THE JUNKYARD:
An Introduction
"The Junkyard" was written a little later than most of the stories in [The Good, The Bad, and the Indifferent], but I’m puffing first because I think it’s a pretty good yarn and a pretty good introduction.
Its source is the pulps. Lovecraft for one. Bloch for another. Films like The Blob. But by the time I came to this one (and it was published quite some time after it was written) I was also influenced by early Stephen King, and. . . Myself.
Stephen King is not only the most important writer to write horror since Lovecraft, (I’d even go as far as to say, since Poe) he’s maybe, in some ways, the most important writer of the twentieth century.
What you think about Mr. King’s work actually has little to do with this, it’s undeniable. For me, he was the first writer I ever read who truly spoke with a voice from my generation. There certainly had been books written that were influenced by my generation, but King was from it and his voice was of it, and it spoke volumes to me.
It also taught me something. He worked well because he was natural, did not try to achieve a spooky slyle; he had a spooky story, so the style took care of itself. King helped me do what I was trying to do all along. Write like myself.
His voice, very colloquial, was akin to mine, only mine was Southern, his was Northern. After reading him, I relaxed some. It let me flow through the story and onto the paper. I used some of my own experiences for the story backgrounds. And by this I mean the surroundings, some of the people I had known and grown up with. Some of the events I had experienced or observed.
As for why King is so important, well, he made horror a genre. An actual publishing label. This had a negative side, of course. The genre burst and exploded in all directions. That was bad for horror in its purer form, but this explosion was akin to a tornado blowing pollen all over creation. It allowed the field to cross pollinate, with the crime/suspense field being the most obvious to profit from this whirlwind of horror.
King also changed the field in other ways. And though it wasn’t his
fault, not for the better. King wasn’t the writer who introduced the idea of Bestsellers Only, but his success was the final straw that brought us to where we now stand.
The destruction of the mid-list.
King made agents and editors and publishing companies happen, large and small, directly and indirectly. Everyone wanted their own King, and when he couldn’t be duplicated, they all wanted their own bestsellers. Not bestseller. But bestsellers. It got so a book that made its money back and then some wasn’t enough. Every book had to go through the roof. No more bottom-line material. If you compare it to baseball, it was as if every swing of the bat had to knock it out of the ball park. That’s no way to play baseball. You have to have more than hitting to have a good game.
And that’s no way to run a publishing company either. And it’s one of the reasons so many are failing. They can’t hit all home runs, and if that’s all you have in the way of a game plan, well, you’re gonna have a real bad year.
Now, with so many publishers tottering along, the few successful ones are buying them up. There are fewer and fewer teams for writers to play on, and hardly any real farm leagues. The future of New York publishing, as it stands, doesn’t look good.
But think about it.
One man. One writer. Stephen King. What a change he made, both good and bad, and he need only take and deserve credit for the good. It’s not his fault publishers can be so greedy they go blind with stupidity.
But back to "The Junkyard."
As I wrote "The Junkyard" I tried to capture a feel of where I grew up, of the voices and people I grew up with. At times I am successful. There are moments when the story seems to be going off in a new and interesting direction, but I didn’t have the skill to make it happen. I kept pulling it back in line with pulp ideas. I didn’t really know how to make a story work that didn’t lead up to an obvious ending, a twist.
So, I produced this.
Where I grew up there were lots of junkyards along the highway. This was before Ladybird Johnson insisted (and probably with good reason) that all junkyards be contained behind fences, and that wildflowers be planted over the entire state of Texas, well, at least along the highways.
My dad was a mechanic, and as a child I often rode with him out to junkyards to buy parts. Back then, something broke on a car you had to fix it, or replace it, usually with a used part. There’s less and less of that these days. It’s actually cheaper to just throw a broken part away and put in a new one than to fix it, and besides, most parts now, like ballpoint pens, can’t be fixed.
In these junkyards car parts weren’t the only things you saw. There were overturned washers, smoking tires and burning mattresses. This was because when someone bought some junk he wanted from someone who was tossing it out, he often had to buy the whole pile. Meaning then he had to get rid of the stuff he didn’t want. Like tires and mattresses.
Sometimes in these junkyards people lived with this mess around them, and to be honest, growing up, a lot of people I knew who didn’t run junkyards looked like they lived in one. I seemed to circulate amongst folks with at least one overturned and grass-surrounded washing machine in the yard. Or a car wheel buried in the weeds so that you could bang your ankles on it.
I remember one junkyard trip in particular, though I’m sure since I was a very young child I’ve made more of it than there was. Way I remember there was this big place full of all manner of junk and a skulking dog that seemed to just want you to turn your back for a moment. I was with my dad, however, so I wasn’t overly afraid.
And before I go farther, let me say something about my dad. I know this doesn’t fit in exactly, but since this is my book, I don’t give a shit. I’m going to talk about my dad, Bud Lansdale. He was, and is, my hero. He wasn’t a perfect man. He was flawed like all of us, but he was bigger than life and had about him a sort of Old Testament sense of justice, though not being able to read he had never read the Bible, and to the best of my knowledge had about as much interest in it as a pig does machinery.
My dad was born in 1909 and grew up during the Depression. He made money from hard work and sometimes from traveling town to town to battle in what would now be called Tough Man Contests, or the original Ultimate Fighting Contests. These events primarily took place at fairs back then.
He had a knowledge of boxing and wrestling and had the opportunity to do both professionally, but had to help take care of his father’s family. My dad’s mother died when he was eight. I don’t know which number wife this was for my grandfather Lansdale, but by all accounts he was an asshole who married several times, once to a step daughter. He beat my father with a whip when he was a child of eight or nine and made him pick cotton. The scars were visible on my dad’s back, like razor cuts. I think it’s interesting that my father never so much as spanked me. He was known to raise his voice, but he never spanked me. I can’t say the same about myself and my children. I have spanked. Not beaten, but spanked. I don’t regret doing it. I think it was the only way to accomplish immediate punishment, and warnings to not do things that could do greater damage to them than a spanking. But my dad never spanked me, and my brother who was seventeen years older was only spanked once for chasing a fire engine.
My mother didn’t believe in spanking, though she once lost her cool when I was about eleven and whipped my ass severely with a fly swatter. This was a whipping I not only remember, but deserved. My mother and I laughed about this until the day she died. Which goes to prove spanking isn’t necessarily the thing that turns a child to drugs, animal mutilation and voting Republican.
My father believed in spanking, he just never did it. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. One look from him was enough. I hated to disappoint my father because I admired him so much. He was honest to a fault, a guy with a Puritan work ethic. Kind as he was to us, he could be violent. Never improperly, I thought. But he didn’t beat around the bush when violence raised its head.
