Heartwood

20

One night every summer the town held a celebration for itself in our small amusement park and beer garden on the river. At sunset a brass band composed of musicians in straw boaters and candy-striped jackets struck up "San Antonio Rose" and someone switched on the Japanese lanterns in the trees, and the hedges and pea-gravel paths and concession stands and carnival booths took on the bucolic and softly focused qualities of a late-nineteenth-century painting. The social distinctions of the town were put in abeyance, and working people, college students, farmers, the business community, the mayor and his family, even Hugo Roberts and his deputies, all mingled together as though the following day held the same promise and opportunity for each of them.

Temple Carrol and Pete and I rode the Tilt-a-Whirl and the bumper cars and ate cotton candy and strolled out by the dance pavilion that overlooked the river. The three of us sat on a green-painted wood bench at the top of a slope that was terraced with carinas and hibiscus and rosebushes and a rock-bordered pond whose goldfish were molting into the albino discolorations of carp. It was Pete who first noticed Peggy Jean Deitrich out on the dance floor with her husband, Earl, and when he did, he waved at her.

"There's Ms. Deitrich, Billy Bob," he said expectantly.

"Yeah, it sure is," I said, glancing over my shoulder.

"Ain't you gonna wave back?"

"She's busy right now," I said.

He frowned and squinted into space. Then he waved again, as though he could make up for our not doing so.

I turned on the bench and looked back at the dance pavilion. Peggy Jean was standing with her husband by the punch table now, but her gaze fell directly on my face. Her expression was disjointed, as though I had failed and wounded her without even having the grace to explain why. Her lips seemed to part in anticipation, forming words that she wished to draw from my mouth.

I turned back toward the river and looked out through the electric haze over the gardens and the goldfish rising in the pond for the bread crumbs a child was throwing at them.

"I think I'll take Pete for a cold drink," Temple said.

"I'll go with you," I said.

"That's all right. Why don't you just take care of business here," Temple said, and walked back up through the trees to the concession area.

"Temple?" I said. But she and Pete had already disappeared up the path into the shadows.

I pulled the last strand of cotton candy off the paper cone it was wrapped on and threw the cone into a trash barrel. I tried to scrub the stickiness off my hands with a paper napkin, then I gave it up and threw it in the trash, too.

I heard light footsteps on the gravel behind me, then smelled Peggy Jean's perfume.

"Do you know what it feels like to have someone stare at you, then turn away when you try to wave at them?" Peggy Jean said.

"How are you?" I said.

"What gives you the right to snub me in public? Can you tell me what it is I've done to you?"

"You're married. I didn't want to recognize that fact. The fault is mine."

"We shared a great deal when we were young." Her eyes held mine. "I'm not talking about just one afternoon. We were true friends. Are you just going to step across a line and pretend we don't know each other? That's sick, if you ask me."

I leaned forward on my elbows and turned my hat in my hands and bounced the brim on the tip of my boot. Then the words I should not have spoken had their way.

"What happened to you, Peggy Jean? You used to be one of us. Why'd you go off with a guy like Earl? Was it the money?" I said.

In the corner of my eye I could see her hand clenching and unclenching against her organdy dress, hear the fractured breathing that was about to crest into tears.

"I'm sorry I said that," I said.

But it was too late. She strode back toward the pavilion, her hair swinging on her shoulders. I don't know what her face looked like, whether it was tear-streaked or angry or bloodless with humiliation or numb and distraught with personal loss, but Earl and Jeff Deitrich had disengaged from their friends and were both staring at her, then at me, their eyes blazing, like men who had witnessed another man commit a cowardly and brutal act against a woman or child.

"You want to get Earl Deitrich before he gets you?" a voice next to me said.

Cholo Ramirez wore gray slacks and a shiny black dress shirt with a pomegranate-red print tie. His left eye was taped over with a square of white gauze. Ronnie Cruise stood behind him in the shadows, a Popsicle stick in the corner of his mouth.

"Ask him about killing himself in the Red Pine Lodge. Ask him what happened to his friends in that water-bed skeet club between Houston and Conroe," Cholo said.

"What's he talking about?" I said to Ronnie.

"You're a religious guy, right, worrying about stuff like people wearing rosaries around their necks? Listen to Cholo, maybe discover how we dress ain't the big problem in your town," Ronnie replied. His dark eyes that seemed impervious to whatever degree of joy the world could offer him wandered over the strollers on the gravel paths and the aerial fireworks popping in pink and white showers above the river. "Does this shithole ever get tired of itself?" he said.

