The Two-Bear Mambo (18 page)

I ran over to where Elephant was screaming and got hold of his rifle. I nodded at Leonard, said, "Stay low," moved back into the woods, out of the line of fire, scouted for Kevin. He wasn't where he had been. I glanced across the marsh, saw him making for one of the cars. ,

I got a little higher ground, and watched him run. He got in one of the cars and backed it around quickly. I jerked up Elephant’s rifle, took out one of the headlights, but Kevin kept turning about. I fired and took out a tire, but he kept going, blubbering along the wet highway on the rim.

I collected my Winchester and went to examine Elephant. His right leg was all but gone, cut off at the knee except for a few strings of muscle and flesh. He was screaming and howling like a dog with ground glass in his belly.

I went past him, on down to Leonard. Leonard was starting to lose his grip, slide back into the water. I tugged him to higher ground, said, "Where's the other one?"

"If he didn't drown," Leonard said, "he's still down there stuck between roots. I choked him out. Bound him up with my belt."

I took Elephant's rifle and the shotgun and tossed them in the water near the bank. I slung the Winchester off my shoulder.

"I wanted to kill him, Hap, but I didn't because I knew it would disappoint you. Same with the other fuck."

"Killed either one of them, you'd have been justified," I said. "And to hell with me being disappointed. Cantuck's here. He's been hit."

"I heard," Leonard said. "Guess I was wrong about him."

I left Leonard on the bank with the Winchester, went back to Elephant. I got hold of the white sheet he was wearing, pulled it over his head while he screamed and cussed me. I said, "You can let me tie up this leg, what's left of it, or you can try and give me shit and bleed to death."

He didn't answer, just screamed and groaned, but he lay back and I used the sheet to tie off his leg above the wound. The sheet turned red immediately.

I went back to Leonard. Leonard said, "How is he?"

"You may have killed him anyway," I said. "He's bleeding like a leaky water hose. I got to get to Cantuck's radio, call in some help."

"I don't think he's got any help back where he's from," Leonard said.

"Then we've got to do different."

I went down in the water and found Bear, his arms bound behind his back with a belt that was looped around a root. He had slipped down into the marsh so far it was washing under his nose. He was still unconscious. I unfastened the belt, got hold of him and pulled him out of there. On shore, I ripped off his white tunic, tore it up, tied his arms behind his back, bent his legs up and tied them to his wrists.

Leonard grunted and groaned as I helped him to his feet. But his sounds were pretty well muffled by Elephant screaming and rolling about in the wet leaves. He hadn't stopped that for a moment.

Leonard nodded toward Elephant. "He Draighten or Ray?"

"Can't say as I care," I said.

Elephant stopped rolling. Just lay there, shivering, holding his hands above his chest like a dog lying on its back with its paws up.

We started for the highway.

When we finally made it to Cantuck, he was on his feet. He leaning against the side of his car, his gun in one hand, his other hand over his eye. Blood was running from under his n, through his fingers, and the rain was washing it away as it came. Still, the blood had managed to stain his khaki jacket and had dripped onto his pants.

He said, "I got glass in my eye." We're going for a doctor," I said.

Go to LaBorde," he said. "You don't want to go back way we le. There's no hospital fifty miles beyond Grovetown."

“There's an asshole in a bad way out there in the woods," I said. "He doesn't get a doctor soon, he'll die. He's one of the guys jumped us in the cafe. One with a big ass. There's another out there tied."

Draighten," Cantuck said, then sagged to his knees and began to pant. Hang in, Cantuck."

I opened the back door of the car, assisted Leonard inside, got Cantuck up and helped him. He was wobbly and heavy, and I was so weak from injuries, the swimming, the fighting, that now, with the adrenaline gone, I was feeling more sore than ever and sick to my stomach.

I put Cantuck in the front passenger seat, stumbled to the pickup, got hold of the dead man Cantuck called Leroy, boosted him on my shoulder, thumped him into the bed of his truck.

The keys were in the pickup. I started it, backed it off the highway, tossed the keys underneath it, staggered to the car they'd left. The keys weren't in it, but it was unlocked. I put it in neutral, went to the rear, gathered my resources, pushed it toward the marsh. It nose-dived into the edge of the water where it was shallow and stuck its tail in the air.

I climbed into Cantuck's car, felt so weak suddenly I had to put my head on the steering wheel, let it rest there for a moment. I said, "Chief, you got to call help for those bastards."

I removed the microphone from the rack and gave it to Cantuck. He mumbled through a call to a LaBorde emergency crew, gave them the location.

I couldn't wait for them to arrive. I was too sick and scared that the bastard who had driven away on the bad tire would come back, or reinforcements would arrive. Cantuck was bad off with that glass in his eye, and Leonard had gone deathly quiet. I looked back at him. His eyes were closed. He was breathing badly.

