Read Online The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale - Free Book Online Page A

bites. And they can cause death, and have. Like I said, in the hundreds."
    "They bite you to death?" said Bad Mustache.
    "I'm a little sketchy on if it's the bite or the poisons in their system that kills humans. They do take a lot of meat with them, though. Actually, you'd have to get Dr. Pine t0 explain it to you."
    "Wow!" said Paisley Shirt.
    "Wow, indeed," I said.
    "But why do you call them Christmas ants?" Bad Mustache asked.
    "Again, you got me. I'm no ant expert. Maybe because they were discovered around Christmastime. That's what I figure."
    The lady came out with my hamburgers.
    "LaBorde," said Paisley Shirt. "That's not that far from here."
    "No it isn't," I said. I got up, went over to the register, and called back to them. "I wouldn't alarm myself. I'd just be alert. Watch the ground. Especially at sunset and sunrise. That's when they like to travel."
    The lady took my money at the register. She said, "Those boys are so dumb, I sometimes think maybe my kids were switched at birth, and they gave me these two jackasses. All they know is what they see on the TV."
    "Maybe they ought to watch the educational channel. Last night they had a great National Geographic special on bears. I tell you, it tantalized me to the point I couldn't sleep afterwards."
    "I like a good nature program myself," she said.
    I got my change, and started out. Paisley Shirt said, "Hey, you said there were two guys we ought to meet."
    "Well," I said, "I meant you would have liked them. They're back in LaBorde. Or were. But, you know . . . the ants."
    "You been jacking with us, ain't you?" said Paisley Shirt.
    "There's lots of people who've ignored the facts of scientific research," I said. "All of it to their detriment. Believe what you want, it's nothing to me. It's not my job to educate the masses. I work for the Water Department. But I will say this. I'm proud of that. I don't care what anyone else thinks about the Water Department. I'm proud."
    I went out to the car and got in. I shook Leonard. He came around slowly and looked at me. "Man, I sort of passed out."
    "Let's go."
    Leonard started the car as the brothers came out of the cafe, stood on the sidewalk and looked at us. Leonard watched them a moment, backed out and drove off.
    "Trouble?" he asked.
    "No. But I will say this. It's not every day you can actually step into a science-fiction episode of The Andy Griffith Show by way of Deliverance ."
    Chapter 7
    We drove out the way we'd come, stopped off at a little roadside park we'd passed. We got out under the pearl gray sky and ate our hamburgers and drank our coffee and rested our elbows on the concrete table. It was cold and the air smelled wet. Blue-jays, bold as priests, came out of the woods and hopped around the table looking for crumbs. I don't think we left too many. We were starved.
    "I could do that again," Leonard said. "Even if it did taste as if it was rubbed under someone's armpit first."
    "Frankly, short of the meat being kneaded between the cheeks of a fat man's ass, I could have eaten it anyway."
    "And how old were those peanut patties? Them peanuts were like gravel."
    "The peanut patties aren't nearly as big a problem as the fact we still don't know where we're going to stay. Did you have an urge for two of those, by the way? The peanut patties, I mean?"
    "What?"
    "Nothing. Buddy, I tell you, the vibes from that town, from that cafe, it's like going back to the middle sixties, when I was marching for civil rights and getting my head cracked. Not only because I was for civil rights, but because I was white and marching for civil rights. You know, I don't know I'm brave enough to do what I did then. It was all going on now, I think I'd hide in the house."
    "It is going on now, and you're not hiding in the house. You're back in the shit. You weren't special brave then, Hap. You were young and stupid and overly idealistic. You're still the last two, even if the idealistic part is slightly tainted."
    "What amazes me,