The Two-Bear Mambo

  “She won’t leave,” he said, “and she doesn’t know anything. She said Florida was there, then she wasn’t, and she never saw her again. And she didn’t leave any clothes.”

  We bought some gas and soft drinks from Tim. I even bought one of the pig’s feet. We went out and sat in the truck. The rain rattled on the roof and flooded over the windshield so thick it was like we were underwater.

  “What now?” I said.

  “This hasn’t worked out quite like I thought,” Leonard said. “I figure I pissed Raul off for nothing. It’s too wet to do a goddamn thing. No place to stay. We’ve got less ideas than we did before we came the first time. And that check I wrote Tim is hot, I don’t get some money to cover it. Boy, he is one tight sonofabitch.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “On all accounts.”

  “I missed out on an anniversary dinner and Raul’s ass for this, and I tell you, I ain’t happy.”

  “Maybe you could find someone to beat up.”

  “Yeah. Things could get better. What would cheer me up real good is getting to hit that Reynolds fucker.”

  “He’ll hit back. I guarantee it.”

  “That is a drawback. Want to eat this sack lunch?”

  “I been thinking about it ever since we left your house.”

  We got the sack lunch and ate it. I tried to eat the pig’s foot too. It smelled rank and it was like eating a piece of soggy, vinegar-soaked rubber. I rolled down the window and spat a few times, then wrapped the pig’s foot up in a paper sack, double-bagged it with another.

  “Maybe you ought to wrap that sack in chains,” Leonard said. “Drive a stake through it so when you throw it out, it ain’t gonna come back.”

  “What now?” I said.

  “We’ve been avoiding the cafe,” Leonard said. “Might as well go there and get a cup of coffee, warm up.”

  We walked over, getting drenched, the water sloshing almost to our knees. I felt sick to my stomach thinking of going into that place, but with our guns in our coat pockets we were a lot braver.

  The cafe was locked. There was a sign on the inside of the glass door that said CLOSED DUE TO HIGH WATER.

  We got in the truck and sat for a while. “Well, we were ready to go in there and face the devil,” I said. “And had it been open, we would have too. I’m proud of us.”

  “Me too,” Leonard said. “On the other hand, I’m kinda glad it wasn’t open.”

  “Me too.”

  “Know what, Hap? We’re gonna have to go back to LaBorde. Get our shit together better, have a real plan. I hate to admit it, but I couldn’t wait to get here today, and now we’re here, and I don’t know what for. Maybe if it wasn’t rainin’. Or we had a place to stay. As it is we’re just running around like chickens with our heads cut off. I’m wet. I’m cold. No one is here I can be mad at, and Cantuck won’t let me and Reynolds play.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. And feeling stupid about jumping up like a big dog, and then here we are and there’s nothing for us to do.”

  We left Grovetown, started the way we’d come, but the weather was so bad we had to creep along at thirty miles an hour, and when we came to the marsh where Leonard’s car had gone in, the marsh was over the road.

  We turned around, headed back to Grovetown, then took the highway that ran out by Bacon’s place, hoping to find a long way to LaBorde.

  We edged along slowly. The water was starting to seep out of the woods and onto the road. The sky was a light show, and the wind was so strong it was hard to hold the truck in a lane. We passed Bacon’s place, went on out a ways, finally came to a rise on the highway, and when we looked down we could see darkness, and the darkness was water.

  I thought about turning back, but the rain was so severe I chose not to. Even with the lights on bright, I couldn’t see much beyond the length of the truck hood, only enough to recognize a swell of water across the highway below. The truck was vibrating in the wind.

  Off to our right was a short gravel road that went up a hill higher than the highway, and we took it. After a little ways, we were able to make out it was a cemetery road, and we drove inside the place and parked under a great oak near an old tomb that was swelling out of the ground, threatening to fall.

