Hap and Leonard: Blood and Lemonade Read online

  They washed the masks in the water so they would stick to our faces better and gave them to us. We put them on and went over and stood by the side of the boat like they said. We took off our clothes, like they said, stripped down to our shorts. We stood near naked in the chill night air and the harsh light that August was pointing at us.

  “Here’s what you do,” Tom said. “You swim down there, and you go in the cabin, where the bodies are, and you look to the right, and there’s a built-in wall chest there. They had the dope there, and we left it there while we did what we did with them, and then the goddamn boat sunk. You get it out of that and bring it up. Probably take both of you. Swim it up and give it to us and we’ll let you go. You don’t even have to get back in the boat. We’ll let you swim off.”

  “And take this with you,” August said.

  He went inside the cabin and came out with a big handheld underwater light. “Use this, you can see better.”

  He handed me the light.

  “And if it’s too muddy to see even with the light?” Leonard said.

  “You better hope you can feel your way, because you come up without that dope, we’re going to shoot a hole in you.”

  “They might have to go down a couple times, find it, come back for a breath and get it,” Jaret said. “We could tie a rope off here, let them take it down and tie it to the boat. That would give them a line to follow when they come up, make things quicker and easier.”

  “Guess that’s right,” August said, and rubbed under his nose. “So, okay. You get to come up once, maybe twice, but third time better be the fucking charm, or just stay down there and drown.”

  August looped one end of the rope through the boat’s railing and gave the length of rope to Leonard.

  I glanced at Leonard. He gave me a smile thin as the edge of a switchblade.

  We took deep breaths and went over the side.

  It was like being inside a cloud, the mud was so thick, but we kept swimming down, close together because I had the light. Finally we swam under the mud and it was a lot clearer. Not like it had been before when we first found them, but you could make out things pretty good.

  Something heavy bumped into me, and I twisted away from it, and even in the grimy underwater light, I could see it was the child. He had come free of the open cabin door and was floating about in the river. It was eerie seeing him swirling around there, and the water kept shoving him at me, and when he touched me it felt like rubber. I pushed the little body away from me and that’s when Leonard grabbed my shoulder.

  I turned and looked at him. He was right in front of my face. He raised his hand and pointed down. I got it together and shined the light down and swam after the beam. Below we saw the boat, the cabin rising up, and the grasses and vines on the bottom of the river were swirling around. It wasn’t like when we were down there in daytime. It was like an underwater haunted house.

  The river was running fast and it was hard to swim in it, but it was easier the lower we got, another couple of feet down and it was totally different, calm almost. I was glad we got to the boat, but I was starting to lose my breath and knew I had to pop up pretty soon.

  Leonard looked as if he was doing okay. He tied his end of the rope off on the boat’s railing, and then he was swimming inside the cabin, and I swam after him. The man and woman were twisting about in the murky light, bumping against one another and against the walls and the glass of the cabin, like they were doing some kind of macabre dance.

  It was all I could do to not focus on them.

  We found the built-in chest, and Leonard tugged at it, but it was staying in place. I went over and hung the light on a wall hook for jackets. The light shone down on the chest. I helped Leonard tug at it. We fought at it, trying to open it for a while, and then I patted him on the shoulder and pointed up.

  Leonard nodded.

  I took the light off the hook, went out of the cabin, and started following the rope up. When we broke the surface, all three of them were leaning over looking at us. I let the line shine in their eyes a moment until one of them cursed, and then I pulled it away from them and held onto it. I pushed my mask up.

  “Well, where the fuck is it?” August said.

  “Still down there,” I said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because we ran out of breath, and opening the chest underwater isn’t that easy.”

  “That sounds like a personal problem,” Tom said.

  “Be that as it may, it’s fastened tight,” I said.

  “We need a hatchet, or a knife, or something to pry up the chest, or break it open,” Leonard said.

  “Why would I give you assholes a hatchet?” August said.

  “I just told you,” Leonard said.

