There were a couple houses across from us, but they kept their porch lights off, and what lights they burned were filmy behind curtains, looked like lights seen from a distance and underwater. Decent folks on Comanche Street didn’t come out of their houses at night, lest they encounter the dealers or the druggies themselves, the latter looking for a quick few dollars to purchase a hunk of rock.
For that matter, during the day you didn’t see folks much. The working people came and went, but didn’t linger. The kid we had seen on Leonard’s front porch that day, we began to see more often. He wore a beeper on his hip. Acquired a cool walk. Had some nice clothes. He looked as if his soul was melting.
The bars and locks on Uncle Chester’s door began to make sense. You didn’t nail something down in this neighborhood, it’d show up at the pawnshop, and the money received for it would finance some druggie to do some business.
Got so we left the house, we had the impression we might come back to the front door off the hinges, rammed in, and all the little goods that Uncle Chester had left would be gone, except the coupons. Or maybe the shits next door would start to think they ought to get even with me and Leonard, and we’d come back to worse: smoke and charred wood.
Considering all that, way we did, was something had to be bought, one of us nearly always stayed while the other went to get it.
Got so Leonard stayed pissed all the time. Kept his brow furrowed and his uncle’s shotgun oiled and loaded, and not with rat shot. He made jokes about how many niggers next door it would take to roof the house, he sliced them real thin.
We cleaned inside the house, too. Uncle Chester and his odors finally departed. The flies went in search of deader pastures.
Nights, after a hard day’s work, was when we did our cleaning and searching for what the key went to. No safe or locked box or locked floor or wall panels were found. Some of the coupons from the deposit box were good, though. We used them for eat-outs, one of us running into town to pick up pizza or burgers.
At night, we worked to the sounds of Leonard’s country music; hillbilly voices fighting it out with the rap and rock sounds next door, stuff I sometimes preferred to lost loves and drinking in the barroom, but Leonard, he used the decibel knob to drown them out. ’Least they were drowned out in Uncle Chester’s house. I don’t know they noticed next door. Nobody called the law on either of us. In that neighborhood, somebody wasn’t getting hurt or robbed, a little loud music didn’t mean much. For all the good the law did down there, they might as well have just drove near the neighborhood and honked, tossed out a few Don’t Do Drug leaflets.
Last room we tackled was the one with the newspapers. It was hot in there, and the little fan managed to stir the dust and make you choke. The roof had leaked, gotten on the papers and mildewed them, and in some places the water had soaked through and joined the wood beneath them and rotted out sections of the floor. We could hear it squeak, feel it sag when we walked.
We decided best thing to do was remove the papers, glance through them quickly as possible, see if there was anything there really meant anything.
After a couple pickup loads to the recycling center, we quit looking through the rest, quit thinking they meant anything. Only thing we noticed were gaps in pages, where Uncle Chester had liberated coupons with scissors.
All doubts were cast aside. It was pretty clear by then. Uncle Chester had been off his nut. The key had probably gone to something no longer owned, long lost to time, but significant somehow in the watery cells that made up Uncle Chester’s brain.
Leonard put the key away and forgot about it and read Dracula. He said he liked it pretty good and thought it would have scared him more had it not been for the crack house next door. Look out there and see that happening, it’s hard for some guy with fangs to scare you much. Guys next door were bigger vampires: clutch of assholes made you want drugs way a vampire wanted blood. Made it so you’d do anything to have it. Rob and lie, murder your lovers, take up astrology and reading cozy mysteries.
After we’d been there about a week, Leonard quit using his cane and replaced the broken bottles on the bottle tree. I think he was taunting the folks next door to shoot them out, looking for some excuse to exchange their heads, mix up their internal organs.
One night he woke me up calling out “You sonsabitches” in his sleep. He was making me nervous. He kept the shotgun a little too close. I felt things were coming down on Leonard that were bigger than he was. Somewhere in all this, he had determined the assholes next door were the cause for Uncle Chester’s death. And maybe they were. Old Uncle Chester had been everything Leonard knew about manhood.
