"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."
"You're probably right," I said.
"But here we are, two guys, friends, one straight and one gay, and we get along better with each other than we do with our chosen sex partners."
"Maybe it's the sex throws a wrench in things. Soon as you start doing the two-bear mambo, like those bears on that special, it falls apart."
"I don't know, those bears looked pretty happy."
"Yeah, but way it works in nature is the male bear loads the female bear with sperm, then he heads out, leaving the female bear to raise cubs by herself."
"That's not nice."
"No, it isn't."
"A little secret, Hap. When two guys fuck, neither of them gets pregnant."
"What I mean is, sex, one way or another, complicates things. I don't know how, but it's always in one way or another the turd in the stew."
"So you want to give it up?"
"I may not have a choice, way things are going, but no, I don't want to give it up. It's been so long for me now, the bear on the National Geographic special got the right look in her eye, I'd mount up."
"So, except for determining that you'd fuck a bear, we're no
closer to solving the mystery of human and animal relations than we were five minutes ago."
"Maybe our friendship works out okay 'cause when I get tired of your shit, I go to the house till I get over it. I don't feel obligated to be with you, and I don't feel I'm deserting you if I go home. I have no sexual interest in you."