Bad Chili by Joe R. Lansdale

crawlin’.”
    “Isn’t this story attributed to Daniel Boone?”
    “You know Webb’s hog farm?”
    “Yeah. And I see this comin’.”
    “I crawled up to the edge of the farm, through the slats of one of the hog pens. They say hogs shit in one corner of the pen, but someone forgot to tell these fuckin’ hogs that, or Webb needs to get his ass out there with a shovel more, ’cause I can seriously testify that this entire pen had the intense aroma of pig shit gone bad and then made worse.
    “I was in this swill, lookin’ out, and I seen the bikers trottin’ along the side of the farm there. I knew they hadn’t seen me, but they were close enough I could have smelled them, if I hadn’t had my nose full of pig shit. You know what I did, Hap?”
    “Is this question rhetorical?”
    “No.”
    “You eased into the pig shit and hid.”
    “You ought to be on fuckin’
Jeopardy!
, Hap. That’s exactly what I did. I slid myself into that muck so there wasn’t nothing but my head and arms and that twelve-gauge stickin’ out. I made up my mind they came for me I was gonna’ start blowin’ kneecaps off. But when they got downwind of that pig shit, they began to cuss and head back into the woods.”
    “It takes a real man to lay down in pig shit and not complain,” I said.
    “I fought off a couple of amorous pigs, climbed through the fence, made the road, but stayed more in the woods. After a while, I heard their bikes and hunched down in the underbrush and watched them drive by. I waited a few minutes, thought about going back for my car, decided they’d expect that and might have a guard there. I crossed the road, went across Murdoch’s old pasture, crossed into the woods behind your house, jimmied a window with a tire iron out of your truck, and climbed inside. I was plumb tuckered out. I lay in your bed there all the mornin’ and the day until you showed up and woke me.”
    “Just like Goldilocks and the three bears.”
    “Well, yeah.”
    “What about my tire iron?”
    “It’s under the porch. Damn, Hap, you’re supposed to show me some sympathy. Fuck your tire iron.”
    “You brought this on yourself, man. And you fucked up my sheets. And you damn well better not have lost my tire iron.”
    “If it makes you feel better, I’ve got hog shit in my twelve-gauge.”
    “I’m tryin’ to figure on this thing, Leonard, and it isn’t adding up so good. Horse Dick lost his head out by Old Pine Road. That isn’t anywhere near the Duffin pasture. But all these bikers were chasin’ you and he wasn’t. Seems to me, I was Horse Dick, and it was my noggin with the bumps on it, I’d have been leading the pack. But he went off in another direction and got himself shot.”
    “Maybe he got confused. Those were some serious adjustments I made on his punkin. I hit him so hard I may have even changed his past, but I didn’t kill him.”
    “Oh, by the way,” I said, “you know your Rambler? They burned that mother to the ground.”
    “Crap! You enjoyed telling me that, didn’t you? You’ve always hated that car, and this from a man with a Datsun pickup.”
    “I think you ought to turn yourself in, Leonard. Not just because you drove a Rambler, but because Charlie will make sure the right thing is done.”
    “I’m not sure there’s much Charlie can do.”
    “Once we start shooting holes in what at first seems obvious, we can clear you. You don’t turn yourself in, they can say you’re runnin’ and hidin’ because you’re guilty.”
    Leonard shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell to do. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.”
    I heard the phone ringing in the house. I said, “I’ll answer that while you clean the hog shit off my floor and carpet.”
    “Do I have to?”
    “Damn straight. And don’t just wipe the surface. You use some cleanser and de-stinker. It’s all under the kitchen sink.”
    “De-stinker?” Leonard said.
     
    It was Doc Sylvan on the phone.
    “Are you