The Two-Bear Mambo

"And what if it isn't my father?" Tim said. "Guys, I'm sorry you got beat up. I'm sorry you got run off the road and nearly killed, but you came out all right. The guys involved confessed. Maybe they'll get scared and pin my father to it in time. But why do you want to meddle anymore?"

"You're about the only one here who has really befriended us," I said. "Maude and her boys a little. Cantuck in his own fashion. But you know these people. You might can tell us something can help. I feel there's an equation we haven't added up. I think we look at the factors just right, we ought to be able to get a total. Know what I'm saying?"

"No," Tim said.

"Florida comes here because she thinks Soothe was murdered," I said. "She wants to prove the Chief and the town are a bunch of bigots. She wants to buy this stuff the Yankee wanted to buy from Soothe and got killed over. Stuff that might or might not exist. She asks around. Talks to you. Gets a place to stay out at your mother's, then disappears. Her car disappears. Her belongings disappear."

"That's what makes me think she may have just driven off," Tim said.

"I don't think so," I said. "Doesn't fit who she was. People can sometimes do crazy things, but by now we'd have heard from her. Something's happened to her."

"You can't be certain," Tim said.

"I've thought every angle. It looked to me at first that Can-tuck might have something to do with her missing, but in light of the way things have gone, that doesn't fit as well as it first did. Reynolds is possible. He and your father could have been in cahoots. They could have hung Soothe. Perhaps Florida somehow found out, so they got rid of her. That sound far-fetched?"

"I guess not," Tim said. "I wouldn't put anything past my old man. Not after the way he's treated my mother and me. I tell you, him with all that money, and me with nothing. And owing him to boot. It gets my goat. And I hate to mention it, boys, but you owe me for some tires."

"Oh, yeah," Leonard said. "You take a check?"

"I don't like to."

"Can you wait then?"

"I'll take the check."

Leonard wrote it out. Tim took it and put it in his wallet. "There now," he said. "That's all taken care of. You were saying . . . what was it?"

"He was about to say, then we show up," Leonard said, "not only are we a nigger and a nigger lover, but we're treading on dangerous ground. Same ground Florida was on."

"So," Tim said. "What can I do?"

"What we want," I said, "is for you to let us talk to your mother. You know, set it up with her. Maybe there's something she knows that didn't seem important at the time, but is now. Perhaps Florida left her clothes in the trailer and your mother took them.”

"She's not a thief," Tim said.

"He didn't say that," Leonard said. "What he wants is any bit of evidence we can find. If your mother has the clothes, then that could point to Florida being abducted, killed. Might be something in her clothes that'll give us a lead. If we could find her car. Just something to start with. Anything."

"Hell," I said. "We don't know what we want, Tim. We just want it. Understand?"

"Here's what I'll do," Tim said. "I'll ask her she knows anything. I'll call out there. I want to talk her into leaving anyway, all this water risin', but that's all I'll do. My mother is not a well woman, and I don't want you two giving her grief. Got me?"

"Fair enough," I said.

Tim went in the back and we sat by the stove and waited. Five minutes later he returned.

"She won't leave," he said, "and she doesn't know anything. She said Florida was there, then she wasn't, and she never saw her again. And she didn't leave any clothes."

We bought some gas and soft drinks from Tim. I even bought one of the pig's feet. We went out and sat in the truck. The rain rattled on the roof and flooded over the windshield so thick it was like we were underwater.

"What now?" I said.

"This hasn't worked out quite like I thought," Leonard said. "I figure I pissed Raul off for nothing. It's too wet to do a goddamn thing. No place to stay. We've got less ideas than we did before we came the first time. And that check I wrote Tim is hot, I don't get some money to cover it. Boy, he is one tight sonofabitch."

"You're right," I said. "On all accounts."

"I missed out on an anniversary dinner and Raul's ass for this, and I tell you, I ain't happy."

"Maybe you could find someone to beat up."

"Yeah. Things could get better. What would cheer me up real good is getting to hit that Reynolds fucker."

"He'll hit back. I guarantee it."

"That is a drawback. Want to eat this sack lunch?"

"I been thinking about it ever since we left your house."

We got the sack lunch and ate it. I tried to eat the pig's foot too. It smelled rank and it was like eating a piece of soggy, vinegar-soaked rubber. I rolled down the window and spat a few times, then wrapped the pig's foot up in a paper sack, double-bagged it with another.

"Maybe you ought to wrap that sack in chains," Leonard said. "Drive a stake through it so when you throw it out, it ain't gonna come back."

"What now?" I said.

"We've been avoiding the cafe," Leonard said. "Might as well go there and get a cup of coffee, warm up."

We walked over, getting drenched, the water sloshing almost to our knees. I felt sick to my stomach thinking of going into that place, but with our guns in our coat pockets we were a lot braver.

The cafe was locked. There was a sign on the inside of the glass door that said CLOSED DUE TO HIGH WATER.

We got in the truck and sat for a while. "Well, we were ready to go in there and face the devil," I said. "And had it been open, we would have too. I'm proud of us."

"Me too," Leonard said. "On the other hand, I'm kinda glad it wasn't open."

"Me too." ^

"Know what, Hap? We're gonna have to go back to LaBorde. Get our shit together better, have a real plan. I hate to admit it, but I couldn't wait to get here today, and now we're here, and I don't know what for. Maybe if it wasn't rainin'. Or we had a place to stay. As it is we're just running around like chickens with our heads cut off. I'm wet. I'm cold. No one is here I can be mad at, and Cantuck won't let me and Reynolds play." '

"I was thinking the same thing. And feeling stupid about jumping up like a big dog, and then here we are and there's nothing for us to do."

