A kid upon his knees in front of a toilet bowl, strings of blood hanging from his broken lips, the jean-clad legs of his tormentors surrounding him like bars, is a sad sight to witness. The fact that the teachers know better than to intervene is even sadder.
But if we saw younger people as they were, we'd have to examine ourselves as well. We'd have to ask ourselves why we allowed people like Hugo Roberts to dwell in our midst.
By the time I had listened to his voice on the message machine and walked over to his office, he had another revelation to make. The only light in his blockhouse of an office came from the desk lamp; the upward glow from the shaded bulb made his face look like a wrinkled tan balloon floating in the gloom.
'We picked up that ole boy Skyler Doolittle. He says he's your client,' he said.
'Not exactly. What'd he do?'
'Hanging around the playground at the elementary, trying to give them kids candy bars.'
'We have an ordinance about giving away candy bars?'
'You can be cute, Billy Bob. But I've dug children out of leaf piles and garbage dumps. Y'all do that in the Rangers?'
'I came over here for only one reason, Hugo. You planted those bonds in Wilbur Pickett's house. You'll wish you didn't.'
He grinned and picked up a pen from his blotter and popped off the cap. He worked the head of the pen in and out of the cap.
'You seen that Mexican girl lately, what's her name, Esmeralda something?' he said.
I walked across the lawn to the main courthouse, where Skyler Doolittle was sitting on a wood bench inside a holding cage between the jailer's office and the back elevator. In his long-sleeve white shirt and wide red tie, his bald head and fused neck looked exactly like the domed top of a partially repainted fire hydrant.
'I'll have you out of here in about a half hour. But I think it's a good idea you not go around the school yard again,' I said.
'I wouldn't harm them kids,' he said.
'I know you wouldn't,' I said. His eyes that were between gray and colorless seemed to take on a measure of reassurance. 'By the way, my investigator checked around and didn't find any indication Earl Deitrich is trying to put you in an asylum. So maybe you were worried unduly on that score, Mr. Doolittle.'
'Those sheriffs deputies called me a sex pervert. They said they'd had their eye on me. They said the state's got a special place for my kind.'
I laced my fingers in the wire mesh of the cage. He looked like the most isolated and socially and physically rejected human being I had ever seen.
'Some Mexican gangbangers made mention of you to me, Mr. Doolittle. Maybe they're the same kids who caused the death of a Jewish man in Houston. I think you're a decent and good man, sir. I suspect your word is your bond. In that spirit I ask you to leave Earl Deitrich alone,' I said.
He seemed to study my words inside his head, his mouth flexing at the corners.
'If you ask it of me. Yes, sir, I won't give him no more trouble,' he said.
When I walked past the elevator, one that looked like a jail cell on cables, two uniformed deputies were struggling with a waist-chained black inmate in county whites. The inmate's left eye was cut and white foam issued from his mouth.
'What are you staring at? Sonofabitch drank out of a fire extinguisher,' one deputy said.
The second deputy looked at me with recognition, his arm locking simultaneously around the black man's struggling head.
'Hey, your client, the freak in the cage? We pick him up again on the same beef, he's going out of here a steer,' he said.
That evening a tornado destroyed an entire community south of us and killed over thirty people. I rode Beau, my Morgan, out into the fields and watched the dust blowing on the southern horizon and the rain clouds moving like oil smoke across the sun. I turned Beau back toward the house just as the rain began to march across the fields and dimple the river.
The sky turned black and the temperature must have dropped twenty degrees. I turned on the lights in the barn and tied on a leather apron and pried a loose shoe off Beau's back left hoof. A car turned off the highway into my drive, paused for a moment by the side of the porch, then rolled slowly to the front of the barn.
Its headlights were on high beam and shone directly into my eyes.
I picked up a hammer off the anvil and stood just inside the opened doors of the barn. The headlights went off and I saw a chopped, sunburst 1961 T-Bird, with chrome wire wheels and an oxblood leather interior, full of Mexican kids. Ronnie Cruise cut the engine and walked through the rain into the barn.
He wore baggy black trousers and a form-fitting ribbed undershirt and a rosary with purple glass beads around his neck; his shoulders looked tan and hard and were beaded with water.
'That's quite a car,' I said.
'Me and Cholo built it. I done a lot of custom work for people around here,' he said. His eyes dropped momentarily to the hammer in my hand. 'You think we're here to 'jack your Avalon, man?'
'You tell me.'
'I didn't mean to dis you at the garage. But see-' He held his fingers up in the air and looked at them as he spoke, as though they held the words he needed. 'See, I heard what the lady said when my back was turned, about two guys going off a roof. Like, that's the story somebody told you. But you didn't have the respect to ask me about it. I don't think that's too cool, man.'
'So maybe it's none of our business.'
'Yeah, well, I'll clear it up for you. A couple of Viscounts put their hands all over a girl in a theater. Then when they had to explain theirselves they got scared and like the punks they were they pulled a nine. Maybe the guy they pulled it on got it away from them and chased them across a couple of roofs. So the two Counts decided they were gonna jump to a fire escape. They almost made it. But the guy didn't throw nobody off a roof…' His eyes searched my face. 'Why you keep looking at me like that?'
'Because I don't have any idea why you're here.'
He cut his eyes sideways and exhaled through his nose.
'There's a tornado out there and I couldn't get back home,' he said.
'Y'all want some coffee?'
He pawed at his cheek with three fingers. 'Yeah, I think that'd be nice,' he said.
I went into the house and brought back a pot of coffee and a paper sack full of tin cups. His friends, two girls and two boys, all of them wearing caps backwards on their heads, sat on hay bales or walked idly through the stalls, touching saddles, coils of polyrope, rakes, hoes, mattocks, bridles, a pair of chaps, axes, and fire tongs as though they were historical artifacts.
I rasped Beau's hoof smooth and reshoed it, then led him toward his stall. Ronnie Cruise stepped behind him to get to the coffeepot, and Beau's back hooves slashed into the air like jackhammers. Ronnie grabbed his shinbone, his face white with pain, his shirtfront drenched with coffee. I grabbed him by one arm and eased him down on a hay bale.
'You all right?' I said.
'Oh yeah. I always like getting my spokes broken.' He rocked forward, squeezing his shin with both hands.
'Let me show you something. You can work behind a horse all you want as long as you let him know what you're doing,' I said.
I ran my hand and arm along Beau's spine and rump and let my body brush close into his when I moved across his hindquarters. 'An animal is just like a human being. He fears what he doesn't understand. Here, step up beside me,' I said.
Ronnie Cruise rose to his feet, then hesitated, his tongue wetting his bottom lip. I picked up his hand by the wrist and set it on Beau's rump, then pulled Ronnie toward me. Beau twisted his head once so he could see us, then blew out his breath and shifted his weight on the plank floor.
'See?' I said.
'Yeah.'
'Your leg okay?'
