Mucho Mojo (12 page)

“I hope it’s flattering,” Leonard said.

“You’re a homosexual and you flaunt it,” Fitzgerald said.

“I don’t wear Easter hats and high heels and study floral arrangements, that’s what you mean,” Leonard said, “but I don’t hide out in the kitchen under a chair either.”

“You take pride in it,” Fitzgerald said.

“You’re no one I have to answer to,” Leonard said.

“No,” Fitzgerald said. “You don’t have to answer to me. The Lord is who you answer to. I’ve nothing against you. I’m merely saying, your way is not the way of the Lord. Are you acquainted with your Bible, Mr. Pine?”

“Me and Hap here were just quoting Bible verses on the way over.”

“Are you familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah?”

“Yep,” Leonard said. “It’s a favorite Baptist queer allegory. I just get cold chills all over when I hear it. Which is pretty often. I especially like where Lot’s wife gets turned into a pillar of salt.”

“You know the story, then learn from it, sir. Lot met the angels of the Lord at the gates of Sodom and took them to his house for a feast, and the house was soon surrounded by homosexuals who wanted to know them.”

“‘Know them’ means ‘fuck them,’ right?” Leonard said.

Fitzgerald batted his eyes a couple of times but pretended not to hear and plowed ahead. “And the homosexuals gathered around Lot’s house and demanded that he bring the angels out and give them to the crowd, and the angels struck the crowd blind. Does that sound like tolerance for homosexuals, Mr. Pine?”

“All right,” Leonard said, “you didn’t get to the pillar-of-salt part, but you left out some good stuff. Like how Lot, wanting to protect these angels who needed no protection, offered his daughters to the crowd. Now there’s the exemplary father I’d like to have. ‘Hey, girls, we got these guests the queers want to screw, but, well, hell, they’re angels and they haven’t finished their chicken-fried steaks, so I’m gonna give them you instead. Shuck your panties and hit the porch.’”

“You have an unfortunate turn of phrase, Mr. Pine,” Fitzgerald said. “The problem you have is not dissimilar to that your uncle had. And for that matter, I’ve had. Yeah, even preachers can have a crisis of faith. But in time it came clear to me. What you’re doing is what I was doing. You’re looking for God to operate on human levels. Forget that. God lays down the law, and the law is there, and it’s not for us to question. It makes no difference if it seems just in our eyes or not. It is the law, and that is the long and the short of it.”

“Religion’s not the question here,” I said, “and we didn’t mean to get off on it.”

“It’s always the question,” Fitzgerald said. “Mr. Pine, be proud now, for when you leave this world of the flesh and meet your Maker and you are cast down into the fiery lava pits of hell, your pride will fail you. Rationale will fail you. The law is the law.”

“Now I know why you call this church primitive,” Leonard said.

I thought:
That’s warming him up, Leonard. That’s playing the game.
Only way we could have made a worse impression was if we’d come in with our pants off swinging our dicks.

“Sin is a primitive act,” Fitzgerald said. “Our beliefs here are as basic as I’ve stated. They’re not to be debated, because they are the law and the law is made by a Judge wiser and more powerful than we. In time, in the hereafter, we’ll understand His judgments. And if not, that is not ours to consider. It is our job to obey the law of God. It’s that simple. And if there was ever a time we needed the laws of God, it’s now. Look what this world is coming to. Forget the world. Look right here. We have a tremendous drug problem right here in LaBorde, Texas. Especially right here in the black sector. Kids sticking poison in their veins. Children prostituting themselves for money and dope. Did you know that many of the mothers here in our black community are unmarried? Their children are illegitimate?”

“I’ve heard that rumor, yes,” Leonard said.

“They don’t see that as sin, Mr. Pine. The world says that’s OK. Fornicating is acceptable. These girls, children really, as young as thirteen and fourteen, have produced baby boys conceived by lust and born of the bile of sin. And who is to take care of these children? The children who bore them? What sort of future will they have? The children of children.”

“What you need here is something practical,” Leonard said. “Not more religion. Lessons in birth control and disease prevention are the ticket.”

“That doesn’t stop the sin,” Fitzgerald said. “The act itself. Sex out of wedlock. Abstinence is what’s needed.”

“That’s all right too,” Leonard said. “But for those who don’t plan to abstain, they need rubbers.”

