"What are you gonna do until they get a new house put up?"
"I don't know. Squeeze a rubber ball. Jerk off. "
"And what if the house gets put in there isn't a crack house next time, but some old lady who just wants to putter around her flower garden?"
"I guess I could go over there nights and pull up her roses. "
"I can see you've thought this through with options. "
Leonard tapped his temple with a finger. "Thinking all the time. " He sat for a moment, said: "That goddamn Raul. I kinda thought I was ready for him to go, but you know, I miss him. "
"Raul seemed okay to me, but it's not like I been around him much. Maybe him going away isn't so bad."
"That some kind of comment?"
"I haven't seen much of you lately either, Leonard. It's not like I know anything about y'all's relationship. See, I sort of thought you and me being like brothers, I'd get the inside scoop on things."
"Hey, you got to remember, I ain't had no loving in ages. You forget how you get when you have a woman. All you want to do is fuck."
"I guess that's normal at the beginning of any relationship. I just thought maybe you'd have brought him around. You and me, compadre, we're family. Besides, you can only screw so much, after a while, you got to maybe read a book, talk to friends."
"You got enough problems in your life doing crap work for a living, being mostly worthless without ambition, and being friends with me. Figured you didn't need me and my lover dropping by."
"You think it's like I got neighbors? And if I did, think they'd know just by looking at you? And if they did, think I'd give a fuck?"
"That's not what I mean, and you know it."
"What do you mean?"
"No matter how close we are, I think the whole thing jacks you around. You know, me fuckin' a guy."
"It's different is all. I'm not used to it. I see two guys hugging up, one of them my friend, guy I think of in a traditional way most of the time, well, I won't lie to you, it makes me uncomfortable. Not sick to my stomach or nothing, just uncomfortable. I don't visualize what you guys are doing in the privacy of your own home, not only because it's private, but shit, Leonard, I don't like to think about it. I know there isn't anything wrong with it. But I was taught one way all my life, that homos were perverts. I know now a pervert comes in hetero or homo, same as good people, but it still turns my crank backwards a little to know y'all got the same equipment to play with and you're willing to do it with each other”
"How do you think it makes me feel, see you kissin' on some old gal? That ain't natural to me, Hap. It don't matter what's supposed to be natural, my biology tells me one thing, yours tells you another."
"All right. Let's drop that. It's not like we're really in disagreement."
"You know what, Hap?"
"What?”
"I really thought this one was more than just sex. I thought me and Raul had a relationship. I thought me and him were gonna grow old together and come over to your place now and then for fried chicken and maybe borrow money, you ever got any. I really did mean to bring him around. Really. I just wanted to get stabilized. And, of course, I have. I'm by myself again."
"He could come back.”
"I doubt it. I think I saw it coming for the last two weeks. We were just too different. I was confusing sex for loving 'cause I hadn't had either in so goddamn long. You know what? He liked Gilligan’s Island. He wouldn't miss that fucker. Had books on that shit. Photos of the stars. Has a stack of videotapes full of Gilligan’s Island. He thought Bob Denver was a good actor, and I think he had this thing for the Professor. Raul's big goal in life was to get a copy of the reunion episode."
"You're right," I said. "Mark Raul off your list. He's too dumb to live. Hey, one bright note. My Christmas present. I'm gonna cheer you up when I tell you what I got you. That 'Asleep at the Wheel' album you been wanting."
"The one where they get a bunch of folks together to redo Bob Wills's stuff?"
"Yep. Got that big-tittied singer you like on it."
"Dolly Parton."
"Yep. And it's got Willie 'Can't Pay His Taxes' Nelson too. “"No shit?” "No shit."
"You said album, but you meant CD, right?” "Yep."
"Great. Guess what? That was Raul's CD player. He took it with him."
Chapter 5
That night I slept on Leonard's fold-out couch, which had acquired an assortment of potato chips, peanuts, and pretzel crumbs. I guess watching Gilligan gives you the munchies.
