Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“I guess she was having a bad day, Pete.”

“After she got her stuff in the car, she dug a half dollar out of her purse and said, ‘Go buy yourself some ice cream or something. Go on, now. Next time just let big people work out their problems. You’re a little too nosy sometimes.’ ”

He climbed down from the fence and looked at the late sun as though it contained an insult.

“I don’t want her durn money. I stopped to hep ’cause she was having trouble,” he said.

“I don’t see her, Pete, so I don’t know what to tell you.”

He ringed the edge of the half dollar with his index finger and flung it toward the tank. He watched it arch out of the light into the grass. His face was hot and dusty and there were moist lines that had dried on his cheeks.

“Where you goin’?” I said.

“Home.”

“Beau’s going to be disappointed if we don’t take him out.”

“How come she acted like that?

I thought she was nice. She ain’t no different from the people my mother hangs with up at the beer joint. They’re nice long as somebody is watching them.”

The answer to his question was not one I wanted to think about.

It was almost sunset when Pete and I rode up a creekbed between two steep-sided hills that were deep in shadow and moist with springs that leached out of the rocks. Beau’s hooves scraped on the flat plates of stone along the creekbank and I could feel Pete’s weight swaying back and forth behind the saddle.

“You don’t think these was Apaches living along here?” he said.

“Too far east,” I replied.

“Maybe they was Comanches.”

“Too far south.”

“Then what was they?”

“Probably Tonkawas.”

“The ones that let the Texans run them up into Oklahoma?”

“That’s the bunch.”

“They don’t sound too interesting,” he said.

We got down from Beau and I unhooked the strap of my rucksack from his pommel and we walked through heavy brush to a faint trail that angled up the hillside through pine trees and soft ground that was green from the moisture in the drainage. Scrub brush and redbud trees grew close into the cliff wall, and if you looked carefully you could see a ragged opening behind the foliage.

“I heard some people in town say Wilbur Pickett’s wife is crazy,” he said.

“You believe that?” I asked.

“No. I feel sorry for her.”

“Because she’s blind?”

“No. ’Cause they’re scared of her. Scared people hurt you.”

“You’re a smart kid, Pete.”

“I wish we could stay up here all the time. It’s a perfect place. There ain’t nobody around but just us.”