We continued at a drag, the water splitting before us and slamming against the bottom of the car, floating us left and right. I began to understand how it must feel to be in a submarine.
Tim's mother's place proved to be well outside of Grovetown, down some incredibly muddy roads, deep in some bottom land that made me nervous, weather being the way it was. I didn't know much about Grovetown, but I knew the dam for Lake Nanonitche was nearby, and not too many years ago it had burst and drowned three people and waterlogged enough property to cause Grovetown and surrounding burgs to become designated as a National Disaster Area.
When we got to the trailer park, I was even more nervous. I'd never seen anything like it. The park consisted of six nasty-ass mobile homes — one a double-wide — standing on stilts damn near twelve feet off the ground with crude wooden stairways leading to their doors.
We parked and sat in Leonard's car while Tim went up to the double-wide, climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. He went inside and stayed awhile.
When he came out he was under an umbrella with an older woman who was wearing an orange raincoat and matching galoshes. Tim beckoned us to him. We got out in the driving rain and met them at the bottom of the stairs. The woman was sixty-ish, attractive in an "I’ve been hit by a truck" kind of way.
Tim said,” This is my mother.”
"Y'all got money?" she said.
Like son, like mother.
"We can buy lunch and have dessert if the waiters don't wear suits,” Leonard said.
Mom studied on that, said,” Come on.”
We moved through ankle-deep muddy water behind them, soaked to the bone. The woman walked with her left leg stiff, her left hand in her raincoat pocket. She leaned against Tim as if she was trying to find her sea legs.
We climbed some stairs, the woman managing it with considerable effort, and stood on a platform in front of a trailer door that was all bent up with an aluminum strip peeling off to one side. There was a huge splotch of blackness at the edge of the door where fire had slipped from the inside and kissed the exterior.
Ms. Garner put a key in the door, and when it was unlocked, Tim got hold of the edge with his fingers and tugged at it. It screeched as if alive, then we were in.
It smelled doggy dank and burnt in there. There was a carpet that looked as if it had once lined a pigpen, and the dog odor came from it. The burnt smell came from a portion of the wall next to the door. That part of the wall was absent of paneling and consisted of charred insulation. The "living room" was furnished with one old rickety couch mounted on cinder blocks and a chair with a cushion that dipped almost to the floor. There was one little gas heater and it was missing most of its grates, and the ones it had were busted.
The kitchen was just another part of the same room, and you could see where there had been a grease fire over the stove. The dank carpet and burnt insulation odor that tracked us from the living room blended with the stench of rancid grease coating the stove top. The fridge hummed desperately, like a dying man trying to remember a sentimental tune.
"Well,” Leonard said,” this is nice.”
"Don't like it, go to hell,” said Ms. Garner. She said that without so much as a change of features.
"So much for the big sell,” Leonard said. ”How much is it? Considering we'll be camping out.”
"Ten dollars a day, pay by the day. Use too much gas or electricity, there'll be a charge for that. I watch the meters.”
"This place looks like you found it when it floated downriver after a fire and tornado,” Leonard said.
"It wasn't so bad six months ago,” Ms. Garner said. ”Morons moved in here were a bunch of them goddamn holier-than-thou Christians. Ones where the men wear their pants pulled up under the armpits and like green suits with white shoes. Women like to pile their hair on their head and wear ugly dresses.”
"Pentecostal,” I said.
"Morons,” Ms. Garner said.
"Did they live in here with a herd of cows?" Leonard asked.
"You're a smart one, ain't you?" Ms. Garner said.
"My dearest friends call me the Smartest Nigger in the World.”
"Yeah. Well, I believe it. What these Christian high-hairs had was a goddamn Chihuahua. One of them little ugly Mexican dogs looks like a shaved rat with a disease. Goddamned lab experiment material is what they are.
"Three men and three women, two kids. I charged 'em twenty dollars a day, there being so many. And they had a whole slew of Bibles and tracts and religious crap. Stupid morons.”
"Calm down, Mom,” Tim said. ”You're gonna strain yourself.”
"Don't talk to me like I'm constipated,” she said.