We left Grovetown, started the way we'd come, but the weather was so bad we had to creep along at thirty miles an hour, and when we came to the marsh where Leonard's car had gone in, the marsh was over the road.

We turned around, headed back to Grovetown, then took the highway that ran out by Bacon's place, hoping to find a long way to LaBorde.

We edged along slowly. The water was starting to seep out of the woods and onto the road. The sky was a light show, and the wind was so strong it was hard to hold the truck in a lane. We passed Bacon's place, went on out a ways, finally came to a rise on the highway, and when we looked down we could see darkness, and the darkness was water.

I thought about turning back, but the rain was so severe I chose not to. Even with the lights on bright, I couldn't see much beyond the length of the truck hood, only enough to recognize a swell of water across the highway below. The truck was vibrating in the wind.

Off to our right was a short gravel road that went up a hill higher than the highway, and we took it. After a little ways, we were able to make out it was a cemetery road, and we drove inside the place and parked under a great oak near an old tomb that was swelling out of the ground, threatening to fall.

The rain pounded us so hard I thought it would come through the pickup roof, and the lightning was like luminous varicose veins across the sky. It cracked and hissed and made the darkness go daylight for full seconds at a time. I feared the tree would attract it, as trees do, so I backed out from under and tried to find a clear spot. I finally settled on a place between a row of tombstones, killed the engine, and we sat there and looked at their gray shapes through the rain, and though I've never been one to be bothered by cemeteries, I was feeling pretty blue and pretty spooky right then. Being out in the open like that made me feel worse. The tree had felt safe, though logically, I knew it was the worst place we could be in a storm. Except maybe a mobile home. Storms, especially tornadoes, dearly loved a mobile home.

"Sometimes," Leonard said, "I think when I die I'd like to end up in a place like this."

"I donated my body to science," I said. "Got it marked on my driver's license. But I don't know. I may take it off next time. Stuff I used to think was silly ain't so silly anymore. I mean, you're dead, you're dead, but it means a little something to know your name might get read off a tombstone someday. Otherwise, it's like you never lived."

" 'Course, giving someone your liver or eyes and them living because of you, that's quite a legacy," Leonard said.

"Then you ought to donate yourself too."

"No, I mean it's a legacy for you. Me, I want to be buried."

We sat there for about twenty minutes, not saying anything, the interior of the truck growing colder, and then I said, "You know, I just realized, first time I met Florida was at a cemetery. I been trying to remember first time I saw her, and it finally came to me."

"My uncle's funeral."

"Yeah. I don't know why I couldn't remember that. A thing like that, think you wouldn't forget."

"Cold is making my leg ache like a sonofabitch, Hap. We got enough gas to run the heater some?"

I fired up the engine and cranked the heater on high, said, "The cemetery here. It's given me an idea. Something that's been building in my subconscious all along. We been going about this all wrong."

"I could have told you that."

"We started out right, but now we're going wrong. We came to Grovetown trying to follow what Florida would have done, but we quit doing that. We did it a little, but we quit. We started trying to figure who killed her, instead of thinking like she would think."

"And how would she think?"

"She'd go first to see Cantuck. Maybe talk to Reynolds."

"We did that."

"She'd go to the road houses, talk to people knew Soothe, saw him and this Yankee together. She'd talk to Soothe's relatives."

"Chief, Rangers, you name it, they've done that, Hap. I mean, we might ask something they didn't ask 'cause we know Florida better than them, but I don't put lots of stock in it. Ultimately, we're just amateurs, and we ain't worth a damn at it. Earnest. But stupid."

"I'll buy that. But there's another thing she'd do. She'd go see Soothe's grave."

"Why?"

"Think a minute."

Leonard did just that. He said, "All right, I thought about it and I don't get it. She might want to see where he was buried, but I don't see that matters much as far as finding her goes."

"I think she might have thought she ought to move Soothe."

"Dig him up?"

"If Florida was here to do an investigation, was convinced Soothe was murdered, she might get to thinking someone like Reynolds, or whoever, might figure an inquiry by outside authorities could result from her snooping around, doing an article, and the outside authorities would come in and want Soothe exhumed—"

"To see if he hung himself, or was hung?"

"Yep. So she dug up the body to keep it out of the hands of anyone who might spoil it, want to destroy autopsy evidence that could prove Soothe was murdered."

"She did dig him up, where'd she put him, Hap? And another thing, Florida, petite as she was, wasn't all that suited for grave

digging."

"She didn't like getting dirty either. However, she wasn't above using her feminine charms when it suited her needs. What she would need was a horny sap who thought doing a favor might get him a little stinky on his dinky, even if all Florida really planned to give him was her heartfelt thanks. Get my drift?"

"Well, I'll be goddamned. You mean—"

"Yep."

Chapter 29

We sat there about an hour, until the rain slacked, then we started for Grovetown. When we got there the water was running wild and deep through the streets, and we had to park up by an antique shop and wade to Tim's station.

The water pushed at us so hard it was difficult to stand, but we made it. The station was locked up. We went around to the back and beat on the door there, and after a moment Tim opened up. He didn't look that thrilled to see us. He told us to go around front, and closed the door.

He let us into the store. The room was still warm, but the heater was down to coals. We went over and sat by it anyway. I checked out the junk under the stove again. It was becoming my focus point, especially that little blue object.

Tim said, "I've closed up for the day. Weather isn't giving me any work. Unless I can do something for you guys right away, I think I'm gonna pack a few things, go out to Mom's see if I can get her to come with me, head out till all this passes. I'm not wanting to be rude, but

"Tim," I said, "you took Florida out to Soothes grave, didn't you?"