I cranked the car, flipped on the heater, pulled on the lights, took a deep breath, pulled onto the highway. The rain was still coming down and the sky was black as midnight, but Cantuck's motor was better than Leonard's had been, and so were the tires, and that was some kind of comfort.

I wondered about Draighten and Ray, but I didn't wonder too much. I couldn't. It wasn't my fault. I didn't want any of this to go the way it had, but there wasn't any undoing it. I told myself if it bothers you don't think about it. Think about the road, the yellow line in the headlights. Hold this thing in the lane and don't pass out. You pass out, it's all over. Hold on, and don't pass out.

Cantuck fumbled the microphone into place, leaned back with his hand still over his eye. In the green light from the dash his face was streaked with blood and some of the blood had dried and it looked like a big birthmark.

"The eye's gone black," Cantuck said.

"It's all right," I said, as if it really were.

The rain pummeled so hard the wipers were near useless. My breath was dry and hot and my body jerked with nervous tension.

And so it went, the seconds crawling along, me looking through that windshield at the rain and the stormy darkness, watching and listening to those pathetic wipers working so hard and doing so little.

Rain on the windshield. Rain on the glass.

When I awoke, I felt as if I were still behind the wheel of Cantuck's car, but I was in bed and three weeks had gone by. It was still raining and had pretty much rained the full three weeks. Lakes were swollen, rivers were overflowing, some areas were flooded out, and the news said the dam near Grovetown looked ready to go.

I was lying in bed looking at the window glass, watching rain bead onto it, beginning to realize that's what I was doing and that's why there were no windshield wipers; I was lying in bed, shaking off the last bad vibes of a dream.

It wasn't the first time I'd dreamed I was in Cantuck's car. Ever since that night, especially that first of two nights in the hospital, I'd had a series of dreams and none of them were very comforting. For a time, before all this Grovetown business, I was having a recurring dream about screwing this beautiful Mexican woman I had seen in a magazine. I guess I was dreaming about her then to get Florida out of my head. I had animated her in my mind and made her ravenous for my root. I was such a stud in my dreams she couldn't get enough. I liked the way she screamed and grunted and called me baby in that sweet high Spanish. Even if in the end she was nothing more than a paper memory in my head, a pillow in my arms.

But after the stuff in Grovetown that dream went away and I couldn't call it up any more than I could whistle down a 747 and cause it to light on a high line. If I tried to call it up the Mexican lovely would not stay static. She went to pieces like fog. In her place I had the other dreams.

One was of Florida wandering about. She was a cross between a zombie and a ghost. I was always walking along a highway, a road, or in the woods, and I'd see her up ahead, not looking at me, just crossing in front of me, wearing one of her short dresses with high heels, going into the cover of the trees, and I'd run after her. Only when I got to where she had gone into the woods she wasn't there, and I couldn't find her.

I dreamed too of the marsh that night, and of Draighten screaming and his leg all gone to pieces. I found out a short time later he had died before the emergency crew made it. Bled to death. He deserved what he got, but I couldn't get him out of my mind. Somewhere he had people who loved him and he'd loved them back and he'd had plans and thoughts just like everyone else. Meaner thoughts, but thoughts.

Had Leonard not shot him, I'd have been the one six feet down in the ground and Draighten would be lying in bed, maybe watching a little wrestling on television or pulling his pud. It was something strange to consider.

The part about him being alive and wanting to watch wrestling. Not the part about him pulling his pud. I tried not to think about that; it was too horrible to visualize.

I was thinking about pulling my pud, when the rain picked up and I began to feel cold, even under my blankets. I got out of bed, pulled a robe over my naked self, picked up the .38 revolver from the nightstand where I kept it all the time now, and made for the bathroom.

I brushed my teeth, looked at the wound the shotgun pellet had given my cheek. It wasn't much. It was healing nicely, but it looked as if it would leave a small puckered scar. The doctor had put medicine on it and a Band-Aid, and I'd been doctoring it at home, but I had begun to suspect a stitch had been needed.

Then again, wasn't like it was going to ruin my native good looks. If I'd had any, that crowd at the Grovetown Cafe had rearranged them. I did look better than a week ago, though. Both eyes seemed to be lined up—sort of—and the bruises had changed from the color of eggplant to a sort of raw spinach green.

I picked the gun off the sink, toted it with me around the house while I lit the butane heaters, then fixed myself a little breakfast of cereal and coffee and sat at the kitchen table with my friend the .38 snub-nose revolver and stared out the window at the rain coming down. My yard looked a lot like Bacon's yard, without the refrigerator and the washer. There was a dead squirrel out there, though, and I'd been thinking about moving it. Another week or two, however, I figured it'd be pretty much dissolved. I thought I could hold out.

