Stories (2011) (11 page)

When the crimson washes from our eyeballs and we look
around, all is as before.

At first glance anyway. Because closer observation reveals
that everything outside the drive-in, the highway, the trees, the tops of
houses and buildings that had been visible above the surrounding tin fence, are
gone. There is only blackness, and we're talking BLACKNESS here, the kind of
dark that makes fudge pudding look pale. It's as if the drive-in has been
ripped up by the roots and miraculously stashed in limbo somewhere. But if so,
we are not injured in any way, and the electricity still works. There are
lights from the concession stand, and the projector continues to throw the
image of Tool Box on the screen.

About this time a guy in a station wagon, fat wife beside
him, three kids in the back, panics, guns the car to life and darts for the
EXIT. His lights do not penetrate the blackness, and as the car hits it, inch
by inch it is consumed by the void. A moment later nothing.

A cowboy with a hatful of toothpicks and feathers gets out
of his pickup and goes over there. He stands on the tire-burst spears, extends
his arm . . . And never in the history of motion pictures or real life have I
heard such a scream.

He flops back, his arm gone from the hand to elbow. He rolls
on the ground. By the time we get over there the rest of his arm is collapsing,
as if bone and tissue have gone to mush. His hat settles down on a floppy mess
that a moment before was his head. His whole body folds in and oozes out of his
clothes in what looks like sloppy vomit. I carefully reach out and take hold of
one of his boots, upend it, a loathsome mess pours out and strikes the ground
with a plopping sound.

We are trapped in the drive-in.

Time goes by, no one knows how much. It's like the Edgar
Rice Burroughs stories about Pellucidar. Without the sun or moon to judge by,
time does not exist.

Watches don't help either. They've all stopped. We sleep
when sleepy, eat when hungry. And the movies flicker on. No one even suggests
cutting them off. Their light and those of the concession stand are the only
lights, and should we extinguish them, we might be lost forever in a void to
match the one outside of the drive-in fence.

At first people are great. The concession folks bring out
food. Those of us who have brought food, share it. Everyone is fed.

But as time passes, people are not so great. The concession
stand people lock up and post guards. My friends and I are down to our last
kernels of popcorn and we're drinking the ice and water slush left in the
coolers. The place smells of human waste, as the restrooms have ceased to
function altogether. Gangs are forming, even cults based on the movies. There
is a Zombie Cult that stumbles and staggers in religious mockery of the
"dead" on the screen. And with the lack of food an acute problem,
they have taken to human sacrifice and cannibalism.

Bob takes down the shotgun. I take down the baseball bat.
Dave has taken to wearing a hunting knife he got out of the glove box.

Rape and murder are wholesale, and even if you've a mind to,
there's not much you can do about it. You've got to protect your little stretch
of ground, your automobile, your universe. But against our will we are forced
into the role of saviours when a young girl runs against our truck while
fleeing her mother, father and older brother. Bob jerks her inside the truck,
holds the family-who are a part of the Zombie Cult and run as if they are
cursed with a case of the rickets--at bay with the shotgun. They start to
explain that as the youngest member of the family, it's only right that she
give herself up to them to provide sustenance. A chill runs up my hack. Not so
much because it is a horrible thing they suggest, but because I too am hungry,
and for a moment they seem to make good sense.

Hunger devours the family's common sense, and the father
leaps forward. The shotgun rocks against Bob's shoulder and the man goes down,
hit in the head, the way you have to kill zombies. Then the mother is on me,
teeth and nails. I swing the bat and down she goes, thrashing at my feet like a
headless chicken.

Trembling, I hold the bat before me. It is caked with blood
and brains. I fall back against the truck and throw up. On the screen the
zombies are feasting on bodies from an exploded pickup.

Rough for the home team. Time creeps by. We are weak. No
food. No water. We find ourselves looking at the rotting corpses outside our
pickup far too long. We catch the young girl eating their remains, but we do nothing.
Somehow, it doesn't seem so bad. In fact, it looks inviting. Food right outside
the truck, on the ground, ready for the taking.