Perhaps my first real memory of my father was him giving me a dog I named Blackie and my dad called Honkeytonk because the dog had belonged to the owner of a honkeytonk just down the hill from where we lived, out by the highway. Across the highway was a drive-in theater. When I was a child my mother and I used to sit at night at the tall windows of our old rickety house, high up on that hill overlooking the honkeytonk, the highway and the drive-in theater beyond, and we’d watch whatever was on at the theater. I only remember the cartoons. I suppose because that’s what a four year old would have been interested in at the time.
We couldn’t hear the drive-in, but my mother would make up stories to go with the cartoons. It was pretty neat. Every night we could sit at these big tall windows and watch the cartoons and mom would tell me a story. Those are really good memories.
Maybe because my parents thought I was bored, and because I didn’t have anyone to play with, my dad got me a dog. A cute black puppy that was part cocker spaniel. I adored that dog and he and I became the best of friends. More like brothers, really.
One day, out playing, my dog crossed the creek behind our house and went into a yard where he shouldn’t have been. I called him, and a man came out of the house and saw Blackie (alias Honkeytonk) digging in his flower beds. Blackie and the man were a good distance from me, but I remember that man looking at me and seeing I was calling my dog, and the next thing I knew he had a stick or pipe, I really don’t remember, and he beat my dog over the head with it and picked up its still body and tossed it into the creek.
My world collapsed. My best friend had just been murdered. I went screaming to my mother. I don’t remember exactly what happened, I
don’t know if dad came home then, or if my mother went to a neighbor’s house to call him at work, because to the best of my memory we didn’t have a phone.
All I know is my dad seemed to appear. He got the dog out of the creek. The dog was alive. (Died at the ripe old age of 13, I might add, and his death was traumatic to me even then.) My dad took the dog in the house, crumbled up aspirin in water and encouraged it to drink, then, without a word he started across the creek.
I followed him, but he sent me back to our property, and from there I watched as he knocked on the back door of the man who had beaned a child’s puppy because it was rooting in his flower bed.
When the man answered the door my father hit him a sharp blow, grabbed him, dragged him out of his house and somehow ended up getting hold of this guy’s legs. (Remember, my dad had been a wrestler.) He dragged that fellow face first through his own flower beds, then pulled him out to the creek and threw him in.
Dad came home then.
The man never bothered me or my dog again.
Nobody sued. Nobody complained. It was over. That all happened about 1955.
This memory, the one about the drive-in, and one about a tornado that I won’t discuss here, all go along with the memory about the junkyard because they all happened in such a close proximity of time, and I was at that age when everything was crystal clear, magical, and not completely understood. I didn’t even realize until I was a grown man that what my dad had done was ironic. He had treated the man as the man had treated my dog. One day, in my mid-twenties, I thought about this incident for about the millionth time, and suddenly it dawned on me what he had done, and I laughed out loud.
Another short true story before I get back to "The Junkyard." Once, when I was in my teens, my father, who was a mechanic and owned his own garage, finished working on a car, and the lady who had left it with him wouldn’t pay. My dad had seen this trick before. From her. He refused to let her have it without payment. The lady sent over her boyfriend.
Now, at the time I was in my late teens and had been in martial arts since I was in my mid-teens, so I was slightly knowledgeable of self-defense. My dad, who looked a bit like Ernest Borgnine crossed over with the older John Wayne with a bit of pit bull and axle grease tossed in, was right at sixty. The young man who had assumed the role of Sir Galahad was probably in his late twenties, possibly mid-thirties. A stout-looking guy looking for trouble.
He pulled up outside our shop, which was in what was then called a bad part of town, and he got out on the edge of the street and called for my dad. He called to him like he was calling up an obstreperous dog.
Dad was in the garage, and it was warm day, and the doors were wide open, so it was easy for my dad to stroll out to meet the fella, who then went about telling my dad how he was going to release his girlfriend’s car and he had no right to hold it, and so on and so on, and how if he didn’t do it he was going to beat my dad like a red-headed stepchild, etc.
My dad listened to him, said, "You got money for the work?"
The guy looked at my dad as if he had suddenly sky dived onto the scene, said something smart. I don’t remember what, but smart ass.
This guy was leaning on the fender of his car, and when he said his smart remark he pushed off the fender like he was about to come at my old man with his fist, and I thought, I’m going to take care of this shit head, but before I could pounce, my dad turned his shoulder and his fist came up from somewhere below his belt, maybe from as far down as hell, and he connected with said shit head’s chin, and I swear to all that is truthful, I had never seen anyone hit that hard before in my life. My dad’s fist making contact with this guy’s chin sounded like someone had filled a balloon about the size of a beach ball with water and dropped it off a four story building. I mean a noise like that could make pond water jump.
My dad’s blow hit this guy under the chin and lifted him off the ground and onto the hood of the car. Mr. Tough Guy slammed on the hood and rolled off on the ground and stopped rolling face up, one leg jerking like he was trying to start a motor bike, his eyes open, sightless and twitching as if they were those little designs in a slot machine. Panicked, I said, "Oh, my God, Daddy you’ve killed him." And, since the guy had stopped kicking, or moving in anyway, it certainly seemed that way.
My dad looked over at the guy, watched him for a moment, as if mildly curious, reached in his shirt pocket, took out a stub of a cigar (he saved half-smoked, half-chewed stubs all over the place, pockets, ashtrays, car motors he was working on, you name it), poked it in his mouth. He took out a box of kitchen matches, removed a match, and in no particular hurry, struck the match on the side of the box and lit his cigar, said, "Naw, he’ll come around."
Dad went in the garage and went to work, and as was his custom, it wasn’t long before he was whistling at his job.
Dad was right, by the way. The fellow did come around.
About fifteen minutes later he rolled over and got to his knees, then his feet, and wobbled off down the street, leaving his car, as well as that of his girlfriend. I don’t think the guy remembered how to drive after that blow. He barely remembered how to walk.
Never saw him again.
I asked daddy about a follow up later. He said the lady paid off her car and sent some other man, who was very polite, over to get it.
I don’t want to give violence too much of a due, but you know what, I think my dad was right. I never saw him start a fight or pick on anyone in any way, but if you tried to hurt him, threaten him, bother his family, he went immediately to the source. This was not an unusual way then. It made for greater politeness amongst your fella men. No lawsuits, because nobody would have thought of suing over such a thing in Texas back then, and they damn sure wouldn’t have expected to win. It was part of the old adage that a man totes his own water.
Okay. One more. One time at a filling station we stopped for gas, and a guy who owed my Daddy money came out of the filling station. He came out right after a fella whose name I won’t mention, but he had EAT PUSSY tattooed on his chest (I’ve used this in books of mine), and he was bare chested, of course, and he had a reputation for being so bad the sun didn’t shine where he walked, and this guy with him, who’s dressed up, was supposed to be badder than him.
