Joe Lansdale: Leather Maiden

“Some of the kids down there don’t even have birth records. Drugs are an everyday thing. Lot of those kids have never been inside a school. They need a chance. Education isn’t white. It belongs to anyone who’ll reach out and take it.”

“I hadn’t heard about this.”

“It’s ramping up as it gets closer to the time when the school is supposed to be built. Judence is doing a lot of talking up in New York, where he’s from. Getting lots of camera time. He’ll come down here a week or two before the ground for the school is supposed to be broke, make a big speech, and it’ll get people fired up. And to make matters worse, to make him seem more the hero, there have been death threats from racist groups saying Judence is an outside agitator, which, in fact, he is. But calling a black man an outside agitator is old racist language for ‘uppity nigger.’”

“And that fires things up more.”

“School was proposed to be built where the old black Baptist church stands, partially burned. Someone set it on fire a year or so back. Rumor was it was white racists. Those who support the school want to build it where the church stands as a kind of gesture of spirit. Judence is telling the community that whites are trying to segregate them again.”

“Sounds like segregation to me, Dad.”

“I don’t want segregation, and the school wouldn’t technically be segregated, but building it in that community shows there’s a chance for students to be educated there, and with good teachers, mostly black, it could happen. It would be a special school, privately funded, better than our public schools, which are just warehouses for warm bodies.”

“Could it be some of the investors hope to run for office of some kind?”

“There’s that. But the whites who don’t want the school are strangely enough on the side of the blacks who don’t. The idea there might be a school in the black community with the potential to be better than the schools their children attend annoys them. They say, well, the black people don’t want it, so don’t give it to them. But there are a lot of local black leaders, lots of parents down there that do want it. Most, I’d say. It’s the loudmouth few, black and white, who are kicking this bee’s nest around.

“There’s this white group that calls themselves the League for the Advancement of Christian Thought. Crackers that get upset to the bone if they see a black man shake hands with a white woman. Think homosexuals are some kind of abomination against God, that they’re trying to wrestle straight white men to the floors of public restrooms to suck their dicks. They’re not that crazy about Jews either, since they think they killed Jesus. Can’t get it in their heads Jesus was a Jew too. And illegal immigrants, that makes them gnash their teeth. Liberals and Democrats and moderates don’t float their boats either.

“The big mullah for all that stuff, the local agitator, the white racist bastard stirring his side of the pot, is a Baptist preacher right here in Camp Rapture. Reverend Dinkins. He’s head of that organization. Spouts racist mess on TV like he’s talking about something truly Christian. They prey on poor screwed-up white kids who are nothing more than angry rednecks without a pot to piss in. All they need is some preacher like Dinkins to tell them they’re on God’s side, or someone like Judence to come down hard on whitey, and BLAM! It all gets set off.”

Dad paused and turned the soft-drink can around and around in his hand; he was really giving that aluminum a workout. He said: “Judence will come here and give a speech and have a rally at the university so he can go home with a few copies of his appearance on DVD. He can lie around at night and watch it and jack off, claim he kept the whitey school out of the black section of town. Dinkins and the League can brag they kept things status quo. The blacks who didn’t want change can feel like they’ve saved the world from white domination, and the blacks that did want change will throw up their hands in frustration and give up. Everyone loses but the rats and the cockroaches and humankind continues its slow march to oblivion, but with a wide variety of ice-cream flavors and television shows to choose from…What would really straighten the human race out is a good plague.”

“I suppose that would clean things up,” I said.

“By the way, did you drive by where Gabby works? I was wondering because she called me and said she saw a car that looked like your old wreck go by there a couple of times real slow, and the guy driving it, she thought he looked a lot like you.”

“The road runs by there, Dad.”

“But the speed limit there is forty-five, not a crawl. Not trying to pin you or make you feel bad. You’ve always been somewhat obsessive. Do you remember when you counted your steps?”

“I counted ceiling tiles too. I counted and arranged my comic books incessantly. I did a lot of things.”

“You moved those obsessions to Gabby. Add the war, what you saw there, how it affected you—”

“I’ m all right,” I said.

“What’s the doctor say?”

“I said I was all right.”

Dad nodded. “Good. Have you seen your brother?”

“Not yet.”

Jimmy was a university professor. His wife taught grade school. They were pretty close to being the perfect couple.

Dad crushed the Diet Coke can, said, “I’m going to bed.” He stood up and paused on the steps and put his hand on my shoulder. “Good to have you home.”

“Good night, Dad.”

I sat on the back steps for a while and finished my Diet Coke. The night air was nice and cool and soft as velvet. I heard a frog bleat. The smell of mowed grass was like a perfume.

I leaned back and looked up at the stars. They were shiny and bright, and there was something right about the heavens that made me want to live forever. I had had that feeling before. It never lasted.

6

Each morning I awoke with the fresh point of view that things were going to change and that Gabby and I would get back together. I could sit down and think this over and realize just how stupid it was, but the thought wouldn’t go away, and I clung to it like a fading movie star thinking just one more film would bring it all back.

I took off my clothes and went to bed just wearing my underwear. The bedroom was the one Jimmy and I had shared growing up. All the things we had loved as kids were still there. It was like stepping back through time, entering the past. The only major difference in the room between now and then was that the bunk beds were gone and there was just the one bed for guests.

After lying in the dark for some time, eyes wide open, I began to see the room more clearly, the outlines of things. I looked up at Jimmy’s model airplanes hanging from the ceiling on wires, looked over at his desk where the frogs and mice he had practiced taxidermy on had started to lean against one another. The stands on which they rested, some kind of glued wood, had begun to come apart and the creatures had fallen together into a gruesome pyramid of arrested decay. I could see the outline of his Eagle Scout sash hanging on the wall. There was a long couple shelves of books, and I could make out a lot of the titles more from memory than from sight.

I got up, turned on the light and sat at my old desk. It was smaller than I remembered, the chair was uncomfortable. I opened one of the desk drawers. All my comic books were still there; at least my favorites were. I took out one and read it. I got up and walked around the room, turned out the light and went to the window and peeled back the curtain and looked out at the street. It was starting to rain, a slow, sweet summer rain. The pavement glistened in the streetlights, and then Jazzy appeared, wearing only a T-shirt and underwear, walking down the street in bare feet, the rain washing over her.