, for extra protection, sunglasses and a straw hat. She wore so many clothes and hats and scarves, I wasn’t actually sure what she looked like.
The breeze was cool and warm at the same time, the leaves on the cottonwoods turning gold and flickering in the sunlight, the shadows of sparrow hawks gliding across the pasture. I wondered if Eden had been like this. I also wondered if the founders of our country had this very scene in mind when they envisioned the agrarian republic. And I wondered if they regretted staining it, just as Eden had been stained, when they placed a portion of the human family in shackles and chains and murdered unknown numbers of indigenous people.
I guess these are strange thoughts to dwell upon, but they were the thoughts I was having when I saw Detective Benbow in his unmarked car with two cruisers coming up the dirt road, thumping across the wood bridge over the stream that rippled as clear as green Jell-O through the entirety of Mr. Lowry’s property.
Spud took off his hat and wiped his face with an oversize bandana, one of several he’d bought down on the border. He was shirtless, his fat shiny with sweat and flecks of hay. “It’s that same cocksucker, isn’t it?”
“Lay off the language, Spud,” I said. “This isn’t the time for it.”
“I know what’s going on,” he replied. “They get you once, they get you for all time. They keep their foot on the neck of the little people.”
He took his shirt off the taillight of the truck and popped it on his chest and back, drying and cleaning his skin, then put it on and buttoned it. The unmarked car and two cruisers turned off the dirt road and came toward us, the grass whipping under their bumpers.
Detective Benbow got out of his car and crooked a finger at Spud. “Over here,” he said.
“What for?” Spud said.
“Because I said so.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Spud said. One of the deputies started toward him. “Okay, you win,” Spud said. “I’m coming.”
Benbow was wearing his Stetson hat and a white dress shirt with puffed sleeves and a dark vest and black trousers; his lean face was unshaved, his eyes tired. In the patches of sunlight and shadow, he looked like a frontier marshal. He yawned and gazed at the hills on the far side of the Lowry house. “Want to tell me about your legal troubles in Kentucky?”
“I didn’t have any legal troubles in Kentucky,” Spud replied. “Least not more than kid stuff.”
“You were in the reformatory?”
“Ninety days in the county jail.” He twisted his bandana on the corners, blinking, looking at nothing.
“Why were you in the county jail?”
“A misunderstanding.”
“When did child molestation become a misunderstanding?” Benbow said.
“It wasn’t any such thing.”
“What would you call it?”
“This girl and me were in the motion picture. She was fifteen and I was sixteen. I put my hand in the wrong place and she made a big deal out of it.”
“Where were you two nights ago?”
Spud squinted. “I get my days mixed up. Ciphering was never my strong suit.”
“You don’t remember what you did night before last?”
“I went into Trinidad for a little R and R.”
“Getting your ashes hauled? I’d believe that.”
“Having a few beers,” Spud said, his chin in the air.
Benbow stared at the ground thoughtfully, his thumbs in his belt. “Where in Trinidad?”
Spud gave the name of a pool hall. The woman driving the flatbed cut the engine and got out of the cab. Her nickname was Maisie. She was Nisei Japanese and had been in an internment camp during the war. “What wrong?” she said.
Benbow ignored her. “Were you looking to get even with somebody?” he said to Spud.