Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“Tomorrow, if you got a minute, Kippy Jo wants to tell you something. I do, too.”

After I ate breakfast the next morning I drove the Avalon through the field behind the barn, the grass whispering under the bumper, around the far corner of the tank, and down to the bluffs. The sun was just above the horizon, and the wind was still cool, and leaves from the grove of trees up on the knoll were blowing out on the water. Wilbur and Kippy Jo were down on the bank, fishing in the eddies behind a bleached, worm-carved cottonwood whose root system was impacted with rocks and clay. A knife-shaved willow branch humped with bream and catfish lay in the shallows.

“Tell him what you seen, Kippy Jo,” Wilbur said.

She sat in a folding canvas chair and rested her rod across a bait bucket. She wore a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt with blue trim on the neck and sleeves. In the softness of the sunrise her hair had a blue-black shine in it and was curved around her throat.

“There won’t be an oil well where Wilbur wants to drill. Just a windmill,” she said.

“She says I ain’t gonna find no oil. Ain’t that a pistol? Course, that means Earl Deitrich ain’t gonna get none, either,” Wilbur said.

“This is what you wanted to tell me?” I said.

Kippy Jo wet her lips. Her eyes followed my voice and fixed on my face. “I’ve had a horrible vision in my sleep. Several people stand at the entrance to Hell. Or at least one man in the group thinks he sees them there. It’s like I’m inside this man’s thoughts and I see the entrance to Hell through his eyes. Then there’s a gunshot,” she said.

“I don’t take your gift lightly. But if I was y’all, I wouldn’t think a whole lot on what tomorrow holds. The sun is going to come up whether we’re here for it or not,” I said.

“Yeah, that kind of talk gives me the cold sweats, Kippy Jo,” Wilbur said. He cast his bobber out into the current again and picked up a lunch bucket and offered it to me. “Fried cottontail and Kippy Jo’s buttermilk biscuits, son. There ain’t no better eating.”

“I believe it,” I said, and then said goodbye to his wife and walked back up to my automobile.

Wilbur caught up with me just as I opened the car door. He wore khakis smeared with fish blood and a black T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up over the tops of his arms. A self-deprecating smile hung on the edge of his mouth.

“I been studying all this time about making money, but the truth is Kippy Jo don’t care if I got it or not,” he said. “It takes some kind of fool to be so long in figuring out what counts, don’t it?”

“I think you’re ahead of the game, Wilbur,” I replied.

I drove back up to the house, brushed out Beau in the lot, watered the flowers in the beds, and went inside to shower and change before going to the office.

Lucas and Esmeralda were eating at the kitchen table. Esmeralda wore a Mexican peasant blouse and a red hibiscus in her hair, almost as though she were deliberately dressing like a Hispanic.

“Running late, aren’t you, bud?” I said.

“Our well’s a duster. The bossman shut it down yesterday,” Lucas said.

“Y’all doin’ all right?” I said.

“Fine. I love your place. It’s real nice of you to let us stay here,” Esmeralda said.

“It’s my pleasure,” I said.

“We’re going down to Temple Carrol’s. Her daddy’s got an old Gibson she wants me to string. Oh, I forgot to tell you. She called and said she’s got to go to Bonham till tomorrow night. Something about taking a deposition for another lawyer,” Lucas said.

I nodded, then felt a strange and unfamiliar sense of loneliness at the thought of Temple’s being gone.

“Y’all have a good one,” I said. When I left the house for the office Esmeralda seemed lost in thought, like a person who has arrived at a destination she never planned.

Later, on the way home for lunch, I stopped at the convenience store down the road for gas. While I was paying inside, I noticed a man with a florid, narrow face at the cafe counter. His eyes were a washed-out blue, his hair like a well-trimmed piece of orange rug glued to his scalp. A puckered burn scar was webbed across the right side of his neck. He drank coffee and smoked a cigarette and glanced at his watch.

I stared at him, remembering my last conversation with Ronnie Cruise.

I took my change from the cashier and walked to the counter and sat down next to the man with orange hair.

“You’re Charley Quail,” I said.

He took his cigarette from his mouth and looked through the smoke at me. “You know me?” he said.

“You used to drive stock cars at the old track out by the drive-in movie. You raced at Daytona,” I replied.