"What?" he said.

I knew I was taking a hell of a flier, but the more I thought about it, considering what I knew of Florida, how she thought, I figured it was as good a flyer as I might ever take.

"She wanted to move Soothe to another place, didn't she? She asked you to take her out there and help her do it."

"Why would she do that?"

I told him what I thought. He said, "That's ridiculous," but he had a look on his face like we'd just caught him jacking off to a grainy photo of a shaved dog butt.

"You took her out there, and you helped move the body. All we want is you to show us where."

Tim studied the floor. He said, "If she did want it moved, and say I did help her, and showed you where the body is, what difference would it make now? All the time he's been in the ground, I don't know they could tell much."

"Not for us to say," Leonard said. "Forensic people can do pretty amazing things."

"And how would that help you find Florida anyway?" Tim asked. "That's what you're after, isn't it? Florida? Not this Soothe thing."

I knew I had hit pay dirt. I tried not to stare directly at Tim, lest I unnerve him. I focused on the blue object under the stove when I spoke.

"I'm not trying to say you did anything wrong, though Texas frowns on bodies being moved around after they're in the ground. But if Florida had you help move the body, and then someone, Reynolds, your father, lackeys, went out there to steal and destroy Soothe's corpse because they thought there might be an autopsy, and the body wasn't there, they might figure since Florida was asking around about Soothe, trying to prove he was murdered, well, they could put one and one together, decide she moved the body. They might not figure on you, but they'd think of her."

"Then," Leonard said, "they kidnapped her, made her tell where it was."

"Considering the boys around Grovetown can be real persuasive," I said, "I think she told, showed them where it was. And : she did, and the body was in a place where they didn't think : would be found, wouldn't cause them a problem, they left it. And they left Florida with it. That's logical. If the body wasn't in a good place, they took it off somewhere in the bottoms where it wouldn't be discovered, and probably took Florida with it."

"If it's the first thing," Leonard said, "we can find Soothe, and maybe Florida. If it's the second thing, then we . . . well, we don't have plans. We're taking it a step at a time."

"I don't know," Tim said.

"We do it this way," I said. "Me and Leonard, we'll figure a way to make it look like we put it together. We won't involve you. I promise you that. You don't help, we got to talk to Canuck."

"Why didn't you do that anyway?" Tim asked.

"Because you and your mother befriended Florida," I said. Because we don't want to tie you to stuff we don't have to."

"And Florida was our friend," Leonard said. "Something happens to a friend and you can do something about it, you ought to."

"But the weather," Tim said. "That's right out there by the dam, and that baby is startin' to pop."

"It floods," I said, "that grave may be worse off than it is now.

both of them are out there, the sooner we get to them, better the forensic evidence. And the sooner we get some kind of knowledge of what happened to Florida, even if it's bad, the better."

"Dirt's soft out there," Tim said, "but with all this water, it could be a mess."

"We'll chance it," Leonard said.

Tim went in the back room and put on boots, pulled on his heavy coat hanging by the stove, then we went out to the big garage and Tim loaded some shovels in his pickup along with a big tarp in case we found Soothe, or Soothe and Florida, then he drove us through the water and up the hill to my truck. Leonard and I followed Tim. We went out the highway where Bacon lived. I hoped the place we were going wasn't beyond that great hill, 'cause if it was we might not make it, and tomorrow Tim might forget he knew anything. I felt the whole situation was fragile, needed to be pushed now.

We came to the road that led out to his mother's, and though it was covered with water, we took it. The water was not deep over the road, but I was nervous as the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I kept thinking about that pickup I'd seen wash over the bridge.

We went down the road a ways, then took a worse road, but it went uphill some and the water disappeared. It was really a high hill for East Texas, and when we got to the top, Tim stopped and we pulled up alongside him. Down below us we could see the road was blocked by water over a narrow wooden bridge. The sky was growing dark again. The rain was coming down harder, and it was so cold the heater in the pickup sounded as if it were crying.

Leonard rolled down his window, and Tim his. Yelling across from truck to truck was difficult, the rain was coming down so hard it drowned out our voices.

"I'm afraid to drive across," Tim said.

"Me too," I said. "How far is it?"

"On the other side of the bridge, up the hill and down. To the right. It's the paupers' graveyard."

"I thought that's where he was in the first place?" Leonard said.

"And still is," Tim said. "I didn't want to do this, but now I've thought on it, I think we ought to. Get it over with. We can leave the trucks here. I don't think traffic is going to be a problem today."

When we all had a shovel and I had the rolled-up tarp under my arm and Tim had a flashlight, we started down the hill. We hadn't gone a few steps before Leonard began to limp as if his leg were made of wood. He was using the shovel to help him along. I said, "Hold up. You that bad off, brother?"

"I'm a little stiff is all," Leonard said, shivering in the cold rain.

"It's not that far," Tim said.

"Going across that bridge on that leg, I don't know," I said. Leonard's leg was so swollen it looked like ground meat pumped into a sausage casing. ' >

"Guess all the wear and tear, the weather, it's not doing me any good," Leonard said. "But I don't like being a weak sister."

"Go to the truck," I said. "Me and Tim will take care of it."

"I can make it," Leonard said.

"It's not really that far," Tim said.

"Go on to the truck," I told Leonard. "As a favor to me."

Leonard nodded. "I guess I ought to. I don't like digging anyway. Watch that water." He limped away, tossed the shovel into the bed of Tim's truck, then got in my truck on the passenger side. Through the blurry haze of the rain on the windshield, I saw him lift a hand and wave.

Tim and I went down the hill and into the water, hanging on to the bridge railing as we went. The force of the water was terrific, and I felt tremendous panic. I lost the tarp from under my arm and the water whisked it away.

