Cimarron Rose bbh-1

by James Lee Burke

  A pair of truck high beams flooded the interior of the chopped-down Ford with a naked white brilliance, and I saw Darl's head on his father's shoulder, his eyes still closed. Then Jack brushed something away from his boy's eye, a food crumb, perhaps, and kissed him on the forehead, his face filled with an undisguised grief.

  It was still raining and dark at sunrise the next morning. I read from Great-grandpa Sam's journal at the breakfast table.

  August 30, 1891

  The preacher who ordained me had been branded in the face with burning horse shoes. He said all good things come to the righteous and the just. His words rose like snow flakes from the heat that had been seared into his skin. But today those words ring hollow on my ears. I have proved unworthy of my ordination. It is a folly for me to pretend otherwise.

  Them in the mud caves are drunk tonight. They brought in two white prostitutes and killed a wild pig and cooked it in a brush fire on the river bank and danced around the flames to fiddle music. I have thought of heading south for the Red River and Texas, but federal marshals have been stationed along the tick-fever line to keep sick herds from trailing up to the railheads in Kansas and I will be served with a federal warrant and locked in manacles for sure.

  My oil lamp has burned low and our little house is filled with shadows as I write these lines. The dirt in our garden is dry and cracked and swarming with insects, and Jennie is trying to swat the deer mice out of the melons and pumpkins with a burlap bag. It won't do no good, but I will not try to tell her that.

  It is hard for me to think of myself as a fugitive from the law. The idea of it makes the insides of my hands sting as though bitten by sweatbees. Them from the mud caves are dipping whiskey out of the busted head of a barrel now, framed in the firelight like painted Indians. At Little Round Top I watched soldiers, boys, really, die in the V of my musket sight. Those memories cause me grave regret, even though it was war. But now I see rocks high on the hill above the Cimarron, a sharpshooter's den made for a Henry repeater or Winchester rifle. Down below, the Doolins and Daltons tip their cups in the firelight. I have to wipe the sweat off my palms onto my britches and not think the thoughts I am thinking.

  I tell myself, Better to slake thirst with whiskey than blood. But if I have come to this, I know my life as a drunkard is about to begin again. Tomorrow I'm going to ride north to the court in Wichita and leave the Rose of Cimarron behind. I have great trepidation about my treatment in a Yankee court and do not know if I will ever see her or Texas again. I hear tell a Scottish slaver wrote the beautiful hymn 'Amazing Grace'. I never thought much on the words 'a wretch like me' until this moment.

  I'll ride through the camp below the mud caves in the morning, just so the Daltons and Doolins can never say they didn't have a chance at my back. Emmett can usually control the others, but if he ain't around, maybe my stay on the Cimarron won't end so bad after all. chapter thirty-one

  The next day Marvin Pomroy recalled Virgil Morales to the stand and tore him up. After Marvin sat back down, I looked over at his table. His coat hung on the back of his chair, and his white shirt looked as bright as new snow against his fire-engine-red suspenders. He saw me looking at him and raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Marvin didn't take prisoners.

  During a midmorning recess Emma Vanzandt rose from a bench in the corridor outside the courtroom and stopped me and Temple Carroll. Darl remained seated behind her, dressed like a fraternity boy, in grey slacks and a blue sports coat, a gold chain and tiny gold football strung outside the collar of his shirt.

  'Got a minute?' she said. Her face was heavily made up, and threadlike lines spread from her eyes and the sides of her mouth when she feigned a smile for passersby.

  'Sorry,' I said. Down the corridor I saw Jack Vanzandt buying a cigar at the concession counter.

  Emma's thumb and index finger circled my wrist.

  'Don't do this,' she said.

  'What?'

  'Blame the girl's death on Darl.'

  'He's not a defendant.'

  'Don't insult me, Billy Bob.'

  'Your boy's never been made accountable. Why don't y'all let him stand on his own for once?'

  'Jack's made arrangements to send him to a treatment center in California. It's a one-year in-patient program. For God's sakes, give us a chance to correct our problem.'

  'Darl came out to my house. He offered to give up his father,' I said.

  'He offered to-' Her face had the startled, still quality of someone caught in a photographer's strobe.