Cholo's skin was glazed with sweat when he came into my office at noon the next day. He hooked a finger over the neck of his T-shirt and pulled it out from his chest and smelled himself.

"That sidewalk will burn through the bottom of your shoes," I said.

"I picked up a sheriffs tail south of town. The guy stayed with me all the way to your office," he said. He chewed on a hangnail.

"They don't see many cars like yours. I wouldn't worry about it."

"This guy had that Fletcher fuck in the car, that ex-mercenary guy or whatever who does scut work for Deitrich."

"Why do you want to dime Earl now, Cholo?"

"'Cause Kippy Jo Pickett says I got to own up. She says maybe I'm gonna be on the Ghost Trail." He hunched his shoulders forward and made a coughing sound, but his throat wouldn't clear.

"The what?" I asked.

"When Indian people die, they disappear down a trail. Light goes through their bodies, and they get pale and gray, like bad milk, and finally you can't see them no more. That's what Kippy Jo said."

"You think you're going to die?"

"You got something cold to drink? I need a beer. Maybe a shot of rum. You got that?"

"No."

He wiped his hair and his eyebrows with a handkerchief. Then he pressed both fists into the sides of his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

"I can't think good when it's hot," he said. "Ronnie's uncle is connected up with some peckerwoods out of Houston. Ronnie didn't have nothing to do with it, though. They was working a scam in Kerr County at a place called the Red Pine Lodge. A shill brought big oil guys in there to play 'Hold 'em.' We'd turn the game over, scare the shit out of the marks with shotguns, play like we was torturing and killing people down in the basement."

"This isn't new information, Cholo. You told this to Temple Carrol when she picked you up for jumping bail."

"Yeah? The shill brought Earl Deitrich into the game. We came through the door with nylon stockings over our heads, knocking people on the floor, breaking glasses and whiskey bottles, throwing poker chips and playing cards in people's faces, yelling at Deitrich, slapping his face, jamming the shotgun in his nuts.

"Then we led everybody one by one downstairs. The screams that come up them stairs was so real they scared me. We fired off a bunch of twelve-gauge rounds in a barrel and threw chicken blood all over everybody. It looked great. Then this woman, the dealer, lies down in the middle of all those bodies. She's got on a white blouse and skirt and it's got chicken blood on it, too. This broad was in porno movies and she was real good at acting. She knew how to twitch, with her eyes closed, just like she was gonna bleed to death unless somebody got her to a hospital.

"So we walk Earl Deitrich downstairs and we tell him, 'Look, man, one guy got out of control down here. We still don't know where the bank is at. You got a chance to live, man. What's it gonna be?'

"He thinks for a minute. Can you believe that? Bodies are all over the floor and he stands there thinking. Then he says, 'There's a safe under the duckboards behind the bar.'

"One of our guys goes upstairs and comes back with handfuls of money, like it's a big surprise. Then we tell Deitrich, 'Look, man, we got nothing against you. But you saw too much here. The broad is still alive. Pump one into her and that puts us all on the same side.'

"The guy saying this takes the magazine out of a Beretta nine-millimeter so Deitrich knows only one round's in it and hands it to him and waits for him to pop the broad. Deitrich just stands there with the piece in his hand, thinking, a smile on his mouth.

"Our guy goes, 'You got a hearing problem?'

"Deitrich says, 'You know, you guys have brought my year to a head. It's been a real pisser. How about all of you kiss my ass?' And he shoots himself in the side of the head.

"We can't believe it. Neither can he. Smoke is rising from his hair and he's smiling at us. He opens and closes his mouth like he's gonna be deaf a month and says, 'A blank, huh? I got to admit, it's a slick blackmail operation. But you're amateurs.' Then he pitches the piece back to the guy who give it to him and says, 'Clean yourselves up, then I want to have a talk with you all.'"

Cholo wiped the heat and grease from his eyes with the flats of his fingers and walked to the air conditioner and hit on it.

"Why don't you get some central air, man? This place is a kitchen," he said. He looked through the blinds, down onto the sidewalk.

"Go on with your story," I said.

"That deputy's still down there, the one with the ex-mercenary fuck. You told somebody I was coming here today?"

"Nope."

"Kippy Jo trusts you. But you ain't earned no points with me."

"That's too bad."

"Maybe you're setting me up. You was a Texas Ranger. That means you still got a badge up your hole."

