The Two-Bear Mambo

by Joe R. Lansdale

“That’s the truth. What about the two guys with the bowling ball heads?”

  “Clinton and Leon. Guess they’re all right. They were here while I was in the hospital. Those fellas are all right, provided you don’t have to spend more than thirty minutes at a stretch with them.”

  “So no trouble while you were gone.”

  “Leon sat on the commode and it fell through the floor with him. I talked to him on the phone at the hospital. He and Clinton got some lumber and fixed the flooring. It was old and rotten under there. Only complaint Leon had was that when he fell through the commode overturned and he got shit on him.”

  Raul came out. He had his hands in his pockets and looked cold. He said, “I told Leonard this wasn’t cookout weather, even on the porch, but he wouldn’t listen. You don’t listen to me, do you, Lenny?”

  “Nope,” Leonard said, and smiled.

  “He doesn’t listen to anybody but you, Hap. He listens to you.”

  “Raul,” Leonard warned.

  “Oh yeah, I don’t want to embarrass you in front of Hap. Anybody but him.”

  “Let’s don’t start,” Leonard said.

  Raul turned and went back inside.

  I said, “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Yeah, you should. Here, help me carry this stuff in.”

  We ate in the kitchen. Raul joined us, but he wasn’t exactly talky. When Leonard paused to go to the facilities, I said, “Raul, I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s not you. It’s me and him. It’s lots of things.”

  Leonard came back. He said to me: “I think I know why you came, Hap.”

  “I missed you.”

  “Besides that. We’re going back to Grovetown, aren’t we?”

  “I’ve got to. I can’t keep doing like I’m doing. I’m sleeping with a goddamn revolver, Leonard. You know me. Does that sound like me?”

  “I sleep with a shotgun nearby.”

  “But that sounds like you.”

  Leonard studied my face for a moment, said, “I cry at night. I just break down crying. Does that sound like me?”

  “Are vanilla cookies involved?” I said. “I can see you crying over cookies. By the way, Charlie ate the ones I keep at the house for you.”

  “That shit,” Leonard said. “He was over here the other day, and I thought I smelled vanilla cookies on his breath. He said he’d just come from your place.”

  A little time floated by. Leonard said, “I get these dreams too. Mostly about that crowd of people, kickin’ and hittin’ on me.”

  “Me too,” I said. “And some others.”

  “I wake up, I think I’m still there,” Leonard said.

  “I tell him to let it go,” Raul said. “But he won’t. I know he can’t forget what happened, but he won’t let go that he’s done something wrong. I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong,” Leonard said. “I just don’t like feeling like I’m feeling. It’s like my guts have been ripped out. What’s wrong is I can’t just let it lay.”

  “It’s over with,” Raul said. “You did all you could. You’ve got this tough-guy image. It’s out of date. We fags, we don’t have to do that. It’s not in our makeup.”

  “What’s in my makeup is in my makeup,” Leonard said. “I’m a man. I got balls. So do you. I like balls. I like your balls, but I’m still a man and I got to feel like a man. Maybe I’m some kind of anomaly or something. I don’t know. I don’t get it. But I like a man acts like a man without thinking it’s being a bully. I can’t explain it to him, Hap. Can you?”

  “You know I can’t,” I said.

  “Saying I’m too stupid to understand?” Raul said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s just a way of living your life, and I personally don’t know it’s better than any other, it’s just all we know.”

  “I don’t get it,” Raul said. “Why all this macho?”

  “When I say act like a man,” Leonard said, “I mean act honorably and with courage. Macho has been turned into a bad word by turds who act like beasts, not men.”

  “You acted with honor and courage,” Raul said. “Look where it got you. There’s nothing left for you to do. You’re not cops. Or heroes. You’re just a couple of fellas, and Lenny, you’re my fella. I want to know you’re here so I can hold you nights. Is that so wrong?”

  “No,” Leonard said. “But I got to go back. I turn my head now, every time someone looks tough or calls me nigger, or queer, I’m gonna turn my head. Get so I’ll turn my head if I think a mechanic’s bill’s too high. I ain’t no worm.”

