Bad Chili

6

When Leonard went into the bathroom, I took the sheets off the bed, folded them together, toted them to the trash can out back, and stuffed them inside. I got my keys and climbed in my truck.

The truck I loved had been lost in a flood in Grovetown, Texas, and my latest ride was a blue, ’79 Datsun pickup with a rust hole in the side. I didn’t love the Datsun, but at least I didn’t have to push it up hills. While I was offshore Leonard had made a point to come out and start it and drive it a bit to keep it running, and it hummed like a sewing machine.

I hummed it into LaBorde, cashed my checks, put some money in the bank, pocketed the rest, bought some groceries and cold medicine, got some food at Taco Bell, and drove back to the house.

When I got home the place had aired considerably, and Leonard, wearing my blue jean shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of my black jeans, was seated at the kitchen table with his legs crossed, wiggling one bare foot. He was drinking a cup of coffee. He looked a hell of a lot better than when I left him.

“You look like a black man again, instead of a gray man.”

“Well, I feel like an asshole. Hope you brought plenty to eat. I’m starved. Say, aren’t you supposed to be in the hospital? I mean, now that I notice, you don’t look so good yourself.”

“I got a cold.”

“You got out of the hospital for me, didn’t you, Hap?”

I told him what Charlie had told me. I told him about leaving the hospital. I told him Charlie was giving me a bit of time to sort things out.

“Goddamn,” Leonard said. “This has turned into one serious fiasco.”

“Thing is, it hasn’t gotten out of hand yet. Charlie’s keeping the connection between you and this biker’s murder to himself. But that won’t last. He’ll have to say something eventually, and who’s to say someone else won’t put it together? Once the connection is established, you better have a damn good idea what’s clickin’, and it better be plain as day.”

“I don’t know exactly what is clickin’.”

“Did you kill the biker?”

“I told you I didn’t shoot anybody. I didn’t even know the sonofabitch was dead until just now. You think I’d kill someone and not tell you?”

“I had to ask.”

“All right. You’ve asked.”

Leonard looked pouty for a moment or two. I said, “Start by tellin’ me what happened. You didn’t just decide to roll in pig shit, did you?”

“No. That was sort of a natural by-product of my adventure. And believe me, without you it just wasn’t the same. We’re like the Hardy Boys, you know.”

“No. I’m a Hardy Boy, and you’re Nancy Drew.”

“I’ll let that slide. Hap, when we were at the hospital, and I went out of the waiting room, I didn’t really plan to go anywhere. But the Doc was taking his time, and I thought, well, I’ll step out, get something to eat for us and come back. But it didn’t work that way. I drove off and couldn’t get Raul off my mind. The boy drives me crazy.”

“Aren’t we a little old for this kind of infatuation? All this huffin’-and-puffin’ shit?”

“I guess, but I got to thinking about him and drove out to the house. I thought he might be there. Had his fling with the biker, and maybe it was over and he’d come back. Wild thoughts, but that’s what I was thinking. Thing was, I didn’t know how I’d feel about him coming back if he did, but I wanted to see him again. It’s that simple. Little bastard had my nose open.”

“Want to open your nose, you should try pig shit. I have a cold, and that opened my nose right up. That mess on the carpet, you’re cleaning that.”

Leonard nodded. “What say we eat first, then go out on the back porch and talk?”

We finished the Taco Bell food, and I opened a can of tuna and a jar of mayonnaise, whipped a tablespoon of mayonnaise with the tuna and put it on bread. Leonard ate the sandwich and then another. When he finished, I made another pot of coffee and we went outside with cups of it.

The back porch wasn’t much. It was close to giving up the ghost. The boards were gray and fiercely weathered, but the view out there wasn’t bad. There was the dark East Texas woods, topped by the sky, which was a peculiar blue this day, made all the more beautiful by the golden brightness of the sun; the clouds flowed across it like lilies cast upon a great and tranquil ocean. Off to the right was a creek. You could hear the water gurgling, like a happy woman humming. There was a slight breeze. Outside you couldn’t smell the mildew, dust, and pig shit. Leonard talked.

“Stuff I was gonna tell you about me and Raul, it don’t seem like much now. Not after what’s happened. All I can say is things were falling apart. I guess I knew they would in time. We were just too different. He was a little too young for me, from another world really. Wanted someone didn’t like guns and boxing and martial arts. Someone more refined.”

“I hear the word refined, Leonard, I think of you.”