So this second guy, he’s the guy owes my dad money and has lied about when he’s going to pay for some time. My dad looks at him, and this guy who was about six two and two hundred and twenty pounds of solid meat, wearing white pants and white shoes and a white belt and this paisley shirt (this was the rage then) looks at my dad, and I’ll tell you, his fucking shoes weren’t any paler than his face.
My dad said something like, "Where you been?"
"I been meaning to get by, Bud."
"Yeah," said my dad, who had a plug of Beech Nut chewing tobacco in his jaw about the size of a bale of hay. "Need to see you."
"I’m going to come by."
"You been owing me for months, and you’re always going to come by."
"I’m coming by."
My dad spat a stream of tobacco on the guy’s white shoes, and this guy didn’t move, and the guy with him, he’s looking off like he’s found an interesting shape in the clouds.
"I think you ought to come by today," dad said. "Now would be good."
"I can’t today."
Another stream of tobacco, down the pants legs this time.
"Come by."
"I got to go to the house and get money."
"Good. You come by. Don’t keep me waiting." Another stream of tobacco down the pants legs.
"I’ll be there."
And he was, too.
Sorry, I’ve gotten away from "The Junkyard," but this gives you some idea of the times and where I grew up. That town, for its betterment, I think, is no longer a tough ex-oil town. It’s now an ex-oil town that specializes in antiques and crafts.
I could tell you other stories about my dad. Ones about his kindness, his generosity, and one about the time he set the Lindale jail on fire, but those are for another time. The kind of stories I’ve chosen here somehow fit in with the atmosphere of the junkyards I remember from my childhood, the one I used as inspiration for this story.
Alright, let’s actually talk about "The Junkyard." I look back on this story with a feeling of warmth. It may not be the first story where I began to find my voice, but I think it was a story that told me clearly that I had turned a corner. And it was the story that made me realize that the basic horror plot, though well loved by me, was apparently not for me as a writer. It was a similar revelation to when I discovered that though I loved science fiction I wasn’t a writer of it. Not true science fiction, anyway.
What was really different here is not that I’m finding my voice, but that I am controlling it better. I’m fighting it less. Letting it flow, though, not entirely unobstructed.
I hope the results are entertaining pulp.

The Junkyard
For the East Texas Writer's Club
 
Drive through East Texas and you’ll see on the outskirts of most towns a junkyard. No town is complete without one. Parts for something or another are always needed, and a good junkyard can provide most anything. They’re like big organ banks for machinery.
Biggest organ bank around is probably Buster Elliot’s lot three miles due west of Mud Creek. It covers several acres and has everything from Cadillac to bicycle parts. There’s an eight-foot, chain-link fence around the place and there are signs every three feet that say ELECTRIFIED! DO NOT TOUCH. And buddy, you better believe them.
Even then, if you were able to make it over the fence and inside, you best be wearing a steel jockstrap and a pan in the seat of your pants, not to mention chainmail leggings and a thick, spiked collar. There’s a dog in there named Mauler, and he didn’t get his name in way of a joke. Big and black, Mauler looks like a cross between a Great Dane, a bulldog and The Tasmanian Devil you see in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Two more heads and you could easily imagine him as Cerebrus, the watch dog to hell. By day Buster keeps him chained, but come night he lets him loose in the yard. Between dog and fence, Buster’s place is immune to any ambitious shade-tree mechanic that might consider turning the yard into a midnight auto supply.
So nothing much ever happens out at the junkyard. Just the usual business and our Friday-night card games in Buster’s trailer.
We came around seven in Jesse’s baby-shit yellow Mustang. There was a full moon going up and it was a pretty night for late October. Sometimes, here in East Texas, it stays warm well into December, and occasionally there’s no real winter at all.
Stopping at the junkyard gate, Jesse honked his horn. After closing time, Buster has a switch inside a shed that he works the gate with. Saves his lazy ass a walk.
Once he hits the switch, the gate opens and an electric eye allows the car through, then it shuts and latches itself. The way things are set up, you’d think Buster was expecting a parts raid on his place at any moment.
Buster came out of his trailer, dipped into the shed and opened the gate. We drove inside and it closed behind us.
Jesse pulled up near the fence and we got out. Jesse and his date, Brenda, went around to the front of the Mustang and leaned against it. Jesse put his arm around Brenda’s shoulders. My cousin Billy Lee and I came around and stood with our hands in our pockets and looked at Buster’s latest addition to the car pile.
It was a hot pink ‘57 Cadillac that had been wadded up in some highway mishap. It was pushed up next to an old Chevy and a new, but thoroughly mashed, foreign car. The top of the Caddy looked as if an outraged giant Indian had taken its metal scalp with a can opener. The roof was peeled back all the way to the trunk.
I walked over and looked inside the Caddy. The steering wheel and column were bent flat against the dash and there was some sort of stain all over the place. I fantasized that it was blood, though for all I knew it could have been a juicy chaw of tobacco that had been knocked from the victim’s mouth, though I doubted it. No chaw was that juicy.
There was a hole in the windshield, just over the steering column, and though it wasn’t big enough for a body to go through, a head would have fit there nicely. In a flash, I thought I could envision the whole grizzly story and the thought of it gave me a chill.
"Wonder what the score is on this one?" Jesse said. He took his arm from Brenda’s shoulders, walked toward the Caddy, bent over and looked under it. "Man, would you look at that axle? A fucking pretzel."
Instead I looked down the long, dark rows of cars. It was like a graveyard full of metal tombstones. I wondered how many of the riders in these cars had been killed. Not a pleasant thought, but one I couldn’t get away from.
After we finished eyeballing the Caddy, we walked toward the trailer Buster called home. It was a good distance from the Mustang, but Buster’s drive was just too full of broken glass and crap to chance parking closer. Buster himself drove a motorcycle, but like most Fridays, he had it torn down and on blocks. He was forever working on it, tuning it and such. Why, I don’t know. It ran like a top.
Buster’s trailer was an old silver job with sinking blocks under it. One end had sunk low enough to give it a slight tilt. Up against the leaning end was a stack of junk: Buster’s broken down bike, pieces of plywood, an air-conditioner shell and some cane fishing poles that were long enough and thick enough to haul in a Great White Shark.
At the other end of the trailer was a long, dilapidated, tin, tool shed. Mauler was chained to that. The shed didn’t have a door, and every night, Mauler crawled inside to sleep. That was door enough. Anyone who tried to go over Mauler they’d have to take out in a sack.
Mauler looked at us when we came up. He stood with his head high and his legs bent, like maybe he’d come after us any moment, dragging the shed behind him.
Buster stood out front of the trailer, scratching his crotch, wearing the same greasy work shirt and pants he’d worn all day. But for our arrival he’d spruced up a bit. He’d put on a clean, yellow cap that read JOHN DEERE across the front.
