Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

Kippy Jo stood at the kitchen window, the breeze in her face, and listened to Wilbur hitch the horse trailer on his pickup truck and rattle past the barn out into the fi

elds. Then she fixed coffee for herself and drank it at the kitchen table. When he didn’t return in an hour, as he had promised, she went into the backyard and looked in the direction of the hills and listened to the wind, her black hair whirling on her neck.

She heard horses nickering in an arroyo, the locked windmill blades buffeting against the wind, the water from the horse tank leaking over the rim into the dirt. Inside her mind, she saw an alfalfa field that bloomed with a fecund, green odor when lightning leaped in the sky; a train crossing a trestle in the hills, and in its aftermath pieces of flame coiling like snakes around the greasewood. She could hear the clicking of the train wheels on the sides of the hills, then the echo of the whistle blowing back over the tops of the cars.

When the train was gone she should have heard only wind again, and the wet, coursing sound it made across the alfalfa when Wilbur had opened the irrigation locks and flooded the pasture. But she heard a different sound now, first an engine, then wind flapping across a moving surface, and she knew the winged man had arrived.

She turned out all the lights in the house and walked out to the barn and felt the lightbulb inside the door for heat. She pulled the beaded chain on it and heard it click off and stood with one hand on the edge of a stall, listening. A washtub Wilbur shelled corn in oscillated in the wind on a wood peg against a post. She walked to the opposite end of the barn and looked out at the darkness and the sky that flared with dry lightning and heard the thunder rolling across the hardpan like apples tumbling down a wood chute into a cider press.

Horses labored out of the arroyo, their chests heaving, their hooves thudding on the sod, spooking walleyed from a presence that moved out of the darkness toward the house.

Kippy Jo retreated backwards, touching the screen with her hand, pulling it open, and stepping inside the kitchen, her blind eyes lighted by the sky. She latched the screen, bumped against the table, and felt her heart seize in her chest at the squeak the wood legs made against the linoleum.

She heard the winged man unchain the lock on the windmill and the blades clatter with life and the well water sluice cold and bright out of the pipe that extended over the horse tank. His hair flowed off his head like feathers, and he cupped his hand under the pipe and rubbed water on his face and through his hair, then wiped his skin and hair dry with his coat sleeve and drank from a heavy bottle that he carried in one hand.

When he stepped away from the tank his feet made cleft-shaped tracks in the mud.

Kippy Jo breathed hard through her mouth. The landscape in her mind had changed, and she saw the winged man in a foreign place, one of rain and heat where fish heads were strewn on a dirt road that wound between cinder-block huts with tin roofs, and the winged man and soldiers in uniform with steel helmets were pushing Indians backwards into a ditch.

The winged man was right outside the screen door now, one foot poised on the bottom step. The wind straightened the curtains, flapping the tips, and puffed open the front door. Kippy Jo felt her way along the wall to the bedroom and touched one prong of the antler gun rack that Wilbur had nailed above the dresser.

What had he said about the gun? She couldn’t remember clearly. There ain’t no such thing as an unloaded firearm in this house, Kippy Jo. A person remembers that, he don’t ever have an accident.

Was that it?

She wasn’t sure.

She lifted the .308 Savage lever-action off the antler prongs, then opened the drawer of the nightstand and removed a .22 Magnum revolver that was inserted in a holster that had no cartridge belt. She sat on the bed and waited, the lever-action rifle across her lap.

The winged man sliced the screen with a knife blade and popped the latch free with one finger and stepped inside the kitchen. He hesitated, listening to the darkness, touching the warmth of the coffeepot on the stove.

Then he pushed open the screen door and let it fall back against the jamb, but she knew he was still inside the house. She fitted her hand inside the lever that would feed a round into the rifle’s chamber, but she didn’t know if there were bullets in the magazine or if in fact a round wasn’t already seated in the chamber.

There ain’t no such thing as an unloaded firearm in this house.

What had he meant?

She remained motionless on the bed and left the lever in place. Then she felt the safety and clicked it off and hooked her index finger around the trigger.

The winged man’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness now and he didn’t need to turn on the light when he entered the bedroom. In her mind the room was filled with moonglow and the winged man stood above her, his eyes fixed on the rifle, unsure whether the next sound his feet made would offer her a target.

She raised the rifle toward his chest and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

The winged man exhaled his breath in a fetid plume of alcoholic air that touched her skin like damp wool.

“Darlin’, you aged me ten years,” he said, and gently pulled the rifle from her hands and sat next to her on the bed. He set his bottle on the floor by his feet and pulled the lever loose from the stock of the rifle.

“Magazine’s full. You could have boiled my cabbage,” he said. When she didn’t reply, he moved closer to her and fitted his arm around her waist. “Wilbur due back directly?”

She looked straight ahead, her right hand resting under a pillow.

“I ain’t a bad man, darlin’. I always go the extra mile to work things out. Anybody knows me will tell you that. I ain’t that fond of Earl Deitrich myself,” he said.

He leaned toward her, his eyes shut, and pressed his lips against her cheek, his forearm gathering her waist closer against him, his tongue quivering slightly against her skin.

Her fingers closed on the wood grips of the revolver. She slipped it from the holster under the pillow, cocking the hammer back with her thumb, locking the cylinder into place. When she pulled the trigger, the barrel was two inches from the winged man’s right eye.