The Two-Bear Mambo

'I don't want to see them again. I want to go home.'

'There's an idea. You damn sure ain't stayin' here. You look well enough to me to stay somewheres else, and I wish you would. I don't want no more troubles than I got.'

Bacon cracked eggs in a bowl, poured some milk from a car­ton into the bowl and started whipping them up. He poured the results in a lightly oiled frying pan, stirred them as they cooked.

A moment later the food was on plates. He pulled the biscuits out of the oven, sat the pan on the counter. 'Your buddy want to eat?'

'I'd appreciate it if you'd make the trip to go ask him.'

'You don't move them muscles, much as they hurt, you're just gonna get stiffer'n shit.'

I sighed, made my way to the bedroom. Leonard was asleep. By the time I got back Bacon was through eating. Half the bis­cuits were gone. There wasn't any margarine left for the biscuits, just a greasy wrapper, and the eggs on my plate were cool.

I eyed the biscuit pan. Two of the biscuits were the ones Bacon had handled after scratching his ass. I ate the others, and the eggs.

'What happened on the movie last night?' I asked. 'I fell asleep.'

'These two guys, they got roughed up, so they decide to go back and do the guys in did it to 'em. They got killed.'

'Did not,' I said.

'You're right. They went home and lived happily ever after, and the guy they was stayin' with 'fore they did got him some peace and goddamn quiet and died with a hard-on.'

'Did not.'

'I got to go to work. There's Epsom salts by the tub, you want to soak.'

'Bacon?'

'Yeah.'

'Thanks for letting me sleep on the couch, taking the cot and all.'

'Don't keep expectin' it. I didn't get paid that much. I don't reckon no one knows where you are right now, but give it a few days, it'll get out. Word always gets out.'

I got out my wallet and gave Bacon a twenty. I said, 'For food.'

'Thanks,' he said.

'I'd appreciate it if you'd get some vanilla cookies. Leonard likes vanilla cookies a lot.'

'Vanilla cookies,' Bacon said, and left for work.

Chapter 21

Around five o'clock that afternoon the rain stopped. I was at the window looking at the sky, the dark line of trees below it and the highway beyond the water-covered yard. The sky looked strange. All red and swollen, as if it were bleeding behind transparent skin. The highway was red with sunlight and glistened H like a fresh-licked strawberry freeze pop. As I watched, a car splashed into view, turned off the highway onto where the drive would have been had it not been covered by water.

It was Bacon's old wreck. Two cars pulled in behind him. I felt my innards churn, then saw one of the cars was Leonard's and Tim was driving. The windshield had been knocked out on the passenger's side and black plastic had been stretched across it and held there with gray tape. The driver's side still had glass, but it was fractured and webbed.

The other car was the Chief's car, and Cantuck was by himself. Bacon got out with a grocery sack in his arms, stood by his car in the ankle-deep water with his head hung, as if he had just been forced to give all the dogs at the pound a blow job; then write a favorable report on it.

I let the curtain drop, went to check on Leonard. He was awake. I propped him up, told him who was out there, then we heard the front door open. I went into the living room, leaving the bedroom door wide so Leonard could look out and hear.

Tim managed to come inside first. He looked tired and vacant-eyed. He needed a shave. He didn't quite look at me. He sort of smiled out of the corner of his mouth. I figured I wasn't much to look at.

Bacon eased inside carrying his dripping shoes and socks in one hand, the grocery sack in the other. He sat the sack on the television, reached inside, got out a bag of vanilla cookies, tossed them at me. 'Little goin'-away present.'

I caught the cookies, let them dangle by my side.

Cantuck was standing in the open doorway, carefully scraping mud off his boots with the bottom of the door frame. He finished and closed the door. His right cheek was stuffed with chewing tobacco and his ruptured nut looked extra lumpy today, as if it might burst open at any moment giving birth to deformed twins. When he spoke, flecks of dark tobacco juice jumped from his mouth and onto his lips.

'Where's the Smartest Nigger in the World?'

'In the bedroom. Right now, he's the Most Swole Up Nigger in the World.'

Cantuck didn't look in the direction of the open bedroom door. He said to me, 'You boys know a fella named Charlie? Cop in LaBorde?'

'Charlie Blank?' I said.