BBH01 - Cimarron Rose (35 page)

He looked out into the rain, his brow knurled, his
recessed eye bright, brimming with water.

'A Mexican narc works out of San Antone?' he asked.

'Guy's got a nasty record, Moon. He likes to hurt
people. But unlike you, he's got juice with the government.'

'That don't change nothing between me and you.'

'The Big C has its own clock.'

'You still ain't caught on, have you? How come that
pipe joint blowed out on your old man? 'Cause some kid lit a cigarette
down in the hellhole?'

I stood up and straightened my back. I felt two long
ribbons of pain slip down my spine and wrap around my thighs.

'Come on, boy. Ask me,' he said. His legs forked out
straight in front of him, like sticks inserted inside his trousers. His
flat-soled prison work shoes glistened with mud.

I picked up my hat and slapped the dirt off it on my
coat. 'You come near Pete or his mother again, I'll shoot you through
the lungs. It's a promise, Moon,' I said, and started to walk away.

'I went back into the pump station and turned on the
gas. That pipe was loaded when his arc bit into it. You ever watch a
cat chewing on an electric cord? You ought to seen his face when it
went,' Moon said.

He began to laugh, holding his ribs because they
hurt him, his face convulsing like a pixie's. He pushed the mattock
handle at me with one shoe, trying to say something, shaking his head
impotently at the level of mirth bursting from his chest.

Moon had to reach into the past to
injure me, but
across town, at that moment, Darl Vanzandt was buying a length of steel
cable and a set of U-bolts, perhaps to prove that no matter what
happened to Garland T. Moon, his legacy would be passed on to another
generation in Deaf Smith.

'You followed Darl from the
courthouse?' I said to
Temple.

We sat on my back screen porch. Pete was in the
house, watching television, and the yard was full of pools with islands
of leaves floating in them.

'You rubbed his face in it, in front of his friends.
A kid like that doesn't pray for his enemies,' she said.

'I'm sorry for the stupid remark I made to you
yesterday.'

'I already forgot about it.' She picked up her
coffee spoon from her napkin and set it in her saucer.

I waited, but her eyes were deliberately empty, the
balls of her fingers motionless on the table, and I said, 'What's he
want with a pair of U-bolts and twenty feet of steel cable?'

She shook her head, then said, 'For some reason,
those words and the name of Darl Vanzandt make my stomach
crawl… You really gonna strike a match on Bunny's soul?'

'It's going to get even worse later.'

She looked at me and then looked through the screen.
Her face was quiet, full of the thoughts and connections that she
seldom shared. Her shirt had pulled out of her jeans and her baby fat
creased on her hips. 'You want to have dinner with me and Pete?' she
asked.

Pete's mother had consented to let him
return to
Temple's house for the next few days. That night we ate at a cafeteria,
then I dropped them off and parked my car in back, turned on the flood
lamps in the yard, poured some oats in Beau's stall, and walked all the
way around the outside of the house with L.Q.' s .45 revolver under my
raincoat.

Then I fell asleep on the third floor, with
Great-grandpa Sam's journal open in my lap, an illogical image of torn
steel cable and roaring car engines threading in and out of my dreams.

Bunny Vogel was dressed in a brown
suit and sandals
and a wash-faded pink golf shirt when he took the stand. He kept
scratching his face with four fingers, as though an insect had burrowed
into his cheek, and staring out into the courtroom, as though looking
for someone who should have been there but wasn't.

I walked toward the jury box so Bunny would either
have to face them when he answered my questions, or avert his eyes or
drop his head. It wasn't a kind thing to do.

'Did you sleep with Roseanne Hazlitt, Bunny?' I
asked.

'We went out in high school.'

'Did you sleep with her?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Would you say you loved her?'

'Yeah, I reckon. I mean, the way kids do.'

'You were a senior and she was only fifteen when
y'all met, is that right?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Was she a virgin?'

'She told me she wasn't.'

'You found out different, though, didn't you?'

He knitted his fingers together, glanced out at the
courtroom, at the Vanzandts, the boys he had played football with, the
Mexican girl he dated now, at the few empty seats in back where maybe
his father would come in late and sit down.