"Whatever,” Tim said, and shrugged his shoulders at us.
"Kids gave the dog a bath,” she said,” and get this, they put the goddamn rat in the oven to dry. Turned on the oven and put the rat in there. He got dried up all right. Little turd caught on fire, starting barking — screaming, really. A dog gets hurt enough, it can scream. Heard him all the way over in my trailer. They let him out of the oven just before he was a casserole. He run all over the place. Caught them Bibles and tracts on fire, then that crap caught the wall on fire. I threw them Christians out on their holy butts. They had to tote what was left of that mutt off in a smokin' pail. Looked kind of pathetic, even if it was a Chihuahua. Nothing but that old blackened tail stickin' out of the top of that bucket, like a burned-down lantern wick.”
"Yeeech,” Leonard said. “I'm just glad it wasn't a real dog.”
"Anyway, those irresponsibles burned up their dog and trashed my trailer. What a bunch of dipshits. I hope y'all aren't dipshits.”
"No, ma'am,” Leonard said.” Least I'm not. But I'll watch Hap for you.”
"Yeah, well don't put him in the oven,” she said. ”And if you've got any more snide remarks about the accommodations here, you can hit the road before we get started. Let me tell you something. I didn't ask to rent to either of you. My son wanted me to help out, way I did that colored gal. I'd rather do without money than put up with shit. You boys got that?"
We said we had it.
She pointed to a dark and exceptionally narrow doorway. ”Crapper's right over there. It's slow flush, so don't wipe so severe you cram the bowl with paper. You won't never get it down. Guess that's about it. Want the place or not?"
"We'll stay,” I said. “But might I ask, as if I didn't know, why all these trailers are on stilts?"
"About five years ago we had a hell of a rain and a flood. Down here in the bottoms, it comes a good rain, you can catch catfish in the commode. Flood washed the entire park away. Fortunately I was in town. Couple old geezers renting the far end trailer drowned like ants in a ditch.”
"That's what I was afraid of,” I said.
"That's why I had these trailers put on stilts. These are good solid posts under us.”
To prove her point she hopped heavily on her one good leg three or four times. ”See there. Doesn't even move.”
She pointed at the stove. ”Top burners work. Oven don't. Damn dog fire messed it up. You won't want to cook much nohow. Even if you cook on the top burners, stove heats up, it smells like burning Chihuahua. I don't know about you, but that would set me off my feed.”
"Yeah, ”Leonard said. ”I think that would bother me too.”
"Come on and I'll show you the bedroom. And by the way, I don't want y'all having anybody over. 'Specially gals. This ain't no brothel.”
"We don't know anybody to have over, ”Leonard said.
"Good. Come on.”
Tim looked at us, tried to grin, but couldn't quite make it. We followed Momsy into the bedroom. There was a single bed with a mattress that looked pretty dadgum bleak.
"Looks as if someone's been pissin' on it nightly,” Leonard said.
"That Chihuahua,” she said. ”Sonofabitches would rather bark and piss than fornicate and eat. That's the thing about 'em. They got no priorities. My sister had one of the
m little poots, and she used to jack him off once a week 'cause he was tense. Never could figure what was wrong with the sonofabitch lickin' his noodle like any other respectable dog. Fact is, more men could lick their noodle, the world would be better off. Less mess'n around. Y'all just turn the mattress.”
"I'll take the couch,” I said.
"We'll flip for it,” Leonard said.
"Hell, dog pissed on the couch too,” she said.
"Dibs on the bed then,” I said. ”I'll turn the mattress."
Chapter 11
Tim helped his mother home, and Leonard and I went into the living room and surveyed our surroundings. "Well, it's cheap enough," I said.
"Well, Smartest Peckerwood in the World, what do you expect? She should be getting top dollar for this? Damn, I'm cold."
We lit the suspicious-looking gas heater in the living room, found one of an equally suspicious nature in the bedroom and lit it. We lit the top cook stove burners as well, and the old lady was right. That rancid grease heated up, that dog in the oven warmed, the place began to smell like a rendering plant.
