The Two-Bear Mambo cap-3

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I tried to get up and go pee, but it wasn't as easy as I would have hoped. It was a job just to get my legs over the side of the couch.

  I saw Bacon in the kitchen, sleeping on a cot with a blanket pulled over him. I finally got up and old-man-stepped to the bedroom/bathroom, pissed and checked on Leonard. He opened his eyes and looked at me.

  "I got to go," he said.

  I pulled back the covers, discovered he had been dressed by the doctor in some of Bacon's old clothes. Helping him took about twenty minutes from bed to toilet. I wasn't all that brisk myself. Leonard took a leak and looked in the mirror. "Oh, my God," he said. "I look like the Elephant Man." I led him back to bed. We were doing better, it only took ten minutes to get back.

  "I feel awful," he said. "Where are we?"

  I filled him in.

  "Bacon? His name is Bacon?"

  "Yeah, and he's grumpy. The doctor, you remember him?"

  "Not really."

  "He was grumpy too. And he's a vet, not a real doctor."

  "That figures."

  "Everybody is grumpy in Grovetown. I want to go home."

  "Me too. Hap?"

  "Yeah."

  "This Bacon, he can't hear me, can he?"

  "No."

  "Then I got to tell you, just between you and me, I was really scared. I mean really. I don't know I could face any of them guys again. I'd wet myself."

  "You already have."

  "Oh yeah."

  "And I forgot to tell you, you cut a big fart when you fell down in the alley. I was really embarrassed for you. And they messed up your hat too."

  "I looked good in that hat."

  "No, you didn't."

  "I been whipped before, but not like that," Leonard said. "I've never been humiliated that way. I've strapped three and four fuckers at a time. So have you. Like the assholes next door. The crack house. I whipped them like they were nothing."

  "In this case, we were vastly outnumbered, the space was small, we did not have the element of surprise, we're older today than we were yesterday, and to be just goddamn honest, Leonard, those bastards, young and old and female, were about as tough and determined as any I've fought, and they came on like a tidal wave. Under the circumstances we did pretty good, and the fact that we're mostly bushed and stove up and not broken and killed is due to the fact that we have some manly skills in the art of self-defense."

  "I figure we just lucked out."

  "Actually, me too."

  "I really want to go home. For the first time, I really want to give up. Why'd you have to tell me about the fart and the dick part? The pissin' on myself was bad enough."

  "I didn't think you'd want it coming from someone else. And besides, misery loves company."

  "We were certainly cocky before all this, weren't we?"

  "You were. I wasn't."

  "Now I don't know if I want to shit or wind my watch."

  We sat for a while, not saying anything. I said, "You hear the joke about the lonesome cowpokes."

  "Ah, Hap, not now."

  "Just to cheer you up."

  "You can't tell a joke for shit, Hap."

  "You see, there was this cowboy town, and this guy rides in—"

  "Hap, please."

  "—and he goes to the bar, and he has a few drinks—"

  "You're going to do this anyway, aren't you?"

  "—and after he gets pretty lubricated, he says to the bar­tender, 'Where are all the gals? Hell, I ain't had a woman in six months.' "

  "Is this going to be sexist?"

  "Probably."

  "Well, all right, go ahead, even if it's the wrong sex for me."

  "We can change it to a gay cowboy. The line is now, 'I ain't had a man's ass in six months.' We have to take for granted that this is sort of a progressive cowboy bar, okay?"

  "Just get it over with."

  "So, the bartender says, 'Hell, there ain't no gals . . . guys.' You know, Leonard, for this one to work it has to be gals."

  "Okay. Whatever."

  "The bartender says, 'There ain't no gals, but we got some­thing we do for that little problem.' Cowboy says, 'Yeah, what's that?' And the bartender says, 'Show 'em, boys.' So the boys take the cowboy out back of the saloon, and there's this watermelon patch."

  "I see this coming."

  "No you don't. They take him over to the fence and he looks at the watermelons growing there, says, 'I don't get it,' and one of the cowboys says, 'We just cut us a plug out of one of these melons, and on a hot night like this, we fuck it, and it feels damn good.' "

  "This is disgusting, Hap. Go on."

