"I don't understand why she'd talk to just anyone about buying Soothe's stuff."
"'Cause she couldn't find none of L.C. s or Bobby Joe's stuff on her own, and his relatives didn't have nothin' of his, didn't want nothing to do with him. They were scared of him. Hell, he used to rape his own sister. They say a female dog run across the yard, he'd chase it down, fuck it and kill it. They wasn't no sorrier sonofabitch than Bobby Joe. He born bad, man. All that legacy stuff started 'cause Bobby Joe did a little playin' around Tyler, and someone on some magazine or paper or somethin' interviewed him, and he told all these stories about how he had L.C.'s stuff, and he talked that voodoo jive, said he had some unpublished songs L.C. had written out, and he had a couple songs on tape was recorded way back but never put on record."
"Did he?"
"Not that I know of. Not that anyone I know knew of."
"You're sayin' Florida was fishing?"
"And she was offering money for information. Lots of money. Them roadhouse lizards, about half of 'em ain't worth a shit. They'd tell her anything she want to hear they think they might make'm a dollar or get 'em some pussy. And it piss me off when anyone try to make somethin' special out of that nigger. He was sorry, just plain sorry. He meet that white boy at a roadhouse here. I seen 'em there. I was drinking a beer and watching 'em, and ole Bobby Joe had that white boy eating out his hand. Talkin' that music shit, playing like he some kind of jive nigger, and that ole white boy, he just shakin' his head like he was talkin' to some kind of god. He was talkin' to the devil, that's who he was talkin' to. They left together in that white boy's car, and wasn't more'n a couple hours after that, they found that peckerwood with his throat cut, hanging from a tree just off the highway, right by the goddamn road led up to Bobby Joe's house. Bobby Joe smart in one way, but in another he just a drunk field hand with a bad temper. He didn't think no farther than the length of his dick or the deep of his thirst. That's the way he was, and that's all there was to it.
"All that voodoo shit didn't do him no good when that Officer Reynolds show up. After ole Officer find out about that dead white boy, he went over to the roadhouse, asked around, and me and some others told him we'd seen Bobby Joe and the white boy together, seen 'em leave together, and when ole shitass Officer kick Bobby Joe's door off the hinges, there's that drunk fuck sittin' at the table with that peckerwood's watch and wallet, countin' the money. Bobby Joe tried to fight that big cop with his guitar, and Officer just tore that all to hell, then ole Officer stomped the stuffin' out Bobby Joe, opened that boy's mouth, made him bite the edge of the table, then slammed him in the back of the head with his forearm, knocked out all of his front teeth."
"I believe that's police brutality."
"Way the law works here. You don't fuck with the white law. 'Course, Bobby Joe had it comin'. Law or anyone couldn't have done nothin' to that jackass would have bothered me."
"How do you know it happened like that?"
"Filipine told me."
"Filipine?"
"That's what we call fella lives down the road here. His mama black, but his father was one of them Filipinos. He went with Officer to show him where Bobby Joe lived. He probably didn't have no choice but to go. Didn't want to go, ole Officer would have kicked his ass up around his ears."
I thought about all that, realized suddenly why Florida had withdrawn her money from the bank. She was a woman with a plan. A bigger one than I had first thought. She saw herself not only as some sort of crusader, but as someone who was going to preserve a heritage, and maybe get some notoriety in the process. She had envisioned Bobby Joe as some kind of Robert Johnson. Magazine articles. A book. TV movies. That would be her approach. Florida was one ambitious rascal. She'd most likely given up her apartment with plans to live here, near her subject matter.
I heard a car splashing through the water outside and became, to put it mildly, tense.
Bacon got up, went to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked out. "Doctor," he said.
The doctor came in wet and old, bald-headed and grumpy. The black skin on his forehead was deeply wrinkled, the wrinkles sagged like worn-out Venetian blinds. The water beaded on his gray slicker like blisters on a rhino's hide. He had a bag in his hand, not a little black bag, but a big red plastic bag, as if he'd just come from shopping at a toy store. He sat the bag down, took off the slicker and dropped it on the floor and the water pooled beneath it.
"What the fuck you doin' to my floor?" Bacon asked.
The doctor looked the place over, then looked at Bacon. "Say what?"
"Yeah, well, all right," Bacon said.
The doctor picked up his bag, and Bacon led him back to where Leonard lay. A moment later Bacon came from the bedroom and shut the door, said, "He always was a dickhead. But he's a good doctor. Only lost a few dogs he's worked on, and they'd been hit real bad by cars. He do all right with horses too. He's had a lot of cats die on him, but I never did give a shit about the outcome of cats."
"He's a veterinarian?"
"He do a little side work, it comes up. Only real black doctor lives fifty miles away, and I'll tell you now, in this rain, this being Grovetown, he wouldn't have come."
"Great. A vet."
Twenty minutes went by and the doctor came out of the bedroom with his big red plastic bag and sighed.
"How bad is he?" I asked.
"Looks hell of a lot worse than he is. Took a good beatin', but folks doin' it didn't do too special a job, all things considered. He's a tough sonofabitch, and he'll be all right. I worked on a hog like that once. Some kids climbed in a pen with a bunch of hogs, took baseball bats to 'em, but this old boar took a good beatin', got one of the kids down and ate part of his face 'fore the kid could get out of the pen."
"So he'll be all right?"
"Not tomorrow, but he'll heal. Don't seem to have no real internal injuries, which surprises me." "He knows something about covering up, going with the flow," I said. "Experience."
"I put his dick in his pants, by the way."
"That's good," Bacon said. "Me and him wouldn't do it."
"I wore gloves," the doctor said. "Well, let me look you over, whitey. Take off them duds."
I could hardly rise off the couch. In fact, I couldn't. Bacon got hold of me and lifted me up. He smelled of fried foods and sweat. My muscles ached deeply and I felt ill to my stomach. Standing was the most painful thing I'd ever done next to paying taxes. I gingerly unbuttoned my shirt and the doctor helped me take it off. My skin had turned purple and black and green where I had taken shots from fists and feet. The lump on the side of my head hurt the worst.
The doctor poked and prodded, felt and looked. He said, "That one there, that's a shoe caught you."
"Reckon so," I said. "Can't say as I was takin' notes."
"Take off your pants."
I did. My balls were the color of plums going to rot and were doubled in size.
"You better get you some underwear," the doctor said. "These dudes swinging will make you see elephants."
"I hear that," I said. "They aren't ruined are they?"
"No. They'll heal. Ought to get you some Epsom salts, put it in the tub with hot water and soak for an hour or so every day." He looked at my head. "This is really the worse shot you got. You have any memory loss?"
"I don't remember."
"Ha. Ha," the doc said. Nobody had a sense of humor anymore.
"Bacon, you watch him. He shows trouble remembering, repeating of phrases, then . . . well, I don't know. Give him a couple of aspirins, keep him awake."
"Shit, man, he ain't my problem. I don't even know this guy.
He go to sleep and die, it ain't my fault. He die, it won't be on my head. I'll sleep like a lawyer. It wasn't me got him into this. Him and ole Swole Head in there is the one's crapped in their nest, not me."