She rolled over on her back and looked at the ceiling. She pulled the sheet up tight under her chin. “I never said anything other than I had problems with it.”
“So it boils down to I’m white, I’m lazy, I don’t have money, and I could have a better job.”
“That makes it all sound so harsh. I don’t mean it that way. Not exactly. If those things really bothered me, I wouldn’t be here.” Florida rolled over and put her arm around me. “Are you really in love with me, Hap, or are you in love with being in love?”
I thought that over. I said, “You’re right. I’m pushing things. Maybe I just been lonely too long, like the Young Rascals song.”
“Who?”
“Before your time. Like Kung Fu.”
“Do you want me to go?” she asked.
“In this rain?”
“Do you want me to go in the morning and not come back?”
“Of course not.”
We lay quietly for a while. Then she said: “Hap, even though I’m a racist castrating bitch that wants you to be better than you are, wants you to do something with your life besides be a knockabout, do you think you could find it in your heart, in your itty-bitty white man’s dick, to get a hard-on for me? In other words, want to fuck?”
I rolled up against her, kissed her forehead, her nose, and finally her lips. She reached down and touched me.
“Is that your answer?” she said.
“Sure,” I said. “I have no shame.”
19.
In the gray morning I awoke to the smell of Florida’s perfume and the dent her head had made in her pillow. I had not heard her leave. It was still raining.
After breakfast, Leonard and I went to work on the subflooring, our hammering not much louder than the pounding of the rain on the roof.
We worked off and on until about suppertime. Then the rain quit and so did we. We locked up and took Leonard’s car and went out to a Mexican restaurant to eat, then decided to try and drive out to Calachase Road and see if we could find Illium Moon’s place. That didn’t work, we’d do what you’re supposed to do. We’d scout around till we found someone who knew where Illium lived.
It was still light, the summer days being long here in East Texas, but the sun was oozing down over the edge of the earth, and the sky in the west looked like a burst blood vessel. The air was a little cool and it smelled sweetly of damp dirt.
Calachase Road is a long road of clay and intermediate stretches of blacktop and gravel. It winds down between the East Texas pines and oaks, and in the summer the air is thick with their smell, and the late sunlight filtering through them turns the shadows on the road dark emerald.
We drove around for a while, saw some houses and trailers, but no mailboxes that said Illium Moon. We finally pulled up to a nasty shack that looked as if a brisk fart might knock it over. It was gray and weathered with a roof that almost had a dozen shingles on it. The rest of the roof was tar paper, decking, and silver tacks. The tiles that belonged up there were in ragged torn heaps beside the house, and leaning against the house was a crowbar and a hammer. A couple window screens were swung free of the windows, dangling by single nails. The front porch and front door were flame-licked black. There was a healthy stack of beer cans by the porch that weren’t even damp, and it had been raining solid for nearly three days. Budweiser was a major label.
Beside the house was a man. He was black and bald and bony and wore a T-shirt that was stained to a color that wouldn’t be found on any paint charts. He had on khaki pants with red-clay knees. His once-black loafers were colored with red clay and gray something-or-other. He had a shovel and he was digging, and he was somehow managing to hang onto a beer can while he did. He looked up when we pulled into the yard.
We got out of the car and walked over to him. The gray something-or-other on his shoes was immediately made identifiable by smell. Sewage.
Up close, we could see he had quite a trench going.
“Hello,” Leonard said.
The man looked at us. His face was boiling in sweat. He opened his mouth to speak and revealed all his front teeth were missing. When he spoke, his missing teeth made him sound a little like he was talking with a sock in his mouth. “Shit, man. I thought y’all’s comin’ tomorrow.” He stood up and pushed his chest out. “I know y’all seen them beer cans, but we ain’t no algogolic’s here.”
Algogolics? What was that? An alligator with alcohol problems?
“You’ve got us confused with someone else,” I said. “We’ve just come to ask directions.”
“Y’all ain’t from Community Action?” he said.
“Nope,” I said.
“Damn, that’s good,” he said. “I’m hoping to get them cans up.”
“What’s Community Action?” I asked.
“They come and see I deserve to have my house weather-proofed or not. It’s for the underprivileged. Figure I tear a few more shingles off the roof, they got to fix the whole thing instead of just spots, which is what they did last time.”
“I don’t know,” Leonard said. “I doubt that dozen or so up there is worth bothering with. I’d go with what I got. But I’d move the shingles in the yard outta sight.”
“I’m gonna tell ’em the wind done it,” the man said. “There was some bad wind with that rain. ’Course, I took ’em off ’fore the rain.”
“That crowbar and hammer look suspicious,” I said.
“I’ll throw ’em up under the house,” he said. “Say, you fellas was Community Action, seen my roof like that, would you fix it?”
“I’d be all over that sonofabitch,” Leonard said.
“That’s what I figured,” the man said. “Wish I hadn’t started taking them shingles off ’fore it rained. Leaks between them tacks. Top of the TV’s all fucked up. Run into the VCR and fucked it too, but I got it at Wal-Mart. They take anything back and give you another. One time I wore some shoes a year and took ’em back. You got to keep your sales slip, though.”
