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  Time I got that done, Leonard had finished the dishes and was doing general cleaning. Sweeping, mopping, beating down cobwebs with a broom, polishing the window bars, spraying Lysol about.

  “There’s roaches in here big enough to own property,” Leonard said.

  “I know. One just helped me carry the trash out.”

  Time we finished what we were willing to do, we were sweaty and dusty, and we took turns in the bathroom, washing up best we could. There wasn’t any hot water.

  We turned on the porch light and closed the windows and locked up the joint and stuffed the trunk and backseat with garbage bags and drove off. We put the garbage in a university dumpster when no one was looking, and went to a Burger King and ate. We went to a movie after that and came back to the house solid dark, watching to see if any of our friends next door were waiting to surprise us.

  Guess they were still mulling over the ass kicking earlier that day. We could see a knot full of them out on the dark front porch over there, looking at us. We picked up the newspapers in the driveway and waved at our crack house buddies and went on in the house.

  Leonard gave me the bedroom and took the couch in the living room. We laid about and read newspapers for a while, then sacked out. I left the bedroom door open to keep air circulating and I raised the window and turned on the overhead fan.

  From where I lay, I could turn and look out the doorway and see Leonard lying in there on his back on the couch, his arm thrown over his eyes.

  “I’m sorry about your uncle,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Everybody has to go.”

  “Yeah. I wish things had worked out better between us.”

  “He loved you, Leonard. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left you the house.”

  “I’d have liked for him to have told me he loved me. Sometimes, when I’m stupid, I feel guilty for being homosexual. Like I had some choice in how my hormones got put together. Uncle Chester found out, he treated me like I was a pervert. Like being gay means you molest children or take advantage of weaker men for sex.”

  “He wasn’t any different than a lot of folks, Leonard.”

  “I’ve never forced anything on anyone else, and mostly I don’t bother with sex at all. I got the problem of being attracted mostly to straight men and that doesn’t work. Lot of gay guys act gay and that bothers me.”

  “That’s odd, Leonard.”

  “No, that’s pretty standard with a lot of gays. I think somewhat like a woman, I guess. I want to have a relationship with a man, but somehow, gay guys don’t normally do much for me. I guess I’ve been taught they’re odd, and I’m one of them. Go figure. I tell you, nature played a fucking joke on me.”

  “Ha. Ha.”

  “Hap, you ever feel funny being my friend, knowing I’m gay?”

  “I don’t normally think about it. I mean, you’re not exactly a gay prototype.”

  “No one is.”

  “I mean, I’m not aware of it much, and when I am, I guess it strikes me odd. I accept it, but don’t understand it. I don’t see gays as perverts. Some are, some aren’t, same as heterosexuals. But I am an East Texas boy and my background is Baptist—”

  “I’m East Texas and Baptist background too.”

  “I know. I’m just saying. Sometimes, I am aware of it. It doesn’t bother me exactly, but I’m aware of it and I feel a little confused.”

  “Think you’re confused. Life would be easier, I was straight.”

  “Yep, but you ain’t.”

  “Damn. Wish I’d thought of that.”

  “You ever watch Leave It to Beaver?”

  “Yeah.”

  “End of that show, way I remember it anyway, the two brothers, Wally and the Beaver, they used to share a room and have a talk before they turned out the light and went to bed. In that talk they summed up the episode you just watched, and the problems they’d gone through, and everything was capped off and solved in those last few minutes and they moved onto new stuff next week with no baggage. You know what?”

  “What?”

  “Life ain’t like that.”

  “No, it ain’t. Good night, Wally.”

  “Good night, Beave.”

  5.

  Next morning Leonard called and made an appointment with Florida Grange and we drove over there.

  Uptown or not, her building was in the cheap section, right next to a burned-out apartment complex on a red clay hill that had a highway cut through it. The apartment complex had burned down three years back and had yet to be rebuilt, and the clay on which it lay had started to shift toward the highway.

  We entered her building and rode the elevator upstairs and saw a middle-aged woman exit a door holding her jaw. We passed the office she had come out of. It was the office of a dentist named Mallory. Florida Grange, Attorney at Law, was between it and a bail bond office.

  We went in. No secretary. No lobby. The room was about the size of the men’s restroom at the YMCA and it was mostly taken up with desk and chairs and file cabinets and a word processor. On the wall were framed degrees and certificates that vouched for Florida Grange’s professional abilities.

  Florida Grange was sitting behind her desk. She smiled when we came in and stood up and extended her hand, first to Leonard, then to me. When I shook it, the two large silver bracelets on her wrist rattled together.

  She was wearing a short snow-white dress that made her chocolate skin and long kinky black hair radiant. I figured her for thirty years old, maybe thirty-five at the outside. Sweet chocolate in a smooth white wrapper.

  I felt a bit self-conscious being there with her, wearing the clothes I’d slept in. I had brushed my teeth with some of Uncle Chester’s toothpaste and my forefinger.

  We took seats and Florida Grange sat back behind the desk and picked up a folder and said, “This is simple and won’t take long. But it is a private matter, Mr. Pine.”

  She smiled at me when she said that, just to make sure I didn’t break out crying.

