The Final Country

FOURTEEN

Although it was not yet April, it could have passed for a summer dusk in the real world, except for a small, aimless wind and the lingering chill of the last in a series of wet northers that had plagued the Hill Country winter. The pungent, musky cedar fragrance mingled lightly with the damp but dry limestone wafting on the cool air. The cloudless horizon burned like a distant grass fire. CJ, as Carol Jean Warren said we should call her, stepped out of the front door of Tom Ben's house as former deputy sheriff Bob Culbertson drove up. She patted my shoulder and tucked my windbreaker closer around my shoulders as if I was some ancient grandfather, and the movement set the rocking chair in motion for a long second. I waited for the black discs and the waves of nausea, echoes of the concussion, that sometimes still came with the rocking, but they didn't come, so I continued whittling at the scrap of cedar in my hands. I wished her good luck. CJ told me good night, kissed the top of my head, then headed down the walk to Bob's pickup, her pool cue case cocky over her shoulder. Bob climbed out of his pickup to meet her at the bottom of the walk. They chatted a few minutes standing beside the pickup. With skinny butts tightly packed into jeans, cowboy shirts topped by down vests, they could have been siblings. Or lovers. Which I suspected they had become in the weeks they had been working for me. But they showed no sign as they parted. She climbed into his pickup and drove away. Bob ambled up to the veranda, scattering the small goats, then stopped in front of me, smiling.

"You ready to beat the shit out of somebody, old man?" Out of uniform, Bob had the face of a boy scout.

I stood up and stretched. The dead man's ligament in my right knee felt a little stiff in spite of, or because of, the long workout I had endured that morning; I would have sworn that the pins in my elbow ached in the unseasonable evening chill. The skin grafts on my neck and shoulder felt like sun-dried leather. But when I stiff-armed Bob's shoulder with my right palm, he stepped back, grinning.

"Who are you calling an old man, kid?" I said. "Besides, we're just looking for some polite conversation."

Well, I was old, true enough. A man can't turn sixty in a hospital bed without feeling old. I was old even before I made it to the hospital in Billings. It took hours and almost all the rest of Enos Walker's cocaine to organize the scene at the Punky Creek Mine building. At least Carver D said it was nine o'clock his time when I called him on the scrambled cell phone as soon as I reached the back door of the Owl, called to ask him to call my ex-partner to ask him to drive over from Meriwether to help me. Then I pulled up my jacket hood, and hobbled into the bar, almost invisible among the other late night drinkers. The bartender handed me the worthless manila envelope full of worthless truths. I tore it into small pieces and fed it into the toilet. Then I settled into a long wait of nips of cocaine and slow sips of Absolut.

I'd wanted to carry Molly's torn body away with me but I couldn't think what to do with it. Wear it around my neck like the fatal, final albatross of my life, a sign of all my mistakes and foolishness. I didn't think I was going to need a visible sign of all that. But I did take the Shark of the Moon and hang it around my neck.

I had used up most of my energy to pile up the meth lab and drag the bodies into the stacks. My attitude toward Enos Walker was oddly benign. Whatever mistakes he had made in his life, I had to admit that my half-assed quest was at least as much for my own benefit as his. I didn't even complain too much that the son of a bitch weighed nearly three hundred pounds. Getting him under the meth lab was like dragging a live bull calf to a denutting. And when I got him under the end table, I hooked his thumb around the trigger of the Desert Eagle pistol and blew most of his fucking head off. The pathologist, should one ever turn up, would have a hell of a time tracing the path of the.22 round that had bounded around inside his skull like a crazed mouse and scrambled his brains like an omelet.

I was afraid to drag Molly into the pile, afraid her destroyed leg would rip off her body. I didn't think I could stand that. So I picked her up, even with my broken arm, then carried her to the table and placed her among the meth chemicals. As the winter dusk settled like an ashen cloud, I closed her eyes and stroked her face until I knew I had to go.

First, I turned off the gas to the heaters until the flames died, then turned it back on again, and set the crude cigarette and matchbox fuse, and finally staggered out to drive shakily away. I was halfway to Wilsall when the gas-filled building went off. It lit up the sky like a bomb, like the end of the world, and with any luck the natural gas and the ether would burn hot enough and long enough to destroy any fingerprints I might have missed inside the building. Whatever tire prints I might have left on the frozen road would be wiped out by the first rural fire truck up the track.