Leonard was up half the night, going to the bathroom, the kitchen, looking out windows, feeling blue over Raul. I lay there and watched him pad around, and thought about Grovetown. I'd heard about it being stuck in time before Charlie told me. Grovetown was like Vidor, Texas, another, and larger, and more infamous Klan stronghold. Vidor didn't even have a black in its town to hang. It was all white and proud of it. Leonard knew about Grovetown. Had some idea what he was getting into, but if he was overly concerned, neither his words or actions showed it.
I closed my eyes and remembered Florida. I could smell her hair. Feel her thigh on my finger tips. The first time we made love was in this house. In Leonard's bedroom. My God, it hadn't really been that long ago. I knew that hot summer night, when we lay in bed together, even before we made love, that I adored her. And just as surely, I knew she would break my heart. And she had.
She couldn't cope with my being white. Not having a career. Having little to no ambition. A man adrift. She said: "I like someone who gets up in the morning and has a purpose. A real purpose. I have one. I want whoever I love to have one."
And she was right. What I was about was day-to-day survival, and that was it. When I was young, I could look around corners. Now, I did well to see six inches beyond my nose.
Jesus Christ, how in hell, why in hell, do all my romances go wrong?
Next morning, not long after the sun came up and coffee had boiled, Leonard called a couple fellas he knew and asked if they could stay over at his place for a while, watch it to make sure his former neighbors didn't drop by to return the favor to his house.
An hour later, the fellas dropped in with two paper sacks full of clothes and accessories. I hadn't met these guys before. They lived in the neighborhood. They were both black and huge and appeared to be in their mid-thirties. Their heads looked as if they had been boiled and all the hair scraped off. You could have put your fingers in their eye sockets and used their noggins to bowl a few sets.
Their faces were as warm and friendly as a switchblade knife. One of them had an eye with scuz all around it, like the crusty lips of an active volcano. They looked as if on their days off they liked to sit around and wring the necks of puppies, maybe stick coat hangers up cats' asses and toast them over a fire.
I was put in the position of entertaining the fellas while Leonard filled a suitcase. They didn't strike up a discussion with me concerning Melville's flawed masterpiece Moby Dick, nor did they have anything to say about Billy Budd.
We mostly sat in silence, said a few things about the weather. The one with the scuzzy eye finally hit a note of interest. He said, "You know, ants come out this time of year if they want to. Our house is full of the little fuckers. Goddamn Christmas ants."
"No shit?” I said. "Christmas ants?"
"Yeah, there's ants in my underwear drawer," said the other one.
"It's 'cause Clinton's underwear ain't clean," said Scum Eye.
"Yeah, well what you been doing in my underwear drawer?” said Clinton. "Sniffin?"
I looked around for Leonard. Still in the back room. Probably sitting on the bed having a laugh at my expense.
"I'll tell you though," said Clinton. "Them ants are busy little shits. They ate my banana. I left it on the table, and next morning they was all over it. “He smiled. "I stuck it in the sink and drowned them. An ant can't swim for shit."
"Leonard," I said. "Man, we got to go."
Leonard came out with his suitcase, and on
our way out the door he paused and gave one of the big guys some money, said, "Here's for food. But there's stuff in the pantry. I get back when I get back, if that's okay with you two."
"We ain't doin' nothin' anyway," said Clinton. "Peckerwood we used to work for had a stroke. He can't do nothin' now but sit around and look wall-eyed, drip spit on his chin. His wife fired us and everyone else over at the aluminum chair plant. They say it may go out of business 'cause his family don't want nothing to do with runnin' it. They're gonna sell it and whoever buys it will bring in a whole new crew of niggers. That's if anyone wants it."
"It wasn't any kind of job anyway," said Scum Eye. "We worked there ten years or better and didn't never get a raise. That peckerwood was so tight when he blinked his asshole turned inside out. I hope all he gets to do rest of his life is sit around in one of them lawn chairs we made, crap his pants and nest in it. "
"They are not only without jobs," I said to Leonard, "but they have an ant problem at their house."
"Christmas ants, we call them," Clinton said. "I mean, they don't just come Christmas, but we call them that."
