Read Online Leather Maiden by Joe R. Lansdale - Free Book Online

come down, and she called Daddy at work, and he said, he gets ready to come down he will, but it didn’t much look like you were gonna get ready. You called until your voice played out and you sounded less like a bull ape and more like a dying goose. And you had on those loose underwear and your balls hung out, and you got sunburned there. Remember?”
    â€œHow can I forget? I still have a scar from when the skin started peeling off. Wanna see?”
    â€œNo thanks. I’ll take your word for it.”
    We moved around the room as we talked, kind of time traveling. Jimmy came to his frogs and rats, and a feeling of guilt ran through me. I had purposely pushed them over the other night, and I suppose if you were a Freudian, you could find some deeply disturbing reason for that.
    â€œI ought to throw this crap away,” he said. “It really looks rough.”
    He opened the drawers on his desk, looked at the contents. He shut the drawer, said, “It’s good to have you back in town, Cason.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œThe newspaper job is probably just the thing,” he said.
    â€œTo tell you the truth, my feelings are mixed about being back in town.”
    â€œGabby?”
    â€œPart of it.”
    â€œYou know she called me about you. She said you keep sending her notes, calling. It upsets her.”
    â€œIt’s just that I find it hard to believe.”
    Jimmy turned and looked at me as if he had just realized I had two heads. “Do you remember when we were kids, and you found out there was no Santa Claus?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThing is, you wouldn’t accept it. You went for months believing it anyway. Persistent. You had fights with kids at school that told you there wasn’t any Santa Claus. Dad finally sat down and talked to you. So you know what you did?”
    â€œI do, but you’re going to tell me anyway.”
    â€œYou thought you were being tested. That Dad had been told by Santa Claus to test your faith.”
    â€œI remember quite clearly. And I hope this isn’t something you tell to the faculty at the university.”
    â€œYou believed this so much, you just wouldn’t accept there wasn’t a Santa Claus. You fixated on it. For you, January on until the next December, it was going to be all about Santa Claus and how you knew he existed and were going to prove it, and you could meet the challenge. No matter how many times you were told it wasn’t true, that there was no such thing, you would not fold. You hung in there, thinking, in the end, you would be especially rewarded for keeping the faith. And you know what? One day, about mid-June, you came in here, and you had all this stuff on Santa Claus, books, comics, I don’t remember. But all manner of stuff. And you put it all in a box and had Mom put it up in the attic for you. Remember?”
    â€œI remember. I didn’t make it until December.”
    â€œYou were stubborn, you were obsessed with the idea that the truth was being thwarted, that Santa was testing you. You hung on to that past any time any reasonable person might. And then one day, you got it. You knew the truth. It wasn’t about hearing it. It wasn’t even about understanding it. It was about believing it.”
    â€œI get the point.”
    â€œLook at me, Cason. She doesn’t love you. I’m sorry. It’s sad. I like Gabby, and I love you, but she doesn’t. It’s time you took all the Gabby stuff, the memories, put it in a box and put it in the attic, so to speak. You have to put it out of your mind.”
    â€œYou make it sound easy.”
    â€œI know it isn’t. The doctor, what did he say?”
    â€œThat I’m obsessed. That I have problems from the war. That and a buck fifty might get me a ride on the horsey out front of the Wal-Mart.”
    â€œKnowing and believing is the way you solve it.”
    â€œSounds like a bumper sticker.”
    â€œI