'Still,' he said, 'I hope Raul don't leave.'
I don't remember much about the drive that morning, just the rain and the scenery being a blurry yellow line in front of my face, a few twists of dried forests, glimpses of swollen creeks and ponds. We drove by where we had gone off in the marsh, and the both of us looked, our heads turning in that direction at the same time. The marsh had expanded. The water was coming over the highway and the woods were swollen with it.
Leonard said, 'They pulled my car out of there.”
'I know.”
'Guess what?'
'It won't run.'
'The insurance ain't given me but two hundred dollars for it. Guess they think I can stick that up my ass and drive around on it.'
'Personally, I don't think it's much of a loss. It was about one notch above a ten-speed, and that's because it had a roof on it.'
A few more miles down the road we started kicking around game plans for what we were going to do when we got to Grove-town, but the plans didn't amount to anything. It consisted primarily of eating the sack lunch Leonard had brought.
Leonard and I were about as far from sleuths as you could get. We didn't know much besides instinct, and so far that had gotten our asses whipped, got us half drowned, shot at, in trouble with the law, and Leonard had screwed up his relationship with Raul, and we still hadn't found Florida.
We ended up driving out to see Bacon. The yard was missing some of its beer cans—washed away most likely—and the house was still a shithole, but someone had helped it along by kicking out one of the porch posts. The porch roof leaned to one side like a rake's hat. NIGGER had been spray-painted in big black letters underneath one of the windows and the window was knocked out and cardboard had been put in its place. The cardboard had taken in so much rain it was puffy and bent back and you could see into the house, and what you saw was darkness. Out to the side, the tarp had been torn off the backhoe by either wind or maliciousness. The machine was a faded yellow and it looked as if it hadn't been cleaned since used last. It was on a wheeled platform attached to an ancient but powerful-looking gray Dodge truck.
We went up on the porch, shook the rain off like dogs, and knocked. After a while a curtain moved, then the door cracked open. There was a new chain across the door. Bright and shiny. Sticking above it was a double-barrel shotgun and the shadow of a face.
'Get the hell out of here,' Bacon said.
'It's us,' I said.
'I know who the hell it is. Get on.'
'We just want to ask a few questions.'
'Not of me. Get on out of here, or I'm gonna blow your ass off. It wasn't for you, I'd be all right.'
'Just a moment of your time,' Leonard said. 'Then we'll leave.'
'I've given you all the time you're gonna get.'
'It's important,' I said.
'It was important last time, and look where it got me.'
'Come on, Bacon,' Leonard said. 'Just a moment.'
The door slammed. The chain rattled. The door was flung open and we went inside. Water was pouring from the kitchen roof into a big pan on the floor and the pan was full and the water was running over, running over the swollen linoleum. Wind was blowing rain through the gaps in the window with the cardboard over it, and it had been going on so long a few of the floorboards were warped.
Bacon stood in the middle of the room in his jockey shorts. He had the shotgun in his right hand and he had both arms flung wide. His scalded skin drooped over a sagging rib cage. His flesh was splotched from forehead to foot with great pink patches of rawness. It looked as if big chunks of hide had been pulled off by squid suckers.
'That tar took my meat off,' he said. 'You hear me! They tarred me 'cause I helped y'all. They meant for me to die. I ain't safe, now. You come around, I sure ain't safe.'
'Jesus, Bacon,' I said. 'I'm so sorry.'
'That's you white folk. You're always so sorry. So goddamn sorry. Jesus, Bacon, I'm sorry. So sorry. Well, that helps, Mr. Hap. I'm all right now.'
'Let's go,' I said.
'Not yet,' Leonard said. 'I'm sorry what happened to you, Bacon. I don't feel so good myself, and it was whites did it to me, but Hap ain't one of 'em.'
'He's the one got me hurt,' Bacon said. He threw the shotgun on the couch, sat down carefully. You could actually hear the skin crack when he sat. Blood beaded around some of the splotches and began to run.
Bacon's voice was venomous. 'Every time I move, feel my skin crack, I think of Mr. Hap, here. I had to soak in kerosene to get that tar and feathers off. It peeled, took skin with it. Both my nuts, they're solid pink. They're ripped right down to the meat. Ain't a place on them ain't scalded by tar, burned by kerosene. I ain't slept a whole night since it happened on account of the pain and knowing they're comin' back to finish me, 'cause they will. I know they will. I'm gonna have to move off somewhere. I can't stay here. I don't know where to go, but I can't stay here . . . y'all go on.'
'In a moment,' Leonard said.
'You ain't nothing but an Uncle Tom, nigger-fella,' Bacon said.
'It's a good thing you're old and splotched like a hound,' Leonard said, 'or I'd have to fix your teeth.'