"Well, guys," Leonard said. "You're gonna like it here. No ant problem. Christmas or otherwise. Watch TV, hang out, whatever, but make sure those chumps lived next door don't drop by."
"You don't want us to kill 'em, do you?” This from Scum Eye.
"No, Leon," Leonard said, "but I want you to discourage them. You got to kill 'em, drag 'em in the house. Law likes it that way better. Looks like breaking and entering. More clear-cut as self-defense. Frankly, I don't think they'll come around. My house got burned down, they'd know I knew who did it. And they wouldn't want me to know."
"I hear that," said Clinton.
"You guys like Gilligan’s Island?” Leonard asked.
"Uh huh," said Leon, better known to me as Scum Eye. "That's a pretty funny show. I'd like to fuck that Ginger. I bet she don't fuck black guys, though."
"It's you she wouldn't fuck," Leonard said.
Leon and Clinton grinned. Leon said, "Yeah, uh huh. I get it."
"Anyway," Leonard said, "I got a stack of Gilligan’s Island tapes, you want to see them. They're on the kitchen table."
"Raul left a treasure like that?” I said.
"It was in the box I was supposed to mail to him. Couldn't find the toaster this morning, so I opened his goddamn box. He loved that fucking toaster 'cause it could do four slices of bread at once. He liked shit like that. If it could have done six slices of bread, he'd have peed on himself. Anyway, no toaster. He must have took that in the car. But he had most of my spoon drawer in the box, and those tapes."
"That guy gone?” Leon asked.
"Raul?” Leonard said.
"One Clinton bounced around at the store," Leon said. "The other queer. No offense."
"None taken. Yeah, he's gone. He comes back, don't give him a rough time, though. I ain't mad at him. Just tell him I'll be back, if he cares. I don't figure he'll be around though."
"Can we have girls over?” Leon asked, scratching at the scum around his eye.
"As long as it doesn't get out of hand," Leonard said. "I don't want to come home to broken furniture. And guys, use a rubber, okay? And I don't mean share one between you. AIDS is goin' around."
"Using a rubber's like taking a shower in a raincoat," Clinton said. "It ain't no fun."
"Hey, it's your dick," Leonard said. "You're too stupid to take care of it, that's your problem. I hope the women are smarter. I'll call you later."
"You might start my pickup now and then, let it run awhile," I said. "This cold weather, it doesn't get run a bit, it'll freeze up. I like to circulate the antifreeze. If you'd rather just drain the radiator, go ahead. Key is on the kitchen table. Merry Christmas, guys."
Leonard got his suitcase and we went out to his car.
As Leonard was backing out of the driveway, I said, "That was goddamn surreal."
"Yep," Leonard said. "Leon and Clinton, they're Andre Breton kind of guys. They're proof positive you ought not let people shoot a few baskets with your head. Let's you and me go to Burger King and have breakfast. I feel expansive."
"Who the fuck are those guys anyway?"
"They tried to beat me up. I whupped those motherfuckers like I was dustin' a rug."
"Both of them!"
"Not at the same time. On different days. They got word I was queer, so they jumped Raul at the Community Store. Didn't really hurt him, but roughed him up. Broke his Dr Pepper bottle. Scrambled a couple of his moon pies. Just took them in their hands and twisted them up inside the plastic wrappers. Really made them hard to eat. I went down to the store after it happened and found one of them—one with the left eye looks like it's got a disease, Leon, and kicked his ass so bad they had to carry him off. Kicked that muscle in the back of his leg so hard it paralyzed it for a while."
"Old Thai boxing trick," I said.
"Yep. Later that day, his brother came over to the house with a baseball bat, started beating on the door. I went out the back way and cracked him over the head with the barrel of my shotgun. Knocked him on his black ass."
"Of course, you didn't hurt him while he was down."
"That wouldn't be right. I just kicked him a little. Until both his eyes closed. They got so they like me now. They want I should teach them some self-defense."
"Jesus," I said.
Couple hours later we were out at my house in the country. I didn't light the heaters, but I made sure the water in the faucets was still dripping, then I threw some clothes together. Leonard had brought his pipe and tobacco with him, and while I packed he filled the pipe and lit it.