But when it seems we are going to join her, there is a red
light in the sky. The comet is back, and once again it swoops down, collision
looks unavoidable, it smiles with its jagged teeth, peels up and whips its
bright tail. And when the glow burns away from our eyes, it is daylight and
there is a world outside the drive-in.

A sort of normalcy returns. Engines are tried. Batteries
have been unaffected by the wait. Automobiles start up and begin moving toward
the EXIT in single file, as if nothing has ever happened.

Outside, the highway we come to is the same, except the
yellow line has faded and the concrete has buckled in spots. But nothing else
is the same. On either side of the highway is a great, dark jungle. It looks
like something out of a lost world movie.

As we drive along--we're about the fifth automobile in
line--we see something move up ahead, to the right. A massive shape steps out
of the foliage and onto the highway. It is a Tyrannosaurus Rex covered in
bat-like parasites, their wings opening and closing slowly, like contented
butterflies sipping nectar from a flower.

The dinosaur does nothing. It gives our line of metal bugs
the once over, crosses the highway and is enveloped by the jungle again.

* * *

The caravan starts up once more. We drive onward into this
prehistoric world split by a highway out of our memories.

I'm riding shotgun and I glance in the wing-mirror on my
side. In it I can see the drive-in screen, and though the last movie should
still be running, I can't make out any movement there. It looks like nothing
more than an oversized slice of Wonder Bread.

Fade out.

That's the dream. And even now when I go to a drive-in, be
it the beat up LUMBERJACK here with its cheap, tin screen, or anywhere else, I
find myself occasionally glancing at the night sky, momentarily fearing that
out of the depths of space there will come a great, red comet that will smile
at me with a mouthful of sawblade teeth and whip its flaming tail.

* * *

Postscript:

The part of this article dealing with my continuing dream,
eventually became my novel, The Drive-In: A B Movie with Blood and Popcorn, and
later led to a sequel, The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels, and a
third is in the mill, due whenever I get around to finishing it.

As to another matter, I have to reveal how poor a prophet I
was concerning matters pertaining to the drive-in.

Almost immediately after I wrote my article, Joe Bob Briggs
(John Bloom), was fired from The Dallas Times Herald. This was due to a
scathing bit of inspired satire he wrote in his column. Satire that was taken
literally, and led to him branching out on his own to become even more popular
and successful than ever before, not only column-wise, but in books, and as a
film-host. He also got a few bit acting parts out of it. So, sometimes, there
is justice.

But for the drive-in, alas, there was no justice. Not even
in Texas.

It wasn't making a comeback after all. It was merely
screaming a death scream so loud I thought it was the voice of triumph. Video
and cable gave it the coup de grace, and I have not driven past a drive-in m
years that isn't closed or has been turned into some other enterprise, like THE
REDLAND DRIVE-IN near me. It tried to hang on by showing porno movies, then
finally, just said "the hell with it," and became a metal scrap yard.
Probably best. It lost the spirit of the drive-in long before it ceased being
one.

THE LUMBERJACK, formerly down the road from me, is also
gone, and a new jail stan4s on the spot where many a lover got their first dose
of wet romance, or perhaps their first dose of clap. Where once cars rocked,
cons now pull their meat come late at night, or spend their time trying to
figure on that big jail break.

The pole and sign that once held the humble LUMBERJACK
drive-in marquee is still there, but instead of reading Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and Night of the Living Dead, it announces that this is the local jail, and
buddy, ain't nothing show'n.

Kida sad, really.

But hey, the spirit of the drive-in is still with us. Even
if it is in video boxes, or weekends at festivals celebrating the drive-in.

Joe Bob was right. "The drive-in will never die."
Not really.

