After we ate, I decided to let Jackrabbit stay missing a few minutes more, having by this point concluded she had split the country or was lying dead in a ditch somewhere and was not all that worried about our timing or anyone else’s. I didn’t have good feelings about the baby either.
We went to the used-book store and prowled around for a few minutes while I waited for the headache medicine to kick in.
Leonard bought some Western novels and I bought a book by a guy named Rocky Hawkins. It was He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother: Guns, Girls and Gambling in East Texas, a memoir. It was about growing up in East Texas, and it looked interesting. His father had been a gangster.
The day had mostly eased away from us by that time, and frankly we didn’t know what else to do outside of finding George, and to be honest, my headache was so bad by then I wasn’t up to it. Leonard drove my car while I closed my eyes and nursed my pain. He hauled us out of Marvel Creek to the nearby city of Longview where we could find a hotel.
We ended up in one that sat near the highway and was as big and soulless as an abandoned aircraft hangar. We got a room on the second floor overlooking the highway. I took my headache medicine again and went to look in the bathroom mirror at where the chair had hit me. A knot had come up that was no bigger than a cantaloupe, and my skin had turned bruise-blue.
I stripped down to my underwear and lay down on my bed, and Leonard lay on his bed with his head propped up with pillows and read. I wasn’t up to reading. I thought I’d shut my eyes for a moment, but when I woke up I’d been asleep for a lot more than a moment. It had been hours. I had dreamed of Sebastian having his stomach cut open while he was alive, his hands stuck deep in his pockets, steam rising up from his belly as his innards were exposed to the air. He was smiling and his teeth were covered with blood.
By this time, it was dead dark and the air-conditioning was constantly cutting on and off. Leonard lay on his bed with his hands behind his head. I could tell he was awake, lying in the dark, thinking.
I still felt bad and decided I might as well stay in bed, but I had a hard time getting back to sleep. I would close my eyes and lie there awhile, and then the air conditioner would act up again, and once I sort of got used to that, a rainstorm came through with a sound like an army dragging chains. The lightning cracked and the thunder pealed; the wind that pushed it coiled around the hotel like an invisible constrictor.
I sat up and saw Leonard sitting on the edge of his bed, looking out the window. The curtains were pulled back and he was watching lightning stitch across the sky. When the thunder rolled, the hotel shook. The nightstand clock was flashing red bars instead of numbers. The electricity had been off for a bit.
I went over and sat on the side of Leonard’s bed, said, “Pretty big storm.”
“Yep. Makes you feel small. Head any better?”
“A little. That son of a bitch could swing a chair.”
We watched the lightning some more, listened to the rain come down in jagged sheets, fade away, and come back hard again. I got up and stood by the window, looked out at the highway. I liked the way the rain hit it and the way the streetlights rippled in the water and the way headlights wavered on the concrete when cars came along. I liked how the tires splashed through the streaming rain and the droplets rose up and the light filled them so that they looked momentarily like molten beads of gold.
Leonard got up and stood by me. “I like to pretend it’s washing away all the bad shit in the world. Sometimes, when the thunder isn’t too loud, and there’s just the rain and no lightning, I lay down thinking that way, and I can sleep better.”
“Not a bad thing to imagine.”
“Yeah, but when it stops, and I get up and go outside again, the same shit is there. I kind of hate everybody. Except you. And sometimes I’m not so sure about you.”
13
We ate the free hotel breakfast and went to work.
The address for George was a junkyard on the outskirts of Marvel Creek. On the way there, we passed the ruins of the old drive-in theater where I had made love to girlfriends in the backseat of my car. Once monsters and cowboys, gangsters and such, had roamed across those screens, but now those days were gone, and it made me a little sad.
The junkyard was almost to the top of a large red-clay hill that looked as bleak as an Orc’s wet dream, the junkyard cars resembling the husks of ravaged insects. Some were in rows, and some were in heaps, and there were platters of metal that had once been cars in stacks, like fat pancakes.
There was a greasy white sign pinned against a tin privacy fence that said GEORGE’S JUNKYARD, and there was a gap in the fence where the chain-link gate was open. We coasted through and got out. Somewhere inside, a dog was barking. There was a lot of bass in that bark.
A whining and metal screeching noise led us to a large man sitting high up in a car crusher’s saddle, working the levers, smashing up an old Dodge truck, turning it from a truck into one of the large metal pancakes. I recognized him from his photo with Jackie, the one Judith had shown us. It was George. He had weathered a lot since the photo, like life had held him down and slapped him, but he was still easy to recognize. In person, he had a threatening air about him, like a thunderstorm building on the horizon.
Nearby, on a chain big enough for tugboat use, was a squatting, blue-skinned, scarred-looking pit bull. The chain was about ten feet long and was attached to a big dog house. The dog was barking nonstop, just in case we might not have noticed him.
George saw us, looked at us with an expression akin to an eagle considering swooping down on a couple of mice. He killed the machine and hoisted himself down. He looked bigger on the ground, bigger than Ace. Certainly bigger than either of us.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You George?” I said.
I knew he was, of course.