  “I don’t get it,” Raul said. “Really, I don’t.”

  “I know,” Leonard said. “Sometimes, I think it’s just me and Hap gets it. Maybe Charlie. And Hanson. Bless him.”

  “I want to go tomorrow,” I said. “I don’t want to plan way ahead. I want to do it quick.”

  “I’ll be ready,” Leonard said.

  “We have plans for tomorrow,” Raul said. He looked at me. “We had plans today.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry, Hap,” Leonard said. “Listen here, Raul. I’ll make it up to you. But plans to go and do something, and me and Hap doing this, it’s different. It’s important. It’s not just made-up shit.”

  “That’s nice,” Raul said.

  “You know what I mean,” Leonard said.

  “No, I don’t,” Raul said.

  “Yeah,” Leonard said. “Guess you don’t. Hap, come by and get me tomorrow morning.”

  “You go, and I’ll leave for good,” Raul said. “You got to decide if this stupid honor of yours—and him—are more important than me.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with what’s the most important,” Leonard said.

  “You go, I’ll go, and this time I won’t come back. I don’t care they hurt you real bad, I won’t come back. They kill you, I won’t be there to see you buried. You go, I’m gone.”

  Leonard turned and studied Raul. I hated it when Leonard looked that way. It was damn scary, and considering the look was intensified by swelling, bruises, and stitches, well, I just didn’t like it.

  “All right,” Leonard said. “I’ve known you for a short time, Raul. I like you. I like fuckin’ you. I hate your taste in movies, TV, and books. You got good taste in men, and that’s it. I might even love you, but I know I love Hap, and me and him ain’t even fuckin’, and if that isn’t real love, I don’t know what is.”

  “Very poetic,” Raul said.

  “I been living with who I am and what I believe longer than I’ve lived with you, much longer than you’ve ever given thought to who you are. You might be somebody deep down—”

  “Leonard,” I said.

  “Shut up, Hap. You might be somebody deep down, Raul, but all you want to see in yourself and me and anyone else is surface. Me and Hap, we got history and we got connection. You can make of that what you want. And let me tell you somethin’. You hit the door this time, you damn well better not come back. I get killed, I wouldn’t want you at my funeral. You’re there, I’d want Hap to throw you out.”

  “He’ll be dead too,” Raul said. “You’ll both be dead.”

  Raul got up and left the room. It was awfully quiet for about twenty seconds. Eventually, we could hear Raul moving about in the other room.

  “What’s that noise?” I asked.

  “The ironing board. He gets upset, he sets it up, irons clothes.”

  We sat for another twenty seconds or so. The clock in the kitchen ticked loudly. The ironing board squeaked louder and louder. Leonard said, “Think maybe we could have a double funeral, and Charlie could throw him out?”

  “Sorry, man. I think he’ll get over it.”

  “He will or he won’t, but you don’t be sorry, Hap.”

  I got up. I pulled on my coat. “This is going to sound funny, Leonard. But is everything okay between us?”

  “It always has been.”r />
  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Bright and early,” Leonard said.

  27

  Next morning, on the way to Leonard’s, I tried to remember the first time I’d seen Florida, tried to figure if I was still in love with her, or just had my feelings hurt because she chose Hanson over me. Had I lost a love or a battle? Both?

  Was I searching for her by going back to Grovetown, or searching for something of myself? Both?

  I just loved it when I got all Zen and shit.

  I pulled up in Leonard’s drive, got out in the rain and went to the door. He opened it before I could knock. He had a twelve-gauge shotgun with him, a backpack and a sleeping bag bound up in a waterproof wrapper.

  “Good to see you still got a bazooka left,” I said.

  “I got another one in the house, and a handgun in my coat pocket, you want it.”

  “I brought my snub-nose. I don’t like that I brought it, but I did. I get away from it too long these days, it’s like I left my dick in the other room.”

  “You see, your manhood is tied up in your weapons, Hap. The revolver is a phallic symbol for your repressed manhood. Your impotence.”

  “For the first time in my life, I believe that.”