  'You've got a monster in your house, Emma. Whatever happens in this courthouse won't change that,' I said.

  Temple and I left her standing in the middle of the corridor, her mouth moving soundlessly while her stepson snipped his fingernails on the bench behind her.

  Temple and I went up to the second floor of the courthouse and bought cold drinks from the machine and drank them by a tall, arched window at the end of the hall. It had stopped raining temporarily, but the streets were flooded and the wake from passing automobiles slid up onto the courthouse lawn.

  'You bothered about what you said to Emma?' Temple asked.

  'Not really.'

  'If you're worried about hanging it on Darl Vanzandt-'

  'The jury won't see motive in Darl. We can make him an adverb but not a noun.'

  She was silent. I heard her set her aluminum soda can on top of the radiator.

  'You want to spell it out?' she asked.

  'Bunny Vogel's going to have a bad day,' I said.

  'Wrong kid for it.'

  'Damn, I wish I could adjust like that. "Wrong kid for it." That's great.'

  I walked back down the hall to the stairs, my boots echoing off the wood floor.

  She caught me halfway down, stepped in front of me on the landing, her arms pumped. A strand of her chestnut hair was curved on her chin. 'There's one person only, one, who has always been on your side. Sorry I never let you fuck me a few times so I could leave town without even a phone call. You only get that kind of loyalty with federal grade,' she said.

  She walked down the rest of the stairs alone, the anger in her eyes her only defense against tears. I stood in the silence, wondering what the final cost of Lucas's trial would be.

  After Darl Vanzandt took the oath he sat at an angle in the witness chair, lowered his eyes coyly, as though the world's attention were upon him, played with his class ring, suppressed a smile when he looked at his friends.

  'Bunny Vogel used to go out with Roseanne Hazlitt, didn't he?' I asked.

  'Everybody knows that.'

  'Is Bunny your friend?'

  'He used to be.'

  'He looked out for you at Texas A amp;M, didn't he?'

  'We were from the same town, so we hung out.'

  'He paid off a grader to change an exam score for you, didn't he?'

  Darl's green eyes looked at nothing, then clouded and focused on me for the first time, as though the words he heard had to translate into a different language before they became thoughts in his mind. He rubbed the peach fuzz on his jawline. 'Yeah, we both got expelled,' he said.

  'Did your stepmother get him a job at the skeet club?'

  'Yeah.'

  'You double-dated and you hung out at the drive-in restaurant together?'

  'Sometimes.'

  'I'd say y'all were pretty tight, right?'

  'That was then, not now.'

  'You let people get in your face, Darl?'

  'What d'you mean?'

  'Dis you, push you around, act like you're a woosh?'

  'No, I don't take that stuff.'

  'What happened to the Mexican kid who scratched up your car with a nail?'

  'I kicked his ass, that's what.'

  'Because people don't get in your face and abuse your property, right? You stomp their ass?'

  'Yeah, that's right.'

  'You ever beat up a woman, a prostitute in San Antonio by the name of Florence LaVey?'

  'No, I didn't. I protected
myself from people who were rolling me.'

  'What happens when people hit your friends, Darl? You kick their ass, too.'

  'You goddamn right.' He looked at his friends and grinned.

  'Did you see Roseanne Hazlitt slap Bunny Vogel the night she was attacked?'

  He pushed at his nose with the flats of his fingers. His eyes were threaded with veins, fixed on mine.

  'Yeah. At Shorty's. It wasn't a big deal. She always had her head up her hole about something,' he said.

  'It made you mad to see your friend get hit, didn't it?'

  'No. I bought her and Lucas a drink. I wasn't mad at anybody.'

  'Is that when you put roofies-downers-in Lucas's drink?' I asked.

  'Objection, your honor. He's badgering and leading his own witness,' Marvin said.

  'Withdrawn,' I said. 'Darl, why'd Roseanne slap Bunny Vogel?'

  'She said she was getting baptized. She wanted him to take her to this holy-roller church that's on TV.'

  'Baptized?'