  “Me and Hap ain’t that private. Nothing you got to say he can’t hear. You already said I get the house and some money. There anything else?”

  “It’s a matter of how much . . . You’re right, Mr. Pine. I’m being melodramatic.”

  “Leonard. I don’t like to be called Mr. Pine. Call him Hap.”

  “Very well, Leonard. It’s not a complicated will, so I’m going to forgo all the formality, if you don’t mind?”

  “I don’t know,” Leonard said. “I live for formality. I don’t get some of it, I might get depressed.”

  She smiled at him. I wished she’d smile at me that way. “He left you the house and some money. One hundred thousand dollars.”

  Maybe that’s why she didn’t smile at me the same way. I didn’t have one hundred thousand dollars.

  “Where in hell did he get money like that?” Leonard said. “He was a security guard when he was working.”

  She shrugged. “If he’d been saving a while, that’s not that unusual. Perhaps he had some bonds come due. Whatever, you inherited that much money. I’ll arrange for you to receive it. One last thing, he left you this envelope and its contents.”

  She opened her desk drawer and removed a thick manila envelope. She handed it to Leonard. He opened it and peeked inside. He gave it to me. I peeked inside. There were a lot of newspaper clippings in there. I saw that one was a coupon for a dollar off a pizza. Good. We liked pizza.

  I shook the envelope. Something heavy moved inside. I held the envelope so that whatever it was slid out through the clippings and into my palm.

  It was a key. I gave it to Leonard.

  “Looks like a safety-deposit box,” he said.

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said.

  “Goddamn, Doc!” came a clear voice through the wall.

  Florida Grange, Attorney at Law, looked embarrassed, said, “I don’t think he’s a very good dentist. People yell a lot.”

  “That’s all right,” Leonard said. “We
don’t plan to use him.”

  “I keep planning to move,” she said.

  Leonard said, “Which was Uncle Chester’s bank, you know?”

  “Certainly. LaBorde, Main and North.”

  Leonard nodded, put the key back in the envelope. “You said you didn’t know him, but you’re his lawyer. You talked to him. You must have got some kind of impression.”

  “I met him about a month ago,” she said. “He came to me and wanted me to handle his affairs.”

  “Did he seem sick?” Leonard asked.

  “He seemed stressed. Like he was having some troubles. He thought he had Alzheimer’s. He said that much.”

  “And did he?”

  “I don’t know. But he thought he did. He wanted to square things up in case his mind was going or his time was up. That’s the way he expressed it.”

  “What I’m really asking is, did he say anything about me, other than what I inherited?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Leonard said, but I could tell it wasn’t all right.

  “I guess you know this, he shot a number of people a few months back. Or so the story goes.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t mean he killed anyone. I heard about it through the grapevine. I’m originally from that part of town. Where your uncle lived. My mama still lives there. Seems your uncle had some trouble with the people next door. Supposed to be a crack house.”

  “It is,” Leonard said.

  “Someone over there was playing around, shot some bottles off a post in his yard. I suppose they were talking about a bottle tree.”

  “They were,” Leonard said.

  “Your uncle was on his porch when it happened and a shot almost hit him he said, so he got his shotgun and went over there and shot some men on the porch. He had rat shot in the gun. Way it worked out, the police showed up and he got hauled in and the men went to the hospital to get the shot picked out. Your uncle was let go, and far as I know, it wasn’t even in the papers.”

  “Happened in nigger town is why,” Leonard said. “Bunch of niggers popping one another isn’t news to the peckerwoods. They expect it.”

  “I suppose,” Florida Grange said. “Anyway, that’s something I can tell you about him, but that’s about all.”

  I could tell Leonard was secretly pleased. It fit his memory of his Uncle Chester. Strong and upright, didn’t take shit from anyone.

  Grange had him fill out some papers and gave him some to take with him. By the time they were finished, the dentist drill had begun to whine.

  “I’m sorry,” Florida Grange said. “Let’s go out in the hall.”

  We went. Leonard said, “I guess I don’t really have anything else to ask, Miss Grange. Sorry I pulled you out here.”

  “I’m tired of the drill anyway,” she said. “And if you’re going by Leonard, call me Florida.”

  “OK, Florida. Thanks.”

  “You have any other questions, give me a call,” she said.

  “Is it OK I ask a question?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone significant in your life right now?”

  “Not really.”

  “Any possibility of me taking you to dinner?”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Collins.”

  “I clean up pretty good.”

  “I’m sure you do, but I think not. Thanks for asking.”

  * * *

  On the way down in the elevator, Leonard said, “Hap Collins, Lady Killer.”

  6.

  In the car, while Leonard drove, I looked through the contents of the envelope.

  “Anything there mean anything?” Leonard asked.

  “Got a bunch of pizza coupons. Some for Burger King. And you get real hungry, we can buy one dinner, get one free at Lupe’s Mexican Restaurant.”

  “That’s it? Coupons?”

  “Yep.”

  “Christ, he must have been losing it.”

  “I don’t know. Coupons save lots of money. I use them. I figured up once I’d saved enough on what I’d normally have spent on stuff to buy a used television set.”

  “Color?”

