“This is disgusting, Hap. Go on.”
“So the cowboy, he’s, to put it mildly, shocked, but as we have established he hasn’t had any in six months, so he climbs over the fence, looks around, sees him a fine-lookin’ melon, one of those striped rattlesnake melons, and damn if he don’t actually feel a little something for it. A stirrin’. He picks it up, takes out his pocketknife, starts to cut him out a plug, when suddenly all the cowboys gasp and fall back. He turns, looks at them. Says, ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’
“ ‘Why stranger,’ one of ’em says, ‘you’re playin’ with fire. That’s Johnny Ringo’s girl.’ ”
A long moment of silence, then Leonard sighed. “Oh God. It’s worse than I thought. That’s tasteless. Which is okay. But it’s not funny.”
“Is too.”
“No, it isn’t. Hap?”
“Yeah.”
“You know what?”
“Yeah. One way or the other, we got to finish what we started.”
Leonard wasn’t much fun. He hadn’t liked my joke and fell asleep while I was talking to him. I went back to the living room. Bacon was up. He had put the cot away. He was wearing boxer shorts with flowers on them, a stained T-shirt, and old brown slippers. He was standing by the stove. He said, “Want a scrambled egg, somethin’?”
“Egg is fine.”
“How about two and some biscuits?”
“All right.”
I went into the kitchen and sat at the table. It was warm in the kitchen. Bacon had slept with the oven lit and the oven door open. He took a can of biscuits out of the fridge and whacked it on the edge of the counter, plucked the biscuits out and snapped them into a greased pan. He paused to scratch his ass, went back to his business. I tried to keep an eye on which biscuits he handled after the ass scratching, so I could locate them in the pan.
He put the pan in the oven, closed the door, went to cracking eggs. “You feel any better?”
“A mite. More than I ever expected.”
“You’re lucky the couple guys knew how to really throw punches were the ones y’all took out right at first. They can do some damage, them two. See ’em again, won’t be so easy. They weren’t expecting all that Jap stuff.”
“Korean, actually. Hapkido.”
“All the same to me. See ’em again, they gonna come on hard, if they don’t shoot you.”
“I don’t want to see them again. I want to go home.”
“There’s an idea. You damn sure ain’t stayin’ here. You look well enough to me to stay somewheres else, and I wish you would. I don’t want no more troubles than I got.”
Bacon cracked eggs in a bowl, poured some milk from a carton into the bowl and started whipping them up. He poured the results in a lightly oiled frying pan, stirred them as they cooked.
A moment later the food was on plates. He pulled the biscuits out of the oven, sat the pan on the counter. “Your buddy want to eat?”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d make the trip to go ask him.”
“You don’t move them muscles, much as they hurt, you’re just gonna get stiffer’n shit.”
I sighed, made my way to the bedroom. Leonard was asleep. By the time I got back Bacon was through eating. Half the biscuits were gone. There wasn’t any margarine left for the biscuits, just a greasy wrapper, and the eggs on my plate were cool.
I eyed the biscuit pan. Two of the biscuits were the ones Bacon had handled after scratching his ass. I ate the others, and the eggs.
“What happened on the movie last night?” I asked. “I fell asleep.”
“These two guys, they got roughed up, so they decide to go back and do the guys in did it to ’em. They got killed.”
“Did not,” I said.
“You’re right. They went home and lived happily ever after, and the guy they was stayin’ with ’fore they did got him some peace and goddamn quiet and died with a hard-on.”
“Did not.”
“I got to go to work. There’s Epsom salts by the tub, you want to soak.”
“Bacon?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for letting me sleep on the couch, taking the cot and all.”
“Don’t keep expectin’ it. I didn’t get paid that much. I don’t reckon no one knows where you are right now, but give it a few days, it’ll get out. Word always gets out.”
I got out my wallet and gave Bacon a twenty. I said, “For food.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d get some vanilla cookies. Leonard likes vanilla cookies a lot.”
“Vanilla cookies,” Bacon said, and left for work.