  'I told you, she had boards in her head. She goes, "Do something decent for a change. Take me to my baptism. Maybe it'll wash off on you." So Bunny says, "Let's take a drive. I'll roll down the windows so you can air the reefer out of your head."

  'She goes, "I'm going down to the Lakewood Church in Houston. I done talked to the preacher already."

  'Bunny says, "Shorty's is a funny kind of church house to show folks you been saved." She goes, "I'm here to meet Lucas Smothers. At least he don't treat his old friends like yesterday's fuck." Another guy goes, "That's 'cause you're Lucas's reg'lar fuck now."

  'Bunny put his hand on her arm and said he'd take her home. That's when she slapped him. She walked on inside and shot him the bone.'

  Darl's eyes smiled at his friends.

  'Did Roseanne once work in the same church store you do, Darl?'

  I saw a thought, like a yellow-green insect, catch in his eye. Then I realized his distraction had nothing to do with my question. He was staring at a spectator in the back of the courtroom. The spectator, Felix Ringo, sat by the aisle with his tropical hat on his knee, one elbow propped on the chair arm, three fingers resting across his mouth.

  'What's that got to do with anything?' Darl asked.

  'Answer the question,' the judge said.

  'Yeah, she worked there,' Darl said.

  'Who got her the job?' I asked.

  'My parents did. They felt sorry for her 'cause she had a crummy life.'

  'How'd your parents know Roseanne Hazlitt, Darl?'

  'Bunny brought her over. You saying I was mixed up with her? I wouldn't touch her. It was probably like the Houston Ship Channel down there.'

  He leaned forward mischievously, his eyes bright under his blond brows, as though in leaning closer to his friends, whose faces were lit with the same mocking grin as his, he shut out the rest of the courtroom.

  'Did you and your friends dope Lucas Smothers and strip off his clothes and pour a bucket of feces on him at the country club? Did you vandalize his house? Did you try to threaten me at my home? Did you murder an indigent man, Darl?'

  'Mr Holland, you're way beyond anything I'll allow,' the judge said.

  'Withdrawn,' I said.

  Darl got down from the stand, his face stupefied, his mouth round and wordless, his teeth exposed like those of a hungry fish.

  At noon Marvin Pomroy caught me in the corridor and asked me into his office. He sat down behind his desk, took his glasses off, and rubbed one eyebrow with the back of his wrist.

  'I'm not comfortable with some stuff that's going on here,' he said.

  'Gee, Marvin, sorry to hear that,' I said.

  'I checked into this threat Moon supposedly made against Bunny Vogel and his father. But there's no handle on it… He walked into their house without knocking.'

  'So why tell me about it?'

  He picked up a sheet of pink carbon paper from his desk blotter.

  'That gal down the road from you, Wilma Flores, the mother of the little boy who's always fishing in your tank?' he said.

  'Pete's mother.'

  'Yeah, that his name, Pete. She made a 911 at five this morning. She was showering to go to work. She went to wipe off the bathroom window to see if it was still raining outside. Six inches from her face is a guy with tufts of red hair slicked down on his head and blue eyes like she's never seen in a human being before.'

  I felt a tingling, a deadness, in my hands that made me open and close my palms.

  'The deputy put it down as a Peeping Tom incident. Nothing would have come of it, except I heard him talking about it when I was in the bullpen this morning. I made him go back out to the house with mug shots of Garland Moon and five other of our graduates. The deputy said she took one look at Moon's photo and wouldn't even touch it with her finger when she identified him,' Marvin said.

  'Where's Pete now?'

  'At school. I'll put a deputy at their house this afternoon.'

  'Your deputies are worthless. Did you pick up Moon?'

  'He has two witnesses who say he was eating breakfast in a diner at five A.M.'

  'You believe them?'

  'It's a Peeping Tom complaint. Even if we could charge him, he'd be out on bond in an hour.'

  Then his defensiveness, his frustration with me and his job went out of his face.

  'I called the lady and offered to keep Pete at our house for a while. She said I was helping Social Services take her little boy from her… Where you going?' he said.

  Stonewall Judy granted a recess until the following morning.

