Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

“Right,” I said.

“Well, he did have a theory or two on black holes.”

“Ha. Ha.”

She laughed. “I’ve never been here when someone else was. Not yet. I’ve always had it to myself.”

“Good,” I said.

A shooting star flamed across the sky and snuffed out. We oohed and aahed it.

Damn, what a day. A nude swim. A dead body. A bar fight, and now a picnic with a beautiful woman, and a shooting star. What next? A UFO encounter?

The picnic basket contained barbecued chicken, egg salad and ham and cheese sandwiches on wheat bread, and sweet pickles and hot peppers and chips and potato salad.

“That’s a lot of food,” I said.

“Figured an old guy like you might need to recharge himself later.”

“Honey, I look at you, I don’t need any jumper cables.”

We put the food on paper plates and ate and drank sweet tea out of a large thermos. There was another thermos with coffee; when we finished eating, I reached for it, but Florida stopped me. She said, “After dessert.”

She stood up and took off her shorts and she wasn’t wearing panties. She put the shorts on the picnic table. She slipped off her shirt and she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“You saving on laundry?” I said.

She put the shirt with the shorts. She moved up close to where I sat on the stone picnic bench, and I kissed her belly button. She pushed away from me and smiled and gathered her clothes and walked back to the car. She looked funny and sexy wearing nothing but those big shoes. She opened the back door and sat on the seat with her legs outside and unfastened her shoes and put them on the floorboard. She crossed her legs and looked at me. “Do I have to write you a letter?” she said.

“Don’t even need to send a telegram,” I said, and I got up and went over there.

Later, we dressed and had coffee while we lay on the hood of the car, our backs against the windshield. We must have seen a half-dozen shooting stars.

“This was a nice surprise,” I said. “I especially liked the part where you shucked your shorts.”

“Glad you liked it, but could I say – without intent to hurt your fragile male ego, because I enjoyed myself very much – you seem a little distracted?”

“I’ve had a big day.”

“Hap, I’ve been thinking, and I got to tell you, what I said the other night-”

“That’s all right. I was pushing.”

“What I mean is, I really don’t have the right to judge you. You are who you are, and that’s a pretty good thing. I shouldn’t try and make you something else.”

“You made some good points. I am coasting.”

“I suppose another thing is we haven’t had time to know each other that well. One day I see you and you’re this grungy guy, and the next day I see you you’re on top of the house sucking in your stomach-”

“You noticed that?”

“Sure. And then we’re in the sack, and I like you. I like you a lot, and I don’t really know who you are.”

“What do you want to know?”

“You don’t know me either. Not really. Let me tell you something about myself. Something to clear the air a little. I’m laying on you how ambitious I am, right? Telling you what a ball of fire I am, and what a wet ball of twine you are. So let me be honest. I’m not living up to my ambitions either.”

“Maybe no one does.”

“It was my plan to be a serious criminal lawyer. I wanted to try murder cases. I wanted to specialize in cases dealing with blacks, helping them get fair trials in a white world. The whole nine yards. But I’ve settled for divorce work and a little ambulance chasing. I’ve been in that shitty office of mine for three years, and half the time my clients don’t pay me, or if I get a percentage of something, it’s not a percentage of much, and I haven’t made one bit of real difference in the world, and I thought I’d make oodles.”

“Everyone starts somewhere, Florida. Hell, you’re young. You’ll build into a bigger career.”

“I’ve got to be willing to do that, though. You see, I found out most of the people I was dealing with, defending, white or black, were guilty. If they weren’t guilty of the crime they were up for, they were guilty of two others they got off from. Most of them were guilty as hell.”

“That could have just been your experience so far. There’re bound to be innocent people who need you.”

“Yes, but I was trying to get guilty people off. Trying to find loopholes. And I’m disillusioned with people. Not just the crooks I’ve dealt with, people in general. Not long ago there was a murder near here, over in Mud Creek. A husband lost it and shot his wife and two kids and even the dog.”

“I remember.”

“People talked about the crime for a month or so. A lawyer friend of mine was assigned to the case. She proved the murderer was insane. She told me people asked her about the case all the time, and you know what she said their most common question was about what happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“What kind of dog was it? Yeah. What kind of dog? Like the people didn’t matter. But if it was a cute dog, then we’re talking tragedy. How could someone think that way?”

“You’re running idealism up against reality, Florida. It happens to everyone eventually. But don’t think the two aren’t compatible. I’ve been through that myself.”

“Point is, I’ve lost a lot of my ambition this last year or so, and just that stupid thing about the dog had a lot to do with it. What I’m saying, Hap, is who am I to cast the first stone? And another thing. You’re right. I am nervous about being seen with you because you’re white-”

“You never denied that.”

“But that’s not an excuse. I’m going to change.”

“Hot damn, you’re gonna take me to a movie.”

“Yeah, but you have to wear gloves and a bag over your head.”

“It’s a start.”

“I don’t think of myself as prejudiced, but when I was a little girl we lived briefly up North. My mother had gone up there to stay with relatives. She left my father for a time, and she thought, up there, out of the South, she had a chance to do something without skin color mattering. That was in New Jersey. Well, there wasn’t much more in the way of jobs there, and the relatives we were staying with were living in a white section of town and had been for a couple of months, and one morning we woke up with snow on the ground and a cross burning in the yard. Burned into the yard with gasoline was the word nigger. We moved back here, and the relatives moved out of that neighborhood and into a black one, and the whole idea of sanctuary, that there was somewhere you could go where there wasn’t any prejudice, any racial hatred, was gone.

“It made an impression, Hap. I don’t blame all whites for the stupidity of those people who put up that cross and burned those words into my relatives’ lawn, but it left something here,” she touched her heart, “that has to do with me and white skin. I’m smart enough to know it’s a knee-jerk response at times, and I fight against it, but it’s there, and what really makes me mad is, late at night, sometimes I wake up bitter. Memories like that don’t go away easy.”

“So now you don’t trust whites, and you don’t care to be seen with them – romantically, anyway?”

“It makes me feel dirty. I even feel a little inferior a lot of the time. Like I should be grateful I’m doing what I’m doing, and that I’m doing good for a little colored girl from East Texas. I know better intellectually, but emotionally, I feel maybe I am a nigger. That I’m second-best. I fight against it all the time.”

“Do you feel dirty right now?”

“No. You don’t make me feel that way. In this setting. But we went out in public, the old feelings would come back. I’m not saying I’m not willing to fight them. I’m being honest. But they’ll come back. And maybe that’s OK, as long as I confront them. All right. I’ve showed you my dirty laundry. Told you stuff I’ve never told anybody. Now, tell me something about yourself. Help me learn who you are.”