I stuck out my hand. George glanced at it but didn’t shake it. I dropped it to my side. Leonard was looking at the dog.
“He don’t like black people,” George said.
Leonard walked over to the dog.
“Better get away from there,” George said. “He’ll tear your ass up.”
Leonard squatted, started speaking in a soothing manner. The dog kept barking. He was showing his teeth and the teeth were foam-flecked.
“He’s gonna eat that nigger,” George said.
“Might want to come back, Leonard,” I said.
Leonard eased his hand closer, palm down, kept talking softly. “It’s okay, boy. It’s all right. I’m a friend.”
“Gonna tear your arm off, nigger,” George said.
“You and me will talk in a moment,” Leonard said. He eased his hand toward the dog some more. The dog quit barking. “Good boy.”
The dog lunged, snapped at Leonard’s hand, but Leonard moved it just in time.
“Told you,” said George. “Rex will get you good.”
Leonard tried again, continuing with the soothing talk. “Rex. It’s all right.”
The dog sat down.
I saw George’s face grow even more rigid than it already was.
Leonard patted the dog on the head and the dog let him.
“Goddamn it,” George said. “Rex has gone to seed.”
“No,” Leonard said. “He’s tired of being on a chain.”
“I let him loose at night in the yard to discourage light-fingered visitors.”
“But there’s no one here then, is there?” Leonard said. “He gets lonely.” Leonard was hugging the dog’s neck now.
“Get away from my dog.”
Leonard took his time, patted the dog some more, then came over to stand where me and George stood.
“You got a way with dogs,” George said.
“Yeah, it’s people I don’t like. Ought not keep him chained up like that,” Leonard said.
“Who are you two? Fucking ASPCA? You come here to give me freelance dog advice, or you got a real reason for being here? Buy some junk or take a hike. I got cars to c
rush.”
I knew Leonard, and I knew he had not dismissed that whole “nigger” business, but as of late, he seemed to be a little calmer. These days he was more likely to cripple you than kill you. But it could be a passing phase.
A man about my height and build but ten to fifteen years younger came out from behind the crusher. He was a nice-looking man with dark brown, cut-close hair and a face as smoothly shaved as a model’s pussy. He was wearing a crisp bright smile that looked only a little less sincere than the one they paint on ventriloquist dummies. He had on a black T-shirt and black slacks and shoes to match. His nose appeared to have been broken at one time, giving his face a look of both boyish geniality and rakish menace.
“What’s up?” he said. He said that like he had sensed a disturbance in the force, à la Star Wars, and was trying to calm it.
“Couple of dog lovers have come to visit Rex,” George said.
Leonard still had his eyes locked on George. He seemed to have hardly noticed the other man, but I knew better. One he was trying to intimidate, and the other he was watching without seeming to. There was this thing about the man in the black T-shirt that made you think he wanted you to notice him, and I think that’s why Leonard wasn’t.
“Ah,” the man in black said. “Yes, and I hope you have asked him to give the dog more priority, something better than a short chain and a long life to live on it. I have suggested it, but so far, no response.”
“Who says Rex gets a long life,” George said. “Hell, he’s happy. He’s a dog. He gets to fight other dogs from time to time, and he hasn’t lost yet. He likes that. That, and eating and fucking and cat-killing, that’s his pleasure.”
“You fight dogs?” Leonard said.
“When the law doesn’t catch me,” George said. He smiled. He was missing a top back tooth. I hoped it had been knocked out with a two-by-four. I know Leonard was considering knocking the rest out with his fists, and it had certainly crossed my mind. Dogfighting is next to child abuse in my book.
“Horrid business,” the other man said. “They call me Professor.” He came forward and shook our hands. “George here, he’s a friend, and he’s all right, but he’s not, shall we say, refined.”
“Oh, hell, Professor,” George said.
That’s when I noticed two men drifting out from a row of cars and moving in our direction. They were dressed alike in clothes that looked too heavy for the climate. Long-sleeved white shirts and black vests that I knew were designed to cover holstered guns. They had thick hair that was black as death combed tight against their heads, and whatever they used to hold it in place glimmered in the sunlight like a waxed car. They were both tall and lean, alabaster faces and thick lips, and the same features. Twins. They came over and stood by George, and I have to tell you, I have never seen deader faces than those, eyes as black and empty as tunnels to nowhere.
Professor said, “Oh, that’s the Fairview twins. They work for me, but I won’t introduce you to them. They don’t make friends all that well.”
“They don’t look to me like they could make change,” Leonard said. He was studying them like they were specimens in a petri dish.
The twins seemed not to blink, and now they were no longer moving.
I turned my attention to George, said, “What we’re here for is we’re looking for Jackie Mulhaney, sometimes known as Jackrabbit. You know her, don’t you?”
“Knew her,” George said. “Bitch was crazy. Always going on about numbers and dimensions or some such shit. Ran around with the wrong kind of people. I finally had enough of her. I’ve already had enough of you, for that matter. I don’t know you from a sack of rocks, coming in here fucking with my dog.”
“Be friendly,” Professor said.
“You don’t make them be friendly,” George said, nodding at the twins.