  “Black and white. But I bought some Diet Pepsi and pork skins instead.”

  “Coupons seem a strange thing for Uncle Chester to give to a lawyer to hold for me. He could have left that stuff on the kitchen table.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t thinking correctly. Coupons could have taken on valuable import. And the key was with them.”

  “Goes to a bank safety-deposit box, I figure.”

  “You said that, Sherlock.”

  “We’ll check it out right now.”

  “Leonard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “These coupons, I just noticed, they’re a couple years expired.”

  * * *

  Inside the LaBorde Main-and-North First National Bank, I took a chair and Leonard spoke to a clerk. The clerk sent him to a gray-haired lady at a desk. Leonard leaned on his cane and showed her the key and some of the papers Florida Grange had given him. The lady nodded, gave him back the key, got up, and walked him to a barred doorway. A guard inside the bars was signaled. He opened the door and Leonard went inside and the guard locked it behind him. A few moments later, Leonard was let out carrying a large manila envelope and a larger parcel wrapped in brown paper and twine.

  “You’ll love this,” he said, and held up the envelope. “Inside’s a paperback copy of Dracula and a fistful of newspaper clippings, and guess what? Another key. There’s not a clue what it goes to. Uncle Chester’s brain must have got so he didn’t know his nuts from a couple acorns.”

  “What about that?” I said, indicating the larger parcel.

  “I opened it already.”

  “I can tell that by the way the twine is rewrapped. What is it?”

  Leonard was hesitant. “Well . . .” He took it over to one of the tables and untied the twine and unwrapped the package. It was a painting. A good painting. It was shadowy and showed a weathered two-story gothic-style house surrounded by trees; fact was, the trees grew so thick they seemed to imprison the house.

  “Your uncle do this?”

  “I did. When I was sixteen.”

  “No joke?”

  “No joke. I used to want to paint. I did this for Uncle Chester’s birthday. Maybe he’s giving it back to me now, letting me know things aren’t really forgiven.”

  “He’s certainly giving you other things. Money. The house.”

  “Coupons and a copy of Dracula.”

  “That’s right. Is that all there was? Nothing else?”

  “Nothing, besides the fact you’re right. There’s the house and I’m gonna get one hundred thousand dollars and you aren’t.”

  * * *

  So, I thought Leonard was gonna be richer, and that would be all right, and we’d go back to normal, except for him not working in the rose fields, and me, I’d be heading on back to the house and back to the fields, provided I could get my old job again, or another just like it, and Leonard, he’d be putting his uncle’s place up for sale and living off that and his inheritance, maybe put the dough into some kind of business.

  I was sad for Leonard in one way, losing a loved one, but in another, that Uncle Chester was a sonofabitch far as I was concerned, way he treated Leonard, and I was glad Leonard had gotten some money and a house to sell, and a secret part of me was glad the old sonofabitch was dead and buried and out of sight.

  So, that afternoon after seeing the pretty lawyer who wouldn’t go out with me, Leonard drove me home and dropped me off and went away. I figured he was at his place, his feet propped up, listening to Dwight Yoakam or Hank Williams or Patsy Cline, smoking his pipe full of cherrytinted tobacco, perhaps reading his uncle’s copy of Dracula or contemplating his loss and gain, wondering what he’d end up doing with his money.

  In the long run, except for the fact he wa
s gonna wither and die like everybody else ever born, I figured things for him were going to be fine as things can get fine.

  But I hadn’t counted on the black cloud of fate.

  7.

  The black cloud of fate came with rain, of course.

  Two days later, early afternoon, I was sitting on my front porch taking in the cool wind and the view. One moment there was just the same red, empty road that runs by Leonard’s place, and beyond it, great pines and oaks and twists of vines, and above it all, clouds as white and smooth as God’s own whiskers, and the next moment, the wind abruptly changed direction, blew harder from the north, turned damp and sticky, and the clouds began to roll and churn and go gray at the edges. Out of the north rolled darker clouds yet, and they filled the sky and gave up their rain and the pines became purple with shadow and the road turned from red to blood-clot brown, then darker. The rain slammed down hard, and the wind thrashed it onto the porch in steel-colored needles that stung my face and filled my nostrils with the aroma of wet earth.

  I got out of my old wooden rocking chair and went into the house, feeling blue and broke and missing Leonard.

  I hadn’t heard from him since he’d dropped me off, and I’d called his place a couple times and only got rings. I wondered if he’d finally gotten his money. I wondered if he were spending it. It wasn’t like me and him to go more than a couple of days without touching base with one another, just in case we needed to argue about something.

  I thought I’d call him again, maybe drive over there after the rain, see if his phone might not be working, but about then the phone rang and I answered it.

  It was my former boss, Lacy, the Old Bastard. He sounded friendly. A warning flag went up. I figured whoever had taken my place in the fields had gotten a better job bouncing drunks or shoveling shit, or maybe died of stroke or snakebite, or taken up preaching, which was a pretty good career, you had the guts not to be ashamed of it.

  “How’s it hanging, Hap?”

  “To the left.”

  “Hey, that’s my good side. Nut over there’s bigger. You ready to come back to work?”