Bad Intentions Read online

  THE ELECTRIFIED BOXING HOLLYWOOD COWBOY IN A GORILLA SUIT

  JOHNNY HALLOWEEN

  88 SINS

  THE CUT MAN

  DEAD CELEBS

  ’59 FRANKENSTEIN

  CANDY BARS FOR ELVIS

  STYX

  WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD

  GORILLA GUNSLINGER

  DEAD MAN’S HAND

  APOTROPAICS

  SHE’S MY WITCH

  BAD INTENTIONS

  TYRANNOSAURUS

  GUIGNOIR

  STORY NOTES

  This book is dedicated to my father

  William Louis Partridge

  1918-1976

  You always said it, Dad:

  “The gate opens in …”

  THE ELECTRIFIED BOXING HOLLYWOOD COWBOY IN A GORILLA SUIT

  or

  NORM PARTRIDGE CUTS LOOSE

  An introduction by

  Joe R. Lansdale

  -his ownself-

  IN SOME WAYS I'm reluctant to write another introduction. I've written several, and though I've never written one that I didn't want to write, I have written enough of them that I fear readers might begin to think that I do them professionally and purely as a favor to the writer I'm addressing.

  This isn't true. I like a lot of different kinds of writing, both in books and short stories and comics, and I've had a number of writers I've been excited about, and because of this, I was willing to write introductions to their work.

  Still, I've written a lot of introductions, and that being the case, I give notice here that this is going to be the last intro I write for some time, and I also give notice that I think this one is one of the most important I've written.

  By important, I don't mean my introduction. By important I mean the fact that I've been honored to write the introduction for Norm Partridge's work.

  Before I continue with Norm, however, let me explain about the introductions I've written.

  Sometimes these were written for writers I hardly knew, or knew not at all, but I knew and liked their work. Sometimes the writers were writers I knew well, and also liked their work.

  In a couple of cases the introductions were written not so much because I thought the writer was breaking new ground or writing the best prose ever written, but because they had something that allowed me to enjoy their work and honestly endorse it to others.

  In some cases, I thought the work was highly original, quirky, maybe not for everyone, but something that should be respected and examined.

  There were a few others I wrote introductions for who I thought were original, quirky, enjoyable, and at the same time accessible, outstanding. Neal Barrett, Jr. comes to mind.

  And so does Norm Partridge.

  I'm not going to be formal here and refer to him as Mr. Partridge or Norman, because I know him as Norm, and I admit up front we are friends and perhaps that gives this introduction a certain prejudice.

  But not much.

  I admired Norm's work before I knew him. It was early work, but I could see where he was going even then. I will flatter myself by saying I saw echoes of my own work in his. Not necessarily meaning he was imitating me, but that both of us had obviously grown up on the same source material.

  When I got to know Norm, this proved true. We both read comics, loved old films—noir, crime, mystery, horror, science fiction, all kinds of low budget trash—and we read or have read a lot of the same authors.

  Norm is in many ways like me. I'm a little older than he—all right. I'm quite a bit older—but when I was becoming a writer I generally related better to the generation of writers ahead of me than those of my own generation. It was this older generation I had read and grown up on, and they, like me, had not just read the works of three years back. They had begun their reading with writers like Poe and Verne and Wells and Doyle and Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson and... well, the list goes on and on.

  Now, most writers, especially those who work in genres, have read the work of their contemporaries—their very immediate contemporaries—and little else. Actually, sad to say, a lot of them have read very little of anything. They've seen a lot of movies. That's good, but it's not enough.

  Norm is an avid reader, and his tastes are varied. I have a feeling he's the kind of guy that reads the cereal box in the morning. Keeps a book on his nightstand, and maybe some kind of browsing reading in the bathroom, magazines on the coffee table. Goes to the dentist, nothing there but Ladies Home Journal, and he even reads it, or at least glances over it. You never know where something interesting might lie, where a potential idea might lurk.

  This shows in his work.

  He is so well read, so rounded, so enthusiastic, the electricity in his head leaps onto the page and into your eyes and finally your brain. His work has the energy of early and middle period Philip Jose Farmer. He's the kind of writer, even if the story doesn't entirely work for you, there's just something about it. It gives you ideas.

  There are a number (not a lot) of writers who write good, unique stories, but there are some that have this strange sort of excitement about their work that goes beyond good and unique, and Norm is one of them, right in there with greats like Neal Barrett, Jr., Howard Waldrop, the aforementioned Philip Jose Farmer, Gerald Kersh, early Ray Bradbury and Charles Beaumont, to name a few.

  What you have here is Norm's second collection, and his first mature gathering of stories. The range is phenomenal. His style is gradually becoming his own; in other words, he's finding his voice. Not as easy a thing for a writer as you might think.

  This book is a milestone of imaginative literature. I think Norm Partridge will be one of the most important writers of the nineties, and beyond. He is certainly one of only a handful of fine writers of genre short stories (he's a good novelist, too, goddamn him) to come out of the nineties so far.

