Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“Come again?” I said.

“She was blackberrying up there. Had three or four quart jars full,” Skyler said. “I think she seen the smoke from our fire. Next day this note was stuck on a pine branch partway up the path.”

He unfolded a sheet of blue stationery from his pocket and handed it to me. It read, “This isn’t a safe place for you. Leave before your hiding place is discovered. Those who will find you mean you great injury.”

“It’s not signed,” I said.

“Ain’t nobody else been up there. To my mind, she’s a great lady,” Skyler said.

“Mr. Doolittle, I want y’all to surrender,” I said.

“That ain’t gonna happen, boy,” Jessie said.

“He’s right,” Skyler said.

“They’ll kill both of y’all,” I said.

Jessie wiped his plate clean with a piece of bread and ate it, then set the plate down on the grass and pulled his shirt out of his trousers. A bloody white sock was tied with a strip of cloth across his top rib.

“That’s where some boys in a Jeep notched me with a deer rifle. Next time I’ll catch them in their sleeping bags,” he said.

“Is this what you want?” I said to Skyler.

“No, sir. I’d like to be let alone,” he replied.

I inverted the skillet and knocked it clean on the fire ring, then slipped a paper sack over it and dropped it in the rucksack and hung the rucksack on the pommel of Beau’s saddle.

“You gonna turn us in?” Jessie said.

I put my left boot in the stirrup and swung up on the saddle. I felt Beau try to jerk his head up.

“I’m going to ask you just once, Jessie. Take your hand off his bridle,” I said.

“Then you answer me. You gonna turn us in or not?” Jessie said.

“He’s a river-baptized man, Jessie. He’s got the thumbprint of God on his soul. Let him pass, son,” Skyler said.

The sun had dropped behind the hills now and the air was moist and heavy and dense with mosquitoes and the bats that fed off them. I crossed the slough and rode back down the dirt street through the row of empty shacks that were encircled by the ugly scar of the oxbow off the river. I felt the thick weight of a bat thud against the crown of my hat, and I kept my face pointed down at Beau’s withers until we were up on high ground again.

Peggy Jean knew Jessie Stump had tried to drive a barbed arrow through her husband’s head, yet had warned him and Skyler Doolittle so they could avoid capture.

Why?

That’s what I asked Temple Carrol two hours later while she smacked her gloves into the heavy bag behind her house. She wore a pair of khaki shorts and a gray workout halter and alpine lug boots with thick socks folded down on her ankles, and her thighs were tan and muscular and tight against her rolled shorts.

“Maybe Peggy Jean wants it all. Maybe that’s always been her way,” she said.

“Pardon?” I said.

She hit the bag again, left, right, left, right, left, and hard right hook, twisting the bag on the chain, ignoring me.

“Will you give it a break?” I said.

“Her first soldier boy got killed in Vietnam. Then she tried a blue-collar kid like you. Then she found another soldier boy with money. Maybe she’d like to keep the money and that monstrosity of a house they live in and have another roll in the hay with you. Feel flattered?” she said.

“Pretty rough assessment.”

“Sorry. I’ll go scrub out my mouth with Ajax,” she said.