Read Online Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale - Free Book Online Page A

to tie a fishing fly, reading me a story, tucking me in bed, and underneath our feet, children are rotting.”
    “He was sick in the head, Leonard. You know that. It could have just happened recently.”
    “That only makes it a little better. Shit, it don’t make it any better. . . . Don’t tell Florida. Not yet.”
    “I wouldn’t.”
    “Christ.”
    “Tell you what, Leonard. Let’s put the trunk up for now. Nothing can be changed tonight. Absorb all this best you can. Tomorrow, after Florida leaves, we’ll do what you want to do. Of course, once the police know, it isn’t a secret any longer.”
    “Yeah. Help me with the trunk, Hap.”
    We put the trunk back. Leonard put a few boards over the hole and we stacked some of the newspapers over that. When we were finished, Leonard said, “Thanks, man.”
    “Not at all.”
    We washed up and I got that drink of water I’d been wanting. I went back to the bedroom.
    Florida had kicked off the sheet again. She lay on her back. Her face was smooth and beautiful, and her lips fluttered slightly. Her breasts and pubic hair caught my attention, but somehow, having seen what I had just seen, I couldn’t hold any sexual interest.
    I took off my clothes and eased back in bed and lay on my back and watched the fan go around and around. I listened to the wind in the bottle tree and hoped the souls of the drug dealers were being sucked inside. I wondered if Uncle Chester’s soul had gone in there, the soul of his victim . . . or victims.
    I thought about the trunk and the magazines and I thought about Leonard. The world had certainly come down on him. I thought about the child’s skeleton and what the child had been like when he was alive. Had he been happy before it happened? Thinking of Christmas? Had he been sad? Had he suffered much? Had he known what was happening?
    Across the way, in the crack house, I heard someone laugh, then someone said something loud and there was another laugh, then silence.
    The shadows changed, broadened. A slice of peach-colored light came through the bars and fell across the bed and made Florida’s skin glow as if it had been dipped in honey. I watched her skin instead of the fan, watched it become bright with light. I rolled over and put my arm around her. Her skin was warm, but I felt cold. I got up and got the sheet and spread it over her and crawled under it and held her again. She rolled against my chest and I kissed her on the forehead.
    “Is it morning yet?” she said.
    “If you’re a rooster,” I said.
    “Umm. I’m not a rooster.”
    “I noticed.”
    “Your breath stinks.”
    “Not yours. It’s sweet as a rose. . . . Of course, it’s growing by the septic tank.”
    “You know, you’re my first peckerwood.”
    “And how was it?”
    “Except for the itty-bitty dick part, great.”
    “Nice.”
    “I’ll show you nice. In a moment.”
    She got out of bed and pulled the sheet off and wrapped it around herself. “I’m going to brush my teeth. Right back. Then you’re going to brush your teeth.”
    “Are we going to check for cavities?”
    “There’s one cavity I’d like you to look at,” she said, and left the room. I actually began to get the trunk and the body and the magazines off my mind. At least off the front burner.
    When she came back, she said, “Leonard’s up. He always get up early?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “You think we woke him up last night? You know, we were kind of loud.”
    “It’s OK. Why don’t you take off the sheet?”
    “Teeth.”
    I went and brushed then. I heard Leonard in the newspaper room. He seemed to be pacing. The old floorboards squeaked.
    When I came back to the bedroom, Florida had taken off the sheet and was lying in bed with an unwrapped rubber on her abdomen, a folded pillow under her ass and her legs spread.
    “Hint, hint,” she said.

11.
    It was noon and hot and no breeze was blowing. Florida was long gone to visit her mother. The curb was bordered with cop cars and