The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale

isn't, and she isn't home, and |we're nervous."
    "You're thinking bad business descended?" Tim said.
    "We're thinking it might have, or can yet," Leonard said. "We hope we're just old worried grandmas."
    "I don't know I can help you beyond saying I hope you're wrong," Tim said.
    "Anything different about her last time you saw her?" Leonard asked.
    "Maybe she was a little tired, or nervous, but you're black and hang out here, you're gonna get a little nervous. Don't believe in time travel, just hang around here a week. Better yet, don't. "
    "So, " Leonard said, "you're saying' all the white guys in town, except you, were just perched like buzzards waiting to take her down?"
    "I suppose you could say that. "
    "I don't doubt this town is backwards as hell, " Leonard said, "but I don't buy every white guy here is a murderous prick. Is that what you're trying to tell me? You are, I got to ask, what makes you so special? You ain't threatening me. You wanted to fuck Florida. You don't seem like you're worried that the White Knights of the Asshole will come down on you with a barrel of tar and a basket of chicken feathers for wanting to bury your toad in some black hole, you got the chance. "
    "You're kinda dropping down on me pretty quick, aren't you, pal?" Tim said.
    "Leonard's motto is 'Make a New Friend Every Day, ' " I said.
    Tim grinned that infectious grin. "Hey, it's all right. And you got some points, fella. But let me sorta tick 'em off. First off, my dick ain't no toad. It's just as pretty as a little old skinned banana, but a hell of a lot harder. 'Specially after I've had some pickled pig's feet. Pussy ain't a black hole. If it's black pussy, white pussy, yellow pussy, or red pussy, any other color, on the inside it's all pink and it all feels like a hot mink glove on your weener. So now we got that straight.
    "Next thing. This town ain't filled with Klan types. It only needs a diligent few to be members. A few more who won't participate in their shit, but are behind them, and some others that might be against them, but are afraid to say anything, and for good reason. You don't believe me, let me tell you, not that long ago they sewed a little ole black gal's thang together and got away with it."
    "So we heard," I said.
    "They've been known to nail black men to trees and work them over with a blowtorch. Burn off their balls. You don't hear about all that goin' on, but it does. Maybe not right here in town, but roundabouts. And maybe not recently, but recent enough, and it could get real recent anytime.
    "And I can hustle a little black tail if I want. You see, it's okay a white man wants to get him a dark piece, long as he has a sense of humor about it and thinks of the piece as just nigger pussy. 'Course, this white and black thing, here in Grovetown, it don't work in reverse. Black man wants to get him a white piece, well, that's considered unnatural and punishable by death.
    "All that aside, main reason I'm left alone is my daddy. The old sonofabitch is Jackson Truman Brown. I've kept my mother's name. Anyway, Daddy's Grovetown s old-time swingin' dick. He's smooth, dresses in nice suits, can talk that shit, but he's at heart a plantation owner that misses the old days when you could work a black man to death and hang him for fartin'. His daddy's daddy, my great-grandfather, was famous for hanging a black man that looked at great-grandpa's wife a little longer than great-grand thought he should have. But hanging wasn't good enough. When the fella was dead, he propped him on a post out in his fields to use as a scarecrow. Left him there for his black field hands to see till the body rotted away. In other words, he wasn't just scarin' crows. He was scarin' his slaves."
    "What is it your daddy does?" I asked.
    "He owns Jackson's Christmas Tree Farm and the lumber mill here. Both thriving concerns. Folks from all over Texas and the United States got to have their Christmas trees, I can tell you that. He's got these goddamn