Heartwood

cottonwoods by the riverbank.

In the corner of one photograph were two huge pipe trucks, a dismantled derrick streaked with rust, and part of an oil platform.

'What's the matter?' Wilbur said.

'I don't know if I'd want to punch a hole in a place that beautiful.'

'Well, you ain't me.'

'I'll get everything I can for you. But you have to trust me. That means at a certain point we indicate to the Deitrichs you're willing to go to jail. You have to mean it, too,' I said.

'Scared money don't win?'

'Not in my experience.'

'I don't think I ever felt so miserable in my life. My mama always said it. Us Picketts has got two claims on fame: My daddy was the dumbest white man in this county and I worked a lifetime to come in a close second.'

He took the photographs of his two hundred acres in Wyoming from my hand and pitched them into the drawer and looked into space.

It was raining the next evening, the air dense with ozone, when Chug Rollins left the Deitrich home and drove down the long valley across the cattleguard onto a two-lane blacktop road fringed on both sides with hardwood trees. The landscape was sodden, the corridor of trees dripping, and a green radiance seemed to lift off the crest of the hills into the dome of sky overhead, then disappear into the swirls of blue-black clouds that groaned and crackled with thunder but contained no lightning that struck the earth.

Chug ripped the tab on a Pearl and drank the can half empty in three swallows, then set it in the holder on the dashboard. In his rearview mirror he could still see the sheriff's cruisers that were parked by the Deitrichs' cattleguard. It was all going to turn out all right, he thought. Nobody had tied the drowned mop-heads to him or Jeff, and besides, it was Jeffs grief, anyway. What they needed to do now was straighten out a few people who thought the East Enders didn't have a firm grip on events in Deaf Smith, starting with Jeff's ex and that punk Lucas Smothers and working on down through Ronnie Cruise and any other Purple Hearts who wanted to be deep-fried in their own grease and then finally, as an afterthought, that pimple on everybody's ass, Wesley Rhodes, yes indeedy.

Who paid the taxes here, anyway? Pepperbellies and bohunks?

Up ahead a sheriff's deputy by the side of the road waved a flashlight at him. Chug lifted the can of Pearl from the dash holder and set it on the floor, then pulled to a stop and rolled down the passenger window with the electric motor.

'Give me a ride up to my cruiser?' the deputy asked, bending down to the window. His uniform was soaked through and molded to his thin frame, and water sluiced off the brim of his campaign hat.

'Sure, get in,' Chug answered.

The deputy seemed relieved to be in the dryness and warmth of the automobile. He removed his hat and shook the water off gingerly on the carpeting and wiped his face with a red handkerchief.

'That open container you got on the floor don't bother me,' the deputy said.

Chug grinned and replaced the can of Pearl in the dash holder. But the deputy continued to study the floor for some reason.

'Where's your cruiser?' Chug asked.

'On up a piece. This rain's a frog-stringer, ain't it?'

'How come you to get separated from your car in weather like this?'

'Another deputy dropped me off to check something out, then he went on up to the house,' the deputy replied.

'Check out what?'

'A colored man standing by the road. I run him off.'

'Is there a reason you keep looking at my feet?' Chug asked.

'Didn't know I was.'

'You damn sure were. What's your name?'

'It's right there on my name tag.' The deputy hooked his thumb inside his shirt pocket and poked out the cloth and the brass nameplate pinned to it. The plate read B. Stokes.

'But what's your name?' Chug asked again.

The deputy was silent. The car hit a depression and splashed water across the windshield, and Chug increased the speed of the wipers, glad to have something to do, to show control of his machine and the environment around him. But why was he thinking like that? he asked himself. The rain spun in a vortex between the line of trees on each side of the blacktop, and the fading, peculiar nature of the light seemed to form a green arch, like a canopy, over the roadway. Chug realized he was sweating and that his breath was coming hard in his chest. He rolled down his window and let the wind and rain blow in his face.

'I'm going to stop at that filling station at the crossroads. You can see the lights from here. Place is full of customers. You can call somebody if you need a ride,' Chug said.

He heard the deputy's gun belt creak, then the hollow sound a leather pocket makes when a heavy object is removed from it.

The deputy twisted the muzzle of his nine-millimeter into Chug's neck.

'Turn right at that cut in the trees, then keep going till you see a railroad car,' he said.

Chug clicked on his turn indicator, but the deputy slapped it off. After Chug had turned off the road, he looked at the pocked, shiny white face of the deputy, the wired, black eyes, and said, 'You got the wrong guy.'

'Maybe… What size shoe you wear?'

'A twelve,' Chug said, his brow furrowing.

'It don't look like it to me… Stop yonder.'

The sandy road dipped and rose through hardwoods, then ended at an overgrown stretch of railway track on which sat a faded red Southern Pacific boxcar that had rotted into the soft, moldy texture of old cork.

The deputy walked Chug to the lee side of the boxcar and picked up a pinecone and threw it at him, hard. Chug raised his arm and ducked and heard the pinecone bounce off the slats of the boxcar.

'This time you catch it. You drop it and I'll shoot you in the elbow,' the deputy said, and tossed the pinecone at Chug underhanded.

'What the hell you doin'?' Chug said.

The deputy worked his handcuffs out of the case on the back of his belt and threw them to Chug.

'Hook yourself up to that iron rung on the corner,' he said. 'Now kick your loafer off.'

After Chug did it, the deputy picked the loafer out of the leaves and pine needles and spread a piece of tissue paper with the penciled outline of a shoe or boot sole on it across the floor of the boxcar and smoothed it with his palm. He held Chug's loafer with the fingers of both hands above the outline, moving it back and forth in space, without touching the paper.

'You're left-handed and got too big a foot. It's your day and not mine,' the deputy said.

Chug looked steadily at the side of the boxcar, the blistered strips of red paint, the gray weathering in the wood, the way the rain leaked down off the roof and threaded in the cracks. He gathered the moisture in his mouth so he could speak, but when he did the words that rose from his throat seemed like someone else's.

'I won't tell anybody about this,' he said.

'Yeah, you will. You'll tell every little pissant who'll listen. You'll tell your mommy and your daddy and them people at the country club and the preacher at your church and all them little pukes at Val's you hang around with and whatever piece of tail you pay to climb up on top of. You'll be oinking your story like a little pig till people want to stop up their ears. I didn't say look at me, boy.'

The deputy brought the barrel of the automatic up between Chug's thighs, flicking off the butterfly safety and cocking back the hammer.

'Don't mess your britches on me. I'll blow your sack off right now,' the deputy said.

But the rings of fat on Chug's hips were shaking, the rain streaming off his hair and face, his eyes wide and his breath sputtering the rainwater off his lips into a spray, so that his head looked like that of a man who had just burst to the surface of a lake after almost drowning.

Chug heard the deputy work open a pocketknife and felt the deputy press the honed edge lightly against the