During the endless, wandering drive to Livingston, I discovered a long sharp pain in my right knee that somehow I hadn't noticed yet, plus the disturbing fact that the little finger on my right hand was half its normal size. But it didn't hurt. I stopped in Wilsall, did another bump of cocaine, and pulled my little finger out of my hand. That got me to the Owl.

Where I huddled on a stool near the front door, sick with the waste of Enos Walker's life. I could have saved him – saved all of us – if he'd just given me a chance. Molly's death had left me as empty as a whiskey bottle in a Hangtown gutter. Whatever she might have been in her earlier life, in my part of it she had been a beauty, a tough, stand-up, fearless partner, and I knew that I would never be able to replace her. Those light blue eyes fading to gray, then into impenetrable, dark distance – that would never go away. No matter how many times I lifted the water glass of vodka, no matter how much shit I stuffed into my broken nose, the black stone was going to hang cold over my heart until the end.

By driving like a madman, my ex-partner managed to show up from Meriwether just before closing time. He didn't ask any questions he didn't want to know the answers to, and dealt with the shit. On the way to Billings, he dumped the weapons, the cocaine, the codeine, and the fake identification into the depths of a deserted construction site in Columbus, followed by a sack of traction sand, a hole where once spring arrived and the cement was poured and the asphalt laid, except for memories, that part of my life would disappear. Then he took most of my extra cash and promised to mail it to Petey, then dropped me down the street from the emergency room entrance of Deaconess in Billings before he drove up to the airport to leave the Cherokee in the rental car lot. He would take the bus to Livingston the next morning, and we would leave no tracks. I wandered over to sit on the curb, stoned and drunk, waiting to die.

"Tell me about it some time, old man," was the last thing he said before he drove away.

I couldn't tell if it was the cold wind, pain, or just my life that filled my swelling eyes with salty tears.

My insurance was current, plus my checks cleared, and I even had a stash of cash in a hidden compartment in my war bag, and it was Montana so the hospital treated me like a human being, once I was willing to pay for a private room, and the police finally got bored and bought my story that I'd picked up a couple of hitchhikers who'd beaten me senseless and stolen my Caddy at a rest area outside Columbus. Of course, I didn't have any idea how I'd gotten burned or have the slightest memories who had dropped me at the ER.

I was a bit more damaged than I had any idea at first. They had to break my nose to reset it, so I could keep breathing through it. That was a pleasant experience. Even deep under the anesthesia I could swear I felt it. Some of the burns were deep enough to require skin grafts, which was about as painful as anything I had ever endured. My left arm had been smashed badly enough above the elbow to require pins to hold the bones together. There was some uncomfortable dental surgery and some new partial plates. And the mystery pain in my right knee turned out to be a torn ACL. They said the easiest and quickest recovery would require the ligament from a dead person.

"Shit, I'm half dead," I told them, "and your drugs are shitty, so do it before I change my mind and sue you."

They weren't amused. They hadn't seen as many dead people as I had recently. Nor did they find it as amusing as I did that the surgery was scheduled for the day I turned sixty. But by the end of February, though, my ribs had knit, and I was deeply and successfully into physical therapy, the grafts had taken, and they had given me a light plastic cast for the arm. Finally, I'd had enough bad food and sterility, and checked myself out against doctor's advice before the bastards committed me, for drug abuse and a generally bad attitude, to the state hospital over in Warm Springs.

As I combed my hair that day – completely white now – as I considered my new white beard and my ravaged face – I'd lost twenty pounds during the six weeks in the hospital – I thought perhaps they were right – it occurred to me that I resembled my greatgrandfather a great deal – but my grin was still my grin, and I still had some shit to deal with back down in Texas before I moved on. There is nothing like weeks of drugged fog equally mixed with severe pain and damned expensive bureaucratic torture plus a complete dearth of recreational drugs to make an old boy cranky. And in spite of Johnson's quip about the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight wonderfully concentrating the mind, when a man doesn't care if he lives or dies, the concentration upon revenge acquires a fearful clarity. It shines like the point of a poisoned dagger, shadows as dark and deep as the barrel of a sawed-off ten gauge double-barrel, and echoes like a tornado's thunder. Just in case my anger wasn't enough to carry me sensibly through the rest of my time, as soon as I was semi-mobile I had Petey fly up and check me out on a new laptop that connected me to a world of information, that even in spite of all the facts Carver D had dug out for me, I'd never realized existed.