  We loaded his stuff in the back of the pickup. I had my stuff there too and had fixed a tarp over it to keep out the rain. By the time we had Leonard’s stuff under there, we were both soaked.

  Leonard slid his shotgun into the gun rack above the seat; a baseball bat already resided in the top slot. It was a bat I’d taken off a thug once who thought he was going to break my knees, but he forgot to quit talking before he started hitting, so I’d taken it away from him, broken his nose, and kept the bat. I usually kept it in the house, but I was glad to have it now. It made me feel slightly more comfortable. Leonard’s shotgun added to the comfort, as did the snub-nose in the glove box and the truck’s heater.

  I backed out and we started up the street. I said, “Raul all right?”

  “Well, we didn’t sing ‘The Sound of Music’ together in the shower this morning, so I don’t think we’re all that rosy. We’ve really done that, you know?”

  “Showered together?”

  “That and sang ‘The Sound of Music.’ We do it quite well, actually.”

  “Raul still leaving?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want him to. I told him if he did, to call the bowling ball head brothers to watch the place. Hell, I can’t figure Raul. He’s all mopey and shit. Today is the anniversary of when we met, and he wanted us to go out to dinner, go to a movie, do some serious fucking. I wanted us to do that too, but I didn’t want it getting in the way of me killing somebody.”

  “Easy, now.”

  “I’m gonna do what I gotta do.”

  “I’m not sure we got to do that.”

  “Let me say this, Hap, then I’ll shut up. I meant what I said yesterday. We got to do this thing because of who we are, or who we want to keep being. Whatever degree it takes, we got to go to that degree. You believe that?”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone. On purpose. I’m going to find out about Florida, and if I can hook Brown up with that, and what happened to us, that’ll make me extra happy.”

  “I don’t think we can undo a beating, Hap. But I got to go back there and face that town. Find Florida. Someone gets in the way of either, I might have to put a hole in them. And by the way, I packed us a nice sack lunch for later. It’s in my pack.”

  “Bullets and lunch,” I said. “You think of everything.”

  “Bottom line is this, Bubba. It’s you and me. Anything and everything else fucks up, it’s you and me. We’re gonna see each other through this, do what we got to do if the sun comes up or don’t. And that’s the long and the short of it.”

  “That’s the truth,” I said.

  “Still,” he said, “I hope Raul don’t leave.”

  I don’t remember much about the drive that morning, just the rain and the scenery being a blurry yellow line in front of my face, a few twists of dried forests, glimpses of swollen creeks and ponds. We drove by where we had gone off in the marsh, and the both of us looked, our heads turning in that direction at the same time. The marsh had expanded. The water was coming over the highway and the woods were swollen with it.

  Leonard said, “They pulled my car out of there.”

  “I know.”

  “Guess what?”

  “It won’t run.”

  “The insurance ain’t given me but two hundred dollars for it. Guess they think I can stick that up my ass and drive around on it.”

  “Personally, I don’t think it’s much of a loss. It was about one notch above a ten-speed, and that’s because it had a roof on it.”

  A few more miles down the road we started kicking around game plans for what we were going to do when we got to Grovetown, but the plans didn’t amount to anything. It consisted primarily of eating the sack lunch Leonard had brought.

  Leonard and I were about as far from sleuths as you could get. We didn’t know much besides instinct, and so far that had gotten our asses whipped, got us half drowned, shot at, in trouble with the law, and Leonard had screwed up his relationship with Raul, and we still hadn’t found Florida.

  We ended up driving out to see Bacon. The yard was missing some of its beer cans—washed away most likely—and the house was still a shithole, but someone had helped it along by kicking out one of the porch posts. The porch roof leaned to one side like a rake’s hat. NIGGER had been spray-painted in big black letters underneath one of the windows and the window was knocked out and cardboard had been put in its place. The cardboard had taken in so much rain it was puffy and bent back and you could see into the house, and what you saw was darkness. Out to the side, the tarp had been torn off the backhoe by either wind or maliciousness. The machine was a faded yellow and it looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned since used last. It was on a wheeled platform attached to an ancient but powerful-looking gray Dodge truck.