  “Hell, give it to them,” Jaret said. “Tom’s got the rifle.”

  August stood there looking at us hanging on the rope, then went away and came back with a machete that had a little leather loop for hanging on the wrist or on a belt. It was in a green, canvas scabbard, and he pulled it out of the scabbard and handed it to Leonard.

  “Take this, and goddamn it, don’t cut the cooler open. Don’t break it apart or the water will ruin it.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “It gets ruined, you get shot,” August said.

  “We might need to come up once more for air,” Leonard said. “It takes it out of you. The current is strong and it wears you out to tug on that goddamn chest lid.”

  “You come up a third time and you don’t have that chest,” August said, “I shoot you, and we wait until morning and clear water and get it ourselves.”

  Tom pointed the rifle at us. “I’m thinking one of you, with a little work, could pull that chest up. I don’t like there’s two of you out there.”

  “It takes two,” Leonard said. “Listen fellows, all we want to do is swim down and get it and bring it up so you can let us go.”

  Tom pulled a face, said, “Alright. Get on with it.”

  Down we went again, this time following the rope Leonard had fastened, me with the light and Leonard with the machete. It was a lot quicker using the rope as a guide, pulling ourselves down it instead of swimming all the way.

  We got to the boat and with a lot of work we worked the wall chest open, and there was the ice chest inside, wrapped up in duct tape. First thing Leonard did was he took the machete and cut the tape loose with a few slices, and then he got the lid open by prying it with the machete, and then he stabbed into the wrapped bags inside. The dope came out in a white cloud, and I figured fish would be dying, or a week from now begging another hit. Water moccasins would be swimming in formation, conducting a water ballet. I pushed back from the stuff. It all went up to the top of the cabin and floated there, then slowly the cloud spread and it eased out of the open doorway as if it were a living thing.

  Leonard let the machete dangle off his wrist by the thong, and then we swam out of the cabin, Leonard taking the lead. We kept swimming close to the bottom, kept at it until I thought my lungs would burst and I was starting to feel dizzy. Leonard got up close to me and took the light from me and pointed it and we swam where he pointed the beam. Finally we started rising up because we needed air. As we rose through a cloud of silt, Leonard cut the light and let go of it. I felt it bump my leg as it went down.

  Sudden loss of the light turned the river black as compost, but we kept rising up, and then there was a pattern in the water made by moonlight and tree shadow. It was like a camouflage netting had been tossed over the surface of the river. We broke the water lightly, just our heads above it, pushed our masks up, and looked back. We could see the boat sitting in its spot, the three dumb asses leaning over the side, looking down. The boat lights gave us a view of the heroin rising to the surface in a white foam all around the boat, and then the foam subsided and the river began to darken again.

  I heard August scream, “Goddamn it.”

  I was hoping they thought we had drowned, dropped the ice chest and
it had busted open. Leonard touched my shoulder, nodded toward the riverbank.

  We swam as silently as we could and came to a series of old stumps in the water. The land and its dead tree stumps had been claimed by the river over time, but it was shallow there, and as we made our way to shore it was hard to be silent. I expected them to hear us splashing about and bullets would crash into us before we made the riverbank.

  The clouds were gone now and the moon was bright. Tendrils of light twisted in through the trees like silver gauze. With our skin still wet it was cool out of the water, and though it was not a winter night, there was a breeze, and it was steady. We worked our way deeper into the tree line.

  My feet hurt from all the pokes it got from forest debris, and I figured what might be an end to a perfect night was to be snake bit or scorpion stung, if not shot in the back of the head, but we managed to finally get deep into the trees. The wind was less cool there. We tossed the face masks and started moving more quickly. Once we surprised a possum. It hissed and made me jump three feet back, but it rustled into the greenery and out of sight, looking there in the mottled moonlight like a giant rat.