I could feel the anger rise in my chest and seize in my throat, but I kept my eyes focused on nothing. In the far corner of the room I thought I saw L.Q. Navarro leaning against the woodwork, his ash-gray Stetson tilted on the back of his head, his eyes filled with humor.

"Get out of here," I said to Cholo.

"Wha-"

"Go learn some respect for other people. I'm full up on bullshit and rudeness today."

"I don't believe you, man."

"It looks like that's an ongoing state with you, Cholo. Adios. No ethnic slur intended," I said.

After Cholo was gone, the door and glass still trembling from being flung back against the wall, L.Q. sat down in the deerhide swayback chair, took out his pack of playing cards, and began a game of solitaire on the bottom of an inverted leather wastebasket.

" You done the right thing. He wasn't going to give you the rest of it. That kid's been in and out of Juvie since he was knee-high to a fireplug," L.Q. said.

"You think he'll be back?"

"It don't matter. You got to make them wince inside. You know who said that? Wyatt Earp."

"I'm going to lunch."

" Eat a second helping for me," he said. He remained concentrated on his card game and didn't look up.

I ran into Temple on the courthouse walk the next morning and told her about Cholo's visit.

"You threw him out?" she said.

"He was confessing to stuff there's no record of. He wants me to bring down Earl Deitrich without implicating himself. I think Cholo burned that savings and loan for Earl and killed those firemen down in Houston. Maybe he was responsible for the accountant's heart attack, too."

"Earl Deitrich fired a gun into the side of his head?"

"You admire that?"

"I didn't think he had that kind of guts," she said.

I shook my head and walked into the courthouse. Two hours later Temple called me at the office.

"I just got a call from Cholo. He says you dissed him. He says he'll unload his whole story if I'll meet him at a gym in San Antone. He says he was at the fire in Houston."

"Make him come to you."

"I'm meeting him at ten in the morning," she said.

"Do you ever listen to me about anything?"

"Not really," she said.

"What's the name of the gym?" I asked.

It was located in a dirty white two-story cinder-block building on the edge of a warehouse district. The rooms were air-conditioned, but the smell of sweat and testosterone and soiled jerseys and socks left to dry on floor fans was overpowering. Temple and I walked through a basketball court filled with slum kids, through a free-weight room, into an annex that contained speed- and heavy bags and a boxing ring. The noise of the speedbags thudding on the rebound boards was deafening.

Cholo was dressed out in black Everlast trunks and a sweatshirt cut off at the armpits, pounding both gloved fists into a heavy bag. The sweat whipped from his hair with each blow.

He saw us and held the bag stationary and looked past Temple at me. He had removed the dressing from his left eye, and the white of the eye was clotted with broken purple veins.

"What's he doing here?" he said.

"We're on a tight schedule, Cholo. You want to fling more bean dip around, we're gone," I said.

"I don't like you, man," he replied.

"Hold the bag for me," Temple said.

"Do what?" he said.

She spun and hit the bag dead-center with a karate kick.

"You can do that?" he said.

"What's the deal on Earl Deitrich and the skeet club?" she said.

"I'll take a shower and we'll go somewhere," he said. "But first there's this guy been pinning me. I gotta straighten him out."

"Which guy?" she said.

"Don't worry about it. Have a seat. This kind of guy is, what d'you call it, predictable," he said.

We watched from a bench against the wall while Cholo continued hitting the bag. It didn't take long to see the scenario at work. A blond man, with brilliantine in his hair, was skipping rope by the ring, crossing his wrists, slapping the floor hard under his flat-soled shoes, an indolent grin on his mouth as he stared straight into Cholo's face.

"You make that guy?" I said to Temple.

"Used to be a mule for Sammy Mace? Out of Houston, he did a vice snitch, I thought he was in Huntsville," Temple said.

"Johnny Krause."

"Yeah, that's it. He beat the homicide beef on appeal. What's he doing here?"

The man named Johnny Krause stopped skipping rope and picked up a pair of sixteen-ounce sky-blue sparring gloves from the apron of the ring and walked toward Cholo. He paused no more than a foot from Cholo, pulling on his gloves, his abdominal muscles protruding slightly over his elastic waistband, indifferent to the possibility of being hit by Cholo's elbows or the bag swinging back on its chain.

"Go three with me. I'll take it easy on you," he said.

"I want to go three, I'll ask. Go fuck your 'easy,' too," Cholo said.