  The rain pounded us so hard I thought it would come through the pickup roof, and the lightning was like luminous varicose veins across the sky. It cracked and hissed and made the darkness go daylight for full seconds at a time. I feared the tree would attract it, as trees do, so I backed out from under and tried to find a clear spot. I finally settled on a place between a row of tombstones, killed the engine, and we sat there and looked at their gray shapes through the rain, and though I’ve never been one to be bothered by cemeteries, I was feeling pretty blue and pretty spooky right then. Being out in the open like that made me feel worse. The tree had felt safe, though logically, I knew it was the worst place we could be in a storm. Except maybe a mobile home. Storms, especially tornadoes, dearly loved a mobile home.

  “Sometimes,” Leonard said, “I think when I die I’d like to end up in a place like this.”

  “I donated my body to science,” I said. “Got it marked on my driver’s license. But I don’t know. I may take it off next time. Stuff I used to think was silly ain’t so silly anymore. I mean, you’re dead, you’re dead, but it means a little something to know your name might get read off a tombstone someday. Otherwise, it’s like you never lived.”

  “’Course, giving someone your liver or eyes and them living because of you, that’s quite a legacy,” Leonard said.

  “Then you ought to donate yourself too.”

  “No, I mean it’s a legacy for you. Me, I want to be buried.”

  We sat there for about twenty minutes, not saying anything, the interior of the truck growing colder, and then I said, “You know, I just realized, first time I met Florida was at a cemetery. I been trying to remember first time I saw her, and it finally came to me.”

  “My uncle’s funeral.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why I couldn’t remember that. A thing like that, think you wouldn’t forget.”

  “Cold is making my leg ache like a sonofabitch, Hap. We got enough gas to run the heater some?”

  I fired up the engine and cranked the heater on high, said, “The cemetery here. It’s given me an idea. Something that’s been building in my subconscious all along. We been going about this all wrong.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  “We started out right, but now we’re going wrong. We came to Grovetown trying to follow what Florida would have done, but we quit doing that. We did it a little, but we quit. We started trying to figure who killed her, instead of thinking like she would think.”

  “And how would she think?”

  “She’d go first to see Cantuck. Maybe talk to Reynolds.”

  “We did that.”

  “She’d go to the road houses, talk to people knew Soothe, saw him and this Yankee together. She’d talk to Soothe’s relatives.”

  “Chief, Rangers, you name it, they’ve done that, Hap. I mean, we might ask something they didn’t ask ’cause we know Florida better than them, but I don’t put lots of stock in it. Ultimately, we’re just amateurs, and we ain’t worth a damn at it. Earnest. But stupid.”

  “I’ll buy that. But there’s another thing she’d do. She’d go see Soothe’s grave.”

  “Why?”

  “Think a minute.”

  Leonard did just that. He said, “All right, I thought about it and I don’t get it. She might want to see where he was buried, but I don’t see that matters much as far as finding her goes.”

  “I think she might have thought she ought to move Soothe.”

  “Dig him up?”

  “If Florida was here to do an investigation, was convinced Soothe was murdered, she might get to thinking someone like Reynolds, or whoever, might figure an inquiry by outside authorities could result from her snooping around, doing an article, and the o
utside authorities would come in and want Soothe exhumed—”

  “To see if he hung himself, or was hung?”

  “Yep. So she dug up the body to keep it out of the hands of anyone who might spoil it, want to destroy autopsy evidence that could prove Soothe was murdered.”

  “She did dig him up, where’d she put him, Hap? And another thing, Florida, petite as she was, wasn’t all that suited for grave digging.”

  “She didn’t like getting dirty either. However, she wasn’t above using her feminine charms when it suited her needs. What she would need was a horny sap who thought doing a favor might get him a little stinky on his dinky, even if all Florida really planned to give him was her heartfelt thanks. Get my drift?”

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned. You mean—”

  “Yep.”

  29

  We sat there about an hour, until the rain slacked, then we started for Grovetown. When we got there the water was running wild and deep through the streets, and we had to park up by an antique shop and wade to Tim’s station.

