The Two-Bear Mambo

'You were. I wasn't.'

'Now I don't know if I want to shit or wind my watch.'

We sat for a while, not saying anything. I said, 'You hear the joke about the lonesome cowpokes.'

'Ah, Hap, not now.'

'Just to cheer you up.'

'You can't tell a joke for shit, Hap.'

'You see, there was this cowboy town, and this guy rides in—'

'Hap, please.'

'—and he goes to the bar, and he has a few drinks—'

'You're going to do this anyway, aren't you?'

'—and after he gets pretty lubricated, he says to the bar­tender, 'Where are all the gals? Hell, I ain't had a woman in six months.' '

'Is this going to be sexist?'

'Probably.'

'Well, all right, go ahead, even if it's the wrong sex for me.'

'We can change it to a gay cowboy. The line is now, 'I ain't had a man's ass in six months.' We have to take for granted that this is sort of a progressive cowboy bar, okay?'

'Just get it over with.'

'So, the bartender says, 'Hell, there ain't no gals . . . guys.' You know, Leonard, for this one to work it has to be gals.'

'Okay. Whatever.'

'The bartender says, 'There ain't no gals, but we got some­thing we do for that little problem.' Cowboy says, 'Yeah, what's that?' And the bartender says, 'Show 'em, boys.' So the boys take the cowboy out back of the saloon, and there's this watermelon patch.'

'I see this coming.'

'No you don't. They take him over to the fence and he looks at the watermelons growing there, says, 'I don't get it,' and one of the cowboys says, 'We just cut us a plug out of one of these melons, and on a hot night like this, we fuck it, and it feels damn good.' '

'This is disgusting, Hap. Go on.'

'So the cowboy, he's, to put it mildly, shocked, but as we have established he hasn't had any in six months, so he climbs over the fence, looks around, sees him a fine-lookin' melon, one of those striped rattlesnake melons, and damn if he don't actually feel a little something for it. A stirrin'. He picks it up, takes out his pocketknife, starts to cut him out a plug, when suddenly all the cowboys gasp and fall back. He turns, looks at them. Says, 'Hey, what's wrong?'

' 'Why stranger,' one of 'em says, 'you're playin' with fire. That's Johnny Ringo's girl.' '

A long moment of silence, then Leonard sighed. 'Oh God. It's worse than I thought. That's tasteless. Which is okay. But it's not funny.'

'Is too.'

'No, it isn't. Hap?'

'Yeah.'

'You know what?'

'Yeah. One way or the other, we got to finish what we started.'

Leonard wasn't much fun. He hadn't liked my joke and fell asleep while I was talking to him. I went back to the living room. Bacon was up. He had put the cot away. He was wearing boxer shorts with flowers on them, a stained T-shirt, and old brown slippers. He was standing by the stove. He said, 'Want a scrambled egg, somethin?'

'Egg is fine.'

'How about two and some biscuits?'

'All right.'

I went into the kitchen and sat at the table. It was warm in the kitchen. Bacon had slept with the oven lit and the oven door open. He took a can of biscuits out of the fridge and whacked it on the edge of the counter, plucked the biscuits out and snapped them into a greased pan. He paused to scratch his ass, went back to his business. I tried to keep an eye on which biscuits he han­dled after the ass scratching, so I could locate them in the pan.

He put the pan in the oven, closed the door, went to cracking eggs. 'You feel any better?'

'A mite. More than I ever expected.'

'You're lucky the couple guys knew how to really throw punches were the ones y'all took out right at first. They can do some damage, them two. See 'em again, won't be so easy. They weren't expecting all that Jap stuff.'

'Korean, actually. Hapkido.'

'All the same to me. See 'em again, they gonna come on hard, if they don't shoot you.'