Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

“You’re quite the intellectual.”

“You’re seeing my sober side. Look quick. I don’t stay this way long.”

14

Harry was surprised, because the neighborhood he drove Tad to was pretty nice.

Correction.

It was damn nice.

Fact was, the place was ritzy.

Harry thought Tad must have bought his place before it all got built up. Must have some little house tucked away amongst all the expensive stuff. A yard with a tree and a run-down house and a car on blocks. Maybe some beer cans tossed about. A dead cat under a bush.

Tad said, “Pull over to the curb.”

“You got to puke?”

“No. This is home.”

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

Home was large, adobe style, and around the house was a high brick fence. There was a gate drive. The gate was open, and oak and sweet gum trees grew high and shady around the house, which covered a lot of ground.

“You have an apartment in the back?”

“They let me sleep in the yard, under a tree.”

“What?”

“It’s mine. Even the fence.”

“Damn.”

“You haven’t seen my housekeeping yet. Hey, you want to come in, have a Coke, some more coffee, somethin’?”

“I guess.”

“Well, I won’t get out here then. Take a right, go up the drive.”

“There never were any murders in this house, were there?”

“What?”

“Murders? Any violence?”

Tad studied Harry. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah. Kind of am.”

“I don’t know of any. Wife’s family property, got the place when we were twenty-five. Her folks lived here before, but I never heard of such. They may have had some vicious games of Go Fish, however.”

Harry drove through the open gate onto the estate. Inside they had a Coke. They sat at a long table in a large room. On one end of the table was a pile of books; the other end held a collection of crumpled beer cans. There were beautiful carpets hanging on the wall, some pretty snazzy paintings that appeared to be of…well, they were of colors. If they were supposed to be of anything in particular, Harry couldn’t make them out.

One wall had a shelf of knickknacks, little ceramic animals: elephants, tigers, lions, bears. They ranged from pink to green to blue.

The place was dusty, and there were clothes thrown about the floor.

“You are a shitty housekeeper,” Harry said.

“My wife was great. She called in the maid. Me, I had to let her go. The maid, I mean. About ten years back. I take out the trash and toss out paper plates and such. Live kind of like you do. Mostly I stay in this room. It was the family room. There’s a television behind that wall. Sliding panel and all. I think it still works. Fact is, except for the toilet and a room or two, I’m not sure I remember what all the other rooms are like.”

“Except, you have a lot of rooms.”

“Twenty rooms, to be exact, not counting kitchens and bathrooms. And the dojo.”

“Dojo?”

“Japanese word. Gym. Workout room for martial arts. I used to teach it. An art called Shen Chuan.”

“What happened?”

“Life happened. About that murder business—why’d you ask?”

“You wouldn’t want to know, and if I told you, you’d think I was nuts.”

“Maybe I would, but what else you got to do? What do you care if some drunk you don’t even know thinks you’re nuts? And it would be entertaining to me. Nuts tell good stories.”

“You tell me about you, and I’ll tell you about me.”

“I didn’t want to play fair,” Tad said. “Just wanted to hear about you.”

“Then no deal.”

Tad nodded.

“All right, kid. I’m not sure why I’m telling you, but, okay. Maybe I owe you one…. Naw, bullshit. I need to talk about it. I talk to the fucking wall, no one’s here. And, except for you, no one has been here in years. Except an old parrot named Chester. Belonged to my wife. I was one happy motherfucker when that feathered bastard died. Was always cleaning out shitty newspapers from his cage and such. There’s lots of things I miss, but that parrot ain’t one of ’em.”

“Your life story is about taking care of a parrot?”

“Let me put it this way, kid. Back when I was a little older than you, I was a drunk.”

“You’re a drunk now.”

“True, but let me tell my story, all right? So I was a drunk. And then I met my wife. This woman, she was so beautiful she made my back teeth ache. Oh, there were probably more beautiful women, but for me, she was it. Before her I was just banging tail. Wasn’t lying to anyone to get it. Just dating, doin’ the thing, you know. It was the seventies. There was so much free pussy it was like money from home. Then I met Dorothy. I loved that woman deeply, my friend. I don’t know how often that happens, that kind of love, but when it does, it’s an amazing thing.”

“My mom and dad. They were that way.”

“They’re lucky…. Were?”

“Dad died of a heart attack.”

“Well, me and your mom, we got similar tragedies. But me and Dorothy got married, I quit drinking, and we had a boy. A fine boy. Dorothy had an inheritance, and she worked as an interior decorator. She was good. She made big dough doing that. Me, I had a martial arts school, and though it wasn’t the sort of thing that would make you wealthy, it was a good living. Believe it or not, boy, I was once considered one of the best.”

“I believe it. I seen you do it, remember?”

“That was some drunk shit, but back then I was deep in the martial arts. Not just the ass-whipping part. I found my center.”

“Your center?”

“The center of my being. That sounds all metaphysical and shit, but it isn’t. It’s about finding the core of who you are, living with it, learning to accept it, and becoming calm. Like you’re the eye of the hurricane, and all around you the world is a-spin, but you’re focused. Nothing fazes you. That’s how I was. Nothing fazed me. I didn’t think anything or anyone could disrupt my center.”

“But something always can,” Harry said.

Tad nodded. “Way I worked is I had small classes, some private lessons. People who wanted to be here and were willing to pay me what I was worth. Then there was the accident. Day it happened, I had a private lesson, a beautiful young woman. There was nothing between us. No monkey business, outside of that feeling any man gets when he’s around a woman that amazing. I mean, it was just great to be with her. Nothing like my wife, that was a whole ’nother thing. But teaching that woman…well, one day her hour is up, her private lesson is over, and she’s got a few questions, and so I say to myself, ‘All right, I’ll stick.’

“Now, you see, I’m supposed to, right after that lesson, go and pick up my wife and son. He was ten then. It was a Saturday, and they went to the movies, some cartoon thing, and the deal was, soon as my lesson was over, I was supposed to go get them.

“They had about a fifteen-minute wait between the time of the movie being over and my lesson ending up here. Wife’s car, it was in the shop. No big deal. Fifteen-minute wait, fifteen minutes for me to drive over; they got thirty minutes to kill.

“But me, I’m talking to this woman like I’m trying to pick her up, and I’m not, you see. My wife was it, but I wanted to see if I still had the old charm. You know, if I had some appeal, ’cause then I was in my mid-thirties, starting to lose a bit of hair, and no matter how hard I worked, no matter how good I was at Shen Chuan, I was getting a bit of a pouch, you know.”

Tad patted his belly as if to prove it.

“So, I’m chatting up the young thing, and I realize suddenly, Damn, I’ve forgotten about Dorothy and John. But you know what? I think, well, another five minutes isn’t going to hurt. Because I’m explaining some special moves to this gal, nothing she’s ready to do, really, but it’s fun to show my stuff, you know. Show what I got. And finally I think: Shit, I got to go, so I do.