“Just start and go,” I said.
“I hate being buffaloed,” Leonard said. “And I hate a man thinks I don’t appreciate Elvis.”
“Yeah, but I hate more being dead.”
Leonard fumed silently, fired up his junker and started to drive. Chief Cantuck leaned down and smiled tobacco at us through Leonard’s rain-beaded car window as we went by.
When I looked back over my shoulder I saw him stooped by the remains of the house, working those wet, smoking Elvis cards toward him with a stick.
9
We drove back into town beneath a churning black sky kicked open and brightened now and then by cruel bursts of lightning. By the time we wheeled into downtown Grovetown, Leonard had on a rockin’ zydeco tape even I could appreciate. Those dudes were blowing accordion music hot as devil farts through Leonard’s cheap speakers, melting down the wires, making me hungry for gumbo.
We stopped at the filling station and I got out and got hold of one of the serve-yourself nozzles. Before I was allowed to put in the gas, Leonard had to finish hearing out a song on the tape player, and since his cheap system didn’t play unless the motor was running, I stood outside willing and waiting with my gas nozzle cocked and ready, tapping my boot to the jump of the music.
Acquaintance of mine, Gerald Matter, who used to own a gas station in downtown LaBorde, told me once, you never load in the gas with the car motor running, or you might get a little spark, end up with your ass on the far side of the moon. “Safety first” was Gerald’s motto.
’Course, Gerald lost the station for lack of payment back in nineteen seventy-eight, but he hadn’t quite gotten the gas and oil business out of his blood. He did him a stretch in prison for trying to rob a filling station in Gilmer with a sharpened butter knife. Fat lady that ran the place came over the counter after him, got him by the throat, and beat the pure-dee dog shit out of him, took his knife away. She then proceeded to carve off part of his head before she could be subdued by a handful of shocked customers waiting on their free “crystal” dish with a fill-up.
Gerald has done his time and he’s out now and he might even be a little smarter. But he’s grown bashful, wears hats indoors and out to hide what’s missing on top of his head, though except for a flap cap he wears now and then, it doesn’t do a damn thing for his absent left ear. These days Gerald has abandoned gas and oil and has a little carpet-cleaning business and likes to go to bed early.
While I waited with the nozzle, the tall, pale-faced man we had seen earlier came out in his thick coat with his cap in his hand, picked up on Clifton Chenier calling out “Eh, Petite Fille,” from Leonard’s tape deck, smiled, sang a verse with Clifton, jiggled a little and flop-kneed on out to the car. His long body, pasty face, and gyrations made him look like an albino grasshopper on speed.
He reached the car dancing and grinning, stopped and laughed. “Damn,” he said, “give an accordion to a redneck and all he can do is play ‘Home on the Range’ or some goddamn polka, give it to a coonass and he’ll make the music crawl up your butt and play with your kidneys.”
“That’s right,” Leonard said. He was standing outside the driver’s door, leaning on the rooftop, listening. When the song finished, Leonard cut off the motor, and I started pumping gas.
“How’re y’all,” said the pale-faced man. He had a grin as infectious as syphilis.
“Good,” I said. “Cold and a little damp, but good.”
“Well, accordin’ to the weather report, we’re all gonna get colder and damper. Air is blowing ass over tea kettle down from Canada, churning like pig feet a boilin’, only the air ain’t warm. There’s penguins would faint they knew something like this was comin’.”
“Damn,” I said. “That bad?”
“Let’s just say them suitcases you got in back of your car there better not be filled with Hawaiian shirts and sun hats … hey, speakin’ of pig’s feet boilin’—”
“Were we?” I said.
“Well, I was,” said the man. “I got some pickled ones inside that’re peppered just right. Fifty cents a pig stump. You might like to try ’em. Just got ’em in. Can’t keep ’em, they go so fast. Fellow I know out in the country makes ’em. Them buddies are so spicy, you eat one, you’ll be able to do a push-up with your dick.”
“Maybe I could use some of that,” I said. “I was younger, I woke up and did a push-up with my dick without pickled pig’s feet. Now, got to get enough sleep to do it, and then when I try to do it, I need sleep.”
