The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online

blowed Galveston away. I had a sister down there and she was drowned durin’ that.”
    “Really?”
    “Uh huh. They gathered up all them bodies and burned ’em, boy. I don’t know nothin’ other than she had to have drowned, and if her body got found, then she got burned up. That’s what they had to do, was so many dead’ns. Coloreds. Whites. Womens and chil’ren.”
    This was interesting, but I didn’t want her to stray too far away from her story about the Travelin’ Man and Dandy. I said, “What about Dandy?”
    “Dandy,” she said. “Well, he loved to play a fiddle, but he weren’t no good at it. He couldn’t make that fiddle talk. He wanted to be like them could, but ‘ceptin’ for a tune or two he could play to kinfolks, and them puttin’ up with it, he weren’t no good at all. So you know what he done, Little Man?”
    “No ma’am.”
    “He got him some whiskey, and he drank him a little of it, then made water in it. You know, pee-peed in it.”
    “In the whiskey?”
    “That’s what I done said. Just let it go in that bottle till it fill on back up. Put back what he drunk, guess you could say. He put the cap on it and shook it up. You know why he done that?”
    “No.”
    “ ’Cause they says that’s the way the Old Man likes it. He think a man’s water spices it up.”
    “The Old Man?”
    “Old Man got other names. Satan. Beezlebubba. The debil. Thing is, you don’t know you call him up you really talkin’ to him or one of dem soldiers he got, but that don’t matter none. Dandy, you see, was tryin’ to become a Travelin’ Man.”
    Miss Maggie paused to spit. She had a big cracked cup she kept for the purpose, and now she reached it off the little shelf by the stove behind her and spat snuff juice into it. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, said, “You gonna do this right, thing Dandy wanted to do, you got to gets down in them bottoms where it’s the thickest, and there’s a crossroads.”
    “There’s crossroads everywhere, Miss Maggie.”
    “Uh huh. But the best place to meet the debil or one of his soldiers is down in the deepest part of them bottoms, on a walkin’ trail that crosses. And you got to be there right when it’s gonna turn both hands up.”
    “Both hands up?”
    “Hands on the clock, boy. Twelve midnight. You got to have you a good pocket watch keeps the right time. ’Cause you got to be on time. You got to be standin’ right there in the center where the crossroads cross, and you got to be havin’ you that peed-in whiskey with you.”
    “That what Dandy did?”
    “They say he did. Say he went down in them bottoms with his peed-in whiskey and his fiddle and bow, stood at them crossroads, and sure ’nuff, right when he’s checkin’ the face of his turnip watch with a match, there’s a tap on his shoulder.
    “Now he jerks ’round fast, and there’s the debil. He got a big ole pumpkin head and wear him a little black suit with shiny black shoes, and got a big ole smile, and he says to Dandy, noddin’ at that whiskey bottle, ‘ ’At for me?’ And Dandy, hesays, ‘Yeah it is, if’n youse the debil.’ And this pumpkin head, he say, ‘I’m what you might call his lead man, Bubba.’ ”
    “Bubba?”
    Miss Maggie paused to spit in her cup again. “Uh huh. Bubba. I always figured Bubba was probably Beezlebubba. You gets it. BeezleBUBBA.”
    “Oh, yes ma’am … Who’s Beezlebubba?”
    “It’s just another name for the debil, Little Man. Like Scratch. It’s probably a Northern name or somethin’. But this here fella, whether he’s really the debil or the debil’s man, I can’t tell you. But whoever he was, he got the power to make the deal. So he takes that peed-in whiskey and drinks him a big jolt, and he say to Dandy, ‘What is it you want?’ and Dandy, he say, ‘I want I can play this here fiddle better’n anyone they is.’ And Bubba tell him, that’s fine, he can do that, but Dandy gonna have to write his mark