  The seventies and the eighties were exciting times for genre fiction, especially in the areas of weird fantasy and horror and the blending of genres. I think that from the mid-seventies to the tail end of the eighties was for horror and weird fiction what the late sixties and early seventies were for science fiction's New Wave. The wave washed away, but it was an exciting time, and even though I was not that fond of most of the fiction, there was an attempt to expand the boundaries of what science fiction was about, and the best experiments still stand, or went on to influence better future writers. I don't know that I'm one of the better ones, but science fiction's New Wave, in retrospect, influenced me as a writer of weird and horror fiction, and finally in the field of crime, and I was, for better or worse, one of the exponents of weird fiction's New Wave during the eighties.

  This is not to say that a group of us writing weird fiction and horror during this time got together and decided to write a certain way. We wrote all kinds of ways. But there did seem to be something in the air that leant itself to wild creation and sent us on paths different from those that preceded us.

  Certainly a lot of standard horror and weird fiction was written during this time—especially in novels—and a lot of experiments failed or were just a mess, but there was a back beat of energy and strangeness to the best work of this period, which, though not as commercially viable as the more standard creations, was, and is, to my mind more memorable, and is likely to have more staying power than any number of books and stories written to fit into easy existing slots.

  I think a writer like Norm, who already had a great literary background, and got involved in developing his talent during this fertile period of weird fiction's New Wave, came out on the other side and into the nineties armed with an arsenal of words and ideas that could not be denied.

  If you look at the list of unique writers and stories from the seventies and eighties, there are qui
te a few. As we cruise into the nineties and take a look at the emerging writers of this period, the list of writers and stories grows short. Some of the writers who were the most exciting during the beginning of the nineties have already stagnated or burned themselves out.

  An inventory of the better writers would be brief. I'm sure I'm missing a few, but generally speaking, the register would contain Nancy Collins, Poppy Brite, and Norm Partridge. There were a number of other writers, mostly associated with the small press, who looked to be comers, but most of them never made the jump to a bigger market, and soon stagnated by repeating the same themes, or by not enlarging the same themes. (Flannery O'Connor wrote about the same themes, but she was constantly growing, expanding those themes, so that every story she wrote was fresh as the last.)

  I'm going to take a flyer here and say it right out. I think Norm Partridge may be the best of a small crew of important writers for the nineties. I'm not saying he is the best as compared to little competition. I'm saying he would have been first rate no matter what era he started writing. No matter how much competition he had.

  He is outstanding.

  He is original.

  He's a writer that future generations of writers will be looking up to.

  He is not tied merely to one genre. He is, in fact, a multigenre writer, sometimes all in one story.

  He is exactly the kind of writer I admire.

  Another thing. Norm isn't just a writer. His work does not have the stink of the library on it. The library is a source, but so is experience. This does not mean he's sailed around the world on a log or scaled Mt. Everest and skateboarded down the other side. It means that he isn't just tied to his desk and chair. His work has not only the feel of someone who loves books and words, but someone who has lived enough of life to have something to write about.

  Norm doesn't just hang around with writers, pleasant as their company might be. His friends and associates include policemen, handymen and boxers. Norm is a boxer himself—not professionally, but in a sort of dedicated hobbyist way. He's more of the Hemingway school (without the ego and the macho posturing) than the bohemian coffee shop school.

  Norm approaches his work as both artist and workman. He has a time to work, and he works. He doesn't wait for inspiration, he kicks inspiration in the ass. He knows writing is like lifting weights. The more you do it, the stronger you get; the easier it is to summon up inspiration.

  He has a weird eye, the ability to look around corners and see things in his own singular way. Yet, when you read his stories, you can't help but feel his way is the correct way, and you wonder why you haven't seen it before.

  I mean, really, this guy can write convincingly about gun-toting gorillas! I'm referring to his comics work here, "Gorilla Gunslinger," which you can find in Weird Business, a book of comic stories I co-edited with Rick Klaw, and you can read the script here, and if you're one of those that doesn't like the idea of reading scripts, toss that notion out the window, because this script is great! In fact, it's almost a movie, and I wish someone would pick it up for that. It would be a hoot!

  All right. I'm wandering. It's a bad habit. It's how I am. My excitement gets the better of me. Back to the collection.

  You ask, okay, besides the script, which stories in Bad Intentions should I read?

  All of them.

  Yeah, but which is the best?

  Well, I like them all, and I'm sincere in that. I don't like to write introductions and give away too much about the stories. I think the reader should experience them for his or herself.

  But I will tell you this. I'm partial to "Candy Bars For Elvis", but I also love "59 Frankenstein", which takes those old cheap-o movies of the fifties (I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, etc. ) and gives them a kind of alternate universe twist. That's not correct, but that's the best way I can describe it. Sometimes Norm's work can't be described. It can only be read.

  "The Cut Man", mixing zombies and boxing is also a favorite of mine. I've written about both subjects, but never together, though I had planned to. Now Norm has beat me to the subject, did it better than I would have, so I've shelved my project of zombies during the Depression fighting in traveling rail cars. At least until I can get more distance between my story and Norm's and feel less depressed about the way I was doing mine, and not be tempted to steal Norm's better approach.