We inched our way across the bridge, and on the other side the water was barely across the road. We walked along more quickly now, and up a hill, and when we came down on the other side I could see the graveyard off to the right, about halfway down the hill, the stones and markers sloping toward the Big Thicket. Definitely a pauper's graveyard.

There was a barbed wire fence around it and an open gate, and we went through there and Tim took the lead. He led me over to where Soothe's grave was, tapped it with his shovel. The grave was covered in colored glass and the cheap gravestone that stated his name, birthdate, and death was wrapped in colored beads. There was a little doll's head in front of the stone with melted wax on top of it where a candle had burned down. Part of the doll's head had melted, and wax had run down over the painted eye.

"Empty," Tim said. "All this shit was put here after we dug the grave up officially. Me, Cantuck, Reynolds, and the Ranger. You wouldn't believe how hard it was for me to act surprised when we opened it."

"Why all this stuff?"

"Voodoo," Tim said. "It's to keep Soothe in the ground." He strolled over to the grave next to Soothe's, stuck his shovel into the dirt at its base. "Old Mrs. Burk has company."

"You put Soothe in there with her?"

"Florida's idea," he said. "Just temporary. Way the weather's been, washing the place and all, no one could tell we'd done anything when they dug up Soothe's spot."

"Clever," I said. "Let's do it."

Grave digging is not nearly as easy as you might think. It's backbreaking, and next to picking corn out of pig shit with tweezers it's the most boring thing in the world. I tried to focus on things other than my injuries, my sore muscles.

I tried not to think about Florida possibly being down there, and I began to hope I was wrong. If she was dead, I wasn't sure I wanted to find her now. I tried not to think about her being forced to bring those Klan idiots out here, show them where Soothe was buried. I tried not to think about what they did to her afterwards, before they put her down here with Soothe and Mrs. Burk.

As we dug, the water ran down the hill and tried to fill the grave. We could hear the woods crackling as the water ran over the dried branches and leaves, and in the distance I could hear a roaring, which I figured was the rush of the creek swelling. But we kept digging, slogging into the mud, and after about an hour my shovel hit something hard. We scraped it clean. A coffin. Wood.

I stood there on top of it, not knowing exactly what to do next. Tim said, "Mrs. Burk, she's under that box."

I had a sudden uncomfortable thought. I said, "What if Florida told the Klan folks you helped do this? You think your father will have you done in?"

I looked at Tim. He shrugged. "If she'd told, and they were going to do something, I reckon they would have done it already. Let's widen the grave a bit."

"It's wide enough. Let's pop the lid."

"Let's widen it so we can pull it out. I think we got to pull it out, don't you? You lost the tarp, so we have to somehow get the coffin up the hill."

We started digging again, widening the grave. That nasty snake of my subconscious began to work at me again. It was trying to tell me something, as it often did.

Tim climbed out of the grave. He got the big flashlight he had carried with him, turned it on, tilted it at the edge of the grave so that it shone down on the coffin. It had grown nearly dark as midnight in the time we had been digging. Water was nearly to my knees, and rising.

"Why don't you pop the lid now," he said. "Use your shovel."

I looked up at Tim. He was standing above me, leaning on his shovel, one hand in his pocket. The rain was so thick, it seemed to be a sheath around him. Lightning sawed across the sky in bright, crooked explosions.

"All right," I said.

I took the tip of my shovel, started forcing it under the lid of the cheap coffin. It wasn't really an official coffin, which would have taken tools to open. It was one of those cheap kind they called pressed wood, which was essentially high-caliber cardboard. It was already starting to come apart due to all the rain since Soothe had been buried. Then reburied.

It popped free, and the stench from it was horrible. Lying on top of what had to be Soothe, though there wasn't much of him to recognize—bones and skin stretched over a skull so tight it looked like a stocking mask—there was another badly decomposed body. The features were basically gone and the hair was patchy. Flesh hung from the skull like chunks of dried glue and above the right eye socket the forehead was pushed in. The rain splashed on it, made the flesh loosen and it slid off the bone as if it were alive and seeking shelter.

In spite of the damage, I recognized the short blue dress the corpse wore, and there was one blue earring dangling from a rotting lobe, and in that instant, I knew I had been a sap all along. I knew what that blue thing under Tim's stove was suddenly, and I knew why Tim wanted the grave widened.

It had to accommodate me. Then Leonard.

I dropped the shovel, reached for the gun in my coat pocket, tried to turn, but didn't make it. Tim hit me across the back of the head with his shovel, knocked me against the grave wall.

My head was splitting. I assumed I had only been out for seconds, because when I came to Tim was stepping into the grave, a foot on Florida's corpse. He reached the pistol that had fallen from my hand out of the coffin and pointed it at me. I was too dazed to do anything. There were just enough brain cells cooking to know I ought to be doing something and wasn't.

I was standing up, lodged between the coffin and the wall of the grave. There hadn't been room to fall down. Tim was squatting in the coffin now, still pointing my gun at me. If that wasn't enough, he pulled a little automatic from his coat pocket with his empty hand, aimed it at me too.

Two-Gun Tim.

"It's nothing personal," he said. "I didn't want to kill you and Leonard, but I got to now. I kept thinking you'd just go off. I mean, I like you. I liked Florida. It was just one of those things. You knew though. Right there a while ago. You knew. How?"

It took me a second to make my mouth work, but I wanted every second I could buy. "Her earring is missing. I realized it's under your stove, at the store."

"Thanks for telling me," Tim said. "I'll get rid of it. Me and her, we struggled. I figure it got caught in my coat, and when I hung it up to dry, the earring fell out, rolled under the stove."