  "So the cowboy, he's, to put it mildly, shocked, but as we have established he hasn't had any in six months, so he climbs over the fence, looks around, sees him a fine-lookin' melon, one of those striped rattlesnake melons, and damn if he don't actually feel a little something for it. A stirrin'. He picks it up, takes out his pocketknife, starts to cut him out a plug, when suddenly all the cowboys gasp and fall back. He turns, looks at them. Says, 'Hey, what's wrong?'

  " 'Why stranger,' one of 'em says, 'you're playin' with fire. That's Johnny Ringo's girl.' "

  A long moment of silence, then Leonard sighed. "Oh God. It's worse than I thought. That's tasteless. Which is okay. But it's not funny."

  "Is too."

  "No, it isn't. Hap?"

  "Yeah."

  "You know what?"

  "Yeah. One way or the other, we got to finish what we started."

  Leonard wasn't much fun. He hadn't liked my joke and fell asleep while I was talking to him. I went back to the living room. Bacon was up. He had put the cot away. He was wearing boxer shorts with flowers on them, a stained T-shirt, and old brown slippers. He was standing by the stove. He said, "Want a scrambled egg, somethin?"

  "Egg is fine."

  "How about two and some biscuits?"

  "All right."

  I went into the kitchen and sat at the table. It was warm in the kitchen. Bacon had slept with the oven lit and the oven door open. He took a can of biscuits out of the fridge and whacked it on the edge of the counter, plucked the biscuits out and snapped them into a greased pan. He paused to scratch his ass, went back to his business. I tried to keep an eye on which biscuits he han­dled after the ass scratching, so I could locate them in the pan.

  He put the pan in the oven, closed the door, went to cracking eggs. "You feel any better?"

  "A mite. More than I ever expected."

  "You're lucky the couple guys knew how to really throw punches were the ones y'all took out right at first. They can do some damage, them two. See 'em again, won't be so easy. They weren't expecting all that Jap stuff."

  "Korean, actually. Hapkido."

  "All the same to me. See 'em again, they gonna come on hard, if they don't shoot you."

  "I don't want to see them again. I want to go home."

  "There's an idea. You damn sure ain't stayin' here. You look well enough to me to stay somewheres else, and I wish you would. I don't want no more troubles than I got."

  Bacon cracked eggs in a bowl, poured some milk from a car­ton into the bowl and started whipping them up. He poured the results in a lightly oiled frying pan, stirred them as they cooked.

  A moment later the food was on plates. He pulled the biscuits out of the oven, sat the pan on the counter. "Your buddy want to eat?"

  "I'd appreciate it if you'd make the trip to go ask him."

  "You don't move them muscles, much as they hurt, you're just gonna get stiffer'n shit."

  I sighed, made my way to the bedroom. Leonard was asleep. By the time I got back Bacon was through eating. Half the bis­cuits were gone. There wasn't any margarine left for the biscuits, just a greasy wrapper, and the eggs on my plate were cool.

  I eyed the biscuit pan. Two of the biscuits were the ones Bacon had handled after scratching his ass. I ate the others, and the eggs.

  "What happened on the movie last night?" I asked. "I fell asleep."

  "These two
guys, they got roughed up, so they decide to go back and do the guys in did it to 'em. They got killed."

  "Did not," I said.

  "You're right. They went home and lived happily ever after, and the guy they was stayin' with 'fore they did got him some peace and goddamn quiet and died with a hard-on."

  "Did not."

  "I got to go to work. There's Epsom salts by the tub, you want to soak."

  "Bacon?"

  "Yeah."

  "Thanks for letting me sleep on the couch, taking the cot and all."

  "Don't keep expectin' it. I didn't get paid that much. I don't reckon no one knows where you are right now, but give it a few days, it'll get out. Word always gets out."

  I got out my wallet and gave Bacon a twenty. I said, "For food."

  "Thanks," he said.

  "I'd appreciate it if you'd get some vanilla cookies. Leonard likes vanilla cookies a lot."

  "Vanilla cookies," Bacon said, and left for work.

  Chapter 21

  Around five o'clock that afternoon the rain stopped. I was at the window looking at the sky, the dark line of trees below it and the highway beyond the water-covered yard. The sky looked strange. All red and swollen, as if it were bleeding behind transparent skin. The highway was red with sunlight and glistened H like a fresh-licked strawberry freeze pop. As I watched, a car splashed into view, turned off the highway onto where the drive would have been had it not been covered by water.