"You've become a fair to middling one-handed keyboard man," Petey said.

"Thanks," I said. "Are you still planning to go to Harvard Business?"

Petey looked uncomfortable for a second, fiddling with the single piece of ornamental metal left on his head, a small earring. He had taken up normal clothes, too. Today he sported a dark tweed jacket, khakis, and loafers.

"If I can get Carver to stop drinking," he said softly. "He's the only family I've ever had." One winter day, Carver D and Hangas had found the fifteen-year-old Petey passed out in an alley off Sixth Street with only a skateboard for warmth. "I'd hate to leave him, man, but he's the one who encouraged me to go to school. And thanks to you, I don't need his money for this."

"I've been meaning to talk to you about that," I said. "It's time to shut our little laundry down." Then told him about my plans for the bar. "If you and your buddies would make one more haul to the Caymans for me, I'd appreciate the chore. Double your cut." Petey and his buddies usually went to the bank for me, then came back with legal amounts of cash to wash. "Can you shut down the program from Carver D's house?" I asked.

"Hell, man, I can shut it down from here."

Since both Molly and Enos Walker were dead and no longer threats to the Lomaxes or anybody else, I had made no secret of my location during the weeks in the hospital. As a result, I received odd lots of information from down in Texas. I had returned my Gatlin County badge and credentials, with a polite letter of resignation, a gesture received without comment. Carver D called daily until he decided to take a month off himself to spend it in a spin dry in Tucson, and to let me know that the GMC pickup had been a dead end, stolen in Lubbock, the plates stolen in Tyler. But he called a second time that day to let me know that Tom Ben hadn't made it. The stroke and the pneumonia had been too much for the old boy. I bribed a nurse to bring me a pint of Jack Daniel's, a taste I'd never much liked, but I drank it anyway, my hangover as grim as my grief the next morning.

I got on the phone that afternoon. Lalo told me that there didn't seem to be any cops hanging around the bar, but for some reason we were making money hand over fist. Hangas kept looking for Eldora Grace, but she hadn't surfaced for so long that her daughter up in Fort Worth reported her as a missing person. He also added that Travis Lee seemed to have Sissy Duval's power of attorney and was taking care of her investments and condo. Joe Warren had left several messages to ask me to find his wife again, but I didn't return any of them. Sylvie Lomax hadn't called, which was news with its own value.

But the strangest message came just about the time I had decided that I was not only going to survive, I was going to enjoy getting even. It came in a registered letter from a lawyer whose name I didn't recognize.

It was a scribbled note from Tom Ben: Well, kid, if you're reading this, I'm dead meat. Hell, I've been half dead since Mary killed herself before I could get back from Korea and beat the shit out of my worthless little brother. But it's too late for regrets. And I don't have the energy for them today. I did as well as I could, given my failures. I'm sure you won't understand what this is about or what's going to happen next, but trust me, I did it in all good faith. For reasons you don't need to know anything about, the girl can't protect my place against the fucking greed-mongering whores. So I'm leaving you my shares in the ranch corporation. And a note with my lawyer. I pray you'll figure out what to do with the land, and maybe with a little luck you can keep them from completely fucking over that small part of the world it has been my pride and joy to inhabit. Good luck, my friend.

The note was signed: Thomas Benjamin Wallingford, Capt. USMC.

I had no idea what it meant then, but when I got hold of his lawyer, I found out. Tom Ben had incorporated the ranch some years before, dividing the shares equally between himself and Betty. He left me his shares, which wouldn't have been a controlling interest, except that, for reasons I didn't understand, and perhaps never would, Betty had outsmarted herself. Every time she cashed one of my rent checks, she transferred ten shares of her stock into my name, so I owned the controlling interest of the corporation. Perhaps trying to protect Tom Ben's ranch from Lomax and Overlord Land and Cattle, thinking I might go up against big money if I had something personal at stake. Just another touch of her desire for a secret life, I assumed. And I was sure that Betty didn't know just how fucking personally I was taking it now. Whatever her reasons, I now owned a controlling interest in Tom Ben's ranch.

Travis Lee showed up unexpectedly a few days later, bearing gifts, a crooked grin, and a complaint. "Hellfire, son, you should have let me know," he said as he stepped into the door. "You look like a man who's been rode hard, put up wet, then run over by a shit-storm."

