The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale Page B

four-wheel-drive, green, broad wheel-base pickup with gaudy tail flaps. One flap had the silhouette of a naked silver lady on it. The other would have had the same but it was ripped in half, leaving only the lady's head.
    We followed in Leonard's heap, and as we drove, Leonard said,” He could have told us up front Florida had been staying with his mother.”
    "I think he was just being cautious,” I said. ”Watching out for Florida. Remember, he was mum until he asked if we were kin, boyfriends, or bill collectors? I think he didn't want to bring shit down on Florida, if he could keep from it. Or maybe he was watching out for his mother. Either way, I think he was being considerate. And remember, he didn't have to tell us dick.”
    "I don't like the dude.”
    "Really? He seems all right. Maybe a little too self-consciously folksy, but okay.”
    "A fifty-dollar finder's fee? I don't give a shit about his childhood money problems. I give a shit about my fifty dollars he's got.”
    "You are the most suspicious sonofabitch I have ever known, Leonard. He's a little overly money-conscious, and he strikes me as a would-be cock dog, but neither of those things are exactly criminal.”
    "Yeah, well doesn't he make you feel kind of creepy, him talking all that good ole boy bullshit?"
    "Only thing creepy is how easy it is for me to do it too.”
    "There's some truth.”
    "Yeah. Well, what about that cockroaches can't play basketball thing?"
    "I like that one,” Leonard said. ”But that aside, if Florida stayed out here, you got to bet this guy was sniffing her ass regular like.”
    "He may have wanted her, but trust me, my friend, if this gal doesn't want to put up with bullshit, she has a way of dealing with you that'll make you feel knee high to a cricket pretty quick. And maybe it takes a heterosexual to understand what I'm getting at, but this lady, young as she is, pretty as she is, she isn't any babe in the woods. Not about men, anyway. Maybe about other things, but trust me, she's got an A+ in Dealing With Men.”
    "All right. There's some more truth. I saw Florida drag you around by your ying-yang some, that's for sure.”
    "I ain't proud of it.”
    "Nor should you be.”
    One minute it was gray and damp, the heater humming, keeping us warm, the wipers thumping almost happily, and suddenly the sky went black as night and the rain fell down in silver sheets thick as corrugated tin. The air in the car turned cool and the heater moaned as if dying of pneumonia, the wipers swiped at the rain like a drowning victim trying to tread water.
    Got so bad, Tim pulled over to the side of the road and sat in his truck. We pulled up behind him and sat too, waited. It was a full forty-five minutes before the rain subsided enough for us to continue, and as we drove on, slowly, I looked out my side, watched as we crawled past an old gray clapboard building. It was long and low-built and the walls were leaning, and you could tell the floor had long since lost its battle against gravity and was lying flat on the ground, the old support blocks having shifted and sunk. Through one of the windows I could see an unlit Christmas tree tilting to port, and an unlit neon sign over the front door that was impossible to read through the slash and thrash of the rain.
    "A black juke joint,” Leonard said.
    "Yep,” I said.
    We continued at a drag, the water splitting before us and slamming against the bottom of the car, floating us left and right. I began to understand how it must feel to be in a submarine.
    Tim's mother's place proved to be well outside of Grovetown, down some incredibly muddy roads, deep in some bottom land that made me nervous, weather being the way it was. I didn't know much about Grovetown, but I knew the dam for Lake Nanonitche was nearby, and not too many years ago it had burst and drowned three people and waterlogged enough property to cause Grovetown and surrounding burgs to become designated as a National Disaster Area.
    When