Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

When he opened his eyes he saw the guys taking the old man out the back door. He stood up straight and started after them, making big drunk steps, like he was stepping over something on the floor.

Joey stood up, grabbed him by the elbow, stopped him, said, “Man, don’t go out there. You might be right, and they’re gonna mug him. And your ass might be next. I ain’t going, man. You’re on your own, hero.”

Harry didn’t listen. He kept stepping. Big and serious, trying to focus.

When he got to the back door and pushed it open, the cool air hit him, sobered him a mite. That along with the stench from the alley, the smell of urine and rotting food and waste from the Dumpster. It was like a bracer.

But what he saw, it made him think he was major-blowout drunk. Maybe even hallucinating.

Joey was there with him, came up beside him after all. Was he hallucinating him too? Was he having some sort of sound flash? What the hell was going on, because, you see…

The man with the thinning hair, the older guy, the slightly thick one, he was pretty drunk, or seemed to be, but one of the guys, the biggest one, one who had drunk from the old man’s pitcher, he hit the old man in the side of the head with his fist, real quick-like, and the old man, he moved.

Man, did he move.

He wasn’t drunk anymore. That one shot to the side of the head kicked the drunk out of him, and what Harry saw next amazed him.

The guy who hit him, he was the first.

The old guy jerked out a leg. Sloppy-like, or so it seemed, but it caught the guy’s knee, took it out with a sound like someone snapping a garden-fresh green bean.

One of the other guys started for the man, and the man grabbed him by the crotch with his right hand and shoved his left palm into the attacker’s face, took his feet out from under him, let his head drop like a cantaloupe on the cement.

Third guy was coming in now, and he was big, and he was gonna fix the old man’s clock big-time, you could see it on his face, but the old man ducked, and the punch the guy swung went over the man’s head and the man snapped out with a right and a left, two loose shots to the solar plexus that made the assailant straighten up, then bend over in pain, trying to puke. The old man made with a kind of quick drunk step toward the guy, and standing sideways to him, brought his forearm up under the puker’s throat, drove his head back. Then the old guy slid in and snapped a sideways elbow to the dude’s chin, just under it; then that loose kick flew out again, this time a little higher, right in the old chicken neck and two potatoes.

Down the guy went.

The one who had his head bonked on the concrete got up at a wobble, came at the old man, really mad now, and the old man stepped sideways and the guy went past, and the old man stuck out a foot and caught the guy’s ankle, and it was asphalt rash all over that dude’s nose and chin, and he didn’t get up this time. Harry thought maybe he could get up, but didn’t want to, was trying to play dead, maybe even imagine he was buried six feet under, out of this old guy’s way.

The guy with the ruined knee lay on the ground, screaming. The old man grabbed him by one arm and the hair and rolled him on his belly. He got the guy’s wallet out of his back pocket and took the money. He went to the other two, did the same.

He saw Harry and Joey, standing in the doorway, their mouths wide-open.

“How’s it hanging?” he said.

He grinned, shoved the money in his pocket, turned, and fell over on his back, stiff as a board.

“Well, I’ll be fucked in the butt,” Joey said.

The guy with the screwed knee was still making sounds, writhing.

Harry and Joey eased past him, over to the older guy, looked down at him, amazed.

He was snoring.

13

“I’m a goddamn drunk,” the old guy said.

“No shit,” Harry said. “I thought I was ripped, but you were torn, mister. You may still be messed up. Me, after what I saw, I’m dead sober now.”

“I come in, and I go out,” the man said.

“Do what?”

“Sober, then not so sober. Never what I would call completely sober, but on the edge of it. Just enough to know I need to not go there. It’s an ugly place, this sobriety. Therein lies worry and evil. Have I talked much while I’ve been here?”

“Mostly you been out,” Harry said.

“That’s probably best for you. I like to talk. Weren’t there two of you? Or was I just seeing two of you? Though usually, I do that, one of you doesn’t look different.”

“There were two of us.”

“Good. I’m just drunk. Not crazy. Though I got to wonder sometimes.”

“You and me both.”

A spear of moonlight cut through a gap in the curtain and stuck in the linoleum floor like a spear. The man sat up and looked around. “I’m on the floor.”

Harry turned on a lamp, pulled up a chair, sat, and looked down at the man on the pallet he’d made. The pillow had a faded Batman pillowcase. Batman had come to look more like an inkblot than the Caped Crusader.

“I made you a pallet, right after you puked in the bushes outside.”

“Outside where?”

“My apartment. It was hell getting you upstairs.”

The man studied Harry.

“You know, if I sucked your dick, I got to apologize. I like women, but when I drink, who knows what I do. Maybe I thought it was a tit.”

“Nothing like that.”

The man blinked, adjusting his sight. He looked about some more. What he saw was one small room, a couch with a sheet and pillow on it, a chair, a table, a cheap bookcase stuffed with books, a lamp on top of it. On the table was a hot plate, some paper plates, cups, plastic utensils. There was no sink or kitchen. There was only a little mini refrigerator in one corner. It hummed like a tone-deaf moron.

All over the walls were flattened cardboard boxes and egg cartons. They had been taped to the walls from top to bottom. There was a pile of flattened cardboard boxes in the corner of the room.

“You slept on the couch?” the man said.

“Always do. That’s my bed.”

“This place sucks.”

“Thanks. Three-fifty a month, plus bills. You can’t imagine how proud I am.”

“You got a shitter?”

“There’s this room and the shitter. You might have to suck it in some to get in there, and the toilet wobbles. Try not to go all over the place. You did before, pissed on the wall. I had to clean it up. Don’t want to do it again. By the way, it smells like Lysol in there.”

The man started to get up, couldn’t quite make it. Harry helped him toward the bathroom.

“I don’t get it,” Harry said. “You were drunk as a skunk back at the bar, and you whipped three guys tried to roll you.”

“I did?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why my face hurts?”

“One of them hit you.”

“That’s what did it. I got hit; instinct took over. I think sometimes it’s stronger than drink.”

The man pushed through the door into the bathroom. Harry returned to his chair. A few minutes later the man came out. He looked fresher. His face was moist from washing, and his thin hair had been dampened and was combed back. He was walking better. He leaned his ass against the wall and, with his legs slightly out in front of him, crossed his arms.

“You been lurking over me all night?” he asked.

“We’ve only been here about an hour or so.”

“Why’d you help me, kid?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t just me. Friend of mine, Joey. He helped me get you to the car. I dropped him off; then it was just me and you, out there dancing on the curb, then you throwing up in the bushes.”

“You could have let them have me.”

“I didn’t do anything about that, keeping them off of you. I might have thought about it, but I never had the chance. You whipped their asses. It was funny to see it. It was like you were stumbling, but everything you did was right. I think you broke one of ’em’s knee.”