“Ain’t that the shits?” he said. “Just when you get older and figure out what it’s all about, what it’s all about you ain’t able to do.”
“Say, listen,” I said. “We’re gonna get a couple of cans of oil too, but we’re looking for someone. Main reason we stopped in here.”
Leonard said, “Lady named Florida Grange.”
“Oh, yeah. Nice lady. A looker too. She was around here a few days.” He looked at Leonard. “You kin?”
“Nope,” Leonard said.
“Boyfriend? Either of you?” He gave me a good hard look. “Though in this town, you better not say you are if you are.”
“Nope,” I said. “We’re not boyfriends.”
“She owe you money?”
“Nope.”
“Y’all some kinda law?”
“Nope.”
“Well then, let me say I tried serious hard and major purposeful to put the make on that little gal, but she wasn’t havin’ any. I think she has a thing about white guys. And not a good thing.”
“Trust me,” I said. “She does.”
“Ah, so you tried her too?” he said.
“It didn’t work out,” I said. “You might say I’m an ex-boyfriend. But what we’re lookin’ for is to help out her current boyfriend who’s worried about her. And we want to do it because we’re friends of hers too. Sort of. Used to be.”
“I see,” the man said. “I think.”
It grew very dark suddenly, then there was a crack of thunder and a sizzling race of lightning, and right after that it seemed as if a great tidal wave washed over us. The rain came down so hard it nearly knocked us flat.
“Goddamn,” said the pale-faced man, putting his cap on. “There it is. Y’all come on in and we’ll talk.”
Leonard followed the man inside. I topped off the tank, hung up the gas nozzle, and damn near swam to the door. Inside, the store was warm and the lights were on, and the cold rain and midday darkness outside made the place seem tight and cozy.
The joint was stocked with pretty basic goods. Breads, crackers, a lunch meat cooler housing pressed ham, bologna, olive and liver loaf. There were soft drinks, peanuts, chips, that kind of stuff. Cans of oil, transmission and brake fluids. A rack of John Deere caps. A few straw cowboy hats. A cardboard display of colored plastic combs, and on the wall a dusty calendar over ten years out of date with a gorgeous, big-breasted woman in shorts and a halter top holding a wrench and smiling; the logo above her read January, and above that Snap Tight Tools.
Next to the cash register were two large jars containing yellowish brine water, and by my standards, some rather nasty looking pig’s tootsies. Didn’t appear to me that before they pickled them little delights they had washed the pig shit out from between the hooves, but maybe that was just a concentration of black pepper and meat gelatin.
There was a homemade oil barrel stove in the middle of the room, and there were lawn chairs and wicker-bottomed chairs pulled all around it. Near a couple chairs were two tobacco-splattered cuspidors, and the floor around them, which was covered with newspaper, was also splattered. Beneath the stove there was a large square of scarred, fire-spotted linoleum, and on it were tufts of dust bunnies, a chewing tobacco wrapper, and something that looked like blue glass or plastic that caught the electric light and pulled it in and winked it back.
There was a small stack of firewood next to the stove and there was a hatchet stuck deep in one of the logs and a gray lizard lay by the hatchet, att
empting to trick us into thinking he was nothing more than a wood knot.
At the back of the store was an aluminum Christmas tree covered in lights and colored ornaments. The lights weren’t on, and the angel at the top of the tree was too heavy for the little tip, so it leaned to one side, as if it were about to be cast from heaven.
Leonard paid for the gas and bought some oil, and when he got his change back, the pale-faced man said, “Y’all want some coffee?”
“You bet,” Leonard said.
“I got a pot goin’ in back. Sit down.”
We took us a spot by the stove and sat. Leonard eyed the cuspidors and the tobacco wads, said, “Looks of this place, this ole boy talks to everybody, and for some time. He might know something nobody else does.”
“And maybe just the weather report and where to get pig’s feet,” I said.
A moment later the man came back with two cups of coffee. He gave us a cup apiece, disappeared into the back of the store again, came back with a cup for himself and some ragged white towels. He tossed the towels at us. We used them to dry off. The station man sat his cup on the stove and took off his heavy coat and draped it over a chair near the stove, sat in another chair, put his feet up close to the heat.
