“My office is open. Have a seat,” he said.
“You look mighty confident this evening.”
“After the show Peggy Jean Deitrich told me to give you a message. I wrote it down. ‘No matter how all this works out, I hold you in high regard.’ She blows hot and cold, don’t she?”
“You could say that.”
“She’s a pretty thing, I tell you that,” he said.
I sat down on the tailgate next to him. “Where we going with this?” I asked.
“You remember her the way she used to be, then you see her the way she is now. It’s like you’re caught between the woman who’s there and the woman who ain’t but should be.”
“Yes?”
“It’s like living in two worlds. Puts a hatchet right in the middle of your head, don’t it? In the meantime, you don’t need to hear bad shit about people you care for.”
“Let me see if I can figure this out. You don’t want me pestering you about Esmeralda again?”
“I wish I had your smarts.”
“Can you tell me why all the lights are on in my house?”
“Esmeralda is cooking up a monster-big Mexican dinner for us. Enchiladas, tacos, refried beans, chili con queso, she done put the whole garbage can in it.”
The moon was yellow over the hills, and in the softness of the light I could see his mother’s looks in his face. I cupped my hand on the back of his neck and felt the close-cropped stiffness of his hair against my palm. I saw his embarrassment steal into his face and I took my hand away.
“I bet that’s one fierce Mexican dinner. We’d better go eat it,” I said.
It rained in the middle of the night and my bedroom curtains flapped and twisted in the wind and in the distance lightning forked into the long green velvet roll of the hills.
L.Q. Navarro sat in my stuffed burgundy chair by the bookshelf, his legs crossed, his Stetson resting on the tip of his boot. He was reading from a leather-bound, musty volume about the Texas Revolution, turning each page carefully with his full hand.
“How’s it hangin’, L.Q.?” I asked.
“You know how Sam Houston beat Santa Anna? He sent Deaf Smith behind Santa Anna’s army and had him cut down Vince’s Bridge with an ax. Once the battle started, there wasn’t no way out for any of them.”
“I’m awful tired, L.Q.”
“Sometimes you got to be willing to lose it all. They’ll see it in your eyes. It tends to give them a religious moment.”
“I’ll beat Earl Deitrich in the courtroom.”
“His kind own the courts. You’re a visitor there, Billy Bob. He fired a gun into the side of his head. You got to admit that was impressive.”
“How about taking the Brown Mule out of your mouth?”
“He took Peggy Jean Murphy from you. He durn near killed you with poison. He corrupts everything he touches. Rope-drag him, pop a cap on him, hang his lights on a cactus. I don’t like to see what he’s doing to you.”
“I don’t live in that world anymore.”
He raised one eyebrow at me over his book, then closed the book in disgust and walked out of the room, the rowels of his spurs tinkling on the hardwood floor.
“L.Q.?” I said.
24
Tuesday morning Temple Carrol came into my office and closed off the glare of sunlight through the blinds and sat down in front of my desk and opened a notepad on her crossed knee. There was a red abrasion at the corner of her left eye, and the eye kept leaking on her skin so that she had to dab at it with a Kleenex.