“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.”
“I don’t understand why she’d talk to just anyone about buying Soothe’s stuff.”
“’Cause she couldn’t find none of L.C.’s or Bobby Joe’s stuff on her own, and his relatives didn’t have nothin’ of his, didn’t want nothing to do with him. They were scared of him. Hell, he used to rape his own sister. They say a female dog run across the yard, he’d chase it down, fuck it and kill it. They wasn’t no sorrier sonofabitch than Bobby Joe. He born bad, man. All that legacy stuff started ’cause Bobby Joe did a little playin’ around Tyler, and someone on some magazine or paper or somethin’ interviewed him, and he told all these stories about how he had L.C.’s stuff, and he talked that voodoo jive, said he had some unpublished songs L.C. had written out, and he had a couple songs on tape was recorded way back but never put on record.”
“Did he?”
“Not that I know of. Not that anyone I know knew of.”
“You’re sayin’ Florida was fishing?”
“And she was offering money for information. Lots of money. Them madhouse lizards, about half of ’em ain’t worth a shit. They’d tell her anything she want to hear they think they might make’m a dollar or get ’em some pussy. And it piss me off when anyone try to make somethin’ special out of that nigger. He was sorry, just plain sorry. He meet that white boy at a roadhouse here. I seen ’em there. I was drinking a beer and watching ’em, and ole Bobby Joe had that white boy eating out his hand. Talkin’ that music shit, playing like he some kind of jive nigger, and that ole white boy, he just shakin’ his head like he was talkin’ to some kind of god. He was talkin’ to the devil, that’s who he was talkin’ to. They left together in that white boy’s car, and wasn’t more’n a couple hours after that, they found that peckerwood with his throat cut, hanging from a tree just off the highway, right by the goddamn road led up to Bobby Joe’s house. Bobby Joe smart in one way, but in another he just a drunk field hand with a bad temper. He didn’t think no farther than the length of his dick or the deep of his thirst. That’s the way he was, and that’s all there was to it.
“All that voodoo shit didn’t do him no good when that Officer Reynolds show up. After ole Officer find out about that dead white boy, he went over to the roadhouse, asked around, and me and some others told him we’d seen Bobby Joe and the white boy together, seen ’em leave together, and when ole shitass Officer kick Bobby Joe’s door off the hinges, there’s that drunk fuck sittin’ at the table with that peckerwood’s watch and wallet, countin’ the money. Bobby Joe tried to fight that big cop with his guitar, and Officer just tore that all to hell, then ole Officer stomped the stuffin’ out Bobby Joe, opened that boy’s mouth, made him bite the edge of the table, then slammed him in the back of the head with his forearm, knocked out all of his front teeth.”
“I believe that’s police brutality.”
“Way the law works here. You don’t fuck with the white law. ’Course, Bobby Joe had it comin’. Law or anyone couldn’t have done nothin’ to that jackass would have bothered me.”
“How do you know it happened like that?”
“Filipine told me.”
“Filipine?”
“That’s what we call fella lives down the road here. His mama black, but his father was one of them Filipinos. He went with Officer to show him where Bobby Joe lived. He probably didn’t have no choice but to go. Didn’t want to go, ole Officer would have kicked his ass up around his ears.”
I thought about all that, realized suddenly why Florida had withdrawn her money from the bank. She was a woman with a plan. A bigger one than I had first thought. She saw herself not only as some sort of crusader, but as someone who was going to preserve a heritage, and maybe get some notoriety in the process. She had envisioned Bobby Joe as some kind of Robert Johnson. Magazine articles. A book. TV movies. That would be her approach. Florida was one ambitious rascal. She’d most likely given up her apartment with plans to live here, near her subject matter.
I heard a car splashing through the water outside and became, to put it mildly, tense.
Bacon got up, went to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked out. “Doctor,” he said.
The doctor came in wet and old, bald-headed and grumpy. The black skin on his forehead was deeply wrinkled, the wrinkles sagged like worn-out Venetian blinds. The water beaded on his gray slicker like blisters on a rhino’s hide. He had a bag in his hand, not a little black bag, but a big red plastic bag, as if he’d just come from shopping at a toy store. He sat the bag down, took off the slicker and dropped it on the floor and the water pooled beneath it.
“What the fuck you doin’ to my floor?” Bacon asked.
The doctor looked the place over, then looked at Bacon. “Say what?”
“Yeah, well, all right,” Bacon said.