“Digging a new sewer line?” I asked.
“Naw,” the man said, swigging from the beer can and tossing it on the ground. “I’m digging in the old one. I lost my teeth.”
“Ah,” Leonard said.
“Got so drunk last night I was puking in the toilet, and I pulled out my bridge and flushed it. It’s here in the line somewhere, it didn’t go into the septic tank. It’s in the tank, reckon I’m fucked.”
“Sorry about the teeth,” I said.
“They ain’t gone yet,” he said. “We ain’t flushed the commode since, so I’m kinda thinkin’ them teeth’s here somewhere in the line. It runs slow.”
I looked at the line. It was a ditch seething with broken red sewer tile and gray sludge. Flies pocked it like jewels.
“I don’t want to buy no new teeth,” the man said, “and I need to get ’em now so I can flush the trapper. Damn wife shit in there a couple of times knowing it ain’t supposed to be flushed. Can’t go in the house it stinks so much.”
I looked at the house and thought a little shit stink might actually give it some charm.
“We wanted to know about someone might be a neighbor of yours,” I said.
“Shit,” the man said, “these neighbors ’round here are all motherfuckers. Our house caught on fire and these motherfuckers didn’t even bake us a casserole or a cake.”
“That’s cold,” Leonard said. “Listen, this guy may not be a main neighbor of yours. He lives on this road.”
“This a long road, man.”
“Illium Moon’s the name,” I said. “Drives a bookmobile.”
“That motherfucker,” the man said. “Shit, he tried to come by here see we wanted to read some books. I told him I got the TV Guide, and my wife can read it, so what I need a book for?”
“TV Guide does hit the highlights,” Leonard said.
“That motherfucker’s crazy,” the man said. “He come by here ’nuther time and wanted to know I wanted to fix my place up with some scrap lumber h
e’s got. Said me and him could do the work. Shit on that. Community Action, they use new lumber and do the work too.”
“You know where this guy lives?” I said.
He pointed. “Down the road a piece there.”
“We been down the road a piece,” I said, “and we don’t know what we’re looking for.”
“He has that van, one with the books, parked out ’side the house,” the man said. “It’s white. And there’s piles of that old sorry-ass lumber and things under tarps there. You didn’t see that, you just didn’t go down a good enough piece.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Good luck with Community Action, and I hope you find your teeth.”
“You do,” Leonard said, “what you gonna do with them?”
“Rench ’em off and use ’em,” the man said.
“That’s what I figured,” Leonard said.
“I’d do more than rinse them,” I said. “You ought to use a little Clorox to kill germs, then rinse ’em in alcohol and then water.”
“I don’t go in for that nonsense,” the man said. “I ain’t never seen a germ, and I ain’t never been sick a day in my life.”
“Okeydoke,” I said.
We left him there, poking his shovel around in the sewage. In the car, Leonard said, “I know it’s an ugly thing to say, him being ignorant as a post and all, but maybe, luck’s with the world, that shiftless sonofabitch will die in his sleep tonight. He ain’t doing nothing but makin’ turds.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and his teeth are in them.”
20.
Red fingers of sunlight were all that remained of the day, and they clawed at the trees on the horizon. By the time we found the place described to us by the man with no front teeth, the sunset was still bleeding, but in the east the full moon was out and clearly visible and the color of fresh coconut.
The man with no front teeth was right. We had not gone far enough. Illium Moon’s place was a small cottage-style house set off the road. We recognized it by the tarp-covered stacks we presumed to be lumber and by a mailbox across from it with MOON painted on it in black letters.
To get to the house you had to go through an open gap in a barbed-wire fence and over a cattle guard and down a muddy-white sand drive. The house was white with a blue roof and shutters, and beside it was a little open carport that sheltered a very clean-looking ’65 white Ford. The yard was impeccable. Out to the far side of the house were several neat stacks of something with huge gray-green tarps pulled over them. No bookmobile was visible.
We parked by one of the stacks and got out. I took hold of the edge of the tarp closest to me and pulled it back. Underneath was lumber on treated pine pallets. The lumber on the pallets was used lumber, as the man with no teeth had said, but it was good lumber and free of nails.
We knocked on the front door and waited, and no one answered. We walked around the house and didn’t see anyone. Out back we walked a ways into a large, recently mowed pasture. The pasture smelled sweet, like a fruit drink. Off to the far left was a small, weathered-gray barn. From where we stood we could see a little brown-water pond with a big oak growing by it, and behind it, a long dark line of pine trees. The leaking sunlight visible above the trees was like a fading flare.
As we walked out to the barn, grasshoppers leaped ahead of us. The barn door was partially open and we went inside and called Illium’s name, but no one answered. Inside it was stuffy hot, and there was a tractor and some equipment and a few bales of low-quality hay. I was uncertain how much land Illium Moon owned, but I didn’t get the impression he ran livestock. Most likely he had a little cash crop of hay, and that was it.
Behind the tractor were two small piles under tarps. I looked under one. Stacks of newspapers on pallets. Under the others were neatly stacked cardboard boxes, and in the boxes were aluminum cans and plastic bottles. A few things clicked around inside my head like Morse code, but they didn’t click long, and I couldn’t decipher it.