“You bet. But we weren’t doing so good, and he got so he wasn’t coming home like he should, and here I was staying up nights watching Dave Letterman and John Wayne movies, and he’d come in tired and cranky and short on explanation. Hell, I guess I knew he was fuckin’ around. But I love the guy, you know, so it blinds you. I thought maybe I was just being stupid jealous. Thought the trouble we were having was a stage we were goin’ through. I believed his shit about he was working-”

“Working?”

“Yeah. He finished hairdressin’ school. Kind of elite business. He was gettin’ into this deal they got now where the rich folks have the hairdresser come around to their place to do the work. Big money in that. Kind of like hiring a bartender for the night. Or maid service.”

“I didn’t know Raul knew a comb from a scissor.”

“It was a short course. Three months. He took it while you were out helping exploit the earth of its natural resources.”

“Go on. You were sayin’…”

“Well, things were tense, and the next-door neighbors were still pissed I’d burned their crack house down, and from time to time some of that bunch would come by late at night, throw things at the house, even took a shot at it once. They fucked with our mail. I finally had to have the address temporarily changed. Had my mail sent out to my old place. It was just one thing after another. But after I found out where those shits are now living, I went over and explained to a couple of people that any more crap happened around my house, even if I didn’t know it was them that was responsible, even if I thought it might be them, I’d frown on it tremendously. Well, they knew I meant business – I mean, hell, I done burned their crack house down three times now. So things started cooling. But it was just one more aggravation to make things more tense with Raul. Maybe it was gettin’ to him too, making him act crazy. Anyway, he wasn’t home much. He was hangin’ out in LaBorde Park, which is where lots of gays meet, and I didn’t like that much ’cause that sounded suspicious, him roamin’ around out there. It’s not just a pickup spot, it’s where those guys got beat up. You know, four or five just last year.”

“One this year,” I said. “That’s the place the preacher carries the sign, isn’t it?”

“‘Gay Equals AIDS Equals Death.’”

“That’s the one.”

“Yeah. That’s the place. So I thought him being there all hours wasn’t such a good idea. ’Specially him having all the fighting skills of a dirty sock. And worse yet, all these friends of his, they’re classic queers. All that swishin’ shit. Obvious targets.”

“Do I detect a little prejudice toward other homosexuals, my friend? Those without weight-lifter arms and the ability to sight down a rifle?”

“I’m just sayin’ Raul’s with them, and since they’re like flashin’ neon, and they’re in a bad place, it’s just not smart. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. So don’t give me that liberal bullshit, Hap. I’m not up for it.

“So I’m worried, and I tell Raul I am, but he ignores me, and by the time I find out he’s not only hanging out at the park, but he’s screwin’ Harley Greaseballs, it’s too late. He’s done run off with him. Can you reckon on that? I’m too macho for him, so he runs off with a guy looks like he wiped a couple old transmissions with his hair. I asked around at the park, found out where the biker guy hung out, found out his name was Horse McNee and that he was a closet fag.”

“Horse?”

“It was a nickname. As in hung like a horse.”

“Who told you this?”

“Another faggot. I kinda know him through Raul. Fusses like an old woman. But you know, you want some dirt, this guy seems to have it. He’s been around for years. An old queen. Fact is, they call him Queen Mary. He’s got a younger friend everyone calls Princess Mary. Princess likes to hang around bus stations hoping for a lube job. I can’t stand him. But that’s beside the point. This Queen Mary, he’s always hittin’ on me, and everyone else. I wouldn’t fuck him if we were both wearing bags over our heads and I was using your dick. Hell, I wouldn’t fuck him if we were double baggin’ and using your dick with a rubber on. But I admit I played up to him a little-”

“You prick-teased?”

“Just a little. Anyhow, I got the info, decided to drive out to the biker bar.”

“With a shotgun, a revolver, and a broom handle?”

“You heard about that?”

“Yeah. And it doesn’t sound like you. Not that I haven’t seen you go off, but this seems radical even for your charming self.”

“I know. Romance. Lust. Whatever, it fucks you up. I’m thinkin’ I can go out there and Raul will be with Horse Dick, and I can talk him into coming back. And, to be blunt, I wanted to whip the guy’s ass stole my boyfriend.”

“It’s not the guy’s fault Raul’s playin’ around.”

“Yeah. But I don’t care. I’m wantin’ to whip him anyway. Maybe I’m thinkin’ I thrash Horse Ass-”

“Horse Dick.”

“Whatever. I think if I thrash him, Raul won’t think he’s so hot. I mean, he doesn’t want a macho queer, so he runs off with a greasy macho queer? You got to think Raul protests too much. So, I got my companions, the twelve-gauge shotgun and the thirty-eight snub-nose revolver, and went out there. As for the broom handle, well, I keep that under my car seat as a kind of attitude adjuster. I figured I had to be seriously prepared. As you recall, you and me learned us a little lesson last year.”