  It was Bacon's old wreck. Two cars pulled in behind him. I felt my innards churn, then saw one of the cars was Leonard's and Tim was driving. The windshield had been knocked out on the passenger's side and black plastic had been stretched across it and held there with gray tape. The driver's side still had glass, but it was fractured and webbed.

  The other car was the Chief's car, and Cantuck was by himself. Bacon got out with a grocery sack in his arms, stood by his car in the ankle-deep water with his head hung, as if he had just been forced to give all the dogs at the pound a blow job; then write a favorable report on it.

  I let the curtain drop, went to check on Leonard. He was awake. I propped him up, told him who was out there, then we heard the front door open. I went into the living room, leaving the bedroom door wide so Leonard could look out and hear.

  Tim managed to come inside first. He looked tired and vacant-eyed. He needed a shave. He didn't quite look at me. He sort of smiled out of the corner of his mouth. I figured I wasn't much to look at.

  Bacon eased inside carrying his dripping shoes and socks in one hand, the grocery sack in the other. He sat the sack on the television, reached inside, got out a bag of vanilla cookies, tossed them at me. "Little goin'-away present."

  I caught the cookies, let them dangle by my side.

  Cantuck was standing in the open doorway, carefully scraping mud off his boots with the bottom of the door frame. He finished and closed the door. His right cheek was stuffed with chewing tobacco and his ruptured nut looked extra lumpy today, as if it might burst open at any moment giving birth to deformed twins. When he spoke, flecks of dark tobacco juice jumped from his mouth and onto his lips.

  "Where's the Smartest Nigger in the World?"

  "In the bedroom. Right now, he's the Most Swole Up Nigger in the World."

  Cantuck didn't look in the direction of the open bedroom door. He said to me, "You boys know a fella named Charlie? Cop in LaBorde?"

  "Charlie Blank?" I said.

  "That's the boy," Cantuck said. "He called up the office. Said to tell you boys to come on home. Said to say a fella you know, a colored cop named Marvin Hanson was in a coma." <

  "A coma?"

  "Got drunk, wrecked his car on the way here last night. Got caught in the rainstorm, run off the road and didn't have on a seat belt. Hit a tree. Jolt shot him through the windshield, bounced his coconut off a limb after he went through a barbed wire fence."

  "Oh shit," Leonard said.

  "This Charlie, he said you'd want to know, and to tell you to come home. I told him I'd pack your bags for you. And I have."

  "We went by the trailer and got your stuff," Tim said. He stood with his hands in his pockets, as if he might reach down far enough to find a crawl space into which to pull himself. "Leonard's car, the window's busted out of it."

  "I saw," I said.

  "Goddammit," Leonard said.

  "Don't know who did it," Tim said. "They cut up the upholstery too, broke the tape player and all the tapes."

  "Hank Williams too?" Leonard asked.

  "I don't know," Tim said, looking toward the bedroom. "I reckon. They put all the pieces in the glove box. They slashed all your tires. I replaced them. Bill's in the glove box with the tapes. I know it's a bad time, but I got to remind you, I need my money."

  "You'll get it," I said. "How bad is Hanson?"

  "A coma's bad," Cantuck said. "You know all I know."

  "How'd you know we were here?" I asked.

  "I told them," Tim said.

  "And how did you know?" I said.

  "Maude told me. I went over to apologize for the way my father acted. Or rather to distance myself from the old bastard. Got a little carpenter work too, fixing what y'all wrecked. I can use the money. I said I was a friend, she told me how bad you two were hurt, where you were. I told the Chief, offered to bring out your car."

  "Great," I said. "And I guess Officer Reynolds knows where we are too?"

  "No," Cantuck said. "I didn't tell him. There's places where me and him don't see eye-to-eye."

  "Only because he's taller," I said.

  Cantuck grinned at me. "You really don't know me, son. Not even a bit. Hey, Bacon, where can I spit this shit?"

  Bacon disappeared into the kitchen. I heard him scrounging around in the garbage. I sat down on the couch. I was past standing up. Bacon came back with an empty corn can. Cantuck took it, spat a cancerous wad of chewing tobacco into it, sat the can on top of the television next to Bacon's grocery sack.