"Bring a gun," he said.
"I don't like guns," I said. "Bringing one causes trouble. Guns lead to guns."
"And if the other guy brings one and you don't, it causes you trouble. It leads to you being dead."
"It's all right with you, I'll pass. I thought we were just going to find Florida. I didn't think we were planning a shootout at the O.K. Corral."
"You're a little short on reality sometimes, Hap."
"I guess you're right. I suppose you brought a gun?"
"Shotgun. Broke it down, wrapped it in plastic. Got a couple revolvers and a couple of Winchester thirty-thirtys, not dismantled. Ammunition. It's all in the trunk."
"How about the gyro copter?"
"Trunk.”
Chapter 6
On the way to Grovetown, Leonard put a Hank Williams cassette in the player and we listened to that. I never got to play what I liked. I wanted to bring some cassettes of my own, but Leonard said it was his car, so we'd listen to his music. He didn't care much for what I liked. Sixties rock and roll.
Even Hank Williams couldn't spoil the beauty of the day, however, and the truth of the matter was, I was really starting to like his music, though I wasn't willing to let Leonard know.
It was cold as an Eskimo's ass in an igloo outhouse, but it was clear and bright and the East Texas woods were dark and soothing. The pines, cold or not, held their green, except for the occasional streaks of rust-colored needles, and the oaks, though leafless, were thick and intertwining, like the bones of some unknown species stacked into an elaborate art arrangement.
We passed a gap in the woods where the pulp wooders had been. It looked like a war zone. The trees were gone for a patch of twenty to thirty acres, and there were deep ruts in the red clay, made by truck tires. Mounds of stumps and limbs had been piled up and burned, leaving ash and lumps, and in some cases huge chunks of wood that had not burned up, but had only been kissed black by fire.
One huge oak tree stump, old enough to have dated to the beginning of the century, had taken on the shape of a knotty skull, as if it were all that was left of some prehistoric animal struck by lightning. Clear cutting, gasoline, and kitchen matches had laid the dinosaurs low. Driven by greed and the need for a satellite dish, pulp wooders had turned beauty to shit, wood to paper, which in turn served to make the bills of money that
paid the pulpers who slew the gods in the first place. There was sad irony in all that. Somewhere. May saplings sprout from their graves.
Just past mid-day Hank was singing, for about the fifteenth time, "Why don't you love me like you used to do," when we reached the outskirts of Grovetown. Here the trees were thick and dark and somber. Low rain clouds had formed, turning the bright cold day gray and sad as a widow's thoughts. The charcoal-colored clouds hung over the vast forest on either side of the narrow, cracked highway as if they were puffy cotton hats, leaving only a few rays of sunlight to penetrate them like polished hat pins.
I watched the woods speed by, and thought about what was out there. We were on the edge of the Big Thicket. One of the great forests of the United States, and everything opposite of what the TV and movie viewer thinks Texas is about. The pulp wooders and the lumber companies had certainly raped a lot of it, like most of East Texas, but here there was still plenty of it left. For now.
Out there, in the Thicket, there were swampy stretches, creeks and timber so compact a squirrel couldn't run through it without aid of a machete. The bottoms were brutal. Freezing black slush in the winter, steamy and mosquito-swarmed in the summer, full of fat, poisonous water moccasins, about the most unpleasant snakes in creation.
When I was a child, an uncle of mine, Benny, a man wise to the ways of the woods, had gotten lost in the Thicket for four days. He lived off puddled water and edible roots. He had been one of those contradictory fellas who loved the woods and wildlife, and yet shot everything that wasn't already stuffed, and if the light were to have glinted off the eye of a taxidermied critter, he might have shot that too. He was such a voracious hunter my dad used him as an example of how I ought not be. It was my father's contention, and it's certainly mine, that hunting is not a sport. If the animals could shoot back, then it would be a sport. It is justifiable only for food, and for no other reason. After that, it's just killing for the sake of putting a lid on what still simmers deep in our primitive hearts.
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