Last room we tackled was the one with the newspapers. It was hot in there, and the little fan managed to stir the dust and make you choke. The roof had leaked, gotten on the papers and mildewed them, and in some places the water had soaked through and joined the wood beneath them and rotted out sections of the floor. We could hear it squeak, feel it sag when we walked.
We decided best thing to do was remove the papers, glance through them quickly as possible, see if there was anything there really meant anything.
After a couple pickup loads to the recycling center, we quit looking through the rest, quit thinking they meant anything. Only thing we noticed were gaps in pages, where Uncle Chester had liberated coupons with scissors.
All doubts were cast aside. It was pretty clear by then. Uncle Chester had been off his nut. The key had probably gone to something no longer owned, long lost to time, but significant somehow in the watery cells that made up Uncle Chester’s brain.
Leonard put the key away and forgot about it and read Dracula. He said he liked it pretty good and thought it would have scared him more had it not been for the crack house next door. Look out there and see that happening, it’s hard for some guy with fangs to scare you much. Guys next door were bigger vampires: clutch of assholes made you want drugs way a vampire wanted blood. Made it so you’d do anything to have it. Rob and lie, murder your lovers, take up astrology and reading cozy mysteries.
After we’d been there about a week, Leonard quit using his cane and replaced the broken bottles on the bottle tree. I think he was taunting the folks next door to shoot them out, looking for some excuse to exchange their heads, mix up their internal organs.
One night he woke me up calling out “You sonsabitches” in his sleep. He was making me nervous. He kept the shotgun a little too close. I felt things were coming down on Leonard that were bigger than he was. Somewhere in all this, he had determined the assholes next door were the cause for Uncle Chester’s death. And maybe they were. Old Uncle Chester had been everything Leonard knew about manhood.
Leonard had been raised by his grandmother, but it was his uncle he came to see summers, and it was his uncle who taught him what it was to be masculine. Taught him about the woods and guns and carpentry and the appreciation of books. Encouraged him to make something of his life, gave him backbone. Then, when Leonard was a young man and realized he was gay and told his uncle, it had all fallen apart.
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.”