“Gonna guess he does,” Leonard said.
“Got drains to wash away the pig shit. There’s constant feeding. Makes a mint selling hogs and butchering hogs. Has a small packing plant of his own. Drive down the road that runs by it during the day, you can hear them hogs grunting and squealing. I heard him say when they’re butchered, when they scream, it sounds like money. Professor owns all kinds of things, or at least has his finger in them. The café, gas stations, lots of property. He’s got the money to get things done his way, and he’s got the gift of gab.”
“And George?” I asked.
“On paper George owns the junkyard, but he doesn’t really. There’s a kind of deal between him and Professor. He owes Professor for helping keep him afloat, orchestrating dogfights for him. This and that.”
“Professor said he was against dogfights,” I said.
“Only time he’s against them is if the dog he’s betting on loses,” Delf said.
“Pit bull out there looks as if he’s been chewed on a little,” Leonard said.
“Don’t think I condone that stuff, or fighting chickens either, but there’s a whole bunch of those folks out and around here who do. Goes on no matter how much I try and stop it. They call it part of their culture, as if that makes it okay. Professor, he works under the table on a lot of things, out in the open on others. Dogfights, junkyards, the café. This and that. His idea is to buy up as much of the town as possible, control what he can’t buy, and make this a haven for folks like himself. Thinks people of his ilk will flock here. Next thing is, they’ll push me out and put in a puppet. Maybe even Jimmy. They’ll have their own society, and believe me, it’ll be lily-ass white. Truthfully, I don’t know how much Professor believes his own bullshit, but if you talk it and promote it, even if your goal is power and money, far as I’m concerned, you believe it.”
“In other words, he wants to run all the black people out to make a certain segment here happy,” Leonard said.
“Mostly it’s about immigrants these days.”
“They’re the new nigger,” Leonard said.
“Oh, he hasn’t forgotten the old hatreds. If there’s a bell he can ring, a whistle he can blow, he does it. He’s hitting heavy on anyone that doesn’t fit the pattern he’s cut. Pattern he knows will appeal to a lot of people. You know, I got a black police officer. Johnny Williams. Nice man, good cop. A friend. Couple of new recruits, also black. Hired them myself. Came from bigger cities, came with fine recommendations. Lots of experience. Next thing I plan to do is ease a woman in. Can you believe that? This day and time, and I have to ease a woman into a position, can’t just go on and do it? Got some backwoods thinking here, guys.”
“Sounds like you might have some of that concerning Eula,” I said.
“Shit, me and Eula got our own program, and we handle it how we handle it. I may not get all the talk right, and I still like pussy and think about it and don’t apologize for it, but I’m fair, boys. These officers I got, they moved here thinking it would be an easier lifestyle, but with Professor out there, those fucking twins, who we think are responsible for a lot of things that aren’t good around here, well, my men, they got to be cautious every time they pull someone over for speeding. Lot of people think the Professor gave them a free pass to do as they please, long as who they do it to isn’t white.”
“Jimmy seemed apologetic about his current position,” I said. “His heart didn’t seem all in.”
“Don’t get fooled, Hap.”
“What I tell him,” Leonard said. “He’s still thinking everyone is going to live in teepees and share each other’s goods.”
“Listen to your pal here,” Delf said. “Don’t underestimate Jimmy or the Professor, and watch out for Lou. He follows as close as shit on an ass hair when it comes to Jimmy. They’re both like Mom said our old man was. ‘People of opportunity,’ she called them. And then Professor has others in his employment, and I don’t mean the creepy twins. There’s nothing solid on them, but there are rumors, some of them fairly sound and none of them about humanitarian deeds. Frankly, you might want to leave town. Not because you have to, not because I won’t try and protect you, but because I might not be able to. Leonard here is just the sort that upsets Professor the most.”
“He pretty much upsets everyone,” I said.
18
I turned a corner and drifted us toward the café where we had eaten our breakfast and where we were planning on having lunch. The idea of going there had a new feel about it, knowing Professor had some ownership in it.
In the café, you got to choose where you wanted to sit, so we took a booth near the large plate-glass window at the front where we could see the street. The sky had turned as gray as an oyster shell, but what it contained was rain, not pearls. I figured within the next few hours the clouds would let the water loose.
The Coffee Spoon was a place where if you wanted to eat healthy you were shit out of luck. I feared even the salad might be deep-fried with a side of fried coffee.
I asked the waitress if they served omelets at lunch.
She was a sassy lady with a face tanned by cigarette smoke and framed by dark brown hair. You could see beauty had once been in that face, and when she turned a certain way, it pushed itself to the fore, and then it went away again. Once upon a time men most likely lined up around the block for her, but eventually, time had carried her out to sea and tried to drown her.
“Is it on the menu?” she said.
“No,” I said.
“We don’t have it.”
“So nothing off the menu?”
“That’s why we have a menu. Goddamn it. Are you Hap Collins?”
“I used to be,” I said, “but lately I’m not so sure.”
“Sharon Young. You remember me?”
I did. And in fact, men had indeed lined up for her attention. I had been one of them. I had been unsuccessful.
