understand it. I don’t see gays as perverts. Some are, some aren’t, same as heterosexuals. But I am an East Texas boy and my background is Baptist-”
“I’m East Texas and Baptist background too.”
“I know. I’m just saying. Sometimes, I am aware of it. It doesn’t bother me exactly, but I’m aware of it and I feel a little confused.”
“Think you’re confused. Life would be easier, I was straight.”
“Yep, but you ain’t.”
“Damn. Wish I’d thought of that.”
“You ever watch Leave It to Beaver?”
“Yeah.”
“End of that show, way I remember it anyway, the two brothers, Wally and the Beaver, they used to share a room and have a talk before they turned out the light and went to bed. In that talk they summed up the episode you just watched, and the problems they’d gone through, and everything was capped off and solved in those last few minutes and they moved onto new stuff next week with no baggage. You know what?”
“What?”
“Life ain’t like that.”
“No, it ain’t. Good night, Wally.”
“Good night, Beave.”
5.
Next morning Leonard called and made an appointment with Florida Grange and we drove over there.
Uptown or not, her building was in the cheap section, right next to a burned-out apartment complex on a red clay hill that had a highway cut through it. The apartment complex had burned down three years back and had yet to be rebuilt, and the clay on which it lay had started to shift toward the highway.
We entered her building and rode the elevator upstairs and saw a middle-aged woman exit a door holding her jaw. We passed the office she had come out of. It was the office of a dentist named Mallory. Florida Grange, Attorney at Law, was between it and a bail bond office.
We went in. No secretary. No lobby. The room was about the size of the men’s restroom at the YMCA and it was mostly taken up with desk and chairs and file cabinets and a word processor. On the wall were framed degrees and certificates that vouched for Florida Grange’s professional abilities.
Florida Grange was sitting behind her desk. She smiled when we came in and stood up and extended her hand, first to Leonard, then to me. When I shook it, the two large silver bracelets on her wrist rattled together.
She was wearing a short snow-white dress that made her chocolate skin and long kinky black hair radiant. I figured her for thirty years old, maybe thirty-five at the outside. Sweet chocolate in a smooth white wrapper.
I felt a bit self-conscious being there with her, wearing the clothes I’d slept in. I had brushed my teeth with some of Uncle Chester’s toothpaste and my forefinger.
We took seats and Florida Grange sat back behind the desk and picked up a folder and said, “This is simple and won’t take long. But it is a private matter, Mr. Pine.”
She smiled at me when she said that, just to make sure I didn’t break out crying.
“Me and Hap ain’t that private. Nothing you got to say he can’t hear. You already said I get the house and some money. There anything else?”
“It’s a matter of how much… You’re right, Mr. Pine. I’m being melodramatic.”
“Leonard. I don’t like to be called Mr. Pine. Call him Hap.”
“Very well, Leonard. It’s not a complicated will, so I’m going to forgo all the formality, if you don’t mind?”
“I don’t know,” Leonard said. “I live for formality. I don’t get some of it, I might get depressed.”
She smiled at him. I wished she’d smile at me that way. “He left you the house and some money. One hundred thousand dollars.”
Maybe that’s why she didn’t smile at me the same way. I didn’t have one hundred thousand dollars.
“Where in hell did he get money like that?” Leonard said. “He was a security guard when he was working.”
She shrugged. “If he’d been saving a while, that’s not that unusual. Perhaps he had some bonds come due. Whatever, you inherited that much money. I’ll arrange for you to receive it. One last thing, he left you this envelope and its contents.”
She opened her desk drawer and removed a thick manila envelope. She handed it to Leonard. He opened it and peeked inside. He gave it to me. I peeked inside. There were a lot of newspaper clippings in there. I saw that one was a coupon for a dollar off a pizza. Good. We liked pizza.
I shook the envelope. Something heavy moved inside. I held the envelope so that whatever it was slid out through the clippings and into my palm.
It was a key. I gave it to Leonard.
“Looks like a safety-deposit box,” he said.
“My thoughts exactly,” I said.
“Goddamn, Doc!” came a clear voice through the wall.
Florida Grange, Attorney at Law, looked embarrassed, said, “I don’t think he’s a very good dentist. People yell a lot.”
“That’s all right,” Leonard said. “We don’t plan to use him.”
“I keep planning to move,” she said.
Leonard said, “Which was Uncle Chester’s bank, you know?”
“Certainly. LaBorde, Main and North.”
Leonard nodded, put the key back in the envelope. “You said you didn’t know him, but you’re his lawyer. You talked to him. You must have got some kind of impression.”
“I met him about a month ago,” she said. “He came to me and wanted me to handle his affairs.”
“Did he seem sick?” Leonard asked.
“He seemed stressed. Like he was having some troubles. He thought he had Alzheimer’s. He said that much.”
“And did he?”
“I don’t know. But he thought he did. He wanted to square things up in case his mind was going or his time was up. That’s the way he expressed it.”
“What I’m really asking is, did he say anything about me, other than what I inherited?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Leonard said, but I could tell it wasn’t all right.
“I guess you know this, he shot a number of people a few months back. Or so the story goes.”
“What?”
“I don’t mean he killed anyone. I heard about it through the grapevine. I’m originally from that part of town. Where your uncle lived. My mama still lives there. Seems your uncle had some trouble with the people next door. Supposed to be a crack house.”
“It is,” Leonard said.
“Someone over there was playing around, shot some bottles off a post in his yard. I suppose they were talking about a bottle tree.”
“They were,” Leonard said.
“Your uncle was on his porch when it happened and a shot almost hit him he said, so he got his shotgun and went over there and shot some men on the porch. He had rat shot in the gun. Way it worked out, the police showed up and he got hauled in and the men went to the hospital to get the shot picked out. Your uncle was let go, and far as I know, it wasn’t even in the papers.”
“Happened in nigger town is why,” Leonard said. “Bunch of niggers popping one another isn’t news to the
