Heartwood

13

Temple Carrol came into my office Monday afternoon and sat down in front of an air-conditioning duct and let the wind stream blow across her body. Her blouse was peppered with perspiration.

"Pretty hot out there?" I said.

"I just spent two hours in the basement of the courthouse looking for the list of possessions on Bubba Grimes's body. It was buried in a box on a shelf right next to the ceiling."

She handed a manila folder to me with several departmental forms and penciled sheets from a yellow legal tablet inside. When he died Bubba Grimes's pockets had contained car keys, a roll of breath mints, a wallet with fifty-three dollars inside, a comb, fingernail clippers, a wine cork, a Mexico peso, and three dimes.

"You checked the possessions bag?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's just like it says there." She held her eyes on my face.

The possessions sheet was marked up, words smeared or scratched out. I picked up the phone and punched in Marvin Pomroy's number.

"I'm looking at some of the expert paperwork done by Hugo Roberts's deputies. For some reason it was filed in the basement with documents that are a hundred years old," I said.

"Talk to Hugo," he said.

"You know what's not on the possessions list?"

"No."

"A pocketknife. But at the bottom of the form a word is scratched out. It's scratched out so thoroughly there's no paper left," I said.

Marvin was quiet a moment. "So Hugo's boys get an F for penmanship and neatness. The scene investigator said Grimes was carrying only what's on that list."

"Grimes cut the back screen. He had to have a knife to do it. Forensics would have given us exculpatory evidence. That knife probably had strands of wire on it. I think that's why you had a blowup with Hugo over the phone. You know he's destroyed evidence."

"No, I don't know that."

"This stinks, Marvin. Don't let them drag you down with them."

"You quit the U.S. Justice Department and went to work for the dirtbags, Billy Bob. Maybe I don't always like the system I serve, but this county is a better place because of the work I do. Nothing derogatory meant. Maybe you like watching sociopaths prop their feet on your desk," he said, and hung up.

Lucas said the fight between Jeff and Esmeralda actually started at the rig, on the night tower, when Jeff showed up late for work, then sassed the driller and later got careless and almost cost another floorman his life.

Imagine an environment filled with the roar of a drill motor, the singing of cables, chains whipping off pipe, hoists and huge steel tongs swinging in the air, drilling mud welling out of the hole over your steel-toed boots, the heat of flood lamps burning your skin. The night sky blooms with dry lightning, and the constant, deafening noise eats at your senses. It's a dangerous environment. But it's also one that's monotonous and mind-deadening. For just a moment, you daydream.

The tongs swung into the man next to Jeff and knocked him all the way across the platform. His bright orange hard hat rolled into the darkness like a tiddlywink. The driller shut off the engine. When the injured man sat up, his arm hung loosely from his shoulder, and the back of his wrist quivered uncontrollably on the floor. He looked stupidly at the others as though he didn't know who he was. A piece of canvas flapped in the silence.

After the injured floorman was driven to the hospital, Jeff put his bradded gloves back on and waited for the derrick man, high up on the monkey board, to unrack a section of pipe and send it down with the hoist. Then he realized the driller and the rest of the crew were looking at him, waiting for something.

"You made three mistakes in one night, Jeff. See the timekeeper for your drag-up check," the driller said.

"I apologize for messing up. I just haven't been feeling too good," Jeff said.

"Ain't everybody cut out for it. Heck, if I had your looks, I'd go out to Hollywood. Anyway, take it easy, kid," the driller said.

A moment later Jeff was standing out in the darkness, beyond the circle of light and noise that oil field people called the night tower, watching what were now his ex-co-workers wrestle the drill bit, hose the drilling mud off the platform floor, and go about their routine as though he had never been there.

At breakfast with Lucas and Esmeralda in Lucas's kitchen, Jeff went over the incident on the platform floor again and again, analyzing what went wrong, rethinking what he should have told the driller, wondering if in fact the accident was his fault or if he had simply been made a scapegoat because he had sassed the driller earlier.

