Lost Echoes by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online Page B

from him.
    “Let me tell you, you’re…you know…imaginative.”
    “You mean I make things up?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “You think I believe them, but they aren’t true?”
    The big man paused, put his hands in his lap. “Son, I don’t know. Truly I don’t. But it was said there was some in our family had the second sight. Can’t say it was true, but it was the story.”
    “This is sort of like hindsight, Daddy. It’s already done. It’s like I hear and see ghosts in sounds. It’s got something to do with fear, or violence. I’ve told you all this.”
    Dad sat and considered for a moment. “Hindsight, second sight, maybe it’s all the same.”
    “Who had second sight in our family?”
    “My mother. You never knew her. Dead before you were born, just like your grandpa. All your grandparents, dead before you were born. That’s too bad. Least as far as your grandmother—my mother—went. Your mom’s parents, good people. My dad, he was a son of a bitch…. You know the scars on my back?”
    “The barbed wire?”
    The old man nodded. “Them ain’t barbed wire. Told you I got tangled in barbed wire when I was a kid. That ain’t what happened. I didn’t want to tell you, not then, that your grandpa beat me with a belt. The buckle. It cut me, made them scars.”
    “Why are you telling me now, Daddy?”
    “I don’t know. I think you ought to know. Don’t know why, but thought you ought to.”
    “What did you do?”
    “When he hit me?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Wasn’t nothing I could do. I was a kid, and he was big and mean and always drunk…. You stay away from that liquor, hear me? You might have the tendency. I drank a little when I was young, and I had the tendency. It brought the mean out in me. Your mama, she got me away from that. Told me she’d go out with me, but not if I drank, and if I drank she was through with me. I ain’t never taken another drop…. Thing is, Harry, there’s shit in your life you don’t expect. Ain’t all of it good. But you got to get around that, got to grab the good, got to get your mind wrapped around that, and let the bad things go. Otherwise you just get caught up in hating or being mad, or being worried all the time. You got what you got, son. But you’ll deal with it.”
    “You think?”
    “Hell, boy, I know…. Here’s the keys. It’s got a full tank.”
    The old man opened his wallet, and Harry could see there was a twenty in there, three or four ones. Daddy took out the twenty, handed it to him.
    “No, Dad, that’s all right.”
    “Take it. You might want a Coke or something. Might want to buy a girl a Coke. Take the car out, you ought to try and have a little money. Take it, son.”
    Harry took the twenty. “Thanks, Dad.”
    “Hey, that’s what dads do.”
    “Sure.”
    Harry stood up.
    “You be careful out there, son.”
    “Absolutely.”
    “She idles kind of heavy at lights, stop signs, but she’s okay. I’ve tuned her up and gone over her good. She’ll run like a spotted-ass ape.”
    Harry laughed. “And how do they run?”
    Dad grinned. “I don’t really know, son. Just an old saying.”
    Harry suddenly grabbed his Dad and hugged him. “I love you,” he said.
    “Yeah, well, you too, son. Hey, you’re getting quite a grip there.”
    Later on, Harry was really glad he did that.
     
    That night, out on the town, doing his thing with Joey riding beside him, Joey drinking a bit, whiskey in Coke, offering him some, but him refusing; out there trying to pick up girls, being awkward and unsuccessful about it; out there on the highways, circling the Dairy Queen, waving at friends passing by in their cars, having the time of his life, his old man, home, sitting at dinner, suddenly stood up from the table, and his mom would tell it like this: “He was just fine: then he stood bolt upright, said, ‘I feel kind of off,’ grabbed his left arm, and then he dropped.”
    Heart attack.
    Dead and gone.
     
    Things were coming