The Two-Bear Mambo

'A black juke joint,” Leonard said.

'Yep,” I said.

We continued at a drag, the water splitting before us and slamming against the bottom of the car, floating us left and right. I began to understand how it must feel to be in a sub­marine.

Tim's mother's place proved to be well outside of Grovetown, down some incredibly muddy roads, deep in some bottom land that made me nervous, weather being the way it was. I didn't know much about Grovetown, but I knew the dam for Lake Nanonitche was nearby, and not too many years ago it had burst and drowned three people and waterlogged enough property to cause Grovetown and surrounding burgs to become designated as a National Disaster Area.

When we got to the trailer park, I was even more nervous. I'd never seen anything like it. The park consisted of six nasty-ass mobile homes — one a double-wide — standing on stilts damn near twelve feet off the ground with crude wooden stairways leading to their doors.

We parked and sat in Leonard's car while Tim went up to the double-wide, climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. He went inside and stayed awhile.

When he came out he was under an umbrella with an older woman who was wearing an orange raincoat and matching ga­loshes. Tim beckoned us to him. We got out in the driving rain and met them at the bottom of the stairs. The woman was sixty-ish, attractive in an 'I’ve been hit by a truck' kind of way.

Tim said,” This is my mother.”

'Y'all got money?' she said.

Like son, like mother.

'We can buy lunch and have dessert if the waiters don't wear suits,” Leonard said.

Mom studied on that, said,” Come on.”

We moved through ankle-deep muddy water behind them, soaked to the bone. The woman walked with her left leg stiff, her left hand in her raincoat pocket. She leaned against Tim as if she was trying to find her sea legs.

We climbed some stairs, the woman managing it with consid­erable effort, and stood on a platform in front of a trailer door that was all bent up with an aluminum strip peeling off to one side. There was a huge splotch of blackness at the edge of the door where fire had slipped from the inside and kissed the exte­rior.

Ms. Garner put a key in the door, and when it was unlocked, Tim got hold of the edge with his fingers and tugged at it. It screeched as if alive, then we were in.

It smelled doggy dank and burnt in there. There was a carpet that looked as if it had once lined a pigpen, and the dog odor came from it. The burnt smell came from a portion of the wall next to the door. That part of the wall was absent of paneling and consisted of charred insulation. The 'living room' was fur­nished with one old rickety couch mounted on cinder blocks and a chair with a cushion that dipped almost to the floor. There was one little gas heater and it was missing most of its grates, and the ones it had were busted.

The kitchen was just another part of the same room, and you could see where there had been a grease fire over the stove. The dank carpet and burnt insulation odor that tracked us from the living room blended with the stench of rancid grease coating the stove top. The fridge hummed desperately, like a dying man trying to remember a sentimental tune.

'Well,” Leonard said,” this is nice.”

'Don't like it, go to hell,” said Ms. Garner. She said that with­out so much as a change of features.

'So much for the big sell,” Leonard said. ”How much is it? Considering we'll be camping out.”

'Ten dollars a day, pay by the day. Use too much gas or elec­tricity, there'll be a charge for that. I watch the meters.”

'This place looks like you found it when it floated downriver after a fire and tornado,” Leonard said.

'It wasn't so bad six months ago,” Ms. Garner said. ”Morons moved in here were a bunch of them goddamn holier-than-thou Christians. Ones where the men wear their pants pulled up under the armpits and like green suits with white shoes. Women like to pile their hair on their head and wear ugly dresses.”

'Pentecostal,” I said.

'Morons,” Ms. Garner said.

'Did they live in here with a herd of cows?' Leonard asked.

'You're a smart one, ain't you?' Ms. Garner said.

'My dearest friends call me the Smartest Nigger in the World.”

'Yeah. Well, I believe it. What these Christian high-hairs had was a goddamn Chihuahua. One of them little ugly Mexican dogs looks like a shaved rat with a disease. Goddamned lab ex­periment material is what they are.

'Three men and three women, two kids. I charged 'em twenty dollars a day, there being so many. And they had a whole slew of Bibles and tracts and religious crap. Stupid morons.”

'Calm down, Mom,” Tim said. ”You're gonna strain yourself.”

'Don't talk to me like I'm constipated,” she said.

'Whatever,” Tim said, and shrugged his shoulders at us.

'Kids gave the dog a bath,” she said,” and get this, they put the goddamn rat in the oven to dry. Turned on the oven and put the rat in there. He got dried up all right. Little turd caught on fire, starting barking — screaming, really. A dog gets hurt enough, it can scream. Heard him all the way over in my trailer. They let him out of the oven just before he was a casserole. He run all over the place. Caught them Bibles and tracts on fire, then that