The Two-Bear Mambo Read online

  Most everyone in the place laughed. Even the blue-haired lady laughed. When the laughter died—

  “Mama said don’t talk that way in here!”

  I turned and looked. It was Bad Mustache. His bubba was beside him. They were out of their booth, standing. The other brother said, “That’s enough! Mama said that’s enough.”

  “Billy, you and Caliber just relax,” Bear said. “No one wants you hurt. Y’all sit down and have some coffee.”

  Billy and Caliber didn’t move.

  Leonard said, “Well, that certainly explains some things about us black folk, don’t it?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Gray Suit, and he laughed a little, and the others laughed.

  When the laughter slowed, Leonard said, “You know, every one of us, when you think about it, just missed about this much,” Leonard held up his hand and made a C with his thumb and forefinger, “being a turd. Every one of us. I mean, there’s only about this much space between one hole and the other. And we all missed the shithole by this much.” Leonard lowered his hand, looked at Gray Suit and smiled, “Except you, mister. You made it. Your mama shit a turd, put a suit on it, and named it you.”

  Gray Suit turned red as a sun-ripe tomato. Bear started out of the booth then, but before he could shoot the distance, a blast of cold air blew through the cafe, and Officer Reynolds came in with it. He was sucking another Tootsie Roll Pop.

  Everything stopped. Reynolds looked around. He eyed Bear, halfway out of the booth. Bear slid back into his place. Gray Suit raised up so Reynolds could see him, said, “Willie, it’s me.”

  Reynolds pulled the Tootsie Roll Pop from his mouth, held it, said, “Yes sir.” He turned to the woman behind the counter, said, “Maude, you got that breakfast?” He looked right at us. “To go?”

  Maude glanced around, as if on the lookout for a miracle, sighed, went to the kitchen, came back with a greasy brown sack. She gave it to Reynolds.

  Reynolds said, “Certainly glad I didn’t see no unpleasantness here. Wouldn’t want that. Chief wouldn’t want that. I seen something like that, didn’t do anything about it, he’d fire me. I don’t like the idea of being fired. I like my little check. But, say I leave, how the hell am I gonna stop something gets going?” He looked at Leonard. “Any idea how I could do that?”

  “There was,” Leonard said, “you’d find a way around it.”

  Officer Reynolds smiled, put his Tootsie Roll Pop back in his mouth, went out with another blast of cold December air.

  Bear stood up, arms crossed on his chest. Elephant stood up, opened and closed his hands—very large hands, and leathery. Probably got that way from strangling children. He was maybe six-six, and his shoulders were even wider than I first thought. So was his ass; even front on, you could tell that hunk of meat was enormous.

  “You boys don’t get in no fights now,” Maude said. “This here is my cafe, and I don’t want no fights. They were just leaving.” She leaned over the counter, touched me on the shoulder. “You were just leaving, right?”

  I was agreeable to this, but before I could say anything, Gray Suit said, “That’s right, they were just leaving, but not under their own power.”

  “This ain’t no cowboy movie saloon,” said Maude. “This is my place.”

  “Mama said that’s enough.” It was Caliber. He and Billy were easing slowly to the front of the cafe. No one was paying them much attention, however. They were watching to see if Leonard and I were going to shit our pants. I don’t know about Leonard, but I felt a rumble in my tummy.

  I began to grope for a graceful way out. Even a not so graceful one, but Leonard, as is often the case, closed the door.

  “Before we get on with the butt-whippin’,” he said, sliding slowly off his stool, turning his body slightly to the side. “I got one question for the big guy.” Leonard gestured to Elephant. “Man, tell me true. Is that your ass following you around, or are you pullin’ a trailer?”

  17

  Elephant was a step closer than Bear, and no sooner had Leonard finished his remark than he stepped with his right foot and threw a hot haymaker at Leonard’s head. It was such a wide and uncalculated blow, Leonard could have eaten a plate of eggs and biscuits and half a cup of coffee before it got there.

  Leonard stepped in and blocked with his left hand and hit Elephant on his left temple with the edge of his right hand; hit him hard enough Elephant’s greasy black hair flew up like a frightened monkey springing for cover.

