Mucho Mojo (6 page)

But be that as it may, his uncle had formed him, had taken him like dough and shaped him and baked him and made him who he was, and no matter how I felt about Uncle Chester’s disowning Leonard, I had to admit, he had done a good job. Or a job that had held up till now—up until Uncle Chester came back into Leonard’s life, came back after he was dead like some kind of ghost. And not a happy one.

*  *  *

One Saturday afternoon, hot as the blazes, I was up on the roof with my shirt off, cooking up a skin cancer, considering breaking my ban on ice-cold beer, and Florida Grange showed up. She was driving a little gray Toyota, and when she got out of the car I saw she was outfitted in a simple sky-blue dress that showed lots of leg and happily threatened to show a little more.

She stood in the drive and put a hand over her eyes like an Indian scout and called up to me. “Leonard here?”

“He’s in town. Went to get some supplies.”

“Oh. Well, I came to visit my mama, thought I’d drop by and see how things are coming along. And I got another paper for Leonard to sign. I missed it at the office.”

“One minute.”

I got my shirt off a sawed oak limb and pulled it on. It was a cotton jean shirt with the sleeves bobbed short and it felt good and soft against my warm, sweaty skin. I sucked in my gut while I buttoned it, just in case Florida was watching. I climbed down by method of the oak.

I dropped out of the tree, wiped my hands on my pants, smiled, and went over to see her. I stuck out a hand and we shook. She had the same soft hand and the same rattling bracelets. Her hair was dark and wild, like a storm cloud. The wind picked up the smell of her perfume and gave it to me. I needed that like a punch in the teeth.

I caught my reflection in her car windshield. I looked like shit, but my teeth were clean. I’d brushed with my own toothbrush not long ago, and I’d even used mouthwash. Progress was being made.

“Would you like something to drink, Miss Grange?”

“Florida?”

“Yeah. That’s right. Florida.”

“Yes. I would like something to drink.”

“I’ll get it. It’d be best to sit out here on the porch. We don’t have air-conditioning.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“We’ve got Coke. Diet Coke. Ice tea. Beer. We’ve got some nonalcoholic beer too. Sharp’s. It’s pretty good.”

“I’ll have ice tea. No sugar.”

I went in the house and poured her tea and got myself a Sharp’s. I had discovered I actually preferred the nonalcoholic beer to the real thing. It was the taste I liked, not the results.

I carried the tea and Sharp’s onto the porch. Florida was seated in the glider Leonard and I had installed. I had fastened the bolts to the porch roof. I hoped I had done a good job. I’d have hated for Florida Grange to bust her shapely ass.

I gave her the tea and sat down on the other side of the glider and mentally groped for small talk. I almost said something about the weather but restrained myself. I tried not to look at her legs, which were bare and smooth looking. I wondered if they were as soft as her hand.

“You living here?” she asked.

“For now. I’m helping Leonard get the place in shape to sell.”

“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.

Here, it was a strange oasis of green in the midst of a disintegrating neighborhood that was a slice of human pie neither completely rural nor urban, a world unto itself.

I read from
The Hereafter Gang
until Leonard came out the back door and called to me, “Why don’t you go down and rent us a VCR and a movie. And don’t get none of those damn socially redeeming films or anything you got to read at the bottom what they’re saying. And let’s don’t see
It’s a Wonderful Life
anymore.”

“Three Stooges OK?”

I drove into town and rented a VCR and checked out a couple of movies.
Jaws,
which I’d never seen, and
Gunga Din,
which I saw when I was head high to a cocker spaniel’s nuts.

By the time I got back to the house I was hot and sweaty and nervous. I was wondering if I should put the move on Florida, or just watch the movies like a good little boy. Frankly, I didn’t know how to put the move on anybody anymore. I was too long out of practice. I began to wonder if she’d show up. Maybe she’d bring a date. That would be cozy. Perhaps I could loan him some condoms.

While Leonard hooked up the VCR, I made the salad. I can break lettuce and slice a tomato with the best of them. I didn’t even screw up when I put on the bacon bits and the croutons.

About fifteen minutes after I finished, there was a knock on the door and Leonard let Florida in. She was carrying a bottle of wine and a long loaf of French bread. She had a little black pocket book on a strap draped over her shoulder. She was wearing canary yellow this time. It was like all her other dresses, plain in design, but tight and short and flattering to what it covered. She didn’t have a date.

“Who’re the sweeties next door?” she asked, giving Leonard the bread and the wine.

“Just the local crack house,” Leonard said. “They’re a real fun-loving bunch.”

“They certainly are. They just gave me a verbal anatomical lesson.”

“Sorry,” I said.

She smiled. “That’s all right. I hear worse in court. From my own clients sometimes.”

We seated ourselves at the table and started on the salad. She ate some of it, but nothing was said about its excellence. Personally, I thought the croutons and bacon bits were very fresh. She bragged on the spaghetti, meatballs, and sauce. Leonard, a regular reader of
Bon Appetit,
bragged on her choice of wine. To me, all wine tastes pretty much the same. Bad. But I said I thought it was pretty good, too.

After dinner, we watched the movies.
Jaws
first. The TV was a little-screen affair Leonard had bought at a pawn shop, but the movie, cropped at the corners, scared the shit out of me anyway. I’ve never liked water, and I like sharks even less. Florida sat in the middle of the couch, and during the scary parts she didn’t leap into my lap for protection or grab my hand. I thought it would be most unbecoming of me to leap into hers, though I found myself pulling my feet up onto the couch, in case any floor sharks drifted by.

Between the movies we took a coffee break, and Florida took off her shoes, then we watched
Gunga Din.
I loved it again. About midnight the movies were over and we talked about them for a while, then Leonard went out on the porch to smoke his pipe.