  Hell, I'm getting wound up. I'll start listing all the stories if I do that. I'll rattle on longer than the collection, and will not have entertained you a fraction as much as the stories. So let's cut out this stupid delay. Hasten to the stories. You're in for a treat.

  Really, they're that good. And really, this collection, Bad Intentions, will be one of the most important short story collections of the nineties.

  I'm going to stop jumping up and waving my hands, and end this simply.

  Nobody writes 'em like Norm Partridge.

  I'm so glad that when he was a baby his mama dropped him on his head.

  JOHNNY HALLOWEEN

  I SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN THERE.

  Number one: I was off duty. Number two: even though I’m the sheriff, I believe in letting my people earn their pay. In other words, I don’t follow them around with a big roll of toilet paper waiting to wipe their asses for them, even when it comes to murder cases. And number three: I’m a very sound sleeper—generally speaking, you’ve got a better chance of finding Elvis Presley alive than you’ve got of waking me between midnight and six.

  But it was Halloween, and the kids next door were having a loud party, and I couldn’t sleep. Sure, I could have broken up the party, but I didn’t. I’m a good neighbor. I like to hear the sound of kids having fun, even if I think the music we listened to back in the fifties was a lot easier on the ears. So I’m not sour on teenagers, like some cops. Probably has something to do with the fact that Helen and I never had any kids of our own.

  It just didn’t work out for us, is all. When Helen had the abortion, we were young and stupid and we figured we’d have plenty of chances later on. That wasn’t the way it worked out, though. I guess timing is everything. The moment passes, things change, and the life you thought you’d have isn’t there when you catch up to it.

  What it is, is you get older. You change and you don’t even notice it. You think you’re making the decisions, but mostly life is making them for you. You’re just along for the ride. Reacting, not acting. Most of the time you’re just trying to make it through another day.

  That’s how most cops see it. Like my deputies say: shit happens. And then we come along and clean up the mess.

  I guess maybe I do carry around that big roll of toilet paper, after all.

  So, anyway, Helen had asked me to get another six-pack and some chips. She does like her Doritos. It was hot, especially for late October, and a few more beers sounded like a good idea. I worry about Helen drinking so much, but it’s like the kid thing. We just don’t talk about it anymore. What I usually do is drink right along with her, and then I don’t feel so bad.

  So I was headed up Canyon, fully intending to go to the Ralphs Supermarket on Arroyo, when I observed some suspicious activity at the old liquor store on the corner of Orchard and Canyon (if you want it in cop-ese).

  Suspicious isn’t the word for it. A couple of Mexican girls were coming out of the place. One was balancing a stack of cigarette cartons that was so high she couldn’t see over it. The other had a couple of plastic sacks that looked to be filled with liquor bottles.

  I pulled into the lot, tires squealing. The girl with the liquor bottles had pretty good instincts, because she dropped them and rabbited. The strong smell of tequila and rum hit me as I jumped out of the truck—a less sober-hearted man would have thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Me, I had other things on my mind.

  The girl with the cigarettes hadn’t gotten too far. She didn’t want to give up her booty. Cartons were slipping and sliding and she looked like a drunken trapeze artist about to take the big dive
, but she was holding tough.

  Tackling her didn’t seem like the best idea, but I sure didn’t want to let her work up any steam. I’m not as fast as I used to be. So what I did was I grabbed for her hair, which was long enough to brush her ass when she wasn’t running and it wasn’t streaming out behind her. I got a good grip first try; her feet went out from under her, she shrieked like a starlet in a horror movie who’s about to taste chainsaw, the smokes went flying every which way, and it was just damn lucky for me that she wasn’t wearing a wig.

  “It wasn’t me!” she said, trying to fight. “I didn’t do it! It was some guy wearing a mask!”

  “Yeah, right. And you’ve got a receipt for these cigarettes in your back pocket. Sorry…got you red-handed, little miss.”

  I hustled her across the lot, stomping cigarette cartons as I went. That gave me a kick. God, I hate smokers. We went inside the store, and that’s when I saw what she’d meant when she said she hadn’t done anything.

  The kid was no more than twenty, and—like the old saying goes—he’d never see twenty-one. He lay on the floor, a pool of dark blood around the hole in his head.

  “We saw the guy who did it,” the girl said, eager to please, real eager to get my fingers out of her hair. “He cleaned out the register. He was wearing a mask…”

  Dead eyes stared up at me. My right boot toed the shore of a sea of blood. Already drying, going from red to a hard black on the yellow linoleum. Going down, the clerk had tripped over a stack of newspapers, and they were scattered everywhere. My face was on the front page of every paper, ten or twenty little faces, most of them splattered with blood.

  “…a Halloween mask,” she continued. “A pumpkin with a big black grin. We weren’t with him. We pulled in after it was over, but we saw him leaving. I think he was driving an El Camino. It was silver, and it had those tires that have the chrome spokes. We were gonna call you before we left, honest. We figured the clerk was already dead, and that we’d just take what we wanted and—”