  We went up on the porch, shook the rain off like dogs, and knocked. After a while a curtain moved, then the door cracked open. There was a new chain across the door. Bright and shiny. Sticking above it was a double-barrel shotgun and the shadow of a face.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Bacon said.

  “It’s us,” I said.

  “I know who the hell it is. Get on.”

  “We just want to ask a few questions.”

  “Not of me. Get on out of here, or I’m gonna blow your ass off. It wasn’t for you, I’d be all right.”

  “Just a moment of your time,” Leonard said. “Then we’ll leave.”

  “I’ve given you all the time you’re gonna get.”

  “It’s important,” I said.

  “It was important last time, and look where it got me.”

  “Come on, Bacon,” Leonard said. “Just a moment.”

  The door slammed. The chain rattled. The door was flung open and we went inside. Water was pouring from the kitchen roof into a big pan on the floor and the pan was full and the water was running over, running over the swollen linoleum. Wind was blowing rain through the gaps in the window with the cardboard over it, and it had been going on so long a few of the floorboards were warped.

  Bacon stood in the middle of the room in his jockey shorts. He had the shotgun in his right hand and he had both arms flung wide. His scalded skin drooped over a sagging rib cage. His flesh was splotched from forehead to foot with great pink patches of rawness. It looked as if big chunks of hide had been pulled off by squid suckers.

  “That tar took my meat off,” he said. “You hear me! They tarred me ’cause I helped y’all. They meant for me to die. I ain’t safe, now. You come around, I sure ain’t safe.”

  “Jesus, Bacon,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s you white folk. You’re always so sorry. So goddamn sorry. Jesus, Bacon, I’m sorry. So sorry. Well, that helps, Mr. Hap. I’m all right now.”

  �
��Let’s go,” I said.

  “Not yet,” Leonard said. “I’m sorry what happened to you, Bacon. I don’t feel so good myself, and it was whites did it to me, but Hap ain’t one of ’em.”

  “He’s the one got me hurt,” Bacon said. He threw the shotgun on the couch, sat down carefully. You could actually hear the skin crack when he sat. Blood beaded around some of the splotches and began to run.

  Bacon’s voice was venomous. “Every time I move, feel my skin crack, I think of Mr. Hap, here. I had to soak in kerosene to get that tar and feathers off. It peeled, took skin with it. Both my nuts, they’re solid pink. They’re ripped right down to the meat. Ain’t a place on them ain’t scalded by tar, burned by kerosene. I ain’t slept a whole night since it happened on account of the pain and knowing they’re comin’ back to finish me, ’cause they will. I know they will. I’m gonna have to move off somewhere. I can’t stay here. I don’t know where to go, but I can’t stay here … y’all go on.”

  “In a moment,” Leonard said.

  “You ain’t nothing but an Uncle Tom, nigger-fella,” Bacon said.

  “It’s a good thing you’re old and splotched like a hound,” Leonard said, “or I’d have to fix your teeth.”

  “Yeah, threaten me ’cause you can whip me. You couldn’t whip all them others.”

  I heard Leonard take a deep breath, blow it out slowly through his nose.

  I said, “It’s all right, Leonard. Let’s go.”

  “Not yet,” Leonard said. “Bacon, they came after you day after some of them came after us. Like you, we were lucky. We want to get even. We want to find who put them up to this, and we want to find out what happened to Florida.”

  “Fuck Florida!” Bacon yelled and half came off the couch and screamed with pain. “Oh, God,” he said, and collapsed into the worn-out cushions. “That bitch, she showed up in town, she upset the balance. Things was bad before she come, but we all knew how things was played. She come around, shakin’ that pretty ass, she got things messed up. She’s as much to blame for what happened to me as Mr. Hap.”

  We gave Bacon a moment to stew in his rancor. We listened to water pound the roof of the house, listened to it run onto the floor in the kitchen, listened to it blow past the cardboard patching in the window. Leonard said, “We’re gonna do this with or without you, but we’re gonna do it, and you might help us do it better. Did you recognize any of the men took you out of here, tarred and feathered you?”