The Two-Bear Mambo (14 page)

There's no other way to describe Bacon's home other than to say it was a real shithole. It was down in a wash and the yard was full of water. Decorating the place like yard art was a worn-out washing machine, the lid up, the drum overflowing with beer cans. Near that, like a dead companion, a refrigerator lay on its side with the door off; its interior was nasty black with moss and grime and an abandoned bird's nest.

Out to the side of the house I could see some kind of heavy machinery and a truck under a weathered tarp. There was just enough visible that I could tell that, but not enough to identify the machinery or the make of the truck.

Bacon coasted slowly through the water, drove right up to the front porch, which sagged a little and dripped water. Worse yet, it looked like the porch was holding the house up. The house looked to have been made mostly of plywood and suspicious two-by-fours pried off a burned-out building. The roof was primarily tin and the rest was tar paper and the water ran off it in great gushes.

Bacon got out, waded to the front porch, which drooped beneath his steps, and opened the front door. He went inside for a moment, came back, opened my door, said, "You gonna have to help me with watermelon head here, Mr. Hap."

"I'm an injured man," I said. "Couldn't you carry me in and leave him here?"

Bacon grinned. "You sore. You banged, but you're all right enough. They spent their steam on your buddy."

"Thank God," I said. "They could have hurt me."

I eased out of the car into ankle-deep water. I felt as if someone had wrapped me in razor wire and set me on fire with a blowtorch. I found I couldn't completely straighten up. Bacon opened the back door, got Leonard under the arms and pulled him forward, out of the car. "Get his feet," Bacon said.

"I just hope that damn hat don't fall off his dick," I said.

It was painful, but we got Leonard inside, carried him into one of the three small rooms—a bedroom. It was actually pretty cozy in there, considering there was no heat, and it looked a hell of a lot better than the exterior. One corner of the room sported a commode and a bathtub right out in the open. Half the room had carpet in it that might have once been beige, but was now greasy brown with a flecking of black spots that wasn't design.

"The decor," Bacon said, "is late slave or early nigger."

I saw what Bacon had done when he went inside. He'd gotten a paint-splattered drop cloth and put it over the bed, and we put Leonard on top of that. There was a little heater in the corner of the room, and Bacon lit that while I took off Leonard's shoes. Bacon got a couple of army blankets out from under the bed and laid them over Leonard without removing the hat from Leonard's crotch.

We went back to the living room. It was small with a shelf of dust-covered knickknacks, a well-worn couch, a large space heater, and a coffee table bearing an ancient television set festooned with foil-covered rabbit ears. Bacon saw me looking at it. He said, "I didn't have to eat regular, I'd get me a satellite dish."

"Quit running yourself down," I said. "I hurt too much to feel sorry for you."

"You think I'm running myself down, then you full of shit. Don't sit on the couch there till you get out of them piss-clothes."

"What am I gonna do, sit around in the nude?"

Bacon disappeared into the bedroom, came out with a pair of khaki pants, some dry black socks, and a plaid shirt.

"You gonna have to let it all hang. I ain't got no clean underwear."

I went to the bedroom, moving slow, bent over like Quasimodo, and took off my clothes. There was a full-length mirror leaning against the wall, and I looked at myself in that. My face was swollen, there was dried blood on my upper lip and over my eyes, knots the size of Ping-Pong balls swelled out of my forehead, and there were great black-and-blue bumps and bruises all over my body. Even my balls were swollen and blue. I had to hold them with the palm of my hand to keep them from hurting as I stepped into the tub and cleaned myself. It was a painful ordeal. The hot water was slow to come and cooled quickly.

I put my pants and shirt in the tub with me, ran water over them, twisted the water out best I could, draped them over the faucets. The water that ran out of the tub didn't go down a drain, it went straight to the ground. I could feel the cool air whistling up under the house, blowing through the tub's drain. It was a simple approach to plumbing. Easy. Efficient. And a bad idea.

I got out and dried on a suspicious-looking towel and put on the clothes Bacon had given me. The pants were too long, so I cuffed them. The shirt was big and loose and felt good on my damaged body.

I went over to the commode to take a leak. The pot's interior was dark with urine stains. It looked as if the last time it was clean was when it came out of the box. I pissed, and the piss was full of blood.

I'd had it happen before. It does that, you take good shots to the kidneys, but it was always scary to see.

