and there were no streetlights, and with the house lights off the stars glowed in the black satin heavens like white dots of neon.
Dad was a heavy man and very tired and we didn't play ball together or do any of the classic stuff fathers and sons are supposed to do. He put in twelve-hour days and did hard manual labor, so he wasn't up for much ball chasing when he came home. But he did his best. He taught me about the woods when he had time, went to my school plays, made sure I had money for comic books, and found the time, now and then, when he should have been sleeping, to sit on the porch and point out the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, and he had names for some of the other stars I've forgotten, but they weren't the names you normally hear. They were names given the constellations by his father or grandfather, and they had known the stars as well as a seasoned truck driver knows a road map.
Dad told me stories while we looked at the stars. He had known Bonnie and Clyde. He had driven around Gladewater, Texas, with them one Fourth of July and tossed firecrackers out the windows of their automobile. At the time, he didn't know they were being pursued by every law enforcement agency in Texas.
Late one night during the depths of the Great Depression, down by the railroad track where he was hoboing, he and his friends had met Pretty Boy Floyd. He had fought bareknuckle and wrestled at county fairs for money. He knew handed-down stories of Billy the Kid, Belle Starr, Sam Bass, and Jessie James, and when he was a child, he'd seen Frank James giving a talk in a Sears store on the ills of crime. He may have yarned a little, but I liked it all anyway.
Now, the stories I heard were off the late-night news. Rapes and serial murders and child molestations. Children with guns and no imagination and less ambition. It wasn't a world my father would have understood. Last time I had seen him was a Christmas many years ago. He looked as if he'd just viewed the new world he was living in for the very first time and didn't like it and didn't want to stay. He was dead in two weeks. A heart attack and he was out of there.
When we got to Leonard's, I knew he was hoping Raul hadn't left, but Raul's Ford station wagon was gone. There were a couple of cops there, watching the place. Leonard thanked them, shooed them off, and Charlie let him.
Leonard went inside while we sat in Charlie's car with the engine running and the heater turned high. It was quite cozy. Charlie was pretty drunk, but when he spoke his words were clear, so I figured he still had a few brain cells left.
'Here's y'all's Christmas present,' Charlie said. 'Some advice. Don't do this thing for Hanson.'
'It beats jail,' I said.
'You ain't goin' to jail. You know that. Hanson ain't gonna do shit. He'll get Leonard out of this. He knows the Chief knows he knows about the crack house. Chief knows Hanson is gonna nail him one day, somehow, if he don't get rid of him first. They're just playing some kind of cat-and-mouse shit. Chief fires him, Hanson can make a big enough stink all the fumigators in LaBorde couldn't get rid of it. Chief knows he's got to get rid of Hanson, but he hasn't figured how. Gives him every shit job there is, hoping he'll get killed. But Hanson, he takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. So, what I'm saying is, Hanson decides to get Leonard off, he'll get him off. He knows enough about where the bodies are buried to handle that.'
Charlie turned to look at what was left of the house next door. A charred frame, a pile of gray ash, and a few wisps of smoke. 'You know,' Charlie said, 'that is Leonard's best job yet.'
'He likes his work. And Charlie, thanks for the advice, but odd as this sounds, Hanson's kind of a friend. Considering Florida and I once had this thing going, I think he's pretty much in need or he wouldn't ask me to get involved.'
'All right,' Charlie said, cracking the passenger window and getting out a cigarette. 'I give you that. “He pushed in the car lighter. 'But this is his problem. Not yours. He feels there's something really wrong, he ought to take care of it himself. He ought not send citizens down there to do his dirty work.'
'I think he's just a little concerned is all and doesn't feel it's a legal matter.'
'Grovetown is a shithole, Hap. You ought not go down there with Leonard. They don't like black folks unless they're swabbing out a toilet or sweeping a floor. That's the main reason Hanson didn't want Florida going down there. He thought it was dumb some little black gal like her going down to Honky-land. He told her so. She thought it was some kind of male chauvinist bullshit. He was just talking good sense. There's people down there don't believe civil rights is a real law. They still think everyone ought to own 'em a nigger. Let me tell you something. I spent a week in that armpit on account of my sister's husband, Arnold—may he grow like an onion with his head in the ground. He left her. He was working the lumber mill there, had this thing going with a secretary, decided one day this clippie’s pussy was all he wanted to smell, so he and her got out of Grovetown and left Sis sittin' on her ass with two kids, both of 'em in diapers. I had to go over there and get her. There were arrangements to be made. Old bills. Some things to sell. Usual shit. I sent her home and stayed to do the stuff she wasn't emotionally fit to do. I went into that town three, four times a week, and I tell you, man, it's like a time warp. Hardly any blacks come into town if they haven't got some kind of business—like buying groceries. Getting gas. Necessary stuff. And they see a white man coming they step off the sidewalk and assume a Rastus position. All teeth and bent heads. It's what's expected of them. It's what they know. They don't do that, Klan over there —or rather some offshoot of it, calls itself the Supreme Knights of the Caucasian Order, or some ridiculous handle like that—decides some black is uppity, they'll come down on 'em. Blacks in Grovetown are outflanked. Whites have all the power there. All the power.'
'Lot of blacks would argue it's that way everywhere.'
'And they'd be wrong. Everywhere ain't like Grovetown. They go to Grovetown, they're gonna find out things are a lot better elsewhere than they think. They're gonna find what it's like to be back in the sixties, before that Civil Rights Act. They're gonna realize things aren't near as bad as they've been. Except in Grovetown. Late as four, five years ago, a black woman was tarred and feathered by some of those Klan ass wipes. She was raped too, ten, fifteen times. Guys did that are the kind of creeps would stand up and tell you how whites and blacks ought not to be together, and whites and blacks shouldn't date, but they don't mind stealing some black pussy from some poor woman, tarring and feathering her. Hot tar, Hap. That shit is intense. That's not something anyone wants on them. She damn near died 'cause most of her pores were closed up. And then there was one other little touch. They sewed up her snatch. Sewed it up with a leather-craft needle and baling wire.'
'Good God. What the hell did she do to get them down on her?'
'You'll like this. They didn't like the way she dressed. She was some young gal, nineteen, twenty at the oldest. Grew up in Grovetown, went off to the university here, went back to Grovetown for spring break, forgot how to play the game. Maybe thought times had changed. Year or two to someone that young is an eternity. Maybe she took an Afro-American course and bought a dashiki. Thought 'cause of that the whole world changed. She developed some pride, like anyone ought to. But then she went home and got that knocked out of her. Word was—and this was based on a couple of unsigned, unaddressed letters the editors of the university paper got from Grovetown—