"I don't know which is worse," Leonard said. "Being frozen or stunk to death. Flip for the bed?"
"I already called dibs. Besides, you heard her. Dog pissed on both of them, so what's the difference?"
"Difference is the couch looks like some kind of torture instrument."
"I got dibs, man. Bed is mine."
The door scraped and squeaked, and Tim, dripping water, came inside and shoved the door shut.
"Shit," he said. "I ain't seen a rain like this since them old codgers drowned."
"That's good to know," Leonard said. "Give me a little something to think about tonight while I'm trying to sleep."
"Trailers weren't on stilts then," Tim said. He went over and got up close to the little heater. "Brrrrrrrr."
"Tim," Leonard asked. "Why didn't you tell us early on Florida stayed out here at your mother's park?"
"I don't know. She seemed like a nice girl. Woman. I didn't know what you guys were up to. I had to feel you out a little. She couldn't find a place, and she mentioned it to me, and I told her about here."
"Didn't have anything to do with you hoping to drop your anchor in her ocean, did it?" Leonard asked. "You having her out here, I mean? Handy. Kind of indebted to you?"
"I guess it did," Tim said. "Some. But I was trying to help her too."
"And pick up fifty dollars," Leonard said.
"That's right," Tim said. "Besides, how indebted is someone gonna feel staying here? This was where she stayed, you know? This trailer . . . besides, I don't need any grief, don't need the law on my back, and I didn't want to drag Mom into this. She don't need those Klan creeps on her for helping out blacks. It isn't like she was trying to be a Good Samaritan, anyway. She'd rent to anybody to make a few bucks."
"Gee, thanks," I said.
"You know what I mean," Tim said. "She wasn't making any kind of statement renting to Florida. It's not like she keeps this park up or nothing."
"No joke?" Leonard said.
"I try to help," Tim said, "but with the station and all, my own life. Hell, it's all I can do."
"You live out here too?" I asked.
"I got a place in back of the store. Once in a while I'll stay out here. It's rare Mom's got any boarders. Place like this mostly caters to a pretty desperate crowd. People come and go quick like. Lot of them are just one-nighters. Some guy renting so he can do the rodeo with some local poke. Right now, 'cept for y'all, and Mom, of course, the park is empty."
"Not to meddle," I said.
"Don't count on it," Leonard said. "Hap's got a black belt in meddlin'."
"Maybe your mom could stay at the store," I said. "This is pretty, well, bleak, isn't it?"
"She won't have it that way," Tim said. "She wants her own thing. When her and Daddy divorced, she had to go to work in the lumber mill, like one of the other wage slaves. She got caught in some machinery. She lost a leg. Has an artificial one. Her hand . . . well, it was mashed flat. Looks like a goddamn Mickey Mouse hand. No shit. Mashed flat like a cartoon hand. Only it ain't a cartoon. It's ruined. She's got where she ain't exactly right. Gets worse every year. But she remembers being independent, and she doesn't want to lose that. Sometimes, I think that's all that holds her together, being independent."
"She sounded all right to me," I said. "Ornery. But all right."
"This is one of her good days," Tim said.
"She's damn sure got them Chihuahuas scoped out," Leonard said.
"You can't put much stock in what she says," Tim said. "She'd probably have been less upset if one of the Pentecostals had gotten cooked by the dog."
"I can understand that," Leonard said. "Or maybe that's the Jehovah's Witnesses that bother me with the tracts and stuff, not the Pentecostals. I can't get 'em straight."
"Listen here, guys," Tim said. "I know you two and me ain't buddies or nothing. Just met you. But I got to give a little advice, tell you that messin' around in this town, a black guy and a white guy. It ain't good. If something did happen to Florida, whoever done it might be willing to do it again. This thing with Florida, maybe you ought to forget it. Let the Chief handle it. He's basically fair. Let him do your lookin' for you."
"I'm not sure he'll look that hard," I said.
"All right," Tim said. "But you wake up one morning beside the road with your throat slit and Leonard hanging from a crab apple tree, and his dick cut off and in your mouth, don't say I didn't warn you."