"Roughnecks get run off all the time. That's part of the life out there, Jeffro. It ain't no big deal," Lucas said.

"That's right, Jeff. There's a lot of work in San An-tone now," Esmeralda said.

"Like doing what?" he asked.

"The restaurant where I work. They need an assistant manager," she answered.

His face was dull with fatigue, but a residual sense of annoyance, like a black insect feeding, seemed to glimmer in his eye.

"We can drive down there this morning. I need to stop at the washateria and go to the Wal-Mart, anyway. Cholo needs me to buy him some underwear," she said.

"You think I'm going to spend my morning shopping for your brother's underwear?" Jeff said.

"Hon, you had a bad night. Now lighten up," she said, and rested her palm on his arm.

He turned his face away from both Esmeralda and Lucas and stared out the rusted screen at a piece of guttering swinging in the wind and the yard that was matted with dandelions.

Later in the morning Lucas turned on the electric fan in the back bedroom and went to sleep. He was awakened in the thick, yellow heat of the afternoon by quarrelsome voices out in the trailer, insults hurled like a slap, a table knocked over, perhaps, dishes clattering to the floor.

"The problem is not a stupid job on an oil derrick. You take me to lounges where it's dark. We go to restaurants where nobody knows you. You don't like being with me in the daylight," Esmeralda shouted.

Jeff burst through the door into the yard, with no shirt or shoes on, and got behind the wheel of his convertible. Then realized he had left his keys inside. He put his head down on his arms and started to weep. Esmeralda walked outside in a pair of blue-jean cutoffs and a halter, her face suddenly filled with pity, and stroked his hair and the back of his neck. Then the two of them went back into the trailer, their arms around each other's waist, and stayed there until sunset.

Lucas was off that night and had planned to go into town. But Jeff and Esmeralda came to his door, their faces glowing with the promise of the summer evening, as though none of the day's events held claim on their lives. Jeff took the last toke off a roach, held the hit in his lungs, then let the smoke drift lazily off his lips into the wind. He was dressed in a tailored beige sports coat and dark blue slacks. She was wearing a pink organdy dress, hoop earrings, lavender pumps, and cherry-red lipstick. Jeff's necktie dangled from his coat pocket, almost as though he wished to demonstrate his indifference to decorum.

"You're going to dinner with us at Post Oaks Country Club," Jeff said.

"I appreciate it, but that's a little rich for my blood. Say, if y'all are holding, I got to ask you not to bring it on my property. I don't mean no offense," Lucas said.

"That was the last of my stash, Lucas, my boy. Hey, you're not going to hurt our feelings, are you?" Jeff said.

To its members Deaf Smith's country club wasn't simply an oasis of wealth in the middle of south-central Texas; it was the architectural expression of a cultural ideal in an era given over to vulgarity, urban ruin, and eastern liberals who destroyed standards and enfranchised an underclass made up of modern Visigoths.

The gardens and circular drive planted with oaks, the blinding-white columned entrance, the sun-bladed, turquoise pool shaped like a huge shamrock, the flagstone terrace dotted with potted palms, these were all lovely to look at but were only symbols of the club's luxury and exclusivity; its uniqueness lay in its tradition, one that went back to the early 1940s, when dance orchestras played Glen Miller's compositions on the terrace and worries over ration stamps and the war in Europe and the South Pacific were as unthreatening as the distant drone of a Flying Fortress on a training flight in a magenta sky.

The late fall might fill the trees with the smells of autumnal gases, and the shamrock-shaped pool might be drained and scrubbed with bleach and covered with canvas in winter, but mutability and death seemed to hold no sway once one entered the geographical confines of the club, which extended from the impenetrable hedges by the road, across the fairways sprayed weekly with liquid nitrogen, to the bluffs that overlooked the lazy, green bend of the river. The balls, the graduation parties, the conviviality of the bar and card room on the ninth tee, the candlelight dinners on the terrace, were part of the world's grandeur, given to those who had worked for and deserved them, and did not have to be defended. The red leaves blowing out of a hardwood tree in November were no more an indication of one's mortality than the aging and transient nature of the staff who, when they disappeared, were quickly replaced by others whose similarity to their predecessors hardly signaled a transition had taken place.

