Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

“Dorothy called the house. I didn’t know this until later, ’cause there’s no phone in the dojo. Later, I see the phone light blinking, turn it on, and it’s Dorothy. ‘Honey, are you okay? We’re waiting, and I’m a little worried.’ Worried. She was worried. About me. I should have been there, and she’s worried something happened to me. And me, I’m chattin’ up poontang like I’m on the hustle, just to keep the old ego polished.

“So later I learn they went to the little café next to the theater, had a Coke, something like that. They came outside to see if I’d made it yet, and a truck—this is like something out of a bad fucking movie—but a truck, a fucking dump truck full of gravel, going down the main drag, not where it should have been hauling that shit, makes a corner too fast and turns over. It doesn’t hit my family. But the gravel does. Like thousands of little bullets.

“When I got there, they were under it, kid. Under all that goddamn gravel. Someone says, ‘There’s a woman and a kid under that shit,’ and I knew…knew it was them. Started trying to dig them out with my bare hands. On top of that fucking pile digging like a goddamn dog. People all around helping.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tad held up a hand. “Let me get to the bottom of it, kid. They were dead. My fault. Had I been on time, they wouldn’t have been there when that truck came around. They’d have been fine. Just gravel on the sidewalk. They were the only ones standing in that spot. Can you believe that? Just the wrong place at the wrong time. Standing there. Waiting on it.

“You want some fucking schmaltz, now. You want the shit they put in the cheap fucking movies? John, my boy, he had a card in his pocket. Wasn’t Father’s Day, wasn’t Christmas, wasn’t my fucking birthday. But at school he made a card with his own hands. I still have it. It says, ‘World’s best dad.’ Cops gave it to me later. All crumpled and shit, but it’s my most prized possession. Is that schmaltz, kid? Is that the shit?

“I began to lose my center. I thought it was just the pain at first, and a year later I’m trying to pull it all together, reestablish my classes. The young woman I was talking to, one I was trying to impress, she wanted to come back, but I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t look at that woman again. It’s not that she did anything. I did something. Let my ego loose. That’s about the first thing you learn in martial arts. Put your ego in a sack and take a stick to it. I just couldn’t do it, couldn’t see her again, or anyone else I knew.

“Got all new people. Started being too rough. Hurting people. If they fought back hard, I hurt them more. I quit teaching. I didn’t need the money. My wife had money, and now it was mine. I was all alone. No wife. No son. No students. The in-laws hated me, as they should have.

“I took to the bottle. So here I am. Sober for the moment. Thinking about a drink. Seeing you, all drunk like me when I was young, I got to think, is it just fun with you, or is it something else? I think it’s something else.”

Harry didn’t know what to say, so he said what he had said before. “I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too. But what about you? What about that drinking? What’s your story?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“We had a deal.”

“Okay.” And Harry told him about the honky-tonk, about the old car when he was a kid. When he finished, he said, “Now what do you think?”

Tad studied him, scratched behind his ear. “Sounds, huh?” Tad said.

“Yeah.”

“That’s some weird shit.”

“You think I’m nuts?”

“I’ve heard some say we’ve lost abilities over the centuries, since we crawled out of the primordial soup. Things like extrasensory perception, the ability to smell a female in heat from a mile away, a prehensile tail, an inordinate love of bananas. Maybe you rediscovered some of it. Or maybe you’re just fucking nuts. Ever been dropped on your head? I’m serious now. You been dropped, you know of?”

“No.”

“Hit with something?”

Harry shook his head. “The mumps, like I told you. That’s it.”

“Do they cause brain damage, the mumps?”

Harry sighed.

“You got to let go of that booze,” Tad said. “Trust me on that, kid. Follow my advice, even if I don’t take it.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“What happened to me, happened. This shit about the sounds, I don’t know. I’d ask your mother about being dropped, that’s what I’d do. Get some specialist. Somebody knows about the brain, can get in there with a cutter, the pliers, fucking tire tool and a truck jack. Whatever it takes. Maybe you’re schizo. It’s no crime. It’s a condition. You got it, you didn’t ask for it. Just showed up, and now you got to deal with it, and the way you do that, you see a doctor.”

“I’ve seen them. They can’t help me. I live with this every day, and it’s not schizophrenia, and I wasn’t dropped on my goddamn head.”

“Don’t shit yourself. Just said it could be something like that.”

“Let me tell you something. When I first found my apartment, I went over every inch, stomping, slamming doors, whacking the walls, scraping the chairs, seeing if there was, so to speak, a ghost in the machine. None. That’s why I live in that shithole. Not just to save money, but because I’m certain there’s nothing lurking inside it.

“Just to make sure I didn’t miss some spot, I taped cardboard and egg cartons all over the walls. Didn’t want to drive tacks—afraid I might find a spot, you see. A spot holding some disaster. Hear what I’m saying, Tad?”

“Loud and clear.”

“I don’t even go to my friend’s Joey’s bathroom. You want to know why?”

“Sure, kid. Lay it out.”

“I was in his shitter, doing my business, stood up after the wiping, and my pants, which were still around my knees, caught the toilet lid, popped it up and down, and there was this guy in the sound, and I could see him sitting on that toilet long before Joey was renting the place. He had a sawed-off shotgun under his chin. I just clicked the goddamn toilet cover, the one with the hole in it, one you sit on—”

“Yeah, I got you.”

“Clicked that with the back of my pants, and I see him, the sawed-off under his chin, and he pulls the trigger. Blood and brains and skull everywhere. The sound of that gun going off in that small space…it was deafening.

“Why did I see him? Why? Because he’s getting ready to do it, his pants around his ankles, and he rose up a bit and clicked that fucking lid. When he did, he pulled the trigger and the lid snapped down again, holding the sounds. Can you believe that?”

“I’m working on it.”

“It’s enough to drive you crazy.”

“You may already have taken the trip, kid. Relax.”

“I looked it up. This suicide. I’m a bear on research because of this stuff. But I looked it up in newspapers, on the Internet, and sure enough, a guy killed himself there. Despondent over a breakup with his wife, something like that. I never told Joey. Just don’t use his bathroom. I’m over there, and I got to go, I hold it. Fact is, I try not to even visit unless I’m drunk.

“This research I do—because of it, I know every spot on campus, around campus, where there has been a major car accident, where anyone was killed or even badly injured. I got a notebook in my back pocket, got it all written there, if I ever need to be sure.”

Harry pulled the notebook from his pocket, tossed it on the table. Tad picked it up, flicked it open, glanced at it. There was writing and little crude maps drawn inside.

“Pretty detailed,” Tad said.

“I wear soft-soled shoes, rubber tipped. That way, I hit some stone wall with my shoe where there was a car wreck, step hard on some spot where someone was thrown clear of a wreck, I don’t activate it. Trapped memories can be anywhere. You wouldn’t believe how many rapes there have been on campus. People don’t report them all.”