Rumble Tumble

6

When I got back to Leonard’s place my car windshield was caked with bugs. I used the hose and an old rag to clean it, but it wasn’t a much better job than I had done on Brett’s car at the filling station. Just call me Greasy Bill.

After I had been struggling for a while, Leonard came out of the house with a squeegee and gave it to me. I assumed he had been watching me through the window and had become frustrated. I used the squeegee and the hose and finally got the windshield clean. All the while I was doing this, I was glancing at Leonard out of the corner of my eye. I could see he was in a foul mood. He had that pouty mouth with the wrinkled forehead he gets when he’s ready to jump your ass. Not the look where his eyes are on fire and you know someone is going to get mauled or maybe die, but the one tells you he’s pissed and ready to let you know.

I tried some polite conversation about the bugs and the weather. Pointed at a couple of interesting birds I saw on fence posts, but Leonard wasn’t having any of that. I tried a clever slide into talking about Brett and her daughter, but he wasn’t having any of that either.

He said, “Before we talk any outside shit, we’re gonna talk some inside shit. I mean mine and your shit. Come on.”

I followed him into the house. He said, “Sit down right there and wait a minute.”

I sat on the couch. He left the room. A moment later he returned. He was carrying a roll of toilet paper and a toilet paper roller. “I’m gonna show you a little trick, here, Hap. You see, when you use the last piece of shit paper on your nasty ass, you take the roller post, that’s this thing here, long and hard, unlike your dick, I’m sure. And you take this long and hard thing, the dick we’ll call it, so it’ll be something you can understand, and we take this dick, and we put it in the hole in the toilet paper tube.

“And in keeping with your mental faculties, we will call this hole in the toilet paper tube the pussy. So you take the dick, put it in the pussy, then, finished, you realize that the dick is sticking in the pussy and out the asshole, which is what we’ll call the other side of the tube. You take each end of the dick, ’cause somehow it got broken off, okay, and you take each end of the dick and slip it into the little notches that hold it on to the wall in the bathroom. This way, you got a new roll of crap paper on a stick. That simple enough for you, Hap?”

“Good grief, Leonard. Don’t have a cow.”

“Yeah. Well there ain’t nothing like taking a big ole greasy crap and having to duck-walk over to the cabinet to get another roll while you got a goddamn hunk of turd hanging out of your ass. You ought to try it some time.”

“Not my sport.”

“Let me ask you something, Hap. Who you think’s been puttin’ the paper on the goddamn roller?”

“Elves?”

“No. Let me ask you something else, Hap. Can you now, after instruction, put the dick in the pussy?”

“What if the paper tube has a headache?”

“Don’t push me, Hap. I’m not finished here. Pay attention.”

Leonard put the roller and paper on his easy chair. He opened the closet door and pulled out a broom. He got down on his knees by the couch, said, “Lift your feet.”

I did. He swiped the broom under there and came out with a pair of formerly white, now gray, jockey shorts, festooned in cobwebs, bearing a couple of dead roaches like stickpins.

“These ain’t mine,” Leonard said. “These here are your ole nasty drawers. You’ve had them under there since you first moved in here. I go to clean today, and what do I see?”

“The toilet paper elves?”

“Your shitty drawers.”

“My guess is, same elves been putting that paper on the roller have been fucking around with my underwear.”

He stuck the broom and underwear in my face. “Got a shit stain in the seat. Your trademark.”

“Careful, you could put an eye out with them drawers.”

“These are yours, Hap.”

“How the hell would you know? You check out my shorts every night? Could be one of your old boyfriend’s.”

“They ain’t no old boyfriend’s, ’cause I don’t mess with men don’t wipe their ass good, and they ain’t mine, ’cause I don’t take off my drawers in the living room and kick’m under the couch. That’s a Hap Collins trademark. That and pissin’ around the toilet, not just in it. You go in that bathroom, stand by the crapper, that goddamn rotten-ass piss on the floor will suck your shoes off and dissolve them.”

“Well, you ought to clean more often, that way there wouldn’t be underwear under the couch, or pee-pee on the bathroom floor.”

“Hap, you’re askin’ for it, man.”

