'My daddy. He always liked bacon, so he named me Bacon. I don't think he liked me near good as bacon, though. Least not the way I remember it.'
I managed to turn and look in the back seat. Leonard was stretched out there, lying on his back, and he looked awful. His face appeared to be the end result of a radiation experiment. Had I not expected him, I don't know I would have recognized him. His smashed straw hat lay over his crotch.
'He needs a doctor,' I said. !
'Gonna get one. Wouldn't no white town doctor gonna look at him. Not after they find out Mr. Jackson Brown was the one wanted y'all beat. Reason he got that hat with him like that, wasn't no one wanted to put his dick in his pants.'
'That'll slay him. He thinks his dick is his best feature.'
'Caliber, he got him two sticks and tried to do it, but he couldn't do nothing but pick it up and move it left and right. Couldn't get it to go inside the pants, and he wasn't gonna touch it. Me neither. So we put that hat over him.'
'Very innovative. He's lucky he's still got a dick. That Brown fella didn't mind touching it. Or cutting it.'
'I don't think he really gonna cut it off. He knows how far he can push, and he can't push that far. Not in town. Not all them witnesses, even if most of them deny they saw anything happen. They know someone got to pay. And if it's somethin' that bad, a ball-cuttin' downtown, they only gonna lie so far.'
'In other words, they won't go to the pen for Jackson Brown?'
'That's right. But way it stands now, Chief ain't gonna do nothin' to that Mr. Jackson, even he wants to. Mrs. Rainforth—'
'Is that Maude?'
'Uh huh. She gonna say what happened, and her boys gonna say, but all them other people, they ain't gonna say, 'cause they was in on it. Them two y'all whupped up bad. They'll take the fall for all that ruckus. 'Cause that's what they're paid for.'
'Where are we going, and how come?'
'You goin' to my place, least for a bit. And the reason how come is Mrs. Rainforth done paid me to do it. Said I should take you home and take care of you awhile. She's paying me some extra.'
'So this isn't out of the kindness of your heart?'
'I ain't got nothing against you. I think what happened was a shame, but I wasn't gettin' paid, and wasn't gettin' Mrs. Rainforth's blessing on this, you'd still be out there in that alley. ‘Sides, my place only a little better than the alley.'
“And how come Mrs. Rainforth is doin' this?'
“White ladies are hard to figure. She don't like Mr. Jackson, for one. He owns most everything in town, wants to own the cafe, and she won't sell, and on top of that, him and her husband, Bud, they hated each other. He's dead now, but Mr. Jackson, he ain't one to forget, and Mrs. Rainforth, she ain't neither. It's not she's suddenly grown to like niggers, but then she don't exactly hate nobody neither. She don't like that kinda business come down on you two.'
'What about you? She like you?'
'Shit, boy. I'm the cook. I been there so long she don't think about me one way or the other. I'm like furniture and . . . Wheeee! I tell you, mister . . . Who are you anyway?'
'Hap. Hap Collins.'
'I tell you, Mister Hap. We got to get you out of them piss-pants. You makin' my eyes burn.'
Chapter 19
There's no other way to describe Bacon's home other than to say it was a real shithole. It was down in a wash and the yard was full of water. Decorating the place like yard art was a worn-out washing machine, the lid up, the drum overflowing with beer cans. Near that, like a dead companion, a refrigerator lay on its side with the door off; its interior was nasty black with moss and grime and an abandoned bird's nest.
Out to the side of the house I could see some kind of heavy machinery and a truck under a weathered tarp. There was just enough visible that I could tell that, but not enough to identify the machinery or the make of the truck.
Bacon coasted slowly through the water, drove right up to the front porch, which sagged a little and dripped water. Worse yet, it looked like the porch was holding the house up. The house looked to have been made mostly of plywood and suspicious two-by-fours pried off a burned-out building. The roof was primarily tin and the rest was tar paper and the water ran off it in great gushes.
Bacon got out, waded to the front porch, which drooped beneath his steps, and opened the front door. He went inside for a moment, came back, opened my door, said, 'You gonna have to help me with watermelon head here, Mr. Hap.'
'I'm an injured man,' I said. 'Couldn't you carry me in and leave him here?'
Bacon grinned. 'You sore. You banged, but you're all right enough. They spent their steam on your buddy.'
'Thank God,' I said. 'They could have hurt me.'
I eased out of the car into ankle-deep water. I felt as if someone had wrapped me in razor wire and set me on fire with a blowtorch. I found I couldn't completely straighten up. Bacon opened the back door, got Leonard under the arms and pulled him forward, out of the car. 'Get his feet,' Bacon said.
'I just hope that damn hat don't fall off his dick,' I said.
It was painful, but we got Leonard inside, carried him into one of the three small rooms—a bedroom. It was