The doctor picked up his bag, and Bacon led him back to where Leonard lay. A moment later Bacon came from the bedroom and shut the door, said, “He always was a dickhead. But he’s a good doctor. Only lost a few dogs he’s worked on, and they’d been hit real bad by cars. He do all right with horses too. He’s had a lot of cats die on him, but I never did give a shit about the outcome of cats.”
“He’s a veterinarian?”
“He do a little side work, it comes up. Only real black doctor lives fifty miles away, and I’ll tell you now, in this rain, this being Grovetown, he wouldn’t have come.”
“Great. A vet.”
Twenty minutes went by and the doctor came out of
the bedroom with his big red plastic bag and sighed. “How bad is he?” I asked.
“Looks hell of a lot worse than he is. Took a good beatin’, but folks doin’ it didn’t do too special a job, all things considered. He’s a tough sonofabitch, and he’ll be all right. I worked on a hog like that once. Some kids climbed in a pen with a bunch of hogs, took baseball bats to ’em, but this old boar took a good beatin’, got one of the kids down and ate part of his face ’fore the kid could get out of the pen.”
“So he’ll be all right?”
“Not tomorrow, but he’ll heal. Don’t seem to have no real internal injuries, which surprises me.”
“He knows something about covering up, going with the flow,” I said. “Experience.”
“I put his dick in his pants, by the way.”
“That’s good,” Bacon said. “Me and him wouldn’t do it.”
“I wore gloves,” the doctor said. “Well, let me look you over, whitey. Take off them duds.”
I could hardly rise off the couch. In fact, I couldn’t. Bacon got hold of me and lifted me up. He smelled of fried foods and sweat. My muscles ached deeply and I felt ill to my stomach. Standing was the most painful thing I’d ever done next to paying taxes. I gingerly unbuttoned my shirt and the doctor helped me take it off. My skin had turned purple and black and green where I had taken shots from fists and feet. The lump on the side of my head hurt the worst.
The doctor poked and prodded, felt and looked. He said, “That one there, that’s a shoe caught you.”
“Reckon so,” I said. “Can’t say as I was takin’ notes.”
“Take off your pants.”
I did. My balls were the color of plums going to rot and were doubled in size.
“You better get you some underwear,” the doctor said. “These dudes swinging will make you see elephants.”
“I hear that,” I said. “They aren’t ruined are they?”
“No. They’ll heal. Ought to get you some Epsom salts, put it in the tub with hot water and soak for an hour or so every day.” He looked at my head. “This is really the worse shot you got. You have any memory loss?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Ha. Ha,” the doc said. Nobody had a sense of humor anymore.
“Bacon, you watch him. He shows trouble remembering, repeating of phrases, then … well, I don’t know. Give him a couple of aspirins, keep him awake.”
“Shit, man, he ain’t my problem. I don’t even know this guy.He go to sleep and die, it ain’t my fault. He die, it won’t be on my head. I’ll sleep like a lawyer. It wasn’t me got him into this. Him and ole Swole Head in there is the one’s crapped in their nest, not me.”
“Well, that’s between you and him,” said the doc. “He ain’t none of my problem neither.”
“Sure I am,” I said. “You’re a man of medicine.”
“Just counts on animals. Someone found I was checkin’ on you, they’d take my license. ’Sides, you seem all right to me.” He poked me in the ribs with his finger. “That hurt?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Good. I’m through. You gonna live. Just stay out of trouble for a while. I tell you, both you boys, you the luckiest fellas I’ve seen. Ain’t neither one of you look like much, but you’re both tough as a roadhouse steak. The one in there, his head wasn’t like that before the beatin’ was it?”
“No.”
“Then he’s tough, not just ugly. Y’all be all right. That’s sixty dollars apiece.”
“Apiece?” I said. “What do you charge dogs?”
“I don’t charge them nothin’, but their owners pay me sixty dollars apiece for a lookover like this.”
“We get anything for pain?”
“My sympathies and Bacon’s aspirin. I can’t be dolin’ out medicine. I’m a vet.”
“Hell,” I said, and gave him some of the money Charlie had given me.
About ten P.M. the rain slacked. I hadn’t moved much from my position on the couch, and that had been a mistake. I was very stiff now. Bacon fixed some fried egg sandwiches and finally got the TV to work. He found an old black-and-white movie about gangsters, interspersed with long stupid commercials, and we watched it. When we finished the sandwiches, Bacon said, “You want some whiskey? I likes a little jolt or two before bedtime.”
“I gave up drinking anything but nonalcoholic beer.”
“You a drunk?”
“Nope. Just felt it wasn’t healthy.”
