The Complete Drive-In by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online Page B

with some of them sophisticated weapons they’ve got, and they’ve done this. I don’t see how it could be anything else.”
    “I don’t think so,” said a guy in a sports coat, his hair neat and stiff as a J.C. Penney model. “I suspect the Communists. They’re a lot stronger in this country than most people imagine. And I don’t want to open any old wounds here, but maybe McCarthy wasn’t as far off as some people thought. These Communists are into everything, and they’ve said all along that they planned to take us over.”
    “Why in the hell would they want some Texas drive-in picture show?” Bob said. “They like horror movies, or what? That don’t make no damn sense. I like the one about the guys from outer space, whatever color they are, better than that, and that’s dumb.”
    “Hey,” said the man with the mustard-colored T-shirt.
    “Call ‘em like I see ‘em,” Bob said.
    “It’s the will of God,” said a girl in a long blue cotton dress. “There was so much sinning going on here, God has sent a blight.”
    The couple who had been practicing the rites of the three-toed salamander in the back of the Buick started shuffling their feet and looking over the heads of the crowd as if they were expecting someone.
    “It wasn’t God,” said somebody at the rear of the crowd, “it was Satan done it. God doesn’t punish. Man and Satan punish.”
    “We’re uptight for nothing,” said another voice. “Tomorrow the sun will come up and shine through this mess. It’s just a freak of nature, that’s all.”
    “No,” said a punker girl with orange spiked hair. “It’s dimensional invaders.”
    No one bought that one.
    A pretty girl in a pink bathing suit suggested, “Maybe we’re all dead, and, like, hanging in limbo or something.”
    Some consideration on that. A couple of maybes from the crowd; I think it might have edged out the Commie threat a bit in popularity.
    “Ain’t none of them things,” said a fat lady with a nose like a red pickle. She was wearing a pink and green housecoat that could have served as a visual emetic and yellow bunny slippers. She had her arm around her skinny husband’s waist and two small ankle biters (a girl and a boy) were at her feet. “It’s the ghost of Elvis Presley. I read about something like this in The Weekly World News, and Elvis was involved in that. His ghost came down and did some things to some sinners. He said to them that he wasn’t happy with the way people were living on Earth.”
    “Hell,” Bob said. “He’s got to be a self-righteous sonofabitch now that he’s dead. He wasn’t nothing but a fat doper.”
    “He was the King,” the woman said, as if she were talking about Jesus.
    “King of what?” Bob said. “Constipation? I heard he died on the floor of his toilet with a turd hanging out of his ass. Report said he died ‘straining at stool.’ He wasn’t any more than the rest of us, except he could sing. And even then, he wasn’t any Hank Williams.”
    “Hank Williams,” said the fat lady, taking her arm from around her husband’s waist and looking as if she were about to leap. “Now there was a drunk and a doper. And he wasn’t near as good-looking as Elvis.”
    “That may be,” Bob said, “but you don’t hear of his ghost coming down to bother nobody. He knew to mind his own business.”
    This went on for a time, not really solving anything, but it was entertaining. I got to thinking about how much time had elapsed, and looked at my watch. It had stopped.
    Bob and the lady with the red pickle nose had finally quit going at it, and a black guy wearing a straw hat and a worn-out gray sweatshirt with “Dallas Cowboys” on it spoke up then. “We could be here a time. What about food? We’re gonna need that.”
    I thought about the cookies and junk back at the truck and wished we’d brought something more substantial, but then maybe that was carrying worry too far, projecting this strange situation too