"I don't want my dick in his mouth, cut off or attached," Leonard said.
"You should be so lucky," I said.
"All right, guys," Tim said. "Have it your way."
We gave Tim some rent money for his mother, and he went away. When he was gone, I said, "Guess we shouldn't have jacked with him. He was just concerned about us."
"Hell with him," Leonard said. "Seems to me he's awfully anxious for us to leave matters in the hands of that ruptured cop. I think he's just worried he might get asked some questions. And hey, Bubba, let me give you some advice. Stay the hell out of everybody's business."
"What?"
"Stuff about his mama living at the store with him. That ain't your problem."
"You're the one thinks he's a money-grubbing untrustworthy sonofabitch. So if he's a sonofabitch, maybe he hasn't thought about it."
"Just keep your mind on askin' the insulting questions that pertain to Florida, and quit trying to take the world in to raise. I think that ole woman is just the way she wants to be, and that
Tim's just embarrassed by her, and he's a selfish sonofabitch who'd take coins off her dead eyes to buy rubbers."
"Could be ... man, she's something, isn't she. That story she told, about the Chihuahua. The Pentecostals. That's horrible, don't you think? Poor dog getting burned up like that."
"Terrible," Leonard said, then pursed his lips and smiled a little. "But it's kinda funny, you don't know the dog personal like."
Chapter 12
We got our suitcases and sandwich makings out of the car, got soaked to the bone again. It had grown so dark outside, it seemed as if it ought to be bedtime.
Inside, we changed into dry clothes and sat on the floor by one of the stoves and made sandwiches of meat and bread and no fixings. We balanced the food on our knees and ate slowly and drank soda pops. Outside, the storm grew stronger and squealed like a pig having its throat cut.
When we finished eating we put the goods in the refrigerator, which was a filthy sucker and had a smell that refused to blend with the burnt dog, burnt wall, and pissed-on carpet. Its aroma was well sorted from the others, and equally overpowering.
The rest of the afternoon we sat by the fire with used paperbacks we had brought, and read. We were sharing some old books written by Michael Moorcock under the name Edward P. Bradbury. They were pastiches of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and they were fast and fun and pretty mindless.
Except for the odor,
and the fact that over-forty-year-old bods have a little trouble sitting on the floor for an extended period of time without back aches and the legs going to sleep, it really wasn't, all things considered, too unpleasant. It had been some time since I had just settled in with a book and read, especially books like these, and my mind and emotions were just right to believe them, eager to get away from crack houses, a Chief of Police with swollen balls, and a missing woman I had once loved, and maybe still did a little.
When I was a kid, I read a book like this, I became the main character, and the characters I liked were big and strong and fearless and always got the babe. I thought my life would go that way when I grew up.
It hadn't.
But for a few hours I was away from what my life hadn't been. Away from worry and reality. I was on another planet, fighting monsters with my fine, sharp sword. And I was winning.
The pleasant feeling didn't last. I finally fell out of the book and hit reality. I thought of Florida. I wondered how she was, and feared I already knew. The rain quit being pleasant. It had gone back to making me feel cold and wet and sad.
When I looked up from my book, Leonard was looking at me. He said, "Hungry?"
"Didn't we just eat?"
"About three hours ago."
We ate again, more out of boredom than anything else, then tried to read some more, but I had lost it. So had Leonard. He found a couple of blankets in the bedroom, put one over the couch itself and took the other for cover. He took the old worn cushion off the chair and tried to make a pillow out of it. He stripped down to his shorts and covered up and lay there and blew out his breath, which frosted and made a fast dissolving cloud. He said, "You know, it's kind of funny, Raul not being around. I'd grown accustomed."
"I'm sorry, man."
"Me too. I reckon, thinking on it, I was kind of a jackass."
"That's hard to imagine."
"Ain't it? How do you put up with me?"
"Guess 'cause you put up with me."
"Thing throws me is how we can be so close, and yet I can't put together a relationship. You and me, we been through thick and thin. Been mad at each other. Gotten each other into shit— Naw, now that I think about it, it's you gets me into shit."
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