She’s got a big round tummy now. She says I didn’t pull out fast enough and the baby’s mine. She says it’s pretty far along, but isn’t showing much because she’s tall. Since I didn’t eat the King’s popcorn and neither did she, she thinks the baby has a good chance to be healthy. I don’t know how I feel about that.
The other women have had their babies and Yes, I’m talking about you guys. But hold up, I’m almost through here. Just be polite and let me get through this.
– they look like the Popcorn King. Two bodies welded together, one on the other’s shoulders, to make a single unit. Unlike the King, they are covered in eyes. The eyes look like the eyes that were on the corn the King puked up. Each eye blinks at a different time. I feel like I’m constantly receiving Morse code.
They’re all sexless. I mean there’s no equipment that I can see. Keeps from having to wipe a lot of asses. They came out of the cannon practically walking. They can put simple sentences together already. They’re almost as tall as me. They like to listen to me read, and though they understand a lot of the words, a lot of sentences, I don’t think they get the gist of it all Okay, Leroy. I take it back. You do understand. That’s all for today, guys, girls, whatever. Go find a car to tear up. I was kidding about there being a test at the end of this…
What test?
Forget it, Leroy. Bye now.
That was about all I had written. I’m back inside the hut now and I’m sitting here finishing this out as best I can, which is just as well. I’m running out of things to write with. I’ve looked everywhere, glove boxes, the concession stand over in B Lot, you name it. I’ve written this in pen and pencil, crayon and eyeliner.
But it doesn’t matter, I’m also running out of things to say. I guess I can mention that the mothers of those kids, or whatever they are, don’t love them. But I’m not sure that’s all their fault. How can they be mothers after all they’ve seen and done?
I see some of the drive-in people looking up at the corpse of Popalong, almost wistfully, I think. At night they wander about in the storms, nothing to do. They’ve forgotten how to talk to one another. It’s a good thing those weird kids were born practically grown.
Sometimes I take the kids hunting with me. They chase down the game on foot. Bob says he thinks he saw one throw a stick without touching it the other day. Kid just willed it up and there it went, hit a rabbit in the back of the head and killed it.
Bob admits he saw this out of the corner of his eye, and it may not be like that, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Well, like I said we hunt a lot. Thought a better diet might help the people here, help them get a better frame of mind. But all it does is help them get around faster.
Sometimes I think I’ll start back down the highway, but I’d have to go on foot and I don’t like the idea of those storms or that film out there at night. Still, I think about it. Shit Town might be a better life than this. Hell, getting back to Jungle Home wouldn’t be too bad.
Let’s see… Oh yeah, Grace has a shadow now, and Steve is starting to have one. Bob and I still don’t. I’m not sure what this means, but it worries me a little, especially when I see Grace working out and popping the air with her punches, and right behind her, capering like a chimp, making fun of her moves, is her shadow. Maybe I’ll stop getting up in the morning to watch her. That shadow takes the joy out of it.
BOOK THREE
THE DRIVE-IN
I never expected to write a Drive-in 2, so I darn sure didn’t plan on writing, The Drive-in: The Bus Tour, which is The Drive-in 3.
Not long after the first two came out, I was asked by a small publisher to do just that, and thought, well, okay. But there was nothing there. Just wouldn’t come, so I had to pass on the deal.
A lot of years passed. A lot. Fifteen, seventeen. I’m a little uncertain. Enough that now I was certain there would never be a Drive-in 3. Besides, the other two, considered humorous books, hadn’t been that much fun to write. Not all writing is supposed to be fun, but as I have said before, I’m not one of those writers who loves having written. I love writing. I can’t wait to get at it. When my feet hit the floor in the morning I take our dog out, have coffee, look at the email, and then, better than nine out of ten times I’m on my work like syrup on a pancake. Oh, there’s a day here and there when my mind is as limp as an octogenarian monk’s dick. But that’s rare, and is really my mind telling me to take a rest, or that the subconscious hasn’t been quite up to par, or whatever. But nearly every morning I go downstairs and go to work and turn out three to five pages a day, and some days more. Well, some mornings more. I usually work about three hours in the morning, and that’s it, five days a week. But now and again I work weekends, and every now and again, I work more than those hours in the morning. Now is an example. It’s after two thirty in the morning on the day of my birthday, October 28, and I’m writing this because I have to leave town in the next day or so and need to get it done, along with some other writing before I head off to a film festival where Bubba Ho-tep is showing, and then the Texas Book Festival.
So, here I am, telling you this: I had no plans to write a third novel about the Drive-in world, but Bill Schafer and I began to discuss it. He wanted me to do it for Subterranean. And then, one day, out of nowhere, the novel caught fire and I was back in that world. It was easier this time, and fun.
I wrote the novel very quickly.
It had been so long since I had written the last, I didn’t realize I had left out one of the main characters from the other novels. Just plain forgot him. A couple of readers called me out. I solved that problem with a small revision.
I’ll let the novel speak for itself on that matter.
Also, I realized when I finished this novel, I didn’t give a pure and perfect answer to the world of the Drive-in, and it’s left open for yet another that need not exist. I left it that way for the reader. But I won’t go into that anymore. My telling you that doesn’t spoil the book or have any effect on the reading of it, but I won’t explain beyond that. I will say this. What I’ve said about the other two.
Enjoy.
– Joe R. Lansdale, 2009
“God bless the children of this picture, this movie book. I’m going on into the Shade.”
“God ain’t nothing but the mind working over time.”
FADE-IN PROLOGUE
In which the Great Jack, during a hypoglycemic high, ponders the universe beneath God’s asshole while writing The Drive-in Bible and contemplating a journey by school bus.
