The Two-Bear Mambo (24 page)

"Thanks for telling me," Tim said. "I'll get rid of it. Me and her, we struggled. I figure it got caught in my coat, and when I hung it up to dry, the earring fell out, rolled under the stove."

"You stupid sonofabitch."

"Hey, look who's on the end of the gun, pal. Ain't me."

"You're the one told the Klan me and Leonard were going home."

"You just kept pushing, Hap. I thought maybe after that beating you took, that would fix you. But hearing you talk to Cantuck ... I don't know. I wasn't so sure, and I had to be. And I didn't mean for Bacon to get it. I made an anonymous phone call to Draighten, told him where you two would be. I said you'd be coming from Bacon's place. Everyone knows Bacon."

"Why would you do this?"

"I think I need to get this over with, Hap. I don't dislike you, it's hard enough to do, but I got to do it."

"I don't think it's that hard for you, buddy."

"Oh, you don't know. It's not easy for me at all. I don't like killing."

"But you get by."

"What I want you to do is step out of the grave. I want you to get out right now, get on your knees up at the edge."

I thought about that. I realized he didn't want to shoot me in case Leonard might hear the shot. Which in this rain wasn't likely, but I decided not to mention that. He wanted me at the edge of the grave on my knees so he could bean me with the shovel again. Bean me on the head, then roll me in between the edge of the coffin and the grave wall. The other side would fit Leonard.

"I don't think I want to climb out," I said.

"Then I shoot you here."

"Why would you kill Florida?"

"The money. That's it. I liked Florida. Really. But she talked too much. I knew she carried her savings somewhere in her car, and I got to thinking about it. She drove out here behind me and I moved the body like she wanted, and I didn't really have it planned, but I knew then I could kill her, take the money, and no one would ever know. I needed that money, Hap, and everything was right for it. Grovetown wasn't going to get too worked up about a missing black girl. Maybe Cantuck. But he ain't Sherlock Holmes, you know. It was quite a bit of money she had. And not hid all that well either. Taped under the seat. All that money and she was going to buy some stupid recording with it."

"Heaven forbid someone spend their own money the way they want."

"I didn't like the way she wanted to use me, neither. Try and make me think she might bed me, but I knew she wouldn't. I put Florida in the coffin with Soothe, put them on top of Burk.

"I drove Florida's car down the road there, off to a fishing spot I used to use. There's swampy water there so goddamn deep it might go to the center of the earth. I pushed the car off in it, walked back and drove out."

"Just for money? You killed her for that?"

"I fucked her too. I figured she was gonna die, wasn't any use in that pussy going to waste. I wouldn't have hurt her, had some fun with her, had I not meant to kill her. It's just ... I was gonna do her in, might as well get some pleasure from her. It wasn't that good by the way. Fight like she did, it isn't that good."

Greed. Tim had killed that wonderful, beautiful woman for money and sex. I'd assigned everything that had happened to bigotry, but it was greed and lust. Two sins much older, and as basic as the instinctive mating of those two National Geographic bears. I felt like an idiot. I felt angry. I felt as if my heart would explode.

"Come on, Hap, get out of the hole."

"If you're gonna bang me with that shovel," I said, "I'd rather take the bullet."

"I do that, Leonard hears the shot, he might drive off, then folks would come here to investigate, figure things out. I got to get you both, Hap. You might as well come on and let me do it. I can kill you with one blow if you're out of the grave. I can make it quick. After I got some from Florida, that's what I did. One blow with a rock."

In the grave, lodged like I was, I didn't have a chance in a million. But the other way, maybe ...

"You don't come out," Tim said, "I'll chance shooting you. I don't think Leonard can hear anyway, but I got an idea he did hear it, he'd know it was a gunshot, and it'll be tidier this way."

"All right, but promise me you'll do it right. Hard and quick. Same for Leonard."

"I'll have to shoot Leonard, most likely. He won't expect it, though, and I'll do it up close. Right in the temple, okay?"

I thought, if you get that close, and Leonard has an inkling what you're going to do, he's going to snap your arm off at the elbow and use it to swab out your asshole. I thought, Leonard, old buddy, I go down, please don't fall for this bastard. Don't fall for it.

Tim put the automatic in his pocket and kept my revolver. He said, "Get up tight against the grave wall."

I did. He climbed out carefully, keeping an eye on me. He got the flashlight and held it on my face, blinding me. The light bobbed low and came back up. I couldn't make out what he was doing behind the light, but I had an idea. He was slipping the revolver into his pocket, picking up the shovel.