I glanced at Jesse. He didn’t look much better than Buster, in spite of being clean. He was the kind of guy that could sweat in a blizzard. Already the pits of his blue and yellow cowboy shirt were swollen with perspiration and his long, thin, acne-cratered face had an oily sheen that made the thought of being near him uncomfortable. It was like the worst parts of his personality came out of him in beads of grease. I knew that when he took that Stetson off, his thin hair would look steamed to his narrow head. And worse yet, he was already near drunk.
I couldn’t imagine what a fine looking gal like Brenda saw in that slimy sucker. For that matter, what did I see in that slimy sucker that kept me hanging around with him week after week?
Brenda had started coming out with us the last couple of weekends, and maybe it was just something to do. Could have been no one else in town had enough sense to ask her out, or maybe enough audacity. In Jesse’s case, it damn sure wasn’t the first.
Or maybe I was just jealous and selling Jesse short. Maybe Brenda had tapped his core and found him to be a kind, sensitive human being that was hung like an Angus bull.
But God, Brenda and Jesse? She was such a looker. Long blonde hair and a willowy figure forever dressed in tight jeans and high boots and bright cowboy shirts that were tailored to show you that lean didn’t mean less.
Billy Lee, my cousin, was a different case. He was neat and clean and always sober; wore Coke-bottle glasses and polished wing-tip shoes, was majoring in archeology over at the college&#151;"dead shit" Jesse called it&#151;and he and I could really get along; could talk about something besides beer, women and the price of gasoline.
As for Buster and Jesse, they were my friends, I suppose, but damned if I knew why. Sometimes I felt like I’d outgrown them, but like a snake half-out of an old, dead skin, hadn’t gotten around to completely shedding them yet.
Then again, wasn’t much else for me in Mud Creek. I’d missed out on college, and there wouldn’t have been money for me to have gone had I wanted to. I used to have this dream of being a big sports figure: track, pole vault, javelin, all the things I was good at in high school, but that had ended with the realization that I had to eat. Now I was ten years older and ten pounds heavier with ten thousand dreams lost in the fog.
So I’d fallen into a rut. Every Friday night I filled my pockets with pennies, bought some beer and went out to Buster’s to play cards. And I’d started dragging Billy Lee along. Already Buster and Jesse had dubbed him "Four Eyes," "Smart Guy" and "Peanut Pecker." They talked about how he was wasting his time studying "dead shit," and that he ought to get him a job he could sink his teeth into and count on, like Jesse who worked at the Fina on Main, or like Buster whose father had died and left him a junkyard. This kind of talk hurt Billy Lee, but he never said anything. Just met me at the Fina every Friday night and rode out to Buster’s with Jesse and I.
Guess Billy was just lonely and wanted company, any company. He was too shy for the girls and too uncool to hang out with the kids his age. So I let him tag along with me. Maybe that was because I thought he looked up to me and I needed that. Needed it bad.
Mauler lurched on his chain as we neared the trailer, and true to form, we all jumped. He didn’t like us this weekend any better than the others. In fact, Mauler didn’t like anybody. Not even Buster, but Buster had put the fear of The Devil into him when he was a pup, and he was the one that fed him.
"Go on inside," Buster said, "I’m gonna let Mauler loose."
He didn’t have to tell us twice. We went in and shut the door.
It looked like Buster had cleaned up some for our visit. Last weekend’s beer cans, and the week’s before that, had been kicked up in a nice, neat pile next to the couch, which by itself looked like a valid reason for disaster relief.
Once I’d been sitting on that couch drinking a beer when at the far end a rat big enough to straddle a turkey flatfooted, poked its head out of a cottony hole, looked about and disappeared. So, since no matter where you sat on that thing you had a hole beneath your ass, I spent all my sitting time at Buster’s on the metal chairs.
I put my six pack of Lone Star in the fridge next to Buster’s usual rations&#151;more beer and a couple of TV dinners that should have been in the freezer&#151;went over to the card table and sat down.
Jesse, one arm around Brenda, the other clutching a six pack, waltzed over to the fridge and put his beer inside, capturing one for Brenda and himself in one big, lean hand before closing the door.
Billy sidled past them and put his beer in the fridge and Jesse made some crack about how maybe he should have brought soda pop. Billy came over and sat down next to me at the table. He was red-faced, and his eyes behind his thick glasses looked like two large, blue stones sinking down to the bottom of a pool.
I looked at Jesse and saw that he saw it too, and I could see the predatory light go on behind his face. Now that he had the prey crippled, he was going to toy with him some.
To cut it off at the pass I made some remark about how well Jesse’s Mustang was running, and Jesse didn’t waste a second agreeing with me. "But it’s still got some clutch problems that I need to work on."
About then Buster came in and closed the door. "Nobody go outside, Mauler’s loose."
"Couldn’t get my ass out there at gunpoint," Jesse said, taking a seat. "Saw Mauler get hold of an armadillo once. Crunched right through that little bastard’s shell, bit that sucker in half. You remember that, Buster?"
"Yep." Buster pulled a chair up at the card table. I picked up the cards and started fumbling with them. They were sticky with beer.
"Let’s deal ‘em," Buster said.
"Hey, hon," Jesse called to Brenda. "You in?"
"No, play on. Say, Buster, can I put on some music?"
"Help yourself."
Soon after the sounds of Hank Williams Jr. filled the room and we began to tap our feet to "Family Tradition." By the time Hank was singing "Women I’ve Never Had" I’d lost fifty cents and drank two beers.
"What’s the story on that pink Caddy?" Jesse asked.
"That’s a good one," Buster said. "Came in yesterday. Holding it for the cops a while. Story on it’s pretty weird."
"All right," Brenda said, "quit stalling. I’ll bite. What’s the scoop?" 
Buster pinched the brim of his cap and pulled it forward, tighter on his head. "You know my brother-in-law Willie is with the cops now&#151;" 
"That schmuck!" Jesse said.
"&#151;and he said the driver of the Caddy ran up under a log truck. It was night and that pulper wasn’t supposed to be hauling, but it happened down on Main where they got all those new street lights&#151;"
"Bright as day down there now," Jesse said.
"Yeah, that’s right. And Willie said there were a lot of witnesses who said he did it on purpose."
"Suicide?" I asked.
Buster pulled at the brim of his hat again. He had us where he wanted us, hanging on his every word. "Well now, I ain’t saying it was and I ain’t saying it wasn’t. Just saying that Willie thinks it might have been."
"Yeah," Jesse said, "and Willie would eat shit for wild honey, too. Man, Willie on the cops? Can’t believe it."
"About a month now," Buster said. "And he likes it a lot."
"Is that the whole story?" I asked.
"No, haven’t got to the weird part yet."
"Then by all means ... " Brenda said.
