'Bad day for a talk?' Jack said.
'Sorry. It's been a peculiar morning,' I said.
Jack still lifted weights and worked out regularly on a speed bag and played polo at a club in Dallas. He was well mannered and intelligent and made little of his war record. Few found any reason not to like him.
His son was another matter. His blond, youthful face always seemed slightly flushed, overheated, his gaze turned inward on thoughts that swam like threadworms in his green eyes.
'Darl had a fistfight with a Mexican kid. We'd like to just shake hands and forget it. But it looks like the family found out we have a little money,' Jack said.
'What about it, Darl?' I asked.
'At the American Legion game. Kid scratched all over my hood with a nail. I asked him why he did it. He said because of the cheer we were yelling in the stands. So I told him it was a free country, people can say anything they want 'cause that's why we got a First Amendment. Wets don't like it, they can swim back home.'
'What cheer?' I asked.
'"Two-bits, four-bits, six-bits a peso, all good pepper bellies stand up and say so."' His eyes smiled at nothing. He rubbed the thick ball of muscle along his forearm.
I looked at his father.
'The Mexican boy had to have his jaws wired together,' Jack said.
I took a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen out of my drawer and pushed them across my desk toward Darl.
'I'd like you to write down what happened for me. Just like you're writing a school essay,' I said.
'I just told you what happened,' he said.
'Darl has dyslexia,' Jack said.
'I see,' I said. 'I tell you what, I'll get back with y'all this afternoon. I'm sorry I'm a little distant this morning.'
Darl Vanzandt played with the high school ring on his finger, his cheeks glowing with peach fuzz. His eyes seemed amused at a private thought. Then he looked me straight in the face and said, 'My father says Lucas Smothers is your woods colt.'
'Go to the car, son,' Jack said.
After Darl was gone, his father extended his hand.
'I apologize. Darl has serious emotional problems. His mother… It's called fetal alcohol syndrome. He's not always accountable for the things he says and does,' Jack said.
'Don't worry about it,' I said.
'I really appreciate your helping us, Billy Bob.'
He squeezed my hand a second time. His grip was encompassing, long lasting, the skin moist and warm. After he was gone and I was seated again behind my desk, I found myself unconsciously rubbing my hand on the knee of my trousers.
Why, I thought.
There was a cut, an indentation, newly scabbed, the size of a tooth, on the ring finger of Darl Vanzandt.
No, I told myself, you're letting it get away from you.
That night, as an electrical storm raged outside, L.Q. Navarro stood in the middle of my living room, his ash-colored Stetson tipped back on his head, and said, 'You were as good a lawman as me, bud. When they're poor and got no power, like Lucas and the dead girl, and other people get involved with what happens to them, you know it's a whole sight bigger than what they want you to think.'
'Why'd you go and die on me, L.Q.?'
He twirled his hat on his index finger, and an instant later, through the window, I saw his silhouette illuminated by a bolt of lightning on a distant hill.
* * *