  Before the hair settled, Leonard captured Elephant’s punching arm, swung under it, pushed against the big bastard’s elbow and drove his head forward into the lunch counter, smacking Elephant’s noggin into it with a noise akin to the crack of doom.

  Leonard grabbed Elephant’s hair, jerked his head up, brought it down into the counter again, let him go. What was left of Elephant’s face smashed into a bar stool. Some of his cheek turned red and greasy and slid to the right of the stool while the rest of him fell left. I tell you, it was enough to make me lose my breakfast, had I eaten any.

  All of this took no time at all.

  Bear was on me then. I had already reached back and got hold of the ketchup bottle, and I swung it. It was still in the rack with the salt and pepper and Tabasco, and the bottle and the rack caught Bear alongside the head solid enough the ketchup exploded. Wads of red went all over Bear and across the cafe and onto Gray Suit’s coat.

  Gray Suit said, “Goddamn!”

  The world froze. We were like prehistoric flies in amber, but one look at the fine citizens of Grovetown, and I could sense a sort of fire building inside them. Nothing like a nigger smacking a white man to stir a bunch of crackers, and a white man taking a black man’s side didn’t cheer them much either. The first was like being made to eat shit. The second was like making them eat it and smile.

  I dropped what was left of the ketchup bottle and the rack. It hit the floor with a sound so sharp we all jumped. Then things went still again. I couldn’t take it anymore. I said, “Well, you assholes gonna do it, or what?”

  “Don’t y’all do it,” Caliber said. “You leave ’em be. You do it, you’re gonna pay damages. You’re gonna pay lawsuits.”

  Gray Suit said, “Git ’em! Kill the sonsabitches!”

  And the mass of them came unstuck in time and space, rushed fast and hard, and I swung an elbow and saw someone’s teeth fly, then I got hit on the right side of the jaw and a floating rib ceased to float, and I got my fingers in one guy’s face and raked his eyes, side-kicked his knee out from under him, then someone was on my back and I was swinging my elbows, trying to throw him, but someone had me around the waist, and I couldn’t get the torque, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Leonard dot a fat fucker’s eyes with a rapid left, right, then kick another fatty between the legs solid enough to lift him. He back-elbowed an old guy, who spat his tobacco onto the back of Leonards head, then Leonard was swarmed. He went down beneath a pile of writhing, punching bodies, his teeth clamped on some dude’s ear, his hat beneath another’s feet.

  I saw Caliber launch a punch at someone, but he caught a solid one to the side of the head and went down. I saw Billy grabbing men and jerking them away from me and Leonard, but it was like trying to bail out the ocean. Gray Suit was standing up in the booth looking down on the action like Xerxes watching the last defenders of Thermopylae go down. He had a fresh unlit cigarette in his mouth.

  Bodies were pressing me so tight I was using nothing but elbows, leg stomps, head-butts, and knees, but it was useless. I started falling. I was being hit so hard and often my face felt as if it were exploding. I came down hard on my back, and above me were thrashing legs and bleeding, hateful faces; the fat guys, the old men, the blue-haired lady.

  Their fists and shoes tumbled down on me like an avalanche. My balls took a few shots. I wondered if Chief Cantuck and I might be able to get matching trusses. Maybe he could wear his nut to the right, I could wear mine to the left. We could walk side by side. Kind of a balance t
hing.

  The lights of the cafe went dark, then bright again, but I was seeing them through a sheen of blood, and it was my blood.

  Too much pain.

  My last vision before darkness was the blue-haired hag’s shoe coming at me, accurately aimed at my head.

  When I awoke, I was in great pain and I was wet and getting wetter and I was shaking from the cold. I realized too I had pissed myself and there was vomit on the front of my shirt and jacket. I was up against an alley wall, out back of the cafe most likely, and it was raining hard, and my mouth tasted of copper and one of my eyes was nearly swollen shut. One of my teeth felt loose. My kidneys hurt. My ribs hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. I feared if I moved too rapidly an arm or a leg might fall off.

  I could hear grunting and I turned my head, carefully, just to make sure it didn’t bowl a strike. The alley was full of people from the cafe, and the alley was full of rain.