Lucas and Jeff and Esmeralda sat in the front seat of Jeff's convertible, their hair blowing in the wind as they drove out of the western end of the county into green, sloping hills and evening shadows breaking across the road. But Jeff did not want to go straight to Post Oaks Country Club. He pulled into a blue-collar bar above the river, one with takeout windows and an open-air dance pavilion and a jukebox in back.

"I don't want to go here, Jeff," Esmeralda said.

"Why not?" he said.

"We dressed up to go to a beer joint? I'm hungry. I don't want to drink on an empty stomach," she said.

"You're not dressed up," he said.

She looked at the side of his face. She placed one hand on top of his.

"What's wrong, hon?" she said.

"Nothing. Will you stop pawing me while I'm driving?" Then he forced a grin on his mouth. "I just want to get a drink. I got fired from my job last night. The tables at the club are crowded till eight o'clock. We can get some nachos. Right, Lucas?"

But Lucas didn't answer.

They drank two rounds of vodka collins, gazing at the river, the smoke from a barbecue pit attended by bikers and their girlfriends drifting across the table. Jeff kept pulling on his earlobe, biting his lip, glancing irritably at the bikers and their girls, almost as though he wanted to provoke them.

"Okay, okay, we're going. Give it a rest," he said to Esmeralda, even though she had said nothing to him.

When they pulled into the country club's driveway and stopped in front of the columned porch, Jeff got out of the car and took the parking ticket from the valet as though he were in a trance. He walked through the glass doors ahead of Esmeralda and Lucas, letting the edge of the door slide off his fingertips behind him. It was almost nine o'clock and the dining room should have been empty, the waiters gathering up silverware and soiled tablecloths and dropping wilted flowers into plastic bags. But instead the chandeliers filled the room with gold fire; carnations and roses floated in crystal bowls on the tables; and a throng of forty people was in the midst of a wedding rehearsal dinner.

One of the guests at the rehearsal dinner was Rita Summers, Jeff's ex-girlfriend. Her hair was as gold as the chandelier above her head, her blue eyes as intense as a hawk's. She took a cigarette without asking from an older woman's case and lighted it and blew smoke at an upward angle out of the side of her mouth. Jeff led Esmeralda and Lucas to a table in the corner and seated himself so his back was to the wedding party.

"This is a right nice place," Lucas said.

"Right nice? Yeah, that says it. That really says it. Right nice," Jeff said, as if his statement held a cryptic profundity that no one else understood.

"That girl over there, the one staring at us. She's the one who told me her food tasted like dog turds," Esmeralda said.

"She's nearsighted. She's got a bug up her ass. Who cares what her problem is? Just don't look at her," Jeff said. "Did you hear me? Look at the menu."

"Jeff, this ain't turning out too cool," Lucas said.

"Tell me about it," Jeff said, and snapped his fingers at a waiter. "Andre, bring three T-bones out here, three schooners, three tossed salads. Shrimp cocktails for them, none for me. I'll take a Jack and Coke now."

"Very good, Mr. Deitrich," the waiter said, and bowed slightly without ever looking at Lucas or Esmeralda. Jeff pulled the menu out of Esmeralda's hands and gave it to the waiter.

"Wow, what a take-charge guy," Esmeralda said.

"At this time of night, in this particular club, you either order steak or you eat warmed-up leftovers. I know that, you don't. So I was saving everybody time," Jeff said.

"I think I need to find the ladies' room. You know, in case I have to throw up later," Esmeralda said.