Fitzgerald took a deep breath, but when he spoke, he was as patient as ever. “That’s exactly the problem, Mr. Pine. Tolerance. Too much tolerance. There will be punishment for those who sin against God. That includes you. Homosexuals will not enter into the House of the Lord. Ask God to forgive you for the perverse things you’ve done with other men. Turn your life over to Him.”

“I ain’t gettin’ down on my knees for nobody,” Leonard said.

Fitzgerald turned his attention to me. “What about you, Mr. Collins?”

“Hey, I didn’t do anything,” I said.

“You have to believe to be saved,” Fitzgerald said.

“I’ll think it over,” I said. “Who knows? I might be back.”

Fitzgerald smiled politely. “Well, it doesn’t seem I can be of much aid to you gentlemen, in the areas of the spiritual, or with directions. I’ve told you all I know about Mr. Moon’s address. Somewhere off Calachase Road.” Fitzgerald put his hands on his desk as if to rise. “I’d really like to get back to my workout, now.”

*  *  *

Outside, where the church lawn met the lawn of the little blue house, a huge man stood in the yard. He was over six feet, wearing gray cotton work clothes and his skin was black as sin and everything about him was big and tight and round, as if he were made up of boulders carefully stacked. In fact, there may have been enough of him there for a mining claim.

He was moving the sprinkler and hose, and when he did, little boulders ran up his arms and crunched and ran back down again. His mouth was open and he was studying us. From a distance, he seemed to have very small teeth. He wasn’t concerned that the water from the sprinkler was spraying all over him. He watched us as we went, and may have watched us after our backs were turned.

Out in the parking lot, I said, “That went well, don’t you think? Seldom have I seen two people warm to each other so quickly.”

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Bet me and Fitzgerald ride together to the next Baptist convention.”

East Texas weather, being the way it is, by the time we got back from the church to the house, ready for lunch, it changed. Before we could get mustard plastered on our ham sandwiches, the hot, blinding sunlight was sacked by hard-blowing clouds out of the west. They swept down black and vicious and brought with them Zorro slashes of lightning and lug bolts of rain.

The rain fell cool and solid for two days, hammered the house, churned pea gravel out of the driveway, broke loose the packed red clay beneath, and ran it in bloody swirls beneath the porch and on either side of the house to collect in the sun-burned grass like gore in a crew cut.

The rain was so constant the birds quit hiding. You could hear them singing and chirping between flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder. Not a good sign. It meant the rain would continue, and most likely for some time. Outside, except when lightning zippered open the sky, it was black as the high stroke of midnight on a moonless night.

On the second day of the rain, late afternoon, I glanced up from reading
The Hereafter Gang
by lamplight and looked at Leonard’s hard profile framed before the living-room window. He had pulled a hard-backed chair there and assumed the position of
The Thinker,
elbow on knee, fist under chin. He was observing the rain, and I watched as a snake tongue of blue-white lightning licked the outside air above and beyond the bars and strobed his skin momentarily blue. Inside the house, the air became laced with sulfurous-smelling ozone, and I could feel my hide and hair crackle like hot cellophane.

Leonard looked at me. “You told Florida to stay home?”

“Sure, but she listens way you listen. Not at all.”

“Then she ought to be here pretty soon?”

“If she didn’t run off in a ditch.”

Earlier, bored out of my mind and tired of working on the flooring with Leonard, I’d braved the storm with a flimsy umbrella and gone over to MeMaw’s and used her phone and called Florida at her office.

Turned out Florida was doing almost as much business as a nun in a whorehouse. She wanted to come by and eat supper with us. I tried to talk her out of it, the weather being like it was, but she told me she was coming anyway and she’d bring a big Pepsi. I wondered if that was some kind of bribe.

I left MeMaw’s after being happily force-fed a slice of fresh cornbread slathered in butter, and waded back to the house through ankle-deep water that flooded down the street and tried to trip me.

Back inside and dried off, I looked at my watch and calculated when I had talked to Florida and told her not to come and she’d told me she was coming. I computed the normal rate of travel from her office to Uncle Chester’s, doubled it because of the rain.

“She doesn’t show in a few minutes, I’m going to look for her,” I said.

“Then I’ll have to go look for you,” Leonard said. “You drive for shit in bad weather.”

“You’re brooding, Leonard, my friend. What’s the problem?”

“I blew it with Fitzgerald.”

