“That’s not high on my list. Seriously, Leonard.”
“Suicide?”
“Actually, I thought of that one. Don’t get pissed, but let me throw out a theory, OK?”
“Toss it.”
“Say your uncle and Illium met and took to one another like flies to shit, discovered they had something in common. They liked little kids, and not to pet on the head.”
“I see this coming.”
“Say your uncle did kill the child under his flooring. Killed him somewhere else and brought him back to the house.”
“To play with?”
“I’m trying to be delicate here.”
“That don’t mean you ain’t thinking it.”
“Illium and Uncle Chester find they both like this kind of thing, and Uncle Chester likes to show Illium what he’s got in the trunk under the floorboards, and they share a few magazines, and let’s say when your uncle dies, Illium begins to feel guilty… No, let’s say lonely. I mean, this isn’t a club. You can’t go to Child Molesters United and find a bunch of guys like you.”
“Way I understand it, it ain’t as hard as you think.”
“So Illium misses your uncle. Gets tired of looking at the kid fuck magazines by himself, just sitting around in the house, waxing his well rope-”
“So he gets all dewy eyed, puts his box of pornography on the couch, and his kid’s clothes, possibly acquired from murders he’s committed, or my uncle’s murders if Illium was just a fantasizer, and he says, ‘Good-bye, cruel world’ to his box of toys, jumps in the bookmobile, runs off in the pond and drowns himself.”
“It’s a theory.”
“It sucks, Hap. It sucks the big ole donkey dick. I don’t buy any of it. And what’s with the coupons? And you know that book I picked up on the bank? It had a mark in it that’s in the copy of Dracula Uncle Chester gave me. A black circle with a red heart on the inside.”
“It’s my turn to say that’s nothing. They were friends. Makes sense Illium marked the books he loaned that way, and your uncle got one.”
“Yeah, and my uncle left me a safety-deposit box containing a book with that inside, and some coupons, so maybe it means more than it seems like it ought to. The coupons seemed nuts until we found those coupons at Illium’s, now I’m beginning to think Uncle Chester was trying to tell me something.”
“And he left you a painting,” I said.
“Yeah, and there’s that,” Leonard said. “And if he was trying to tell me something, why didn’t he just write it down and explain it? Or get in touch with me and tell me? Why the code business? What’s it all mean?”
“I’m afraid Hanson’s right,” I said. “This is starting to sound like Agatha Christie shit, and I don’t know from puzzles. They make my head hurt.”
“Reckon we need Miss Marple?”
“Could be she’s coming over right now,” I said.
The big black guy who’d been watching strolled over to our table. Well, not exactly strolled. He listed a little. He’d had just the right amount of beer. I sized him up, looking for striking zones just in case it wasn’t his intention to discuss politics or summer fashion.
He stopped at our table, said to Leonard, “What the fuck you doin’ in here with this honkie, brother? You trying to get a job promotion? This ain’t no honkie place.”
Leonard leaned over the table, said, “He’s talking about you.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “You see, honkie is a very derogatory black term for whites,” Leonard said to me. “You see, stuff like peckerwood, ofay, and honkie, it’s very insulting. It’s like whites calling us nigger or coon or jungle bunny.”
“No shit?” I said.
The big black guy glared at me, said, “You ain’t never heard honkie before, motherfucker?”
“He’s sheltered,” Leonard said. Then to me: “ Motherfucker, Hap, is a common term meaning you fuck your mother. Even if you don’t fuck your mother, folks say it anyway if they’re mad at you or want to make you mad. It’s designed to be derogatory.”
“I see,” I said.
“You cocksuckers best quit fuckin’ with me!” the big black guy said.
“ Cocksucker,” Leonard said to me, “is a common term-”
“Cut it out, you motherfuckers!”
A lot of folks were looking at us now, wondering how much blood would be involved. The jukebox wrapped up its tune and the air went silent with the threat of murder.
The bartender said over the bar, softly, “Clemmon, ease off, these fellas just come in for a drink.”