'Bunny?'

'Yes, sir, I found out I was the first,' he said.

'You hurt her, didn't you? You thought you should
take her to a hospital?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But not in the county where people might know you?'

He turned his head away from the jury and cleared
his throat. 'That's right,' he said.

'The witness will speak up,' the judge said.

'I was afraid. She was underage,' Bunny said. He
pushed himself up in the chair and rubbed his hand on the back of his
neck.

'Then you went to A&M and dumped her?' I
said.

'She didn't lack for boyfriends. She found some a
whole lot better than me.'

'Did you punch out Virgil Morales at Shorty's?'

'Yeah, we got a bad history.'

'He called you a pimp?'

Bunny's right hand squeezed on his thigh. He ran his
tongue over his lips. 'Yeah, that's what he did,' he said.

'How did Roseanne Hazlitt come to know Mr and Mrs
Jack Vanzandt, Bunny?'

'I took her out to their house once. I intro—'

'Introduced her to whom?'

'Just what I said. I took her to their house.'

His words were binding in his throat now, the scar
along his jaw turning as dark as blood against his tan.

'Did you have sexual intercourse with Mrs Vanzandt?'
I asked.

'Relevance, your honor,' Marvin said.

'I'll allow it,' the judge said. 'The witness will
answer the question.'

'I did it once. It was 'cause she was mad over
something, I mean with her husband. She was like that,' Bunny said.

'Did Roseanne ever slap you before that night at
Shorty's?'

'No, sir.'

'Roseanne said her baptism might wash off on you.
Why was she so angry at you, Bunny? Why did she feel so betrayed?'

'Cause she didn't have no friends left. Except
Lucas. He's the only one done right by her.'

'But she wanted you to take her to her baptism?
Because you owed her in a big way, didn't you?'

'I guess that's what she
thought.'

'Why did you owe her, Bunny? Why did she say her
baptism might wash off on you?'

He kneaded his hands between his thighs, the balls
of his feet tapping neurotically on the stand, his head pulled down on
his chest. His long hair fell down around his throat like a girl's.

'Answer the question, please,' I said, but I had
lowered my voice now, the way you do when you hope your own capacity
for cruelty will be forgiven.

'I drove her to Dallas to meet Mr Vanzandt. He
rented three rooms at the Four Seasons, like there wasn't nothing
unusual about him being with a couple of young people. But we all knew
why we was there. I took her down to his room the first night, for
drinks out on the balcony and all, but I left by myself,' he said.

He rested his forehead on his fingers, staring
numbly at the floor. Then he added, as though his own behavior had been
explained to him by someone else, 'That's what I done, all right.'

Emma Vanzandt rose from her chair and walked down
the aisle and out of the courtroom, her face like parchment about to
wrinkle in a flame.

'How many times did you do this?' I asked.

'Whenever he wanted her. At least up until she
thought she was pregnant and he told her to get it cut out of her,
'cause he wasn't gonna have no woods colt with his name on
it…'

The only sound in the courtroom was the hum of the
fans and the rain clicking on the windowsills. No one looked at Jack
Vanzandt, except his son, who studied his father as though a strange
and new creature whom he didn't recognize had just swum into his ken.

Fifteen minutes later a power failure
darkened the
building for three hours, and Temple and Lucas and I drove to a
barbecue restaurant on a hill that overlooked the river outside of
town. It had stopped raining, and the sky in the west was blue and you
could see the shadows of clouds on the hillsides.

Lucas couldn't eat. I reached over and picked a
piece of blooddried tissue paper off his cheek where he had cut himself
shaving.

'There's nothing to it. Just be who you are,' I said.

'Be who I am?' he said.

Temple was watching my face.

'You heard me. Tell the truth, no matter what it is.
When you go on that stand, you just be Lucas. Don't try to hide
anything, don't try to manipulate the jury, don't back away from a
question,' I said.

'What are you gonna ask me?'

'I don't know.'

He looked seasick.

'Do what Billy Bob tells you,' Temple said.

He pressed his napkin to his mouth, then got up from
the table and walked quickly to the men's room.

'You're gonna take him apart, huh?' Temple said.

