Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

I was thinking about this one warm but pleasant afternoon while me and Leonard were out on the lake fishing, not catching anything, of course, just drifting around in the boat, untangling moss from our lines and watching birds fly over.

At least most of the mosquitoes had called it a season. It was still warm enough that a few of them came out on scouting missions, looking for a place to land, a place to refuel, a place that generally seemed to be located somewhere on the back of my neck, but an occasional quick slap took care of that matter.

“Get your mind off of it,” Leonard said.

“What?”

“You just took the bait off your hook and cast the empty hook back in the water. I’d say you’re thinking about Florida or Hiram.”

I had been thinking about Florida earlier. And Hanson. They were going to get married. Florida had invited me to the wedding. By mail. She said she hoped I’d come. Word from Charlie, who still shopped at Kmart, was that Hanson was hoping I’d stay home. I kept thinking I ought to wish Florida and Hanson well and be happy for them. That was the right thing to do, but I kept hoping she’d miscalculate and get her period on her wedding night. It was the least fate could do for me.

“It’s Hiram,” I said. “The whole mess.”

I reeled the line in, gingerly. My ribs were a lot better, but I still found simple things painful. The doctor had wanted to put a body cast around me, but I’d had broken ribs before. After he helped me get them set, I’d insisted on an Ace bandage, wrapped tight. I figured another month from now I could put on a Chubby Checker record and do the twist. Leonard had recovered just fine; the sprain had gone away within a week.

“You know,” I said, “I kinda liked Hiram. He had a good side.”

“You kinda liked his bullshit. There’s no balance in having a good side when you got the other side he had. Hell, you don’t know he had a good side. He had a good front, man. That guy had more masks than a gaggle of trick-or-treaters. Look the way he went off and left his mother so he could kill that kid.”

“I guess. You think he’ll get life, or a needle full of shit?”

“I pray for the needle. I’d like to be there to push the plunger in the fucker, or maybe just forget the dope and jab him to death with the needle.”

“The thing that worries me about you, Leonard, is you have such a hard time getting in touch with your true feelings.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna get me an analyst can help me out on that. Tell me why I’m queer, too. They like stuff like that. He’ll want to know if I dream about my daddy’s dick. Hell, maybe I’m lucky, shrink’ll be some blond stud that’s queer himself.”

“Hope springs eternal.”

“Listen, man, you worry too much about the psychology of things. That stuff’s just head voodoo. It don’t mean a thing. You took all the psychiatric and psychology degrees in the world, balanced that paper against the truth, there wouldn’t be enough there to wipe a baby’s ass on.”

“Maybe. But it figures with Fitzgerald, if the stuff Hiram says was true, and I think it was, but Hiram, I don’t know.”

“You want everything to come up neat, Hap. That’s bullshit. What Hiram said about Fitzgerald is probably true, what he said about himself is probably bullshit. What you’re doing, is still blaming yourself for not figuring Hiram sooner.”

“I should have seen it. Shit, everything was there. Boxes of flags in Hiram’s van, and each of the bodies had been wrapped in cloth, and he had quoted that piece out of Psalms. Add to that the fact he was here every year at the time of the murders, knew the Reverend and had a history with him. Toss in the religious connection, the way he’d acted that night I handed him Ivan, all drugged and dying, the way he looked at the kid like I’d given him a gift from God. The thought of that, knowing what I know now, gives me chills.”

“Monday morning quarterbacking. I’ve heard it all, Hap, and frankly, I’m tired of it. Look, amigo, I don’t blame myself. You shouldn’t blame yourself. Hiram was cool, and Fitzgerald, hell, he was ripe for the part and was guilty too. We had our eyes on him and couldn’t see the whole of it. That flag shit, hell, who would have thought of that? Only way it would come together is the way it did. You found the flag and the kid. But the thing is, another kid didn’t go down. We got ’em all. I’m gonna feel sorry for anyone, it’s T.J., rotting away in some state institution. Not that I’d want the fucker on the street, but in his case, I got a tear or two for him.”

“I don’t see any.”

“I cry on the inside. And I hope every day the poor bastard will die in his sleep. He ain’t nothing for this world. Shit, Fitzgerald told T.J. his own dick was a snake, he’d have believed it. Cut it off and tied it in a knot had Fitzgerald wanted him to.”

“No doubt about that.”

“Actually, thing that cheers me at night is thinking of that motherfucker falling down that well. I wish I could have been close enough to hear his bones break.”

“Your humanity overwhelms me, Leonard.”

“Now forget Hiram, the whole mess. Set your hook. Personally, I put my next bait on the hook, I’m gonna pretend I’m putting the needle in Hiram’s eye… Come on man, let’s catch at least a couple perch. I’d like fish for dinner.”

“You know what it is, Leonard?”

“No, but I’m gonna find out.”

“It’s the fact they were the same, and yet, they were different.”

“Hiram and Fitzgerald?”

“Yeah. I mean, Hiram says they were the same, but what do you think?”

“Same thing I thought yesterday. They’re both better off dead, and when Hiram goes and makes it a duo, I’ll buy a party hat and a noisemaker. But since you just got to talk about it, let me give you my last word, brother. Fitzgerald, if Hiram can be believed – and like you, I believe this part – got jacked around early on, right? What did you call him?”

“Psychotic.”

“Right. And Hiram, he was a psychopath. No matter what story he tells about how he and Fitzgerald were turned into what they were. I don’t buy it. Least not in Hiram’s case.”

I remembered the story Hiram told, or at least I remembered it as best Hanson would tell it to me later. Hiram told the law and the psychiatrists he couldn’t help himself; he’d been made that way. Said when he was a boy he spent time with Fitz, and Fitz’s father raped not only his son, but him as well. This, he said, was why the old man killed his wife. Not that he thought she might be sleeping around. That was just the bullshit he told me to distance himself from Fitzgerald. The old man’s wife caught the elder Fitzgerald in the act with him and Fitz. Hiram said they watched the old man murder her and wrap her in a flag from the church. Then he made them help load the body in his car, go to the Hampstead house with him, watch him dispose of her by candlelight, all the while telling them it was the will of God. Words confirmed by the image on the wall, the water-spot face of Christ.

Hiram said the old man told him he ever said a word, he’d do the same to MeMaw, so Hiram had been quiet all those years. But the memory wouldn’t go away, and he’d wake up at night and see the blood and think of it oozing through that flag. He’d envision the water spot on the wall and smell the fresh dirt beneath the house, and he’d feel angry. He developed an urge to light fires and make little animals suffer. He did both on the sly.

When he was a grown man, animals weren’t enough. And he and Fitzgerald, scarred by the same crime at the same time, found a linking between them. The murders began. They felt they were doing the will of God, getting rid of those sad cases, those admonitions. Or so said Hiram.