Mucho Mojo

1.

It was July and hot and I was putting out sticks and not thinking one whit about murder.

All the other rose-field jobs are bad, the budding, the digging, but putting out sticks, that’s the job they give sinners in Hell.

You do sticks come dead of summer. Way it works is they give you this fistful of bud wood, and you take that and sigh and turn and look down the length of the field, which goes on from where you are to some place east of China, and you gird your loins, bend over, and poke those sticks in the rows a bit apart. You don’t lift up if you don’t have to, ’cause otherwise you’ll never finish. You keep your back bent and you keep on poking, right on down that dusty row, hoping eventually it’ll play out, though it never seems to, and of course that East Texas sun, which by 10:30 A.M. is like an infected blister leaking molten pus, doesn’t help matters.

So I was out there playing with my sticks, thinking the usual thoughts about ice tea and sweet, willing women, when the Walking Boss came up and tapped me on the shoulder.

I thought maybe it was water break, but when I looked up he jerked a thumb toward the end of the field, said, “Hap, Leonard’s here.”

“He can’t come to work,” I said. “Not unless he can put out sticks with his cane.”

“Just wants to see you,” the Walking Boss said, and moved away.

I poked in the last stick from my bundle, eased my back straight, and started down the center of the long dusty row, passing the bent, sweaty backs of the others as I went.

I could see Leonard at the far end of the field, leaning on his cane. From that distance, he looked as if he were made of pipe cleaners and doll clothes. His raisin-black face was turned in my direction and a heat wave jumped off of it and vibrated in the bright light and dust from the field swirled momentarily in the wave and settled slowly.

When Leonard saw I was looking in his direction, his hand flew up like a grackle taking flight.

Vernon Lacy, my field boss, known affectionately to me as the Old Bastard though he was my age, decked out in starched white shirt, white pants, and tan pith helmet, saw me coming too. He came alongside Leonard and looked at me and made a slow and deliberate mark in his little composition book. Docking my time, of course.

When I got to the end of the row, which only took a little less time than a trek across Egypt on a dead camel, I was dust covered and tired from trudging in the soft dirt. Leonard grinned, said, “Just wanted to know if you could loan me fifty cents.”

“You made me walk all the way here for fifty cents, I’m gonna see I can fit that cane up your ass.”

“Let me grease up first, will you?”

Lacy looked over and said, “You’re docked, Collins.”

“Go to hell,” I said.

Lacy swallowed and walked away and didn’t look back.

“Smooth,” Leonard said.

“I pride myself on diplomacy. Now tell me it isn’t fifty cents you want.”

“It isn’t fifty cents I want.”

Leonard was still grinning, but the grin shifted slightly to one side, like a boat about to take water and sink.

“What’s wrong, buddy?”

“My Uncle Chester,” Leonard said. “He passed.”

I followed Leonard’s old Buick in my pickup, stopping long enough along the way to buy some beer and ice. When we arrived at Leonard’s place, we got an ice chest and filled it with the ice and the beer and carried it out to the front porch.

Leonard, like myself, didn’t have air-conditioning, and the front porch was as cool a spot as we could find, unless we went down to the creek and laid in it.

We eased into the rickety porch swing and sat the ice chest between us. While Leonard moved the swing with his good leg, I popped us a couple.

“Happen today?” I asked.

“They found him today. Been dead two or three days. Heart attack. They got him at the LaBorde Funeral Home, pumped full of juice.”

Leonard sipped his beer and studied the barbed-wire fence on the opposite side of the road. “See that mockingbird on the fence post, Hap?”

“Why? Is he trying to get my attention?”

“He’s a fat one. You don’t see many that fat.”

“I wonder about that all the time, Leonard. How come mockingbirds don’t normally get fat. Thought I might write a paper on it.”

“My uncle’s favorite bird. I always thought they were ugly, but he thought they were the grandest things in the world. He used to call me his little mockingbird when I was a kid because I mocked him and everybody else. I see one, I think of him. Hokey, huh?”

I didn’t say anything. I focused my eyes on the floorboards at the edge of the porch, watched as a hot horsefly staggered on its disease-laden legs, trying to make the little bit of shade the porch roof provided. The fly faltered and stopped. Heat-stroke, I figured.

“I want to go to Uncle Chester’s funeral tomorrow,” Leonard said. “But I don’t know. I feel funny about it. He probably wouldn’t want me there.”

“From what you’ve told me about Uncle Chester, spite of the fact he disowned you when he found out you were queer-”

“Gay. We say gay now, Hap. You straights need to learn that. When we’re real drunk, we call each other fags or faggots.”

“Whatever. I’m sure, in his own way, Chester was a good guy. You loved him. It doesn’t matter what he would have wanted. What matters is what you want. He’s dead. He’s not making decisions anymore. You want to go to the funeral and tell him ’bye because of the good things you remember about him, go on.”

“Come with me.”

“Hey, I’m sorry for Uncle Chester on account of what he meant to you, but I don’t know him from brown rice. Fact is, him dying, you coming around upset, and me leaving the rose fields like that, I figure I don’t have a job anymore. He screwed up my income, so why the hell would I want to go to his funeral?”

“Because I want you to and you’re my friend and you don’t want to hurt my teeny-weeny feelings.”

This was true.

I didn’t like it, but I agreed. Going to a funeral seemed harmless enough.