The Best of Joe R. Lansdale

ever seen her, with or without the shower cap, except through the screenwire door. She wasn’t thought to leave the house. She played radio contests and had to be near the radio at strategic times throughout the day so she could phone if she knew the answer to something. She claimed to be listening for household tips, but no one had ever seen her apply any. She also watched her daughter’s soap operas, though she never owned up to it. She always pretended to be reading, kept a Reader’s Digest cracked so she could look over it and see the TV.

She wasn’t friendly either. Times Wilson and Jake had come over before, she’d met them at the screen door and wouldn’t let them in. She wouldn’t even talk to them. She’d call back to Buddy inside, “Hey, those hoodlum friends of yours are here.”

Neither Wilson or Jake could see any sort of relationship developing between them and Buddy’s mother and they had stopped trying. They hung around outside the house under the open windows until Buddy came out. There were always interesting things to hear while they waited. Wilson told Jake it was educational.

This time, as before, they sidled up close to the house where they could hear. The television was on. A laugh track drifted out to them. That meant Buddy’s sister LuWanda was in there watching. If it wasn’t on, it meant she was asleep. Like her mother, she was drawing a check. Back problems plagued the family. Except for Buddy’s pa. His back was good. He was in prison for sticking up a liquor store. What little check he was getting for making license plates probably didn’t amount to much.

Now they could hear Buddy’s mother. Her voice had a quality that made you think of someone trying to talk while fatally injured; like she was lying under an overturned refrigerator, or had been thrown free of a car and had hit a tree.

“LuWanda, turn that thing down. You know I got bad feet.”

“You don’t listen none with your feet, Mama,” LuWanda said. Her voice was kind of slow and lazy, faintly squeaky, as if hoisted from her throat by a hand-over pulley.

“No,” Buddy’s mother said. “But I got to get up on my old tired feet and come in here and tell you to turn it down.”

“I can hear you yelling from the bedroom good enough when your radio ain’t too high.”

“But you still don’t turn it down.”

“I turn it down anymore, I won’t be able to hear it.”

“Your tired old mother, she ought to get some respect.”

“You get about half my check,” LuWanda said, “ain’t that enough. I’m gonna get out of here when I have the baby.”

“Yeah, and I bet that’s some baby, way you lay up with anything’s got pants.”

“I hardly never leave the house to get the chance,” LuWanda said. “It was Pa done it before he tried to knock over that liquor store.”

“Watch your mouth, young lady. I know you let them in through the windows. I’ll be glad to see you go, way you lie around here an’ watch that old TV. You ought to do something educational. Read the Reader’s Digest like I do. There’s tips for living in those, and you could sure profit some.”

“Could be something to that all right,” LuWanda said. “Pa read the Reader’s Digest and he’s over in Huntsville. I bet he likes there better than here. I bet he has a better time come night.”

“Don’t you start that again, young lady.”

“Way he told me,” LuWanda said, “I was always better with him than you was.”

“I’m putting my hands right over my ears at those lies. I won’t hear them.”

“He sure had him a thrust, didn’t he Mama?”

“Ooooh, you… you little shit, if I should say such a thing. You’ll get yours in hell, sister.”

“I been getting plenty of hell here.”

Wilson leaned against the house under the window and whispered to Jake. “Where the hell’s Buddy?”

This was answered by Buddy’s mother’s shrill voice. “Buddy, you are not going out of this house wearing them nigger shoes.”

“Oh, Mama,” Buddy said, “these ain’t nigger shoes. I bought these over at K-Woolens.”

“That’s right where the niggers buy their things,” she said.

“Ah Mama,” Buddy said.

“Don’t you Mama me. You march right back in there and take off them shoes and put on something else. And get you a pair of pants that don’t fit so tight people can tell which side it’s on.”

A moment later a window down from Wilson and Jake went up slowly. A hand holding a pair of shoes stuck out. The hand dropped the shoes and disappeared.

Then the screen door slammed and Wilson and Jake edged around to the corner of the house for a peek. It was Buddy coming out, and his mother’s voice came after him, “Don’t you come back to this house with a disease, you hear?”

“Ah, Mama,” Buddy said.

Buddy was dressed in a long-sleeved paisley shirt with the sleeves rolled up so tight over his biceps they bulged as if actually full of muscle. He had on a pair of striped bell-bottoms and tennis shoes. His hair was combed high and hard and it lifted up on one side; it looked as if an oily squirrel were clinging precariously to the side of his head.

When Buddy saw Wilson and Jake peeking around the corner of the house, his chest got full and he walked off the porch with a cool step. His mother yelled from inside the house, “And don’t walk like you got a corncob up you.”

That cramped Buddy’s style a little, but he sneered and went around the corner of the house trying to look like a man who knew things.

“Guess you boys are ready to stretch a little meat,” Buddy said. He paused to locate an almost flat half-pack of Camels in his back pocket. He pulled a cigarette out and got a match from his shirt pocket and grinned and held his hand by his cheek and popped the match with his thumb. It sparked and he lit the cigarette and puffed. “Those things with filters, they’re for sissies.”

“Give us one of those,” Wilson said.

“Yeah, well, all right, but this is it,” Buddy said. “Only pack I got till I collect some money owed me.”

Wilson and Jake stuck smokes in their faces and Buddy snapped another match and lit them up. Wilson and Jake coughed some smoke clouds.

“Sshhh,” Buddy said. “The old lady’ll hear you.”

They went around to the back window where Buddy had dropped the shoes and Buddy picked them up and took off the ones he had on and slipped on the others. They were smooth and dark and made of alligator hide. Their toes were pointed. Buddy wet his thumb and removed a speck of dirt from one of them. He put his tennis shoes under the house, brought a flat little bottle of clear liquid out from there.

“Hooch,” Buddy said, and winked “Bought it off Old Man Hoyt.”

“Hoyt?” Wilson said. “He sells hooch?”

“Makes it himself,” Buddy said. “Get you a quart for five dollars. Got five dollars and he’ll sell to bottle babies.”

Buddy saw Wilson eyeing his shoes appreciatively.

“Mama don’t like me wearing these,” he said. “I have to sneak them out.”

“They’re cool,” Jake said. “I wish I had me a pair like ‘em.”

“You got to know where to shop,” Buddy said.

As they walked, the night became rich and cool and the moon went up and it was bright with a fuzzy ring around it. Crickets chirped. The streets they came to were little more than clay, but there were more houses than in Buddy’s neighborhood, and they were in better shape.

Some of the yards were mowed. The lights were on in the houses along the street, and the three of them could hear televisions talking from inside houses as they walked.

They finished off the street and turned onto another that was bordered by deep woods. They crossed a narrow wooden bridge that went over Mud Creek. They stopped and leaned on the bridge railing and watched the dark water in the moonlight. Wilson remembered when he was ten and out shooting birds with a BB gun, he had seen a dead squirrel in the water, floating out from under the bridge, face down, as if it were snorkeling. He had watched it sail on down the creek and out of sight. He had popped at it and all around it with his BB gun for as long