"Now the way them witnesses seen it, wasn’t any reason that Caddy shouldn’t have stopped. Bright up there on Main, plenty of time to stop and all that, and what’s this sucker do? Stomps the gas. Willie said old Mason Emberly could see him good from the Fina&#151;"
"Emberly?" Jesse said. "That asshole! I work for him ten years and he don’t even tell me about this, and he saw it."
"Come on, Jesse," Brenda said, "shut up and let Buster tell the story."
"All right, all right."
"So Emberly, he says the driver of the Caddy just leaned back in that seat and put the pedal to the metal. Log jutting out of the back of that pulp truck went right through the windshield and punched the guy’s head off, knocked it around the backseat like a pinball, then it went out an open back window and landed in the street. Rest of them logs just sort of lifted the roof of the car."
"Goddamned that Emberly," Jesse said. "I saw him just today. Just for a few minutes, but he could have told me about that."
"That still ain’t the weird part," Buster said. He rocked back in his chair, balancing it on two legs, and touched the brim of his hat like a baseball player giving a signal. "Willie said when he got there and stepped out of the car, he could smell something dead already."
"Dead folks don’t stink that fast!" Jesse snapped.
"Just what Willie was thinking," Buster continued. "Man don’t smell that quick. So he finds the fellow’s head in the street and tosses it in the back seat of the Caddy. Looks in the front and sees the headless body leaking all over the place, still spurtin’, in fact, that’s how fast Willie got there&#151;"
"Big shit," Jesse said. "Cop shop ain’t a block up the fucking street."
"Shut up, Jesse," Brenda said.
"Now this stink was just about to knock old Willie down. He had to go over to the side of the Caddy and toss his cookies, you know. Willie says he knows that smell is coming from the trunk of the car, ain’t nowhere else it could be coming from&#151;"
"Fucking Sherlock Holmes," Jesse said.
"Will you please shut up!" Brenda said.
"I’m shuttin’, I’m shuttin’."
"Well," Buster said, "Willie gets the keys out of the ignition, goes back there and unlocks the trunk, and he said if he hadn’t already tossed his innards on the street, he’d have done it then. Odor that came out of the trunk was strong enough to part your hair and charge you fifty cents. So Willie, he said he figured it’d be a dead dog or something like that, but it wasn’t. It was this young girl&#151;about thirteen. Naked, bloated up and splitting open like an overripe watermelon. Had her arms tied behind her with barbed wire, twisted tight with pliers, Willie figured. Legs same way. There was a gag made out of her underwear in her mouth, and it was strapped in there with a piece of coat hanger. Twisted around her head so tight it damn near made her cheeks meet."
"Jesus Christ," Billy Lee said softly.
"And all over her body a bunch of tattoos had been cut. Pictures just carved in there with something sharp, a knife maybe, more than likely a piece of wire. She was fixed up like that all over. Even her ... pardon me, Brenda. Well, you get what I mean."
"Jesus Christ," Billy said again.
"Shit," Jesse said, "what’s the front page on that?"
"Hell," Buster said, "I don’t know. Willie said that trunk was stuffed with religious tracts, and later when they got that girl out of there ... You want to hear this Brenda?"
"I might as well go the whole hog," Brenda said.
"A crucifix had been shoved up that girl ... You know where I mean?"
"Holy shit!" I said.
"They suppose she’s been colder than a carp for over a week and in that trunk. Guy driving was an ex-Baptist preacher from Gladewater, or some place like that. I don’t rightly remember. And Willie told me this morning that they’d checked up on him and found out that he’d been kicked out of his church for weird ideas. Seemed like he wanted to mix Baptist teachings with something else. Some kind of pagan stuff. Willie said folks who knew him thought he was crazy on account of he kept talking about The Others, or some such foolishness, and how they were the rightful owners of things. Willie wasn’t too specific there. I mean, it was just crazy talk ... nothing to be on the money about."
"And the girl?" I asked.
"No one knows who she is yet. Just some unlucky kid. They figure he picked her up and did those things as some kind of ritual."
"Ritual for what?" I asked.
"How do I know?"
"You make any of this shit up?" Jesse asked.
"Not a word," Buster said. "That’s how it was told to me."
"Emberly saw it, huh? That asshole." Jesse shook his head.
"And Tom over at the cafe, and some others," Buster said.
"You’d think someone would tell you something like that," Jesse said shaking his head. "And Willie, on the cops, man, that takes the rag off the bush."
The Hank Williams Jr. album had come to an end and we hadn’t noticed until now. Brenda got up and took the record off and put on something snappier. ZZ Top rocked into "The Tube Snake Boogie" and Brenda began to do the same.
With Brenda dancing around the room shaking her ass, our card playing went to shit. Buster must have spilled his beer three times. Billy Lee was trying to suck his front teeth down his throat, and I was trying to find a way to sit comfortable. Jesse was grinning at us like he’d seen it all before and was going to see it again later, and a lot closer. Right then, I think all of us were hoping that sucker would have a stroke and die with that shit-eating grin on his face.
Brenda wasn’t unaware of the effect she was having. The heavier we breathed, the harder she danced. She pushed her hair up on top her head and held it that way with both hands. The back of her neck looked sleek and sexy. Her rolling buttocks looked round and sexy. I thought maybe lust was going to drive me into a coma.
We had forgotten all about the pink Caddy.
When it was Billy’s turn to deal, I dropped out a round to stretch my legs and take a leak. After the pit stop, I came back in to Jesse trying to talk Buster or Billy into an arm-wrestling contest. If Jesse had been any drunker they could have bottled him.
I didn’t go right back to the table. I didn’t want to have to hear Jesse challenge me. He’d probably do it anyway, but if I went to the table it would be certain.
I got a beer out of the fridge and went to the window to look out. The weather had changed drastically. Lightning was flashing and the moon was behind clouds. Beyond the fence, where a cluster of pines stood, their tops were beginning to wave.
Once, when the lightning flashed, I saw Mauler. He was standing not far from the window, looking out at those rows of cars on the Northwest side of the lot. His ears were laid back and he seemed to be enjoying the weather.
I glanced in the direction of the pink Caddy and thought about what had been in the trunk. Until that moment I had forgotten about it. But now it came back to me and I had a chill, and not just from the thought. It was actually getting colder, the temperature was dropping.
Suddenly there was a thunder clap, and I swear, for a moment I thought The Bomb had been dropped. The night sky lit up bright as high noon and a thick fork of lightning came out of the sky and stabbed the pink Caddy dead center. The Caddy and the cars touching it turned bright yellow-orange and my vision went temporarily white.
When my head cleared and I could see again, I heard Jesse say, "Goddamned, what was that?"
I looked out at the cars again. Lightning flashed and I saw in that instant that the trunk of the Caddy had been knocked open and it seemed as if a black tongue of shadow were falling out of it onto the ground. When lightning flashed once more there was nothing. Just the open trunk and Mauler trotting in that direction.