We waited in my office until the power
went back on
in the courthouse, then a bailiff phoned me and we went downstairs and
across the street and met Marvin Pomroy coming down the courthouse walk.

'I need to talk to you,' he said to me.

'What's up?'

He looked at Temple and Lucas.

'I bet it's earth-shaking stuff, like prosecuting
parking offenders in the most corrupt shithole in Texas,' Temple said,
and went up the walk with Lucas.

Marvin looked at her back, his eyes involuntarily
dropping to her hips.

'You think she'd work for me?' he asked.

'How about getting to it, Marvin?'

'Getting to it? You stoked up Garland Moon and aimed
him at this Mexican drug agent, didn't you?'

The air smelled of wet leaves and sewer mains
swollen with rainwater and pavement drying in the sunlight. A sheriff's
deputy led five black inmates in jailhouse whites past us on a wrist
chain.

'Look at me!' Marvin said.

'Take it easy, Marvin.'

'Felix Ringo's got a fuck pad at the Conquistador.
He says a guy he swears is Garland Moon tried to get through the
bathroom window. He says the guy was carrying one of these small
chainsaws, the kind you cut up cordwood with.'

'That's bad news, isn't it?'

'Are you out of your mind? You bust up a psychopath
with an ax handle, then screw down his dials and turn him loose on a
policeman. You're supposed to be an officer of the court.'

'How do you know I sent him after Ringo?'

'Because you're still a vigilante. Because you still
think this is the O.K. Corral.'

'Thanks for sharing, Marvin. I really appreciate it.'

'Sharing? Moon trashed Ringo's place down in San
Antone. Get this. He defecated on the upholstery. What's all this tell
you?'

'He's terminal and knows it.'

'Yeah, well, here's the surprise. Felix Ringo's
getting a Mexican warrant on Moon for scoring some dope across the
border. Moon might do time in a Mexican slam. The centipedes come free
with the rice and beans.'

'For some reason, you don't look all broken up.'

'You're still not hearing me. When Moon gets word of
this, and he will, who's he going to come after?'

'Well, you never know what's down at the bottom of
the Cracker Jack box, Marvin.'

He shook his head and walked away, trying to smooth
the wrinkles out of the seersucker coat he held in his right hand, a
good man who would forever serve causes that were not his own.

Lucas took the oath just after one
o'clock. He sat
very still in the witness chair, his hands splayed on his thighs, his
face damp in the humidity. His throat was already streaked with color,
as though it had been rouged.

'When you were first arrested, you said you hardly
knew Roseanne Hazlitt. You said you didn't even know her last name.
That was a lie, wasn't it?' I said.

'Yes, sir.'

'Why would you lie like that?'

'Cause she told me she was pregnant. 'Cause y'all
would think it was me hurt her if y'all knew it was my baby…'
He took a breath. 'I lied 'cause I didn't have no guts.'

'How'd you feel about Roseanne?'

'She was a good person. She couldn't hep the things
she done, I mean, with drinking and that kind of stuff.'

'Did she tell you who might have made her pregnant?'

'Objection, hearsay,' Marvin said.

'I'll allow it,' the judge said.

'Some older guy she was seeing in town. I didn't
ask. It didn't make me feel too good.'

'You thought the baby could be yours, didn't you?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Why?'

'Sir?'

'Why did you think it could be yours?'

'Cause we was making love.'

'That's not what I'm asking you, Lucas. Did you use
a condom?'

He rubbed his palms on his trousers and looked at
the judge.

'Answer the question, please,' she said.

'No, sir, we didn't use none,' Lucas said.

'That sounds dumb to me. Why not?'

'Objection, your honor. He's badgering and
cross-examining his own client,' Marvin Pomroy said.

'Approach,' the judge said. She took off her
black-framed glasses and pushed aside the microphone. 'What are you
doing, Mr Holland?' she said.

'I'm going to prove my client is psychologically
incapable of having committed the crime,' I replied.

'Psychologically incapable? Wonderful. Your honor,
he's not only appointed himself the repository of Freudian thought,
he's psychoanalyzing someone who was drunk,' Marvin said.