We walked back to the house and stood on the front porch.
“No bookmobile,” I said, “and no Illium.”
“Let’s leave a note,” Leonard said. “Tell him I’m Chester’s nephew, see if he’ll get in touch.”
Leonard went out to his car and got a pad and a pencil. He came back and leaned the pad against the front door and started to write. The front door swung open under the pressure.
“Open sesame,” Leonard said.
I peeked inside. It was a very neat house. The living room furniture wasn’t new, but it was well cared for. The white walls looked to have been painted a short time ago. There was no carpet, but there were some colorful throw rugs. The blue-and-brown couch had plastic protection sleeves over the arms. There was a cardboard box on the couch.
I called out, “Illium.”
No answer.
“He ought to lock up,” I said.
“Maybe he couldn’t lock up,” Leonard said.
I let that lay, and Leonard went in the house, and I went with him.
“We could get our ass in a crack for this,” I said, but we kept right on looking.
We went through the house. Illium’s kitchen was even neater than MeMaw’s place and smelled of some sort of minty disinfectant. The bedroom was very tidy and the bed was made. The bathroom was neat except for the tub. It had a sandy ring around it and there were little hunks of damp hay. We went back to the living room.
I looked in the box on the couch. There were magazines in the box. I saw immediately by the cover of the magazine on top that it was the same sort of magazine we had found in Uncle Chester’s trunk. I picked it up. There were more magazines of the same ilk underneath. Unlike the magazines in Uncle Chester’s trunk, these magazines weren’t as aged. They looked as if they might have been damp once, but they were in pretty good condition. I said, “Uh-oh.”
Leonard was looking at them too. He said, “Yeah, uh-oh.”
Under the magazines was a pile of clothes. Pants. Shirts. Underwear. All little boys’ clothes.
“A bigger uh-oh,” I said.
“I don’t know,” Leonard said. “We come by and Illium ain’t here and he’s left the door unlocked and he’s got him a box of kiddie porn sitting right here on the couch with kids’ clothes. Seems awful damn convenient.”
“Nothing says he couldn’t be stupid.”
We put the stuff back like it was and went out and closed the door. I used my shirttail to wipe the door knob and wondered what all I’d touched in the house besides the magazines.
“Let’s look in the carport,” Leonard said.
We looked in the old Ford first. Nothing there.
“Must be doing the bookmobile route,” I said. I turned then, and in the corner of the carport, on shelves, were a number of large jars, and in the jars there were little cuts of paper, and even though I wasn’t close to them, I guessed what they were right away.
Leonard saw what I saw. He went over and got one of the jars and twisted the lid off and pulled some of the pieces from the jar and held a handful out for me to look at.
I’d guessed right. Coupons.
Leonard replaced the coupons and screwed the lid on the jar. “While we’re snooping,” he said, “why don’t we look under those tarps?”
We checked under all the tarps. Under some was lumber, and under others were mechanical parts of all kinds, everything from plumbing to automotive. Illium seemed to be a neat pack rat. Maybe he used the stuff to fix up his house and car, tried to be neighborly to folks like No Front Teeth down the road by sharing his goods.
And in his spare time he cut hay and sold it and worked at the church and free-lance drove the bookmobile, and in the evenings, after a hard day of public service, he read child pornography with a young boy’s underwear stretched over his head. It could happen.
We walked back to Leonard’s car and leaned on the front of it and we crossed our arms and watched the sky grow darker and the moon grow brighter. Stars were popping out. In the distance, the pond sucke
d up the moonlight and turned the water the color of creamed coffee.
“What the hell is it with the coupons?” Leonard said. “First, I thought Uncle Chester had gotten to be a nut shy a pecan pie, but now I’m wondering. This guy’s got the same thing going.”
“Hate to bring it up,” I said, “but another stretch of coincidence is kiddie porn showing up here as well as your uncle’s. And there’s the fact they knew each other, and were good friends. Lots of circumstantial evidence. It’s beginning to look bad for a certain good friend’s relative, and I say that with all due respect.”
Leonard was quiet for a time. He said, “Doesn’t matter. I believe in Uncle Chester. He didn’t kill anyone, not a kid anyway. Someone fucked with him, he might have killed them, but a kid, no way. And he wasn’t reading kiddie fuck lit. There’s an answer to all this, I don’t care how it looks.”
I hoped so, for Leonard’s sake. I glanced down at the ground and watched the moonlight silver the rainwater collected in a set of deep tire ruts in front of us, ruts from the bookmobile, I figured.
Where was the bookmobile? Where was Illium? Did moss really only grow on the north side of trees, and why did the Houston Oilers keep losing football games?
I took a careful look at the ruts. They ran on out across the grass and hay field. The grass and hay was pushed down, but starting to straighten slowly. That meant the grass had not been pushed down too long ago, but with the rain beating for a couple of days, it probably hadn’t had the chance to pop back up. It would have taken this warm day and this much time for it to come back to its former position. Those tracks had been made three days, four days before.
I said, “Look here.”