The Two-Bear Mambo (21 page)

Next morning, on the way to Leonard's, I tried to remember the first time I'd seen Florida, tried to figure if I was still in love with her, or just had my feelings hurt because she chose Hanson over me. Had I lost a love or a battle? Both?

Was I searching for her by going back to Grovetown, or searching for something of myself ? Both?

I just loved it when I got all Zen and shit.

I pulled up in Leonard's drive, got out in the rain and went to the door. He opened it before I could knock. He had a twelve-gauge shotgun with him, a backpack and a sleeping bag bound up in a waterproof wrapper.

"Good to see you still got a bazooka left," I said.

"I got another one in the house, and a handgun in my coat pocket, you want it."

"I brought my snub-nose. I don't like that I brought it, but I did. I get away from it too long these days, it's like I left my dick in the other room."

"You see, your manhood is tied up in your weapons, Hap. The revolver is a phallic symbol for your repressed manhood. Your impotence."

"For the first time in my life, I believe that.”

We loaded his stuff in the back of the pickup. I had my stuff there too and had fixed a tarp over it to keep out the rain. By the time we had Leonard's stuff under there, we were both soaked.

Leonard slid his shotgun into the gun rack above the seat; a baseball bat already resided in the top slot. It was a bat I'd taken off a thug once who thought he was going to break my knees, but he forgot to quit talking before he started hitting, so I'd taken it away from him, broken his nose, and kept the bat. I usually kept it in the house, but I was glad to have it now. It made me feel slightly more comfortable. Leonard's shotgun added to the comfort, as did the snub-nose in the glove box and the truck's heater.

I backed out and we started up the street. I said, "Raul all right?"

"Well, we didn't sing 'The Sound of Music' together in the shower this morning, so I don't think we're all that rosy. We've really done that, you know?"

"Showered together?"

"That and sang 'The Sound of Music' We do it quite well, actually."

"Raul still leaving?"

"I don't know. I don't want him to. I told him if he did, to call the bowling ball head brothers to watch the place. Hell, I can't figure Raul. He's all mopey and shit. Today is the anniversary of when we met, and he wanted us to go out to dinner, go to a movie, do some serious fucking. I wanted us to do that too, but I didn't want it getting in the way of me killing somebody."

"Easy, now."

"I'm gonna do what I gotta do."

"I'm not sure we got to do that."

"Let me say this, Hap, then I'll shut up. I meant what I said yesterday. We got to do this thing because of who we are, or who we want to keep being. Whatever degree it takes, we got to go to that degree. You believe that?"

"I'm not going to kill anyone. On purpose. I'm going to find out about Florida, and if I can hook Brown up with that, and what happened to us, that'll make me extra happy."

"I don't think we can undo a beating, Hap. But I got to go back there and face that town. Find Florida. Someone gets in the way of either, I might have to put a hole in them. And by the way, I packed us a nice sack lunch for later. It's in my pack."

"Bullets and lunch," I said. "You think of everything."

"Bottom line is this, Bubba. It's you and me. Anything and everything else fucks up, it's you and me. We're gonna see each other through this, do what we got to do if the sun comes up or don't. And that's the long and the short of it."

"That's the truth," I said.

"Still," he said, "I hope Raul don't leave."

I don't remember much about the drive that morning, just the rain and the scenery being a blurry yellow line in front of my face, a few twists of dried forests, glimpses of swollen creeks and ponds. We drove by where we had gone off in the marsh, and the both of us looked, our heads turning in that direction at the same time. The marsh had expanded. The water was coming over the highway and the woods were swollen with it.

Leonard said, "They pulled my car out of there.”

"I know.”

"Guess what?"

"It won't run."

"The insurance ain't given me but two hundred dollars for it. Guess they think I can stick that up my ass and drive around on it."

"Personally, I don't think it's much of a loss. It was about one notch above a ten-speed, and that's because it had a roof on it."

A few more miles down the road we started kicking around game plans for what we were going to do when we got to Grovetown, but the plans didn't amount to anything. It consisted primarily of eating the sack lunch Leonard had brought.