21
Around five o’clock that afternoon the rain stopped. I was at the window looking at the sky, the dark line of trees below it and the highway beyond the water-covered yard. The sky looked strange. All red and swollen, as if it were bleeding behind transparent skin. The highway was red with sunlight and glistened like a fresh-licked strawberry freeze pop. As I watched, a car splashed into view, turned off the highway onto where the drive would have been had it not been covered by water.
It was Bacon’s old wreck. Two cars pulled in behind him. I felt my innards churn, then saw one of the cars was Leonard’s and Tim was driving. The windshield had been knocked out on the passenger’s side and black plastic had been stretched across it and held there with gray tape. The driver’s side still had glass, but it was fractured and webbed.
The other car was the Chief’s car, and Cantuck was by himself. Bacon got out with a grocery sack in his arms, stood by his car in the ankle-deep water with his head hung, as if he had just been forced to give all the dogs at the pound a blow job; then write a favorable report on it.
I let the curtain drop, went to check on Leonard. He was awake. I propped him up, told him who was out there, then we heard the front door open. I went into the living room, leaving the bedroom door wide so Leonard could look out and hear.
Tim managed to come inside first. He looked tired and vacant-eyed. He needed a shave. He didn’t quite look at me. He sort of smiled out of the corner of his mouth. I figured I wasn’t much to look at.
Bacon eased inside carrying his dripping shoes and socks in one hand, the grocery sack in the other. He sat the sack on the television, reached inside, got out a bag of vanilla cookies, tossed them at me. “Little goin’-away present.”
I caught the cookies, let them dangle by my side.
Cantuck was standing in the open doorway, carefully scraping mud off his boots with the bottom of the door frame. He finished and closed the door. His right cheek was stuffed with chewing tobacco and his ruptured nut looked extra lumpy today, as if it might burst open at any moment giving birth to deformed twins. When he spoke, flecks of dark tobacco juice jumped from his mouth and onto his lips.
“Where’s the Smartest Nigger in the World?”
“In the bedroom. Right now, he’s the Most Swole Up Nigger in the World.”
Cantuck didn’t look in the direction of the open bedroom door. He said to me, “You boys know a fella named Charlie? Cop in LaBorde?”
“Charlie Blank?” I said.
“That’s the boy,” Cantuck said. “He called up the office. Said to tell you boys to come on home. Said to say a fella you know, a colored cop named Marvin Hanson was in a coma.”
“A coma?”
“Got drunk, wrecked his car on the way here last night. Got caught in the rainstorm, run off the road and didn’t have on a seat belt. Hit a tree. Jolt shot him through the windshield, bounced his coconut off a limb after he went through a barbed wire fence.”
“Oh shit,” Leonard said.
“This Charlie, he said you’d want to know, and to tell you to come home. I told him I’d pack your bags for you. And I have.”
“We went by the trailer and got your stuff,” Tim said. He stood with his hands in his pockets, as if he might reach down far enough to find a crawl space into which to pull himself. “Leonard’s car, the window’s busted out o
f it.”
“I saw,” I said.
“Goddammit,” Leonard said.
“Don’t know who did it,” Tim said. “They cut up the upholstery too, broke the tape player and all the tapes.”
“Hank Williams too?” Leonard asked.
“I don’t know,” Tim said, looking toward the bedroom. “I reckon. They put all the pieces in the glove box. They slashed all your tires. I replaced them. Bill’s in the glove box with the tapes. I know it’s a bad time, but I got to remind you, I need my money.”
“You’ll get it,” I said. “How bad is Hanson?”
“A coma’s bad,” Cantuck said. “You know all I know.”
“How’d you know we were here?” I asked.
“I told them,” Tim said.
“And how did you know?” I said.
“Maude told me. I went over to apologize for the way my father acted. Or rather to distance myself from the old bastard. Got a little carpenter work too, fixing what y’all wrecked. I can use the money. I said I was a friend, she told me how bad you two were hurt, where you were. I told the Chief, offered to bring out your car.”
“Great,” I said. “And I guess Officer Reynolds knows where we are too?”