“I’m gonna take me a little jolt. All that pain and such, you might want you a little.”
“Oh, all right, what the hell, just a shot.”
He poured us both some in plastic glasses and gave me a handful of aspirin. I took the aspirin and we sipped and watched the movie. I finished off my whiskey and began to nod. The gangsters were taking another gangster for a ride when I lost track of the plot. Next thing I knew it was morning.
20
I tried to get up and go pee, but it wasn’t as easy as I would have hoped. It was a job just to get my legs over the side of the couch.
I saw Bacon in the kitchen, sleeping on a cot with a blanket pulled over him. I finally got up and old-man-stepped to the bedroom/bathroom, pissed and checked on Leonard. He opened his eyes and looked at me.
“I got to go,” he said.
I pulled back the covers, discovered he had been dressed by the doctor in some of Bacon’s old clothes. Helping him took about twenty minutes from bed to toilet. I wasn’t all that brisk myself. Leonard took a leak and looked in the mirror. “Oh, my God,” he said. “I look like the Elephant Man.” I led him back to bed. We were doing better, it only took ten minutes to get back.
“I feel awful,” he said. “Where are we?”
I filled him in.
“Bacon? His name is Bacon?”
“Yeah, and he’s grumpy. The doctor, you remember him?”
“Not really.”
“He was grumpy too. And he’s a vet, not a real doctor.”
“That figures.”
“Everybody is grumpy in Grovetown. I want to go home.”
“Me too. Hap?”
“Yeah.”
“This Bacon, he can’t hear me, can he?”
“No.”
“Then I got to tell you, just between you and me, I was really scared. I mean really. I don’t know I could face any of them guys again. I’d wet myself.”
“You already have.”
“Oh yeah.”
“And I forgot to tell you, you cut a big fart when you fell down in the alley. I was really embarrassed for you. And they messed up your hat too.”
“I looked good in that hat.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I been whipped before, but not like that,” Leonard said. “I’ve never been humiliated that way. I’ve strapped three and four fuckers at a time. So have you. Like the assholes next door. The crack house. I whipped them like they were nothing.”
“In this case, we were vastly outnumbered, the space was small, we did not have the element of surprise, we’re older today than we were yesterday, and to be just goddamn honest, Leonard, those bastards, young and old and female, were about as tough and determined as any I’ve fought, and they came on like a tidal wave. Under the circumstances we did pretty good, and the fact that we’re mostly bushed and stove up and not broken and killed is due to the fact that we have some manly skills in the art of self-defense.”
“I figure we just lucked out.”
“Actually, me too.”
“I really want to go home. For the first time, I really want to give up. Why’d you have to tell me about the fart and the dick part? The pissin’ on myself was bad enough.”
“I didn’t think you’d want it coming from someone else. And besides, misery loves company.”
“We were certainly cocky before all this, weren’t we?”
“You were. I wasn’t.”
“Now I don’t know if I want to shit or wind my watch.”
We
sat for a while, not saying anything. I said, “You hear the joke about the lonesome cowpokes.”
“Ah, Hap, not now.”
“Just to cheer you up.”
“You can’t tell a joke for shit, Hap.”
“You see, there was this cowboy town, and this guy rides in—”
“Hap, please.”
“—and he goes to the bar, and he has a few drinks—”
“You’re going to do this anyway, aren’t you?”
“—and after he gets pretty lubricated, he says to the bartender, ‘Where are all the gals? Hell, I ain’t had a woman in six months.’ ”
“Is this going to be sexist?”
“Probably.”
“Well, all right, go ahead, even if it’s the wrong sex for me.”
“We can change it to a gay cowboy. The line is now, ‘I ain’t had a man’s ass in six months.’ We have to take for granted that this is sort of a progressive cowboy bar, okay?”
“Just get it over with.”
“So, the bartender says, ‘Hell, there ain’t no gals … guys.’ You know, Leonard, for this one to work it has to be gals.”
“Okay. Whatever.”
“The bartender says, ‘There ain’t no gals, but we got something we do for that little problem.’ Cowboy says, ‘Yeah, what’s that?’ And the bartender says, ‘Show ’em, boys.’ So the boys take the cowboy out back of the saloon, and there’s this watermelon patch.”
“I see this coming.”
“No you don’t. They take him over to the fence and he looks at the watermelons growing there, says, ‘I don’t get it,’ and one of the cowboys says, ‘We just cut us a plug out of one of these melons, and on a hot night like this, we fuck it, and it feels damn good.’ ”