ONCE UPON A TIME
Once upon a time, Ug said to Gar, let me tell you a story.
This was around a campfire, you see, people sitting around with their naked asses hanging out, maybe a bearskin over their shoulders, or when that wasn't available, a dog or wolf skin, something that might have given the camp dog pause from time to time, lying there beside the fire, listening to Ug tell Gar a story, trying to determine if that dog skin looked like a relative or friend.
But I, as omniscient narrator, have departed from what I first intended to do. This is common to me, and must be forgiven, and if not forgiven, what can I say, I'll most likely do it anyway.
So Ug, he says to Gar, says it soft so his voice seems part of the night and the high full moon, the not-so-distant howl of a wolf, says: Once upon a time, I was down in the valley, the valley way low, over there where the big thickets grow and the brambles twist and the trails are thin, way down there, I heard a noise. We're not talking your usual noise, some wolf or bear or tiger or such, but something that moved silent from tree to tree, in the dark. It was like the shadows of the moon came unglued, swung swift and silent through trees. And when I saw it, I said, Damn, that don't look good, and I started moving away, slow like at first, then with a trot, carrying the rabbits I'd killed, and then I realized that this shadow, this thing in the trees, was following from limb to limb and gaining on me rapidly, and so, to keep it at bay, I began tossing one rabbit back at a time, and when I looked over my shoulder, lo and behold, that thing, that shadow, would drop from the trees and stop to maul the little hopper I had tossed back, and when it did, in the moonlight–and it was less light than tonight–I could see it had big white teeth and big yellow-green eyes, the color of pus in a wound, and I ran and ran, dropping rabbits as I went, and soon, way too soon, I had but one rabbit left.
What did you do? Gar asked.
I tossed it, too. What could I do, and I looked back, and it stopped to eat it, and I ran faster, until I thought my sides would break, and then, over my breathing, which was loud and pained, my friend, I heard it breathing, right down my neck, and its breath smelled of rabbit flesh and blood and dirt and bone and all the death you could imagine, and up ahead of me I saw a break in the trees, and somehow, somehow, I knew if I could get out of the trees, out of the shadows they made, I'd be home free.
Wow! How would you know that?
I felt it. In my heart. I just knew. But just before I reached the opening, the way out of the trees, I tripped.
Dog Butt! Gar said.
You said it, and when I fell it grabbed my ankle, pulled at me, tried to yank me back deeper into the shadows of the trees, but there was a stone in the field, and I took hold of it, and it held, and I used it to pull myself forward, but just when I thought I had it made, it came loose.
Oh no.
You said it. But I turned, rolled on my back as I was being dragged, and I threw that stone as hard as I could, threw it at its open mouth, and the stone went in, and it gagged and swallowed, and let me go. I stood up to run, but before I turned I saw it choking, rolling all over the leaves, thrashing up against trees and bushes, twisting in brambles 'til it was wrapped in them thick as this skin over my shoulders.
And then it coughed, my friend. Coughed. And out burst the rock, like it was thrown. And it slowly turned its head and looked at me and came for me and I ran, boy, did I run, even though I thought my sides would explode.
But when I looked back it stood on the edge of the forest, looking at me, not able to go out into the full moonlight, away from the trees and shadows. So I stopped and I yelled and it hopped up and down and I laughed and called it all sorts of names and finally it quit hopping and just looked at me, as if to say, brother, you had better not come back. And then, it turned and it took to the trees, climbing up and away, fast as a spear flies. Faster.
And it was gone.
Damn, Gar said.
"Once Upon a Time" originally appeared as the introduction to Brian Hopkins' book, Thirteen Horrors, an anthology celebrating 13 years of the World Horror Convention. But that was a different version. In this form, it appeared, with illustrations, in the book that was printed to accompany an art show in Nacogdoches. So I doubt you've ever read this before. "Once Upon a Time" © 2003 Joe R. Lansdale. All Rights Reserved.
ONE DEATH, TWO EPISODES
First Episode:
"One minute he’s all right, then the little fucker cut a fart and he was out of here, gone for good, like the five-cent candy bar."
"Shit. He was what? Twelve. Kid like that, you’d think he could stand a kick or two to the head."
"You don’t know your own strength."
"That begging stuff. I couldn’t stand the begging."
"He ain’t begging now."
"Naw he ain’t. It just went all over me, him begging like that. Them cigarette burns wouldn’t have killed him. He didn’t have to beg like that."
"You always got to push your fun, son."
"I don’t know what it is. Guess him being a nigger and talking the way he did, all educated and everything, being young and talking better than a grown man, his family having all that money. It just went all over me. Hell, we’re the ones, the chosen people, not this jigaboo."
"I don’t know who’d choose him now. And the Jews that are chosen are Yankee Jews. It’s all right they hate niggers, long as they don’t talk with a Southern accent. They must think them Yankee vowels don’t hurt a person’s ear. Well, they hurt mine plenty."
