Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

Florida had kicked off the sheet again. She lay on her back. Her face was smooth and beautiful, and her lips fluttered slightly. Her breasts and pubic hair caught my attention, but somehow, having seen what I had just seen, I couldn’t hold any sexual interest.

I took off my clothes and eased back in bed and lay on my back and watched the fan go around and around. I listened to the wind in the bottle tree and hoped the souls of the drug dealers were being sucked inside. I wondered if Uncle Chester’s soul had gone in there, the soul of his victim… or victims.

I thought about the trunk and the magazines and I thought about Leonard. The world had certainly come down on him. I thought about the child’s skeleton and what the child had been like when he was alive. Had he been happy before it happened? Thinking of Christmas? Had he been sad? Had he suffered much? Had he known what was happening?

Across the way, in the crack house, I heard someone laugh, then someone said something loud and there was another laugh, then silence.

The shadows changed, broadened. A slice of peach-colored light came through the bars and fell across the bed and made Florida’s skin glow as if it had been dipped in honey. I watched her skin instead of the fan, watched it become bright with light. I rolled over and put my arm around her. Her skin was warm, but I felt cold. I got up and got the sheet and spread it over her and crawled under it and held her again. She rolled against my chest and I kissed her on the forehead.

“Is it morning yet?” she said.

“If you’re a rooster,” I said.

“Umm. I’m not a rooster.”

“I noticed.”

“Your breath stinks.”

“Not yours. It’s sweet as a rose… Of course, it’s growing by the septic tank.”

“You know, you’re my first peckerwood.”

“And how was it?”

“Except for the itty-bitty dick part, great.”

“Nice.”

“I’ll show you nice. In a moment.”

She got out of bed and pulled the sheet off and wrapped it around herself. “I’m going to brush my teeth. Right back. Then you’re going to brush your teeth.”

“Are we going to check for cavities?”

“There’s one cavity I’d like you to look at,” she said, and left the room. I actually began to get the trunk and the body and the magazines off my mind. At least off the front burner.

When she came back, she said, “Leonard’s up. He always get up early?”

“Sometimes.”

“You think we woke him up last night? You know, we were kind of loud.”

“It’s OK. Why don’t you take off the sheet?”

“Teeth.”

I went and brushed then. I heard Leonard in the newspaper room. He seemed to be pacing. The old floorboards squeaked.

When I came back to the bedroom, Florida had taken off the sheet and was lying in bed with an unwrapped rubber on her abdomen, a folded pillow under her ass and her legs spread.

“Hint, hint,” she said.

It was noon and hot and no breeze was blowing. Florida was long gone to visit her mother. The curb was bordered with cop cars and unmarked cop cars. Leonard had called the police about an hour back.

Next door, the crack house was up early, surprised it wasn’t them being paid a visit. They sat and stood on their porch and watched. Mohawk called to one of the plainclothes cops in the yard – a fat guy with a bad toupee – by name. The fat cop waved back.

An old black woman on a walker came out of the house across the street and stood on the porch and looked at us. It was the first time I’d seen her. She reminded me of an ancient, oversized cricket. Above her, on a high line, a crow cawed as if it needed a throat lozenge.

Leonard and I were on his front porch, sitting in the glider. Leonard looked to have shrunk during the night. His complexion had grayed.

A big black detective, fiftyish and hard looking, wearing a loose blue suit coat, was hunkered down by the glider asking us questions, while a white detective in a green Kmart suit like I had wanted to buy took notes and did battle with a fly that kept trying to light on his sweaty, balding head.

“Goddamn fly,” he said.

“They go straight for shit,” the black cop said.

“Yeah,” said the white cop. “Guess they’re gonna be all over you.”

The big black cop didn’t look at the white cop. You got the idea they did that kind of dull banter all the time, just to keep themselves awake. The black cop got a turd-colored cigar out of the inside of his coat and put it in his mouth and chewed it. He didn’t light it. He said, “That’s about it for now. The both of you will have to talk again. Maybe come down to the station.”

Inside, we could hear boards being ripped up. A couple of guys in jeans and T-shirts went by us, carrying shovels into the house.

“My name’s Lt. Marvin Hanson,” said the black cop. “I guess I should have already told you that. My manners are short. You two might want to hang somewhere else for a while. They’re gonna be digging and looking for a time… You fellas want to go with me and have lunch? I’ll make the city pay.”

“Thanks,” Leonard said. “We’ll do that. OK, Hap? I wouldn’t mind getting out of here.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“What about me?” said the white cop.

“Blow it out your ass, Charlie,” Hanson said.

Charlie chuckled and slipped his notepad inside his coat. Hanson stood up and I heard his knees pop.

“Be a minute,” he said.

He went in the house and we stayed put. Charlie didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at us. He just leaned on the porch post and did battle with his fly.

Over at the crack house, a pizza delivery truck pulled up at the curb and a nervous black kid wearing a cockeyed paper cap got out and carried half a dozen large pizza boxes up to the porch.

Some jive talk and some dollars were passed around. The kid got off the porch without his paper hat. I noticed Mohawk was wearing it. It was too small and made him look like a black Zippy the Pinhead. Charlie looked over and saw him. He yelled, “Give it back, asshole.”

“Ah, man,” Mohawk said.

“Give it back.”

“That’s all right,” the pizza kid said, one foot in the truck, one foot out. “They got another one they can give me.”

“Naw,” Charlie said. “You look good in that one.”

“Whatch y’all got over there?” Mohawk said. “Dead people?”

“Butane leak. Give him the cap back.”

“Yeah, sure,” Mohawk said. “Come get it, kid.”

“Naw,” said Charlie. “You take it down to him. And be polite. Or we might have to look your place over. See if you got any illegal substances behind the commode.”

“You got to have some cause,” Mohawk said.

“A stolen paper pizza hat.”

“I didn’t steal it. I borrowed it.” Mohawk looked around at his porch buddies and smiled, and they all smiled with him. Parade Float came out of the house and let the screen door slam like he meant some kind of business.

“That’s right, ain’t it, kid?” Parade Float yelled to the kid. “My man just borrowed that hat, didn’t he?”

“That’s all right with me,” the kid said. “Damn. You know I don’t deliver this other pizza quick, I’m gonna have to pay for it. I better rush.”

The kid got in the truck and started to close the door.

“Naw. That’s all right kid,” said Charlie. “Keep your spot. I got money. And you, Melton. Let me give you some cause to give that hat back. You don’t, I’ll shove a pipe up your ass. One shoots bullets out the end of it.”

Mohawk – or rather, Melton – smiled. “Well, since you’re talking sexy, Sergeant. I’ll give it back.”

Mohawk went down the steps and toward the kid. He walked slow and cool, like he was styling his duds. He threw the hat at the kid and the kid grabbed at it and missed it, picked it off the ground, put it on his head, got in his truck, and cranked it up. He rolled away from there bent over the wheel.