Bad Chili

10

After lunch the next day, Charlie came by. He was wearing a poorly cut brown suit with a light brown shirt and a dark brown tie. He had on tennis shoes, white socks, and his porkpie hat.

“When do you get out of this pit?” he asked.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Then maybe I ought not get you too excited before then.”

“My God, are you fixing to strip?”

“Be the best thing you’ve ever seen, but no. You got to tell Leonard to come in.”

“We been over that,” I said.

“No. You got to have him come in. Way it looks now, he’s in the clear.”

“How’s that?”

“Bikers at the bar. They all called Leonard a mean nigger and numerous names so foul that if I was to air them politically correct liberals would start to fall out the sky clutchin’ their hearts, and the fuckin’ super-conservatives would like it too much.”

“Get on with the meat.”

“They all agree he was too busy running from them, tryin’ to hide, to have killed McNee, who they call Horse.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“That they call him Horse?”

“That he’s called Horse and that his real name is McNee. But what about Leonard?”

“Leonard wouldn’t have had time to whack anybody. It’s not like they’re tryin’ to give him an alibi, it’s just their stories give him one anyway.”

“You wouldn’t pull me, would you? This isn’t some kind of trick?”

“You tell Leonard to come in. He’ll end up owin’ a fine for shootin’ up the place, assault charges, maybe. Might have to buy the Blazing Wheel a new sign. He’ll have to answer a lot of questions, but in the end he won’t have to hide out. We can say he was hiding from the bikers for fear of his life. Say he’s been in the woods all the time… Has he?”

I didn’t say anything.

“All right, have it your way,” Charlie said. “But, way it looks, his head is off the chopping block.”

“I’ll be goddamn.”

“Yeah, me too. You have him at the station no later than tomorrow morning after you get out of here.”

“It’ll be more like after lunch. Hospital has to process me out.”

“So you knew where he was all along?”

“Let’s just say I think I can get in touch with him.”

“Yeah. Right. After lunch tomorrow. No later. Hear?”

It went pretty smooth, all things considered. Leonard didn’t get off scot-free. A court date was set, and it was certain he’d be paying a fine, and he wasn’t entirely out of the woods on being a suspect in the death of Horse Dick, but no one was really trying to push him hard in that direction. Not with the bikers actually giving him an alibi. He got processed and out of the cop shop almost quicker than I got out of the hospital, and he didn’t have to ride in a wheelchair out to the curb like I did.

I’ve never really figured that. You go to the hospital, they check you out, no matter if you’re skipping rope and climbing the walls, they got to take you out in a wheelchair. It’s one of life’s little mysteries, like UFOs and the Loch Ness monster.

The morning after Leonard was set free it was hot and bright, but there was a cool wind with it. We met at his house to clean up the mess there, but finally said to hell with it.

I drove out to my house and he followed in the rented Chevy he was driving. We got cane poles and some fishing goods, walked through the woods to where the creek widened, sat there fishing for perch.

“I just couldn’t face that mess today,” Leonard said. “Besides, it makes me think about Raul.”

“The mess?”

“No. The house, stupid.”

“Any idea about the mess?” I asked.

“I figure it was the bikers. They found out where I lived, went looking for me, didn’t find me, trashed the place. That fits in with you finding the motorcycle tire prints.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know,” I said. “The bikers have been pretty candid about stuff. They didn’t admit to that.”

“They’ve only been candid when they could say what an asshole I was. And you know what, they’re right.”

“I never doubted that. Thing is, that mess bothers me. I think you ought to seriously watch your ass for a while. Those footprints out there don’t belong to the tooth fairy.”

“Yeah, all right,” Leonard said, but he didn’t sound too sincere. “You think Raul’s alive?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t a clue. I got to say this. Seems to me he’d have shown up by now. I’m sure you’re aware with you in the clear he’s considered the prime suspect in the murder of Horse.”

“I figured as much. They’re just replacing me with him. You know I can’t let that stand. Raul couldn’t murder anyone… Shit, Hap. I love that kid. He’s a dip, but I love him.”

We caught a couple of perch, put them in a can of water, sat and talked. Leonard told me about Raul, and how things had gone sour, and how the kid was wilder than he’d realized. It was a pretty standard story. I’d heard it before, but it had been men talking about their women. Love was love, however, and the problems didn’t seem to change much, even if the lover was of the same sex, except there was a lot more fucking. Gay or not, men are men, and men seriously love to fuck, and you can write that down in your little black book, tear out the page, crumple it up, and smoke it.

When Leonard finished telling me his woes, I told him about Brett. Then we talked about Hanson, and how we had to go see him and watch him do his coma.

Next Leonard told me how he had gotten a tick on his balls while staying in the woods. He said he still had it. He couldn’t get it off.