“Now, you’re lookin’ for this gal?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I said.
“By the way, my name’s Tim Garner.”
“Glad to meet you,” I said, and Leonard and I leaned forward and took turns shaking Tim’s hand and giving our names. When we finished, Tim kicked back again and sipped his coffee.
“What do you mean she’s missing?”
“Last time anyone’s seen her we know about was here,” Leonard said.
“No shit?”
“No shit,” Leonard said. Outside the lightning gave the sky a workout and the flashes went all through the store. The lights faded, and the pickled pig’s feet, for a fleeting instant, looked like strange body parts floating in jars in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.
“Goddamn,” Tim said when the lights came back. “That was rich … let me see. She was here a few days, but she was having trouble finding a place to stay … you hang out here long enough, you’re gonna discover this ain’t a real opened-minded place.”
“Naw,” I said. “Say it ain’t true. A homey burg like this.”
Tim smiled at me. “Yeah, well, I guess you been talkin’ to the Chief, so you know he’s a bastard.”
“How do you know that?” Leonard asked.
“That he’s a bastard, or you been talkin’ to him?” Tim said.
“Either,” Leonard said.
“I come into town lookin’ for someone, first place I’d go is the law. Am I right?”
Leonard nodded.
“And I’ll bet old Cantuck sure was glad to see you two running around together. What he thinks, he sees a black and white guy together, is one of them ought to be riding in the back of a pickup with a rake.”
“You’re right,” I said. “He wasn’t glad to see us. I got the feeling just us being alive made him nervous. We met the fire department too. Now there’s a bunch of regular guys. If you’re white, potbellied, and stupid. Seems like they’d bore each other to death. What in the hell can guys like that talk about when they get together?”
“Pussy,” Tim said.
“Well, all right,” I said. “I can see that.”
Tim took hold of the hatchet, lifted the log, and with a flick of his wrist, popped it loose of the hatchet and through the open stove door.
I was going to protest, since the lizard didn’t have time to bail out, but Tim’s move was so unexpected and so swift there wasn’t a chance. The lizard gave a little pop when it went into the blaze, went black and turned to ash on his log; the last animated bit of him was his tail, which curled up and fell off. I decided not to mention it. No use putting an accidental lizard death on someone’s head.
“Cantuck’s a funny guy,” Tim said. “Don’t underestimate him. He ain’t as stupid as he looks. And for a man with a left nut that looks like a softball in his pocket, he can move pretty fast too. No. He ain’t stupid. And he ain’t incompetent. Not really. He kinda uses that hick image to get his edge.”
“I found that out,” I said, watching the last of the lizard dissolve in the stove. The critter looked like a melted chunk of gummy bears.
“He’s ignorant, but he’s actually fair, and pretty law-abiding,” Tim said. “In an Old Testament sort of way.”
“Wonder how much he abided the law when that black guy hung himself in jail?” I asked.
“That weird sonofabitch had it comin’,” Tim said. “He was a murdering bastard. I prefer he hung himself to the Chief doing it—and I don’t think Cantuck would do it. Couldn’t have. He wasn’t even in town. That Soothe sumbitch was choked and stretched and put in the hole before Cantuck got back.”
“Chief wasn’t here,” Leonard said, “but he could have made arrangements. Being out of town would be a good cover.”
“I reckon,” said Tim, “but I got to tell you true, if that sorry Bobby Joe fuck got a little help from the Chief, anybody, doesn’t bother me a bit. That ole boy was into all kinds of shit. And I mean all kinds. Pretty smooth talker. Could stick his dick up your ass and tell you it was a turd, and you’d believe him.
“He’s lucky he lived long as he did, considering how black folks are thought of here in Grovetown. I suppose he lasted ’cause he was a scary, dangerous bastard. And he could sing a pretty good tune. And there was some legacy to him, being kin to L.C. and all.
