Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Holland 1)

'Come in,' she said.

Her small living room was furnished with rattan chairs and a couch and a round glass table. A yellow counter with three stools divided the kitchen from the living room. She was barefoot and wore jeans and a white and burnt orange University of Texas Longhorn T-shirt. A copy of The New Yorker was splayed open on the glass tabletop and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses lay next to it.

'You just happened by and saw Moon outside my office?' I said.

'What's this about, Mr Holland?'

'I think I'm developing an ongoing problem with the sheriff's office. I think it's because of Lucas Smothers.'

She hadn't asked me to sit down. She placed one hand against the counter and pushed her feet into a pair of white moccasins as though she were about to go somewhere. Her eyes were violet colored, unfocused, caught somewhere between two thoughts.

'You shouldn't come here,' she said.

'I wonder how I should read that. Is there hidden meaning there? I always have trouble with encoded speech.'

'If you don't like rudeness, you shouldn't keep forcing the issue, Mr Holland.'

'My name is Billy Bob.'

'I know who you are.' Then I saw the color flare behind her freckles, not from anger but as if she had made an admission she shouldn't.

'You like Mexican food?' I asked.

'Good night.' She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it.

'Tomorrow night? I appreciate what you've done for me.'

She opened the door and I started outside. I was only inches away from her now and I could smell the perfume behind her ears and hear her breathing and see the rise and fall of her breasts. A tiny gold chain and cross hung around her neck.

'Moon won't come at you head-on. He'll use Jimmy Cole,' she said.

I felt my mouth part as I stared into her eyes.

It was sunrise the next morning when I pulled into the dirt drive of Vernon Smothers's two-bedroom white frame house, with a mimosa in the front yard, a sprinkler spinning in a sickly fashion by the wood steps, a partially collapsed garage in back, and every available foot of surrounding property under cultivation.

I walked along the edge of a bean field to an irrigation ditch where Lucas stood up to his knees in the water, raking dead vegetation out of the bottom and piling it on the bank.

'What are you doing?' I said.

'My dad uses it in the compost heap.'

'He's not one to waste.'

'You don't like him much, do you?' he said. His face and denim shirt were spotted with mud, his arms knotted with muscle as he lifted a rake-load of dripping weeds to the edge of the ditch.

'Garland Moon's out. I want you to be careful,' I said.

'Last night a Mexican in the poolroom offered me five-hundred dollars to drive a load of lumber down to Piedras Negras.'

'What are you doing in the poolroom?'

'Just messin' around.'

'Yeah, they only sell soda pop in there, too. Why's this Mexican so generous to you?'

'He's got a furniture factory down there. He cain't drive long distances 'cause he's got kidney trouble or something. He said I might get on reg'lar.'

'You leave this county, Lucas, you go back to jail and you stay there.'