"I don't have much hospital experience," I admitted. "And I don't want much more." Recovering in an El Paso hospital from a gunshot wound had been enough for me.

"Can't blame you for that," he said. "It's sure as hell hard to get up here in the wintertime. I sure didn't plan on spending a major part of my remaining years in the Salt Lake airport." He nodded toward the snow squall outside my room's windows.

"The price you pay for splendid isolation," I said. "What the hell are you doing up here?"

"Thought you might need something to read," he said, then handed me a sackful of paperback books, canned treats, and two half-pints of vodka.

"Where's the heroin?" I asked, after I glanced through the sack. I had to admit that the small cans of pate, smoked oysters, and clams looked good. Travis Lee had even included a small jar of Dijon mustard and a package of water crackers. "Thanks," I said, oddly touched by the old man's visit. "You came a long way to see me laid up."

"Down at the nurses' station, they said that you're comin' along fine," he expounded. "Said you should be outa here in a couple shakes of a puppy's tail."

"That's not what they tell me," I said. "I'm wearing pieces of my ass on my neck, a dead man's ligament in my knee, and an assortment of screws and pins in my elbow worthy of a hardware store." Then I wondered, "How did you know I was in the hospital?"

"Hell, I don't know," he said, "somebody must have mentioned it. Austin may be on the verge of making Gatlin County look like a city, son, but you know it's a small town as far as gossip goes. And speaking of gossip, I hear you've settled your cash flow problem."

"I don't have a cash flow problem," I said, "so I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"I'm talking about your sudden acquisition of my brother's ranch."

"Shit, Trav," I said. "That's not gossip, that's criminal behavior. The goddamned will hasn't been probated yet. So how the hell did you know about the will?"

"Word gets around," he said innocently.

"Then maybe you can tell me what the hell Tom Ben had in mind?" I said. "Leaving his place to me?"

"Couldn't speak to that, son," he said, "but I have some idea what that land is worth. Particularly if it's parceled out to the right people at the right time."

"It all seems like a long way away," I said. "I'm going to be in this bed for a time."

"You're coming back to Texas, aren't you?" he said, his face furrowed with worry. "You got a passel of business interests down there, son."

"I don't know what I'm going to do," I said, suddenly very tired and reaching for the nurse's call button. I wasn't going to criticize Tom Ben – he was clearly a man of some honor – but I sure as hell wasn't all that happy about being dropped into the middle of the Wallingford family's troubles. "Right now I'm going to see if I can't beg a shot out of these stingy bastards," I said, "then see about a siesta."

We chatted aimlessly until the nurse came, and I begged like an egg-sucking dog until she gave me a jolt of Demerol just to shut me up. Travis Lee made his exit, explaining that he had spent so much time on the ground at the Salt Lake airport that he had to turn around and head right back to Texas. I wanted to ask him about Sissy Duval, but it slipped my mind. As I drifted off behind the painkiller, I thought that it was nice of Travis Lee to come all the way up here to see me, then I wondered, sleepily, why he had gone to the trouble – he hadn't bothered to mention his investment ideas – but then I let it go as I slipped into the warm, drugged slumber.

Once out of the hospital, I went over to Meriwether to spend a couple of weeks with my ex-partner and his family. Baby Lester wasn't a baby anymore. Which he reminded me every time I slipped and called him that. And they were too busy with law school and a growing Lester to spend much time with me and my problems, and I got tired of watching them try, so I climbed on a plane and hopped back to Texas. I didn't really care if anybody knew I was back, but for some reason I didn't want to return to my room in the Lodge to wait for Tom Ben's will to go into probate. So I rented a car and stopped by my place to check with Lalo and ran into one of my grass widows, Sherry. She invited me up for a drink that turned into a few pleasant days. And nights. Until her big-shot computer-chip-on-the-English-tweed-shoulder husband came back from Boston. Then I crashed with Renfro and Richie at their place off Bee Caves Road for a few more days, but they took such good care of me that I began to feel as if I was either an invalid or a leeching guest at a chichi bed-and-breakfast. A guy can stand out-of-season strawberries and clotted cream for breakfast only so many days in a row.

So I went over to Travis Lee's office to ask him if I could borrow his place down on the Gulf for a few weeks, but he said he was having some work done on the place. When I thought about that last weekend Betty and I had spent there, I decided perhaps I didn't mind too much not going. I asked him if he couldn't get Gatlin County to speed up the probate process.