“Way I see it, those elves can put a roll of paper on a stick, they ought to be able to get underwear out from under couches and wipe around the base of the commode, and you and I could just hang easy.”

“You are asking for it, man. Let me question you some-thin’ else: when’s the last time you cleaned anything in this house? We’re gonna have to have a come-to-Jesus meetin’ on that, my friend. And you ate the last vanilla cookie. Those are mine, Hap. Mine.”

“I apologize. We were all out of steak. And if you think you’re blue now, I’m going to throw more color on you. Me and Brett, we’re not moving in together.”

Leonard lowered the underwear onto the floor and tossed the broom down. “Ah, hell. Y’all have a fight?”

“No.”

Leonard picked up the roller and paper and sat down in the chair and held them in his lap while I explained.

When I was finished, he put the roller and paper on the floor and walked over to the shabby fireplace and plucked one of his pipes from the pipe rack on the mantel, grabbed his bag of tobacco, unrolled it, and filled his pipe. He picked up a box of matches, returned to his chair, and studied me a moment.

“What you’re sayin’,” he said, kicking back in his easy chair and sticking the pipe into the corner of his mouth, “is, in a nutshell, this gal, this Tillie, decides to be a whore, then times get hard and she’s ready to quit and they won’t let her quit?”

“That’s it.”

“She think whoring had a retirement plan?”

“I don’t think she thought at all.”

“I don’t even know this girl, Hap. There’s lots of whores out there. Why, if I decided to save one, would I pick this one?”

“Because she’s Brett’s daughter.”

“I don’t know Brett that well. I mean, I like her, but I don’t know her that well. You know this isn’t going to be an easy thing. Just drive up there and knock on the door and help this whore carry her suitcase out to the car.”

“Exactly what I told Brett.”

“You’re going, I go or not, aren’t you?”

“You bet. So’s Brett. She insisted.”

“This Brett, she’s got you by the ying-yang.”

“The ying-yang. The balls. The heart. She’s got me, man. And she’s not asking me to do this. I’m volunteering.”

“Oh, she’s asking all right. I know you, a good-lookin’ woman comes along and plays the right tune, you dance.”

“All right, let’s say she’s asking. I love her. Why shouldn’t she ask? Who else is she going to ask? I’ve done more for people I didn’t care about as much, so why shouldn’t I do it?”

“Because you might get your ass shot off. And considering you got one of them little narrow white asses, you can’t spare much.”

“You got enough for both of us.”

Leonard let that one go by. He pulled a match, lit his pipe and puffed. “I reckon we get this over with, and Brett has time to settle stuff with her daughter, then maybe she’ll take you in.”

“That’s the plan.”

“We get this done, then maybe a short time after, I can get rid of you.”

“That’s possible.”

Leonard nodded. “What we’re going to need first is a few guns. I think for something like this, we’re gonna need a few unmarked guns. I got a shotgun fills that bill, but we could use some other stuff.”

“You’re always with the guns.”

“What do they shoot at us with when we do stuff like this, straws full of spit wads?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“All right, I’ll say it. Guns. Happy?”

“Yep. Now, we’re gonna need guns. Correctomondo?”

“I suppose.”

“I know you don’t like the gun talk, Hap, but you know well as I do, at some point those people up there, they’re who I think they are, they’re gonna point guns at us. And the guns are gonna be loaded, and when they pull the trigger our heads are gonna go away. Unless we shoot first or intimidate their asses into not shooting at all. Maybe that way, we don’t have to shoot. We throw the whore in the car, then drive like bastards.”

“It’s not my plan to go up there with guns blazing. I don’t work like that.”

“I know. I just said as much. We take it easy if the easy way is there. But it isn’t, we got to go the hard way, then we got to be prepared. There’s this guy I know, he can help us.”

I thought awhile. Anytime talk of guns comes up, I get nervous. I don’t like them. I was about the best goddamn shot with a rifle or handgun you ever saw, but I still didn’t like them. I own one, and I still don’t like them. I knew there were times when they were necessary, and it was better to have one and not need it than to not have one and need it, but goddammit, I still don’t like them.

I sighed. “This guy you know. When can we see him?”

“I’ve mentioned him before. Haskel. You don’t call him. You don’t plan. You just go over to his place and be real careful.”