Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

He dropped his eyes and gripped his bunk and rocked on his arms.

“He takes me out to dinner and buys me clothes sometimes, that’s all. I got to get out of jail. They’re scaring me.”

“In what way?”

“A couple of mop-heads, you know, dreadlocks, Jamaican guys, been unloading a lot of blues and rainbows. The word is they ripped them off Jeff Deitrich.”

“So?”

“I was cuffed in the cruiser with a friend while the deputy was tearing up my daddy’s car. I was telling my friend about Jeff getting stiffed by these two guys. Then the deputy comes back to the cruiser and picks up a tape recorder off the front seat. He plays it back, listening to everything I said, all the time staring at me like I done something really bad.

“I go, That’s an illegal wiretap.’

“He goes, ‘You better stick to being some rich junky’s hump, sperm-breath.’ Then he wouldn’t put me in the tank. Wh

y they pissed off, Mr. Holland? Is it ’cause I told them they cain’t use that tape?”

“You don’t have expectation of privacy in the back of a police cruiser, Wesley. But that’s not the problem. While you’re in here, you don’t talk about Jamaicans taking off Jeff Deitrich. You hearing me on this?”

Wesley stood up from his bunk and looked at the barred window above his head. An uneaten breakfast of powdered eggs and white bread and packaged jam lay on top of the toilet tank.

“My stomach’s been sick. I ain’t ever pissed them off before. Nothing don’t feel right,” he said.

“Give me your belt and that dog collar,” I said.

“What?” he said.

Downstairs I dropped the collar and Wesley’s wide leather belt and heavy metal buckle on the jailer’s desk.

“Don’t ever try to get away with something like this, L.J.,” I said.

He dipped his fingers in a leather pouch and loaded his jaw with chewing tobacco, his lidless eyes never leaving mine.

Later, after church, I stopped by a supermarket in town, then drove to Temple Carrol’s house, which was just down the road from mine. I could hear her working out on the heavy bag in the backyard, thudding her gloves into it, spinning it on the chain that was hooked into a beam on her father’s open-air welding shed.

She didn’t see me behind her. She wore gray sweatpants and a workout halter and red tennis shoes, and she was leading into the bag with her left, hooking with her right, and following with a karate kick. Her skin was flushed, her shoulders and the baby fat on her sides slick with perspiration.

“Have a picnic with me,” I said.

She turned and lowered her gloves, chewing gum, her face without expression, the bag creaking on the chain behind her.

“You need a favor?” she asked.

“It’s a nice day. I didn’t want to spend it alone.”

She pulled off her gloves one at a time. They were dull red, thin-padded, with metal dowels inside that fitted across the palms.

“I don’t like being somebody’s safety pin, Billy Bob,” she said.

“I had to try. No hard feelings. I’ll probably see you tomorrow.”

“Were you in the sack with Peggy Jean?” she asked.

“No.” I picked up a bottle cap off a spool table and flipped it with my thumbnail against the trunk of a pecan tree. “That doesn’t mean my behavior was acceptable.”

She looked at me for a long moment, her chestnut hair damp on her cheeks. Then she tossed one of her gloves at my face.

“I’ll take a shower. Wait out here,” she said.