Leonard had been raised by his grandmother, but it was his uncle he came to see summers, and it was his uncle who taught him what it was to be masculine. Taught him about the woods and guns and carpentry and the appreciation of books. Encouraged him to make something of his life, gave him backbone. Then, when Leonard was a young man and realized he was gay and told his uncle, it had all fallen apart.
But be that as it may, his uncle had formed him, had taken him like dough and shaped him and baked him and made him who he was, and no matter how I felt about Uncle Chester’s disowning Leonard, I had to admit, he had done a good job. Or a job that had held up till now – up until Uncle Chester came back into Leonard’s life, came back after he was dead like some kind of ghost. And not a happy one.
One Saturday afternoon, hot as the blazes, I was up on the roof with my shirt off, cooking up a skin cancer, considering breaking my ban on ice-cold beer, and Florida Grange showed up. She was driving a little gray Toyota, and when she got out of the car I saw she was outfitted in a simple sky-blue dress that showed lots of leg and happily threatened to show a little more.
She stood in the drive and put a hand over her eyes like an Indian scout and called up to me. “Leonard here?”
“He’s in town. Went to get some supplies.”
“Oh. Well, I came to visit my mama, thought I’d drop by and see how things are coming along. And I got another paper for Leonard to sign. I missed it at the office.”
“One minute.”
I got my shirt off a sawed oak limb and pulled it on. It was a cotton jean shirt with the sleeves bobbed short and it felt good and soft against my warm, sweaty skin. I sucked in my gut while I buttoned it, just in case Florida was watching. I climbed down by method of the oak.
I dropped out of the tree, wiped my hands on my pants, smiled, and went over to see her. I stuck out a hand and we shook. She had the same soft hand and the same rattling bracelets. Her hair was dark and wild, like a storm cloud. The wind picked up the smell of her perfume and gave it to me. I needed that like a punch in the teeth.
I caught my reflection in her car windshield. I looked like shit, but my teeth were clean. I’d brushed with my own toothbrush not long ago, and I’d even used mouthwash. Progress was being made.
“Would you like something to drink, Miss Grange?”
“Florida?”
“Yeah. That’s right. Florida.”
“Yes. I would like something to drink.”
“I’ll get it. It’d be best to sit out here on the porch. We don’t have air-conditioning.”
“That’ll be fine.”
“We’ve got Coke. Diet Coke. Ice tea. Beer. We’ve got some nonalcoholic beer too. Sharp’s. It’s pretty good.”
“I’ll have ice tea. No sugar.”
I went in the house and poured her tea and got myself a Sharp’s. I had discovered I actually preferred the nonalcoholic beer to the real thing. It was the taste I liked, not the results.
I carried the tea and Sharp’s onto the porch. Florida was seated in the glider Leonard and I had installed. I had fastened the bolts to the porch roof. I hoped I had done a good job. I’d have hated for Florida Grange to bust her shapely ass.
I gave her the tea and sat down on the other side of the glider and mentally groped for small talk. I almost said something about the weather but restrained myse
lf. I tried not to look at her legs, which were bare and smooth looking. I wondered if they were as soft as her hand.
“You living here?” she asked.
“For now. I’m helping Leonard get the place in shape to sell.”
“I see.”
We sat in silence and sipped our drinks. An old black Chevy chugged along the street and an elderly black face looked out of it at us, looked away, and looked back. The driver was trying to determine if any miscegenation was going on.
It wasn’t, though I was hopeful, in a fantasy sort of way. Actually, seemed to me, from here on out, I’d have to be content to look at Florida Grange’s legs and sneak a look at her panties when she got in or out of her car, way I used to do with girls when I was in high school.
Thought of that made me feel sort of ill. Guys, they’re some piece of work. Next thing I knew I’d be putting quarters in filling station restroom rubber machines, trying to get those special gift items you bought when you really didn’t need a rubber. The Instant Pussy, a French Tickler that looked like a plastic squid, and the little book of sex jokes.