"I guess I kissed twenty thousand goodbye, didn’t I?"
"Next time you kidnap somebody, don’t kidnap a nigger, no matter how much money they got. A nigger seems to get on your nerves worse than anybody. And stay away from women. I don’t think I’d like you to kidnap a woman."
"Oh hell, Mama, you know you’re the one for me. You’re always the one for me."
"Yeah, I’m all the woman there is when your root’s talking, and your root’s talking right now. Doing things to niggers, it always did get you hard."
"Oh, Mama, it ain’t that. It ain’t that way."
She goes into his arms and they kiss: "What kind of way is it, baby? Show Mama what kind of way it is."
Second Episode:
A big guy is bouncing a basketball, taking some shots. A younger guy comes out drinking a beer. He says: "There’s a nigger swelled up in the living room."
"Yeah. I killed him."
"Y’all kidnap him?"
"Uh huh."
"You know how you are about niggers. You should have got a white boy."
"I don’t care for gentiles all that much neither."
"Yeah, but their color doesn’t excite you."
"He died easy. Mama wasn’t too happy."
"Hell, she wasn’t. I bet you killed that nigger she got wet, probably fucked your brains out."
"Yeah, well, she did me pretty good."
"Where is she?"
(Grins) "Sleeping it off."
"Whatcha gonna do?"
"Thought we’d take the nigger and dump him."
"You could still get the money."
"Whattaya mean?"
"Tell ‘em he’s dead, but they want the body back, they still got to pay."
"I hadn’t thought of that. Hey, I take after daddy. I think a little."
"Yeah, he was a good thinker all right. He wasn’t thinking so good the night they cut his balls off."
"Well, he let the drink get ahead of him. Said some things to those Mexes when he thought he had a gun."
"I’d like to seen his face when he reached for it and didn’t find nothing."
"Yeah, that would have been something. He’s up there looking down on things now, I bet he’d think what happened to him was funny."
"I can just see the way his mouth used to do. You remember." (Mimics)... "But you’re right. A nigger dead ought to be worth as much as one alive."
"Don’t ask me what I’d pay. They ask me to pay for him he’d be a nigger in a ditch s
omewhere. I wouldn’t give you five cents for his pecker to feed my dog with."
© 1997 Joe R. Lansdale.
"One Death, Two Episodes" was originally published in 1997 in The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent, a collection of Lansdale’s short stories published in a limited-edition hardcover by Subterranean Press.
THE PASTURE
Five thirty-eight a.m. Less than an hour before light. Out there in the back-country darkness, great pines on either side, the red clay road winding like a reptile in the headlights, a man couldn't help but feel that he had fallen out of everyday life into a surreal land.
That time of night had an eerie quality the same as twilight, when brilliance slid slowly off the edge of the world and darkness, like some crawling beast, inched gray then black, over the rim.
But now there was a jigger of rose-and-gold morning mixed with the night; and perhaps that, with the heady brew of darkness whipped thick about it, was what gave the air its unnatural look and feel.
Yes, feel, thought Lieutenant Maynard. It was as if one could reach out, hold the air, and work it between the thumb and forefinger like fine gossamer.
The three of them had come out of sleep to the fire bell's ring. The dispatcher, a strawberry blond woman nicknamed Red, had sent them on call.
In the depths of the pines lay a cow pasture where, according to the coon-hunter who had called it in, a small grass fire was burning. After crossing the pasture and threading through woods, he had found his pickup and driven to the nearest phone, in the town of Nacogdoches, Texas, just three miles away.
It wasn't much of a fire, the coon-hunter had said, and perhaps it would die out on its own, but it should be checked. He had given directions. Now they were checking.
Finally they stopped by the side of the road. The lieutenant got out first, went around the truck, and leaned on the top wire of a four-strand barbed wire fence. The other two firemen climbed out of the truck and leaned on either side of him.
"This seems about right," said the lieutenant. "Best as I can tell from the directions."
"Mileage would indicate," said Martin, and he spat a brown stream of snuff over the fence and against a tree.
Ted, the other fireman, said, "I don't see a fire."
"Doesn't mean it's not out there," said the lieutenant.
"How we gonna get a truck in there?" said Martin. "We could spend all night looking for a road."
"We won't worry with the truck for now," said the lieutenant. "Maybe nothing to it. Get me a pump can, would ya, Ted?"
Ted trotted to the truck and returned with the pump can. The lieutenant strapped it on his back. "If it isn't much of a fire this will take care of it. If it is, well, guess the sonofabitch'll burn the whole pasture up before we can get in."
"We could cut the wire," said Ted.
"Uh huh," said Martin, "and then we could squeeze our little red rubber fire truck through the trees and out into the pasture there."