"You stupid sonofabitch."

"Hey, look who's on the end of the gun, pal. Ain't me."

"You're the one told the Klan me and Leonard were going home."

"You just kept pushing, Hap. I thought maybe after that beating you took, that would fix you. But hearing you talk to Cantuck ... I don't know. I wasn't so sure, and I had to be. And I didn't mean for Bacon to get it. I made an anonymous phone call to Draighten, told him where you two would be. I said you'd be coming from Bacon's place. Everyone knows Bacon."

"Why would you do this?"

"I think I need to get this over with, Hap. I don't dislike you, it's hard enough to do, but I got to do it."

"I don't think it's that hard for you, buddy."

"Oh, you don't know. It's not easy for me at all. I don't like killing."

"But you get by."

"What I want you to do is step out of the grave. I want you to get out right now, get on your knees up at the edge."

I thought about that. I realized he didn't want to shoot me in case Leonard might hear the shot. Which in this rain wasn't likely, but I decided not to mention that. He wanted me at the edge of the grave on my knees so he could bean me with the shovel again. Bean me on the head, then roll me in between the edge of the coffin and the grave wall. The other side would fit Leonard.

"I don't think I want to climb out," I said.

"Then I shoot you here."

"Why would you kill Florida?"

"The money. That's it. I liked Florida. Really. But she talked too much. I knew she carried her savings somewhere in her car, and I got to thinking about it. She drove out here behind me and I moved the body like she wanted, and I didn't really have it planned, but I knew then I could kill her, take the money, and no one would ever know. I needed that money, Hap, and everything was right for it. Grovetown wasn't going to get too worked up about a missing black girl. Maybe Cantuck. But he ain't Sherlock Holmes, you know. It was quite a bit of money she had. And not hid all that well either. Taped under the seat. All that money and she was going to buy some stupid recording with it."

"Heaven forbid someone spend their own money the way they want."

"I didn't like the way she wanted to use me, neither. Try and make me think she might bed me, but I knew she wouldn't. I put Florida in the coffin with Soothe, put them on top of Burk.

"I drove Florida's car down the road there, off to a fishing spot I used to use. There's swampy water there so goddamn deep it might go to the center of the earth. I pushed the car off in it, walked back and drove out."

"Just for money? You killed her for that?"

"I fucked her too. I figured she was gonna die, wasn't any use in that pussy going to waste. I wouldn't have hurt her, had some fun with her, had I not meant to kill her. It's just ... I was gonna do her in, might as well get some pleasure from her. It wasn't that good by the way. Fight like she did, it isn't that good."

Greed. Tim had killed that wonderful, beautiful woman for money and sex. I'd assigned everything that had happened to bigotry, but it was greed and lust. Two sins much older, and as basic as the instinctive mating of those two National Geographic bears. I felt like an idiot. I felt angry. I felt as if my heart would explode.

"Come on, Hap, get out of the hole."

"If you're gonna bang me with that shovel," I said, "I'd rather take the bullet."

"I do that, Leonard hears the shot, he might drive off, then folks would come here to investigate, figure things out. I got to get you both, Hap. You might as well come on and let me do it. I can kill you with one blow if you're out of the grave. I can make it quick. After I got some from Florida, that's what I did. One blow with a rock."

In the grave, lodged like I was, I didn't have a chance in a million. But the other way, maybe ...

"You don't come out," Tim said, "I'll chance shooting you. I don't think Leonard can hear anyway, but I got an idea he did hear it, he'd know it was a gunshot, and it'll be tidier this way."

"All right, but promise me you'll do it right. Hard and quick. Same for Leonard."

"I'll have to shoot Leonard, most likely. He won't expect it, though, and I'll do it up close. Right in the temple, okay?"

I thought, if you get that close, and Leonard has an inkling what you're going to do, he's going to snap your arm off at the elbow and use it to swab out your asshole. I thought, Leonard, old buddy, I go down, please don't fall for this bastard. Don't fall for it.

Tim put the automatic in his pocket and kept my revolver. He said, "Get up tight against the grave wall."

I did. He climbed out carefully, keeping an eye on me. He got the flashlight and held it on my face, blinding me. The light bobbed low and came back up. I couldn't make out what he was doing behind the light, but I had an idea. He was slipping the revolver into his pocket, picking up the shovel.

I put a foot inside the coffin, between Florida's stick legs, prepared to reach for the edge of the grave. I figured soon as I did that, that's when Tim would strike. He'd get me before I got out, right in the head, then all he had to do was make sure I was pushed down between the coffin and the dirt, go up and talk to Leonard. He wouldn't have to worry about the noise of the gun then. One snap and it was all over.

In the split second before I raised my hands to take hold of the edge of the grave, I thought about trying to snatch up the shovel I dropped, but knew that wouldn't work. I wasn't quick enough for that. Not quick enough to get hold of it, come out of the grave and hit him with it.

I took hold of the edge of the grave with both hands, then the flashlight dropped, and I heard the whistling of the shovel being swung. I threw my hands up in a wide X pattern and twisted my head to the side as the shovel came down and hit my wrists and pain exploded in me, but I had twisted my body so that it carried the power of the blow to the side, and with a quick turn of my arms, I wrenched the shovel free, dropped it, seized the sides of the grave, pulled myself up into a crouch.

The flashlight still lay on the ground, and there was a dark shape behind it, and I dove for it, was rewarded by my arms encircling Tim's neck.

