fellow whose younger, weaker brother has fallen in with extremely bad company—he's just joined a gang of bank robbers whose leader is used to increasing his own share of the loot by killing the other gang members. As usual, the dialogue is deadpan tart and the action extreme but convincing. Readers will find themselves simultaneously grinning and flinching. The book also includes "The Boy Who Became Invisible," a story Hap tells about something he witnessed years before, perhaps explaining why he's inclined to stand up for people who aren't as good at defending themselves as he and Leonard grew up to be. Lansdale (Vanilla Ride) once again proves he's the East Texas master of redneck noir.  

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I DON'T KNOW when it happened, but it got so when Jesse came over I found things to do. Homework, or some chore around the house, which was silly, because unlike Jesse, I didn’t really have any chores. In time he quit stopping by, and I would see him in the halls at school, and we’d nod at each other, but seldom speak.

The relentless picking and nagging from James and Ronnie continued, and as they became interested in girls, it increased. And Marilyn Townsend didn’t help either. She was a lovely young thing and as cruel as they were.

One day, Jesse surprised us by coming to the cafeteria with his sack lunch. He usually ate outside on one of the stoops, but he came in this day and sat at a table by himself, and when Marilyn went by he watched her, and when she came back with her tray, he stood up and smiled, politely asked if she would like to sit with him.

She laughed. I remember that laugh to this day. It was as cold as a knife blade in the back and easily as sharp. I saw Jesse’s face drain until it was white, and she went on by laughing, not even saying a word, just laughing, and pretty soon everyone in the place was laughing, and Marilyn came by me, and she looked at me, and heaven help me, I saw those eyes of hers and those lips, and whatever made all the other boys jump did the same to me…and I laughed.

Jesse gathered up his sack and went out.

IT WAS AT this point that James and Ronnie came up with a new approach They - фото 32

IT WAS AT this point that James and Ronnie came up with a new approach. They decided to treat Jesse as if he were a ghost, as if he were invisible. We were expected to do the same. So as not to be mean to Jesse, but being careful not to burn my bridges with the in-crowd, I avoided him altogether. But there were times, here and there, when I would see him walking down the hall, and on the rare occasions when he spoke, students pretended not to hear him, or James would respond with some remark like, “Do you hear a duck quacking?”

When Jesse spoke to me, if no one was looking,

I would nod.

This went on into the ninth grade, and it became such a habit, it was as if Jesse didn’t exist, as if he really were invisible. I almost forgot about him, though I did note in math class one day there were stripes of blood across his back, seeping through his old worn shirt. His father and the razor strop. Jesse had nowhere to turn.

One afternoon I was in the cafeteria, just about to get in line, when Jesse came in carrying his sack. It was the first time he’d been in the cafeteria since the incident with Marilyn some time before. I saw him come in, his head slightly down, walking as if on a mission. As he came near me, for the first time in a long time, for no reason I can explain, I said, “Hi, Jesse.”

He looked up at me surprised, and nodded, the way I did to him in the hall, and kept walking.

There was a table in the center of the cafeteria, and that was the table James and Ronnie and Marilyn had claimed, and as Jesse came closer, for the first time in a long time, they really saw him. Maybe it was because they were surprised to see him and his paper sack in a place he hadn’t been in ages. Or maybe they sensed something. Jesse pulled a small revolver from his sack and before anyone knew what was happening, he fired three times, knocking all three of them to the floor. The place went nuts, people running in all directions. Me, I froze.

Then, like a soldier, he wheeled and marched back my way. As he passed me, he turned his head, smiled, said, “Hey, Hap,” then he was out the door. I wasn’t thinking clearly, because I turned and went out in the hall behind him, and the history teacher, Mr. Waters, saw him with the gun, said something, and the gun snapped again, and Waters went down. Jesse walked all the way to the double front door, which was flung wide open at that time of day, stepped out into the light and lifted the revolver. I heard it pop and saw his head jump and he went down. My knees went out from under me and I sat down right there in the hall, unable to move.

WHEN THEY WENT out to tell his parents what had happened to him that Marilyn - фото 33

WHEN THEY WENT out to tell his parents what had happened to him, that Marilyn was disfigured, Ronnie wounded, and James and Mr. Waters were dead, they discovered them in bed where Jesse had shot them in their sleep.

The razor strop lay across them like a dead snake.

“Hyenas” Copyright © 2011 by Joe R. Lansdale.

All rights reserved.

“The Boy Who Became Invisible” Copyright © 2010 by Joe R. Lansdale. All rights reserved.

Dust jacket illustration Copyright © 2011

by Glen Orbik. All rights reserved.

Interior design Copyright © 2011

Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.

Electronic Edition

9781596064454

Subterranean Press

PO Box 190106

Burton, MI 48519

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