“I ease off I want to ease off,” said the big black guy.
I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the front door. About twenty steps. Five, if you were leaping.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, showing more confidence than I felt, “I’m not bothering you.”
“You come down here and slum with the niggers, is what bothers me,” said the big black man. “You white pieces of shit always lookin’ down your noses at us. Come in here, smart-mouth me. It’s gonna get you hurt. I bet you think I’m on food stamps.”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said.
“Well, I ain’t. I own my own business.”
“Congratulations,” I said, “but I’m warning you, go on about your business. ’Cause you fuck with me, tomorrow your relatives will be splitting up your belongings.”
“What’s that mean?” the big man said. “What the fuck you talkin’ about?”
“He’s threatening to kick your ass plumb to death,” said someone at a nearby table.
“Appreciate that translation,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” said the man at the table.
It finally registered with the big black guy that he was being insulted, and the game was over. He reached for me.
I batted his hand to the inside with my palm and raised out of my seat and hooked my other arm behind his head and dropped down quick with all my weight, brought his head into the edge of the table, sharply. The bottles on the table jumped and fell over. I slammed the guy behind the neck with my forearm and he came down and met my knee and rolled over on the floor and made a sound like he might get up, but didn’t. He lay there in a ball and tried to look comfortable. I was glad he was drunk.
Leonard stood up. A lot of folks were standing up. I heard the click of a knife opening nearby. I picked a fallen bottle off the table and held it by the neck. Some of its contents ran out and splashed on my shoe. I reached in my pocket with my free hand and got some money and put it on the table. I wished I was wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a serape. A damp shirt and pants would have to do, though.
The bartender said very softly, “Go ’head on and leave, boys.”
I turned and looked at him. He was a little jet-black man wearing a white shirt with black bow tie. The neon throbbed colors on his shirt. He was holding a sawed-off pump shotgun, gauge of twelve. He wasn’t holding it tensely, just showing it off. If he’d thought it through, he’d probably loaded it with slugs. You let down on it, you cleaned out fewer innocent customers that way.
“We were just leaving,” I said.
“I thought you was,” he said. “Don’t forget the tip.”
22.
When we got back to Leonard’s place, Florida’s car was parked in the drive and she was on the porch sitting in the glider. It was a bright-enough night I could see she was wearing some kind of cartoon character T-shirt, blue jean short-shorts and big wooden shoes that reminded me of miniature pontoons. She looked cute as a new puppy.
Next door there was the usual activity of drug selling, and I could hear Mohawk’s, alias Strip’s, alias Melton’s, voice above everyone else’s. When Melton got excited, his vocal cords achieved a kind of shrill quality, like something oily was trying to crawl up his ass and he was liking it.
“Not a real good place for a lady to hang out this time of night,” I said to Florida.
“They think I’m ins
ide, I bet.”
The way the glider was positioned, the shadows, that was possible, but I still didn’t think it was a good idea. Guys like the ones next door knew we were gone, saw her car over here, they might decide to investigate.
“You’ll promise me you won’t do this again, though, won’t you?” I said.
“I promise,” she said.
“Want to come in?” Leonard asked her.
“No,” she said, “I’m going to steal Hap from you. I’m taking him on a picnic.”
“Picnic?” I said. “This time of night?”
“I been waiting since dark,” she said. “I’m hungry. And I don’t care if you just ate dinner, we’re picnicking, and you will eat. I made the stuff myself.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Florida said to Leonard, “stealing Hap off and not inviting you, but-”
“That’s all right,” Leonard said, hanging his head and pretending to be sad. “I have a TV dinner, meatloaf, I think, and they’re having a Three’s Company rerun marathon on channel nine. I wouldn’t want to miss that. And right before it, there’s an hour of The Brady Bunch.”
Florida giggled sweetly and Leonard raised his head and smiled.
I said to Leonard, “We’ll talk later.”
“I want to sleep on a few things anyway,” Leonard said.
