Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

In the car, while Leonard drove, I looked through the contents of the envelope.

“Anything there mean anything?” Leonard asked.

“Got a bunch of pizza coupons. Some for Burger King. And you get real hungry, we can buy one dinner, get one free at Lupe’s Mexican Restaurant.”

“That’s it? Coupons?”

“Yep.”

“Christ, he must have been losing it.”

“I don’t know. Coupons save lots of money. I use them. I figured up once I’d saved enough on what I’d normally have spent on stuff to buy a used television set.”

“Color?”

“Black and white. But I bought some Diet Pepsi and pork skins instead.”

“Coupons seem a strange thing for Uncle Chester to give to a lawyer to hold for me. He could have left that stuff on the kitchen table.”

“Maybe he wasn’t thinking correctly. Coupons could have taken on valuable import. And the key was with them.”

“Goes to a bank safety-deposit box, I figure.”

“You said that, Sherlock.”

“We’ll check it out right now.”

“Leonard?”

“Yeah.”

“These coupons, I just noticed, they’re a couple years expired.”

Inside the LaBorde Main-and-North First National Bank, I took a chair and Leonard spoke to a clerk. The clerk sent him to a gray-haired lady at a desk. Leonard leaned on his cane and showed her the key and some of the papers Florida Grange had given him. The lady nodded, gave him back the key, got up, and walked him to a barred doorway. A guard inside the bars was signaled. He opened the door and Leonard went inside and the guard locked it behind him. A few moments later, Leonard was let out carrying a large manila envelope and a larger parcel wrapped in brown paper and twine.

“You’ll love this,” he said, and held up the envelope. “Inside’s a paperback copy of Dracula and a fistful of newspaper clippings, and guess what? Another key. There’s not a clue what it goes to. Uncle Chester’s brain must have got so he didn’t know his nuts from a couple acorns.”

“What about that?” I said, indicating the larger parcel.

“I opened it already.”

“I can tell that by the way the twine is rewrapped. What is it?”

Leonard was hesitant. “Well…” He took it over to one of the tables and untied the twine and unwrapped the package. It was a painting. A good painting. It was shadowy and showed a weathered two-story gothic-style house surrounded by trees; fact was, the trees grew so thick they seemed to imprison the house.

“Your uncle do this?”

“I did. When I was sixteen.”

“No joke?”

“No joke. I used to want to paint. I did this for Uncle Chester’s birthday. Maybe he’s giving it back to me now, letting me know things aren’t really forgiven.”

“He’s certainly giving you other things. Money. The house.”

“Coupons and a copy of Dracula.”

“That’s right. Is that all there was? Nothing else?”

“Nothing, besides the fact you’re right. There’s the house and I’m gonna get one hundred thousand dollars and you aren’t.”

So, I thought Leonard was gonna be richer, and that would be all right, and we’d go back to normal, except for him not working in the rose fields, and me, I’d be heading on back to the house and back to the fields, provided I could get my old job again, or another just like it, and Leonard, he’d be putting his uncle’s place up for sale and living off that and his inheritance, maybe put the dough into some kind of business.

I was sad for Leonard in one way, losing a loved one, but in another, that Uncle Chester was a sonofabitch far as I was concerned, way he treated Leonard, and I was glad Leonard had gotten some money and a house to sell, and a secret part of me was glad the old sonofabitch was dead and buried and out of sight.

So, that afternoon after seeing the pretty lawyer who wouldn’t go out with me, Leonard drove me home and dropped me off and went away. I figured he was at his place, his feet propped up, listening to Dwight Yoakam or Hank Williams or Patsy Cline, smoking his pipe full of cherrytinted tobacco, perhaps reading his uncle’s copy of Dracula or contemplating his loss and gain, wondering what he’d end up doing with his money.

In the long run, except for the fact he was gonna wither and die like everybody else ever born, I figured things for him were going to be fine as things can get fine.

But I hadn’t counted on the black cloud of fate.

The black cloud of fate came with rain, of course.

Two days later, early afternoon, I was sitting on my front porch taking in the cool wind and the view. One moment there was just the same red, empty road that runs by Leonard’s place, and beyond it, great pines and oaks and twists of vines, and above it all, clouds as white and smooth as God’s own whiskers, and the next moment, the wind abruptly changed direction, blew harder from the north, turned damp and sticky, and the clouds began to roll and churn and go gray at the edges. Out of the north rolled darker clouds yet, and they filled the sky and gave up their rain and the pines became purple with shadow and the road turned from red to blood-clot brown, then darker. The rain slammed down hard, and the wind thrashed it onto the porch in steel-colored needles that stung my face and filled my nostrils with the aroma of wet earth.

I got out of my old wooden rocking chair and went into the house, feeling blue and broke and missing Leonard.

I hadn’t heard from him since he’d dropped me off, and I’d called his place a couple times and only got rings. I wondered if he’d finally gotten his money. I wondered if he were spending it. It wasn’t like me and him to go more than a couple of days without touching base with one another, just in case we needed to argue about something.

I thought I’d call him again, maybe drive over there after the rain, see if his phone might not be working, but about then the phone rang and I answered it.

It was my former boss, Lacy, the Old Bastard. He sounded friendly. A warning flag went up. I figured whoever had taken my place in the fields had gotten a better job bouncing drunks or shoveling shit, or maybe died of stroke or snakebite, or taken up preaching, which was a pretty good career, you had the guts not to be ashamed of it.

“How’s it hanging, Hap?”

“To the left.”

“Hey, that’s my good side. Nut over there’s bigger. You ready to come back to work?”

“Don’t tell me you’re calling from the field?”

He forced a laugh. “Nah, we had a down day.”

That meant either no one showed up, or certain supplies couldn’t be coordinated, or they’d expected the rain.

“That little thing the other day,” he said. “Let’s let it go. I won’t even dock you. Tomorrow we got to have a good day, losing this one. So, hell, Hap. I can use you.”

“Man or woman’s got hands and isn’t in a wheelchair, you can use them.”

“Hey, I’m offering you a job. I didn’t call up for insults.”

“Maybe we can jump that shit pay a little. Another fifty cents an hour you’d almost be in line with minimum wage.”

“Don’t start, Hap. You know the pay. I pay cash, too. You save on income tax that way.”

“You save on income tax, Lacy. Wages like that, I don’t save dick. I’d rather make enough so I had to pay some taxes.”

“Yeah, well…” And he went on to tell me about his old mother in a Kansas nursing home. How he had to send her money every month. I figured he probably shot his mother years ago, buried her under a rosebush to save on fertilizer.

“Couldn’t your old mother whore a little?” I said. “You know, she’s set up. Got a room and a bed and all. If she can spread her legs, she can pay her way.”