  The water pushed at us so hard it was difficult to stand, but we made it. The station was locked up. We went around to the back and beat on the door there, and after a moment Tim opened up. He didn’t look that thrilled to see us. He told us to go around front, and closed the door.

  He let us into the store. The room was still warm, but the heater was down to coals. We went over and sat by it anyway. I checked out the junk under the stove again. It was becoming my focus point, especially that little blue object.

  Tim said, “I’ve closed up for the day. Weather isn’t giving me any work. Unless I can do something for you guys right away, I think I’m gonna pack a few things, go out to Mom’s see if I can get her to come with me, head out till all this passes. I’m not wanting to be rude, but—”

  “Tim,” I said, “you took Florida out to Soothe’s grave, didn’t you?”

  “What?” he said.

  I knew I was taking a hell of a flier, but the more I thought about it, considering what I knew of Florida, how she thought, I figured it was as good a flyer as I might ever take.

  “She wanted to move Soothe to another place, didn’t she? She asked you to take her out there and help her do it.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  I told him what I thought. He said, “That’s ridiculous,” but he had a look on his face like we’d just caught him jacking off to a grainy photo of a shaved dog butt.

  “You took her out there, and you helped move the body. All we want is you to show us where.”

  Tim studied the floor. He said, “If she did want it moved, and say I did help her, and showed you where the body is, what difference would it make now? All the time he’s been in the ground, I don’t know they could tell much.”

  “Not for us to say,” Leonard said. “Forensic people can do pretty amazing things.”

  “And how would that help you find Florida anyway?” Tim asked. “That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? Florida? Not this Soothe thing.”

  I knew I had hit pay dirt. I tried not to stare directly at Tim, lest I unnerve him. I focused on the blue object under the stove when I spoke.

  “I’m not trying to say you did anything wrong, though Texas frowns on bodies being moved around after they’re in the ground. But if Florida had you help move the body, and then someone, Reynolds, your father, lackeys, went out there to steal and destroy Soothe’s corpse because they thought there might be an autopsy, and the body wasn’t there, they might figure since Florida was asking around about Soothe, trying to prove he was murdered, well, they could put one and one together, decide she moved the body. They might not figure on you, but they’d think of her.”

  “Then,” Leonard said, “they kidnapped her, made her tell where it was.”

  “Considering the boys around Grovetown can be real persuasive,” I said, “I think she told, showed them where it was. And if she did, and the body was in a place where they didn’t think it would be found, wouldn’t cause them a problem, they left it. And they left Florida with it. That’s logical. If the body wasn’t in a good place, they took it off somewhere in the bottoms where it wouldn’t be discovered, and probably took Florida with it.”

  “If it’s the first thing,” Leonard said, “we can find Soothe, and maybe Florida. If it’s the second thing, then we … well, we don’t have plans. We’re taking it a step at a time.”

  “I don’t know,” Tim said.

  “We do it this way,” I said. “Me and Leonard, we’ll figure a way to make it look like we put it together. We won’t involve you. I promise you that. You don’t help, we got to talk to Cantuck.”

  “Why didn’t you do that anyway?” Tim asked.

  “Because you and your mother befriended Florida,” I said. “Because we don’t want to tie you to stuff we don’t have to.”

  “And Florida was our friend,” Leonard said. “Something happens to a friend and you can do something about it, you ought to.”

  “But the weather,” Tim said. “That’s right out there by the dam, and that baby is startin’ to pop.”

  “It floods,” I said, “that grave may be worse off than it is now. If both of them are out there, the sooner we get to them, better the forensic evidence. And the sooner we get some kind of knowledge of what happened to Florida, even if it’s bad, the better.”

  “Dirt’s soft out there,” Tim said, “but with all this water, it could be a mess.”

  “We’ll chance it,” Leonard said.