“Yep. No matter how tough you are, you can’t whip a bunch of guys at one time if they want to whip you bad enough. And if they whip you damn good and dead solid, it hurts like a sonofabitch.”

“That’s the lesson. Not only is the Blazing Wheel a biker bar, it’s a seriously Caucasian bar. Dixie flag. The whole works. You’re not even gonna find James Brown on the jukebox in this joint. Charlie Pride wouldn’t be welcome. And here I am, a nigger with an attitude and a stick. A very solid stick, I might add. And I see this guy I’ve seen with Raul, and I walk over to him, holding this damn honkie knocker by my side-”

“Honkie knocker?”

“Sorry. Slipped out. No offense intended… And I say, ‘I’m Leonard Pine, and you’ve been fuckin’ with my boyfriend.’

“That’s original.”

“Wish I’d thought the line over better, but that’s what came out. Horse Dick threw a right cross at my head, and I drilled his arm on the inside with my stick, went to knockin’ apples on his head. That first noggin shot I hit him so hard I bet his fuckin’ dog back home shit a turd in the shape of a praying Jesus. All this happened quick-like, and these guys decided they were gonna skin me for knockin’ their buddy, so I pull my pistol, shoot a hole in the floor and scare them back. I go out to the car and they follow.”

“And you pull the twelve-gauge and shoot out the neon sign and blow up some bikes.”

“You heard about that?”

“Same place I got the news about the shotgun, the broom handle, and the revolver. Charlie.”

“That goddamn Charlie is one knowledgeable sonofabitch, ain’t he?”

“That he is.”

“So I went away from there, and a few of these guys followed, but I lost them. Or thought I did. I decided Duffin’s pasture was a good place to hide. I pulled in, killed the lights, parked, and sat. I think, all right, I’ve lost them. I start to relax. I have a bag of cookies in the car there, and I’m eatin’ them, and I glance in the rearview mirror, and what do I see?”

“An old gentleman and eight tiny reindeer.”

“The biker fucks. I wasn’t slick as I thought. They’d seen me turn in, left their bikes down the road somewhere, and were sneakin’ up on my highly attractive shiny black ass.”

“But you were sneakier.”

“I slid to the other side of the car, opened the door and slipped into the grass, draggin’ my twelve-gauge with me. I crawled along for a bit, then got up and ran. Them sonofabitches seen me. They let out a whoop, and the race was on. I went into the woods. I looped wide and doubled back and got down in the creek and saw them crossin’ down a ways, goin’ up on the bank. I went down the creek about a mile and came up in the woods, and goddamned if some of them hadn’t wandered up right where I come out. Asswipes had me surrounded.”

“So they scalped you and ate you.”

“I crawled right between those fuckers, and they didn’t hear nor see me, so I kept on crawlin’.”

“Isn’t this story attributed to Daniel Boone?”

“You know Webb’s hog farm?”

“Yeah. And I see this comin’.”

“I crawled up to the edge of the farm, through the slats of one of the hog pens. They say hogs shit in one corner of the pen, but someone forgot to tell these fuckin’ hogs that, or Webb needs to get his ass out there with a shovel more, ’cause I can seriously testify that this entire pen had the intense aroma of pig shit gone bad and then made worse.

“I was in this swill, lookin’ out, and I seen the bikers trottin’ along the side of the farm there. I knew they hadn’t seen me, but they were close enough I could have smelled them, if I hadn’t had my nose full of pig shit. You know what I did, Hap?”

“Is this question rhetorical?”

“No.”

“You eased into the pig shit and hid.”

“You ought to be on fuckin’ Jeopardy!, Hap. That’s exactly what I did. I slid myself into that muck so there wasn’t nothing but my head and arms and that twelve-gauge stickin’ out. I made up my mind they came for me I was gonna’ start blowin’ kneecaps off. But when they got downwind of that pig shit, they began to cuss and head back into the woods.”

“It takes a real man to lay down in pig shit and not complain,” I said.

“I fought off a couple of amorous pigs, climbed through the fence, made the road, but stayed more in the woods. After a while, I heard their bikes and hunched down in the underbrush and watched them drive by. I waited a few minutes, thought about going back for my car, decided they’d expect that and might have a guard there. I crossed the road, went across Murdoch’s old pasture, crossed into the woods behind your house, jimmied a window with a tire iron out of your truck, and climbed inside. I was plumb tuckered out. I lay in your bed there all the mornin’ and the day until you showed up and woke me.”