"Man," Buster said, "after that I’m sitting an inch higher, and you know on what."
"Lightning hit the Caddy," I said.
"Yeah," Buster said, not overly excited.
"Hey," Jesse said. "You gonna play this hand or not?"
"Yeah," I said, "deal me in."
We were about five minutes into that hand when we heard Mauler.
First there was his rattling bark and his deep growl, like an angry Tyrannosaurus Rex about to crack the neck of a lesser lizard, then there was a yelp that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Then silence.
Jesse tipped back his cowboy hat. "What in Sam Hill ... ?"
Buster got up, went to the closet and dug out his twelve gauge pump and a flashlight. "Gonna check this out." He opened the door and went outside.
"If someone got Mauler," Billy said rising, "I think I’d rather be with the man with the gun, get my drift?"
The four of us moved quickly to the door and out. We caught up with Buster at the edge of the trailer. The rain had stopped and some of the cloud cover was rolling away, allowing the moon to show.
Buster pointed the shotgun toward the northwest rows of cars. "Sounded like it came from over there."
Way he said it, I got the impression Buster hoped one of us would deny it, but no one did. Brenda said, "That’s what it sounded like to me."
"I saw Mauler going that way when I was looking out the window," I said. "That wasn’t ten minutes ago."
Buster handed me the flashlight, pulled at the bill of his cap and said, "Shine me the way."
We went over there, me beside Buster, shining the light, the others walking close behind us. Soon we stood next to the Caddy. The rows of cars looked like furrows of strange misshapen plants there in the moonlight. It was very dark down between them.
I stared at the Caddy’s open trunk, hit it with the light. "Lightning did that," I said. "Knocked the trunk open."
For a moment I imagined I could smell the odor of the dead girl on the wind, then it passed. My imagination was working double time.
"Let’s start down that way," Buster said nodding down the row. "You keep that light ahead of me, now."
"Yeah," I said.
"Shit, but it’s gotten cold," Jesse said.
We started down the row.
Guess we’d gone about fifty feet when we heard a noise. I’m not sure how to describe it. A sort of slithering sound, but not quite. It may have been nothing more than the wind in the pines, but it sounded closer than that.
There was a break in the cars, one that led over into another row, and we went through there in the direction of the sound. When we stood in the middle of the new row, I flashed the light both ways. Nothing&#151;just a long empty path bordered by dead automobiles.
"Let’s go down that way a bit," Buster said, indicating the direction with a wave of his hand.
"Shit," Brenda said, "this is creepy.
"Hell, baby," Jesse said putting his arm around her shoulders, "I got you. Don’t worry."
We started down the row, me slightly in front with the light, and that’s when I stepped in it.
It was like warm Jell-O and it oozed up over my shoes. Before I could flash the light down, I instinctively knew what it was.
It was Mauler. Or what was left of him. And I had stepped right in the big middle of him.
The dog looked as if something had reached down his throat and pulled him inside out and thrown the bones away. His body was little more than mush.
I threw up all over Buster’s pants and shoes. Buster stumbled over to the cars and threw up.
Jesse said, "Brenda, baby, you don’t want to see this."
"Cut the tough guy crap," Brenda said, but when she saw Mauler, she lost it too.
Only Billy and Jesse didn’t throw their dinner away. I figure Jesse held it in due to image, and the fact that he didn’t want to soil his new cowboy boots.
As for Billy? I’m not sure. Maybe he hadn’t had as much beer as the rest of us. He just looked at old Mauler then looked down the row of cars and said softly, "Don’t forget, whoever did this is still out there."
Out there suddenly became a very alien place indeed. The distance back to the trailer was well over two-hundred yards, and a large portion of that trip was down between these dark rows of cars.
Buster had regained some of his composure and he was for going ahead. "We’ll find the sonofabitch who did this and blast him into next week."
I wasn’t crazy about looking for whoever, or whatever, could turn Mauler inside out, but I was less crazy about going back to the trailer unarmed. Buster had the shotgun and I intended to stay with him.
Brenda said, "Let’s go back to the trailer and call the cops."
"No phone," Buster said. He pulled at the brim of his cap and started down the dark row almost striding. "Bring the light," he called back to me.
Buster had the shotgun held close to his chest, ready to throw it to his shoulder at the slightest indication of danger. I started after him with the light, and the others, not wanting to be left alone in the dark without Buster and his gun, hustled after.
We hadn’t gone ten feet when it got Buster.
There was a break in the row of cars on the right&#151;one of those crossways Buster had made by spacing the junk out&#151;and out of that break came something dark and globby and moving fast. The odor of it almost knocked me down. It wasn’t just a dead odor, it was a poisonous odor, a numbing smell that seemed to have blown out of the open gate of hell.
I jerked the light up just in time to see a dark whip-like tentacle flash out of the mass and wrap around Buster’s throat.
Buster dug his heels in and threw the shotgun to his shoulder. He pumped two rounds into the thing quick as you can blink. If it bothered the blob I couldn’t tell it.
"Let the fuck go!" Buster screamed. "No ... no, it hurts, oh fucking damn, it hurts."
Billy bounded past me, almost knocked me down. He grabbed Buster by the waist and dug his heels in, trying to keep the thing from pulling Buster forward. Brenda and I followed suit, grabbed at Buster and pulled. In the struggle I dropped the light.
Buster managed to fire another load into the thing. It didn’t move.
"You filthy cocksucker," Brenda yelled, "let go!"
Another tentacle whipped out of the dark mass and attached itself around Buster’s head. As the tentacle tightened, I could feel warm blood popping onto my face. The damn thing was squeezing Buster like a sponge.
Then Buster just popped up out of our grasp like a greased dildo. Went up in the air and was jerked into that thing. He stuck to it like B’rer Rabbit to the Tar Baby. He hadn’t dropped the shotgun, but it didn’t matter. The blackness had foamed over him, all the way up to the elbows.
"It hurts, God do something it hurts," Buster screamed.
Brenda had begun a litany of, "Shit, shit, shit, shit."
The quivering blackness slurped over Buster until only the back of his head and cap and buttocks were visible. For a wild, improbable moment, it looked as if the Tar Baby were wearing Buster’s hat and had it turned backwards on its head like a catcher at the plate.
Buster’s buttocks wiggled slightly, then ceased moving. He sunk into the thing like an anvil slipping down into dark quicksand. The cap followed after.
The thing shook violently, then came a sputtering sound like a greasy beanfart, and out of the upper part of the Tar Baby something shot and landed at our feet.
It was the shotgun and Buster’s hand was still clinging to the trigger guard. The hand looked like an empty glove.
"Shit, shit, shit," Brenda started up again.
Our exit was not graceful, but it was fast. We darted down the long, dark row screaming. Behind us the horrid blackness rolled.
