Joe Lansdale - Bad Chili

“Thought you might be here,” he said to Leonard.

“Yeah,” Leonard said.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “You should have been invited.”

“Family don’t like queers,” Leonard said. “Far as they were concerned, Raul wasn’t queer. He was just a little confused. Any day now he’d quit suckin’ dicks and start dive-bombing pussy.”

“Easy, Leonard,” I said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Easy.”

Charlie climbed onto the Chevy’s hood, sat by Leonard. “I wasn’t invited either. Came anyway. Thought whoever did it might show up. You know, like in the movies. Returning to the scene of the crime.”

“You don’t mean me, do you?” Leonard said.

“No,” Charlie said.

“Well, you sure don’t mean me,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Actually, I came ’cause I thought I might see you two. Raul’s body was on Old Pine Road, just down the hill from where Horse Dick bought it. Down there all the time.”

“So we heard,” Leonard said.

“Shits went out there to investigate the site didn’t do much of a job,” Charlie said.

“Boy, that surprises me,” Leonard said. “A dead queer, I thought everybody would be in a hurry.”

“It ain’t one dead queer,” Charlie said. “It’s two.”

“All right,” Leonard said. “Two dead queers.”

“Could it be one of you boys called in about the body?” Charlie asked.

“Could be,” I said.

“Thought so. You boys are too nosey to let something lay.”

“Hey, we did better than you guys,” I said.

“That’s what gets my goat,” Charlie said. “Want a little tidbit, boys?”

“Sure,” I said.

“The two dead queers,” Charlie said. “One of them was a cop.”

We both stared at Charlie. I said, “Well, since it wasn’t Raul, that leaves Horse.”

“See,” Charlie said, “your powers of deduction. Phenomenal.”

“Don’t fuck around here,” Leonard said. “I’m not in the mood. Horse Dick was a cop?”

“Yep,” Charlie said. He reached inside his suit coat, brought out a flattened pack of cigarettes. He put one in his mouth, got out a lighter, and lit it. He said, “He was working undercover.”

“Under Raul’s covers,” Leonard said.

“He was on special assignment,” Charlie said. “Didn’t know it till the other day. It wasn’t part of my business. This was something the chief set up.”

“The chief set up stuff with a gay cop?” I said.

“Didn’t know he was gay,” Charlie said. “Chief knew, guy wouldn’t have been a cop, let alone on assignment. I’d seen the guy around, but he wasn’t part of my action. I didn’t connect the death of the biker with the cop’s death, not until it got to be more common knowledge. It was slow to leak around the department. Chief thought it made him look like an idiot, so he wasn’t blowin’ any trumpets.”

“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” I said.

“Guys are running a lot of drugs through the Blazing Wheel,” Charlie said. “So Chief got Horse… McNee… and that’s another alias. His real name is Bill Jenkins. Anyway, Chief got him to go undercover. Horse got involved with Raul, then he and Raul got dead.”

“You think it had something to do with Horse being a cop, or being gay?” I said.

“Don’t know,” Charlie said, shaking his head as he blew out smoke. “Maybe both. Maybe neither. Whatever, I wanted y’all to know, ’cause truth of the matter is this one may not get the attention it deserves. Cop gets killed in the line of duty, we’re all over it. But, like you said, Leonard, couple of fags, Chief being like he is, seeing this as some reflection on the department and himself… It could fall between the cracks. Might already be there. I maybe can’t do what ought to be done. Get what I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “We get what you’re sayin’.”

“I didn’t really know Raul that much,” Charlie said. “I hate he’s dead, though. I mean, you liked him.”

“Good enough,” Leonard said.

Charlie finished his smoke, climbed off the hood. “See you boys later.”

Charlie went down to his car and drove away.

We sat there for a while watching the grave digger with his backhoe. He threw the dirt in fast and got things tidy, drove the backhoe through a large gate on the other side of the graveyard, wheeled it onto a trailer hooked to a truck. He fastened the backhoe down. He locked the gate up. He drove the trailer and the backhoe away.

Two men took down the striped funeral tent and placed the flowers and wreaths the bereaved had ordered onto and around the grave. They loaded up and got out of there.

We walked down to the graveyard, went through the gate. Walked past gravestones. I read some of them. Civil War dates. One worn stone bore the faded words BELOVED SLAVE AND SERVANT chiseled on it, which I thought was kind of ironic.

One said JAKE REMINGTON, adding, NO RELATION TO THE ARTIST OR THE GUN MANUFACTOR OF THE SAME LAST NAME. There was a Jane Skipforth, who died in the early 1900s, FROM COMPLICATIONS WITH MEN. A Bill Smith, who died in World War I. HIS PLANE WENT DOWN, BUT HIS SPIRIT SOARS. A Frank Jerbovavitch, who got old and died. A Willie, no dates, just Willie. A Fred Russel, just dates. No mention of his relationship to the famous western artist of the same last name.

And so it went. But it really didn’t matter what was said or wasn’t. Now they were all brothers and sisters under the dirt.

Leonard stood at Raul’s grave, said, “Somehow, it don’t mean nothin’, a grave. Just like when my uncle got buried. He’s dead, and that’s all there is to it.”

Leonard kicked some dirt onto the grave and we left.

When we got back to Leonard’s house we drank some coffee and chatted a bit, but it wasn’t a lively sort of chat.

After a while, I took a hint, told Leonard I was going home, and I’d call him the next day. He almost helped me to the door. He stood on the porch as I was getting in my pickup.

“Hap,” he said, “ain’t no one I’d rather have around than you. But sometimes I don’t want no one around.”

“I understand.”

“This is one of those times.”

“No problem.”

I drove home, wheeled by Leonard’s old house, the one down the road from me, gave it a longing once-over. It was boarded up and graying, and the old television antenna shooting up the side of the house, spreading out on top of the roof, had been ravaged by wind. It looked like some kind of giant alien hand gone to rot, leaving only bones. Paint flaked like psoriasis off the porch and the front door. The grass was tall and nodding in the wind.

I wished Leonard would move away from his uncle’s house and come home. The place wasn’t much, but I liked him down the road from me. We had had some good times out here, and maybe we’d never have them again. Life was starting to get in the way.

I was pretty wired when I got home, so I tried a shower, but that didn’t help. I sat around for a while, trying to read, trying to watch television, trying to listen to music. None of this did me any good.

The day wore on. I got to thinking about Brett. I looked at my watch. It was late afternoon, but she wouldn’t have to go to work until late. I dialed her number. She answered on the third ring.

“Honey, I was beginning to think I was going to have to part my hair on the other side,” she said.

“Come again?”

“I thought I was losing my touch.”

“Do you practice it much?”

“Actually, I don’t. And I’m not normally such a floozy, but I haven’t met anyone that’s interested me in ages.”

“That’s flattering. What interested you in me?”

“I just love that little bald spot.”