Praise for Joe R. Lansdale
“Hilarious.… Lansdale is a terrifically gifted storyteller with a sharp country boy wit.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“Lansdale’s prose, both laconic and sarcastic, is so thick with slang and regional accent that it’s as tasty as a well-cured piece of beef jerky. Readers will want to savor each bite.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Lansdale has an unsettling sensibility. Be thankful he crafts such wild tall tales.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“A storyteller in the great American tradition of Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain.”
—The Boston Globe
“Funny, compulsive … enjoyably raffish.”
—Esquire
Books by Joe R. Lansdale
The Bottoms
Leather Maiden
Lost Echoes
Sunset and Sawdust
A Fine Dark Line
Freezer Burn
In the Hap and Leonard Series
Savage Season
Mucho Mojo
The Two-Bear Mambo
Bad Chili
Rumble Tumble
Captains Outrageous
Vanilla Ride
JOE R. LANSDALE
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Sunset and Sawdust, Lost Echoes, Leather Maiden, and Vanilla Ride. The Bottoms and Mucho Mojo were New York Times notable books. He has received the British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Edgar Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, and seven Bram Stoker Awards. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.
www.joerlansdale.com
FIRST VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD EDITION, NOVEMBER 2009
Copyright © 1998 by Joe R. Lansdale
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by the Mysterious Press, a division of Warner Books, Inc., New York, in 1998.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lansdale, Joe R., 1951–
Rumble tumble / by Joe R. Lansdale.
—1st Vintage Crime/Black Lizard ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-77268-8
1. Collins, Hap (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Pine, Leonard (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 4. Southwestern states—Fiction. 5. Automobile travel—Fiction. 6. Middle-aged men—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.A557R8 2009
813′.54—dc22
2009027229
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
For Jimmy Vines, with mucho respect.
Many of the towns and cities mentioned are real, but Hootie Hoot, Oklahoma, though inspired by a number of oddly named Texas and Oklahoma towns, does not exist. At least I don’t think it exists. If it does, my apologies. The same goes for Echo, Texas. I’ve also made some minor changes in Texas and Mexican geography to suit my storytelling purposes.
J.R.L.
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot
That it do singe yourself.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII
“Remember what Nietzsche said—‘Live dangerously.’ ”
“You know what happened to Nietzsche.”
“What?”
“He’s dead.”
—Joan Crawford responds
to Jack Palance in Sudden Fear
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Books By Joe R. Lansdale
1
An easy and convincing case could be made that my life has been short on successes, both financial and romantic, but no one could say with any conviction it has been uneventful.
In fact, of late, it had been so full of events, I concluded I had outlived my allotment of outlandish moments, and now the law of averages was on my side for pursuing a relatively tame existence. At least until old age set in and I took up residence in a cardboard box beneath the overpass on Highway 59, taking a dump behind a bush and licking secret sauce off old Big Mac wrappers for sustenance.
That was how I figured most of us baby boomers would finish the race. No Medicaid. No Medicare. No insurance. No couple of million stashed back for our dotage. Maybe not even the cardboard box. Hell, for that matter, we couldn’t even be assured of a bush to shit behind.
My dotage was a ways off yet, but a lot nearer than I liked to think. Though I had days when I wished I wouldn’t make that geriatric goal—end up in a cardboard box, stiff and rotting beneath an overpass with one of those Big Mac wrappers clutched in my fist—nor did I wish to gain the better scenario of passing on to the great beyond via a crisp white bed in a nursing home with a plate of mashed green peas on my dinner tray and a tube in my dick.
My best friend, Leonard Pine, always says the best way to go is lying in bed listening to a Patsy Cline song, or watching the last fifteen minutes of Championship Wrestling, which was funny enough to kill you.
None for me, though. Times like that, when I was blue and thinking of my exit, I wished to go out between the legs of some wild redhead while striving for a double on a cool winter night, her hot breath in my ear, her fingernails buried in my ass like tacks in a bulletin board.
It could happen.
Currently, I knew the wild redhead. She was my age, forties, her life full of her own unique events. Including setting fire to the head of an ex-husband and beaning his brainpan with the business end of a shovel. But even though she might worry me some when near matches or farm implements, going out between her legs was, as I said, not such a bad way to pass, so I tried to stay within her proximity as much as possible these days, lest I feel a bit of a murmur, a flashing of life’s events before my eyes. I could only hope if such a dire situation arose, she would be in the mood and I could fight off the inevitable for whatever time was necessary for me to selfishly satisfy myself.