Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

“But black-white thing or not, white people run this town, and they’re going to be a lot more rested they think a nigger did it, and did it to little niggers. That fits in with the general thinking and keeps it out of their backyard. They don’t see anything black as being part of their immediate problem, even the liberals.”

“Leonard, most likely, all things considered, a black man did do it. It sure points that way. A white guy would have to be pretty clever to cruise around over here and not get noticed.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t a black man. You’re missing the point. Way it stands now, all we got to show the cops is certain proof my uncle killed those kids and hid their bodies at the Hampstead place, and that this Illium fellow was in on it. Shit, he’s got kid’s clothes and pornography setting on his couch, just waiting for the cops to eyeball it. Cops see that, they aren’t going to look any farther, and Hanson isn’t going to get the chance to look either. They’ll have it all solved. Couple old dead niggers did it, or rather my uncle did it and Illium got in on the business late. Case closed. And I ain’t having it. Uncle Chester’s the one taught me about pride and honor. Taught me not to care about color, one way or the other. Not to hide behind it, not to use it to roll over nobody.

“I was growing up, you hear a crime newscast, read a newspaper, they were always quick to point out when the criminal was a black, but not when they were white. I got the impression it was blacks did everything. It was my uncle showed me things straight. That people were people and there were good and bad, and to just look at a thing head on, not try and dress it up any. And that’s just a reverse way of saying it turns out to be a black man, it’s a black man. That’s no skin off my ass. I just want whoever it is nailed. But I don’t want to give the cops the easy way out. Uncle Chester was a good man, Hap. He had honor. Me and him, we had our problems, but he wasn’t a child killer. There’s no reason you got to believe in him, but I believe in him, and I want to see he gets a fair shake.”

“Thing is, Leonard, whoever killed these kids and did Illium in is still out there. Guys like that, they don’t stop. You know that. While we’re investigating, he could be planning to kill another child. That’s who he’s after. Kids. Illium only got aced because he got in the way, and somehow let on he knew something.”

“I realize that.”

“That first grave we dug into. That’s fresh, Leonard. You know that. It doesn’t take any time at all for a body to decompose. That one still had the stink on it. He’ll kill again, and I don’t want that on my head.”

“And I don’t want my uncle’s reputation destroyed, and I don’t think the cops are going to find who’s doing this anyway. Like I said, they got their suspects. Uncle Chester and Illium. They’ll close the book on this case so quick it’ll make your head swim.”

“I don’t know what to say. I really don’t.”

“Don’t say anything for a while. Don’t tell anybody.”

“Leonard, I already told Florida about Illium.”

“Goddamn you, Hap!”

“She won’t say anything. For a while.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. We had a deal. That goddamn pussy always did mess your thinking.”

“Watch it, Leonard.”

We sat there looking at each other like bad asses for a moment. Leonard smiled slowly. “Hell, Hap, I love you, man. We gonna fight?”

“’Course not.”

“That would be some fight, you know?”

“I couldn’t take you,” I said.

“I don’t know. I think you might. You hesitate now and then, you think you’re gonna hurt someone bad. You ain’t got that killer instinct, but you got mad enough, you’d be some bad business all right.”

“I couldn’t get that mad at you, buddy.”

“Yeah, we’re stuck with one another… Shit, Hap. It’s OK you told Florida. Hell, I know you got a head on you. She’s all right. I mean, you’re a dumb asshole, but what’s done is done, and she’s all right.”

“It just slipped out. A thing like that, it’s hard to keep under your hat.”

“It’s all right, bubba. It’s just I don’t know what to do exactly.”

“Me either,” I said.

A few days went by. The recollection of those bodies burned my memories at night, found their way into my thoughts during the day. It was the same with Leonard. Not that he said much about it. But I could tell. I had known him long enough to see his feelings expressed in the way he moved or smiled or tried to laugh.

To flush the memories out we took to hard work. Manual labor has a way of sweating out impurities. Both physical and emotional.

We finished up the surface flooring late one afternoon and took what scraps of lumber were left over, and went to see MeMaw, dumped the stuff in her yard and made a pledge to patch her porch.

She was agreeable and very grateful. She told us how much Jesus loved us and took us inside and showed us our snapshot. She had pinned it on the wall near the snapshot of her youngest son, Hiram, who she said Leonard reminded her of. She said her boy would soon be home for a visit. When she said it, her entire face brightened and she looked no older than seventy-five. OK, eighty-five.

I looked at the snapshot of her son and the one containing me and Leonard. Well, Leonard and her son were both black, that much was similar.

We had to eat some homemade bread and preserves before we were allowed to consider leaving. It wasn’t a difficult task. We insisted she let us do a few chores for her as well, then we left out of the kitchen and shoved the lumber under her porch and vowed to be back to do the work in a day or two.

Back at Uncle Chester’s, just as the sun faded, Leonard put some water in a pot of yesterday’s pinto beans, dropped in a fresh strip of ham hock, and peppered it. While it stewed, I drove my pickup down Comanche Street to the East Side Grocery for a few supper items. It was a beautiful death to the day, and in the red and gray time before the dark, the East Side took on a sort of fairy brilliance. A lot of walkers had disappeared from the streets for supper, and those who had jobs were back from them and settled, so the streets were near empty and stained with the blood of the sun.

East Side Grocery was a center for more than commerce. It was where the old men gathered to rattle dominoes and cuss and tell about how they used to do this and used to do that. A bunch of them were sitting out front of the grocery, to the right of the door on the concrete walk, underneath an overhang with a tin-capped light that was already on and already swarmed with bugs. They were sitting on old metal lawn chairs playing dominoes on a fold-out table, laughing and drinking beer out of paper cups.

Behind them, stapled on the store wall, there were ads for great black blues musicians, like Bobby Blue Bland. Guys like that played the East Side often, and the white community never even knew it. There was also a colorful poster announcing East Side’s Summer Carnival, August 27th, the “Only All Black Sponsored Major Carnival In East Texas,” if one were to believe the poster. In addition, there were a variety of church and community project bulletins.

I nodded at the old men when I went in the store. They nodded and grinned amiably enough, but even though I had been here a lot of late, there was the usual suspicion on their faces, the unasked questions: Who’s the white guy? What’s he doin’ here? Why’s he keep hangin’ around?

The store owner had been at the domino table, and he reluctantly followed in after me and got behind the counter and waited. I picked up some bread and eggs and cornmeal mix, a six-pack of beer for Leonard, and looked for some nonalcoholic beer for me but didn’t find any. I got a six-pack of Diet Coke instead.