I dropped my grasp from his neck to his sides, pinned his arms against him just as he reached into his coat pockets to get hold of the guns. I used my right knee to strike him in the side of the leg, on the pressure point there. He sagged and I butted him in the face, and he went down. I was all over him then, but the water flowing under us made us slide and we went backwards into the grave. We hit the coffin and the sides blew out, and the bodies beneath us leaped up. I felt a bony arm clasp my face, blocking my vision, filling my head with the stink of rotting meat. I don't know if it was me or Tim that screamed, but one of us did.

The rest of the coffin came apart beneath us, and we rolled in a wreck of bones and flesh. I came up on top, driving straight punches into Tim's face, and they were good punches, but I'd forgotten about the shovel I'd left in the grave, and Tim got hold of it, and though he didn't have room to swing it, he popped it forward, banging me between the eyes with the handle, then he was on top of me, trying to strangle me. I thrashed amidst the wreckage of Soothe and Florida, brought the sides of my hands down hard behind his elbows, pushed in. He couldn't hold the choke. I was gaining control. In another second I was going to turn him over and be on top, and he knew it. He shoved to his feet, leaped for the edge of the grave.

I managed to grab his leg. He kicked back reflexively. It was a lucky shot to the jaw. In the instant I was dealing with the pain he got out of the grave. I got it together pretty quick, went after him, stumbling over the flashlight as I went. The light spun toward him, showed him in its glow, then rolled away, but not before I saw he had pulled the automatic from his coat pocket.

Then there was a sound, like a stick snapping, and Tim did a little trick with his legs, as if he were trying to bury his heels in the earth, then he sagged and fell on his side, did a few kicks that carried him around in a semicircle, then he stopped moving. I could hear his breathing. It was hard and heavy.

"Hap. You okay?"

Leonard grew out of the darkness, limped toward me. He was holding his pistol. I answered, "Just barely."

"I got to thinking about things," Leonard said. "He went from not wanting to cooperate to being awfully anxious to cooperate. He wanted me to come even when you didn't. I got to wondering why he was so eager to get us down here. I'd have been here sooner, but the leg isn't working so well."

"I'm just glad you came . . . shit!" I glanced where Tim had been lying. He was no longer there.

Leonard wheeled with the gun and I got hold of the flashlight. I shined it about the graveyard. Tim, walking as if he were imitating the scarecrow in the Oz movie, was making bad time toward the far side of the graveyard, toward the woods. He got to the barbed wire fence, fell against it and stuck there, his upper body bending over it, as if he were trying to fold in half. Then I heard a loud cracking, a roar, like the sound of a freight train magnified by ten. In the glow of the flashlight I saw a tall silver mass of flying needles coming out of the forest. Pines snapped and crackled into toothpicks. Great oaks screamed as they were pulled from the ground.

The mass of silver needles was a great wall of water. Before I could say, "I'll be a sonofabitch," the wall came down on us like a thousand pianos falling, and the great gray mountain of wetness pushed Leonard and me together and carried us away.

We held to each other and the water carried us high up, then under, and I couldn't breathe, and it was the marsh all over again, only worse, because the power of the water was so awesome there was no fighting back, no swimming. It churned us up and carried us through the heights of trees. We clung to each other and breathed again. Then it was down once more into choking darkness and confusion. A moment later, we were on top of the water again, coughing, and the next thing I knew I was hung in a tree, my body slamming against the tree trunk. There was a great weight tearing at my right shoulder, and I realized it was because I was holding on to Leonard and the water was jerking at him and trying to take him and my shoulder with it.

"Let go, Hap, you stubborn sonofabitch!"

I could see Leonard's shape now, at the end of my arm, and the bastard let go of my hand, but I held his wrist and gritted my teeth. It was like the marsh, and I hadn't let go and we had made it, and I wouldn't let go this time.

"Let go!" Leonard said, "or it'll take us both!"

"Then it will," I said.

I heard Leonard laugh. A choked water laugh. A crazy laugh. Then he snapped his wrist loose of my fingers and the dark churning water pulled him from me, washed him away.

Chapter 30

A few hours before morning a hot gold corkscrew of lightning hit the top of a pine across the way and knocked it in half and caught it on fire. The rain sizzled in the flames and the tree burned out quickly and the fiery limbs that fell off of it were consumed by the flooding waters.

Then the rain stopped and the clouds split open like cotton candy being torn by greedy fingers and the wind blew their remnants away. A great gold moon rose high up and was visible through the summit of the trees—a pocked Happy Face against black velvet. I looked at the stars and thought first of my father, pointing out the shapes in the heavens, then of Florida and how we had once made love in her car and lay on her car hood afterwards looking at the stars, feeling as if they were near and belonged to us.

In time the moonlight and starlight brightened even more and I spied a strange configuration in a massive oak, as if nature had made an image of the crucified Christ out of debris and put heaven's spotlights on it. I watched it for a long time, uneasy with it, then nodded some, thinking of Leonard.

Dawn came rosy, as if it had never rained, and the moon was dissolved by sunlight and the sun itself was a bleeding red boil that did little to warm the chilled air. The water below me had dropped ten feet, but it was still a rush of mud and wreckage. A bloated cow was wedged between a pine and a sweet gum, and with the water no longer rushing, I could hear flies working the carcass, getting their breakfast. I ached all over. I was freezing. My coat and clothes crinkled and popped with ice when I moved. Ice fell out of my hair.

I tried to stretch, get positioned on the limb some way I wouldn't ache, but that wasn't possible. Nothing was comfortable. But as I moved I could see the shape in the oak clearly.

It was Florida. Her corpse, mostly devoid of flesh now, her left leg missing from the knee down, was hung up in the oak amidst a wad of limbs and vines and shattered lumber. Her stick arms were spread wide and her skull was tilted down on the neck bones, held together by peeling strips of flesh and muscle. Hungry crows were so thick on top of her skull, flapping their wings, pecking at her flesh, they looked like windblown black hair. One arm was raised slightly higher than the other, and the skeletal hand pointed to the sky.