  I drove home and went into the barn, unlocked the tack room and sorted through the garden hoes and rakes and mauls and picks and axes that were stacked inside an old Mayflower moving drum. The edges of the tools were flecked with bits of dried mud and tangles of dead weeds from cleaning the vegetable garden and flower beds in the early spring, or strung with resinous wisps of pine from the cords of wood I had split last fall. But I knew the tool I was looking for.

  It was a mattock whose heavy, oblong iron head had already worn loose from the helve. I clamped a pair of vise grips on the wedge that held the handle fast inside the mattock head, twisted it out of the wood, and slipped the handle free. It was made from ash, thick across the top to support the weight of the iron head, the grain worn smooth at the grip. I propped it on the passenger seat in the Avalon and headed down the road to town just as a curtain of rain moved in a steady line across the clumped-up herd of red Angus in my neighbor's draw.

  I parked behind the tin shed where Moon worked. The rain pattered on my slicker and the brim of my Stetson as I pulled open the back door of the shed. A black man in a bikini swimsuit with a yellow rag tied around his head was grinding a metal bracket on an emery wheel.

  'Hep you?' he asked.

  'Is this your shop?'

  'What you want?'

  'Garland Moon.'

  His eyes went over my person. 'That a chunk of wood under your raincoat?'

  'It's been that kind of day.'

  He nodded. 'He gone down to Snooker's Big Eight.'

  'You going to use the telephone on me?'

  'Rather y'all do it there than here… Tell you something, a man like that is looking for somebody to click off his switch. You don't do it, he'll find the right man sooner or later.'

  I drove a half mile down the road to a bluff above the river and a long wood building that was ventilated with window fans and set in a grove of oak trees that had been the site of a beer garden during the 1940s. The parking lot was full of pickup trucks and motorcycles, and rain was blowing through the trees and streaking on the front windows, which glowed with purple and red neon.

  I walked the length of the building, stepping across puddles, looking through the spinning blades of fans at the felt tables, pinball machines that swam with light, bikers drinking beer at the bar, an enormous Confederate flag ruffling against the far wall. Then I looked through a screen door and saw him bent over a cue, sighting on t
he diamond-shaped nine-ball rack, the triceps of his poised right arm knotted with green veins. He drove the cue ball into the rack like a spear.

  He raised up, his mouth smiling at the perfection of the break, his fingers reaching for the chalk. Then he heard the screen open and close behind him and he turned toward me just as I whipped the mattock handle, edge outward, across his jaw.

  His knees buckled slightly, and a choked sound, a grunt, came out of his throat. He pressed his hand against his cheek as though he had a toothache, his eyes glazing with shock and surprise, and I hit him again, this time whipping the helve across his mouth.

  His pool cue had clattered to the floor. He looked at it rolling away from him, his mouth draining blood on the apron of the table, and I hit him again, in the ribs, and again in the head, the neck, across the ear; then Moon was stumbling out the back screen door, through the trees, along the edge of the bluff. Down below, the river was covered with rain rings.

  I swung the mattock handle with both hands across his spine. I seemed to slip out of time and place, as though I had been absorbed into a red-black square of film that was like the color of fire inside oil smoke. Then, like a man awakening from a dream, I realized the mattock handle was no longer in my grasp, that I was on one knee beside him, his head lolling against a tree trunk, my fist driving into his face.

  'That's enough, motherfucker,' a voice said behind me.

  I turned and looked up into the disjointed, heated eyes of a booted man in a leather vest whose body glowed with odor.

  'Private conversation,' I said. But my words sounded outside my skin, as though they had been spoken by someone else and I heard them through the rain. The back of my right fist was flecked with Moon's blood.

  A biker next to him studied my face and extended his arm across his friend's chest.

  'His name's Holland. Sonofabitch is crazy. Leave him alone. Snooker done already called the Man,' he said.

  They and those who had followed them walked away, their boots splashing in puddles, as though water had no effect on their clothes and bodies, their hair blowing in the wind like dirty string.

  I looked again at Moon, his face, the tree he lay against, the grass stains on his elbows, the skinned lesions around his eyes, the rain dripping out of the overhead branches, all of it coming into focus now, my breath quieting in my throat, as though a bird with blood in its beak had flown out of my chest.