“Pretty mysterious, you two,” Florida said.
“That’s us,” Leonard said, “The Mysterious Duo.”
I got in the car with Florida and she drove us out Highway 7 East. I reached in the back for the picnic basket, an official wicker one with handle, and she said, “Uh-uh.”
“I just wanted to know what we were having on this picnic,” I said.
“It’s a surprise. You find out as you eat it. But I bet you can guess what dessert is.”
“Is it chocolate colored and sweet and shaped like a taco and you keep it in a warm place?”
“My God,” she said, “The Amazing Kreskin. Come over here and ride bitch, big boy.”
I slid over next to her and she smelled sweet and delectable. She said, “What’s that cologne, Hap? Frog and Pond?”
I slid away from her. “Do I smell that bad?”
“Get back over here,” she said. “Always did like a man smelled faintly of frog. Maybe you’ll tell me how you came by that aroma?”
“Maybe,” I said, and slid back and kissed her softly on the neck.
We continued until we came to a turnoff that announced a Scenic Overlook. The idea of an overlook in East Texas, especially if you’ve ever been to Colorado, someplace with mountains, is pretty funny. What it means here is a high hill, and not all that high.
We drove up there, and at the top were a couple of concrete picnic tables, a chained-down metal trash receptacle, and a whitewashed chain that ran between thick white posts that designated the area.
We got out of the car, and I carried the basket over to a table. Florida put her arm around me, and we walked to the chain barrier and looked down. You fell, you’d go almost six feet before you were in a pasture. Not exactly scary or breathtaking. But the deal was this: Here, on this hill, you looked straight out, there was a big V in the usual line of trees, and you could see a long ways, and the trees in the distance, especially now at night, looked like blue and purple mountains, and above those trees, the stars were like glitter being poured into a funnel. Directly overhead, it was so clear the stars seemed close enough to snag with a butterfly net. The air was invigorating.
The depression I was feeling after the rush of adrenaline from discovering the body in the van and the brief bar fight was subsiding.
“This is nice,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” she said, and hugged me tighter. “You can see forever itself from here.”
“You come here a lot?”
“Now and then. An old boyfriend in high school showed it to me.”
“Never mind. I’d rather not hear it.”
“He was an astronomer-to-be,” she said. “He was interested in the stars.”
“Right,” I said.
“Well, he did have a theory or two on black holes.”
“Ha. Ha.”
She laughed. “I’ve never been here when someone else was. Not yet. I’ve always had it to myself.”
“Good,” I said.
A shooting star flamed across the sky and snuffed out. We oohed and aahed it.
Damn, what a day. A nude swim. A dead body. A bar fight, and now a picnic with a beautiful woman, and a shooting star. What next? A UFO encounter?
The picnic basket contained barbecued chicken, egg salad and ham and cheese sandwiches on wheat bread, and sweet pickles and hot peppers and chips and potato salad.
“That’s a lot of food,” I said.
“Figured an old guy like you might need to recharge himself later.”
“Honey, I look at you, I don’t need any jumper cables.”
We put the food on paper plates and ate and drank sweet tea out of a large thermos. There was another thermos with coffee; when we finished eating, I reached for it, but Florida stopped me. She said, “After dessert.”
She stood up and took off her shorts and she wasn’t wearing panties. She put the shorts on the picnic table. She slipped off her shirt and she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“You saving on laundry?” I said.
She put the shirt with the shorts. She moved up close to where I sat on the stone picnic bench, and I kissed her belly button. She pushed away from me and smiled and gathered her clothes and walked back to the car. She looked funny and sexy wearing nothing but those big shoes. She opened the back door and sat on the seat with her legs outside and unfastened her shoes and put them on the floorboard. She crossed her legs and looked at me. “Do I have to write you a letter?” she said.
“Don’t even need to send a telegram,” I said, and I got up and went over there.
Later, we dressed and had coffee while we lay on the hood of the car, our backs against the windshield. We must have seen a half-dozen shooting stars.
