Rumble Tumble

Over the last few months I’d been halfheartedly going through the stuff I’d gathered up after the storm. Going through it, not so much afraid of what I might find, but more afraid of what I might not find. Some part of my life gone.

The twister had knocked the largest part of my goods ass over tea kettle, blown them to hell, or maybe worse, all the way to New York City. Maybe up North some Yankee was looking at my books, wearing one of my shoes. Laughing at my photographs. My favorite pants might be in a tree somewhere. My record collection at the bottom of a lake. It was too goddamn depressing to contemplate.

I had just put a batch of ruined books in the trash box when Leonard came into the barn. He was wearing sweats and carrying two cups of coffee. He looked as if he was straight from the shower. His short kinky hair glistened and his face looked like buffed ebony. The sunlight shone brightly through the door behind him, and I could see steam rising up from the coffee, blending with the dust motes in the air. Leonard said, “You going to move in with her?”

I stood and brushed the dust off my hands. Leonard gave me a cup. “I don’t know,” I said, and sipped the coffee. It was good rich coffee with some kind of chocolate flavoring in it.

“You ought to.”

“You trying to get rid of me?”

“Some. You’re fuckin’ up my house.”

“Like it’s anything special.”

“Hey, it may be a shack, but it’s better than your shack, which, I might point out, would be harder to put together than one of those thousand-piece landscape puzzles. If you had all the pieces.”

“Touché.”

“And the way you handle your domestic business, man, it’s tiresome. Think I want to have your old smelly drawers hanging on my couch arms for doilies? Goddamn shoes in the middle of the floor, dirty old socks up under the chair. Hell, man, smells like someone’s been wiping their ass and hidin’ the paper somewhere.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“All right, then, your shoes are slightly off center of the middle of the floor. But I still trip over them. Now what about Brett? You movin’ in with her, or not?”

“I’ve been burned so many times in love I’m not sure I want to go through it again.”

“Yeah, but all your other relationships were stupid. This one isn’t.”

“She set her husband’s head on fire, burned his car too.”

“Don’t forget she beaned him with a shovel and he’s in a home somewhere trying to decide if blue socks go with a paper hat and a fart.”

“There’s that.”

“Maybe she should have left the car alone, Hap, but way I see it, far as his head’s concerned, sonofabitch had it comin’. Besides, she didn’t burn his whole head up, just some of it. Guy beats a woman on a daily basis, and one day she’s had enough, it’s okay she sets the guy’s head on fire.”

“This coming from an arsonist.”

“Don’t bring that up. You’re tryin’ to change the subject. Law let me go, didn’t they?”

“It was a miracle.” And it was. Leonard had burned down three crack houses, and each time he’d managed to get off. ’Course, I helped burn down one of them, so I couldn’t be too self-righteous.

“They let Brett go, didn’t they?” Leonard said.

“The judge was a lecher. She was young then. She wore tight shorts and a halter top. I’m surprised they didn’t throw her a parade and give her the key to the city. Way she looks now, back then, man, she must have been something.”

“Being queer, it’s hard for me to know what a good-lookin’ woman’s supposed to look like, but I figure Brett’s it. She’s got all her workin’ parts, don’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“You get along, don’t you?”

“Yeah. She’s funny. I like being around her. We seem to have something going besides dating and rutting, although I hasten to add I don’t want to undervalue rutting.”

“Then what’s the holdup?”

“I just don’t want to screw up again.”

“Hap, that’s what you do best. And if you ain’t willin’ to screw up, you ain’t ever gonna get any of the good out of life either. That’s the way of the world, according to Leonard Pine. And keep in mind I just went through somethin’ worse, and I’m out here lookin’ for love all over again. It’s the way of our species.”

“We’re a stupid species.”

“Yeah, but we’re consistently stupid. So, you get what I’m sayin’?”

“You’re as big a screwup as me?”

“No one is, Hap. But thing is, even though you fuck up more than most, everyone fucks up. Only difference with you is you think your fuckups matter more than anyone else’s. Strangely enough, there’s a kind of conceit in all that.”

“I reckon you’re right.”

“Good. Why don’t you tell her you’re moving in?”

“Because I’m still not sure.”

“You see her today, right?”

“Right.”

“She’s expecting an answer, right?”

“Right.”

“Do it.”

2

I drank my coffee, sorted my junk awhile longer, put on my sweats, and Leonard and I went jogging along the road in front of his house and past my place, which now consisted of a bathtub. It was the only thing the tornado hadn’t taken away. And good thing too. Brett had been hiding in it.