Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“Then respect what I tell you, Ronnie,” she said.

“You got something going with Smothers over there?” he asked.

“He was good to me. Leave him alone,” she said.

“What we got here is all kinds of people dumping on us,” Cholo said. “Jeff’s old man just got your marriage annulled. It don’t exist. That means Jeff used you to glom his big-boy and threw you away like toilet paper,” Cholo said.

Lucas stepped farther out into the drive and said, “You guys got the message. She don’t want y’all here.” His hands were inserted flatly in his back pockets and the skin of his face was tight against the bone.

“I’ll say this once. This is a private conversation,” Ronnie said.

“Fuck you, Ronnie. You’re on my property,” Lucas said.

Ronnie breathed slowly through his nose and picked at his nails. He cut his head at Lucas, then at me.

“We came here to work something out that don’t got nothing to do with you two. But you treat us like we’re spit on the bottom of your shoe. No different than Mr. Deitrich. You think you can bing with us, man? You really think that?” he said.

“We’re not part of your problem. You need to understand that,” I said.

Ronnie wiped at his nose, looking at nothing.

“Call me, Essie,” he said to Esmeralda.

“It’s over, Ronnie,” she said.

He rubbed his thumb back and forth across his forehead and walked toward his car, his face lost in thought, suddenly oblivious to our presence.

Lucas and I watched the T-Bird disappear down the road.

“How do you read that?” Lucas asked.

“Don’t ever humiliate a guy like Ronnie Cruise in front of his peers,” I said.

“Well, he ain’t coming on my property and wiping his feet on people,” he said.

I looked at his profile against the early sun, the heat in his cheeks, the manly energy in his eyes, and felt my heart sink like a stone in a well.

It’s strange how people bloom, even in poisonous soil, once they allow themselves to become what they’ve always been.

Jeff Deitrich had rebelled against his father and married a Mexican girl and had tried to cut it on the floor of a drilling rig. But he quickly learned that yielding to the seduction of his father’s world brought no penalty, instead only celebration of the returned prodigal, and that he had been foolish to compete with people who secretly coveted the opulence that was his by right.

At the end of the week I had to go out to Post Oaks Country Club and meet a client, an obese, self-deluded, thoroughly corrupt oilman who was about to enter Huntsville Penitentiary.

We sat in the cooling shadows on the terrace while, not far away, golfers on the driving range were hitting into an enormous white net. My client’s face went soft and then nakedly lustful as he gazed over my shoulder.

“I’m born again, but an elegant woman like that can sure give a man thoughts,” he said.

I turned in my chair and saw Peggy Jean and Jeff Deitrich, side by side, dressed in tennis whites, hitting off the rubber tee into the net. Jeff’s form was perfect, his skin tanned as dark as the polished wood in his club. Peggy Jean rested one hand on his shoulder, her head bending down with laughter as both of them shared a joke, more like confidants or even sweethearts than child and stepmother.

“It’s too bad Earl don’t spend more time at the fireside and not at the poker table. For a while I thought he was going to be selling his furniture out on the lawn. He must have hit a gusher,” my client said.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Don’t pay me no mind. If I was single, I’d probably drool a bucket full.”

“I was thinking about Jeff,” I said.

“Jeff? His mother should have thrown him back and raised the afterbirth. You mixed up with that little piss-pot? I thought you had some smarts. No wonder I’m headed for the pen.”