Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

He was only slightly certain who he was.

He remembered Tad leaning over him and him lying on the wet ground.

Slowly he swung out of bed and put his feet on the floor. It was covered in nice carpet. He wiggled his toes in it.

He put last night together. Joey. The bar. An ass whipping from the bartender. Going upstairs to his place, awakening on the ground, Tad leaning over him.

Shit.

It was morning.

He was supposed to be at the bookstore.

He started to move more quickly, found he didn’t have the energy. But he didn’t want to lie back down. In fact, awake or lying down, his head spun, and so did the world. Sitting up like this, he felt only marginally miserable.

After a time he stood up, noticed his clothes folded on a chair, his shoes under it, a note taped to the bedroom door:

Shower. Please. And use lots of soap. Your clothes have been washed. Fresh towels in the bathroom. Coffee’s made. Tad.

24

Feeling better after a shower, dressed again, but barefoot, Harry shuffled down a hallway and into a kitchen dining area. Tad, looking clean, thinning hair combed tight against his head, dressed in loose white shirt and pants and tennis shoes, was at the counter, sitting on a stool, reading a book.

There was a sliding glass door on the far side of the room, and it was filled with daylight.

Tad glanced up.

“Dead man walking,” he said.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Come. Sit down. Have a cup.”

“How about a bucket’s worth?”

“I’ll keep making it long as you want to drink it. Got enough for a lot of cups. Italian coffee. Kona coffee from Hawaii. Plain old American coffee, and instant coffee. Much as I liquor up, I keep plenty of coffee. Got enough so you could fill a tub and bathe in it.”

“Think I’m supposed to be at work. Know I am.”

“Where do you work? You told me, I’ve forgot.”

“Bookstore. Downtown. University bookstore. I work in the stockroom a few hours a week, do the shelves now and then. Keeps me in beer and my fine abode. Or did. I’ve missed before and they didn’t like it. Way I remember, one more fuckup and I’m out in the snow.”

“It’s not snowing.”

“You know what I mean.”

Tad took his thumb out of the book and slipped a piece of paper into it, closed it, laid it on the counter, said, “You wrote me a note.”

“That was when I thought I was hot shit. That I was in love. And I am. But now that I know who I am and where I stand, it don’t matter anymore.”

“Sure it does.”

“Think so, huh?”

“That note, it got me to thinking. You and me, we have lost our center. You still want to get it back?”

“The girl I wrote about, I think it’s over before it got started. I don’t know if it was going to start. Not now. I think it was wishful thinking.”

“She tell you that?”

“She didn’t tell me anything. Joey made me see the light. I didn’t like how bright it was, but he made me look at it.”

“So this guy tells you she’s not for you.”

“Said she’s too good for me. And she is.”

“You believe that?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“You wouldn’t if you had your center. Things between you and her might not work out, but you’d feel different about it. You’d know how to deal with pain.”

“And you’re the master of dealing?”

Tad shook his head. “No. But we can master it together. Once I did master it—to some extent. You’re always gonna have things that make you wobble, but the trick is to not let yourself wobble so far the balance tips so much you can’t bring it back in line. That’s what mastering it means. It doesn’t mean life doesn’t come at you, and that it doesn’t try and shove you around, but it means you can negotiate the storm.”

“What if your balance is really fucked? Like I’ve gotten tipped bad, see, and I’ve fallen over and I can’t get up.”

“You can get up. You can always get up. Maybe not physically, sometimes, but mentally, emotionally, you can always get up.”

“No offense. But maybe you’re not the best example.”

“Point taken. But things have changed. For me. Or I’m trying to change them. You can be part of that change—for me, and for you. Interested?”

“I don’t know.”

“Remember, you’re the one who asked me.”

“Yeah, but it was during a period of euphoria.”

“People think being happy is an all-the-time thing. It’s a series of balancing acts. If you were standing—which I’d rather you not do too much of right now—but if you were standing there, you wouldn’t be balanced.”

“Because I don’t know how to stand?”

“No. All that karate-front stance, locked-horse stance, all that stuff, it’s bullshit. You were standing there, you’d be constantly trying to find your balance. I’m talking standing there without thinking, you know, just hanging out. What a person does is they constantly shift to find balance. We all do it. Gradually. You’re standing one way, you get tired, you got to shift—reason being, you got to renegotiate your balance. Same thing when it comes to life. Happiness is about renegotiating balance.”

“That one of those Zen things?”

“No. That’s a Tad thing. It’s what my teacher taught me. My instructor of martial arts and life. He was a balanced kind of guy. He knew some shit. Once, I thought I was balanced and knew some shit, then I realized I didn’t know half the shit he did. But, still, there was a time when I knew some shit.”

“You can teach me?”

“I can teach you what you want to learn. While I reteach myself. Interested?”

Harry sipped his coffee.

“Will it hurt?”

“Sometimes. Pain is an indicator of life, you know.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how alive I’m wanting to feel.”

“How good do you feel now?”

“Not so good.”

“You just answered your own question.”

“So this wanting to teach me, does that mean you believe the stuff I told you?”

“I don’t know. But I looked some things up. Right here in my own library. Got a lot of books, Harry. Used to read all the time. I got medical books—I used to study the body for martial arts. I got all manner of books. I went to the library for one—one I was reading when you came in. Hold on.”

Tad went away, came back with a big, thick book.

“Medical volume,” Tad said. “I want you to listen to something.”

He began to read:

“‘There have been numerous cases where, either by accident or birth, or due to catastrophic injury, or even childhood disease, the brain has been affected, or altered, in such a way that it can perceive color as smell, or even sound. Meaning, to some, seeing the color red could activate sensors that would cause the observer to smell cinnamon, or rose, or even fecal matter. In reverse, smell can sometimes be perceived as color. There are cases of images being activated by the audio as well, resulting in the ability to interpret sounds as visuals. And there is some questionable evidence of sounds containing images of past events that have been recorded in the surroundings. Rocks, dwellings and the like, even the designs on pottery. Trapped in the manner of sound trapped in the grooves of old-style records. Sometimes, these “recordings,” like the remembered voices and sounds of songs sung, come back in flashes of sound, appearance, and, most destructively, emotion.

“‘Some people believe this is the source for the belief in ghosts, and since not everyone has this innate, or acquired, ability, this is why some people hear or see “ghosts” and others do not.’

“That’s from the Texas Medical Journal volume The Mystery of Senses, Perceptions, and the Brain , by James Long-Williams, Ph.D.”