  We stopped to whisper to one another for a while, figuring what to do next, decided we would find a spot in the trees where we could see the river and their boat. When we made that spot, we saw Tom hand his rifle to August, and then he started taking his clothes off. He stripped completely naked and eased over the side where the rope was, and then we couldn’t see him anymore.

  Squatting there in the woods, looking through gaps in low-hanging limbs and splits in thick-leafed brush, a lot of time passed. We trembled in the cool breeze. It was obvious August and Jaret were starting to get worried. They paced the deck. Finally, Jaret stripped down and went over the side.

  I don’t know how much time passed, couple of minutes maybe, before Jaret came up. His head rose over the edge of the boat as he pulled himself inside, then he and August started pulling on the rope. After some time they bent down over the side and hoisted Tom’s body into the boat. It flopped on the deck like a big, white fish.

  I got it then. Tom had gone down to see if there was some dope to be saved. He followed the rope, but we had the big light, and he got confused, trapped in the cabin and couldn’t get out. Something like that. Jaret had groped around down there and found him and found the rope again, unfastened it and tied Tom’s body to it, and came up by the rope. Then he and August had pulled Tom up.

  There came a sob so loud and sad from August, that even under the circumstances I felt his pain. Jaret kept saying over and over, “Those goddamn bastards. Goddamn it. We should have shot them soon as we seen them.”

  Leonard said, “Ha, the fucker drowned.”

  I was learning Leonard was short on sympathy for assholes.

  They were there for a while, crying and bawling like children, and all that did was make Leonard snicker. I on the other hand felt damn bad about it, but wasn’t sure why. They would have killed us as easily as looking at us if we had brought that dope chest up. Maybe even tortured us like they did the family, just because they could. All in all, we had turned out alright, not dead, not in the depths of the river with bottles stuck up our asses.

  I don’t know how long we shivered there, but eventually August went inside the cabin with Jaret. The boat motor fired up, lights came on, and the boat made a loop in the river and started back the way it came.

  We eased down to our camp site then, got spare clothes out of our packs and got dressed. Neither of us had spare shoes. The only way back to Marvel Creek was by river, and that meant we had to go the way they had gone.

  I don’t know how long we waited, but it was a long time. We didn’t want to wait until daylight, because if we came upon them they would be sure to see us, but we were hoping to give them enough time to get off the river and pass wherever they were in the night. From the way they talked, they lived right along the bank.

  Leonard had me hold the flashlight while he took the little tool kit he had, and slipped the motor cover off. He messed with it awhile, but couldn’t do anything with it. If we went back to Marvel Creek we’d be paddling up river for hours, and I wasn’t sure we could do it, fight the current all night. And still there was that whole thing about maybe being seen passing wherever they lived. Hell, they might even be looking for us.

  We put our supplies back in the boat, slid the boat down to the river. The river carried us along with its flow, away from the way we had come, and we let it, using our paddles to speed up the process. It was a safer way to go, but it was going to be a while before we came to any place that was worth stopping.

  Day eased away the night, and the water lit up with sunrise and was rust-colored, then within minutes, it turned dark brown. The air was cool with wind for a while, but it wasn’t long before it turned still and hot. We paddled onward.

  There were fishing camps along the way, but we didn’t stop to talk to anyone there, as we couldn’t be certain who those three knew along the river. At some point someone took a shot at us, and we paddled really hard. No more shots came.

  Eventually we came to a clearing off to our left, and we paddled for that, pulled the boat on shore, then sat back down in it to rest. We hadn’t been there long when we heard an engine groaning, and all of a sudden a black pickup barreled up beside us. It was going so fast I thought it would go into the river, but it didn’t. The truck braked and the doors slammed and two young men got out. I thought, okay, now what the fuck?

  They came down and saw us sitting there in the boat.

  “You have to put it in the water, you want to go anywhere,” said one of the boys. He was blond and stocky and had a little bit of blond fuzz on his chin that looked so thin you got the impression he could have wiped it off with a rag. The other was a darker-haired boy with a five o’clock shadow at the break of day.

  “We’ve just stopped for a while,” I said.