“It’s in a hard-for-me-to-reach place,” he said. “Maybe you could pull it off for me.”

“Not on your life. I’m a pretty good shot, though. I could shoot it off.”

“I’m serious here. This is a problem.”

“Use a match. You light it, blow it out, then stick the hot end against the tick’s butt, and he’ll back out.”

“You’ve done this?”

“No, but I’ve heard about it.”

“You’ve had ticks on your nuts?”

“Yep.”

“But you didn’t try this method?”

“Nope.”

“Why didn’t you?

“Afraid I’d burn my balls.”

“Some help you are. I think you just don’t want to be handlin’ no queer’s balls.”

“I don’t want to be handling anybody’s balls but my own.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll be sorry, I get that tick disease. You’ll wish you’d pinched that tick off.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Way this sonofabitch is swellin’ up, I’m gonna have to put a camp chair beside the bed so my balls and the tick got a place to sleep.”

“Hey, you want, I’ll get your balls and the tick a blanket and a fluffy pillow, but I’m not pulling nothing off your balls.”

As usual, the conversation degenerated from there, finally drifted, and we just sat there silently and fished. The wind stopped and turned hard and hot and the air was difficult to breathe, but still we sat, and finally the heat began to fade, and it was cool again, without the wind, and the air was fresh and the brightness of the day fell down amongst the trees, and the sky turned purple, then black, and the stars came out, big and bright and splendid.

We walked home through the dark with our gear, a can of perch and a flashlight, arrived at my house in time to clean the fish by porch light, fry them up, and have a good supper.

After supper we watched a little TV. Then Leonard left early. I promised to come over the next morning and help him clean. He drove off and I watched something on TV I wasn’t really paying attention to for about an hour, then cut it off, went to bed, and read a science fiction novel for a while.

Next morning, early, I got up and drove to town and bought some sausage and biscuits at the drive-through of a fast-food joint, went over to Leonard’s place.

When he let me in, the house smelled of coffee, and most of the living room had been picked up, and the kitchen porcelain was shiny and the kitchen floor in front of the refrigerator was bright and damp from a recent mopping.

“You’ve been busy,” I said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Couldn’t sleep last night. Stayed up cleaning. Come in the kitchen, just step careful. Floor’s still damp.”

I did that. Put the sack on the table, pulled up a chair. I said, “You pour us some coffee, and I’ll give you a sausage and biscuit.”

“That’s a good-enough deal,” Leonard said. “You know what’s odd? I discovered something missing.”

“Oh?”

“Videotapes. The blank ones, and the ones with movies on them. They’re all gone.”

“You mean someone broke into the house and stole movies?”

“Looks that way,” Leonard said. “I got to figuring, and thought, well, the Gilligan tapes are gone, so it could have been Raul. Maybe he’s the one wrecked the house. You know, pissed at me. Maybe thinks I did Horse Dick in. So he comes here, throws stuff around, and takes his Gilligan tapes. But the thing is, why would he take The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and a bunch of others?”

“They’re good movies?”

“He didn’t think so. Anything that had gunfire in it he was against. I’m not sayin’ my tastes run to Battleship Potemkin, but all of Raul’s taste was in his mouth, and besides for my dick, which spent a goodly amount of time in his mouth, I don’t think he knew good taste.”

“Maybe he stole them because you liked them? A kind of revenge.”

“I thought of that,” Leonard said. “But why did he steal the blank videotapes?”

“So he could tape stuff on them.”

“All right. All that works, but why just the videotapes? There’s music CDs here he liked, and he didn’t take those. He didn’t take anything else I think would have interested him. And this mess doesn’t strike me as vandalism. There’s a lot of things could have been broken for fun, but weren’t. Most of the stuff is just tossed around. What’s broken seems to have been the result of a search. It wasn’t a vandal. I think someone was looking for something, and that doesn’t fit in with Raul. He knew where everything was, so why would he throw stuff around?”

“He was mad at you.”

“Could be. But, I don’t think he took the videos at all.”

“Someone else took the Gilligan tapes?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Man, a crime like that, it shows you what the world is coming to. Fucking crooks are like bottom feeders now. Who the fuck in their right mind would want a tape of Gilligan’s Island, let alone the whole series?”

“Bob Denver?”

“Shit. Don’t you know he gets tired of wearing that stupid sailor hat and trying to look perky?”

“You think the series waddled in shit, you got to see the reunion movie,” Leonard said. “Raul made me watch it. And man, that one is really deadly. It sort of numbs you, you know, like a kind of nerve gas. I was weak for two days.”

“You just hit on the secret,” I said. “It was stolen by the State Department to use as a means of covert warfare.”