  Two fat guys, one with a couple of black eyes, the other with a wide split in his lip, had a mostly unconscious Leonard held up between them. His knees were bent and his legs were flared out behind him, the tops of his boots dragged the ground. His head was about the size of a medicine ball, and his lips and nose and eyes blended together in a knobby topography of swollen flesh. His breath steamed from his mouth and turned into little white clouds that faded to nothing.

  The blue-haired lady was in front of him. She said, “Hold him up better.”

  She tried to kick Leonard in the balls, but the alley was wet, and she slipped and fell on her ass. The crowd moved toward the woman, and two men pulled her to her feet. When the crowd moved, I saw that Billy and Caliber were lying in the alley too. They looked to have taken a pretty good beating. Their mother was between them. Her hair was plastered to her head like seaweed to a rock. She was screaming her boys were hurt and wouldn’t somebody do something, but nobody did. She squatted next to Billy and held his head in her lap, screamed, “Stop it! Stop it! Now! Stop it!”

  Billy’s hand came up and touched her hair. He said something, not very loud, then his hand went down again. He got the hand under him and pushed to a sitting position and scooted his back against the alley wall. He didn’t look as if he cared much about what was happening now, long as it wasn’t happening to him.

  Maude rose suddenly, pushed through the crowd and went inside the cafe.

  The blue-haired lady had a solid stance now. She kicked Leonard firm in the nuts with a football style kick. Leonard let out a burst of air, it puffed white and went wide and far, like a blast from a dragon. He sagged between the two men even more. The old lady said: “Niggers is what’s wrong with this country.”

  I tried to get up, but couldn’t. I fell over on my side and watched the alley wall lean at me. I turned my head toward Leonard, saw that Blue Hair had been replaced by Gray Suit. The rain had pushed his evangelist do apart and it had fallen into his face. I noticed, pushed down like that, he had been covering a half-dollar-sized bald spot at the back of his head. Good. I was glad he had a bald spot. I really didn’t like this guy.

  He had ketchup on his suit and the rain had spread it into rusty patches all over his jacket. His white shirt looked as if it were spotted with blood. He said, “Hold him,” and the two guys picked Leonard up higher and held him firm, and Gray Suit began to work on him. Pounding him in the stomach, once in the jaw, but that hurt Gray Suit’s hand. He jerked it back, said “Damn,” and kicked Leonard in the shin. Then the leg. Leonard’s bad leg.

  Gray Suit reached in his pants pocket and got out a large pocketknife, pinched a blade open.

  I tried to crawl toward Leonard, but I wasn’t making any time at all. I felt like a slug nailed to the ground. I felt like I was in a car and it had skidded off the road, and everything had gone slow motion, and I could see a telephone pole coming through the windshield and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

  Gray Suit said, “Way you tame a nigger … way you make ’em good, is just like you do a rambunctious stallion. You got to severely lower their testosterone level. All that ball juice just leads a nigger to trouble.”

  The men in the crowd laughed. One came forward, got hold of Leonard’s zipper and pulled it down, reached in his pants and pulled out Leonard’s equipment.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t,” but my words sounded like coughs.

  Gray Suit turned, looked at me. He showed me that pretty dimple. It looked so deep now you’d have thought it ought to have a winch and bucket perched over it. He said, “Well, the nigger lover’s come around. I cut this nigger’s boo-doodles off, I’m gonna put ’em in your pocket, boy.”

  Gray Suit came forward and grabbed Leonard’s testicles and lifted them and reached with the knife, and a gunshot split the air.

  It was Maude. She had a pistol in one hand, a Winchester in the other, tucked under her armpit.

  “You ain’t gonna do this. Not in my place. Not out back of my place.” Maude fired a shot with the revolver and made a trash can jump. She pointed the revolver and the rifle at Gray Suit, who still held Leonard’s balls and the knife. She said, “Jackson Brown, you cut that nigger, you touch one of my boys, you come for me or that fella on the ground over there, any of you make a move to do that kinda business, I’m gonna blow what little brains you got out of the back of your head. And I’ll do it too. Don’t think I won’t. Now all you cretins get on your horses and ride.”

  Gray Suit said, “You’re gonna bring yourself some serious grief, Maude.”

