The Thicket

by Joe R. Lansdale

I didn’t suspect the day Grandfather came out and got me and my sister, Lula, and hauled us off toward the ferry that I’d soon end up with worse things happening than had already come upon us or that I’d take up with a gun-shooting dwarf, the son of a slave, and a big angry hog, let alone find true love and kill someone, but that’s exactly how it was.

“Beware a woman that wants reasons for everything,”

We were the kind that found it hard to cry, but once we got started you best be ready for high water and the loading of animals two by two.

Daddy always said Grandpa was so tight that when he blinked the skin on his pecker rolled back.

He prayed loudly to Jesus to save him. Jesus didn’t show, and considering what that fellow had been a part of I couldn’t blame him.

“It is better when people are straightforward about what they think of me. It is the lying and the dodging and the shifty-eyed looks that annoy me. I came to a comfortable conclusion with myself some time ago. Well, should say I have come to a more comfortable conclusion. I will not say it is complete and something I can nestle down into like a feather pillow, but I have made my bed a lot better to lie in than it once was by learning to accept what I cannot change. Mostly I think my size is other people’s problem, not mine, though an easier way for me to get on a horse could be devised. So you have your doubts about me. Any other questions?”

Here I am, high in my forty years, and I have yet to find a woman with long legs who is ready to let a dwarf nestle between them on a regular basis unless she is paid for the service. So true love? I do not think so.

those who refuse to consider what they do are cloaked in the shadow of stupidity, but they enjoy the shade. It is cool and comfortable there.

“You can go fuck your little short self with your little short dick in your fairy tail,” Eustace said, then got on his horse. “This way.” Shorty looked at me with a grin, said, “I may be short, but the appendage to which he refers is not. Sometimes in the night, I mistake it for a full-grown water moccasin and try to choke it to death.”

There was really nothing to say. It was like she was a bottle of something with fizz that had been shook up and uncorked, and she wasn’t going to stop talking until her bottle run out.

It’s like there never was a fella more inclined to catch a bullet or a severe beating than Harlis. You took that son of a bitch’s brain and put it in an empty ink bottle and shook it, it would sound like a round of shot in a boxcar.

“Everything is humorous,” said Shorty, “except your own death. But other people will laugh.”

When we pulled on the leather sling and the door swung back, a stink come with it full of bean farts and sweat and something sweet as honey, and that honey smell just made it all the worse.

“You didn’t need to kill the man I shot,” I said. “I thought I did,” Shorty said. “You didn’t need to,” I said. “Need and want sometimes do not mix well,” said Shorty.

“You think burying those unfortunate people is going to make up for killing a murderer?” Shorty said. “Could that be your thinking?” “It might be,” I said. “The problem, kid,” Shorty said, “is there is no one on either side of the fence keeping measurements about what you do. God is an idea, and the devil is us.”

“Are we good folks?” I asked. “Well, now,” Winton said. “If you could lay out who we are on a board side by side with them that was killed, and we took a measurement of the good and the bad in each, and long was bad and short was good, our size might be longer than we’d like but a lot shorter than theirs. Life isn’t just black or white, here or there; it’s got some mud in it, and we’re some of the mud.”

“I’m just saying I can’t imagine a man, even Jesus, not liking to take his pleasure from time to time. I also like to have my faith when I want it. That way it works. If I think about it too hard I know it’s a lie, but if I just squint at it I’m okay.”

Had she been willing and not Winton’s wife, then I could have got past that face, which was like a hatchet to the soul. But that is what eyelids are for, to shield you from sights hard to bear.

To some extent I find sin like coffee. When I was young and had my first taste of it I found it bitter and nasty, but later on I learned to like it by putting a little milk in it, and then I learned to like it black. Sin is like that. You sweeten it a little with lies, and then you get so you can take it straight.