Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

This way he knew he was safe.

Which was why, on this Wednesday morning, he was so upset. The path he usually took was blocked.

Construction. The sidewalk was torn up and there were barriers all about, big, burly men working at banging up the concrete with jackhammers and the like.

For a moment Harry just stood and stared.

Blocked.

Can’t go my route.

Shit.

He thought all manner of things, but none of them were any good.

Like trying to go under the wooden barriers and weave his way through the workmen.

He figured that wouldn’t work out. It would only cause him to possibly be part of a violent moment himself, though, in his own estimation, that was easier to handle. You couldn’t see what was happening to yourself, only feel it. It was seeing their faces, feeling their terror that made him crazy.

He slipped his backpack off his shoulder, laid it on the ground, got his notepad out of his back pocket, studied it.

All right. He could go left, then skirt around all this business, but he didn’t know that territory. Most likely, as was the case with much territory, it would be safe. Nothing hidden.

But you never knew. It was always a struggle.

Shit, he told himself, you go to bars. You do that, and they’re worse places to go than a college campus.

But they’ve got the beer. Enough of that, I’m okay.

It would be easier to blow it all off, buy a twelve-pack, take it home, sit in the dark inside the tested room with the cardboard and egg cartons on the wall.

There had been a rape in the bushes on the right. He had found that out by shaking the shrubs, just passing through, grabbing at them idly, shaking them, going from sunlight to late night and seeing it all, her hand clutching at the shrubs. Some girl coming back from the library most likely. Some guy she knew thought she owed him a piece, and decided to take it.

He had never found any record of it being reported.

The guy got away with it.

Son of a bitch.

From the way they were dressed, or almost dressed, it looked to have happened way back. The seventies, perhaps. Maybe she never told anyone. Maybe the guy bragged about it. Did it again.

Don’t think about that now.

Not now.

You can’t undo the past. It’s not even your past.

He studied the notepad awhile, mapped out some safe spots. Problem was, he had to go over uncharted territory to get to those known safe spots. Anything could happen.

He put up the notebook, grabbed his backpack, and went left.

17

Harry sat down and wrote:

Tad, I’m not drinking.

Right now.

I didn’t drink last night either.

And already good things have come to me.

For one thing, when I woke up this morning I didn’t have a headache and feel like forty miles of bad road.

I know you haven’t been sitting up nights, between drunks, thinking about me, worrying if I was drinking, but there was no one else I could tell but you.

No one else I could turn to.

Well, there are others. I could tell Joey, but he’s a dick and wouldn’t get it. And my mom, but she’s got enough worries. And there’s a special reason I’m writing you.

I want to stop drinking.

No, that’s not true. I like drinking. I need to stop drinking. That’s different.

You see, I don’t really think I drink to forget, like you. I drink to numb, so I won’t have, you know, the experiences.

Okay. I drink to forget as well. I’ve seen some bad business, stuff to do with the ghosts in the noise.

But I’ve told you that.

Let me put it like this: You haven’t always been as fucked-up as you are now. Me, I’ve been pretty much like I am always: insecure, worried, and confused since I was a kid.

My parents didn’t do it.

The sounds did.

I’m not going to tell you what I already told you, and I’m not going to try to convince you I’m not a fruitcake (I’m not, by the way), but I am going to say it again.

You haven’t always been so fucked-up.

Me, I have. For a long time.

You once had a center.

Before the mumps, as a little kid, maybe I was centered. I don’t know for sure.

Maybe when my mom and I used to watch cartoons out the windows, watch them at the drive-in theater across the way. I might have had a center then.

Shit. I don’t remember if I told you about all that. The drive-in and stuff. But it’s unimportant. It’s not the point.

What I’m saying is this.

I want to find my center.

You know how to do that.

Maybe we can help each other. You can relocate yours, and I can find mine.

And there’s a real special reason I want to do this. Something wonderful happened to me today, Tad. Something fucking extraordinary. I haven’t felt this way since I was a teenager and Kayla, my neighbor, gave me a kiss, and I thought, at least for a moment, I was Emperor of the Universe.

With a gearshift.

Think on that one.

But this feeling, I’m crazy with it. I’m consumed with it. I’m on fire with it. I’m covered up in it and eaten up by it.

I’m talking about love here, Tad.

The arrow through the heart, my man. Cupid’s straight shot.

It’s what I’ve always wanted.

And you know what? She might even like me.

Here’s what happened.

Dig this. Because of construction, I have to walk around my usual path. For me, this is a BIG FUCKING DEAL. No shit. A big deal. I’m like Superman doing this, taking a different route, because the world—again, for me—is full of all kinds of uncomfortable surprises.

It’s like a world filled with dog doo and I’ve got to thread my way around it blindfolded. Only the dog doo, it’s not just messy, it explodes, and I see—

Again, been over all that.

But this construction thing, this holdup, this snag, this snafu…Guess what? I gird my loins, and—

I do it.

I go around the construction that’s messing up my path, and nothing happens. I didn’t really expect anything, but you never know. Stuff is out there lurking.

So I’m moving along, you know, preoccupied, and as I go, guess what happens?

I get knocked down.

That’s right. I’m going into the building, to my class, running up the steps, almost to the top, head down, and the door blows open, and bam, I’m knocked on my ass.

Fortunately, no one has taken a beating there before, so my rolling over the steps doesn’t excite anything in the stone, and I wonder if, in that sudden moment of surprise, or fear of falling, if my own thoughts are registering there, and would I be able to read them, wondering all that while I’m falling, see, and I’m pissed too, because all I was trying to do was go to class, and someone has thoughtlessly and carelessly knocked me on my ass, and then—

You know what, Tad? All of a sudden, I’m not wondering about any of that stuff at all.

Because, what they say about there being angels, and how they show up in times of need, at least for some people, it’s all true.

An angel was looking down at me.

I’m at the bottom of the steps, on my back, legs almost over my head, my pack has slipped off, and the books have come out, and there’s a paper of mine twisting in the wind over my face, and as it floats down past me, it’s replaced with the face of that angel I was telling you about.