  “You don’t own my place yet, Jackson. You don’t threaten me. You hear? Let go of that nigger’s rocks.”

  So this was Tim’s father. Jackson Truman Brown, the Lord of Grovetown. Standing in a wet alley with a pocketknife in one hand, Leonard’s balls in the other.

  Gently, the Lord unhanded Leonard’s gonads, folded up his knife and put it away. Way he did it, you’d have thought he just used it to clean his fingernails. The two fatties dropped Leonard on his face. He hit so hard he cut a fart, then lay still.

  A siren whooped once, went quiet. I turned to see the Chief’s car at the mouth of the alley. Officer Reynolds was driving. He got out of the car and strolled up the alley, sucking his last Tootsie Roll Pop. “That’s enough,” he said. “All y’all go home.”

  “Draighten and Ray are on the floor in the restaurant,” one of the fatties said. “These fellas hurt ’em bad.”

  “Yeah,” Reynolds said. “Well, haul ’em off. Get ’em a doctor, they need it. I want all y’all out of here. Now.”

  “Officer,” Jackson Brown said, “you don’t want to get too carried away.”

  Officer Reynolds studied Brown for a few seconds. His face took on a pleasant look. “You know how it is, Mr. Brown. Think about it a minute. The position I’m in.”

  Brown took the minute offered and considered. “There’ll be another time,” he said.

  “That may be,” Officer Reynolds said. “Maude, put them guns up before you shoot yourself or wound that nigger. We wouldn’t want something to happen to that nigger. Niggers are special, you ought to know that. Government protects ’em, like some kind of goddamn endangered species.” He looked at me. “And nigger lovers are special too. Damn precious, in fact.”

  Maude lowered the guns. Caliber limped over and took the Winchester from her, then the revolver. Billy turned so he could use the wall to get up, clawed his way to his feet. He and Caliber looked rough. But not as rough as Leonard. I figured I didn’t look too pretty myself.

  The crowd began to break up. Brown looked at me, creased his dimple, said, “You boys weren’t tough as you thought, were you?”

  It took me a couple of deep breaths to say it: “Could be. But all I can say for you is, you certainly handled Leonard’s nuts like a natural.”

  Brown glared, turned, paused long enough to look Maude over good, nodded at her, then went through the back door of the cafe and out of sight. The others had already gone, and now there was only Maude, her sons, me, Leonard, and good ole O
fficer Reynolds.

  “That nigger don’t look so smart now,” Reynolds said. “Neither do you. You want to say something smart?” I was on my knees, using my hands for support. Officer Reynolds came and stood over me. “I said, you want to say something smart?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Good. Now, get your nigger. Put his dick back in his drawers, zip him up, then you and him get out of Grovetown, and when you get home, find you some pretty stationery, purple or pink would be nice, and write me a thank-you card for not letting them folks kill you. Write Maude one too. And you keep your nigger and your nigger-lovin’ ass out of Grovetown, Texas. Only thing I regret in all this is not gettin’ to try your nigger. I think he might have thought he could take me. I’d like to have shown him he couldn’t.”

  Officer Reynolds went down the alley, opened his car door and turned. “Billy. Caliber. Y’all see them guns get put up.”

  “Yes sir,” Caliber said.

  I lay down, slowly, the side of my face resting against the freezing, wet alley floor. My face was so hot from injury, it actually felt good. The rain felt good. My eyes, heavy as stones, began to close.

  I heard Officer Reynolds drive away.

  18

  The oaks and pines and hickory trees that grew close to the road were dark with rain. Visible through the boughs, when there was any visibility at all, was a grim, gray sky. The sound of windshield wipers beating back and forth, the vibration of tires on cement, seemed at first to be the rhythm of striking fists and feet on flesh.

  For an instant, I thought I was in the midst of another beating. I hurt so bad, I figured I couldn’t distinguish the pain of the old beating from the new.

  It took me a moment to realize I was in a car, an old blue Ford Fairlane, and that it was not night but late morning, and that the beating was over, and not long over. My face was turned toward the door and my forehead was resting on the rain-beaded passenger glass of the front seat. I could feel cold air leaking in around the window and hitting my feverish face, and it felt good. I smelled like dried urine.