I didn’t know exactly what to make of it, but that’s all there was. Next day I got in Strangler’s car and caught up with the carnival. It had gone across the Red River and was in northern Texas, at a place called Paris.
It wasn’t much like I pictured Paris to be. I had always thought it would be like Texas’s answer to the one in France. But it was just a hot little town where people came to the carnival, and Strangler won every bout.
I don’t know if I’ll stay with the carnival or not. I sure like Strangler, and I like the job of making him run and work out and eat right. I like making sure he’s ready for his bouts, and I manage his side bets. He makes quite a few, and he always wins. But I don’t know if I’ll stay. I don’t know if it’s enough, and it darn sure can’t last forever. Strangler is no spring chicken.
“Someday,” he told me, “when I feel one of them younger ones is making it too hard for me, I’m going to retire and go into another line of work.”
“What will that be, Strangler?” I asked.
“Brain surgeon,” he said, and laughed.
So, here I am, Strangler in his bedroom asleep, and me about to lie down on my couch. But before I do that, I thought I’d sit here with the lamp on, a writing pad on the table, and a sharp pencil in my hand, so I can put all the things down on paper that happened to us.
Guess I got that idea from Jane.
I hope she’s doing well.
I hope she’s finding what she wants out there.
I know I’ll never forget her. I love her, but truth to tell, I don’t know a whole lot about love. It confuses me. So maybe Jane was right to not let that go too far. Not with us as young as we are, with so much future stretched out in front of us.
But sometimes, right before I fall asleep, I think I can taste her lips, and they are sweet.
She was an awful liar, but still, she was so smart and so beautiful. She sure was something.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than a dozen novels for adults, including eight Hap and Leonard novels, as well as
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Joe R. Lansdale
Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Emmanuelle Brisson/Getty Images
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Lansdale, Joe R.
All the earth, thrown to the sky / by Joe R. Lansdale. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When the devastation wrought by endless dust storms in 1930s Oklahoma makes orphans of Jack, his schoolmate Jane, and her brother Tony, they take the truck of a dead man and set out to find a new start.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89748-1
1. Dust Bowl Era, 1931–1939—Juvenile Fiction. [1. Dust Bowl Era, 1931–1939—Fiction. 2. Automobile travel—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 5. Depressions—1929—Fiction. 6. Oklahoma —History—20th century—Fiction. 7. Texas—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L2795All 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010029260
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