"Oh, son, I don't know," he groaned, a Confederate cavalry saber balanced on his knee, "down here a favor always calls for a favor in return. You scratch my balls, I'll scratch yours. I strongly suspect those old boys around the courthouse are a little worried that you might be considerin' removing my brother's land from the tax rolls. 'Cause of your former relations with my niece." Travis Lee stood up, holding the old saber in front of him. From this angle I realized that his golden belt buckle wasn't a snake's head but a bullfrog's head, and now I knew what it meant. He pointed the saber at me. "Now if I could go over there and give them some reassurance in this rather important matter," he continued, "I'm sure they would be more than happy to move things along."

"You tell them," I said, fighting to keep the anger out of my voice. "You tell them old boys that I don't have any plans to take the ranch off the tax rolls." Truth was I didn't have any plans about the ranch at all. But I had some plans for Mr. Wallingford, plans he wasn't going to like.

"You sure you didn't check out of that hospital too soon?" he asked.

"Maybe," I admitted. "But I was bored."

Travis Lee nodded his head as if he understood exactly. But he didn't understand anything at all. I didn't understand why I didn't jerk the saber out of his hands and shove it up his ass. Maybe I was learning restraint in my golden years.

When the will went through probate the next day, I decided to move into Tom Ben's ranch house. Over the fervent objections of Betty and some lawyer I didn't know, objections that Tom Ben's lawyer quickly stifled. When it was over, he handed me a sealed envelope. Betty watched, her face with a haunted look, as if she hadn't slept in weeks. When she had first seen my new old man's face in the judge's chambers, a ripple of concern crossed her pale face, and she took one small step in my direction, then pulled herself up, stopped, and just stood there, her face angry with hurt and betrayal, staring at me. But I didn't understand any of it. Not how we had gotten together, or how we'd fallen apart.

That afternoon I bought a four-wheel-drive crew cab pickup just like any other all-hat-and-no-cattle Texan, picked up my new gear, and moved myself into Tom Ben's house. It seemed like a good center of operations for what I had planned. I made a few quick changes: two more telephone lines installed; a wall between two bedrooms removed to make space for the computers and the exercise equipment; and had one of the bulldozer guys build me a new road out the backside of the ranch so my comings and goings wouldn't be quite so visible.

Tom Ben's foreman had towed the burned hulk of my Caddy out into the pasture with a bulldozer, then buried it. I told him to keep the hands doing whatever the old man had been doing, then went about my business.

The afternoon Red's scrambled cell phone came by FedEx with a sweet note from Mrs. McCravey, I decided to pick up Gannon's. When I called, I caught him in the office. I still used one crutch and kept a fiberglass cast on my left elbow, mostly for cover, and with the white beard probably looked like my grandfather's ghost. At least Gannon looked at me as startled as if I were some kind of specter.

"Jesus, man," he said. Today he was dressed like the rest of the boys in cowboy boots and a western-cut suit. "I heard that you'd been in a car wreck, but I had no idea."

"You should see the other motherfucker," I said.

"You have any luck with your notions?"

"Not a bit," I said. "It was a long tiresome chase into a pile of slick, slippery gooseshit with not a rose petal in sight. And as you can see, I'm a little too beat up to go on with it."

"I can see that," he said. "Are you going to be all right?"

"The rumors of my near demise haven't been exaggerated," I said, "but unfortunately for my enemies, I'm not dead yet."

"Well, if there's anything I can do, let me know," he said, ignoring my line about enemies. He honestly seemed to have no idea of the real story.

"Absolutely," I said. "Hey, how's that kid doing? Culbertson, I think his name was."

"Released when we downsized last month," Gannon said, but I suspected I knew the real reason.

"How's your job looking these days?" I asked. "You're not in uniform. They put you back in the detective division?"

"For a few weeks," he said. "While they decide if they're going to fire me. I'm keeping my fingers crossed." Then he paused. "You spending any time at the bar these days?"

"I was just on my way over there right now," I said. "You want to have a drink?"

"Sounds good to me," he said quickly, glancing around as if the walls were listening. "I'll meet you there in a few minutes. I've got something you ought to hear."