“Way I figure it,” Leonard said, “them folks already got a complete set of Gilligan. It goes with their Three’s Company collection. It’s what they watch when they’re supposed to be solving the nation’s problems.”

We worked on the house until early afternoon, had some sandwiches, decided we ought to drive into town and buy a few cleaning supplies. We went in my truck. On the way back to Leonard’s house, he said, “This Old Pine Road, where Horse Dick got it. Could we drive over there?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Guess I’d like to see the spot where this guy they thought I killed bought it.”

“I don’t know that’s such a good idea,” I said.

“Come on, Hap.”

I didn’t much care for it, but we drove out to Old Pine Road, which isn’t much of a road, really. It’s narrow and winds through a heavily wooded area and links up with a highway that leads to Lufkin. It’s shady because of the trees, and not too heavily traveled.

We drove along, finally saw some tire tracks burned into the road, heading through the underbrush and into a large oak tree. Beyond the oak the ground was covered in a deep carpet of kudzu vines and wildflowers, and the hill rolled down steep and turned level as it met the woods.

We pulled to the side of the road, got out and looked around. It was a bright, hot day, and everything I looked at seemed to be viewed through a piece of transparent, lemon-colored rock candy. The air was full of pollen. Every time I took a breath it was like sniffing flour. Within minutes my throat was scratchy and my nose was plugged. It didn’t help my cold much.

We looked at the oak, could see where the bike struck it. It was a damn good strike. A chunk had been taken out of the tree as if with an axe.

“If the shotgun hadn’t killed him,” Leonard said, “you can bet this tree wouldn’t have done him any good.”

“Without the shotgun, he wouldn’t have hit the tree,” I said. “Now you’ve seen it. Make you feel any better?”

“No. I don’t really know why I wanted to see it.”

We stood under the oak out of the sunlight while Leonard dealt with his thoughts, stood there hugging the shade. Not that it helped. It was still hot and the pollen was thick.

“You know,” Leonard said, “I bet I could put a weenie on a stick, poke it out from under this shade, and the sun would cook it… What’s that?”

Leonard was turned away from the road, looking down the hill, toward the woods. I looked and saw a scattering of mosquitoes buzzing at the edge of the woods where shadow gave way to light. The insects rolled and rose and dropped like a tiny black cloud amongst the trees. I could imagine them looking up at us, thinking, Come on down and we’ll strip your bones, for we are the piranha of the air.

It was the mosquitoes I thought Leonard was talking about, but then I followed his pointing finger and saw what he saw. It lay partially buried in the vines near the woods. It was silver, and the sunlight bounced off of it as if it were a mirror. The reflected light was painful to view and caused me to squint my eyes.

“I don’t know what it is,” I said.

“Could be a piece off the motorcycle,” Leonard said.

“Cops looked the place over,” I said.

“Don’t forget, it’s the LaBorde cops we’re talking about. Charlie, excluded, of course. I bet they didn’t even go down the hill. At least not all the way. Especially the fat ones. They went down too far, they wouldn’t have been able to get back up.”

“What if it is part of the motorcycle?” I said. “So what?”

“It could lead to the solving of the case.”

“What, a fender? The handlebars?”

“You need to read some Agatha Christie, man.”

“Why? Am I being punished?”

“You read her, you’ll find nothing is too small. Let’s go down and see what it is.”

“It’s a steep hill.”

“I bet that’s exactly what the fat cops said.”

“They were right.”

“We’re manly men. We can do it.”

“Will you carry me?”

“Nope.”

We went down the hill, our ankles clutched by kudzu and all manner of undergrowth, and when we were within twenty feet of it I thought it was a huge wad of aluminum foil. Then I saw that what I thought were the natural crumples of a wad of foil were not crumples, but dents, and it wasn’t foil, it was a motorcycle helmet. I could see part of the visor, and it was cracked, and I could see something behind the visor, and Leonard, who was slightly ahead of me, could see it too because he stopped walking, made a kind of startled move and let his breath out slowly.

“Shit,” he said. “Goddamn shit.”

I went on past where he was standing, got closer. There was a head in the helmet, and there was a body attached to the head, and the body was twisted down into the vines. I couldn’t see the body from atop the hill, just a piece of the helmet, but I could see all of it easily from this angle, and the legs and arms looked as if they were nothing more than the limbs of a scarecrow, stuffed with straw, twisted into the kudzu.

I squatted down and looked at the face inside the helmet. The head was turned in there too far and was covered in what looked like molasses but wasn’t. There were ants and maggots on the part of the face I could see. The wind had changed and the smell of death rode on it and blew into my nostrils and defeated the plugs of pollen. It was all I could do not to get sick.

I got up and turned Leonard by grabbing him by the elbow and started us up the hill.

“It was Raul, wasn’t it?” Leonard said.

“Yep.”