“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. It was more like a nuclear disaster.”

“Just can’t stand shits like that guy, hiding behind the Bible and a church, judging everyone’s got a view doesn’t fit tight with his.”

“All you had to do was hold your tongue for five minutes and we’d have known where Illium’s house is. I think he knew exactly where he lived, but he didn’t entirely trust us. After we got what we wanted, you didn’t like the Reverend, we could have soaped his windows or shit on the lawn. Actually, I thought the old boy was pretty polite. He’s at least trying to deal with his community’s problems, and I guess religion is a better way than nothing. Truth is, you were itching for a fight.”

“Have me shot, will you?”

“Not the first thing you’ve fucked up. I can think of all kinds of stuff.”

“Thanks, Hap.”

“Seriously, pal. Reverend’s not the only one knows where Illium lives. It’s not like he’s hiding. We’ll find him when the rain stops.”

About ten minutes later, I heard a car sluicing through the rain. I went to the front door and opened it. The rain was like a steel-beaded curtain hanging off and all around the porch. It slammed the ground with a sound like ball bearings. The wind was the coolest it had been since last fall.

I could see car lights in the drive, and they were all I could see. They went out, I heard a door slam, a black umbrella and a yellow, hooded rain slicker split the curtain of water, and Florida was on the porch, her beautiful face staring out of the slit in the slicker hood. She grinned and held the umbrella down and shook it and collapsed it and leaned it against the wall next to the door.

“Hi,” she said.

“You should have stayed home,” I said.

“Good to see you too.”

We went inside.

“Hello, Leonard,” Florida said.

“Florida,” Leonard said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t get out in this. We been worried.”

Florida slipped off her raincoat, and I hung it on a wood-frame chair by the door. She had on laced workboots, blue jeans, and a loose-fitting plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Under the coat she had been carrying a cloth bag. She sat it on the seat of the chair and spread the mouth of it and pulled out a three-liter Pepsi and a bag of those vanilla cookies Leonard likes.

“Hap told me you were nuts for these,” she said to Leonard.

Leonard got up and took a look. “He’s right. Thanks.” He hugged her.

“You know I’m sorry how things are,” she said.

“Yeah,” Leonard said. “Thanks.”

“First time I haven’t seen you in a dress, Florida,” I said.

“I was doing office cleaning,” Florida said. “I felt like grubbies. Make us some cocoa or something, Hap. I don’t think I’m ready for Pepsi.”

“It’s coffee or tea or slightly curdled milk warmed on the stove,” I said. “Take your pick.”

“That curdled milk sounds good,” Florida said, “but guess I’ll go for the tea.”

I made us a pot of tea, and we were sitting at the kitchen table drinking and eating cookies instead of having supper, when I heard another car come up in the drive.

“Would you get it?” Leonard said. “I’m kind of comfortable next to the cookies.”

“Yassuh, Massuh Leonard, I’s on it.”

I went to the door and opened it and a big shape in a black slicker mounted the porch. He looked a little like the Spirit of Christmas Future. He pushed back the hood of the slicker and smiled at me. It was Lieutenant Hanson.

“Come in,” I said.

Hanson slipped off the slicker, and I took it and led him inside. I hung the slicker over a chair and let the water from it puddle on the floor. I said, “Hey, gang, look who’s here.”

“Damn,” Leonard said, looking through the dividing space between kitchen and living room, “if it ain’t Sherlock Holmes, and come all the way in the rain just to visit. Can I hold your gun, sir?”

“No,” Hanson said, “but you can wear my badge a little while, you promise not to lose it.”

Hanson and I went into the kitchen, and Hanson smiled broadly and said, “Hi, Florida.”

“Hi, Marvin.” Florida had a pretty big smile herself.

“You two know each other?” I said.

“We’ve met a time or two,” Hanson said. “I’ve arrested a couple of her clients.” Hanson nodded toward the cup Florida was sipping from. “That coffee?”

“Tea,” Florida said. She smiled. Rather nicely, I thought.

I offered Hanson my chair and poured him a cup of tea and took my cup and went over and leaned against the kitchen counter and watched him watch Florida out of the corner of his eye. Watched Florida watch him for that matter. I didn’t blame him, she was beautiful. And I didn’t blame her, Hanson was powerful and charismatic and likable, if big and ugly and old enough to be her father.