“Oh,” Leonard said. “Then what are you?”
“The new police chief. I should also mention that the mayor is the one that caught a stray bullet and is as dead as an old bean can.”
“Mayor. Police chief. We had quite a night,” I said.
To make this part of the story short, we had to stay in the jail till our friend Marvin Hanson could get us a lawyer, and then we got out, and then we got no billed, in spite of the fact we had hunted the bastard down and caused quite a ruckus. The former police chief was dead, by our hand, and the mayor was on the deceased list as well, by a stray slug, and the others that had been in the row of chairs were all prominent citizens. It was best to take it easy on us, let them cover their own dirt in their own way.
Thing was simply this: The crime being done to Tillie was so bad, they let us pretty much skate on self-defense. Hell, after all, it is Texas.
Brett and I climbed into bed and she lay in the crook of my arm.
“Tillie is going to be out of the hospital tomorrow,” Brett said.
She had spent about three months in there. She had been in a bad way. I had to say this for the kid, she was tough as yesterday’s fajita meat.
“I have to go get her then,” Brett said.
“All right,” I said.
“I know you don’t like her.”
“Correct.”
“You didn’t have to do what you did.”
“Yes I did.”
“For me?”
“You and her.”
“But you don’t like her.”
“I don’t like a lot of things,” I said, “but you love her. You think she’s a bent twig, and maybe you’re right. No one deserves that.”
“But she sets herself up for it, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She does. I don’t think she’ll ever change. Sometime soon, she doesn’t, she’s going to be dead. She picks men like ducks pick june bugs. At random.”
“I know. I tried to be a good mother.”
“I know that too, so don’t start on how you failed. You did what you could.”
“I did set her father’s head on fire,” Brett said.
“Yes, you did,” I said. “But by all accounts, he had it coming.”
“He did, you know.”
“Never doubted it.”
“I love you, Hap.”
“And I love you, Brett.”
“Want to lose five minutes out of your life the hard way?” she said.
I laughed. “Now that’s not nice.”
She laughed, rolled over, and turned off the light. And then she was very nice.
Joe R. Lansdale Interviews
Hap Collins
and
Leonard Pine
Q. Hap, I’m going to start with you. You strike me as an intelligent guy. Why don’t you try and make a little bit more of your life?
Hap: Haven’t a clue. I keep thinking I will, but I seem to take wrong turns.
Q. Why not back off from the situations you get yourself into? You deserve a little better, don’t you?
Hap: I get into them before I mean to. It’s like they’re kind of lurking out there. I turn left to avoid them, there’s more trouble comin’ the other way.
Leonard: And he drags me in after him. Can I say something?
Q. Be my guest.
Leonard: Hap’s bright, but doesn’t fully believe it. He thinks because he hasn’t come up with the formula for something like Coca-Cola, or has done him some brain surgery, or cured a disease, he hasn’t lived up to his expectations. Problem with Hap is, he coasts. Ain’t sayin’ he’s lazy. He works hard. When he works. But he hasn’t got any rudder.
Q. Now, don’t take this wrong, Leonard, but what’s your excuse?
Leonard: I don’t make any. I’m doing what I want to do. That’s the difference between me and my brother here. He isn’t entirely happy being him. I’m damn ecstatic about being me. I work hard. I don’t worry that much about the future. A little. But nothing serious. Hap, he’s nothing but a big ol’ bag of worry.
Hap: I thought I was a love machine.
Leonard: You’re a love machine can’t keep a woman.
Hap: You’ve had a bit of a problem maintaining relationships yourself, my good man.
Leonard: Yeah. But, you know what? I think I’ve found a man finally.
Q. That’s another thing. Don’t the people you guys care about seem to . . . well, you know?
Leonard: Yeah, they seem to give us bad luck. We haven’t figured that one out yet.
Q. Well, they’re the ones get killed.
Leonard: Yeah. We haven’t figured that out either.
Q. This one’s for you, Leonard. Do you feel that as you get older you’re gettin’ your temper under control?
Leonard: What temper?
Q. Well . . .
Leonard: Hey, answer the question. I didn’t stutter. What temper?
Q. I was merely sayin’ . . .
Leonard: You haven’t said anything yet. You asked if I had a temper. I don’t have any damn temper.
Hap: Yes you do.
Leonard: Hey, you want a piece of me, brother? You want to wake up with a crowd around you?
Hap: Hey, bubba. You and me get into it, you better brought yourself a sack lunch, ’cause we’re gonna be here all night.
Leonard: Yeah?
Hap: Yeah.
Q. Let’s change the subject. You guys seem to survive through pure tenacity and a feeling of quarrelsome brotherhood. . . .
Leonard: Quarrelsome. Who you callin’—
Hap: You’re right. We do. There’s this, Lansdale. You can have all the money there is, every damn thing, and what it comes down to finally, like it or not, you got to have someone to lean on.
Leonard and I aren’t brothers by birth. But we are brothers. Like our lawyer friend Andrew Vachss says, “It’s the family you choose that counts.” We stand by that. It can be your blood kin, certainly, but it doesn’t have to be. Way we see it, we can argue and fight with each other, but no one else better think they can. Least not in any serious manner.
