Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet (32 page)

Every so often, I’ll write something so disturbing it gives me pause. Case in point: The “fisting” scene between Dwight Ritter and the Jarvis gal …
Die Dog
was originally conceived as a short story with the working title
Treed
, in which a door-to-door salesman arrives at the Ritter house, where he is attacked by a dog and forced to shelter in a tree. From there his only option is to caterpillar crawl along an overhanging tree branch to the porch roof. Through a bedroom window he spies Dwight … shall we say,
tormenting
the Jarvis gal with a disembodied human arm. I had a vague notion that the salesman would become an unlikely hero and attempt to rescue the Jarvis gal while playing cat-and-mouse with the maniac. Little did I know what the salesman would see until he peered through that window. Given the nasty shit I write about, I suspected it would be unpleasant. But the force of the scene stopped me dead. I saw it, I smelled it; I heard the screams. (And now I’ve rubbed your nose in it—sorry about that …) Not knowing how to proceed from there—the scene didn’t seem to suit the sleazy salesman hero I’d written—I shut down the computer and for the rest of the day wondered where these fucking ideas come from …

I was inspired to return to the story by a beat from the movie
Blue Ruin
. (Good movie, check it out.) Our hero has trapped one of the villains in the trunk of his car. Having left him there for some time, he returns to the car and, not knowing if the man is dead or alive, nervously approaches the trunk and knocks on the trunk lid—And the guy in the trunk goes batshit, starts hollering for help. Nice little jump scare. It’s not a big moment in the movie, though it’s nicely played. But it gave me the ‘What if?’ moment which brought me back to
Die Dog.
What if a car trunk captive started hollering for help at an inopportune time for the captor? At a gas station, say. While the attendant is gassing the car. And what if the gas station attendant is an even nastier piece of work than the kidnapper? This became the genesis for the scene between Hingle and Dwayne at the RITTER GAS & TOW filling station, which in turn led me back to the
Treed
setpiece. The Jarvis Gal scene remained (and remains) disturbing, but seemed to work better within the context of the kidnap-thriller involving Tilly and Hingle.

I hope the story kept you entertained. It’s a pulp piece, a dark thrill ride in the mould of Richard Laymon and Jack Ketchum. Early readers told me it reads like a survival horror movie, which was the scuzzy feel I was aiming for. Other influences? There’s a nod to
Psycho
—Hingle is my Marion Crane; I even attempted a little trick known as “The
Psycho
Switch” midway through the story. I liked the idea of this Ted Bundy-style serial killer finding himself at the mercy of a pair of
Texas Chainsaw-
style brothers. Poor Tilly is the meat in a maniac sandwich and must undergo a
Straw Dogs
-style transformation to survive.

I’m hugely grateful to Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale for the title. “Die dog or eat the hatchet” is apparently an old nautical expression, meaning “do or die,” or “needs must when the devil drives.” It’s a phrase I’d noticed in a lot of Lansdale’s works. When I contacted Joe and asked his permission to use it here, he told me it was a phrase his dad had used—along with many other colourful expressions that have found their way into his work. So thanks, Joe. Chances are the title’s better than the story!

For some time, I’d wanted to write about little-known Texan serial killer, Joe “The Alligator Man” Ball, the Prohibition bootlegger turned bar owner who fed a bunch of gals to the pet gators he kept in the pond behind his place. Horror movie fans will be familiar with the Joe Ball story from Tobe Hooper’s
Eaten Alive
(known in the UK as
Deathtrap
), the director’s follow-up to
Texas Chainsaw.
Back in my screenwriting days I pitched a riff on the Joe Ball story. “
Boardwalk Empire
meets
Jaws
” was what I then had in mind. There was some resistance to a period genre film. This was hard for me to shake when I finally attempted to write a prose version. I kept trying to update the story but it wouldn’t pop. I reminded myself I was writing prose fiction, and no longer bound by the same constraints as a screenwriter. So fuck it, I went back to what I had in mind. By now enough time had passed that my initial idea of “
Boardwalk Empire
meets
Jaws
” had changed. Now I saw it as a traditional hardboiled crime piece—my template was
The Postman Always Rings Twice
—with creature-feature horror elements.