  Bacon said, "You was gonna have to leave anyway, Mister Hap."

  "Before you head out," Chief Cantuck said, "let me give you a little report. . . . Bacon, got any coffee?"

  "Yes sir."

  "Make us some."

  "Yes sir."

  I watched sadly as the old black man shuffled into the kitchen. He had gained ten years and lost twenty points off his IQ the moment Cantuck arrived.

  The Chief took hold of a rickety chair, straddled it carefully, adjusted his nut, said: "On this gal."

  "Florida," I said.

  "Yeah, well, you boys may be right. I think maybe she might be in trouble. Or beyond it."

  "No shit," Leonard called out.

  "There's stuff don't add up," Cantuck said. "Tim, give me that spit can."

  Tim, with a scrunched face, picked the can off the television set and handed it to Cantuck by holding it with thumb and forefinger. Cantuck put the can in front of him on the chair, peeled back his coat, pulled a pack of Beech-Nut from his shirt pocket. He carefully unfolded the pack and opened it. The smell of the tobacco was fresh and sweet, like syrup on pancakes. Too bad it didn't taste that way.

  Cantuck poked tobacco into his mouth as if packing a cannon. He worked his mouth a little, wiped spittle on his sleeve and said, "There's some kind of tie-in in all this. Bobby Joe's death, this Florida gal missing."

  "So we're not quite the assholes you thought," I said.

  "No, you're assholes all right," Cantuck said, "you're just a little smarter than I expected."

  I could hear Leonard moving in bed, trying to find a better listening position.

  "This mornin' a Texas Ranger came down with the County Sheriff, Tad Griffin. They had a fella with 'em. Some kind of coroner, or dead body expert, whatever them sonofabitches are."

  "Forensics," Tim said.

  "That's it," Cantuck said. "They come to dig up that dead nigra. Bobby Joe. Wanted to see if he'd hung himself or someone hung him. They got ways of tellin'. Did you know that?"

  "
All I know I get from the movies," I said.

  "They look at the marks on his neck, the strangle marks, and they can somehow tell if he did it himself or had help. Or so they claim. I'm not sure they really know shit."

  Cantuck paused, poked two fingers into his mouth to line his chewing tobacco up right, then wiped the fingers on his pants.

  "I'll bite," I said. "Was he hung, or did he commit suicide?"

  "Don't know," Cantuck said.

  "When will you know?" I said.

  "No idea, because they didn't find the body," Cantuck said.

  "What?"

  "I put him down," Bacon said. "You was there."

  "I know," Cantuck said. "Went out there, dug where he was supposed to be, and he wasn't there. Wasn't nothing there, unless you want to count earthworms. Big old bastards. Make good fishing bait."

  "You're sure he was in the coffin to begin with?" I asked.

  "He was there," Cantuck said. "I went out and supervised the burial. Bobby Joe's family wouldn't have nothing to do with him. Thought he had the taint of the devil on him. Was a voodoo person, they said. I was at the undertaker's when they closed him up in his box, and I was there with a Baptist reverend when they put him down in the colored pauper's field. Bacon dug the original hole. I watched him dig it."

  "Colored?" Leonard called out. "You can't be consistent, can you, Chief? Are we niggers, colored, or nigras?"

  "Take your pick," Cantuck said.

  "Just as long as you don't use a term like People of Color," Leonard said.

  "Don't worry," Cantuck said. "I won't."

  "You mean someone stole the body?" I said.

  "Unless it turned into a worm and crawled off. Coffin, body. Gone. Bobby Joe wasn't embalmed 'cause wasn't nobody paying for it, so whoever took the body had'm a pretty ripe job."

  "Any ideas who might have stolen it?" I asked.

  "Few," Cantuck said, changing his tobacco to the opposite cheek. "Could be kids fuckin' around, some of that Satanist shit."

  "Oh, come on, Chief," I said.

  "Didn't say it was," Cantuck said. "Said it could be. It could be other things. Folks might not want him buried out there near a loved one."

  "I know one family was real upset about it," Bacon said. "They was upset enough, they could have moved him."

  "Who would that be?" I asked.

  "Mrs. Bella Burk's folks," Bacon said.