I put a foot inside the coffin, between Florida's stick legs, prepared to reach for the edge of the grave. I figured soon as I did that, that's when Tim would strike. He'd get me before I got out, right in the head, then all he had to do was make sure I was pushed down between the coffin and the dirt, go up and talk to Leonard. He wouldn't have to worry about the noise of the gun then. One snap and it was all over.

In the split second before I raised my hands to take hold of the edge of the grave, I thought about trying to snatch up the shovel I dropped, but knew that wouldn't work. I wasn't quick enough for that. Not quick enough to get hold of it, come out of the grave and hit him with it.

I took hold of the edge of the grave with both hands, then the flashlight dropped, and I heard the whistling of the shovel being swung. I threw my hands up in a wide X pattern and twisted my head to the side as the shovel came down and hit my wrists and pain exploded in me, but I had twisted my body so that it carried the power of the blow to the side, and with a quick turn of my arms, I wrenched the shovel free, dropped it, seized the sides of the grave, pulled myself up into a crouch.

The flashlight still lay on the ground, and there was a dark shape behind it, and I dove for it, was rewarded by my arms encircling Tim's neck.

I dropped my grasp from his neck to his sides, pinned his arms against him just as he reached into his coat pockets to get hold of the guns. I used my right knee to strike him in the side of the leg, on the pressure point there. He sagged and I butted him in the face, and he went down. I was all over him then, but the water flowing under us made us slide and we went backwards into the grave. We hit the coffin and the sides blew out, and the bodies beneath us leaped up. I felt a bony arm clasp my face, blocking my vision, filling my head with the stink of rotting meat. I don't know if it was me or Tim that screamed, but one of us did.

The rest of the coffin came apart beneath us, and we rolled in a wreck of bones and flesh. I came up on top, driving straight punches into Tim's face, and they were good punches, but I'd forgotten about the shovel I'd left in the grave, and Tim got hold of it, and though he didn't have room to swing it, he popped it forward, banging me between the eyes with the handle, then he was on top of me, trying to strangle me. I thrashed amidst the wreckage of Soothe and Florida, brought the sides of my hands down hard behind his elbows, pushed in. He couldn't hold the choke. I was gaining control. In another second I was going to turn him over and be on top, and he knew it. He shoved to his feet, leaped for the edge of the grave.

I managed to grab his leg. He kicked back reflexively. It was a lucky shot to the jaw. In the instant I was dealing with the pain he got out of the grave. I got it together pretty quick, went after him, stumbling over the flashlight as I went. The light spun toward him, showed him in its glow, then rolled away, but not before I saw he had pulled the automatic from his coat pocket.

Then there was a sound, like a stick snapping, and Tim did a little trick with his legs, as if he were trying to bury his heels in the earth, then he sagged and fell on his side, did a few kicks that carried him around in a semicircle, then he stopped moving. I could hear his breathing. It was hard and heavy.

"Hap. You okay?"

Leonard grew out of the darkness, limped toward me. He was holding his pistol. I answered, "Just barely."

"I got to thinking about things," Leonard said. "He went from not wanting to cooperate to being awfully anxious to cooperate. He wanted me to come even when you didn't. I got to wondering why he was so eager to get us down here. I'd have been here sooner, but the leg isn't working so well."

"I'm just glad you came . . . shit!" I glanced where Tim had been lying. He was no longer there.

Leonard wheeled with the gun and I got hold of the flashlight. I shined it about the graveyard. Tim, walking as if he were imitating the scarecrow in the Oz movie, was making bad time toward the far side of the graveyard, toward the woods. He got to the barbed wire fence, fell against it and stuck there, his upper body bending over it, as if he were trying to fold in half. Then I heard a loud cracking, a roar, like the sound of a freight train magnified by ten. In the glow of the flashlight I saw a tall silver mass of flying needles coming out of the forest. Pines snapped and crackled into toothpicks. Great oaks screamed as they were pulled from the ground.

The mass of silver needles was a great wall of water. Before I could say, "I'll be a sonofabitch," the wall came down on us like a thousand pianos falling, and the great gray mountain of wetness pushed Leonard and me together and carried us away.

