“I’d be all over that sonofabitch,” Leonard said.
“That’s what I figured,” the man said. “Wish I hadn’t started taking them shingles off ’fore it rained. Leaks between them tacks. Top of the TV’s all fucked up. Run into the VCR and fucked it too, but I got it at Wal-Mart. They take anything back and give you another. One time I wore some shoes a year and took ’em back. You got to keep your sales slip, though.”
“Digging a new sewer line?” I asked.
“Naw,” the man said, swigging from the beer can and tossing it on the ground. “I’m digging in the old one. I lost my teeth.”
“Ah,” Leonard said.
“Got so drunk last night I was puking in the toilet, and I pulled out my bridge and flushed it. It’s here in the line somewhere, it didn’t go into the septic tank. It’s in the tank, reckon I’m fucked.”
“Sorry about the teeth,” I said.
“They ain’t gone yet,” he said. “We ain’t flushed the commode since, so I’m kinda thinkin’ them teeth’s here somewhere in the line. It runs slow.”
I looked at the line. It was a ditch seething with broken red sewer tile and gray sludge. Flies pocked it like jewels.
“I don’t want to buy no new teeth,” the man said, “and I need to get ’em now so I can flush the trapper. Damn wife shit in there a couple of times knowing it ain’t supposed to be flushed. Can’t go in the house it stinks so much.”
I looked at the house and thought a little shit stink might actually give it some charm.
“We wanted to know about someone might be a neighbor of yours,” I said.
“Shit,” the man said, “these neighbors ’round here are all motherfuckers. Our house caught on fire and these motherfuckers didn’t even bake us a casserole or a cake.”
“That’s cold,” Leonard said. “Listen, this guy may not be a main neighbor of yours. He lives on this road.”
“This a long road, man.”
“Illium Moon’s the name,” I said. “Drives a bookmobile.”
“That motherfucker,” the man said. “Shit, he tried to come by here see we wanted to read some books. I told him I got the TV Guide, and my wife can read it, so what I need a book for?”
“ TV Guide does hit the highlights,” Leonard said.
“That motherfucker’s crazy,” the man said. “He come by here ’nuther time and wanted to know I wanted to fix my place up with some scrap lumber he’s got. Said me and him could do the work. Shit on that. Community Action, they use new lumber and do the work too.”
“You know where this guy lives?” I said.
He pointed. “Down the road a piece there.”
“We been down the road a piece,” I said, “and we don’t know what we’re looking for.”
“He has that van, one with the books, parked out ’side the house,” the man said. “It’s white. And there’s piles of that old sorry-ass lumber and things under tarps there. You didn’t see that, you just didn’t go down a good enough piece.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Good luck with Community Action, and I hope you find your teeth.”
“You do,” Leonard said, “what you gonna do with them?”
“Rench ’em off and use ’em,” the man said.
“That’s what I figured,” Leonard said.
“I’d do more than rinse them,” I said. “You ought to use a little Clorox to kill germs, then rinse ’em in alcohol and then water.”
“I don’t go in for that nonsense,” the man said. “I ain’t never seen a germ, and I ain’t never been sick a day in my life.”
“Okeydoke,” I said.
We left him there, poking his shovel around in the sewage. In the car, Leonard said, “I know it’s an ugly thing to say, him being ignorant as a post and all, but maybe, luck’s with the world, that shiftless sonofabitch will die in his sleep tonight. He ain’t doing nothing but makin’ turds.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and his teeth are in them.”
20.
Red fingers of sunlight were all that remained of the day, and they clawed at the trees on the horizon. By the time we found the place described to us by the man with no front teeth, the sunset was still bleeding, but in the east the full moon was out and clearly visible and the color of fresh coconut.
The man with no front teeth was right. We had not gone far enough. Illium Moon’s place was a small cottage-style house set off the road. We recognized it by the tarp-covered stacks we presumed to be lumber and by a mailbox across from it with MOON painted on it in black letters.
To get to the house you had to go through an open gap in a barbed-wire fence and over a cattle guard and down a muddy-white sand drive. The house was white with a blue roof and shutters, and beside it was a little open carport that sheltered a very clean-looking ’65 white Ford. The yard was impeccable. Out to the far side of the house were several neat stacks of something with huge gray-green tarps pulled over them. No bookmobile was visible.
We parked by one of the stacks and got out. I took hold of the edge of the tarp closest to me and pulled it back. Underneath was lumber on treated pine pallets. The lumber on the pallets was used lumber, as the man with no teeth had said, but it was good lumber and free of nails.
We knocked on the front door and waited, and no one answered. We walked around the house and didn’t see anyone. Out back we walked a ways into a large, recently mowed pasture. The pasture smelled sweet, like a fruit drink. Off to the far left was a small, weathered-gray barn. From where we stood we could see a little brown-water pond with a big oak growing by it, and behind it, a long dark line of pine trees. The leaking sunlight visible above the trees was like a fading flare.
As we walked out to the barn, grasshoppers leaped ahead of us. The barn door was partially open and we went inside and called Illium’s name, but no one answered. Inside it was stuffy hot, and there was a tractor and some equipment and a few bales of low-quality hay. I was uncertain how much land Illium Moon owned, but I didn’t get the impression he ran livestock. Most likely he had a little cash crop of hay, and that was it.
Behind the tractor were two small piles under tarps. I looked under one. Stacks of newspapers on pallets. Under the others were neatly stacked cardboard boxes, and in the boxes were aluminum cans and plastic bottles. A few things clicked around inside my head like Morse code, but they didn’t click long, and I couldn’t decipher it.
We walked back to the house and stood on the front porch.
“No bookmobile,” I said, “and no Illium.”
“Let’s leave a note,” Leonard said. “Tell him I’m Chester’s nephew, see if he’ll get in touch.”
Leonard went out to his car and got a pad and a pencil. He came back and leaned the pad against the front door and started to write. The front door swung open under the pressure.
“Open sesame,” Leonard said.
I peeked inside. It was a very neat house. The living room furniture wasn’t new, but it was well cared for. The white walls looked to have been painted a short time ago. There was no carpet, but there were some colorful throw rugs. The blue-and-brown couch had plastic protection sleeves over the arms. There was a cardboard box on the couch.
I called out, “Illium.”
No answer.
“He ought to lock up,” I said.
“Maybe he couldn’t lock up,” Leonard said.
I let that lay, and Leonard went in the house, and I went with him.
“We could get our ass in a crack for this,” I said, but we kept right on looking.
We went through the house. Illium’s kitchen was even neater than MeMaw’s place and smelled of some sort of minty disinfectant. The bedroom was very tidy and the bed was made. The bathroom was neat except for the tub. It had a sandy ring around it and there were little hunks of damp hay. We went back to the living room.
I looked in the box on the couch. There were magazines in the box. I saw immediately by the cover of the magazine on top that it was the same sort of magazine we had found in Uncle Chester’s trunk. I picked it up. There were more magazines of the same ilk underneath. Unlike the magazines in Uncle Chester’s trunk, these magazines weren’t as aged. They looked as if they might have been damp once, but they were in pretty good condition. I said, “Uh-oh.”