“No,” Cantuck said. “I didn’t tell him. There’s places where me and him don’t see eye-to-eye.”
“Only because he’s taller,” I said.
Cantuck grinned at me. “You really don’t know me, son. Not even a bit. Hey, Bacon, where can I spit this shit?”
Bacon disappeared into the kitchen. I heard him scrounging around in the garbage. I sat down on the couch. I was past standing up. Bacon came back with an empty corn can. Cantuck took it, spat a cancerous wad of chewing tobacco into it, sat the can on top of the television next to Bacon’s grocery sack.
Bacon said, “You was gonna have to leave anyway, Mister Hap.”
“Before you head out,” Chief Cantuck said, “let me give you a little report.… Bacon, got any coffee?”
“Yes sir.”
“Make us some.”
“Yes sir.”
I watched sadly as the old black man shuffled into the kitchen. He had gained ten years and lost twenty points off his IQ the moment Cantuck arrived.
The Chief took hold of a rickety chair, straddled it carefully, adjusted his nut, said: “On this gal.”
“Florida,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you boys may be right. I think maybe she might be in trouble. Or beyond it.”
“No shit,” Leonard called out.
“There’s stuff don’t add up,” Cantuck said. “Tim, give me that spit can.”
Tim, with a scrunched face, picked the can off the television set and handed it to Cantuck by holding it with thumb and forefinger. Cantuck put the can in front of him on the chair, peeled back his coat, pulled a pack of Beech-Nut from his shirt pocket. He carefully unfolded the pack and opened it. The smell of the tobacco was fresh and sweet, like syrup on pancakes. Too bad it didn’t taste that way.
Cantuck poked tobacco into his mouth as if packing a cannon. He worked his mouth a little, wiped spittle on his sleeve and said, “There’s some kind of tie-in in all this. Bobby Joe’s death, this Florida gal missing.”
“So we’re not quite the assholes you thought,” I said.
“No, you’re assholes all right,” Cantuck said, “you’re just a little smarter than I expected.”
I could hear Leonard moving in bed, trying to find a better listening position.
“This mornin’ a Texas Ranger came down with the County Sheriff, Tad Griffin. They had a fella with ’em. Some kind of coroner, or dead body expert, whatever them sonofabitches are.”
“Forensics,” Tim said.
“That’s it,” Cantuck said. “They come to dig up that dead nigra. Bobby Joe. Wanted to see if he’d hung himself or someone hung him. They got ways of tellin’. Did you know that?”
“All I know I get from the movies,” I said.
“They look at the marks on his neck, the strangle marks, and they can somehow tell if he did it himself or had help. Or so they claim. I’m not sure they really know shit.”
Cantuck paused, poked two fingers into his mouth to line his chewing tobacco up right, then wiped the fingers on his pants.
“I’ll bite,” I said. “Was he hung, or did he commit suicide?”
“Don’t know,” Cantuck said.
“When will you know?” I said.
“No idea, because they didn’t find the body,” Cantuck said.
“What?”
“I put him down,” Bacon said. “You was there.”
“I know,” Cantuck said. “Went out there, dug where he was supposed to be, and he wasn’t there. Wasn’t nothing there, unless you want to count earthworms. Big old bastards. Make good fishing bait.”
“You’re sure he was in the coffin to begin with?” I asked.
“He was there,” Cantuck said. “I went out and supervised the burial. Bobby Joe’s family wouldn’t have nothing to do with him. Thought he had the taint of the devil on him. Was a voodoo person, they said. I was at the undertaker’s when they closed him up in his box, and I was there with a Baptist reverend when they put him down in the colored pauper’s field. Bacon dug the original hole. I watched him dig it.”
“Colored?” Leonard called out. “You can’t be consistent, can you, Chief? Are we niggers, colored, or nigras?”
“Take your pick,” Cantuck said.
“Just as long as you don’t use a term like People of Color,” Leonard said.
“Don’t worry,” Cantuck said. “I won’t.”
“You mean someone stole the body?” I said.
