The Highway Kind(53)

Folks were always saying that Lester would end up dead somewhere anyway. Charlie could feel himself becoming resigned to the notion. Some dudes just don’t make it. Getting all weepy wasn’t gonna bring him back now. Just bad breaks. Dale too. Charlie and Dale weren’t really buds, but he’d always liked him okay. You meet those guys along the way. You have some good times, then you move on. Life gets tough sometimes. It was always rough around those parts.

As he rounded the curve to his house, there was Jimmy Ray parked, just there under the streetlight in front of his house like he always left it. The 1970 redesigned Chevelle SS had such beautiful lines. She needed a lot of work but he’d get around to it one of these days.

Charlie stood there for a bit, taking it in. His mind slowed and he was suddenly totally calm and relaxed. He felt like he was out of his body, looking down and seeing the whole scene, as if in a movie. His mind felt strangely rational and deliberate, the way he would get when he started those fires that made him a hero. The way a hunter feels as he draws a bead on his kill.

The air had developed a slight chill now and he thought he could smell a faint trace of smoke in the pines. The cooler was still in the back and the hood was still warm. He noticed that the square GM key was not in the ignition. He wondered what, if anything, might be in the trunk and wished he had the oval key to check.

Charlie’s house was dark and still but his door was standing wide open. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, threw the match down on the ground, and walked toward the front porch.





DRIVING TO GERONIMO’S GRAVE


by Joe R. Lansdale

We ought never to do wrong when people are looking.

—Mark Twain

I HADN’T EVEN been good and awake for five minutes when Mama came in and said, “Chauncey, you got to drive on up to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and pick up your uncle Smat.”

I was still sitting on the bed, waking up, wearing my nightdress, trying to figure which foot went into what shoe, when she come in and said that. She had her dark hair pushed up on her head and held in place with a checkered scarf.

“Why would I drive to Oklahoma and pick up Uncle Smat?”

“Well, I got a letter from some folks got his body, and you need to bring it back so we can bury it. This Mrs. Wentworth said they were gonna leave it in the chicken house if nobody comes for it. I wrote her back and posted the letter already telling her you’re coming.”

“Uncle Smat’s dead?” I said.

“We wouldn’t want to bury him otherwise,” Mama said, “though it took a lot longer for him to get dead than I would have figured, way he honky-tonked and fooled around with disreputable folks. Someone knifed him. Stuck him like a pig at one of them drinking places, I figure.”

“I ain’t never driven nowhere except around town,” I said. “I don’t even know which way is Oklahoma.”

“North,” Mama said.

“Well, I knew that much,” I said.

“Start in that direction and watch for signs,” she said. “I’m sure there are some. I got your breakfast ready, and I’ll pack you some lunch and give you their address, and you can be off.”

Now this was all a fine good morning, me hardly knowing who Uncle Smat was, and Mama not really caring that much about him, Smat being my dead daddy’s brother. She had cared about Daddy plenty, though, and she had what you could call family obligation toward Uncle Smat. As I got dressed she talked.

“It isn’t right to leave a man, even a man you don’t know so well, lying out in a chicken house with chickens to peck on him. And there’s all that chicken mess too. I dreamed last night a chicken snake crawled over him.”

I put on a clean work shirt and overalls and some socks that was sewed up in the heels and toes, put on and tied my shoes, slapped some hair oil on my head, and combed my hair in a little piece of mirror I had on the dresser.

Next, I packed a tow sack with some clothes and a few odds and ends I might need. I had a toothbrush and a small jar of baking soda and salt for tooth wash. Mama was one of the few in our family who had all her teeth, and she claimed that was because she used a brush made from hair bristles and she used that soda and salt. I believed her, and both me and my sister followed her practice.

Mama had some sourdough bread, and she gave that to me, and she filled a couple of my dad’s old canteens with water, put a blanket and some other goods together for me. I loaded them in another good-size tow sack and carried it out to the Ford and put the bag inside the turtle hull.

In the kitchen, I washed up in the dishpan, toweled off, and sat down to breakfast, a half a dozen fried eggs, biscuits, and a pitcher of buttermilk. I poured a glass of milk and drank it, and then I poured another and ate along with drinking the milk.

Mama, who had already eaten, sat at the far end of the table and looked at me.

“You drive careful, now, and you might want to stop somewhere and pick some flowers.”

“I’m picking him up, not attending his funeral,” I said.

“He might be a bit stinky, him lying in a chicken coop and being dead,” Mama said. “So I’m thinking the flowers might contribute to a more pleasant trip. Oh, I tell you what. I got some cheap perfume I don’t never use, so you can take that with you and pour it on him, you need to.”

I was chewing on a biscuit when she said this.