I flushed, wondered if the contents of the toilet went straight to the dirt below the house along with that of the tub, then picked up my socks and shoes, stopped by the bed and looked at Leonard.

It was all I could do not to cry, he looked so bad. I touched him gently on the shoulder, went to the living room. I sat on the couch, put the socks and shoes beside it. I said, "What about this doctor?"

"He gonna be here," Bacon said. "Mrs. Rainforth called him. Told him we was comin'. He live on the far side of here. Probably be a few minutes. If the rain's worse on his side, he's flooded out, who knows?"

The third room was a kitchen, but it was a room only by definition of containing a butane stove, a refrigerator, a sink, a table with chairs, and a large lard bucket that collected water dripping from a hole in the ceiling. There was a window over the sink, but a big square of warped plyboard had been nailed over that. Bacon lit the greasy cook stove and the space heater, and the house, small as it was, began to warm.

Bacon said, "You gonna be here just a little bit, then I'm gonna run you off. I don't want no trouble with them Ku Kluxers. You want some coffee?"

"Might as well. Jesus, I don't know when I been hurt this bad id was still able to stand. I mean, I been hurt worse, but not in this way. "

I was thinking about being shot. That had been damn serious, and scary too. Leonard had been hit worse, and he almost lost a leg. But those times were not times I liked to think about often.

I had a feeling this little escapade wasn't going to be one of my top ten on memory lane either.

"You think you hurt now, give it a couple hours, tomorrow morning," Bacon said. "You be stiff as a young bull's dick, only not as happy. You know that was all a setup don't you?"

"Back at the cafe?"

"Uh huh. They layin' for you and the other'n. Mr. Hat Over His Dick."

"Leonard," I said.

"They just waiting for you to be where they want you, and I guess the cafe got as good as they could get. I think Mr. Jackson, him not liking Mrs. Rainforth had somethin' to do with it too. He don't go to the cafe. Never. Not even for coffee. Reckon he figured he was gonna shit off the papers, he oughta do it someone else's place. Someplace where there was plenty of folks behind him. They don't show a little support, they could lose jobs. 'Sides, I think they really liked beatin' on y'all."

"They did seem jovial. I would have thought he'd have picked a more private spot."

"He might have. But I figure, right now, he just want to run you off 'cause you askin' too many questions. He like to sport a little for the town too, keep showin' 'em who's boss. Show the law don't worry him none."

I lay down on the couch very carefully. It was damned uncomfortable and smelled musty. I turned my head and saw the shelf of dust-covered knickknacks. I said, "You don't look like a man likes knickknacks."

"Can't live without them. I had my way, I'd have a room with them and nothing else. Especially they was ceramics of little kitties or ducks. . . . Them's my wife's."

"Where is she?"

"Dead."

"Hell, I'm sorry."

"I ain't. I been meaning to sack up that shit of hers for years, throw it out, but I just ain't had the time. Ain't got no milk, want some sugar in yours?"

"Just black," I said.

"Way I like my women," he said. He brought the coffee in, said, "Sit up, man, I got to have some room. Sides, I got a program to watch. I like the noon news. I like to know who's killin' who."

"I'm injured here."

"Sit up anyway."

I managed myself to a sitting position, slid down to the far end of the couch and took the coffee he was offering me. "Thanks," I said.

"Don't make nothing of it. I was gonna fix me some anyway."

Bacon turned on the television, adjusted the rabbit ears for a while, did everything with them except tie them in a knot, but he didn't get a picture. Just snow.

"Shit," he said, and turned off the set. "Guess we got to talk."

"Do you think Jackson Brown did it? Hung the fella in the jail?"

"Bobby Joe? If ever anybody needed hangin', it was that sonofabitch."

"He's certainly popular around here. I haven't talked to anyone liked him."

"Nothing to like. I enjoyed puttin' him down."

"Come again."

"I buried that fool. Dug the hole for him, anyway. I do back-hoe work, I'm asked. Make a little on the side, digging ditches, sewer lines, and graves. Gotta stay on top of stuff, you gonna make ends meet."

Now I knew what kind of machinery was under the tarp.

"Well, do you think Brown did it?"