We held to each other and the water carried us high up, then under, and I couldn't breathe, and it was the marsh all over again, only worse, because the power of the water was so awesome there was no fighting back, no swimming. It churned us up and carried us through the heights of trees. We clung to each other and breathed again. Then it was down once more into choking darkness and confusion. A moment later, we were on top of the water again, coughing, and the next thing I knew I was hung in a tree, my body slamming against the tree trunk. There was a great weight tearing at my right shoulder, and I realized it was because I was holding on to Leonard and the water was jerking at him and trying to take him and my shoulder with it.

"Let go, Hap, you stubborn sonofabitch!"

I could see Leonard's shape now, at the end of my arm, and the bastard let go of my hand, but I held his wrist and gritted my teeth. It was like the marsh, and I hadn't let go and we had made it, and I wouldn't let go this time.

"Let go!" Leonard said, "or it'll take us both!"

"Then it will," I said.

I heard Leonard laugh. A choked water laugh. A crazy laugh. Then he snapped his wrist loose of my fingers and the dark churning water pulled him from me, washed him away.

A few hours before morning a hot gold corkscrew of lightning hit the top of a pine across the way and knocked it in half and caught it on fire. The rain sizzled in the flames and the tree burned out quickly and the fiery limbs that fell off of it were consumed by the flooding waters.

Then the rain stopped and the clouds split open like cotton candy being torn by greedy fingers and the wind blew their remnants away. A great gold moon rose high up and was visible through the summit of the trees—a pocked Happy Face against black velvet. I looked at the stars and thought first of my father, pointing out the shapes in the heavens, then of Florida and how we had once made love in her car and lay on her car hood afterwards looking at the stars, feeling as if they were near and belonged to us.

In time the moonlight and starlight brightened even more and I spied a strange configuration in a massive oak, as if nature had made an image of the crucified Christ out of debris and put heaven's spotlights on it. I watched it for a long time, uneasy with it, then nodded some, thinking of Leonard.

Dawn came rosy, as if it had never rained, and the moon was dissolved by sunlight and the sun itself was a bleeding red boil that did little to warm the chilled air. The water below me had dropped ten feet, but it was still a rush of mud and wreckage. A bloated cow was wedged between a pine and a sweet gum, and with the water no longer rushing, I could hear flies working the carcass, getting their breakfast. I ached all over. I was freezing. My coat and clothes crinkled and popped with ice when I moved. Ice fell out of my hair.

I tried to stretch, get positioned on the limb some way I wouldn't ache, but that wasn't possible. Nothing was comfortable. But as I moved I could see the shape in the oak clearly.

It was Florida. Her corpse, mostly devoid of flesh now, her left leg missing from the knee down, was hung up in the oak amidst a wad of limbs and vines and shattered lumber. Her stick arms were spread wide and her skull was tilted down on the neck bones, held together by peeling strips of flesh and muscle. Hungry crows were so thick on top of her skull, flapping their wings, pecking at her flesh, they looked like windblown black hair. One arm was raised slightly higher than the other, and the skeletal hand pointed to the sky.

I closed my eyes, but in time I was drawn to look again, and after an hour or so I felt so strange and disconnected with reality her corpse was no longer horrifying; it was like part of the decor.

By midday I was hungry and freezing and feverish, beginning to feel as if I was going to fall because I couldn't keep my grip anymore. My hands were like claws. My calves and thighs ached with cramps. When I stood up on the limb to shake my legs out, I could hardly keep my balance. Something was moving and rattling in my chest, and its name was pneumonia.

The sun bled out its redness and turned yellow and rose in the sky like a bright balloon full of helium, but still it gave no heat.

The air was as cold as an Arctic seal's nose and there was a slight wind blowing, and that made matters worse, turned the air colder and carried the stench from Florida's corpse and that of the bloated cow—which I named Flossy—to me as a reminder of how I would soon end up.

A few mobile homes floated by, mostly in pieces. A couple of rooftops drifted into view later on. I thought I might drop down on one of the roofs as it floated by, ride it out. And I think I was weak enough and stupid enough right then that that's exactly what I would have done, but the roof I had in mind hit a mass of trees, went apart, was washed away as splintered lumber.

I had become a little delirious with fever. Sometimes I dreamed I was still holding Leonard's wrist, and I was about to pull him into the tree with me, then I'd realize where I was and what had happened, and I'd go weak and wonder how it would be to drop from my limb and let the water have me.

After a time, I heard the helicopter. At first I thought the chopping sound was in my head, but finally I looked, and high up like a dragonfly, was a National Guard helicopter.

