Heartwood

behind Peggy Jean just as Earl Deitrich's maroon Lincoln pulled to the curb and Earl popped open the passenger door for his wife.

Earl's face was rainbowed with color in the glow of his dash.

'I don't believe it. You're stalking my wife,' he said.

'I haven't did no such thing,' Skyler said.

Peggy Jean got in the car and closed the door. But Earl did not drive away. He made a U-turn and slowed by the curb, rolling his window down on its electric motor so he could look directly into Skyler's face.

'You malignant deformity, you just made the worst mistake of your life,' he said.

I was standing in the shadows on the corner and Earl did not see me. For some reason I could not explain, I felt obscene.

Early the next morning, before I went to the office, I drove to a sporting goods store in the strip mall on the four-lane, then returned to the west end of the county and headed down the dirt street that fronted Pete's house. When no one answered the door, I walked around back. He stood barefoot in the tomato plants, hoeing weeds out of the row, the straps of his striped overalls notched into his Astros T-shirt.

'Give it a break, bud,' I said, and sat down on a folding metal chair. I put my Stetson on his head and popped loose the staples on the shopping bag in my hand, then reached inside it.

'Where'd you get the glove?' he asked.

'A client gave me this two or three years back. I put it up in the closet and forgot all about it.'

His gaze shifted to the back door and windows of his house.

'That's why it's still in the shopping bag?' he said.

'Right, because I don't have occasion to use it. But you're missing the point. Anybody can own a fielder's glove. The art comes in molding the pocket.' I opened a cardboard box and rolled an immaculate white, red- stitched baseball out of it. 'See, you rub oil into the pocket, then mold the ball into it and tie the fingers down on top of it with leather cord. Watch.'

I heard his mother open the screen behind us and smelled the cigarette smoke that curled away from her hand into the clean vibrancy of the morning air.

'What ch'all doin'?' she said.

'I had this old glove lying around. I thought Pete might get some use out of it,' I said.

'He ain't eat his breakfast yet,' she said.

'He'll be right in. How you been doing, Wilma?'

But she closed the door without answering. I winked at Pete and handed him the glove and removed my Stetson from his head.

'Are lawyers supposed to lie, Billy Bob?' Pete asked.

'Not a chance.'

'You're mighty good at it.'

'Yeah, but don't tell anyone,' I said.

'I ain't.' His eyes squinted shut with his grin.

Two days later Kippy Jo Pickett's bail was set at seventy-five thousand dollars. After she was taken back up to the women's section of the jail, I caught Marvin Pomroy in the corridor outside the courtroom.

'They're mortgaging their place to make the bail,' I said.

His eyes clicked sideways behind his glasses and looked somewhere else. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'This is all over one man's pride and avarice,' I said.

'Sure it is,' he said. He set his briefcase on the arm of a wood bench and unsnapped the locks on it. He removed an eight-by-ten crime scene photo and put it into my hands without bothering to look at me. Bubba Grimes's mutilated eyes were sealed with the coagulated blood that had welled out of the entry wounds. 'Keep it. I have a dozen color slides or so for the jury,' he said.

That evening Pete and I bought a bucket of fried chicken and cane-fished for shovelmouth under a weeping willow on the bank of the river. The sun was a dull red on the western horizon, as though it were surrendering its heat to the darkness that lay beyond the earth's rim, and when the wind blew from the river, the grass in the fields turned pale in the light slanting out of the clouds and the wildflowers seemed to take on a new color.

'Are Wilbur Pickett and his wife going to the pen?' Pete asked.

'Not if I can help it.'

Pete's face was pensive, the way it became when he put the adult world under scrutiny.

'People are saying Wilbur's wife shot that fellow 'cause they were all stealing from Mr. Deitrich,' he said.

'They're wrong.'

His brow furrowed as another question swam in front of his eyes, like a butterfly that wouldn't come into focus.

'If Mr. Deitrich is trying to put your clients in jail, how come you and Ms. Deitrich are such good friends?' he asked.

'Something just pulled your cork under.'

He jerked on his pole. The cork and weight and hook came flying out of the water into the grass.

'He must have taken off,' I said.

'Durn, I knew you was gonna say that.'

Then Pete looked past my shoulder at a low-slung, chopped-down Mercury coming through the field. In the muted light its tangled colors took on the deep reddish-purple hue of a stone bruise.

'I'm heading back home,' Pete said.

'No, you stay here. This is your place. You never have to leave it, not for any reason.'

'Them gangbangers are no good, Billy Bob. You don't see what they do when people like you ain't around.'

I set down my cane pole and walked toward the Mercury before it reached the riverbank. Cholo Ramirez pulled to a stop and got out, his baggy khaki trousers hanging loosely from his hips, his ribbed, white undershirt molded to his physique. His tan shoulders seemed to glow with the sun's fire.

'How much can I tell you and be protected?' he said.

'You mean by client-lawyer privilege?'

'Whatever.'

'You're not my client. I'm not taking on any new ones, either.'

He gazed at the river, his hands opening and closing at his sides.

'Esmeralda married a maricon, man. He beats up queers 'cause that's what he is. She told me how they made love on an air mattress on the Comal River. I was getting sick,' he said.

'I don't know if you've come to the right place, Cholo,' I said.

'Me and Earl Deitrich got a history. I can jam him up real bad, man. But I got to have guarantees.'

'What's he done to you?'

'It's what he's doing to Esmeralda. She ain't no gangbanger, man. She makes As in college. He sent a lawyer to the house. Five thousand dollars for her to get lost.'

'You want more?' I said.

Cholo stepped closer to me. I could smell the heat in his skin. For the first time in months I saw the silhouette of L.Q. Navarro on the edge of my vision, his ash-gray hat shadowing his face, his white shirt glowing against his dark suit, his index finger wagging cautiously.

'Esmeralda ain't somebody's pork chops you pay for by the pound. She thinks Jeff loves her. If he loves her, how come he lets his old man treat her like she's the town pump?' Cholo said.

'How did you know I was back here?' I asked.

'I walked around back. I looked in your barn. I seen you and the little boy riding your horse out here.'

'You walked around back?'

'You got a hearing problem? I'm talking about my sister. What, I didn't have permission to walk behind your fucking house?'

'Come to the office, Cholo. We'll talk this stuff over. Maybe I can help,' I said.

His brow was creased into rolls of grizzle, his eyes pulled close together like BBs.

'I'm all mixed up. I can't think. It makes my head hurt,' he said.