Cimarron Rose

I stood up and straightened my back. I felt two long ribbons of pain slip down my spine and wrap around my thighs.

'Come on, boy. Ask me,' he said. His legs forked out straight in front of him, like sticks inserted inside his trousers. His flat-soled prison work shoes glistened with mud.

I picked up my hat and slapped the dirt off it on my coat. 'You come near Pete or his mother again, I'll shoot you through the lungs. It's a promise, Moon,' I said, and started to walk away.

'I went back into the pump station and turned on the gas. That pipe was loaded when his arc bit into it. You ever watch a cat chewing on an electric cord? You ought to seen his face when it went,' Moon said.

He began to laugh, holding his ribs because they hurt him, his face convulsing like a pixie's. He pushed the mattock handle at me with one shoe, trying to say something, shaking his head impotently at the level of mirth bursting from his chest.

Moon had to reach into the past to injure me, but across town, at that moment, Darl Vanzandt was buying a length of steel cable and a set of U-bolts, perhaps to prove that no matter what happened to Garland T. Moon, his legacy would be passed on to another generation in Deaf Smith.

chapter thirty-two

'You followed Darl from the courthouse?' I said to Temple.

We sat on my back screen porch. Pete was in the house, watching television, and the yard was full of pools with islands of leaves floating in them.

'You rubbed his face in it, in front of his friends. A kid like that doesn't pray for his enemies,' she said.

'I'm sorry for the stupid remark I made to you yesterday.'

'I already forgot about it.' She picked up her coffee spoon from her napkin and set it in her saucer.

I waited, but her eyes were deliberately empty, the balls of her fingers motionless on the table, and I said, 'What's he want with a pair of U-bolts and twenty feet of steel cable?'

She shook her head, then said, 'For some reason, those words and the name of Darl Vanzandt make my stomach crawl… You really go

'It's going to get even worse later.'

She looked at me and then looked through the screen. Her face was quiet, full of the thoughts and co

Pete's mother had consented to let him return to Temple's house for the next few days. That night we ate at a cafeteria, then I dropped them off and parked my car in back, turned on the flood lamps in the yard, poured some oats in Beau's stall, and walked all the way around the outside of the house with L.Q.' s.45 revolver under my raincoat.

Then I fell asleep on the third floor, with Great-grandpa Sam's journal open in my lap, an illogical image of torn steel cable and roaring car engines threading in and out of my dreams.

Bu

I walked toward the jury box so Bu

'Did you sleep with Rosea

'We went out in high school.'

'Did you sleep with her?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Would you say you loved her?'

'Yeah, I reckon. I mean, the way kids do.'

'You were a senior and she was only fifteen when y'all met, is that right?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Was she a virgin?'

'She told me she wasn't.'

'You found out different, though, didn't you?'

He knitted his fingers together, glanced out at the courtroom, at the Vanzandts, the boys he had played football with, the Mexican girl he dated now, at the few empty seats in back where maybe his father would come in late and sit down.

'Bu

'Yes, sir, I found out I was the first,' he said.

'You hurt her, didn't you? You thought you should take her to a hospital?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But not in the county where people might know you?'

He turned his head away from the jury and cleared his throat. 'That's right,' he said.

'The witness will speak up,' the judge said.

'I was afraid. She was underage,' Bu

'Then you went to A amp;M and dumped her?' I said.

'She didn't lack for boyfriends. She found some a whole lot better than me.'

'Did you punch out Virgil Morales at Shorty's?'

'Yeah, we got a bad history.'

'He called you a pimp?'

Bu

'How did Rosea

'I took her out to their house once. I intro-'

'Introduced her to whom?'

'Just what I said. I took her to their house.'

His words were binding in his throat now, the scar along his jaw turning as dark as blood against his tan.

'Did you have sexual intercourse with Mrs Vanzandt?' I asked.

'Relevance, your honor,' Marvin said.

'I'll allow it,' the judge said. 'The witness will answer the question.'

'I did it once. It was 'cause she was mad over something, I mean with her husband. She was like that,' Bu

'Did Rosea

'No, sir.'

'Rosea

'Cause she didn't have no friends left. Except Lucas. He's the only one done right by her.'

'But she wanted you to take her to her baptism? Because you owed her in a big way, didn't you?'

'I guess that's what she thought.'

'Why did you owe her, Bu

He kneaded his hands between his thighs, the balls of his feet tapping neurotically on the stand, his head pulled down on his chest. His long hair fell down around his throat like a girl's.

'Answer the question, please,' I said, but I had lowered my voice now, the way you do when you hope your own capacity for cruelty will be forgiven.

'I drove her to Dallas to meet Mr Vanzandt. He rented three rooms at the Four Seasons, like there wasn't nothing unusual about him being with a couple of young people. But we all knew why we was there. I took her down to his room the first night, for drinks out on the balcony and all, but I left by myself,' he said.

He rested his forehead on his fingers, staring numbly at the floor. Then he added, as though his own behavior had been explained to him by someone else, 'That's what I done, all right.'

Emma Vanzandt rose from her chair and walked down the aisle and out of the courtroom, her face like parchment about to wrinkle in a flame.

'How many times did you do this?' I asked.

'Whenever he wanted her. At least up until she thought she was pregnant and he told her to get it cut out of her, 'cause he wasn't go

The only sound in the courtroom was the hum of the fans and the rain clicking on the windowsills. No one looked at Jack Vanzandt, except his son, who studied his father as though a strange and new creature whom he didn't recognize had just swum into his ken.

Fifteen minutes later a power failure darkened the building for three hours, and Temple and Lucas and I drove to a barbecue restaurant on a hill that overlooked the river outside of town. It had stopped raining, and the sky in the west was blue and you could see the shadows of clouds on the hillsides.