Joe Lansdale - Leather Maiden

In the meantime I wrote columns on stem cell research, people who took the Bible literally, and even wrote one on gardening gleaned from Francine’s old notes. It was an easy thing to do, to use those notes, and I took advantage of it and got my column written quickly that week. It gave me more time to read through the research I had on Caroline, though what I had I had read a half-dozen times.

Then, one morning, all the notes, all my thoughts came together and I wrote a kind of lest-we-forget piece with the best photo of her and a shot of her shoes and that sad sack of food lying on her car seat. I wrote reminding the community that she had lived here, was well known at the university, was thought to have tremendous promise, that she had disappeared, and all these months later, no one knew any more than the day she disappeared. It was also about the fact that not only was there no information on her disappearance, when you got right down to it there wasn’t much information on her before her disappearance. I thought it might be a two-part or three-part piece, the other two parts a little more investigative. It depended on the feedback I got.

Anyway, the column got done, and I was at my desk on a Tuesday morning, two days after it appeared, having managed not to get drunk and to think of Gabby only a few hundred times since I got up, showered, shaved and had my coffee. I brought some more coffee to work from the coffee shop and was still drinking it when Mrs. Timpson came out of her office, stopped at my desk and shifted her ample ass onto the corner of it, then shifted the teeth in her mouth.

“Cason, you kind of got things stirring.”

“The column on Caroline Allison?”

“No. The one you did on Noah’s ark.”

“Oh.”

“Christians are all fired up.”

“Aren’t they always? What did I do, misspell Noah?”

“You suggested that it didn’t really happen.”

“And you think it did?”

“Do I look like an ignorant yahoo? No one in their right mind thinks some fella put, what was it you said, ‘thousands of species, times two’ on a goddamn boat and sailed it around for forty days and forty nights. But for some Christians, it’s like the best sex in the world to them. They can’t let it go. They like getting banged in the ass by the Noah story.”

“Actually,” I said, “I understand that. Personally, I’m still mad about there not being any Santa Claus.”

Timpson adjusted her teeth with her tongue. “Some of the people who put advertising in the paper are big Charlie Churches. We have to kiss their ass a little, right around the pucker hole.”

“You’re telling me not to write about that sort of thing anymore?”

“I’m not going to say that. But you followed it with stem cell research, and how we need it. Don’t put two ass kickers back to back. Space them out a bit. It’s all right to stir them up, but let’s don’t keep them stirred. Kick Jesus in the balls one week, then do some fluff piece or a profile, then come back for another kick. Give them time to heal. They get stirred enough, they’ll get deep-fried and sanctified all over our asses. I’m going to let Reverend Dinkins address your article in his Sunday column. He’ll take the fundamentalist view. It’ll be stupid, but it’ll make the church people happy.”

“Isn’t he the one trying to keep them from building a school down in the old black section of town?”

“He is at that, and so is Reverend Judence. Funny thing is, they both want the same thing, but not for the same reason, so they’re mad at each other.”

“Dad told me about it.”

“I know your dad. He’s not a bad-looking old man.”

“I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear it.”

“Judence and Dinkins. They’re real pieces of work, those two, but they’ve been good for news, and when Judence comes to make his speech, that’ll be a hot news day for this little town.”

“Wouldn’t it be a better idea to get some other preacher for the rebuttal? Someone screwed down a little tighter.”

“Dinkins is the celebrity, kid,” she said. “That’s who we’ll go with. It’ll spike paper sales and show we aren’t godless heathens. Except for you.”

“All right,” I said. “Let him go at it.”

“I was going to. Oh, that column on the missing girl. Not bad.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“A little fluffy, so I figure you’re holding the good stuff back for a later column, or for a shot at a bigger article somewhere else.”

I didn’t say anything to contradict her remark. She might be an asshole, but she was damn savvy.

“Well, keep your powder dry,” she said.

Mrs. Timpson got off my desk and went over to Oswald’s desk, most likely to discuss his writing of the sports, or perhaps to offer her insights into the running and football-tossing abilities of the colored.

Belinda came over with a handful of mail. I knew some of it would be letters about my column. There might even be something nice in one of them. Mixed in with the mail was a FedEx envelope. There wasn’t any address on it. Not the newspaper’s address, not the sender’s. It just had my name written on it.

I said, “How’d you get this?”

“It was in front of the door when they opened up this morning.”

“It didn’t really come from FedEx,” I said, and showed her the envelope.

“I guess it’s a hand-delivered fan letter,” she said.

“It didn’t quite make it to my hand, though, or anyone else’s. So I figure, since it’s a drop-off, it’s not all that positive.”

“Maybe they were just shy.”

“I hope so,” I said. “I could use a fan letter.”

She patted the letters and the package she had put on my desk. “All this for you, and me I’m lucky if I get anything other than a water bill. Of course, that might be because I’m not a reporter.”

“You’ll get your shot.”

“That’s what they all say.”

Belinda turned to go.

“Belinda?”

She stopped and looked back at me. “Maybe,” I said, “someday soon, we could go get a cup of coffee after work. If we’re feeling rowdy, a Diet Coke?”

She gave me a slow, braces-shiny smile. “I’ll think it over,” she said.

“Just a little conversation. Nothing serious.”

“I guess we can swing that.”

“Soon then?”

She smiled at me again. I was beginning to really like that smile, grillwork and all. “I’d love that,” she said.

“Great. Then we’ll call it a future plan.”

“Certainly,” she said.

When she was back to her place, I felt a little self-satisfied. That was good, Cason, old boy, I thought. You’re moving on. Or at least you’re trying.

I started in on the mail by opening the FedEx package. There was a DVD inside, enclosed in a plastic case. There was also a note written on cardboard with a black marker. It read: “YOU WILL WANT TO SEE THIS.”

I studied the package again, but didn’t come up with any new results. Anyone could get a FedEx envelope, just had to drive by one of the boxes where they kept the supplies. I read the note again, but it didn’t say anything different.

I sat and tried to work for a while, but the DVD was bothering me, lying there on my desk unseen, calling to me like a siren. My guess was it was some Christian propaganda sent to me because of my column on Noah’s ark or stem cell research. I finally picked it up and left.

12

I had recently bought myself a police scanner for the car and had rented a little apartment not far from where Mom and Dad lived.

I was on the bottom floor of a duplex. Nothing cute, nothing fancy. Just cheap rent. I pushed against the moisture-swollen door and made my way inside. It smelled as if a rat had died in the walls; it had held that smell for the entire week I had lived there. In the morning it was at its weakest, but as the day wore on and it became hot, Mr. Dead Rat, or so I assumed it was, heated up in the walls and gave off an odor that could grab you by the collar and toss you out the door. I remembered a story I had read by Mark Twain about a cheese that had stunk so bad that he gave it military promotions. It was the same with my dead rat. He was a private in the morning, but by the afternoon I had promoted him to general. It was almost that strong now, but not quite. He was at about a captain’s level.