Then it was low, skimming over the trees, beating furiously, rattling the dry limbs of winter, making me colder. My coat was so soaked in water, so caked with ice, speedy movement was difficult, but I did my best to stand on my limb and wave an arm.

The helicopter passed over, started climbing. As I watched the copter soar up and away, I felt as if the world were falling out from under me. I slowly sat down. Then the copter turned back, dropped low.

It hovered over the tree where Florida's corpse was wedged, and I realized they had spotted her, not me. I waved and screamed and jumped up and down on my limb like an excited monkey. The copter moved slowly in my direction, a few yards above my tree and beat the air. A rope with a life basket was lowered out of its door.

They couldn't get too close because of the limbs, and I couldn't

get far enough out to get hold of the basket. I tore off my coat and tossed it, inched my way out on the limb, heard it crack, but kept going. The basket was six feet away and the limb was starting to sag, and I knew this was it. Die dog or eat the hatchet. I bent my knees, got a little spring like a diver about to do a double somersault, and leaped into space.

My legs didn't carry me as far as I thought they might, but I got hold of the basket, barely, and it tilted and swung and I clung. They hauled up slowly, me swinging in the air, my fingers weakening by the second. And just when I thought I couldn't hold anymore, they pulled me inside and threw a blanket around my shoulders and shoved a cup of hot soup into my bloodless hands.

"Man," said the young, uniformed Guardsman who gave me the soup, "you are one lucky sonofabitch. We been all over. We haven't found but three or four people. That flood, it took the world. You Hap Collins?"

"Yeah. How did you—"

"Fella we found, said you were out there. Wouldn't let us give up. Said he'd throw himself out of the copter, we didn't keep looking. I don't think he has the strength to roll over, but we kept looking. We saw that body in the tree, then you."

I wasn't paying attention to the Guardsman anymore. I took a better look around the chopper. I had been so preoccupied with getting inside, then with the soup, I hadn't noticed that there were three other rescued civilians inside, lying under blankets. One of them rolled over slowly and looked at me and smiled, if you could call lifting your upper lip slightly a smile. It was Leonard.

"That's the guy," Guardsman said.

"Yeah," I said. "I know that sonofabitch."

The Guardsman pulled me over by Leonard and draped a blanket around my shoulders and gave me more soup. The

Guardsman said, "We haven't got a doctor on board, but we'll have you to one soon."

"Thanks," I said.

I looked at Leonard. He was trying to sit up. I set the soup down and got him under the arms and pulled him up against the wall. "Throw yourself out, huh?" I said.

"Just bullshit." His voice was like crackling cellophane.

"Want some of my soup?"

"Long as I don't drink on the side where your mouth's been."

The rain stopped the day after the flood and it hasn't come a big rain since. The flood was the worst in East Texas history. Grovetown was almost wiped off the map and was designated a Disaster Area.

Leonard and I felt like warmed-over dog shit for about three months after it all. We were both pretty much broke, having gone through our savings and owing doctor bills.

Raul didn't run off while Leonard was in Grovetown. He had a change of heart, stayed home and waited. Leonard is looking for work. I go over there most Sundays to have dinner. I still don't like Raul much.

Florida's corpse was recovered and buried in the LaBorde cemetery. I was too sick to go to the funeral. Now that spring has come, there's a hill across from my house where beautiful wildflowers grow. I pick them from time to time, drive out to the cemetery in the car Charlie loaned me, and put them on Florida's grave.

Last week I started back doing odd jobs, and at the end of the week I nailed work driving a tractor, getting the ground in shape for a sweet potato crop for Mr. Swinger. It's not good work and it doesn't pay much, and it won't last long, but it has a hypnotic quality and keeps me from thinking too much. I get so I see only the field in front of me, hear the hum of the tractor, have to think just enough to do what needs to be done.

Sometimes, though, I can't help but consider it all. I heard through Charlie that Bacon was washed away with the flood, and his body has never been found. Mrs. Garner drowned too, but they found her body way down in the Thicket, the remains of that double-wide on top of her. Tim's body was located wrapped tight in barbed wire, like a metal mummy. They didn't find him all that far from his mother.

Hanson's the same. I went to Tyler to see him a couple of times, but he didn't know me and the family hardly does. I didn't go back. I couldn't see it made a difference. Charlie, on the other hand, goes there often, holds Hanson's hand and talks to him. He thinks Hanson's doing better. But he's the only one that does.