I closed my eyes, but in time I was drawn to look again, and after an hour or so I felt so strange and disconnected with reality her corpse was no longer horrifying; it was like part of the decor.

By midday I was hungry and freezing and feverish, beginning to feel as if I was going to fall because I couldn't keep my grip anymore. My hands were like claws. My calves and thighs ached with cramps. When I stood up on the limb to shake my legs out, I could hardly keep my balance. Something was moving and rattling in my chest, and its name was pneumonia.

The sun bled out its redness and turned yellow and rose in the sky like a bright balloon full of helium, but still it gave no heat.

The air was as cold as an Arctic seal's nose and there was a slight wind blowing, and that made matters worse, turned the air colder and carried the stench from Florida's corpse and that of the bloated cow—which I named Flossy—to me as a reminder of how I would soon end up.

A few mobile homes floated by, mostly in pieces. A couple of rooftops drifted into view later on. I thought I might drop down on one of the roofs as it floated by, ride it out. And I think I was weak enough and stupid enough right then that that's exactly what I would have done, but the roof I had in mind hit a mass of trees, went apart, was washed away as splintered lumber.

I had become a little delirious with fever. Sometimes I dreamed I was still holding Leonard's wrist, and I was about to pull him into the tree with me, then I'd realize where I was and what had happened, and I'd go weak and wonder how it would be to drop from my limb and let the water have me.

After a time, I heard the helicopter. At first I thought the chopping sound was in my head, but finally I looked, and high up like a dragonfly, was a National Guard helicopter.

Then it was low, skimming over the trees, beating furiously, rattling the dry limbs of winter, making me colder. My coat was so soaked in water, so caked with ice, speedy movement was difficult, but I did my best to stand on my limb and wave an arm.

The helicopter passed over, started climbing. As I watched the copter soar up and away, I felt as if the world were falling out from under me. I slowly sat down. Then the copter turned back, dropped low.

It hovered over the tree where Florida's corpse was wedged, and I realized they had spotted her, not me. I waved and screamed and jumped up and down on my limb like an excited monkey. The copter moved slowly in my direction, a few yards above my tree and beat the air. A rope with a life basket was lowered out of its door.

They couldn't get too close because of the limbs, and I couldn't

get far enough out to get hold of the basket. I tore off my coat and tossed it, inched my way out on the limb, heard it crack, but kept going. The basket was six feet away and the limb was starting to sag, and I knew this was it. Die dog or eat the hatchet. I bent my knees, got a little spring like a diver about to do a double somersault, and leaped into space.

My legs didn't carry me as far as I thought they might, but I got hold of the basket, barely, and it tilted and swung and I clung. They hauled up slowly, me swinging in the air, my fingers weakening by the second. And just when I thought I couldn't hold anymore, they pulled me inside and threw a blanket around my shoulders and shoved a cup of hot soup into my bloodless hands.

"Man," said the young, uniformed Guardsman who gave me the soup, "you are one lucky sonofabitch. We been all over. We haven't found but three or four people. That flood, it took the world. You Hap Collins?"

"Yeah. How did you—"

"Fella we found, said you were out there. Wouldn't let us give up. Said he'd throw himself out of the copter, we didn't keep looking. I don't think he has the strength to roll over, but we kept looking. We saw that body in the tree, then you."

I wasn't paying attention to the Guardsman anymore. I took a better look around the chopper. I had been so preoccupied with getting inside, then with the soup, I hadn't noticed that there were three other rescued civilians inside, lying under blankets. One of them rolled over slowly and looked at me and smiled, if you could call lifting your upper lip slightly a smile. It was Leonard.

"That's the guy," Guardsman said.

"Yeah," I said. "I know that sonofabitch."

The Guardsman pulled me over by Leonard and draped a blanket around my shoulders and gave me more soup. The

Guardsman said, "We haven't got a doctor on board, but we'll have you to one soon."

"Thanks," I said.

I looked at Leonard. He was trying to sit up. I set the soup down and got him under the arms and pulled him up against the wall. "Throw yourself out, huh?" I said.

"Just bullshit." His voice was like crackling cellophane.

"Want some of my soup?"

"Long as I don't drink on the side where your mouth's been."

The rain stopped the day after the flood and it hasn't come a big rain since. The flood was the worst in East Texas history. Grovetown was almost wiped off the map and was designated a Disaster Area.

Leonard and I felt like warmed-over dog shit for about three months after it all. We were both pretty much broke, having gone through our savings and owing doctor bills.

Raul didn't run off while Leonard was in Grovetown. He had a change of heart, stayed home and waited. Leonard is looking for work. I go over there most Sundays to have dinner. I still don't like Raul much.

Florida's corpse was recovered and buried in the LaBorde cemetery. I was too sick to go to the funeral. Now that spring has come, there's a hill across from my house where beautiful wildflowers grow. I pick them from time to time, drive out to the cemetery in the car Charlie loaned me, and put them on Florida's grave.

Last week I started back doing odd jobs, and at the end of the week I nailed work driving a tractor, getting the ground in shape for a sweet potato crop for Mr. Swinger. It's not good work and it doesn't pay much, and it won't last long, but it has a hypnotic quality and keeps me from thinking too much. I get so I see only the field in front of me, hear the hum of the tractor, have to think just enough to do what needs to be done.