“Sorry,” she said to Leonard. “What’s your name, hon?”
“Leonard Wants a Cheeseburger,” he said. “My friends call me Had a Cheeseburger.”
She laughed. “Sure. I’ll get to it.”
But she didn’t move, just smiled at me. She had good teeth, and when she smiled it caused wrinkles to appear at the edges of her eyes, but even still, that smile peeled ten years off her face. That light she had once had came back for a moment.
“I remember you in school,” she said. “I had such a crush.”
“On what?”
“You, silly.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I asked you out,” I said. “I remember you, and I remember you said no.”
“I was playing hard to get, way we were supposed to back then. Or way I thought we were supposed to. I thought you’d ask again. You didn’t.”
“I wanted to,” I said.
“Isn’t high school funny.”
“I laugh every day, between the tears.”
“I hear that. Best time of our lives. Bullshit. Come to think of it, though, for me, it might have been, and that’s a sad statement. You doing okay?”
“I am.”
“Wife?”
“Yep.”
“Kids?”
“One girl.”
“Me, I had three husbands and one got up one morning and said he was going to look for a job, tried to rob the bank that was across the street from where you fellows sit. They give out enchiladas now instead of loans.”
“I know,” I said. “We ate there last night. My first bank account was there. First State Bank. I’m assuming your husband’s life of crime didn’t turn out well.”
“Everyone recognized him, of course. He hadn’t thought about that problem. Andy Coleman, remember him?”
“Oh, hell. Really? Andy? You married Andy? Sorry, I’m just thinking—”
“Keep thinking it,” she said, “he was a piece of”—she leaned in close to me—“shit. So, my John Dillinger tripped going down the steps prancing out t
o his getaway car. Dropped the money. Got up and ran off to his car without it, and then, know what? Car wouldn’t start. Piece-of-crap Gremlin. Cops nabbed him, of course. Me and him got divorced while he was in prison. If he’s getting any now, it’s butt hole in cell block C. But to hell with all that. You want an omelet, I’ll fix you an omelet. And you, Leon. What would you like?”
“Leonard,” he said, “and still a cheeseburger, and double the onions and heap the fries.”
“No, don’t double the onions,” I said. “I have to ride with him all day.”
“Customer’s always right, sugar,” she said.
A redheaded man, tall and bony, wearing a khaki shirt and pants, guy who looked like you would imagine an oil-field worker would look, took a seat near the kitchen. Sharon noted his arrival.
“Back to work,” she said. “Order coming up.”
I watched her head to the kitchen. The girl she had once been moved under her waitress outfit, but there was more of her than before. I thought, Men are pigs, we really are, because that’s the first thing I noticed, her being heavy, as if I had ever been a Greek god and had a right to judge.
She stopped at the booth near the kitchen, talked to the redheaded guy, wrote something on her pad, then went on about her business.
Later, when Sharon brought our food, I said, “Let me ask you a question, Sharon. Did you know a young woman named Jackie Mulhaney?”
“A little. Came in from time to time. Daddy was a weirdo that used to run the nut church that was once the picture show. Now some other nut runs it, but he’s more pleasant. Me, I’m a Methodist.”
“Dancing Baptist,” Leonard said.
“That’s the one,” she said.
“Is there anything you can tell us about her?” I said.
Sharon thought a moment. “Not much that will amount to anything. Always had a salad with extra croutons. Had big teeth. Way men acted around her, I think those teeth must have looked good on her. Little horsy-looking, you ask me. I need to hit another lick. Got to look busy. Jobs don’t get handed out in this town, especially the ones I’m good to do, and you need your coffee.”
She went away for a moment, came back with a shiny coffeepot. She poured us coffee. I remembered that coffee from breakfast. It was still better than the Reverend Jamesway’s coffee, but nothing so good you wanted a can of it.
“Know what she used to do?” Sharon said as she set the pot on the table. “She’d come in, bring her laptop, sit in that booth over there, on the side against the wall. That way she could type on her laptop while she noodled with her salad and drank a glass of tea. Bet she held down that booth an hour or two at a time. Tough on me when we had a big crowd and I didn’t have that booth free to get fresh tips. Jackie always left a small tip, even though she held that space long as she did. If she left me over a dollar, I think she might have cried herself to sleep about it. Cheap as she could be. Ah, maybe I’m catty ’cause all the men liked her. I remember when I used to be something on a stick, and now I’ve just got the stick, so being honest, you got to measure that against what I say about her. That’s all I got, Hap.”
She eased away. Leonard said, “No one has thrown us out for being a black-and-white pair yet.”
“Don’t think they will. Don’t think Professor has that kind of power. He wants it to be subtler, under the table. Where the Klan burned crosses and wore hoods, he wants to seem like a businessman. He’ll take your money no matter what color you are, but try and buy a home in this town, set up a business, and your skin is black, he wants to keep that from happening. That’s what he’s working on. Separate but equal, he calls it.”
Sharon brought the check and left. I was about to give the check to Leonard, remind him it was his turn, when I noticed there was a folded note with it.
I palmed it flat on the table and read it.