Leonard and I were about as far from sleuths as you could get. We didn't know much besides instinct, and so far that had gotten our asses whipped, got us half drowned, shot at, in trouble with the law, and Leonard had screwed up his relationship with Raul, and we still hadn't found Florida.

We ended up driving out to see Bacon. The yard was missing some of its beer cans—washed away most likely—and the house was still a shithole, but someone had helped it along by kicking out one of the porch posts. The porch roof leaned to one side like a rake's hat. NIGGER had been spray-painted in big black letters underneath one of the windows and the window was knocked out and cardboard had been put in its place. The cardboard had taken in so much rain it was puffy and bent back and you could see into the house, and what you saw was darkness. Out to the side, the tarp had been torn off the backhoe by either wind or maliciousness. The machine was a faded yellow and it looked as if it hadn't been cleaned since used last. It was on a wheeled platform attached to an ancient but powerful-looking gray Dodge truck.

We went up on the porch, shook the rain off like dogs, and knocked. After a while a curtain moved, then the door cracked open. There was a new chain across the door. Bright and shiny. Sticking above it was a double-barrel shotgun and the shadow of a face.

"Get the hell out of here," Bacon said.

"It's us," I said.

"I know who the hell it is. Get on."

"We just want to ask a few questions."

"Not of me. Get on out of here, or I'm gonna blow your ass off. It wasn't for you, I'd be all right."

"Just a moment of your time," Leonard said. "Then we'll leave."

"I've given you all the time you're gonna get."

"It's important," I said.

"It was important last time, and look where it got me."

"Come on, Bacon," Leonard said. "Just a moment."

The door slammed. The chain rattled. The door was flung open and we went inside. Water was pouring from the kitchen roof into a big pan on the floor and the pan was full and the water was running over, running over the swollen linoleum. Wind was blowing rain through the gaps in the window with the cardboard over it, and it had been going on so long a few of the floorboards were warped.

Bacon stood in the middle of the room in his jockey shorts. He had the shotgun in his right hand and he had both arms flung wide. His scalded skin drooped over a sagging rib cage. His flesh was splotched from forehead to foot with great pink patches of rawness. It looked as if big chunks of hide had been pulled off by squid suckers.

"That tar took my meat off," he said. "You hear me! They tarred me 'cause I helped y'all. They meant for me to die. I ain't safe, now. You come around, I sure ain't safe."

"Jesus, Bacon," I said. "I'm so sorry."

"That's you white folk. You're always so sorry. So goddamn sorry. Jesus, Bacon, I'm sorry. So sorry. Well, that helps, Mr. Hap. I'm all right now."

"Let's go," I said.

"Not yet," Leonard said. "I'm sorry what happened to you, Bacon. I don't feel so good myself, and it was whites did it to me, but Hap ain't one of 'em."

"He's the one got me hurt," Bacon said. He threw the shotgun on the couch, sat down carefully. You could actually hear the skin crack when he sat. Blood beaded around some of the splotches and began to run.

Bacon's voice was venomous. "Every time I move, feel my skin crack, I think of Mr. Hap, here. I had to soak in kerosene to get that tar and feathers off. It peeled, took skin with it. Both my nuts, they're solid pink. They're ripped right down to the meat. Ain't a place on them ain't scalded by tar, burned by kerosene. I ain't slept a whole night since it happened on account of the pain and knowing they're comin' back to finish me, 'cause they will. I know they will. I'm gonna have to move off somewhere. I can't stay here. I don't know where to go, but I can't stay here . . . y'all go on."

"In a moment," Leonard said.

"You ain't nothing but an Uncle Tom, nigger-fella," Bacon said.

"It's a good thing you're old and splotched like a hound," Leonard said, "or I'd have to fix your teeth."

"Yeah, threaten me 'cause you can whip me. You couldn't whip all them others."

I heard Leonard take a deep breath, blow it out slowly through his nose.

I said, "It's all right, Leonard. Let's go."

"Not yet," Leonard said. "Bacon, they came after you day after some of them came after us. Like you, we were lucky. We want to get even. We want to find who put them up to this, and we want to find out what happened to Florida."