"He may not have done it himself, but he probably behind it, 'cause I don't think Bobby Joe hung himself. I think he con that white sonofabitch down here with that music business, thinking he gonna get big money out of him, then Bobby Joe got drunk, and didn't think it through, decided to go for the short change. Just killed him for what he had in his wallet. Bobby Joe like that. Mean as ass rash. He might just thought it would be funny to see that peckerwood squirm. You know how they found that white man?"

"No."

"Hung by his heels from a tree with his throat cut."

"Damn. Taking another angle on the subject, thing we came here for, Bacon, reason we ended up takin' this beatin', is we're trying to find a woman."

"What man ain't?"

"A certain woman. Named Florida. Good-lookin' young black woman, came here not long back? You saw her, you'd remember her."

"That black fox? Shoot, she here fifteen minutes, everyone knew it. Every hard dick in niggertown was after her, and the peckerwoods was watchin' too. I was still able to trot, I'd have been after her."

"She was interested in the Soothe case. She was here to look into it. Do you know what happened to her?"

"She a fool. Come down this side of town talking about how she wanted to maintain Bobby Joe Soothe's legacy, like he had one. It was ole L.C. had the legacy. Bobby Joe could pick a guitar some, but he was a scum hole, and a scum hole don't deserve no legacy, 'sides that hole I dug for 'm. If'n he'd a takin' up preachin', he'd have been the perfect villain. As was, he once cut up his nephew."

"I heard that story."

"Hear about the German shepherd?"

"Yeah."

"Well, that ain't true. That ole dog was part collie."

"I don't suppose you caught the dog's name?"

"Ralph. Tell you another one. Bobby Joe, he goin' to one of the joints, and he stepped in some cat shit by the door. Fella owns the joint, he got all kinds of cats. Don't really take good care of 'em none. Just lets 'em run wild. Throws a little food out the back, and well, them cats ain't spayed, and next to a rat and rabbit, ain't nothing likes to fuck better'n a cat. So they always makin' baby cats. Cat shit all over that place. Bobby Joe, he did his drinkin' there 'cause everyone was scared of him, and he liked that. He liked to go a place where people was afraid of him. Made him feel like a big dick. Anyways, he steps in this cat shit, and you know what he does?"

"I can't even begin to guess."

"He goes in and gets him a beer mug, and he scoops up some cat crap with it, then he comes in and makes the owner buy himself a beer. You know, take money out of his own pocket and put it in the register."

"Least he gets the money back," I said.

"That's right. Who says life ain't fair. Well, Bobby Joe makes this owner, Tiny Joe Timpson, called that 'cause he's big as a bear standing on a block of wood, makes this guy pour that beer on top of the cat shit, and drink it. And Bobby Joe, he ain't no big guy. Ain't no midget, but ain't no big guy either. That Tiny, he done killed six folks this year. Caught two of 'em breakin' in the place, killed two others 'cause he was fuckin' around with their wives and they caught on, and done killed two women. One of 'em 'cause she got mad Tiny was keepin' her husband down at the bar all hours of the night. She complained and words got tossed, then Tiny shot her. Called it self-defense. Cantuck, he looked into it, but wasn't no one contradicted Tiny. Said she tried to kill him with a beer mug."

"What about the other woman?"

"She was asleep in the driveway, and he backed over her."

"She pass out there?"

"Yeah, right after Tiny hit her in the head with a Coke bottle."

"Cantuck didn't do nothing?"

"He tried, but black folks, they keep things to themselves, and the white folks, they let 'em. But you can see the kind of guy Tiny is, and this Bobby Joe, he makes Tiny drink this beer with the cat shit in it."

"Man, I don't think that'll catch on."

"Tiny made sure it didn't. Next day, he got his shotgun, and he shot all them cats, and when he run out of shells he beat the rest of 'em to death. He wouldn't even hang a picture of a cat in his place now. That cat shit, it's always right there in the back of his throat."

"I wasn't under the impression Florida was here to find out about his legacy. She was planning to write some kind of article on him."

"Heard some of the guys say somethin' about that, but I don't know about it. She liked to hang over at the roadhouse, talk to people about Bobby Joe like he was some kind of star. She wanted to buy his guitar, music tapes, stuff like that. She had the money for it and she told anyone would listen to her she did. Them boys over there, they was tellin' her all that shit about how L.C. and Bobby Joe sold their souls to the devil at the crossroads and drank the devil's piss and such to play guitar, and she was eatin' it up."