The Two-Bear Mambo

'I don't know. She seemed like a nice girl. Woman. I didn't know what you guys were up to. I had to feel you out a little. She couldn't find a place, and she mentioned it to me, and I told her about here.'

'Didn't have anything to do with you hoping to drop your an­chor in her ocean, did it?' Leonard asked. 'You having her out here, I mean? Handy. Kind of indebted to you?'

'I guess it did,' Tim said. 'Some. But I was trying to help her too.'

'And pick up fifty dollars,' Leonard said.

'That's right,' Tim said. 'Besides, how indebted is someone gonna feel staying here? This was where she stayed, you know? This trailer . . . besides, I don't need any grief, don't need the law on my back, and I didn't want to drag Mom into this. She don't need those Klan creeps on her for helping out blacks. It isn't like she was trying to be a Good Samaritan, anyway. She'd rent to anybody to make a few bucks.'

'Gee, thanks,' I said.

'You know what I mean,' Tim said. 'She wasn't making any kind of statement renting to Florida. It's not like she keeps this park up or nothing.'

'No joke?' Leonard said.

'I try to help,' Tim said, 'but with the station and all, my own life. Hell, it's all I can do.'

'You live out here too?' I asked.

'I got a place in back of the store. Once in a while I'll stay out here. It's rare Mom's got any boarders. Place like this mostly caters to a pretty desperate crowd. People come and go quick like. Lot of them are just one-nighters. Some guy renting so he can do the rodeo with some local poke. Right now, 'cept for y'all, and Mom, of course, the park is empty.'

'Not to meddle,' I said.

'Don't count on it,' Leonard said. 'Hap's got a black belt in meddlin'.'

'Maybe your mom could stay at the store,' I said. 'This is pretty, well, bleak, isn't it?'

'She won't have it that way,' Tim said. 'She wants her own thing. When her and Daddy divorced, she had to go to work in the lumber mill, like one of the other wage slaves. She got caught in some machinery. She lost a leg. Has an artificial one. Her hand . . . well, it was mashed flat. Looks like a goddamn Mickey Mouse hand. No shit. Mashed flat like a cartoon hand. Only it ain't a cartoon. It's ruined. She's got where she ain't ex­actly right. Gets worse every year. But she remembers being in­dependent, and she doesn't want to lose that. Sometimes, I think that's all that holds her together, being independent.'

'She sounded all right to me,' I said. 'Ornery. But all right.'

'This is one of her good days,' Tim said.

'She's damn sure got them Chihuahuas scoped out,' Leonard said.

'You can't put much stock in what she says,' Tim said. 'She'd probably have been less upset if one of the Pentecostals had got­ten cooked by the dog.'

'I can understand that,' Leonard said. 'Or maybe that's the Jehovah's Witnesses that bother me with the tracts and stuff, not the Pentecostals. I can't get 'em straight.'

'Listen here, guys,' Tim said. 'I know you two and me ain't buddies or nothing. Just met you. But I got to give a little ad­vice, tell you that messin' around in this town, a black guy and a white guy. It ain't good. If something did happen to Florida, whoever done it might be willing to do it again. This thing with Florida, maybe you ought to forget it. Let the Chief handle it. He's basically fair. Let him do your lookin' for you.'

'I'm not sure he'll look that hard,' I said.

'All right,' Tim said. 'But you wake up one morning beside the road with your throat slit and Leonard hanging from a crab apple tree, and his dick cut off and in your mouth, don't say I didn't warn you.'

'I don't want my dick in his mouth, cut off or attached,' Leonard said.

'You should be so lucky,' I said.

'All right, guys,' Tim said. 'Have it your way.'

We gave Tim some rent money for his mother, and he went away. When he was gone, I said, 'Guess we shouldn't have jacked with him. He was just concerned about us.'

'Hell with him,' Leonard said. 'Seems to me he's awfully anx­ious for us to leave matters in the hands of that ruptured cop. I think he's just worried he might get asked some questions. And hey, Bubba, let me give you some advice. Stay the hell out of everybody's business.'

'What?'

'Stuff about his mama living at the store with him. That ain't your problem.'

'You're the one thinks he's a money-grubbing untrustworthy sonofabitch. So if he's a sonofabitch, maybe he hasn't thought about it.'

'Just keep your mind on askin' the insulting questions that pertain to Florida, and quit trying to take the world in to raise. I think that ole woman is just the way she wants to be, and that

Tim's just embarrassed by her, and he's a selfish sonofabitch who'd take coins off her dead eyes to buy rubbers.'

'Could be ... man, she's something, isn't she. That story she told, about the Chihuahua. The Pentecostals. That's horrible, don't you think? Poor dog getting burned up like that.'

'Terrible,' Leonard said, then pursed his lips and smiled a lit­tle. 'But it's kinda funny, you don't know the dog personal like.'