On the way out of the courthouse I made a point to clunk slowly past the county prosecutor's offices. Rooke glanced up from where he leaned on his secretary's desk. I gave him a friendly wave. Then he stood up straight, his hard gray eyes slightly confused, not a sign of recognition on his narrow face. He even tried to grin as if I were a voter.

As I walked through the lobby of the Lodge, Travis Lee came striding out of the office, his boots slapping heavily on the Mexican tile floor, his large Stetson sailing like a large white bird on his head. He planted himself right in front of me, so I stopped. He took a step toward me, smiling, saying, "Jesus, son, I'm worried about you. You're hobbled like an old mare with a stone bruise."

"I'm getting around," I said. That suited me perfectly. I wanted Gatlin County to think of me as an old man, to dismiss me as a threat. "I've got business to tend to down here. I'm meeting Gannon for a drink," I added as I turned to the bar.

"What business have you got with him?" Travis Lee asked, then stepped in front of me. The bottom of my right crutch, which I had filled with six ounces of melted lead sinkers while I was in Meriwether, caught him on the shin. Travis Lee jumped back as if he'd been shot.

"Sorry," I said. "We're just having a drink."

"What the hell you got in there, son? An anchor?"

I ignored him. "By the way," I said, "there's an envelope with Sissy Duval's name on it in the Lodge safe with ten thousand five hundred dollars in it. But it isn't really hers. I've got to give it back when I get a chance." But from the look on his face, I knew something was wrong. "What's up?"

"Well, I don't know if you knew," he said. "Sissy dropped me a note and asked me to take care of her affairs. She gave me her power of attorney a long time ago. Since the cash had her name on it, I took it. I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"Oh, hell," I said. "I'll figure something out. Where'd it come from?"

"What?"

"The note. Where was it mailed from?"

"Somewhere in the Caribbean, I think," he said, then started to walk away. "Enjoy your drink," he added over his shoulder.

Gannon and I had a pleasant drink, both lightly pumping each other to no avail. He suspected I hadn't been in any car wreck, suspected somehow that I had found the McBride woman, and that I knew more about what was going on than he did. So I gave him a taste.

"Enos Walker is dead," I said. "I'm sorry. I did my best to get him to come back. With my testimony, we could have worked a deal."

"A deal? Anything less than the needle wouldn't have done me any good," he admitted. "That's how you got busted up?"

I didn't bother answering that one. If he had to ask, he didn't need to know the answer. "I don't know how to tell you this, Gannon, but while I was nosing around I kept coming up with bits and pieces of information that Walker was somehow connected to Hayden Lomax."

"That doesn't make any sense," Gannon said. "A man like Lomax wouldn't fuck with cocaine. Christ, he's got to be worth three or four hundred million."

"I don't know," I said.

"Speaking of odd information," he said. "The other day I heard that Tobin Rooke is trying to convince the grand jury to indict you for Billy Long's murder. Since he can't indict you for his brother's death."

"Thanks," I said. "I haven't heard anything about that. Can you nail it down?" But I didn't really care. Tobin Rooke was about to have problems of his own.

"I'll nose around, but you know -"

"- your job's hanging by a thread," I interrupted.

"Yeah," he said standing. "I guess I better get back to it. I've got some paperwork to take home."

I told him the beers were on me. He said thanks, then walked out of the bar, still unsteady on his new cowboy boots.

"Guys from New Jersey shouldn't wear cowboy boots," Lalo said as he brought me a fresh beer.

"Well, mi amigo," I said raising the glass, "I think my days of cowboy boots are over. A man in my condition could fall off them high heels and hurt myself." Lalo chuckled happily. Coming back to work seemed to have knocked ten years off his face. "You're looking good, viejo," I said.

"Perhaps I retired too soon," he said. "But running your bar, my friend, is a pleasure instead of a job."

I saw no reason to tell him that as soon as things settled out, my lawyer had arranged to sell the bar to the Herrera family at fairly reasonable terms. Nothing down, with a small piece of the action month as payment. Travis Lee wouldn't be happy, but lying in that hospital bed, I had decided to get out of the bar business as easily and quickly as I could.

Lalo poured two shots of tequila out of the Herradura bottle. We toasted the clear, bright day outside the glass walls of the bar. No buildings or houses troubled the tangled expanse of the Blue Creek Park. It could have been a different world, an easier world. But for the shadows still drifting behind my eyes. I shook Lalo's soft, satin hand, then went about my business.