It wasn’t until we reached the trailer that I realized Jesse had deserted us some time ago. About when the blobby thing had snagged Buster with its first tentacle. Jesse’s cowboy hat lay by the steps and there was a ripped piece of his shirt hanging off the door. He had practically disrobed himself getting into the trailer.
Brenda tugged at the door. It was locked.
"Jesse," I yelled, "open this door."
No answer.
"Open the door!"
Nothing.
"Jesse," Brenda yelled, "you limp dick motherfucker, open this goddamned door! Let us in you moron!"
"It ... it’s out there," Jesse’s voice whimpered through the door.
"So are we," Billy said, and he kicked Jesse’s hat under the trailer.
I looked back towards the car rows. It had made the clearing. It looked six-feet tall and three-feet wide, and growing. It moved as lightly as a blowing tumbleweed.
"We’re going to die, goddamnit," I yelled. "Open the door, you frigging idiot!"
The thing was halfway to us.
The door cracked open. Billy pushed past Brenda and I and hit it with his shoulder. The door caught Jesse in the chest and sent him hurtling over the card table and knocked him sprawling up against the couch in a puddle of beer and cards.
Billy’s hand reached out to grab Brenda, but she didn’t need any help. She practically flew inside, and I wasn’t far off her heels.
Billy slammed the door and locked it, and at that moment the thing rolled up against the trailer and bumped it. That horrid smell seeped beneath the door and filled the room.
The trailer rocked savagely for a full minute, so hard in fact things flew off shelves and chairs turned over. Dishes crashed out of the cabinets and exploded on the floor.
Then there was silence and no motion.
"Maybe it’s gone," Jesse said from the floor. His eyes were large and wild and there was spittle on his lips. His face was as pale as an albino.
Billy eased over to the light switch and cut it. Then he slipped over to the window, pinched back the curtain and looked out. "It’s not gone," he said. "It’s waiting outside the door."
"Oh God," Jesse said.
Brenda, taking the moment well in hand, walked over to where Jesse lay, and with all her might she buried the toe of her little cowboy boot in Jesse’s balls.
Jesse didn’t bother to fight it this time. He leaned forward and threw up between his legs.
"What is it?" Brenda said. "It just can’t be."
"But it is," I said, and I told them about what I’d seen when the lightning flashed, the thick shadow rolling out of the Caddy’s trunk. "Maybe there’s some sort of connection with that story Buster told us and the lightning striking the Caddy. Maybe the murder of the girl and the preacher’s suicide were some kind of ritual ... Something that opened the way for ... what did Buster say they were called ... The Others?"
"That’s dopey as shit!" Brenda said. "Monsters coming out of car trunks!"
"It doesn’t really matter," Billy said. "It’s out there and that’s all that counts."
"All right then," I said. "What are we going to do?"
"There’s the car," Billy said.
We all looked at him.
"If one of us could get to the car, and another could throw the gate switch, the driver could go for help."
"We’re safe here," Jesse said. He eased up to sit on the couch, one eye on Brenda, just in case she wanted to kick him again. Cards and pennies, stuck there by beer and vomit, clung to his shirt and pants’ legs.
"Safe for now," Billy said. "I’ve got a feeling that if that glob wants in this tin can, it can get in."
"And with no phone," I said, "and no reason for anyone to come by this late, and the yard being closed Saturday and Sunday, we could be here a long time."
"Or a very short time," Brenda said. "If you know what I mean?"
Billy went to the window and peeled back the curtain and looked out.
"Gone?" Jesse asked.
"Not in sight," Billy corrected.
"All right," I said. "Let’s do it."
"I’ll go for the car," Billy said. "You go for the shed."
I nodded.
"You guys can have it," Brenda said.
"Let me go for the car," Jesse said. "I ought to be the one. Besides, it’s got a tricky clutch. You need me to drive it."
No one said a word to him.
Billy got the keys from Jesse. I found some matches for light, put those in my pocket along with a bit of rolled up newspaper that I thought might serve as a brief torch.
Billy pulled the curtain back and eyeballed in all directions. "Okay," he said.
We opened the door and went out. The night had turned cold, but it was clear now, and very bright. I glanced at the shed, then at the Mustang. Both looked too far away, but Billy had the worse job of the two. A long, lonely run with heaps of cars on either side, and somewhere out there, waiting, was that thing.
Then I thought about the shed. It could just as easily be in there.
Jesse and Brenda took up stations at the ends of the trailer, where they could see fore and aft. I was glad to have Jesse outside. The idea of being locked out again didn’t appeal to me.
"When I get hold of the switch," I said, "I’ll yell out."
"Gotcha," Billy said.
Taking one last look around, I walked over to the shed and stood in the open doorway. I struck a match and started in there.
Nothing jumped out at me, but my hair pricked nonetheless. There was that smell. Old Spot had been here. Or maybe still was.
There was all manner of junk inside. Buster had been anything but neat, and there were plenty of places for a good-sized monster to hide.
I lit another match and started around a long plank-table stacked with generators, tools and unidentifiable metal objects. On the far wall I could see the switch box. The closer I got to the box, the stronger the odor became. I got the newspaper out of my back pocket, twisted the end good and put fire to it. The interior of the shed grew brighter. No shadows disengaged themselves. But the smell was about to knock me down.
Then I saw the goop. It was puddled in front of the switch box. Easing over there, I held the newspaper down where I could see. If there had been anything left in my stomach I would have chucked it. It was Buster ... more or less. Just like Mauler, he looked as if he had been turned inside out. There were no bones. The body was as flat as a used condom. Buster’s eyes, like two grapes with the insides sucked out, floated in the syrupy mess on and around the skin.
The newspaper torch was burning quickly. I dropped it and struck a match. Stepping over what was left of Buster I put my hand on the switch and yelled, "Go for it!"
For a moment, I was uncertain they had heard me, but soon Brenda’s voice called, "He’s halfway there ... In the car. Get ready. Jesus, it won’t start ... No, no, he’s got it! ... Shit, the clutch!"
"I told you, I told you," I heard Jesse say.
"Jesse!" Brenda screamed.
Letting go of the switch, I darted for the door. From there I could see the Mustang hopping about as Billy tried to put it in gear. Each time he did it would die, and each time he started it again the battery sounded a bit more pathetic. Jesse, running with all his might, was almost there.
Jesse jerked open the door, and I saw Billy slide over to the passenger side. Jesse hit the starter and it cranked right up. He put it in reverse and began backing it around so the nose would face the gate. I was about to go back to the switch when Tar Baby came out of the shadows, out from where the ‘57 Caddy set.
Tentacles, perhaps a half-dozen, zipped out of the dark mass like syrupy ropes, slapped wetly over the roof of the Mustang and over the passenger side.
Jesse stomped the gas. The wheels of the Mustang spun, but the sticky tentacles held the car like a toy. Jesse opened his door and was out in one movement and running. But when he reached the end of the Mustang, he turned and looked back.
