The Complete Drive-In

  “Go shower and shave ... and for heaven’s sake brush that hair off your teeth,” Mom said.

  “My breath is sweet. I go to bed with sugar breath, and I awake with it even sweeter. I—”

  “Go!”

  “Yessuh, Massuh,” he said, and shuffled off.

  When he was gone Mom gave me an exasperated look. “He’s crazy, you know?”

  “I know,” I said.

  A little later on, Mom went to play tennis and Dad went to work and I never saw them again.

  4

  Before we started going to the drive-in, come summer mornings you couldn’t get me up if you fired a bazooka under the covers. But now Friday meant the Orbit, and I was usually up early. And there was also The Early Morning Monster Show that I had acquired a taste for. It showed on Channel 6 at eight and Randy came over every Friday to watch. Bob would have, but he worked half a day at his dad’s feed store. As I said, none of us had to work, but Bob was more willing, and he liked having plenty of pocket change.

  So Randy came over and the movie was The Crawling Eye, and it wasn’t bad until the monsters showed up. The wind kind of went out of its sails after that. It was hard to feel threatened by things that looked like large rubber mops. Still, I enjoyed it, and it gave Randy a chance to make fun of the special effects.

  He got what I thought was a sort of strange, even perverse, pleasure out of that, considering most of those movies had been made on a rubber-band budget. But I think it was important for him to have something to look down on, considering he felt pretty much low man on life’s totem pole. He had brains and he was nice, but there was some invisible thing about him that led others to direct their hatred toward him, the incident with Bear being a case in point. In fact, I sometimes felt that behind that mousy, quiet exterior was a tyrant without courage, someone looking for his edge on humanity.

  He was good in school, but he didn’t take any particular pride in that because no one gave a damn. He was knowledgeable about film, makeup and special effects particularly, but again, no competition. Bob and I loved that stuff too, but we weren’t wrapped up in it like Randy. So the only thing he could measure his knowledge and skills against were low-budget films, mentally playing out in his mind that he could do better if given a chance.

  But the thing I remember best about that morning was Randy turning to me while all hell was breaking loose in the movie (admittedly the hell in the movie wasn’t as intense as it ought to have been), and saying, “Do you think Willard has a steady girl?”

  “Hell, Randy, I don’t know. I’m sure he has girls, but I don’t think he’s the wearmy-ring kind. I think the tattoo on his arm, EAT PUSSY, is sort of a statement on romance, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Randy said. “I suppose so.”

  After that he just watched the movie, but I could tell his mind wasn’t on it. He had a sort of dreamy look in his eyes, like he was thinking about something that lived way down deep in his brain.

  About noon we ate some ham sandwiches and drove over to Safeway and bought some supplies for the night: Cracker Jacks, chocolate-covered almonds, potato chips, some Cokes and a few bags of cookies. Bob was supposed to get a case of beer; he had connections. Connections that bought it cheap and sold it dear, and didn’t give a damn if you were a minor or a warthog. In spite of that, Bob could deal with them better than we could. He dressed the way they did, could talk their line of talk, and the bottom line was he was so damn tight, when he blinked the skin on his dick rolled back. Just the man for hard money dealings.

  He had also promised Randy and me that he would bring us some jerky from his dad, who had made it himself from last season’s deer. He’d given us some of it before, and it was fine. In fact, last time he’d given us enough to feed an army. Well, mine mostly fed my dad, even if it did give his teeth a workout. He loved the stuff, tried to convince everyone who came by the house they should too. My dad and Bob’s dad should have gone into business together. Bob’s dad could make it and my dad could hawk it.

  I remember passing the kitchen once, and Dad was sitting in there at the table with one of his business partners, and he had pushed a strip of the meat off on him, and I heard the guy say, “I’m not so hot on this stuff, Harold. It’s kind of like chewing on a dead woman’s tit.”

  From then on when I ate the stuff, I had to chew it in an absentminded sort of way, not thinking too much about the texture so I could enjoy it.