Krause made a casual face and turned his head to the side and looked into space. His blue, white-striped trunks reached almost to his knees and clung like moist Kleenex to his skin. "Suit yourself. You been staring at me all morning. I thought you wanted to go," he said.

"Me staring at you?"

"Don't worry about it. Sorry I bothered you, Paco," Krause said, and rubbed the sweaty top of Cholo's head with the palm of his glove.

Cholo knocked his arm away.

"Who you calling Paco, man?" he said.

"That ain't your name?" Krause kept smiling and tapped Cholo on the ear, winking, raising his guard now, his head ducking down behind his gloves as though he were about to be hit. "I been hearing you're one badass mean motherfucker. Don't hurt me, mean motherfucker," he said.

Cholo stepped away from the bag and swung at Krause, his glove ripping into empty space, pulling him off balance.

"The wind almost knocked me down. I got to carry an anchor around. Get me out of here," Krause said.

Others had stopped their workout and were watching now, laughing, making remarks behind their gloves to one another.

"Get a timekeeper. We don't use no headgear, either," Cholo said.

Johnny Krause sprang into the ring, threw a combination left and right at the air, his lips pursed, his chin tucked into his chest. Then he leaned back into the turn-buckle, his arms spread on the ropes, and watched Cholo, down below, pulling on the other pair of blue gloves with his teeth.

I stepped between Cholo and the apron of the ring. "I don't know why, but he's setting you up. Don't do it," I said.

"Fuck you," he replied, and climbed up into the ring, the tattoos of a knife dripping blood and a death's head on his throat running with sweat.

An old man with white, puckered skin and hair like meringue clicked a stopwatch and clanged the bell. Johnny Krause had either fought professionally or in prison, because he took complete control of his environment as soon as he moved to the center of the ring.

He stepped sideways, bobbed, or jerked backwards so quickly that Cholo couldn't touch him, all the time feigning restraint, as if Cholo were the aggressor in what should have been a sparring match.

"Whoa! You trying to take my head off? This ain't Mexico City. Hey, we got no cut man here. Maybe I'm a bleeder. Help!" Krause said, dancing, his sky-blue gloves at his sides.

Cholo reminded me of old film clips of Two-Ton Tony Galento, wading forward with the plodding solidity of a hod carrier, throwing one wild overhand punch after another.

Except Cholo's fists could not find his opponent or the smile that mocked him.

Krause jabbed Cholo around the eyes with his left, pow, pow, pow, that fast. Cholo's face twitched, his eyes watering as though he had been Maced. Then Krause hooked him on the ear and caught him hard on the jaw with a right cross, knocking his mouthpiece through the ropes. When Cholo tried to clench him, Krause thumbed him in his bad eye and nailed him again, this time in the mouth.

The timekeeper was jerking the rope on the bail, waving one hand in the air for Krause to stop.

Krause set himself and drove his right fist straight into Cholo's unprotected face, bouncing him off the ropes, spiderwebbing his nose and chin with blood. Cholo rolled on the canvas, disoriented, and fell off the apron onto the cement, turning over the spit bucket.

"We don't have no dirty fights in here. What's wrong with you?" the timekeeper said.

"You got it turned around. He was trying to scramble my eggs," Krause said.

He climbed through the ropes and dropped to the cement, avoiding the wetness from the spit bucket.

"You all right, buddy? You were coming hard. You didn't give me no choice," Krause said.

Cholo got to his feet, his eyes crossing, and pulled his gloves off one at a time by trapping them between his arm and his chest. He tossed them to the floor and hitched up his genitalia.

"I got your lunch hanging," he said.

"What can I say?" Krause said.

Cholo walked unsteadily toward the dressing room, a towel crumpled against his mouth and nose.

"You got crazy people in here. What kind of dump is this?" Krause said.

Someone picked up Cholo's gloves off the floor and started to put them in an equipment box under the ring.

"Them are my gloves," Krause said, popping open a paper bag for the man to drop them in.

But if Cholo Ramirez was indeed intended to embark on the Ghost Trail of his Indian ancestors, its entrance was not marked by Cottonwood trees along a riverbank on a windswept green plain. The Ghost Trail for Cholo lay inside the incessant scream of a shorted-out car horn and the heated smell of car metal and exhaust fumes and asphalt only a block from the Alamo. That's where the paramedics pried his hands off the steering wheel of his '49 Merc and tried to abate the convulsions in his body and the hemorrhage that was taking place in his brain.

While they strapped him down to a gurney, a frustrated policeman popped the Merc's hood and tore the wiring from the horn like a severed snake.