What really kicked the story into gear was something I read in one of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux books, a passing mention of the barbaric bayou bloodsport “coon-on-a-log.” Innocent that I am, I believed this was something Mr. Burke had surely invented. A quick Google search proved otherwise … From this grew the scene in which poor Johnson is fed to Big George for the entertainment of Horace Croker and his cronies. This scene, I knew, would be highly racially charged, though I felt it was in keeping with what we know of the South of the time. But little did I suspect the horrific historical detail I would stumble upon as I keyword-searched my title. (I figured someone must’ve the title
Gator Bait
before. And sure enough, they have. I figured what the hell and used it anyway.) What I found were archive documents claiming Southern alligator hunters had used slave children as “gator bait.” It’s difficult to believe this was a widespread practice. That it happened even once is quite horrifying enough. But on consideration, I’m probably just being naïve … When I wove this detail into my plot, it gave the narrative an even greater intensity, and in Horace Croker allowed me to create a truly terrifying villain.

The North American Skunk Ape, as any hominologist will tell you, is the redneck cousin to Bigfoot and Sasquatch. Native to the swamps and sticks of the American South, offensively odorous, and aggressive towards humans, the loveable Bigfoot of
Harry and the Hendersons
fame he is not. Little is known about this reclusive hominid. Despite compelling evidence from hominologists, mainstream science would have us believe the creature doesn’t even exist. As such, the skunk ape of
Damn Dirty Apes
is largely my own invention.

The inspiration for this story came from an article I read in the
Fortean Times
about legendary skunk ape hunter Gerard Hauser. (For a full account of the problems this would ultimately cause me, see the next chapter entitled: The Damn Dirty Apes Controversy.) I was indebted in my research to an entertaining book by Lyle Blackburn,
The Beast of Boggy Creek: The True Story of the Fouke Monster.
Of course, I put my own lurid spin on things …

I had a skit about a group of “amateur filmmakers” making a “nature documentary” in the backwoods— Ah, who am I bullshitting? Okay: They’re gonzo pornographers shooting a skin flick involving a guy in a monkey suit banging a gal in a cavewoman costume. Before they get to the money shot, a randy skunk ape crashes the shoot and kidnaps the male porn star (the guy in the monkey suit) as a sex toy. This leads to a misfit posse assembling on a rescue mission to slay the skunk ape and save the porn star …

I ran the idea past my partner Suzie, who’s the (often unwilling) royal taster for my crazy ideas. To my surprise, she liked this one, so I started writing, thinking maybe it’d make a fun companion piece to the unrelenting grimness of
Die Dog
. I had no idea it’d wind up being the longest story in the book. I envisioned the piece as an offbeat throwback to 80s action/ adventure movies. So this one’s chockfull of references to
Roadhouse, Jaws, The Legend of Boggy Creek
, William Friedkin’s
Sorcerer,
the Brian Bosworth biker flick,
Stone Cold
—even
Scooby Doo!

If
Damn Dirty Apes
has you yearning for more stories about humans versus hominids, you’re in luck: I’ve written another one called
“Kid” Cooper & the Blackwood Ape-man
. A Depression era yarn in the Robert E. Howard/Joe R. Lansdale mould, it’s an epic slugfest between a hobo boxer (based on the young Jack Dempsey) and the fighting pride of a backwoods lumber camp: A captive Bigfoot. You can read it in
Mythic Delirium Magazine
Issue 1.4. And depending on how readers like
Damn Dirty Apes
, I might have more Reggie Levine fiascos to tell. Like so many of my characters, the poor bastard’s a magnet for trouble.

ADAM HOWE
VS.
THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SKUNK APE

Writing for the small press, without an advertising budget to promote your work, the best an up-and-coming writer can hope is that an established writer will endorse your work, that you might poach a few of their readers.

