Joe Lansdale - Mucho Mojo

“I see.”

We sat in silence and sipped our drinks. An old black Chevy chugged along the street and an elderly black face looked out of it at us, looked away, and looked back. The driver was trying to determine if any miscegenation was going on.

It wasn’t, though I was hopeful, in a fantasy sort of way. Actually, seemed to me, from here on out, I’d have to be content to look at Florida Grange’s legs and sneak a look at her panties when she got in or out of her car, way I used to do with girls when I was in high school.

Thought of that made me feel sort of ill. Guys, they’re some piece of work. Next thing I knew I’d be putting quarters in filling station restroom rubber machines, trying to get those special gift items you bought when you really didn’t need a rubber. The Instant Pussy, a French Tickler that looked like a plastic squid, and the little book of sex jokes.

Here was an intelligent professional woman, and all I could think about was how much I’d like to dork her. I had to think about something else. Thing to do was to talk to her the way you’d talk to any interesting professional in the law business, male or female.

“You get many whiplash cases?”

“What?”

“You know-”

“Oh. Now and then. I mean, a couple. I mainly do wills, stuff like that.”

That was good, Hap. Real good. Why don’t you just call her an ambulance chaser?

“Nice day, huh?”

“Yeah. Well…”

“I mean, it’s hot, but it’s OK. It’s not as humid as usual. I mean, it’s usually more humid.”

Florida Grange looked at her watch. “When do you think Leonard will be back?”

“Soon. Hell, Florida. I’m acting like a fool. I get around a beautiful woman lately, I act like a jackass. I don’t mean to.”

“That’s all right.”

“No. No, it isn’t. If you prefer, I’ll just be real quiet and sit here… You interested in Leonard?”

She smiled at me. “Leonard’s gay.”

“You knew that? I was hoping to break the news to you, and you’d be so disappointed, I’d have to do in a pinch. I’m not gay, by the way.”

“Gee. I’d never have guessed. Most everyone around here knows Leonard’s gay. He spent time here in the summers. My mother knew his uncle and knew Leonard all the while he was growing up. She told me about him.”

“Ah.”

“Listen, Mr. Collins… Hap. I owe you an apology.”

“You owe me one? Way I’ve been ogling you? You got to forgive me, Florida. I been out in the country too long. No female companionship. I’m almost completely fueled by adolescent hormones.”

“The other day, when you asked me out, I told you no-”

“Hey, no problem, that’s your right-”

“Will you shut up a minute?”

“Sure.”

“I got a confession. I didn’t go out with you because you’re white. That’s it.”

“You don’t like white guys?”

“It’s not that. It’s that I’m as much a product of racism as anyone else. I don’t really think about it much, don’t think I’m doing it. But, you see, I feel all that stuff about the white man’s world. How, as a black woman, I have to battle uphill for everything I get. How it always seems when I get to a point where I’m ready to advance, there’s some kind of white hurdle.”

“I guess there is.”

“Sometimes there is. Sometimes there isn’t, but I’ve got a chip on my shoulder just the same, so when a white man asks me out, I get to thinking he’s thinking, ‘This black bitch will be glad to go out with me. I’m white. And because I’m white, I can get me some of her nigger ass,’ then Massuh can go on about his business and hook up with someone white, someone respectable.”

“Well, to be honest, I was thinking about the ‘get me some ass’ part.”

“I know. I can tell. You sort of ooze musk. But it’s the other part. The racist part. I didn’t really think you were thinking that. Not then, not now. But conditioning dies hard. I’ve thought about it a lot since then, and I’ve regretted it, me thinking that, and you see, I knew you were here, ’cause my mother said she’s seen you here, and she knew you from the funeral, and well, I wanted you to know, I’m sorry I was racist. Damn, I’m sort of running things together.”

“That’s all right. I get your drift. It’s very honest of you. It makes me feel like shit, but it’s honest.”

“Yes, it is. And I still don’t want to go out with you.”

“I see.”

“Know why?”

“I’m ugly?”

“No. Actually I find you attractive, in a gnarly, old-fashioned male sort of way.”

Gnarly?

“But the problem is I like to dance and white boys have no rhythm. And you know what else they say about you white boys?”

I watched a beautiful smile spread across her face.

“What do they say?” I asked.

“You’ve got itty-bitty dicks.”

When Leonard came back, Florida gave him the paper and he signed it and she took it back. We talked her into returning that night for supper. Leonard promised to cook spaghetti and sauce, and I promised to make a salad. Leonard eyed me when I said that, and I said, “Really.”

I tried not to watch too pointedly as Florida climbed into her car. When she was driving off, Leonard said, “Man, you need to jack off or something. You’re starting to look at that woman like she’s a chocolate eclair.”

“Yeah, and I’m embarrassed by it too. I can’t help myself. I been alone too long. I made progress, though. While you were gone we had a polite and intelligent conversation about the size of white guys’ dicks.”

“Those little things?”

I climbed back on the roof and Leonard came up with me and looked over what I had done, and was pleased to see he wouldn’t have to redo it.

“You know, you gonna get where you can flush a toilet without instructions,” Leonard said.

“Yassuh,” I said. “I’s catchin’ on. Ya wants me to sang one them spirituals now, Massuh Leonard?”

“I want you to shut up.”

We knocked off at five to clean up. Leonard had paid for a tank of butane, so now there was hot water. When I finished showering with the hot water, I turned the faucet to pure cold and rinsed in that. By the time I got out of the shower and dried and was stepping into clean underwear, I was already sweating and the old boards and wallpaper in the bathroom, damp from moisture and heat, had taken on the aroma of the ass end of a camel.

I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt and slid my sockless feet into my deck shoes and went into the kitchen. It smelled good in there, which was a nice change. Leonard was hustling about, chopping mushrooms and stirring meat and garlic in a frying pan. There was a big pot of water on to boil.

“Can I help?”

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Stay the fuck out of the way.”

“I could do the salad.”

“You could, but it’s too early. Made it now, time we ate, the lettuce would be wilted and the tomatoes would taste like wet golf balls.”

“Maybe I’ll just read.”

I got one of the books I’d brought along, Neal Barrett, Jr.’s, The Hereafter Gang, went out on the back porch and sat in a creaky old rocking chair. The left side of the porch was blocked with plywood, most likely so Uncle Chester wouldn’t have to look at the drug dealers next door. The rest of the porch was screened in. The screen door had the bottom part of its screen knocked loose, and it curled up as if suffering from heat stroke.

Out behind the house there was a pile of burned garbage, some of it black, twisted plastic, some of it blackened cans and dark wisps of paper.

On out a ways was a butane tank, and beyond that, a trickle of woods and brambles that gradually became more than a trickle. It turned into full-fledged woods. I wondered how far it went. Had it been in a white section of town, where property values were up, it would have long been cut down and concrete would have been spread over it.