  We took the goodies home, read some Fangoria magazines Randy had brought over, and Bob arrived an hour later than usual for our ventures.

  Two things were noticeable right off. One was that the fool was fresh from the shower and hadn’t bothered to dry off; his shirt was stuck to his back and the hair that hung out from beneath his hat was wet and shaggy. The second thing was that he had been in a fight; he had a black doughnut around his left eye.

  “You know that girlfriend I used to have?” he said.

  “Used to have?” Randy asked.

  “Yep, used to have. Caught her with Wendle Benbaker.”

  Wendle was about the size of a small camper trailer. He had played tackle for Mud Creek High until graduation, and his hobby, when he wasn’t drinking beer and talking about girls, was talking about girls and drinking beer. He was the only guy I knew who moved his lips over the Playboy foldout as well as the magazine’s text. I think it was the staples that confused him.

  And to be honest, Bob’s girlfriend, Leona of the Big Tits, didn’t strike me as any great loss. Her nickname was how she was known by the staunchest anti-male chauvinist, both male and female. She invited being called that, even liked it, thought it was an honor; she wore those monstrous boobs like war medals on a proud general’s chest.

  “Reckon this discovery,” I said, “caused you and Wendle to fight.”

  Bob rubbed his sore eye. “Good, Sherlock. You’re right. Jake was supposed to meet me out back of the Dairy Queen with the beer, and he did. But after I loaded it up, I saw Leona and Wendle sitting in his car around front. She was sitting so close she might as well have been wearing his pants with him. Burned my ass up. She told me she didn’t do nothing on Fridays but watch TV. Told me I could go with the guys, no sweat. Now I know the hell why. She’s been letting Wendle check her oil.”

  “What did you do?” Randy asked.

  “Went over there, yanked the door open and called him a sonofabitch, I think. I was a bit under stress right then and don’t remember so good.”

  I nodded at the black eye. “And I take it he wasn’t scared none?”

  “Not that I could see. And he can move fast for a big guy. Sucker popped out of that Dodge like a ripe zit and hit me in the eye before I could shag it.”

  “Looks bad,” I said.

  “You oughta see him.”

  “You hit him?” Randy said, amazed. “You hit Wendle the tank?”

  “No, but I damn sure got some oil stains on his pants. I mean I ruined them little buddies.”

  Randy and I let that hang, trying to work it into the scheme of things.

  “Oil stains?” I finally asked, as if I were delivering the cryptic line “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane.

  “When he knocked me down, I crawled under his car and he crawled after me. Some car had been leaking oil there—Wendle’s, I hope—and he got his white pants all nastied up. Covered both knees. Won’t wash out. Them boogers are ruined.”

  “That’s showing him,” I said.

  “He was so big I got over beneath the muffler and he couldn’t get under there after me ... remember that if he starts for you. You get under his car by the muffler and you’re safe. He can’t get there.”

  “Good tip,” I said. “Go for the muffler.”

  “He did kick me, though. He can get his legs under there after you pretty good, so it ain’t completely safe. He jammed my little finger some, but he finally gave up, got back in the car and tried to back it over me.”

  “Looks to me you escaped,” I said.

  “R
olled out from under there like a dung bug. You remember how fast I could roll in gym when we was doing that tumbling exercise, don’t you?”

  “You were an ace roller, as I recall,” I said.

  “Damn right.”

  “What was Leona doing?” Randy asked.

  “She got out of the car, started screaming and cussing—which was a thing that hurt me. She told me a couple of times she was a lady and didn’t say them kind of words. Swore she wouldn’t say ‘shit’ if she had a mouthful. But she was out there yelling at Wendle to pull my head off and to kick a turd down my throat.

  “When I rolled out from under the car and started running, her and ole Wendle yelling at my back, I knew right then and there that things between us were over.”

  “Does sound kind of past the patching stage,” I said.

  “Well ... I ruined that sucker’s pants.”