“Just like Goldilocks and the three bears.”

“Well, yeah.”

“What about my tire iron?”

“It’s under the porch. Damn, Hap, you’re supposed to show me some sympathy. Fuck your tire iron.”

“You brought this on yourself, man. And you fucked up my sheets. And you damn well better not have lost my tire iron.”

“If it makes you feel better, I’ve got hog shit in my twelve-gauge.”

“I’m tryin’ to figure on this thing, Leonard, and it isn’t adding up so good. Horse Dick lost his head out by Old Pine Road. That isn’t anywhere near the Duffin pasture. But all these bikers were chasin’ you and he wasn’t. Seems to me, I was Horse Dick, and it was my noggin with the bumps on it, I’d have been leading the pack. But he went off in another direction and got himself shot.”

“Maybe he got confused. Those were some serious adjustments I made on his punkin. I hit him so hard I may have even changed his past, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Oh, by the way,” I said, “you know your Rambler? They burned that mother to the ground.”

“Crap! You enjoyed telling me that, didn’t you? You’ve always hated that car, and this from a man with a Datsun pickup.”

“I think you ought to turn yourself in, Leonard. Not just because you drove a Rambler, but because Charlie will make sure the right thing is done.”

“I’m not sure there’s much Charlie can do.”

“Once we start shooting holes in what at first seems obvious, we can clear you. You don’t turn yourself in, they can say you’re runnin’ and hidin’ because you’re guilty.”

Leonard shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell to do. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.”

I heard the phone ringing in the house. I said, “I’ll answer that while you clean the hog shit off my floor and carpet.”

“Do I have to?”

“Damn straight. And don’t just wipe the surface. You use some cleanser and de-stinker. It’s all under the kitchen sink.”

“De-stinker?” Leonard said.

It was Doc Sylvan on the phone.

“Are you out of your mind?” he asked.

“I’m not sure one way or the other.”

“I can believe that. You have to have those shots, Hap, or you will die.”

“Come on, Doc, I got five days before the next one.”

“What about the insurance problem? You forgot about that?”

“Can’t you fudge a little? I had to leave the hospital. It wasn’t by choice, but I had to.”

“Why?”

“I haven’t done laundry in days.”

“You went home to do laundry!”

“I had some bills to pay.”

“Why don’t you just say you needed to wash your hair?”

“Well, it does need it.”

“Hap, listen here. You come back to the hospital tonight and stay, and I’ll work something out. But you got to be there tonight. I can rig something for you being out of the room a while. Say I had you over at the office for tests, but that’s as far as I go. Doing something like that, getting caught, I could lose my license, and I don’t think you make enough to support us both.”

“Not in the style to which you are accustomed. Fact is, I don’t make enough to support me. In any kind of style.”

“You be in the hospital tonight, and I promise I will have you out of there within two days, and still make the insurance work. It’ll take some finagling, but I’ll do it. Just to get you out of my hair.”

“Got you.”

“I will be by the hospital at eight-thirty tonight, Hap. Be there. In bed.”

“In one of those little gowns?”

“You bet.”

“Shall I wear a little perfume?”

“Please do.”

“I think you just want to see me naked, Doc.”

“It’s all I think about.”

Leonard came in with a scrub brush full of hog shit, a pail of stinky water, and a couple of towels.

“These towels weren’t the good stuff, were they?” he asked.

“Not anymore.”

“They have holes in them.”

“Yeah, and the bad towels have more holes in them. You clean the mess up?”

“Yeah.”

We went out back and Leonard dumped the water on the ground and used the water hose to clean the brush and towels. He hung the towels on my clothesline. He said, “I’ve been hesitating to ask. But what about Raul? Charlie know anything about him?”

I shook my head.

Leonard said, “That worries me. I hope he’s all right.”

Leonard’s voice would have sounded calm to anyone who didn’t know him, but I caught the tremolo there. He was not only worried, he was scared. Maybe not for himself, but certainly for Raul.

“He’s probably all right,” I said.

“Maybe you could check around. Just to see. It’s not like I can go out and look for him.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start, Leonard. He may have run off back to Houston. He’s done that before, right?”

Leonard nodded.

“I figure him and Horse Dick had a fight,” I said, “and he went away, then you stepped into the picture a day late and a dollar short and got your ass in a crack with all this business. Right now, way I see it, and you better believe me on this, Raul is the least of your worries.”

“I guess you’re right,” Leonard said. “Just forget it.”