Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

“Yeah, well, you too, son. Hey, you’re getting quite a grip there.”

Later on, Harry was really glad he did that.

That night, out on the town, doing his thing with Joey riding beside him, Joey drinking a bit, whiskey in Coke, offering him some, but him refusing; out there trying to pick up girls, being awkward and unsuccessful about it; out there on the highways, circling the Dairy Queen, waving at friends passing by in their cars, having the time of his life, his old man, home, sitting at dinner, suddenly stood up from the table, and his mom would tell it like this: “He was just fine: then he stood bolt upright, said, ‘I feel kind of off,’ grabbed his left arm, and then he dropped.”

Heart attack.

Dead and gone.

Things were coming apart.

10

For a few months Harry’s life rocked and floundered. He was so rattled that when he read about Kayla’s dad in the Tyler paper, he felt for her, but there just wasn’t enough left in him to respond.

And there was the fact he hadn’t seen her in years. Thought about her from time to time, but that was Kayla then, not Kayla now. There were times when he thought about her and felt as if a piece of him were missing. That puzzle part. But it was probably just wishful thinking. Kid memories.

Maybe a good word would make her feel better, maybe not. He didn’t know if he had a good word left, or that she would really remember him, not the way he remembered her.

Still, it was surprising, way it had gone down, her dad’s death.

He zeroed in on parts of the article:

Jerome Jones was found dead in his part-time garage on High Street, hanging by a lamp cord from a door inside the building. He was discovered by his daughter about eight P.M. Thursday after he failed to return from work. Suicide is suspected, but not confirmed.

Poor Kayla, he thought. What was she doing back here? Had she moved back? Was she nearby?

Goddamn. To hell with Kayla.

He tossed the paper aside.

And the beat goes on.

11

The ceiling had shadows on it that looked like the blades of a fan, and this was because the light fixture on the ceiling had little slats inside.

The big man lay on the bed looking at this, considering something or another about it, but he was uncertain what. A spider crawled out of the light fixture and dangled out to the side of it, and he thought, if it falls, it will fall on her.

He turned and looked over at the woman beside him, then at his partner, who was on the other side of the female sandwich, grinning. His partner was up on one elbow looking at him, so he rose up too, and grinned. They were just a couple of Cheshire cats tossing grins across the room.

The big man swung his feet to the side of the bed and sat there and looked toward the open door of the bathroom, thought about the car. They had to get rid of the car, and they needed to do it soon. It was good to stretch out for the moment—all the activity, the adren-line, had made him tired—but you could stretch your time too far, and if you kept stretching, the whole thing was going to snap. You had to think about that. Had to.

They had found her at the motel. It was one of the places they liked to look, and mostly they weren’t lucky, but this night they were. They cruised in, and out back of the place, getting out of her car, heading toward the row of rooms, was the girl.

Quick was their middle name. They were out of the car and had her before you could blink an eye, hand over her mouth, pulling her into her own ride, hitting her with a tire iron, dropping her down onto the floorboard, taking her keys, him driving her car, his partner following in theirs. On out to the woods to leave their car and take her car back to the motel room. She had a key. Number seven. There could be a man in there. A family. That was all part of the game.

They took her back to the motel and into number seven and there was no one else. It was easy, and they did to her what they wanted to do. Had fun.

He looked at the young woman lying in the center of the bed. Her dead eyes looked at the ceiling in the way his live eyes had, but she saw nothing. He had seen shadow slats and a spider. It was all shadow to her and no awareness of shadow.

He liked to think about that, try and understand it. What was it like to be nothing, to know nothing? How was it to be dead? He didn’t want to experience it himself, but in her eyes, in that last moment when he fastened his hands around her throat, after she had come awake from the blow to the head, after they had finished with her, he thought, for just an instant, in her face, in her eyes, he could see the shadow of death move into her head behind the windows of her soul.

It was quite a feeling.

The big man got up and started for the bathroom, scratching his naked ass as he went. Behind him he heard his partner get up, and when he looked, he saw he was getting dressed.

That didn’t surprise him. They had used protection, condoms, and they had disposed of the condoms down the toilet, but his partner wasn’t even going to wash his dick. He ought to wash it just because he ought to. Had to be some real nasty on that dude.

He turned his attention to the woman again.

Still dead.

She hadn’t miraculously come back to life.

They had had that happen once. Thought a gal was dead, had her at a drive-through eatery, covered in a blanket, down on the backseat floorboard, and while they were waiting on their burgers and fries, looking at the kid on the other side of the window hustling around at the register, they heard a sudden gulp of breath.

The woman they thought dead was not dead.

He remembered it as if it were yesterday, though it was…two, three years ago. She had gulped air, and with his partner at the wheel, he had reached back between the seats as she rose up like a zombie from the dead, the blanket over her head and body, and he grabbed her throat. Grabbed it right through the blanket and squeezed, cutting off the hose, not letting the fuel get into her system. Held her tight.

She thrashed. Her arms came out from under the blanket.

He looked at his partner, who saw what was going down, then he glanced at the kid behind the register, gathering up a sack now, turning his pimple-painted face toward them, reaching for the sliding window, and with all his might, he pushed down with his hand, squeezed with his fingers, and the woman—girl, really—kicked a couple of times. But the kid, he didn’t notice shit. There was music inside, and you could really hear it now that the window was slid back, some canned shit that ran all day long at the place, and he was saying, “Two burgers, all the way. Fries. Two Diet Cokes.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” his partner said, and gave him a bill.

A big bill.

Damn.

Now they had to wait for change, and there he was, trying to hold that bitch down, and she was goddamn strong, and it was work, doing it with one hand stuck back between the seats, trying to look casual, hoping the burger doodle guy didn’t see her feet moving around back there, didn’t hear them against the seat. All that, and his partner gives the guy a big bill and waits.

Later, his partner would say, “Shit, man. It’s what I had. Don’t want him to remember I gave him a twenty, some such thing, said keep the change, something like that, ’cause he sure would remember that, don’t you think? So I had to wait on the change. Had to.”

And of course he was right. But there was the kid, passing sacks and drinks along, taking the money, and there he was, his hand tight on the woman’s throat, doing what he thought he had already done, and then, as her arms, way out from under the blanket, thrashed and she dug her nails into the back of his hand and he gritted his teeth to keep from yelping, the kid closed the window and his partner juiced the car.