  Tim went in the back room and put on boots, pulled on his heavy coat hanging by the stove, then we went out to the big garage and Tim loaded some shovels in his pickup along with a big tarp in case we found Soothe, or Soothe and Florida, then he drove us through the water and up the hill to my truck. Leonard and I followed Tim. We went out the highway where Bacon lived. I hoped the place we were going wasn’t beyond that great hill, ’cause if it was we might not make it, and tomorrow Tim might forget he knew anything. I felt the whole situation was fragile, needed to be pushed now.

  We came to the road that led out to his mother’s, and though it was covered with water, we took it. The water was not deep over the road, but I was nervous as the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I kept thinking about that pickup I’d seen wash over the bridge.

  We went down the road a ways, then took a worse road, but it went uphill some and the water disappeared. It was really a high hill for East Texas, and when we got to the top, Tim stopped and we pulled up alongside him. Down below us we could see the road was blocked by water over a narrow wooden bridge. The sky was growing dark again. The rain was coming down harder, and it was so cold the heater in the pickup sounded as if it were crying.

  Leonard rolled down his window, and Tim his. Yelling across from truck to truck was difficult, the rain was coming down so hard it drowned out our voices.

  “I’m afraid to drive across,” Tim said.

  “Me too,” I said. “How far is it?”

  “On the other side of the bridge, up the hill and down. To the right. It’s the paupers’ graveyard.”

  “I thought that’s where he was in the first place?” Leonard said.

  “And still is,” Tim said. “I didn’t want to do this, but now I’ve thought on it, I think we ought to. Get it over with. We can leave the trucks here. I don’t think traffic is going to be a problem today.”

  When we all had a shovel and I had the rolled-up tarp under my arm and Tim had a flashlight, we started down the hill. We hadn’t gone a few steps before Leonard began to limp as if his leg were made of wood. He was using the shovel to help him along. I said, “Hold up. You that bad off, brother?”

  “I’m a little stiff is all,” Leonard said, shivering in the cold rain.

  “It’s not that far,” Tim said.

  “Going across that bridge on that leg, I don’t know,” I said. Leonard’s leg was so swollen it looked like ground meat pumped into a sausage casing.


  “Guess all the wear and tear, the weather, it’s not doing me any good,” Leonard said. “But I don’t like being a weak sister.”

  “Go to the truck,” I said. “Me and Tim will take care of it.”

  “I can make it,” Leonard said.

  “It’s not really that far,” Tim said.

  “Go on to the truck,” I told Leonard. “As a favor to me.”

  Leonard nodded. “I guess I ought to. I don’t like digging anyway. Watch that water.” He limped away, tossed the shovel into the bed of Tim’s truck, then got in my truck on the passenger side. Through the blurry haze of the rain on the windshield, I saw him lift a hand and wave.

  Tim and I went down the hill and into the water, hanging on to the bridge railing as we went. The force of the water was terrific, and I felt tremendous panic. I lost the tarp from under my arm and the water whisked it away.

  We inched our way across the bridge, and on the other side the water was barely across the road. We walked along more quickly now, and up a hill, and when we came down on the other side I could see the graveyard off to the right, about halfway down the hill, the stones and markers sloping toward the Big Thicket. Definitely a pauper’s graveyard.

  There was a barbed wire fence around it and an open gate, and we went through there and Tim took the lead. He led me over to where Soothe’s grave was, tapped it with his shovel. The grave was covered in colored glass and the cheap gravestone that stated his name, birthdate, and death was wrapped in colored beads. There was a little dolls head in front of the stone with melted wax on top of it where a candle had burned down. Part of the doll’s head had melted, and wax had run down over the painted eye.

  “Empty,” Tim said. “All this shit was put here after we dug the grave up officially. Me, Cantuck, Reynolds, and the Ranger. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was for me to act surprised when we opened it.”

  “Why all this stuff?”

  “Voodoo,” Tim said. “It’s to keep Soothe in the ground.” He strolled over to the grave next to Soothes, stuck his shovel into the dirt at its base. “Old Mrs. Burk has company.”