“Unless it turned into a worm and crawled off. Coffin, body. Gone. Bobby Joe wasn’t embalmed ’cause wasn’t nobody paying for it, so whoever took the body had’m a pretty ripe job.”
“Any ideas who might have stolen it?” I asked.
“Few,” Cantuck said, changing his tobacco to the opposite cheek. “Could be kids fuckin’ around, some of that Satanist shit.”
“Oh, come on, Chief,” I said.
“Didn’t say it was,” Cantuck said. “Said it could be. It could be other things. Folks might not want him buried out there near a loved one.”
“I know one family was real upset about it,” Bacon said. “They was upset enough, they could have moved him.”
“Who would that be?” I asked. “Mrs. Bella Burk’s folks,” Bacon said.
Cantuck nodded, picked up from there. “They come to me about it. Wasn’t nothing I could do. Burks didn’t want Bobby Joe laid down near their mama on account of him into black magic, not being baptized and all. Her people covered her grave with crucifixes, charms. They may have decided that wasn’t enough, dug him up and disposed of the body. They did, I wouldn’t hold it against them.”
“And if they didn’t,” I said, “what’s that leave?”
“What you might suspect,” Cantuck said. “What you been thinking all along. Someone got rid of the body so there’s no evidence Bobby Joe didn’t commit suicide. If he didn’t.”
“That’s the case,” I said, “him not committing suicide, someone might think your office could be involved. He didn’t hang himself, that points a finger at you, doesn’t it?”
“It do,” Cantuck said. “In fact, they’re thinkin’ along that line right now. Sheriff and Ranger told me that right out. Frankly, I’m startin’ to think that boy was hung.”
“While you were away, of course,” I said.
“Yeah, while I was away. I was there, he wouldn’t have been hung. He might have lived to have gotten the needle, but I wouldn’t allowed nothing like that. I keep tellin’ you that.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I thought I’d heard it before.”
“Man does a crime like that, sets it up way Bobby Joe did, had that stupid Yankee come down here with money to buy stuff didn’t exist … Well, the Yankee was stupid, but his only crime was being stupid, and legally, that ain’
t no crime. Bobby Joe could have had that Yankee’s money without killin’ anyone. Could have conned that city fuck and come out good, but Bobby Joe thought it was too much fun to kill him. Maybe ’cause he was white. Maybe ’cause Bobby Joe was drunk. Maybe ’cause he just wanted to.”
“Sounds more like it,” Tim said.
“But there wasn’t no excuse to gut him like a hog, do him the way he did,” Cantuck said. “Even if he was a Yankee. I got nothin’ but contempt for Bobby Joe.”
“You and everybody else,” Tim said.
“But,” Cantuck continued, “he was in my jail, and I put a prisoner in my jail, he’s supposed to be safe. People work for me are supposed to make sure he’s safe. They don’t, and I find out they didn’t, then I’m gonna want to see they get a trip to the death house, get that needleful of shit in the dead man’s place. I don’t allow that kind of shit.”
“Does Reynolds know you don’t allow that kind of shit?” I said.
“I reminded him this mornin’ after that body come up missin’, and I told him if he had his fingers in any of this, well, I was gonna see they got cut off.”
“How’d he take that?” I asked.
Cantuck paused. “Nervous. I thought he looked a little nervous when we went out to the gravesite, for that matter. And damn relieved when the body wasn’t there.”
“So, you think Reynolds was surprised it wasn’t there?” I said.
“I don’t think nothing.”
“Meaning, he didn’t move the body,” Leonard said.
“Meaning nothing,” Cantuck said. “I’m sayin’ he looked nervous, then relieved. That could mean somethin’, and it could mean diggin’ up corpses don’t give him a hard-on. Then, knowing he wasn’t going to have to see a dead body after all, it cheered him up. I’ll tell you, seeing a body don’t give me no hard-on neither, so I can understand that. Fact is, ain’t nothin’ gives me a hard-on anymore.”
“Not even chickens?” I said.
“Not even chickens,” Cantuck said. “But I don’t know, I look at them little pin feathers around a chicken’s butthole long enough, maybe I’d heat up.”