  We put the goodies in Bob’s truck, drove over to Buddy’s Fill-up to get gas and some ice for our beer chest.

  While we were there, I went to the bathroom to take a leak and Bob joined me at the urinal. The two caballeros.

  The place was really nasty, smelled awful. The urinal was stopped up with candy wrappers and some things I didn’t want to examine too closely, lest I identify them. Over in one corner was a mashed item I hoped was a Baby Ruth.

  Most of the graffiti were illiterate and the artist who had drawn naked women on the walls seemed to lack acquaintance with human anatomy. My dad told me his generation learned a lot about sex from writings and drawings on bathroom walls. I hoped to goodness our generation was getting its information from better sources.

  “Nice place, ain’t it?” Bob said.

  “Maybe we ought to bring us some dates in here.”

  “We could sit on the commodes and talk.”

  “Bring in some dip and stuff.”

  “Have some of them little sausages wrapped in bread with toothpicks through them.”

  “Serious now,” I said. “How are you making it?”

  “Good enough. Splashed a little on my boots is all. But I ain’t having a good enough time to stick around when I finish. Kind of stinks. How about you? What are your plans?”

  “That’s funny, Bob.”

  “Okay, I’m doing fine. She was just some ole gal. You worry about other people too much. Me included.”

  “Yeah, I’m a regular bleeding heart.”

  “Well, you are . . . but, yeah, I’m okay. I’m going to miss her some.”

  “There’s nothing to miss, Bob.”

  “I don’t know. Them tits were sure nice and warm.”

  Randy was leaning on the truck when we came out.

  “I was about to organize a search party,” he said.

  “Well,” Bob said, “we got to talking, you know, and damn if we don’t have all kinds of things in common.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You just wouldn’t believe.”

  Randy rolled his eyes. “How about we get in the truck?”

  We drove over to Larry’s Garage, got there fifteen minutes early, but Willard was out front, smoking a cigarette, the damn thing hanging off his lip like a leech. His long hair was clean and combed back and he wore a black T-shirt with a cigarette pack stuck under one short sleeve. He had a faded blue-jean jacket tossed over one shoulder. He looked like he was waiting for someone to come along so he could mug them.

  He strolled over to the truck. “Ready?”

  “We’re always ready,” Bob said.

  “You look ready,” Willard said. “What happened to your eye?”

  “A truck named Wendle Benbaker.”

  “Get in,” I said, “and he’ll tell you how he ruined Wendle’s pants, and how to hide from him under a muffler.”

  Randy got out of the truck and made Willard take his place at shotgun. He went around to ride in the back, carrying a Fangoria with him to read.

  “He’s a nice little guy,” Willard said when he was seated, his arm hanging out the window.

  “That’s the truth,” Bob said, cranked the truck and drove on out of town. As we went, I took the whole place in, noticed for the first time some houses and stores I had looked at before, but hadn’t really seen. We drove down the main drag, past the university that I planned to attend, past the big pines that were slowly being thinned by idiots with no concept of city planning but a firm grasp on the concept of greed; drove past the stinking chicken plant and the plywood plant and the aluminum-chair factory, which Willard saluted with an upward push of his middle finger; drove on out of there with me photographing it all in my mind, perhaps sensing somehow it was for the last time.

  5

  It didn’t seem like a night for horrors. Least not the real kind.

  It was cool and pleasant. We got there a little later than usual due to some bad traffic. Quite a line had formed. You could see the Orbit’s Saturn symbol spinning blue and silver against the night.

  “I’ll be damned,” Willard said.

  “We’ll all be if we don’t change our ways,” Bob said.

  “Wait until you see the inside,” I said.

