BBH01 - Cimarron Rose by James Lee Burke

I could follow, if I were willing, into Val Verde County
and beyond, across the river, into an arroyo where horses reared in the
gunfire and a man in a pinstriped suit and ash gray Stetson and Mexican
spurs grabbed at his breast and called out to the sky.
    We were outside the car now. My ears were popping,
as though I were on an airplane that suddenly had lost altitude.
    I heard myself say something.
    'I beg your pardon?' Mary Beth said, her mouth
partly open.
    My face felt cold, impervious to the wind, the skin
pulled back against the bone. Like the penitent who refuses to accept
the priest's absolution through the grilled window inside the
confessional, I felt the words rise once more in my throat, as in a
dream that knows no end.
    'I killed my best friend. His name was L.Q. Navarro.
He was a Texas Ranger,' I said.
    Her lips moved soundlessly, her eyes disjointed as
though she were looking at a fractured image inside a child's
kaleidoscope.
     
    At noon the next day I walked from my
office to the
pawnshop down the street from the health club. The three-hundred-pound
black woman who owned it, whose name was Ella Mae, wore glass beads in
her hair and a white T-shirt that read:
I Don't Give a
Fuck—Don't
Leave Home Without American Express.
    On the wall behind the counter were scores of guns
and musical instruments. I pointed at one.
    'Can you give me a good deal, Ella Mae?' I said.
    'Honey, if we was back in the old days, I'd pay to
pick your cotton. That's the truth. Wouldn't put you on,' she said.
    But after she had rung up my purchase, her mood
changed, as though she were stepping across a line she had drawn
between herself and white people.
    'The other day when you was here? You gone on to
your car, but a man with red hair was watching you. He had a coat on
without no shirt,' she said.
    'What about him?'
    'The look in his face, honey. He started to come in
here and I locked the door.' She shook her head, as though she feared
her words could make the image a reality.
     
    That evening I drove to Lucas
Smothers's house.
Vernon was sitting on the steps, a bottle of strawberry soda beside
him. His clothes were dirty from his work, his face lined with streaks
of dried sweat. A wheelbarrow filled with compost and crisscrossed with
rakes and a shovel stood in the front yard. Under Lucas's screen was a
bright patch of white paint.
    'Is Lucas home?' I asked.
    'He took the truck to town.'
    'Did the sheriff do anything about those kids who
tore up your lawn?'
    'That tub of guts is doing good to get himself on
and off the toilet seat.'
    'Is Lucas at the poolroom?'
    'No, they're handing out free beer at the Baptist
church tonight.'
    'It's always a pleasure, Vernon.'
    But Vernon had another side, one that wouldn't allow
me the freedom to simply condemn and dismiss him. When I was almost out
the drive, he rose from the steps and called my name and walked out to
the road. He pulled a cloth cap from his back pocket and popped it open
and flicked it against his thigh, as though he could not bring himself
to admit the nature of his fear and love and his dependence upon others.
    'What kind of chance has he got? Don't lie to me,
either,' he said.
    'It doesn't look real good right now.'
    'It ain't right… I swear, if they send
that boy to prison…' He breathed hard through his nose. 'I
killed people in Vietnam didn't do nothing to me.'
    'I'd get a lot of distance between me and those
kinds of thoughts, Vernon.'
    'Damn, if you don't always have to get up on the
high ground. Excuse me for asking, but who died and made you God?' he
said, and went inside the house. You didn't win with Vernon Smothers.
     
    I drove downtown and parked in front
of the
poolroom, a gaunt, two-story building that was over a hundred years
old. It had a wood colonnade and elevated sidewalk inset with iron
hitching poles, a stamped tin ceiling, oak floors as thick as railroad
ties, a railed bar with spittoons, card and domino tables, a
woodburning stove, and a toilet