"All right, all right, don't be a smartmouth," said Ted. "Just trying to make a suggestion."
Martin spat on another tree.
"It's sort of wide over there," said the lieutenant, pointing to a gap between the trees. "I think I can get through. I'll go in and head right first. Follow me through the trees with the spot. That way I can tell where you are out here, and I'll keep in touch with the walkie-talkie."
"All right," said Martin. "Find something, then maybe we can snake a hose through."
"Maybe," said the lieutenant. "Well, before the world burns away..." Ted and Martin pushed down the bottom two strands of wire with their booted feet, held the top strands high with gloved hands. The lieutenant, pump can and all, worked his way through, found the opening, and wriggled his way into the pasture.
Behind him Martin called, "Watch for cow plops!"
The lieutenant smiled in their direction. He could barely see them through the trees, the engine behind them, a splotch of clay road. He turned and walked. After a while he turned on the talkie.
"Nothing I can see. Thought you guys were going to start the light?"
He waited. No responding voice. No light.
"Start the light," he repeated.
No light.
"Martin, would you start the light, please?"
Nothing. There wasn't even static on the talkie. "Dead," the lieutenant concluded aloud. He started back to the truck for another communicator. He would have to start over.
Presently he came to a patch of wood, but could not find the opening. It looked different somehow, but common sense told him this was the right spot.
He took off the pump can, leaned it against a tree, pushed his way into the foliage. Branches picked at his uniform like magpies. He went twenty feet, thirty.
No fence.
No road.
No truck.
The wood seemed to go on forever.
Now how in the world could I have gotten that turned around? he thought.
He navigated back to the pasture, strapped on the pump can, and began to walk along the edge of the pine stand. He tried the walkie-talkie again, but still no soap. He called out by cupping his hands megaphone-style over his mouth and got the same nonresponse.
"Hey, Martin, Ted," he yelled. "I'm turned around out here. Say something. I'm lost."
Silence.
He started across the pasture toward a clutch of pines on the other side. Like those near him, they seemed to run as far as the eye could see, then mixed with the strange pre-morning darkness.
Perhaps he was completely turned around, so much, in fact, that he had crossed the entire pasture and was trying to get out on the wrong side. That was a pretty crazy thought, but it was possible. It was early and he was half-asleep, and his wife had always said, "You wake up crummy."
As he neared the other side of the pasture, he noted that it sloped off dramatically to his left, dipping down into the greater darkness. He could hear sounds down there. Ted and Martin, perhaps? He walked that way.
It was too inky to be sure, but something seemed to move down there. Shapes - animals, from the way they milled about - and it looked as if there might be a pond. Yes, thought the lieutenant, that was it, animals drinking from a pond. Cows, most likely.
Behind him came a sound, like a truck. He turned, saw lights. At first he thought it was the fire truck, that they had found a way in after all. But no, the lights were different from that of the fire engine, and the motor sound, now that he listened closely, was different. This vehicle breathed its roar with a smaller set of metallic lungs. Probably a pickup.
Some strange compulsion caused him to stop staring and turn in the direction of the pines at his left. He walked briskly, removed the pump can, and placed it between two pines, easing himself into the concealment of the trees. Fire department or not, uniform or not, it was not wise to wander about in a man's pasture at night. People still rustled cows, and ranchers still shot rustlers. It might be judicious to wait until a more opportune moment to introduce himself. Were they to come upon him suddenly they might shoot first and take names later. In many ways the Old West was still very much alive in this part of the country. Besides, not too long back this area had, like much of the nation, been plagued by oddball cattle mutilations. If they spotted him with this pump can out here, they just might mistake him for a little green man.
He waited silently in the pines.
The lights swelled. It was a pickup, all right. Two men were riding in the truck bed. He could make them out against the gray skyline. There was also something else stacked high in the bed; it looked like bales of hay. Attached to the truck, and rattling behind it, was a long, narrow trailer made of bars.
So he had been right about the pond and the noise. Cattle. Made sense. Early morning feeding, and these folks were the sort to start early.
The truck came even with him, stopped on the slope above the pond. He waited until they killed the engine. He was about to call out from his concealment and explain why he was here, when his mouth
froze forming a word. His brain locked up like a frozen brake.
Was it Halloween? Something was very wrong here.
The two men in the truck bed, standing up and looking over the top of the cab, did not look like men at all. In fact, they looked like- No. Couldn't be.
Lieutenant Maynard rubbed his eyes and looked again.
The truck doors opened and two more got out, one on either side. The one on the passenger side took hold of a spotlight fastened to the door and flicked it on. The light was harsh in the near-morning darkness. It gave Lieutenant Maynard a good view of the pond.
Down there by the water, milling about like cattle, were people. Women, men, and children. Black, brown, and white. There must have been two dozen. They were stark naked.