Sometimes, though, I can't help but consider it all. I heard through Charlie that Bacon was washed away with the flood, and his body has never been found. Mrs. Garner drowned too, but they found her body way down in the Thicket, the remains of that double-wide on top of her. Tim's body was located wrapped tight in barbed wire, like a metal mummy. They didn't find him all that far from his mother.

Hanson's the same. I went to Tyler to see him a couple of times, but he didn't know me and the family hardly does. I didn't go back. I couldn't see it made a difference. Charlie, on the other hand, goes there often, holds Hanson's hand and talks to him. He thinks Hanson's doing better. But he's the only one that does.

Not so long ago, Leonard and I, like gluttons for punishment, drove over to Grovetown. I was looking for Cantuck, but couldn't find him and couldn't find anyone knew anything about him. Fact was, I could hardly find anyone at all. The place is like a soggy ghost town. Half the buildings are a wreck and stink of mud and fish. Tim's filling station, except for the pumps, is just a patch of filthy concrete with dead bass on it.

We stopped by the cafe to tell Mrs. Rainforth thanks for saving our lives and Leonard's balls, for having Bacon look after us. The cafe had stood the flood pretty well, but it was closed. There was a realty sign on the door. I put my hands against the glass and looked inside. Water damage. Everything gone. I don't know where she and her boys went.

Week ago, I was sitting at home swigging a Diet Coke, trying to read an old paperback, when the telephone rang.

It was Cantuck.

"How are you, boy?" he said.

"Good enough," I said. "I'm breathing. I didn't know for sure you were. I came looking for you."

"Me and the wife got out just ahead of the flood. Lost every goddamn thing we owned. Been livin' with my sister over in

Brownsboro. We got us a mobile home now. Moved it in next to where our house used to be. We get the 'lectricity hooked up this week, and the shitter, then things can start gettin' back to normal and I can try and get down to business. Runnin' an office from Brownsboro hasn't been worth a flying fuck in a tornado."

"I presume, by business, you mean you're still Chief?"

"Yeah. Kinda what I'm callin' about. I thought you ought to know. Might involve you again in court, little later down the road. Kevin and Ray, they decided jail wasn't all that fun. They're trying to make some deal, shorter sentences. They named Reynolds. Said he let them in the jail, them and some others, and together they killed that nigger. Kevin said Reynolds swung on Soothe's legs till he choked. Rangers picked his ass up yesterday."

"What about Brown?"

"Nope. They may come through on him later, or Reynolds might. But I don't know. One rat at a time, son. One rat at a time. How's the colored boy . . . how's Leonard?"

"He's all right. Getting along."

"Good. Glad to hear it. You know what?"

"What?"

"They dug a bullet out of Tim's body."

I paused for an instant. "No shit?"

"Looks like someone killed him. Could be, we ran some tests on that slug, we might could figure out whose gun fired it."

"That a fact?"

"Yep. But dammit, way things been goin', the flood and all, me not having a place to keep stuff good, damn thing got lost. Can you believe that?"

"With you at the helm, it's hard to accept."

"Just plain disappeared. Never happened to me before. Makes me look bad, since I was the one ended up with the bullet, but these things happen. It won't happen again, but it happened this time."

I tried not to sigh. "Well, you can't blame yourself too much."

"Nope, I can't."

"Guess it can't be proved who killed Florida either?"

"No, but you know, I got this feeling, down deep. Just a feeling mind you, that justice has been served."

"Me too."

"Listen here, y'all come back this way, and it might be best if you don't, but if you do, we get the lectricity and the shitter in, come see me. My wife cooks a mean meat loaf, provided there's enough oatmeal to stretch it."

"Isn't that violating your religious rules?"

"Oatmeal in the meat loaf?"

"Blacks and whites."

"Well, you can be too strict, I reckon. Take care, Hap."

"One thing. Anyone ever find any music, recordings, stuff like that Soothe could have had?"

"Nothing. 'Course, if a fella found something valuable like that hidden in Florida's car. Say she got her hands on them somehow and didn't tell no one, and this stuff was still in good enough shape, a fella could hang on to it, and in time, he could come up with it like it was found another way, couldn't he?"

I let a few seconds pass. I thought about asking how Florida might have finally come by those recordings. I thought about lots of other questions no one could answer. When I finally spoke, what I said was, "But would a man that found something like that—knowing he ought to turn it over to the authorities— do something like that?"

"I think he might. And what would those recordings have to do with the authorities? Think about it."

"Even so, would it be wise for a fella to tell other people?"

"No. But he might do it anyway. If who he told was someone he thought wouldn't mind if they popped up later and the money from them went to a pet charity."

"Like muscular dystrophy."

"Yep."

"I'll be damned," I said.

We were quiet again. Maybe for a full half minute. Then Can-tuck said, "Oh, we found your pickup. You don't want it back."

"Cantuck?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"You take care, boy."

I went to bed then, without my gun. I thought I was doing better. But for the first time in months, it began to rain. It was a gentle spring rain, and I didn't like it. It woke me up. It used to help me sleep, now it makes me nervous. Twice as nervous if I should hear thunder or see lightning.

It's a week later and it's still raining. Nothing serious. Just a steady, easy spring rain, but I still can't sleep. I wake up every night and pad to the kitchen window for a look out back. There's only the woods out there, but I can't sleep. I sit up and drink coffee till morning, watch the late movies. Sometimes I play the L.C. Soothe boxed set I borrowed from Leonard. I play it and think about how this man, long dead, got this whole thing started.

Might as well. I go back to bed, I lay there and wait for the floodwaters to come hurtling down with Florida at the crest, pinned to the top of a wave like a Christmas tree ornament for the devil.

Just lay there and listen to the beating of my heart, counting the seconds gone from my life, anticipating less of the same.