Bumper Crop by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online Page B

to the window. With a sudden movement, he slammed the pizza into his stomach.
    " Ahhh ," said the Fat Man, and little odd muscles like toy trucks drove up and down his back. His khaki-covered butt perked up and he began to rock on his toes. Fragments of pizza, gooey cheese, sticky sauce, and rounds of pepperoni dripped to the floor.
    The Fat Man's hand floated out, clutched another box and ripped it open. Out came a pizza, wham, into the stomach, "Ah," went the Fat Man, and down dripped more pizza ingredients, and out went the Fat Man's hand once again.
    Three pizzas in the stomach.
    Now four.
    "I don't think I understand all I know about this," Joe whispered. Five pizzas, and a big " ahhhhhh ," this time.
    The Fat Man leaped, high and pretty, hands extended for a dive, and without a sound he disappeared into the food-stained cartons.
    Joe blinked.
    Harold blinked.
    The Fat Man surfaced. His back humped up first like a rising porpoise, then disappeared. Loops of back popped through the boxes at regular intervals until he reached the far wall.
    The Fat Man stood up, bursting cartons around him like scales. He touched the wall with his palm. The wall swung open. Joe and Harold could see light in there and the top of a stairway.
    The Fat Man stepped on the stairway, went down. The door closed.
    Joe and Harold looked at each other.
    "That wall ain't even a foot thick," Harold said. "He can't do that."
    "He did," Joe said. "He went right into that wall and down, and you know it because you saw him."
    "I think I'll go home now," Harold said.
    "You kidding?"
    "No, I ain't kidding."
    The far wall opened again and out popped the Fat Man, belly greased and stained with pizza.
    Joe and Harold watched attentively as he leaped into the boxes, and swam for the clearing. Then, once there, he rose and put a thumb to the candle and put out the light.
    He kicked his way through boxes and cartons this time, and his shadowy shape disappeared from the room and into another. "I'm going to see how he went through the wall," Joe said.
    Joe put his hands on the window and pushed. It wasn't locked.
    It slid up a few inches.
    "Don't," Harold whispered, putting his hand on Joe's arm.
    "I swore on the dead cat I was going to find out about the Fat Man, and that's what I'm going to do."
    Joe shrugged Harold's arm off, pushed the window up higher and climbed through.
    Harold swore, but followed.
    They went as quietly as they could through the boxes and cartons until they reached the clearing where the pizza glop lay pooled and heaped on the floor. Then they entered the bigger stack of boxes, waded toward the wall. And though they went silently as possible, the cartons still crackled and popped, as if they were trying to call for their master, the Fat Man.
    Joe touched the wall with his palm the way the Fat Man had. The wall opened. Joe and Harold crowded against each other and looked down the stairway. It led to a well-lit room below.
    Joe went down.
    Harold started to say something, knew it was useless. Instead he followed down the stairs.
    At the bottom they stood awestruck. It was a workshop of sorts. Tubes and dials stuck out of the walls. Rods of glass were filled with pulsating colored lights. Cables hung on pegs. And there was something else hanging on pegs.
    Huge marionettes.
    And though they were featureless, hairless and sexless, they looked in form as real as living, breathing people. In fact, put clothes and a face on them and you wouldn't know the difference. Provided they could move and talk, of course.
    Harold took hold of the leg of one of the bodies. It felt like wood, but it bent easily. He tied the leg in a knot.
    Joe found a table with something heaped on it and covered with black cloth. He whipped off the cloth and said, "Good gracious." Harold looked.
    It was a row of jars, and in the jars, drooping over upright rods, were masks. Masks of people they knew.
    Why there was Alice Dunn, the Avon Lady. They'd know that wart on her nose