Q. All right. Let me ask this: What are future plans?
Hap: Hard to say.
Leonard: Charlie Blank and Hanson have some ideas for us. They’ve got a little private investigator’s agency, and we may be picking up a few jobs from them. Nothing technical. Just little stuff, you know. Hap here, he’ll still be looking for a date. Watching his weight. Sticking to nonalcoholic beer and losing his hair. I’ll still be cool and calm in my JCPenney’s suit.
Hap: You may be calm, but that cheap suit is enough to make anyone else nervous.
Q. I have just a few more questions.
Leonard: Actually, we got to go. We borrowed the truck we’re in to get over here, and we promised to have it back. Our junkers are in the shop. Guy needs this one back to go to work.
Hap: And there’s a monster movie showing on channel 38 I want to see.
Leonard: Not that he hasn’t seen it about a hundred times.
Q. Well, thanks, guys. And be careful out there. Leonard: Hell, careful’s our middle name, man.
An Interview with Joe R. Lansdale,
His Own Self
Editor Rick Klaw sat down with Joe and discussed his writing, racism, violence, Texas, and, of course, Hap and Leonard.
RK: Your work has been called Texas gothic, gothic Texas fiction, Texas noir, mystery, suspense, crime, horror, western, and damn near everything in between. How would you describe your work?
JRL: Lansdale. I think of it as being Lansdale work. I try not to fit into any category. It’s not that I purposely try not to, but that I just don’t. I’m uncomfortable trying to force myself into a box. I write what I want to write. I also find that if I fit into a mystery or horror category and try to label myself or push myself as that, then if any one of those things becomes passé or not popular for awhile, then I’ve actually eliminated part of my audience. I don’t want people to pick me up and r
ead me for a mystery writer or read more mysteries; I want them to read more Joe Lansdale and that’s not egotistical—although maybe it is a little, I don’t know—but it’s actually trying to find a way of expressing yourself and promoting what you do, instead of the general idea of a certain genre or a label. And I really hate labels like “splatterpunk” and things like that. Those to me, I think, actually constrict your audience.
RK: One issue that is common to all your work is racism. Why is that?
JRL: I think it perhaps is when I grew up—I was born in 1951—and in the South there was a lot of Jim Crow laws. I grew up in East Texas, which is considered part of the South, unlike most of Texas, which is considered the Southwest, so I saw examples of it. The separate water fountains, separate toilets, going around to the back of restaurants to get their food, theaters where they had to be in the balcony, general attitude that they were not as human as whites. I think, too, that a lot of it was just that my mother was very progressive for her time and I think she planted that seed there for me. Then the sixties came along and civil rights was a big issue as part of the sixties. I think that in those early years that it imprinted. I just always felt uncomfortable with segregation and didn’t understand exactly what it was about. I also felt that education and many things like that that had been denied blacks was the thing that prevented them being able to operate in society. I felt that these were things that should be there for everyone. And I didn’t feel they were, and it really struck me deeply. It runs throughout my work, civil rights in general, but I think especially my experience being with how blacks were treated and to a great extent with how women were treated in the fifties and sixties and what their roles were expected to be. My mother defied that and was certainly, as I said, very progressive. I don’t use the term “liberal” or “conservative” in that because I don’t think that matters, but I think she was progressive in her time. I believe too that put a lot of stress on her trying to do that because that certainly wasn’t accepted, because there was a lot of religious fanaticism against the idea of women even working. All the things we take for granted now and are very common were at one time taboo socially—not just in the South but across the United States. Perhaps the racism struck me more deeply being from this area because we had more blacks and there was this ill legacy of the Civil War and people were still fighting the Civil War even when I was a kid. Even though it was over, they were still fighting it emotionally.
RK: Your work is littered with the mixture of violence and humor. Do you find these to be essential elements to your work, and do you feel you always need the combination?
JRL: I don’t think you always have to. And I don’t think I always have. But I think that it’s more common in my work than not to have that. I think that’s because I saw a lot of violence when I was growing up. Not necessarily always murderous violence, but in school Gladewater was a tough town—people always gettin’ in fights, fistfights over silly things, and they fought hard. But there was a lot of humor in the way people conducted themselves and the way they saw things. I think that rubbed off on me a lot. I think everybody sees humor in violence, even those people who don’t think they do. Because even if you are watching Laurel and Hardy or any comedian, whoever it is on these old shows that we grew up on, people are falling off ladders and people are laughing. People have always laughed at those sorts of things. Sane people laugh when they realize that no one is actually hurt. It is intertwined. I think that humor and violence is nothing new. It’s always been intertwined. I think that Robert Bloch probably had a big influence on me as a writer because he always recognized that.
RK: In your books, the violence is very realistic. Why do you think you make it that way?