Not so long ago, Leonard and I, like gluttons for punishment, drove over to Grovetown. I was looking for Cantuck, but couldn't find him and couldn't find anyone knew anything about him. Fact was, I could hardly find anyone at all. The place is like a soggy ghost town. Half the buildings are a wreck and stink of mud and fish. Tim's filling station, except for the pumps, is just a patch of filthy concrete with dead bass on it.

We stopped by the cafe to tell Mrs. Rainforth thanks for saving our lives and Leonard's balls, for having Bacon look after us. The cafe had stood the flood pretty well, but it was closed. There was a realty sign on the door. I put my hands against the glass and looked inside. Water damage. Everything gone. I don't know where she and her boys went.

Week ago, I was sitting at home swigging a Diet Coke, trying to read an old paperback, when the telephone rang.

It was Cantuck.

"How are you, boy?" he said.

"Good enough," I said. "I'm breathing. I didn't know for sure you were. I came looking for you."

"Me and the wife got out just ahead of the flood. Lost every goddamn thing we owned. Been livin' with my sister over in

Brownsboro. We got us a mobile home now. Moved it in next to where our house used to be. We get the 'lectricity hooked up this week, and the shitter, then things can start gettin' back to normal and I can try and get down to business. Runnin' an office from Brownsboro hasn't been worth a flying fuck in a tornado."

"I presume, by business, you mean you're still Chief?"

"Yeah. Kinda what I'm callin' about. I thought you ought to know. Might involve you again in court, little later down the road. Kevin and Ray, they decided jail wasn't all that fun. They're trying to make some deal, shorter sentences. They named Reynolds. Said he let them in the jail, them and some others, and together they killed that nigger. Kevin said Reynolds swung on Soothe's legs till he choked. Rangers picked his ass up yesterday."

"What about Brown?"

"Nope. They may come through on him later, or Reynolds might. But I don't know. One rat at a time, son. One rat at a time. How's the colored boy . . . how's Leonard?"

"He's all right. Getting along."

"Good. Glad to hear it. You know what?"

"What?"

"They dug a bullet out of Tim's body."

I paused for an instant. "No shit?"

"Looks like someone killed him. Could be, we ran some tests on that slug, we might could figure out whose gun fired it."

"That a fact?"

"Yep. But dammit, way things been goin', the flood and all, me not having a place to keep stuff good, damn thing got lost. Can you believe that?"

"With you at the helm, it's hard to accept."

"Just plain disappeared. Never happened to me before. Makes me look bad, since I was the one ended up with the bullet, but these things happen. It won't happen again, but it happened this time."

I tried not to sigh. "Well, you can't blame yourself too much."

"Nope, I can't."

"Guess it can't be proved who killed Florida either?"

"No, but you know, I got this feeling, down deep. Just a feeling mind you, that justice has been served."

"Me too."

"Listen here, y'all come back this way, and it might be best if you don't, but if you do, we get the lectricity and the shitter in, come see me. My wife cooks a mean meat loaf, provided there's enough oatmeal to stretch it."

"Isn't that violating your religious rules?"

"Oatmeal in the meat loaf?"

"Blacks and whites."

"Well, you can be too strict, I reckon. Take care, Hap."

"One thing. Anyone ever find any music, recordings, stuff like that Soothe could have had?"

"Nothing. 'Course, if a fella found something valuable like that hidden in Florida's car. Say she got her hands on them somehow and didn't tell no one, and this stuff was still in good enough shape, a fella could hang on to it, and in time, he could come up with it like it was found another way, couldn't he?"

I let a few seconds pass. I thought about asking how Florida might have finally come by those recordings. I thought about lots of other questions no one could answer. When I finally spoke, what I said was, "But would a man that found something like that—knowing he ought to turn it over to the authorities— do something like that?"

"I think he might. And what would those recordings have to do with the authorities? Think about it."

"Even so, would it be wise for a fella to tell other people?"

"No. But he might do it anyway. If who he told was someone he thought wouldn't mind if they popped up later and the money from them went to a pet charity."

"Like muscular dystrophy."

"Yep."

"I'll be damned," I said.

We were quiet again. Maybe for a full half minute. Then Cantuck said, "Oh, we found your pickup. You don't want it back."

"Cantuck?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"You take care, boy."

I went to bed then, without my gun. I thought I was doing better. But for the first time in months, it began to rain. It was a gentle spring rain, and I didn't like it. It woke me up. It used to help me sleep, now it makes me nervous. Twice as nervous if I should hear thunder or see lightning.