"Fuck Florida!" Bacon yelled and half came off the couch and screamed with pain. "Oh, God," he said, and collapsed into the worn-out cushions. "That bitch, she showed up in town, she upset the balance. Things was bad before she come, but we all knew how things was played. She come around, shakin' that pretty ass, she got things messed up. She's as much to blame for what happened to me as Mr. Hap."

We gave Bacon a moment to stew in his rancor. We listened to water pound the roof of the house, listened to it run onto the floor in the kitchen, listened to it blow past the cardboard patching in the window. Leonard said, "We're gonna do this with or without you, but we're gonna do it, and you might help us do it better. Did you recognize any of the men took you out of here, tarred and feathered you?"

"No."

"Come on, Bacon," Leonard said.

"No! I said NO! Are you deaf?"

"Just tell me if this is right," Leonard said. "You left here ahead of us, went into town, came home, and next night they came out and got you."

Bacon didn't say anything, but he didn't argue either.

"They came out and got you 'cause someone let on we were here, that you helped us," Leonard said. "Who?"

"I don't know," Bacon said. "Cantuck, maybe. It could have been him. I don't think so, but it could have been. Maybe Mrs. Rainforth, she could have said something wrong. Mr. Tim might have. It ain't no tellin'. Please go. Please. They see you here . . ."

"They're not gonna see us," Leonard said.

"They gonna find out," Bacon said. "Somehow, they'll find 3ut. They found out last time, didn't they?"

"Sorry, Bacon," I said. "Really."

"Yeah," he said. "Okay. You're sorry. Just go on, now."

It was strange and painful driving into Grovetown. It's impossible to describe the feelings that went through me as we came co the city-limits sign, and soon to the square. The square was fairly deep in water. You could pass through it, but the water was swift and it made me nervous. Once, when I was younger, I was following a pickup truck out of a hayfield where I had been working, and we'd had to stop working because a tremendous and unbelievable rain had fallen out of the sky. It was like someone had dumped an ocean on East Texas. But I was with my boss, who had given me a ride to the field, and he was taking me home, and we got behind this pickup, and we came to a bridge and the water was just too much for the hard dry ground. It had been too hot for too long, and when it finally did rain, it wasn't absorbed. It was swelling, and water was already over the bridge, though it wasn't deep. I think had we come to the bridge first, we would have tried to drive over it too, but the pickup in front of us tried it. The water hit the pickup like a battering ram, carried it into the bridge railing and the railing broke and the truck went over. There was nothing we could do. One instant man and truck were there, the next they were gone. The water carried the truck away and under, and it was three days later when the water went down that they found him. He was still in the truck, what was left of a cigar clamped between his teeth. That's how fast he'd gone over and drowned.

It had taught me a lesson about the power of water, and I had respected it ever since. I knew what it could do, and I was haunted by it. By the deeps. By the shallows. By water.

Across the way I could see the Grovetown Cafe. Water was lapping over the curbing, threatening to enter the place. In my head I could see inside it and I could visualize all those angry people, falling down on us like cut timbers.

We decided to start at Cantuck's office, but we couldn't get to it. The water was too high over there to park. We parked at Tim's filling station, and walked over. I tell you, outside of the truck I was a nervous wreck. I knew it wasn't wise, especially going into Cantuck's office, but I wouldn't go without the snub-nose and Leonard wouldn't go without his pistol. We hid them in our coats.

Water was seeping under the door and into the lobby when we arrived. The carpet smelled like a damp sheepdog. We were both breathing harder than either of us really should have been. Perspiration was boiling out from under my arms almost as fast as the rain was coming down. Leonard's limp was more pronounced. He had gotten the original injury saving my life, and he'd healed up good, having only occasional trouble with it, but the beating we had taken had done his leg some bad business again, reactivated the old pain.

"You all right?" I asked.

"Unless you want to have a sack race, I'm all right."

The secretary had taken down her Christmas cards and tree. She wasn't glad to see us. Reynolds was out, which was, of course, a major disappointment.

Cantuck must have heard us come in, because he came to the door of his office with a jaw full of chewing tobacco. He looked a lot less friendly than when I used to see him leaving the police station in LaBorde.