My days had been like this for two weeks. A little coffee and cereal in the morning, the dead squirrel watch, worrying about how I was going to pay my hospital bills, then a morning movie if I could find one worth watching. All this hinged, of course, on how often I was asked to come in and see the cops. They insisted I drop by for talks.

They held meetings in LaBorde, since it was the county seat, and the law was a Texas Ranger and some detectives from somewhere, and then Charlie, who was kind of a moderator. I even saw Cantuck a few times, going out as I came in, a big swathe of gauze over his eye, always wearing a cheap black suit that offered plenty of room for his balls. He'd smile and say, "Hap," but keep right on walking. I even saw Jackson Brown once. He was dressed in a bright blue suit, a white cowboy hat with a beaded band, and shiny black cowboy boots. We passed right by each other. He was walking with a thin, attractive woman with tall blond hair and an empty look to her eyes. He smiled at me as he passed, said, "Tell the nigger Jackson says hey."

It was tempting to see if I could turn his head completely around on his neck, but I didn't. I just walked on.

The cops liked to talk. They liked for me to talk. They loved hearing my story. Separately, they talked to Leonard too. They liked his story. We told it so much, I thought maybe we ought to work out a dance routine, so if we ever told it together, maybe we could do a few steps in concert.

But for now the cops seemed through with me. I had gone a few days without seeing their smiling faces, and I wanted it to stay that way. Without them, I could maintain my mind-numbing routine.

After the movie every morning there was lunch, usually a sandwich, or more cereal and coffee, then I'd go out on the front porch bundled up in a coat with my revolver and sit in my glider and listen to the rain until the cold got too much. Then it was back inside where I'd strip off and get under the covers again, and with my revolver on the nightstand, I'd crack open the book I was currently reading.

As I sat that morning with breakfast, I kept thinking in time I wouldn't feel the need to carry the gun with me everywhere I went, to sleep with it nearby, feeling greater comfort in it than I might a woman. But that beating I had taken with Leonard, and that night at the marsh with the Kluxers, had changed me and I wasn't sure there was any going back. I wasn't sure I could be Hap Collins the way Hap Collins used to be. I was still him, but I wasn't him, and I didn't know who I was or who else to be.

I thought about giving Leonard a call, but feared Raul would answer the phone. I'd heard he'd come back, and for some reason I didn't like the little sonofabitch anymore, though I wasn't sure I'd liked him in the first place. Fact was, all told, I had spent little more than an hour with him, so my opinion was bullshit anyway.

I was jealous. I had been Leonard's friend longer than Raul had been his lover, and when they split up and Leonard and I got together again and went to Grovetown, even with all that had happened, at least we'd had each other, and it was like old times. There had been that special warmth between us, that understanding, that lack of explaining, and now Raul was back and I had a robe to wear, a gun to tote, and my dick to jerk. I wished with all the blackness of my heart right then that Raul was forcing Leonard to watch the Gilligan's Island reunion episode, which I understood he'd finally acquired. I wondered whose dick he'd sucked to get it.

Goddamn, Hap, don't think like that. That's homophobic. That's evil. Just not nice.

No, hell, it isn't any of those things but the last. It's not nice. You're just mad so you're thinking mean and you better not keep thinking that way or you will be mean.

Why in hell had Raul come back anyway? I asked myself, and self answered: Because he heard Leonard was hurt and needed him, and he came back and things were all right now in their relationship. They were close again, and that was good.

Sure. Sure it was. It was good. Liver was good, if you closed your eyes and rinsed your mouth and ate ice cream afterwards.

Shit, don't think like that, Hap. You're being an asshole. Leonard's got his right to happiness, even if his boyfriend is as shallow as a saucer and likes Gilligan's Island. Who are you to stand in the way of Leonard's love life? Friendship isn't about that. It's about being happy your friend is happy. That's the true nature of friendship.

I sat and wondered if I could think of any more folksy homilies, but nothing came to me.

Me and my gun got us a cup of coffee and went into the living room and turned on the television and surfed the channels until we found an Audie Murphy Western.

The movie was coming to the end when I heard a car, got hold of the gun and took a timid peek out the window.

It was Charlie driving up. He got out, wearing a beige belted raincoat and a porkpie hat with a plastic cover on it. He was holding a black umbrella over his head, tiptoeing toward my door through puddles of water like a schoolgirl trying not to get her stockings wet.

I cut the television, stuffed the gun beneath a couch cushion, hoped Charlie would have good news about Hanson. Hell, good news about anything.