Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“You have three clients—Wilbur and Kippy Jo Pickett and Skyler Doolittle—involved in an adversarial relationship with Earl Deitrich. You’re getting in his wife’s bread and you ask me what’s the point?”

“I don’t care for your language,” I said.

Marvin turned from the window and bunched my sleeve in his fist, his eyes full of pity and disappointment.

“You could be disbarred for stuff like this. You’re a pain in the ass, but you’re an honest man. If you let me down, Billy Bob, I’m going to bust your jaw,” he said.

• • •

That evening Kippy Jo Pickett hauled five buckets of water from the horse tank and started a fire of slat wood under an iron pot set on stones in the lee of the barn. She sat in the shade, upwind of the fire, and felt the heat begin to crawl through the iron and rise from the water’s surface. The ground was littered with the chickens Wilbur had butchered on the stump before driving off to a temporary job at a rig out in the hills, their headless bodies flopping in the dirt, their feathers powdering with dust. When the first steam bubbles chained to the pot’s surface, she lifted two chickens by the feet and dipped them into the water, then sat back down in her chair and began ripping sheaths of wet feathers from their skins and dropping them into a paper bag. That’s when she heard the car turn into the drive and stop, the twin exhausts echoing off the side of the house.

She wiped her hands on a cloth and wrapped her fingers around the handle of the hatchet Wilbur had used to butcher the chickens and listened to a man’s footsteps come up the drive and into the backyard.

She looked into the purple haze and the dust blowing from the hoof-smoothed area around the horse tank, and inside her mind saw a squat, brow-furrowed man with the thick neck of a hog watching her. The wind blew out of the north and swept her hair back over her shoulders and lifted her dress around her knees. The man approached her, guardedly, his feet splayed, his gaze sweeping the yard, the pasture where the horses nickered, the sun’s fire on the western hills, his nostrils dilating like an animal emerging from a cave.

He paused when he saw the hatchet behind the calf of her leg. Her sightless eyes seemed to burrow into his face and probe thoughts and feelings that he himself did not understand. He swallowed and felt foolish and cowardly and wiped his mouth with his hand. Then she did something he didn’t expect. She rested the head of the hatchet by her foot and released the handle and let it fall sideways into the dust.

“I’m looking for Wilbur Pickett,” he said.

“He’s at work. On the oil rig. He won’t be home till morning,” she answered.

He waved one hand back and forth in front of her eyes, his soiled palm only ten inches from her face.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

He stepped back, frightened again. He tried to think clearly before he spoke a

gain. His tongue made a clicking sound inside his mouth. “How you know I did anything? How come a blind woman will tell a stranger she’s all alone? That ain’t smart,” he said.

“You might be a violent man. But it’s because others have hurt you,” she said.

His face flinched as though flies were buzzing in it. He opened and closed his palms at his sides and could hear himself breathing. He studied the flecks of whiteness in her blue eyes, the redness of her mouth, the way her black hair whipped around her cheeks in the wind. She pressed her dress down over her knees and waited for him to speak.

“I know stuff about Earl Deitrich don’t nobody else know. I can bring him down,” he said.

“We don’t care what you can do,” she replied.

“Don’t talk to me like that. I’m here to help. We got a, what do you call it, we got a mutual interest.”

“No,” she said.

“Listen, lady, y’all got something he wants or he wouldn’t be trying to send your old man to the pen. Your husband wildcatted in Mexico. It’s got something to do with oil, ain’t it?”

“It’s not your business. There’s fried rabbit and potato salad on the kitchen table. Bring it out,” she said.

“Bring food out? I didn’t come out here to eat. Look, lady—”

“You hate Earl Deitrich because he treats you and someone close to you with disrespect. He’s obligated to you but makes you feel worthless. You fight with him in your mind and he always wins.”

He stepped back from her, his mouth opening to speak. Her words were like cobweb that he wanted to wipe out of his face. She rose from her chair and spread newspaper on the stump that was grained with dried blood and bits of chicken feathers. She set a stone on each side of the newspaper so the wind wouldn’t blow it away.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Cholo Ramirez.”

“You’re part Indian, Cholo. The spirits of all your people watch over you. Don’t be frightened. Go get the food,” she said.

He walked away from her toward the house, his head twisted back toward her, his close-set eyes like those of a wolf circling a steel trap. He stepped inside the kitchen door and pressed the heel of each hand hard into his temples, opening and closing his mouth until the whirring of blood ceased in his ears. The interior of the kitchen was painted with fire from the glow of sun through the west windows. He struck the heels of his hands repeatedly against the sides of his skull but his head would not clear. For a moment he felt he was deep under the earth, inside a box of flame that had been created especially for him and that he would never escape.