Here was an intelligent professional woman, and all I could think about was how much I’d like to dork her. I had to think about something else. Thing to do was to talk to her the way you’d talk to any interesting professional in the law business, male or female.
“You get many whiplash cases?”
“What?”
“You know-”
“Oh. Now and then. I mean, a couple. I mainly do wills, stuff like that.”
That was good, Hap. Real good. Why don’t you just call her an ambulance chaser?
“Nice day, huh?”
“Yeah. Well…”
“I mean, it’s hot, but it’s OK. It’s not as humid as usual. I mean, it’s usually more humid.”
Florida Grange looked at her watch. “When do you think Leonard will be back?”
“Soon. Hell, Florida. I’m acting like a fool. I get around a beautiful woman lately, I act like a jackass. I don’t mean to.”
“That’s all right.”
“No. No, it isn’t. If you prefer, I’ll just be real quiet and sit here… You interested in Leonard?”
She smiled at me. “Leonard’s gay.”
“You knew that? I was hoping to break the news to you, and you’d be so disappointed, I’d have to do in a pinch. I’m not gay, by the way.”
“Gee. I’d never have guessed. Most everyone around here knows Leonard’s gay. He spent time here in the summers. My mother knew his uncle and knew Leonard all the while he was growing up. She told me about him.”
“Ah.”
“Listen, Mr. Collins… Hap. I owe you an apology.”
“You owe me one? Way I’ve been ogling you? You got to forgive me, Florida. I been out in the country too long. No female companionship. I’m almost completely fueled by adolescent hormones.”
“The other day, when you asked me out, I told you no-”
“Hey, no problem, that’s your right-”
“Will you shut up a minute?”
“Sure.”
“I got a confession. I didn’t go out with you because you’re white. That’s it.”
“You don’t like white guys?”
“It’s not that. It’s that I’m as much a product of racism as anyone else. I don’t really think about it much, don’t think I’m doing it. But, you see, I feel all that stuff about the white man’s world. How, as a black woman, I have to battle uphill for everything I get. How it always seems when I get to a point where I’m ready to advance, there’s some kind of white hurdle.”
“I guess there is.”
“Sometimes there is. Sometimes there isn’t, but I’ve got a chip on my shoulder just the same, so when a white man asks me out, I get to thinking he’s thinking, ‘This black bitch will be glad to go out with me. I’m white. And because I’m white, I can get me some of her nigger ass,’ then Massuh can go on about his business and hook up with someone white, someone respectable.”
“Well, to be honest, I was thinking about the ‘get me some ass’ part.”
“I know. I can tell. You sort of ooze musk. But it’s the other part. The racist part. I didn’t really think you were thinking that. Not then, not now. But conditioning dies hard. I’ve thought about it a lot since then, and I’ve regretted it, me thinking that, and you see, I knew you were here, ’cause my mother said she’s seen you here, and she knew you from the funeral, and well, I wanted you to know, I’m sorry I was racist. Damn, I’m sort of running things together.”
“That’s all right. I get your drift. It’s very honest of you. It makes me feel like shit, but it’s honest.”
“Yes, it is. And I still don’t want to go out with you.”
“I see.”
“Know why?”
“I’m ugly?”
“No. Actually I find you attractive, in a gnarly, old-fashioned male sort of way.”
Gnarly?
“But the problem is I like to dance and white boys have no rhythm. And you know what else they say about you white boys?”
I watched a beautiful smile spread across her face.
“What do they say?” I asked.
“You’ve got itty-bitty dicks.”
9.
When Leonard came back, Florida gave him the paper and he signed it and she took it back. We talked her into returning that night for supper. Leonard promised to cook spaghetti and sauce, and I promised to make a salad. Leonard eyed me when I said that, and I said, “Really.”
I tried not to watch too pointedly as Florida climbed into her car. When she was driving off, Leonard said, “Man, you need to jack off or something. You’re starting to look at that woman like she’s a chocolate eclair.”