So, rent a low-budget gem. Turn out the lights. Get some
popcorn. Get your best girl or guy, and one of you sit on the left side of the
couch like you would if you were in the car, and the other, well, slide on over
there close, and when you get to the slow part, like where the scientist is
talking some bull about how the Z-ray works, maybe you could neck a little or
do something a little more ambitious. Because, hell, even if you are indoors,
if you've got the right movie on the tube, got the right state of mind about
you, you're at the goddamned drive-in.

Enjoy.

And remember, when it comes to prophecy, Nostradamus, I'm
not.

Jack had six fingers. That
’
s how Big O, the big, fat, white, straw-hatted son of a
bitch, was supposed to know he was dead. Maybe by some real weird luck a guy
could kill some other black man with six fingers, cut off his hand, and bring
it in and claim it belonged to Jack, but not likely. So he put the word out
that whoever killed Jack and cut off his paw and brought it back was gonna get
$100,000 and a lot of goodwill.

I went out there after Jack just
like a lot of other fellas, plus one woman I knew of, Lean Mama Tootin
’
, who was known for shotgun shootin
’
and ice-pick work.

But the thing I had on them was I
was screwing Jack
’
s old lady. Jack didn
’
t know it, of course. Jack was a bad dude, and it wouldn
’
t have been smart to let him know my bucket was in his well.
Nope. Wouldn
’
t have been smart for me, or for Jack
’
s old lady. If he
’
d known that
before he had to make a run for it, might have been good to not sleep,
’
cause he might show up and be most unpleasant. I can be
unpleasant too, but I prefer when I
’
m on the stalk, not
when I
’
m being stalked. It sets the dynamics all
different.

You see, I
’
m
a philosophical kind of guy.

Thing was, though, I
’
d been laying the pipeline to his lady for about six weeks,
because Jack had been on the run ever since he
’
d tried
to muscle in on Big O
’
s whores and take over that
business, found out he couldn
’
t. That wasn
’
t enough, he took up with Big O
’
s
old lady like it didn
’
t matter none, but it did. Rumor
was Big O put the old lady under about three feet of concrete out by his
lake-boat stalls, buried her in the hole while she was alive, hands tied behind
her back, staring up at that concrete mixer truck dripping out the goo, right
on top of her naked self.

Jack hears this little tidbit of
information, he quit fooling around and made with the jackrabbit, took off
lickety-split, so fast he almost left a vapor trail. It
’
s
one thing to fight one man, or two, but to fight a whole organization, not so
easy. Especially if that organization belongs to Big O.

Loodie, Jack
’
s
personal woman, was a hot flash number who liked to have her ashes hauled, and me,
I
’
m a tall, lean fellow with a good smile and a willing
attitude. Loodie was ready to lose Jack because he had a bad temper and a bit
of a smell. He was short on baths and long on cologne. Smellgood juice on top
of his stinky smell, she said, created a kind of funk that would make a skunk
roll over dead and cause a wild hyena to leave the body where it lay.

She, on the other hand, was like
sweet, wet sin dipped in coffee and sugar with a dash of cinnamon; God
’
s own mistress with a surly attitude, which goes to show
even He likes a little bit of the devil now and then.

She
’
d
been asked about Jack by them who wanted to know. Bad folks with guns, and a
need for dough. But she lied, said she didn
’
t know
where he was. Everyone believed her because she talked so bad about Jack. Said
stuff about his habits, about how he beat her, how bad he was in bed, and how
he stunk. It was convincing stuff to everyone.

But me.

I knew that woman was a liar,
because I knew her whole family, and they was the sort, like my daddy used to
say, would rather climb a tree and lie than stand on the ground and tell the
truth and be given free flowers. Lies flowed through their veins as surely as
blood.

She told me about Jack one night
while we were in bed, right after we had toted the water to the mountain. We
’
re laying there looking at the ceiling, like there
’
s gonna be manna from heaven, watching the defective light
from the church across the way flash in and out and bounce along the wall, and
she says in that burnt-toast voice of hers,
“
You split
that money, I
’
ll tell you where he is.
”