'Yeah, threaten me 'cause you can whip me. You couldn't whip all them others.'
I heard Leonard take a deep breath, blow it out slowly through his nose.
I said, 'It's all right, Leonard. Let's go.'
'Not yet,' Leonard said. 'Bacon, they came after you day after some of them came after us. Like you, we were lucky. We want to get even. We want to find who put them up to this, and we want to find out what happened to Florida.'
'Fuck Florida!' Bacon yelled and half came off the couch and screamed with pain. 'Oh, God,' he said, and collapsed into the worn-out cushions. 'That bitch, she showed up in town, she upset the balance. Things was bad before she come, but we all knew how things was played. She come around, shakin' that pretty ass, she got things messed up. She's as much to blame for what happened to me as Mr. Hap.'
We gave Bacon a moment to stew in his rancor. We listened to water pound the roof of the house, listened to it run onto the floor in the kitchen, listened to it blow past the cardboard patching in the window. Leonard said, 'We're gonna do this with or without you, but we're gonna do it, and you might help us do it better. Did you recognize any of the men took you out of here, tarred and feathered you?'
'No.'
'Come on, Bacon,' Leonard said.
'No! I said NO! Are you deaf?'
'Just tell me if this is right,' Leonard said. 'You left here ahead of us, went into town, came home, and next night they came out and got you.'
Bacon didn't say anything, but he didn't argue either.
'They came out and got you 'cause someone let on we were here, that you helped us,' Leonard said. 'Who?'
'I don't know,' Bacon said. 'Cantuck, maybe. It could have been him. I don't think so, but it could have been. Maybe Mrs. Rainforth, she could have said something wrong. Mr. Tim might have. It ain't no tellin'. Please go. Please. They see you here . . .'
'They're not gonna see us,' Leonard said.
'They gonna find out,' Bacon said. 'Somehow, they'll find 3ut. They found out last time, didn't they?'
'Sorry, Bacon,' I said. 'Really.'
'Yeah,' he said. 'Okay. You're sorry. Just go on, now.'
It was strange and painful driving into Grovetown. It's impossible to describe the feelings that went through me as we came co the city-limits sign, and soon to the square. The square was fairly deep in water. You could pass through it, but the water was swift and it made me nervous. Once, when I was younger, I was following a pickup truck out of a hayfield where I had been working, and we'd had to stop working because a tremendous and unbelievable rain had fallen out of the sky. It was like someone had dumped an ocean on East Texas. But I was with my boss, who had given me a ride to the field, and he was taking me home, and we got behind this pickup, and we came to a bridge and the water was just too much for the hard dry ground. It had been too hot for too long, and when it finally did rain, it wasn't absorbed. It was swelling, and water was already over the bridge, though it wasn't deep. I think had we come to the bridge first, we would have tried to drive over it too, but the pickup in front of us tried it. The water hit the pickup like a battering ram, carried it into the bridge railing and the railing broke and the truck went over. There was nothing we could do. One instant man and truck were there, the next they were gone. The water carried the truck away and under, and it was three days later when the water went down that they found him. He was still in the truck, what was left of a cigar clamped between his teeth. That's how fast he'd gone over and drowned.
It had taught me a lesson about the power of water, and I had respected it ever since. I knew what it could do, and I was haunted by it. By the deeps. By the shallows. By water.
Across the way I could see the Grovetown Cafe. Water was lapping over the curbing, threatening to enter the place. In my head I could see inside it and I could visualize all those angry people, falling down on us like cut timbers.
We decided to start at Cantuck's office, but we couldn't get to it. The water was too high over there to park. We parked at Tim's filling station, and walked over. I tell you, outside of the truck I was a nervous wreck. I knew it wasn't wise, especially going into Cantuck's office, but I wouldn't go without the snub-nose and Leonard wouldn't go without his pistol. We hid them in our coats.
Water was seeping under the door and into the lobby when we arrived. The carpet smelled like a damp sheepdog. We were both breathing harder than either of us really should have been. Perspiration was boiling out from under my arms almost as fast as the rain was coming down. Leonard's limp was more pronounced. He had gotten the original injury saving my life, and he'd healed up good, having only occasional trouble with it, but the beating we had taken had done his leg some bad business again, reactivated the old pain.
'You all right?' I asked.
'Unless you want to have a sack race, I'm all right.'
The secretary had taken down her Christmas cards and tree. She wasn't glad to see us. Reynolds was out, which was, of course, a major disappointment.
Cantuck must have heard us come in, because he came to the door of his office with a jaw full of chewing tobacco. He looked a lot less friendly than when I used to see him leaving the police station in LaBorde.
'All right,' he said. 'Come in.'
We went into his office. Cantuck sat down, picked his spit can off the desk and pushed his chew into it with his tongue.
'We just thought we'd drop in and say hi,' Leonard said, taking a chair. When he sat, water pooled beneath him. '
Cantuck sighed. He rolled his one good eye to the left, then the right, perhaps looking for sanctuary. I got a
