Negras,' Ronnie said.
'That's not how she told it to me,' I said.
The skin on Ronnie's face flexed against the bone. 'You already talked to her? She says she wanted to marry Jeff?' he asked, his mouth slack.
'I went to see her because I think she's getting a bad deal, Ronnie. Here's the card of a bondsman across the square. I'll be at her arraignment this afternoon. Use that money to work out something on the bail,' I said.
'Why you looking out for Esmeralda?' Cholo asked.
'Because she's stand-up,' I said.
His eyes narrowed, as though there were a trick in my words. He wore a white undershirt and his shoulders and upper arms had the swollen proportions of a steroid addict. He stood in front of the glass wall case that contained the revolvers and Winchester rifle of my greatgrandfather without seeming to have ever noticed it. His reflection wobbled between the glass and blue felt background like a man trapped under lake ice.
I waited for him to speak but he didn't.
'A pilot named Bubba Grimes told me Earl Deitrich has a weakness for gambling. I hear you told Temple Carrol a story about turning over card games. Is there a connection there, Cholo?' I said.
'No.'
But Ronnie was looking at the side of Cholo's face now.
'I said no,' Cholo repeated.
'You two guys build cars that belong on magazine covers. Why do you waste your energies with gang- bangers?' I said.
Ronnie Cruise pointed the index and little fingers of his right hand at me, like devil's horns. 'Man, you're a Heart only once. You got a tattoo on your throat like Cholo's, you got shit in your blood and everybody on the street knows it. You were a Texas Ranger?' he said.
'That's right.'
'Then you should understand.'
After they left I called Temple and asked her to visit the women's section of the jail to ensure that nothing untoward was happening to Esmeralda Ramirez.
'I thought you already went over there,' she said.
'It doesn't hurt to err on the side of caution,' I said.
'Is that the reason you called?'
'No. Have dinner with me.'
'I'll think about it,' she said, and hung up.
I walked to the window and looked out on the square, at the blinding white reflection of sunlight on the cement and the deep green of the oaks moving in a hot wind. I tried to keep my thoughts straight in my head but I couldn't. I kept thinking of both Temple and Peggy Jean Deitrich and wondered at how it was possible to feel trepidation, guilt, and attraction whenever the name of either one came into my mind. I heard the secretary's voice, then the door of my office ease open on the rug.
Ronnie Cruise stood in the doorway, the envelope full of money stuck down in his belt.
'She told you she got married 'cause she wanted to? She wasn't fried when she done it?' he said.
'I'm not her priest, Ronnie.'
'I was just clearing it up, that's all. I'll be at the arraignment. I got no beef,' he said.
I bet, I thought.
Esmeralda was released on bail at four that afternoon. Her brother, Cholo, and Temple Carrol and I walked with her toward Cholo's car, which was webbed with dried mud from the tomato field she had plowed through. The late sun was like a yellow flame in the trees and she shielded her eyes and kept looking at the row of cars parked up and down the street.
'Ronnie's waiting in the car. He wasn't sure you wanted him inside,' Cholo said.
'Why'd you bring him? It's not his business. Stay out of my life, Cholo,' she said.
'Don't treat us like that, Esmeralda. We're your people. It's you who don't have no business up here,' Cholo said. Then his face clouded and his metabolism seemed to kick into a higher register. 'I don't understand nothing that's going on here.'
But she wasn't listening to him. Her eyes swept the street once more. She pirouetted on the sidewalk and stared into my face.
'Is Jeff in jail? Because of the gay guy at Shorty's?' she said.
'The guy Jeff beat up had a change of heart. He dropped the charges and decided to vacation in Cancun,' I said.
But the inference about the way Jeffs father handled business did not show in her face. 'Then where's Jeff?' she said.
A steel-gray limo with tinted windows pulled into a yellow zone next to Cholo's car and Earl Deitrich got out of the back door, dressed in dark blue jeans and soft boots and a snap-button shirt. Peggy Jean stayed far back in the interior of the limo, her face veiled with shadow, her white dress glowing in a ray of sunlight. The chauffeur, a peculiar man named Fletcher, who seemed to have no past or origins, stood on the opposite side of the limo, his arms propped on the roof, a fixed smile on his mouth.
Earl's face was warm with sympathy, his hands open, as though he were about to console a survivor at a funeral.
'Thank the Lord I caught you,' he said to Esmeralda.
'My attorney is going to contact you tomorrow. We'll get everything worked out. Believe me, Jeff wants to do the right thing. In the meantime, you call me with any problem you have.'
'What are you talking about?' she said.
'Young people act hastily sometimes. That doesn't mean they have to ruin their lives over it. We're here to help. We're in this thing together,' he said.
'Where's Jeff?' she asked.
'He's got some things to work out. But he's going to have to do it by himself. It's important for us to understand that, Esmeralda,' Earl said.
'He marries my sister but he's got things to do by himself? She don't have no more to say. You send the lawyer around, he talks to me first,' Cholo said.
Earl's chauffeur walked around the grille of the limo and stood inches from Cholo's back, smiling at nothing, the black hair that was combed on the sides of his bald pate ruffling slightly in the breeze. He wore black slacks and shined shoes and an open-necked long-sleeve white shirt with cuff links that had red stones in them.
Earl's eyes looked directly into the chauffeur's. The chauffeur's gaze shifted to a spot across the street and he stepped backwards as though an invisible hand had touched his chest.
'You're right, Cholo,' Earl said. 'Everybody needs to be included in on this, informed about everything that's happening. Absolutely.'
'You think I married your son so I can take your money? You're pitiful, Mr. Deitrich,' Esmeralda said.
'I don't blame you for having bad feelings. I just want to-' Earl began.
Ronnie Cruise, who sat behind the Mercury's steering wheel, lifted his eyes into Earl's face. Ronnie's eyes were absolutely black, without luster, dead, devoid of all moral sense.
'Like Cholo says, we got nothing else to talk about here. No disrespect, but tell your man there, what's his face, Fletcher, to get his fucking hand off Cholo's paint job,' Ronnie said.
A few minutes later Temple Carrol and I watched the limo and the customized Mercury drive in different directions through the cooling streets of Deaf Smith. Peggy Jean had never spoken. Not to me, not on behalf of decency or fairness or in some token way to show a bit of kindness toward a Mexican girl who was about to discover you didn't leave the rural slums of San Antonio because a drunk white boy married you in Piedras Negras.
'How do you read all that?' Temple asked, lifting her shirt off her moist skin and shaking the cloth.
I couldn't answer. I kept thinking about Peggy Jean and the net of shadow and light on her skin and white dress and her silent participation in her husband's evil.
'You still on the planet?' Temple said.