  The blond boy nodded. “Fishing?”

  “Have been,” Leonard said. “Didn’t catch a thing.”

  “You ain’t got no shoes?” said the dark-haired boy.

  “We just ain’t wearing any,” Leonard said.

  The dark-haired boy nodded. “I got some nigger friends” he said.

  “That’s nice,” Leonard said. “I got some cracker buddies.” He pointed at me. “There’s one now.”

  This made them laugh out loud. I was glad for that. I wasn’t sure they were the humorous type, but turned out they were. I had yet to determine which direction that humor could go.

  The blond said, “Shit, man, I took a shot at you guys earlier.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That was you?”

  I thought it was about to all go south, end up with us being shot and butt-fucked while dead.

  “Yeah,” said the blond. “I thought you was my brother.”

  “Ah,” I said. I didn’t examine that comment any further. I merely said, “Is there a town nearby. Our boat motor played out, and we thought we might get it fixed.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” the blond said.

  “It don’t work,” Leonard said.

  The blond laughed. “You’re a hoot. I always say, you want to laugh, hang with niggers.”

  “That’s why we black folks are here, to make you laugh,” Leonard said.

  The blond boy studied Leonard for a moment. “I like you.”

  “I’m glad,” Leonard said.

  “Let’s look at that motor,” the blond said. “Leroy, look at the fucker.” Then to us, “Leroy could fix the dead Jesus.”

  Leroy went back to the pickup, leaned into the bed and pulled out a tool box. We got out of the boat and he got in. He popped the sheath off the motor and pottered around a bit, poking it with a screw driver, and after a while he popped it with a hammer a bit, then took a wrench to it. Within fifteen minutes he had pulled the rope out of where it had disappeared, and he managed to get enough of it to go back through the gap in the sheath after he put that back on. He tied
the end of the rope over the handle of the hammer, and let that clamp up against the gap. Then he used the bit of rope with the pull handle lying in the boat to fasten it back together with the rope he had saved, freeing his hammer and making a big knot so it wouldn’t slip back through the gap.

  “You ain’t got as much pull room,” said the dark-haired boy, “but it ought to go now.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I haven’t got any money to give you, but if you want my fishing tackle, you can have that.”

  “Naw,” said the blond boy. “You’ll need that. We don’t fish much anyway. We come down here to shoot turtles mostly. We can help you push the boat in the water, you’re ready to go.”

  “We are,” I said.

  They helped us get the boat back in the water, and as we were climbing in, the dark-haired boy said, “You fellows want a beer? We got some cold ones.”

  “I’m going to pass,” I said.

  “Sure,” Leonard said. “I’ll have a beer, and I wouldn’t fight you off if you offered me a pretzel.”

  The blond laughed. “You niggers are funny.”

  “What we black folk tell ourselves all the time,” Leonard said.

  “Y’all really do that?” said the blond boy.

  “Naw,” Leonard said. “I’m just fucking with you.”

  That made both boys laugh. The dark-haired one brought Leonard a beer from the truck, handed it to him without him having to get out of the boat. I used my paddle to push off.

  “Thanks again,” I said.

  “Sure,” said the blond.

  “Don’t shoot at us no more,” I said.

  “Naw. I thought I was fucking with my brother.”

  Leonard pulled the rope on the motor and the motor caught and away we went.

  Eventually we turned the boat around and headed to Marvel Creek. We weren’t as scared with a motor to speed us on. Nobody shot at us again, and we didn’t see August and Jaret. When we got back to Leonard’s truck and fastened the boat on the boat rack, I used the pay phone outside the feed store to call the cops. I told them about what we had found. I told them about August, Jaret, and Tom. I told them about the bodies in the boat and about the dope. I gave them a kind of overview of all that had happened, and did my best to indicate where the sunken boat was. I didn’t give our names. I didn’t want to be pulled into it. I didn’t trust how the law would take our presence. They might think we were a part of the whole thing.