“Yeah, and I’m embarrassed by it too. I can’t help myself. I been alone too long. I made progress, though. While you were gone we had a polite and intelligent conversation about the size of white guys’ dicks.”
“Those little things?”
I climbed back on the roof and Leonard came up with me and looked over what I had done, and was pleased to see he wouldn’t have to redo it.
“You know, you gonna get where you can flush a toilet without instructions,” Leonard said.
“Yassuh,” I said. “I’s catchin’ on. Ya wants me to sang one them spirituals now, Massuh Leonard?”
“I want you to shut up.”
We knocked off at five to clean up. Leonard had paid for a tank of butane, so now there was hot water. When I finished showering with the hot water, I turned the faucet to pure cold and rinsed in that. By the time I got out of the shower and dried and was stepping into clean underwear, I was already sweating and the old boards and wallpaper in the bathroom, damp from moisture and heat, had taken on the aroma of the ass end of a camel.
I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt and slid my sockless feet into my deck shoes and went into the kitchen. It smelled good in there, which was a nice change. Leonard was hustling about, chopping mushrooms and stirring meat and garlic in a frying pan. There was a big pot of water on to boil.
“Can I help?”
“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Stay the fuck out of the way.”
“I could do the salad.”
“You could, but it’s too early. Made it now, time we ate, the lettuce would be wilted and the tomatoes would taste like wet golf balls.”
“Maybe I’ll just read.”
I got one of the books I’d brought along, Neal Barrett, Jr.’s, The Hereafter Gang, went out on the back porch and sat in a creaky old rocking chair. The left side of the porch was blocked with plywood, most likely so Uncle Chester wouldn’t have to look at the drug dealers next door. The rest of the porch was screened in. The screen door had the bottom part of its screen knocked loose, and it curled up as if suffering from heat stroke.
Out behind the house there was a pile of burned garbage, some of it black, twisted plastic, some of it blackened cans and dark wisps of paper.
On out
a ways was a butane tank, and beyond that, a trickle of woods and brambles that gradually became more than a trickle. It turned into full-fledged woods. I wondered how far it went. Had it been in a white section of town, where property values were up, it would have long been cut down and concrete would have been spread over it.
Here, it was a strange oasis of green in the midst of a disintegrating neighborhood that was a slice of human pie neither completely rural nor urban, a world unto itself.
I read from The Hereafter Gang until Leonard came out the back door and called to me, “Why don’t you go down and rent us a VCR and a movie. And don’t get none of those damn socially redeeming films or anything you got to read at the bottom what they’re saying. And let’s don’t see It’s a Wonderful Life anymore.”
“Three Stooges OK?”
I drove into town and rented a VCR and checked out a couple of movies. Jaws, which I’d never seen, and Gunga Din, which I saw when I was head high to a cocker spaniel’s nuts.
By the time I got back to the house I was hot and sweaty and nervous. I was wondering if I should put the move on Florida, or just watch the movies like a good little boy. Frankly, I didn’t know how to put the move on anybody anymore. I was too long out of practice. I began to wonder if she’d show up. Maybe she’d bring a date. That would be cozy. Perhaps I could loan him some condoms.
While Leonard hooked up the VCR, I made the salad. I can break lettuce and slice a tomato with the best of them. I didn’t even screw up when I put on the bacon bits and the croutons.
About fifteen minutes after I finished, there was a knock on the door and Leonard let Florida in. She was carrying a bottle of wine and a long loaf of French bread. She had a little black pocket book on a strap draped over her shoulder. She was wearing canary yellow this time. It was like all her other dresses, plain in design, but tight and short and flattering to what it covered. She didn’t have a date.
“Who’re the sweeties next door?” she asked, giving Leonard the bread and the wine.
“Just the local crack house,” Leonard said. “They’re a real fun-loving bunch.”
“They certainly are. They just gave me a verbal anatomical lesson.”
Mucho Mojo cap-2 Page 4