JRL: Like I said, I’ve seen it, I’ve been involved in it in the sense that I grew up with people who would fight at the drop of a hat over almost anything. I’ve been a martial artist all my life and I’ve actually used it in self-defense. I’ve also made a point of not using it a few times when I could have. I just controlled the situation either verbally or controlled them physically when they didn’t realize that they were being controlled. And though I’m not anxious to get involved in violence myself (I’m not very much a fan of violence), it intrigues me. It’s so much a part of the human condition. Some people try to deny it as part of the human condition. One of the things that martial arts does and writing this kind of fiction does is that they allow you to tap into that and let off some of that steam. Which is not to say that if you didn’t that you’d necessarily go out and be an ax murderer, but I do believe that in my case that I have somewhat of an aggressive personality to some extent. I am very physical, and I think all those things help me keep my life balanced—which is still not to say I think I was gonna flip out or be an ax murderer or anything.
RK: It seems whenever a new Lansdale book comes out, fans and critics hail it as your most violent book yet.
JRL: I never can tell. To me, I don’t notice any difference between this one and that one. I really don’t. When I look at Bad Chili, I think, “Whoa! That was pretty violent.” I always think of it and Two-Bear Mambo has the most violent of the Hap and Leonard series. The Nightrunners and Waltz of Shadows, those are VERY violent. I never think about that. I never think that I’m going to make this scene violent or what. It just sort of arrives. I’ll read these other books, and this book is just as violent as my books. Why don’t they talk about these people? As other people have told me: “But they don’t write violence the same way. They don’t have that kind of poetic description.” I appreciate that.
RK: Your stories are steeped in Texas. Someone once said you’re a writer who practically oozes Texas. Beside the fact that you grew up in Texas, is there another reason? There are plenty of writers who grew up here who don’t have as much Texas flavor to their work.
JRL: First of all, as you said, growing up here. But I also believe that my parents were proud of being Texans. I think their people actually come from somewhere else. But my father was a Texan. My mother was a Texan. Prior to that, we weren’t generations of Texans. But we epitomized what Texas represents, at least in that mythological sense, as being hardcore, independent people. People who literally did pull themselves up by their bootstraps. My father was a person who could not read or write. And I think he was a vast success. He taught himself how to be a mechanic. My mother bought him a Model T and said take this apart and put it back together until you can do it. And he did. That’s how he learned to be a mechanic and, of course, just continued to learn and update his knowledge. He got to where toward the end of his life, he could actually read a little bit and write a couple of sentences here and there. His mother died when he was eight years old and him taking over the family pretty much. His father bein’ a brutal bastard and my father, like I said, not being educated and having to work all these hard physical jobs. I look at my mother coming from a somewhat-better situation but still a poor situation. When they were reaching their adulthood, that was the Great Depression, and I think all of that just epitomizes what people think of when they think of Texans. So whether true or not, there’s that. Something that appealed to me is that as a child, I always loved mythology. I didn’t know that I was living in mythology, because Texas has its own mythology. It’s bigger than life. And my father was the kind of person who’s a real, everyday, down-to-earth person, but was yet somehow bigger than life. He was what John Wayne thought he was.
RK: Since this is an interview for a collection of Hap and Leonard stories, we probably should discuss the stars. Hap is obviously you.
JRL: To a great extent, yeah.
RK: And Leonard is. . . ?
JRL: Leonard is made up of several people I know, both gay and straight. He’s a combination of those. And uh, also the fact that Hap and Leonard in many ways reflect both of my sides, ’cause I’ve always found that the liberals consider me a conservative and the conservatives consider me a liberal. Somebody once said that I’m an Old Testament liberal, whi
ch I thought was one of the funniest things and most accurate things I’d heard, even though I’m not by nature a religious person. However, the concept was just perfect. I knew when they said that exactly what they meant. And even though it would be hard to define what that means, it tapped with me . . . that’s exactly right. And I also have a way of just irritating either side, which gets me back to . . . what the hell was the question?
RK: The genesis of Leonard?
JRL: Yeah, so he’s a combination of things. And they’re also BOTH a combination of me. Hap represents more one side of me than the other and Leonard more the other side. But Hap in personality and, I think, the way he talks in the books and attitude and approach is more similar to me, and maybe if I had been less ambitious and hadn’t met my wife, I might have lived like he did. Hopefully not with all the adventures, of course.
RK: You once told me that you were surprised at how popular Hap and Leonard were with older women. Have you ever figured out why?
JRL: I have not. What’s interesting is that it’s not just older women now. The more the series has been around, the more women are responding to it. I only know that people have said that women will never like this because there’s references that they may find offensive. And I think some have.
RK: There are references that we all find offensive.
JRL: That’s part of the point.
I think that’s one thing that a lot of the readers never understand—that there are some people who are offensive just because they are writing offensively, and there are other people who are using it as a tool and sometimes just for the hell of it. Just for the shock of it. But it’s also because this is how a lot of the people I know talk. This is how they really are. And all I’m trying to do is tap into that. A lot of guys have responded to that. They’ve said, this is the way we really talk. When women aren’t around, this is what we say—and you’ve done that. And the women—another thing that I’ve heard is that I’ve had several say, just tell me that Hap is real, please, because I want to marry him. I think what they are responding to somewhat is that Hap is a little bit in need. That people think, well, I can help him out. But the other part of it is that Hap does come across as a good man and that he means well and he’s honest and he’s trying his best. People respond to that. And they respond to that in Leonard, too.