beams of bluish light.
'How would Earl Deitrich know about your land?' I asked.
'He's a big man in extractive industries. I had the core tested at a lab in Denver. They all know each other,' Wilbur said. 'That pipeline deal in Venezuela? Every dollar we make is going into our own drilling company. Billy Bob, I'm talking about an oil and natural gas dome big as that Tuscaloosa strike back in the seventies.'
'That's what all this has been about, hasn't it? He wants your oil property,' I said. 'What'd you tell Fletcher?'
'To keep his eyes off my wife. To get his damn car out of my driveway.'
'That's the ticket.'
He pulled the saddle off the Appaloosa and flung it across a sawhorse.
'It's all bluff. If I got to give it up to get Kippy Jo off, that's what we'll do.' He replaced the jar of oil sand on the shelf. 'It's funny what can happen just from setting down at the wrong man's table, ain't it?'
He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve, then grinned, blade-faced, in the sun's first pink light.
Then something happened that I would not quite be able to get out of my memory. His innocent nature, his devotion to his wife, his concern for an injured animal, seemed exquisitely caught in the moment, until I smiled back at him and looked directly into his eyes. When I did, he dropped his head and buttoned a shirt pocket, as though he did not want me to see beyond an exterior that I obviously admired.
13
Temple Carrol came into my office Monday afternoon and sat down in front of an air-conditioning duct and let the wind stream blow across her body. Her blouse was peppered with perspiration.
'Pretty hot out there?' I said.
'I just spent two hours in the basement of the courthouse looking for the list of possessions on Bubba Grimes's body. It was buried in a box on a shelf right next to the ceiling.'
She handed a manila folder to me with several departmental forms and penciled sheets from a yellow legal tablet inside. When he died Bubba Grimes's pockets had contained car keys, a roll of breath mints, a wallet with fifty-three dollars inside, a comb, fingernail clippers, a wine cork, a Mexico peso, and three dimes.
'You checked the possessions bag?' I asked.
'Yeah, it's just like it says there.' She held her eyes on my face.
The possessions sheet was marked up, words smeared or scratched out. I picked up the phone and punched in Marvin Pomroy's number.
'I'm looking at some of the expert paperwork done by Hugo Roberts's deputies. For some reason it was filed in the basement with documents that are a hundred years old,' I said.
'Talk to Hugo,' he said.
'You know what's not on the possessions list?'
'No.'
'A pocketknife. But at the bottom of the form a word is scratched out. It's scratched out so thoroughly there's no paper left,' I said.
Marvin was quiet a moment. 'So Hugo's boys get an F for penmanship and neatness. The scene investigator said Grimes was carrying only what's on that list.'
'Grimes cut the back screen. He had to have a knife to do it. Forensics would have given us exculpatory evidence. That knife probably had strands of wire on it. I think that's why you had a blowup with Hugo over the phone. You know he's destroyed evidence.'
'No, I don't know that.'
'This stinks, Marvin. Don't let them drag you down with them.'
'You quit the U.S. Justice Department and went to work for the dirtbags, Billy Bob. Maybe I don't always like the system I serve, but this county is a better place because of the work I do. Nothing derogatory meant. Maybe you like watching sociopaths prop their feet on your desk,' he said, and hung up.
Lucas said the fight between Jeff and Esmeralda actually started at the rig, on the night tower, when Jeff showed up late for work, then sassed the driller and later got careless and almost cost another floorman his life.
Imagine an environment filled with the roar of a drill motor, the singing of cables, chains whipping off pipe, hoists and huge steel tongs swinging in the air, drilling mud welling out of the hole over your steel-toed boots, the heat of flood lamps burning your skin. The night sky blooms with dry lightning, and the constant, deafening noise eats at your senses. It's a dangerous environment. But it's also one that's monotonous and mind-deadening. For just a moment, you daydream.
The tongs swung into the man next to Jeff and knocked him all the way across the platform. His bright orange hard hat rolled into the darkness like a tiddlywink. The driller shut off the engine. When the injured man sat up, his arm hung loosely from his shoulder, and the back of his wrist quivered uncontrollably on the floor. He looked stupidly at the others as though he didn't know who he was. A piece of canvas flapped in the silence.
After the injured floorman was driven to the hospital, Jeff put his bradded gloves back on and waited for the derrick man, high up on the monkey board, to unrack a section of pipe and send it down with the hoist. Then he realized the driller and the rest of the crew were looking at him, waiting for something.
'You made three mistakes in one night, Jeff. See the timekeeper for your drag-up check,' the driller said.
'I apologize for messing up. I just haven't been feeling too good,' Jeff said.
'Ain't everybody cut out for it. Heck, if I had your looks, I'd go out to Hollywood. Anyway, take it easy, kid,' the driller said.
A moment later Jeff was standing out in the darkness, beyond the circle of light and noise that oil field people called the night tower, watching what were now his ex-co-workers wrestle the drill bit, hose the drilling mud off the platform floor, and go about their routine as though he had never been there.
At breakfast with Lucas and Esmeralda in Lucas's kitchen, Jeff went over the incident on the platform floor again and again, analyzing what went wrong, rethinking what he should have told the driller, wondering if in fact the accident was his fault or if he had simply been made a scapegoat because he had sassed the driller earlier.
'Roughnecks get run off all the time. That's part of the life out there, Jeffro. It ain't no big deal,' Lucas said.
'That's right, Jeff. There's a lot of work in San An-tone now,' Esmeralda said.
'Like doing what?' he asked.
'The restaurant where I work. They need an assistant manager,' she answered.
His face was dull with fatigue, but a residual sense of annoyance, like a black insect feeding, seemed to glimmer in his eye.
'We can drive down there this morning. I need to stop at the washateria and go to the Wal-Mart, anyway. Cholo needs me to buy him some underwear,' she said.
'You think I'm going to spend my morning shopping for your brother's underwear?' Jeff said.
'Hon, you had a bad night. Now lighten up,' she said, and rested her palm on his arm.
He turned his face away from both Esmeralda and Lucas and stared out the rusted screen at a piece of guttering swinging in the wind and the yard that was matted with dandelions.
Later in the morning Lucas turned on the electric fan in the back bedroom and went to sleep. He was awakened in the thick, yellow heat of the afternoon by quarrelsome voices out in the trailer, insults hurled like a slap, a table knocked over, perhaps, dishes clattering to the floor.
'The problem is not a stupid job on an oil derrick. You take me to lounges where it's dark. We go to restaurants where nobody knows you. You don't like being with me in the daylight,' Esmeralda shouted.
Jeff burst through the door into the yard, with no shirt or shoes on, and got behind the wheel of his convertible. Then realized he had left his keys inside. He put his head down on his arms and started to weep. Esmeralda walked outside in a pair of blue-jean cutoffs and a halter, her face suddenly filled with pity, and stroked