“They are something else,” Professor said. “You run a business.”
“Not like they want any of this business,” George said, nodding at us this time. “I think they’re giving me the business, that’s what I think.”
“Answer their questions, George,” Professor said. “Go on.”
“You said she was running with the wrong kind of people,” I said. “What do you mean by ‘wrong kind of people’?”
“Ran around with people outside her place in life,” George said. “She took a step down.”
“You mean she was hanging with the brothers, huh?” Leonard said.
“Ain’t my brothers.”
“Reason she changed up like that is the dicks,” Leonard said. “We black men all got enormous dicks. Mine is so big and heavy I keep it in the car.”
“You’re not all that funny,” George said.
“Hey,” Leonard said. “Who’s joking.”
Professor chuckled a little, but it didn’t sound all that sincere to me. The twins hadn’t so much as moved.
“I’ve talked all I’m going to talk, coming in here telling me how to raise my dog, asking me questions ain’t none of your business. Ought to bust your heads.”
Leonard smiled, but there was nothing friendly about it.
“I think you only think you’re bad,” Leonard said. “Pushing us around, that won’t be like shoving some cracker that owes you money, chaining up some trusting dog. It might take a little more work. You might need an overnight bag. And I hope you got room up your ass for them twins, ’cause that’s where I’m going to shove them.”
George moved forward slightly. Leonard didn’t move at all. Neither did the twins.
“Here now, George,” Professor said, and he touched George on the shoulder.
George glared at Leonard, but he had stopped moving.
“Get out of my junkyard,” George said.
“All right,” I said.
The twins finally moved. Almost in unison they slipped dark sunglasses from their pockets and put them on. That was it. When they had them on, they let their hands hang by their sides again.
“Let me walk you gentlemen out,” Professor said. He looked back at the twins and George. “I’ll be fine. Stay here.”
“Where’d you get the bookends?” Leonard said, nodding at the twins.
“Best not to antagonize them,” Professor said.
Leonard stared at them a little longer, then we turned and started out, Professor walking with us.
As we went, Professor said, “George isn’t really a bad man, just a little unrefined.”
“That so?” Leonard said.
When we got to the car Professor said, “Let me explain it as best I can, keeping it brief. Once there were a lot of folks in this part of the country that felt they were superior to people that weren’t like them.”
“You mean people who weren’t white?” Leonard said.
“Correct,” Professor said, and nodded. “They were pretty foolish about the idea. Hated people with darker skin, led to them doing some very nasty things to them. Lynching, for example. It was our way or the highway. That was the white view.”
“I remember it unfondly,” Leonard said.
“I suppose so,” Professor said. “Me, I’m not like that. I’m not filled with that kind of hate. But I am a segregationist. Not a racist.”
“Segregationist is just another way to spell racist,” Leonard said. “Only difference is the long word wears a hat and tie.”
“No,” Professor said. “There is a difference. I can talk to you and work with you and generally get along with you, but I believe the races are supposed to be separated. I think it’s God’s word and nature’s law. You over there, me over here. We can see each other on the street, can speak, even call ourselves friends, but when we part ways, you go to where you belong, and I go to where I belong. I believe Negroes should have their own section, if you will.”
“Nigger Town,” Leonard said.
“You said it, I didn’t. I try not to use that word. I know it’s offensive, but I don’t believe in the absolute mixing of the races and certainly not dating and mar
rying. You come to my house, that’s my castle. I might ask you in. I might give you a cup of coffee and not do what they did of old, which was break the cup after you drank out of it.”
“Wow, you are just a beacon of contemporary thinking,” Leonard said.
Professor didn’t blink, just plowed ahead.
“You work for me or I know you, Negro or not, you got yourself in trouble, I’d be there to bail you out, help you out. Up to a point.”
“You’re assuming black people get in trouble on a regular basis?” I said.
“Not at all. I think there are good and bad on both sides of the fence. I merely believe in a fence with a gate, so we can cross over to either side for certain things, work, a bit of this, a bit of that, but I think sometimes we need to lock that gate. I wouldn’t want the sun to go down with a black person in the house, nor, on the other hand, do I believe you should want a white person to be in yours. The mixing of races is not intended, and that is why we have different colors of skin. Tribal identification. It’s a natural law, if not currently a legal one. Some believe we can’t change that, can’t have separate but equal, but I think we can, and will. We have to return to a more balanced life. Bar the Hispanics from crossing the border. Put up a wall. Keep other religions and races out of America. Our country can only hold so many comfortably. That’s common sense. Is that racist?”
“I’m going to go with the idea that it is,” I said. “Leonard lived at our house. Never ended up missing one piece of silverware while he was there. Vanilla cookies, however, you have to watch out for. Comes to those, he’s without a conscience.”
“They call my name,” Leonard said.
“You can do as you please,” Professor said. “But I believe there is a place for us all, and—”
“Is this where you talk about each kind of bird knows its place and doesn’t mate with the other?”
“Perhaps,” Professor said.
“What about dogs and wolves, donkeys and horses?” Leonard said. He looked at me. “Will a squirrel fuck a rabbit, Hap?”