  We moved up in line, finally drove by the outdoor marquee. It listed I Dismember Mama, The Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead, The Toolbox Murders and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

  Inside, the big party had already started. There were lawn chairs planted in the backs of pickups, and folks planted in the chairs. There were people on the hoods and tops of their cars. Punkers. Aging hippies. Conservative types. Fraternity and sorority kids. Families. Cowboys and cowgirls with beer cans growing out of their fists. Barbecue grills sputtered away, lifting sweet smoke into the fine Texas sky. Tape decks whined in conflict of one another. A few lovers on blankets were so hot at it, Willard suggested that they should charge admission. Cars rocked in spastic rhythm to the sexual gyrations of unbridled youth. Someone somewhere called someone a sonofabitch. Other people yelled things we couldn’t understand. Bikini-clad women walked by. People in monster suits walked by. Sometimes young men in monster suits chased the bikini-clad women by. Dogs, let out of their owners’ cars to do their business, pissed on tires or left deposits of another nature in the vicinity.

  And, most important, of course, there was the screen.

  One of six, it stood stark-white against a jet-black sky, a six-story portal into another dimension.

  We tried to get as close as we could, but most of the front rows were taken. We ended up in the middle of a rear row.

  We got the lawn chairs out, the goodies. Bob and I went to the concession stand and bought some bloody corn for all of us, and by the time we got back with it, the sleaze classic I Dismember Mama had started.

  We rolled through that one, drinking, eating, laughing, shouting at the gory spots, and finally The Toolbox Murders came on, and it was halfway through that one that it happened.

  I don’t remember any great change in the atmosphere, anything like that. Everything was normal—for the Orbit. Sights, sounds and smells as they ought to be. The bloody corn was gone, so were several Cokes, and Bob and Willard had made good work of the beers. We were about a third of the way through a bag of chocolate cookies. Cameron Mitchell had just opened his ominous box of tools to take out an industrial nailer, as he had designs to use the wicked instrument on a young lady he’d been spying on in the shower, and we were ready, hoping as much for blatant nudity as celluloid gore, when

  —there was light.

  It was a light so bright and crimson, the images on the screen paled, then faded.

  We looked up.

  The source of the light was a monstrous red comet, or meteor, hurtling directly toward us. The night sky and stars around it were consumed by its light, and the thing filled our vision. The rays from the object felt soft and liquid, like being bathed in warm milk and honey.

  Collision with the drive-in seemed imminent. My life didn’t pass before my eyes, but I thought suddenly of things I hadn’t done, thought of Mom and Dad, then, abruptly, the comet smiled.


  Split down the middle to show us a mouthful of jagged saw-blade teeth. Instead of going out of life with a bang, it appeared we were going out with a crunch.

  The mouth opened wider, and I was turning my head away from the inevitable, thinking in a fleeting second that I would be swallowed by it, like Pinocchio by the whale, when

  —it whipped up and away, dragging its fiery tail behind it, leaving us awash in flickering red sparks and an even more intense feeling of being engulfed in warm liquid.

  When the red pupil paint peeled away from my eyes and I could see again, the sky had gone from blood red to pink, and now that was slowly fading. The comet was racing faster and faster, ever upward, seemingly dragging the moon and stars after it, like glitter swirling down a sewerish drain. Finally the comet was nothing more than a hot-pink pinprick surrounded by black turbulence that sparked with blue twists of lightning; then the dark sky went still, the lightning died out, and the comet was memory.

  At first, it looked as if nothing had changed, except for a loss of the moon and the stars. But the exterior of the drive-in was different. Beyond that seven-foot, moon-shimmering tin fence that surrounded it was ... nothing. Well, to be more exact, blackness. Complete blackness, the ultimate fudge pudding. A moment before the tops of the houses, trees and buildings had been visible beyond the drive-in, but now they were not. There was not even a dot of light.

  The only illumination came from the drive-in itself: from open car doors, the concession-stand lights, the red neon tubes that said ENTRANCE ( from our angle) and EXIT, the projector beams, and, most brilliantly, the marquee and the tall Orbit symbol, the last two sources being oddly located on a spur of concrete jutting into the blackness like a pier over night ocean. I found myself drawn to that great symbol, its blue and white lights alternating like overhead fan slats across the concession, making the Halloweenish decorations against the window glass seem oddly alive and far too appropriate.