I’ve been very lucky. Early in my writing career, Stephen King chose my short story “Jumper” (written under the pseudonym Garrett Addams) as the winner of his international
On Writing
contest; should you wish to read that story, you can find it at the end of the Kindle edition of King’s
On
Writing
—but cut me some slack, I was very young when I wrote it. Since then, I’ve received encouraging praise from other great writers whose work I admire—enough to keep me plugging away at this writing lark. For
Damn Dirty Apes
, an offbeat throwback to 80s action/adventure movies, I thought it might be fun to request an endorsement from a more unusual source. Little did I imagine the shitstorm that would erupt when I sent the manuscript to Mr. Lambert Pogue, General Secretary of the Society for the Preservation of the North American Skunk Ape. Here in full is Mr. Pogue’s letter to my publisher, dated 3rd September 2015:

________

Sir,

This morning I received among my usual correspondence a manuscript entitled
Damn Dirty Apes
by Adam Howe, with a request to provide an endorsement. Now let me say in advance, in my official capacity as General Secretary of the S.P.N.A.S.A, I am not in the habit of reading, much less of reviewing fictional works. Having read enough ill-conceived, ill-researched and illness-inducing titles exploiting the Bigfoot, Sasquatch and Skunk Ape phenomena to last a lifetime, I will politely decline, citing more pressing work commitments. Yet Howe’s manuscript is so deeply offensive that I feel I must respond, frankly and fully.

From a research point of view, it is clear that Howe has exerted himself no further than a cursory Google search, spicing his narrative with only the most lurid tidbits. In so doing, he serves the reader a rancid broth of gross distortions, misrepresentations and half-truths, played for shock value and scatological humor. No doubt the small print prefacing the published book will contain the usual disclaimer:
“This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to characters living or dead is entirely coincidental.”
And readers would be well advised to take these words to heart. Unfortunately for me, this advice was more difficult to apply.

As I waded through Howe’s nauseating pulp fiction, I became uncomfortably aware that the protagonist named as “Jameson T. Salisbury” was based on a decidedly non-fictional character. And furthermore, someone I regarded as a personal friend. There is no doubt in my mind that “Salisbury” is a thinly disguised, grotesque caricature of the late Gerard Hauser, author of the seminal work

Among the Skunk Apes of the North American South: One Man’s Journey of Self-Discovery
(Pine Marten Press, 1972, sadly long out of print).

I daresay only a handful of people are alive today who remember the hermetic Hauser well enough to take offense at the injustice Howe does to the man. To the best of my knowledge, he left no next-of-kin to defend his reputation, much less to pursue litigation. So it seems that apart from my own modest protest, Howe’s slanderous portrayal will remain unchallenged.

For those unaware, it is due to Hauser’s lifelong study of the North American Skunk Ape, that the majority of our knowledge about this reclusive hominid derives. Taken as a whole, the decades of self-sacrifice in Hauser’s pioneering field research comprises a huge debt to which all of us in the field owe him.

Yes, there were controversies that dogged the man. It hardly bears repeating the allegations made by young female campers who reported Hauser for voyeurism and public indecency; embarrassing episodes Hauser claimed to his dying breath were simple misunderstandings. And yes, the unanswered questions surrounding Hauser’s final expedition, in which an amateur cryptozoologist tragically lost his life when he stepped into a hominid-snare, are difficult for even his staunchest supporters to defend. But these are, in the main, anomalies that can be excused as the enthusiasm of a field researcher with no formal training. (In the latter case, it should also be noted that the authorities cleared Hauser of any criminal wrongdoing, a fact many of the man’s critics so conveniently forget!) Hauser’s shortcomings and eccentricities pale in comparison to the sheer volume of data he left to us—physical evidence, photographs, and compiled eyewitness testimonies; a life’s work spanning decades.

Until Hauser’s premature death in 1982, he and I exchanged semi-regular correspondence. I met him personally only once, when he was scheduled to lecture at the annual hominology convention in Atlanta, Georgia. I found him to be considerate, courteous, lucid, and well balanced. In Howe’s repellent pulp fiction, Hauser is lampooned as an unhinged and callous misfit, who thinks nothing of endangering others in the obsessive pursuit of his cause. He bears little resemblance to the kind and gentle man I felt privileged to call my friend.

I cannot, in all good conscience, endorse this work. Moreover, I call on all hominologists, whether in the Bigfoot, Sasquatch or Skunk Ape fields, to put aside our differences and unite in a boycott of this disgraceful book. Quite apart from Howe’s literary shortcomings, which will quickly become apparent to the unsuspecting reader, the author’s attack on Hauser’s integrity is the action of a cynical coward seeking profit by besmirching the reputation of a man no longer alive to defend himself. Furthermore, I wish it to be known I am prepared to render my fullest assistance to any parties pursuing legal action against Howe and his publisher for the injustice done to Gerard Hauser.