Tar Baby had smashed the glass on Billy’s side with one of its tentacles, and even as Billy tried to crawl across the seat, the tentacle whipped in and grabbed him around the neck and began pulling him back. It pulled him through the shattered glass where projecting shards peeled strips of flesh from his head like wet ribbons. It tugged until Billy’s shoulders popped out the remaining glass and he was jerked head first into the black wad. His feet kicked spasmodically and one of his shoes flew off.
"Let him go!" Jesse howled, and he ran up the back of the Mustang like the human fly until he stood on the roof. He kicked out at the Tar Baby and his foot hung. Jesse tried to twist free but couldn’t. He dropped to his butt and pushed out with his other foot. It too stuck, and now Jesse was beginning to scream with pain. He struck with his right fist and then his left. Both stuck. He butted with his forehead. It too stuck.
By now, Billy had completely slipped into the thing and Jesse was following suit. Tentacles swirled out of Tar Baby to help finish the job. Another second and there was no more Jesse.
The creature began to roll in our direction.
I darted towards the trailer. Brenda was halfway inside holding the door open, crying, "Run, run, run."
Not bothering with the steps, I leaped from the ground straight through the door. Brenda slammed it, locked it, and the two of us moved back against the couch. Waiting.
Nothing happened.
We waited, clinging to each other.
Still nothing.
"Okay," I said softly. "I’ll check." I eased over to the window and moved the curtain aside.
Glass blew in, shattering into silvery splinters that slashed my cheek and creased my neck. A tentacle flapped through the window and grabbed at me. Ducking, I could hear it whistling over my head. I staggered back and Brenda gripped me around the waist. "Shit, shit, shit," she started.
Tentacles filled the window, dozens of them, like cancer roots probing for a hold on a healthy organ. The window turned black. Tar Baby began to pour through the opening carrying glass and frame with it.
We edged around the couch and backed down the short hall, past the bathroom and into the bedroom. The door was one of those sliding jobs with a half-ass lock that wouldn’t have held out a determined rat terrier, let alone Tar Baby. We shoved Buster’s bed up against the door and lodged his dresser behind that.
Then it hit. The door shook. The bed slid back half an inch and the dresser groaned as it was forced against the wall. A crack leaped down the side of it, and for a moment I thought it was going to buckle. But suddenly it caught and held. After a moment, there was no more movement at the door.
The silence was worse. Where was it?
Outside the door?
In the yard?
Trying to find its way through one of the bedroom windows?
Not liking the idea, but liking waiting less, I moved over to the window and looked out. I could see the Mustang. It had died when Jesse had tried to make his escape, but the lights were still on and those red tail beams looked like two fiery eyes. I wondered if I could outrun the Tar Baby in a straight dash for the car. Thinking about how fast it had covered the ground between Mustang and trailer, I decided, not likely.
When I turned back to Brenda, she had sat down on the bed. I was just about to say something to her when she abruptly snapped forward and landed on the floor on her face.
Tar Baby had slid beneath the crack in the door and under the bed.
A tentacle had her by the foot and was pulling her beneath it. Before I could reach her, two others had flipped out from under the bed and covered her head, turning her screams to muffled coughs. "Brenda!" I screamed.
Then she was gone.
The bed began to rise. It tilted back and crashed against the wall as Tar Baby rose up from the floor to become a towering lump of blackness.
Snatching up a chair, I turned and smashed it against the window with all my might. I got hold of the frame and pulled myself through with only minor cuts to my hands and shoulders.
Dropping to the ground, I turned to see that Tar Baby was drooling out of the window after me. I grabbed one of the big cane fishing poles at the end of the trailer and, in a moment of insane panic, swatted Tar Baby with it. The tip of the pole stuck and dissolved.
For a dumbfounded instant, I stood there with the pole in my hand, the first six inches eaten off to a blunt end, and when I finally turned to run, an idea came to me: Pole vault the fence.
Even as I thought it, I knew it was crazy. But if I turned right, made my way down between a row of cars, my path to the fence would be shorter than if I tried to make the Mustang. And if I made the car, I still had to get it started&#151;provided the battery wasn’t down from the lights being on&#151;then ram the gate off the fence and hope I didn’t get fried to pudding.
Reflexes made up my mind for me. I turned right, down a long, shadowy row of cars.
The night had taken its toll. The beer, fear and the horrors were weighing on me like anvils. My legs were turning to creamed wheat.
I peeked over my shoulder. Tar Baby had long since cleared the window, was less than twenty-five feet behind me, moving in that uncanny way that made it seem light as a feather and blown by the wind.
The outline of the fence was becoming more definite. The patch of winter-gray weeds and briars on the other side were visible in the moonlight and they looked strangely inviting.
But how long would the fence hold back Tar Baby? How much time could I gain?
Don’t think about it. Just run, run, run.
The fence was close. I began to sob. I wet myself. I gripped the pole so tight I feared I’d break it. It was now or never, and here I was ten pounds heavier and ten years older with a cane fishing pole in my hand that might snap to pieces the moment I put my weight to it.
I put the pole to the ground and launched off, twisting my body up, popping myself like a whip. And I was airborne.
Until the pole broke. I never heard it crack, just felt it. I dropped.
But the vault had carried me over the fence. I missed landing dead center of the wire by a skin cell. Instead it caught my shirt and ripped it, and I crashed into the weeds and briars. Fighting my way to my feet, I found my sides hurt like hell and my left ankle felt like an anaconda was wrapped around it. The briars had stitched little wounds across my face and hands.
Tar Baby hit the fence like a locomotive. But it held. It squirted through the gaps in the wire like mashed silly putty. Sparks jumped, and the fence sizzled. The air was full of a horrible stench. Tar Baby burst out in a mass of slithering tentacles that clawed the fence and the air. The creature glowed like a Japanese lantern. The tentacles fell apart on contact with the fence, burst into flames. Yet it continued to push itself through in an attempt to reach me.
For the first time I heard a sound from Tar Baby. A wild, high keening noise like a dying rat. The electricity had quit popping and had settled down to a loud, consistent hum. The only thing left of Tar Baby was a few cooked and brittle-looking drapes of black dangling from the wire. Even as I watched, the breeze caught them up and carried them away like ashy crepe paper.
It was over, I told myself. Over. But then I had a chill run up from my heels to the top of my head. I thought about the open trunk of the ’57 Cadillac, thought about it possibly being a gate between this world and some other, a door for The Others.
I looked at the yard and hoped all the blackness there was merely shadow. 
 
"The Junkyard" was originally published in Dark Regions. It later appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent, a collection of Lansdale’s short stories published in a limited-edition hardcover by Subterranean Press. "The Junkyard" © 1989 Joe R. Lansdale.