"You want to explore? It's a club. Can't you just…"

"What?" she said.

"Quit turning everything into a problem. Let's just eat dinner and get out of here. Oh, forget it," Jeff said, and flipped a tiny silver spoon in the air and let it bounce on the tablecloth.

But before Esmeralda could get up from her chair, Rita Summers walked across the carpet and stood by their table, smoking her cigarette.

"Congratulations on your marriage, Jeff. I wish I'd had some preparation. I would have sent a gift. I really would," she said. She had a peach complexion and shadows pooled in the folds of her blue satin dress and there was a shine on the tops of her breasts.

"Yeah, thanks for dropping by," Jeff said, one arm hooked over the back of his chair, his eyes gazing out the French doors at the underwater lights glowing off the swimming pool's surface.

Rita took a puff off her cigarette and left lipstick on the tip. "I guess you've worked out all your little sexual problems. I'm so happy when the right people meet," she said.

The waiter brought Jeff's Coke and Jack Daniel's on a tray, and Jeff drank the glass half empty, his eyes deepening in color, then swung a cherry back and forth by its stem and stared at it.

"You want to clarify that last remark?" Esmeralda said.

Rita smiled at Jeff, then bent down and whispered in Esmeralda's ear, her eyes uplifted maliciously into Jeff's. Esmeralda's face grew pinched, puckering like an apple exposed to intense heat.

Rita straightened up and looked down at Esmeralda. "He used to go to Mexican cathouses for it. But finally the only place that would let him in was run by a black woman down in the Valley," she said.

Esmeralda picked up her purse, one with spangles and pink fringe, and walked past the wedding party to the rest rooms, her chin tilted upward, the movement of her hips accentuated. But she could not hide the look in her eyes.

"If we weren't in this dining room, I'd kick your ass around the block," Jeff said to Rita.

"Oh, I know you would. You're just so… studly," Rita said, and made a feigned passionate noise and kissing motion with her mouth and rejoined her party. She leaned forward confidentially, telling a story to a half dozen others, all of whom were grinning.

"Get Esmeralda out of the can. We're going," Jeff said.

"Me?" Lucas said.

"You're not a member here. Nobody cares what you do. Go get her."

"Tell you what. I'll just walk out to the highway and hitch a ride. In the meantime, why don't you quit acting like your shit don't flush?"

"All right, I'm sorry. Sit down. I'll take care of it. God, why do I get myself into this stuff?" Jeff said. He finished his drink, then stood up, his face blanching slightly as the combination of whiskey and vodka on an empty stomach suddenly took effect.

He walked down the hallway to the ladies' room and went in without knocking. A moment later he and Esmeralda emerged in the hallway, his hand spread across the small of her back. Her cheeks were wet, her purse held tightly in both hands.

"She's a liar. She gave blow jobs to the whole back-field at SMU. She's treating you like a dumb peon," he said to her.

The waiter had wheeled their dinner to their table and was placing schooners of draft beer to the right of each steak platter.

"Bag it up for the dishwashers, Andre. We're gonna boogie on over to the Dog 'n' Shake. That's where it's happening," Jeff said, and signed the ticket on the serving cart.

Then he realized that Rita Summers and her friends were laughing, not abruptly, as they would have at a joke, but in a sustained, collective giggle that seemed to spread like a crinkling of cellophane at their table. He turned and saw their eyes fixed on Esmeralda's shoe and the long strand of wet toilet paper that was attached to the sole.

He gripped her upper arm, squeezing hard, and stepped with one foot on the toilet paper and tried to push her free of it. Instead, he only shredded the paper and matted it on his loafer. His rage boiled into his face and he stooped and tore Esmeralda's shoe off her foot and flung it under a table, then pulled her out the front door.

"All you had to do was just eat dinner. It was that simple. You people are a walking ad for the Ku Klux Klan. Stop making that sound," he said, while she rested her forehead against one of the white columns on the porch and hid her face in her hands.