“Not that that’s worth a big goddamn around here, but I reckon there’s more than a few whites would hate to admit they enjoyed it when Bobby Joe come to town Saturdays, played over there in front of the courthouse with that ole slide guitar. Fact is, Saturday is normally the day all the blacks come in. Do their shopping, what they got to do. Hang out a little. Very little. Then go home. They got their own ways on the other side of town, and Bobby Joe was smart enough to keep most of his badness over there. Lot of folks here figured if it was just—and you’ll pardon the expression—nigger business, then it wasn’t no business of theirs. Figured too, niggers killing each other, giving each other a hard time, that wasn’t nothing to be concerned with. One less nigger was like one less cockroach.”
“ ’Course,” Leonard said, “cockroaches can’t play basketball.”
“Yeah, the jump shots throw ’em. I’ll tell you about Bobby Joe, kinda guy he was. He raped his own nephew’s wife, then when she told on him and the nephew tried to do something about it, he cut the nephew up to where he near died, went after the woman. Rumor is he made her fuck his German shepherd.”
“Oh, get out of here,” I said.
“I’m tellin’ you the story,” Tim said. “I can’t prove it. Haven’t got photos or nothing, but I believe it. There wasn’t nothing Bobby Joe wouldn’t do short of a law degree.”
“Man has to have some ethics,” Leonard said.
“Our concern here is Florida,” I said. “Only reason we’re interested in Bobby Joe Soothe at all is Florida came down here to investigate things for some kind of article she wants to write about his death.”
“I know about that,” said Tim. “I got that much out of her. We talked a little when we saw each other. She was convinced Bobby Joe was innocent just because he was black and in a white jail.”
“Innocent really hasn’t got anything to do with it,” I said. “Guilty or innocent, you’re supposed to let the State of Texas do the killing, and with a needleful of poison.”
“Yeah, well, we’re back to where we started,” Tim said. “Like I was sayin’, I don’t give a shit what happened to Soothe.”
“Frankly,” Leonard said, “I don’t give a shit, if he had it comin’. I’m not as sweet as Hap. He still has all his Roy Rogers cap guns and stuff. But what we’re concerned with is that Florida was in Grovetown, now she isn’t, and she isn’t home, and we’re nervous.”
“You’re thin
king bad business descended?” Tim said.
“We’re thinking it might have, or can yet,” Leonard said. “We hope we’re just old worried grandmas.”
“I don’t know I can help you beyond saying I hope you’re wrong,” Tim said.
“Anything different about her last time you saw her?” Leonard asked.
“Maybe she was a little tired, or nervous, but you’re black and hang out here, you’re gonna get a little nervous. Don’t believe in time travel, just hang around here a week. Better yet, don’t.”
“So,” Leonard said, “you’re saying’ all the white guys in town, except you, were just perched like buzzards waiting to take her down?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“I don’t doubt this town is backwards as hell,” Leonard said, “but I don’t buy every white guy here is a murderous prick. Is that what you’re trying to tell me? You are, I got to ask, what makes you so special? You ain’t threatening me. You wanted to fuck Florida. You don’t seem like you’re worried that the White Knights of the Asshole will come down on you with a barrel of tar and a basket of chicken feathers for wanting to bury your toad in some black hole, you got the chance.”
“You’re kinda dropping down on me pretty quick, aren’t you, pal?” Tim said.
“Leonard’s motto is ‘Make a New Friend Every Day,’ ”I said.
Tim grinned that infectious grin. “Hey, it’s all right. And you got some points, fella. But let me sorta tick ’em off. First off, my dick ain’t no toad. It’s just as pretty as a little old skinned banana, but a hell of a lot harder. ’Specially after I’ve had some pickled pig’s feet. Pussy ain’t a black hole. If it’s black pussy, white pussy, yellow pussy, or red pussy, any other color, on the inside it’s all pink and it all feels like a hot mink glove on your weener. So now we got that straight.
“Next thing. This town ain’t filled with Klan types. It only needs a diligent few to be members. A few more who won’t participate in their shit, but are behind them, and some others that might be against them, but are afraid to say anything, and for good reason. You don’t believe me, let me tell you, not that long ago they sewed a little ole black gal’s thang together and got away with it.”