food on the floor.
You ain't gonna find that on a rap sheet. When he was nine years old
they pushed epilepsy pills down his throat till he choked to death. You
doubt my word, you go look in the Waco Baptist Cemetery.'
'You're a sick man.'
'There's some that has said that. It never put no
rocks in my shoe, though.'
I got up from my chair and walked to the door and
turned the key in the lock.
'Get out,' I said.
He remained motionless in the chair, his face
looking away from me, the back of his neck flaming with color. He
mumbled something.
'What?' I said.
He didn't repeat it. When he walked past me, his
eyes were fixed straight ahead, a single line of sweat glistening on
the side of his face like an empty blood vein.
----
chapter
seven
At sunrise Sunday morning I put on my
pinstriped
beige suit and a short-sleeve white shirt and a pair of oxblood Tony
Lamas, walked down to the barn and lifted my saddle off a sawhorse in
the tack room and threw it on the back of my Morgan. The breeze blew
through the doors on each end of the barn and the air was cool and
smelled of wildflowers, fish spawning, oats and molasses balls, green
horse dung, hay that had turned yellow in the corners, and well water
spilling over the lip of the corrugated windmill tank.
L.Q. Navarro sat on top of a stall, the heels of his
boots hooked onto a plank, his body slatted with sunlight.
'You should have taken that .38-40 that
gal tried to give you,' he said.
'It's Sunday, L.Q. Take a day off.'
'It's them kind of days the shitbags crawl
out of the storm sewers. Tell me it wasn't fun busting caps on them
dope mules down in Coahuila.'
'
Adios, bud
,' I said, and
flicked my heels into the Morgan's ribs and thudded across the soft
carpet of desiccated horse manure in the lot.
I crossed the creek at the back of my property and
rode through a stand of pines, then up an incline that was humped with
blackberry bushes into Pete's backyard. He waited for me on the porch,
dressed in a pair of pressed jeans and a starched print shirt and
freshly shined brown shoes. I reached my arm down and pulled him up
behind the cantle.
The Morgan's hooves clattered on the flattened beer
cans in the yard.
'Was you really baptized in the river?' he said.
'Sure.'
'I never heard of a river-baptized person converting
to a Catholic'
'Somebody's got to keep y'all honest.'
He was quiet a long time, rocking against me with
the horse's steps.
'Does it bother you when people say you're crazy,
Billy Bob?'
'Most of the human race is, Pete.'
'I knew you was gonna say that.'
We came out of the pines into the backside of a
rural Mexican neighborhood with fenceless dirt yards and abandoned
privies and alleys blown with litter and bloodred hibiscus growing out
of rusted car shells.
This area was part of what was known as the West
End, a place where cedar cutters and field-workers and 'bohunks',
people who were of mixed German and Mexican blood, had always lived. It
was exactly twenty miles down the same road that led into the East End,
where Deaf Smith's country club set, and there were many of them, had
bought and refurbished Victorian homes that were as big as steamboats
when spot market oil was forty dollars a barrel.
It was cool inside the small stucco church, and
electric fans oscillated on the walls by the Stations of the Cross, and
the votive lights in front of a statue of Christ's mother rang with
color each time the breeze from the fan passed over the burning wax.
The people in the pews were almost all elderly, their hands sheathed in
callus, the skin around their eyes wrinkled, as though they had been
staring into the sun for a lifetime.
After Mass Pete and I rode my Morgan up the street,
then cut through a grove of cedars and an empty filling station that
had been built in 1945 and went inside a clapboard chafé and
ate
breakfasts of pork chops, biscuits, milk gravy, scrambled eggs, grits,
sliced tomatoes, and coffee.
'What's a crystal meth lab?' Pete asked.
'A
You ain't gonna find that on a rap sheet. When he was nine years old
they pushed epilepsy pills down his throat till he choked to death. You
doubt my word, you go look in the Waco Baptist Cemetery.'
'You're a sick man.'
'There's some that has said that. It never put no
rocks in my shoe, though.'
I got up from my chair and walked to the door and
turned the key in the lock.
'Get out,' I said.
He remained motionless in the chair, his face
looking away from me, the back of his neck flaming with color. He
mumbled something.
'What?' I said.
He didn't repeat it. When he walked past me, his
eyes were fixed straight ahead, a single line of sweat glistening on
the side of his face like an empty blood vein.
----
chapter
seven
At sunrise Sunday morning I put on my
pinstriped
beige suit and a short-sleeve white shirt and a pair of oxblood Tony
Lamas, walked down to the barn and lifted my saddle off a sawhorse in
the tack room and threw it on the back of my Morgan. The breeze blew
through the doors on each end of the barn and the air was cool and
smelled of wildflowers, fish spawning, oats and molasses balls, green
horse dung, hay that had turned yellow in the corners, and well water
spilling over the lip of the corrugated windmill tank.
L.Q. Navarro sat on top of a stall, the heels of his
boots hooked onto a plank, his body slatted with sunlight.
'You should have taken that .38-40 that
gal tried to give you,' he said.
'It's Sunday, L.Q. Take a day off.'
'It's them kind of days the shitbags crawl
out of the storm sewers. Tell me it wasn't fun busting caps on them
dope mules down in Coahuila.'
'
Adios, bud
,' I said, and
flicked my heels into the Morgan's ribs and thudded across the soft
carpet of desiccated horse manure in the lot.
I crossed the creek at the back of my property and
rode through a stand of pines, then up an incline that was humped with
blackberry bushes into Pete's backyard. He waited for me on the porch,
dressed in a pair of pressed jeans and a starched print shirt and
freshly shined brown shoes. I reached my arm down and pulled him up
behind the cantle.
The Morgan's hooves clattered on the flattened beer
cans in the yard.
'Was you really baptized in the river?' he said.
'Sure.'
'I never heard of a river-baptized person converting
to a Catholic'
'Somebody's got to keep y'all honest.'
He was quiet a long time, rocking against me with
the horse's steps.
'Does it bother you when people say you're crazy,
Billy Bob?'
'Most of the human race is, Pete.'
'I knew you was gonna say that.'
We came out of the pines into the backside of a
rural Mexican neighborhood with fenceless dirt yards and abandoned
privies and alleys blown with litter and bloodred hibiscus growing out
of rusted car shells.
This area was part of what was known as the West
End, a place where cedar cutters and field-workers and 'bohunks',
people who were of mixed German and Mexican blood, had always lived. It
was exactly twenty miles down the same road that led into the East End,
where Deaf Smith's country club set, and there were many of them, had
bought and refurbished Victorian homes that were as big as steamboats
when spot market oil was forty dollars a barrel.
It was cool inside the small stucco church, and
electric fans oscillated on the walls by the Stations of the Cross, and
the votive lights in front of a statue of Christ's mother rang with
color each time the breeze from the fan passed over the burning wax.
The people in the pews were almost all elderly, their hands sheathed in
callus, the skin around their eyes wrinkled, as though they had been
staring into the sun for a lifetime.
After Mass Pete and I rode my Morgan up the street,
then cut through a grove of cedars and an empty filling station that
had been built in 1945 and went inside a clapboard chafé and
ate
breakfasts of pork chops, biscuits, milk gravy, scrambled eggs, grits,
sliced tomatoes, and coffee.
'What's a crystal meth lab?' Pete asked.
'A
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