Come by at midnight and I can tell you something about Jackie. Can’t now. The wrong ears might hear. Like the redhead in the booth near the kitchen. I really do wish you’d asked me out a second time. Come alone, please.
There was an address below that.
I slipped Leonard the note and glanced toward the booth Sharon had indicated.
The redheaded fellow seemed to be woolgathering as he sipped his coffee. Me and Leonard might as well have been on Mars, the way he acted. Had he been following us? Maybe Jimmy and Lou had traded off because we knew their truck, would recognize them. Could it be like that?
“We could just go over and ask Red there if he’d like his meal jammed up his ass, get this over with,” Leonard said.
“We could, but to me that seems like a bad approach to investigation, as well as a waste of mediocre food.”
“Might be,” Leonard said. “I can tell you clearly, though, you aren’t going over there by yourself tonight.”
“Hey, never intended to.”
19
We had nothing else to do for a while, so I drove us out across the Sabine River Bridge again.
“I think we should get a hotel in Tyler for tonight, come back when it’s dark,” I said.
“Yeah, all right. I got an idea or two I want to chase. But before I work those ideas, I want to canoodle with them, think them over.”
“That is so sweet,” I said. “Canoodling with your ideas.”
We ended up in Tyler at a Holiday Inn. We hauled our overnight bags up to the third floor, made coffee in the room, sipped and sat on our beds opposite one another, and talked.
“I told you I had some ideas,” Leonard said.
“You were canoodling with them,” I said.
“Yes, and after much hugging and kissing them, I kind of came up with a thing or two, and then that thing or two gave me another idea or two.”
“All that canoodling has caused your ideas to multiply,” I said.
“Other night, we’re in the house where Jackie used to live, and Ace shows up. I’m thinking he must have known she was long gone from there, and why would he think our car was Jackie’s car? He would know her car.”
“Could have thought she got a different car,” I said.
“Considered that. What are the odds Ace drives by where Jackrabbit used to live, decides our car might be her car, a car he doesn’t know? Maybe he came there looking for something, and then he saw us and thought we were looking for the same something.”
“Something hid in the house?” I said.
“It’s a long shot, but I been thinking that way.”
“Couldn’t Ace easily have come back since we last saw him, got whatever was there? Provided something was there.”
“Could have, no doubt,” Leonard said, “but maybe after he found us there, got his ass handed to him, he decided to stay away.”
“Actually, if you count him hitting me with a chair, he came out all right.”
“I was talking about me. I whipped his ass while you were stretched out on the floor. But if I’m right, and he wants what’s there, he can’t be cautious for long. Place might get rented out, and if there’s something hidden there, it’ll be harder for him to get to it then.”
“Didn’t look to be a place riddled with secret hiding places,” I said.
“No,” Leonard said, “it didn’t, but I’m thinking something could be there just the same. Good chance he did go back and get it, but I think we ought to take a peek.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I said.
“I got another idea too, but for that one I’m going to need some gloves and a pair of bolt cutters, and if I get the chance, I’m going to order me one of those hats like Ace has.”
20
After we left the hotel and shopped for some gloves and a nice pair of bolt cutters for Leonard, we came back there and holed up for a few hours, waiting for dark. I read the book by Rocky Hawkins about growing up in Gladewater, Texas. He knew his business. I had grown up in nearby Marvel Creek, and Gladewater seemed almost exactly the same. His father had been a gangster, one of the East Texas kind, and he knew a lot of t
he same people I had met in passing or knew of through story and perhaps legend. It was a short book and Rocky liked religion a lot better than I did, but he wrote simply and with heart. I came away from the book liking him and finding the book fascinating and honest as a dead hog.
Leonard read too, and about an hour before the sun sank, we put on the darkest clothes we had, fixed another cup of coffee to fortify ourselves, loaded up the gloves and bolt cutters, and away we went.
By the time we arrived back in Marvel Creek, it was solid dark and a light rain had started and the lights of the town gave the wet streets an eerie quality.
We drove as many back streets as possible, since with the town not being all that big, we didn’t want to chance an encounter with Jimmy and Lou or for that matter the redheaded guy, who we figured also worked for the Professor. There was even a chance Professor or George might be in town for a big fandango at the Mexican restaurant, a fandango that would have consisted of some tinny Mexican music and some good food.
There was, of course, the twins to think about. They had said not a word and done nothing but walk and stop and stand, and from experience, I knew they were the ones to truly fear.
We parked at the side of the street where the movie-theater-now-church was, put on the gloves we had bought, and took a short walk over to the house, trying not to look as conspicuous as we were. What worked in our favor was most of the town had already rolled up their sidewalks and were at home having dinner, visiting with family.
The thought of that made me wish I was home doing the same. I missed Brett. We may have been together for years, but we had only been married a couple days, and though nothing was actually any different than before, I felt we should be basking in our recent decision together.
The rain was a mist now and the air was cool. The house was dark and it still looked empty. We went along the walk as if we owned the place and could shit anywhere. At the back of the house we found it still locked, way we had left it. I held a penlight while Leonard worked the lock and got us inside.
Jackrabbit Smile (Hap and Leonard) Page 9