“This was a nice surprise,” I said. “I especially liked the part where you shucked your shorts.”
“Glad you liked it, but could I say – without intent to hurt your fragile male ego, because I enjoyed myself very much – you seem a little distracted?”
“I’ve had a big day.”
“Hap, I’ve been thinking, and I got to tell you, what I said the other night-”
“That’s all right. I was pushing.”
“What I mean is, I really don’t have the right to judge you. You are who you are, and that’s a pretty good thing. I shouldn’t try and make you something else.”
“You made some good points. I am coasting.”
“I suppose another thing is we haven’t had time to know each other that well. One day I see you and you’re this grungy guy, and the next day I see you you’re on top of the house sucking in your stomach-”
“You noticed that?”
“Sure. And then we’re in the sack, and I like you. I like you a lot, and I don’t really know who you are.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You don’t know me either. Not really. Let me tell you something about myself. Something to clear the air a little. I’m laying on you how ambitious I am, right? Telling you what a ball of fire I am, and what a wet ball of twine you are. So let me be honest. I’m not living up to my ambitions either.”
“Maybe no one does.”
“It was my plan to be a serious criminal lawyer. I wanted to try murder cases. I wanted to specialize in cases dealing with blacks, helping them get fair trials in a white world. The whole nine yards. But I’ve settled for divorce work and a little ambulance chasing. I’ve been in that shitty office of mine for three years, and half the time my clients don’t pay me, or if I get a percentage of something, it’s not a percentage of much, and I haven’t made one bit of real difference in the world, and I thought I’d make oodles.”
“Everyone starts somewhere, Florida. Hell, you’re young. You’ll build into a bigger career.”
“I’ve got to be willing to do that, though. You see, I found out most of the people I was dealing with, defending, white or black, were guilty. If they weren’t guilty of the crime they were up for, they were guilty of two others they got off from. Most of them were guilty as hell.”
“That could have just been your experience so far. There’re bound to be innocent people who need you.”
“Yes, but I was trying to get guilty people off. Trying to find loopholes. And I’m disillusioned with people. Not just the crooks I’ve dealt with, people in general. Not long ago there was a murder near here, over in Mud Creek. A husband lost it and shot his wife and two kids and even the dog.”
“I remember.”
“People talked about the crime for a month or so. A lawyer friend of mine was assigned to the case. She proved the murderer was insane. She told me people asked her about the case all the time, and you know what she said their most common question was about what happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“What kind of dog was it? Yeah. What kind of dog? Like the people didn’t matter. But if it was a cute dog, then we’re talking tragedy. How could someone think that way?”
“You’re running idealism up against reality, Florida. It happens to everyone eventually. But don’t think the two aren’t compatible. I’ve been through that myself.”
“Point is, I’ve lost a lot of my ambition this last year or so, and just that stupid thing about the dog had a lot to do with it. What I’m saying, Hap, is who am I to cast the first stone? And another thing. You’re right. I am nervous about being seen with you because you’re white-”
“You never denied that.”
“But that’s not an excuse. I’m going to change.”
“Hot damn, you’re gonna take me to a movie.”
“Yeah, but you have to wear gloves and a bag over your head.”
“It’s a start.”
“I don’t think of myself as prejudiced, but when I was a little girl we lived briefly up North. My mother had gone up there to stay with relatives. She left my father for a time, and she thought, up there, out of the South, she had a chance to do something without skin color mattering. That was in New Jersey. Well, there wasn’t much more in the way of jobs there, and the relatives we were staying with were living in a white section of town and had been for a couple of months, and one morning we woke up with snow on the ground and a cross burning in the yard. Burned into the yard with gasoline was the word nigger. We moved back here, and the relatives moved out of that neighborhood and into a black one, and the whole idea of sanctuary, that there was somewhere you could go where there wasn’t any prejudice, any racial hatred, was gone.
Mucho Mojo cap-2 Page 12
