Heartwood bbh-2

by James Lee Burke

  Kippy Jo stood at the kitchen window, the breeze in her face, and listened to Wilbur hitch the horse trailer on his pickup truck and rattle past the barn out into the fields. Then she fixed coffee for herself and drank it at the kitchen table. When he didn't return in an hour, as he had promised, she went into the backyard and looked in the direction of the hills and listened to the wind, her black hair whirling on her neck.

  She heard horses nickering in an arroyo, the locked windmill blades buffeting against the wind, the water from the horse tank leaking over the rim into the dirt. Inside her mind, she saw an alfalfa field that bloomed with a fecund, green odor when lightning leaped in the sky; a train crossing a trestle in the hills, and in its aftermath pieces of flame coiling like snakes around the greasewood. She could hear the clicking of the train wheels on the sides of the hills, then the echo of the whistle blowing back over the tops of the cars.

  When the train was gone she should have heard only wind again, and the wet, coursing sound it made across the alfalfa when Wilbur had opened the irrigation locks and flooded the pasture. But she heard a different sound now, first an engine, then wind flapping across a moving surface, and she knew the winged man had arrived.

  She turned out all the lights in the house and walked out to the barn and felt the lightbulb inside the door for heat. She pulled the beaded chain on it and heard it click off and stood with one hand on the edge of a stall, listening. A washtub Wilbur shelled corn in oscillated in the wind on a wood peg against a post. She walked to the opposite end of the barn and looked out at the darkness and the sky that flared with dry lightning and heard the thunder rolling across the hardpan like apples tumbling down a wood chute into a cider press.

  Horses labored out of the arroyo, their chests heaving, their hooves thudding on the sod, spooking walleyed from a presence that moved out of the darkness toward the house.

  Kippy Jo retreated backwards, touching the screen with her hand, pulling it open, and stepping inside the kitchen, her blind eyes lighted by the sky. She latched the screen, bumped against the table, and felt her heart seize in her chest at the squeak the wood legs made against the linoleum.

  She heard the winged man unchain the lock on the windmill and the blades clatter with life and the well water sluice cold and bright out of the pipe that extended over the horse tank. His hair flowed off his head like feathers, and he cupped his hand under the pipe and rubbed water on his face and through his hair, then wiped his skin and hair dry with his coat sleeve and drank from a heavy bottle that he carried in one hand.

  When he stepped away from the tank his feet made cleft-shaped tracks in the mud.

  Kippy Jo breathed hard through her mouth. The landscape in her mind had changed, and she saw the winged man in a foreign place, one of rain and heat where fish heads were strewn on a dirt road that wound between cinder-block huts with tin roofs, and the winged man and soldiers in uniform with steel helmets were pushing Indians backwards into a ditch.

  The winged man was right outside the screen door now, one foot poised on the bottom step. The wind straightened the curtains, flapping the tips, and puffed open the front door. Kippy Jo felt her way along the wall to the bedroom and touched one prong of the antler gun rack that Wilbur had nailed above the dresser.

  What had he said about the gun? She couldn't remember clearly. There ain't no such thing as an unloaded firearm in this house, Kippy Jo. A person remembers that, he don't ever have an accident.

  Was that it?

  She wasn't sure.

  She lifted the. 308 Savage lever-action off the antler prongs, then opened the drawer of the nightstand and removed a. 22 Magnum revolver that was inserted in a holster that had no cartridge belt. She sat on the bed and waited, the lever-action rifle across her lap.

  The winged man sliced the screen with a knife blade and popped the latch free with one finger and stepped inside the kitchen. He hesitated, listening to the darkness, touching the warmth of the coffeepot on the stove.

  Then he pushed open the screen door and let it fall back against the jamb, but she knew he was still inside the house. She fitted her hand inside the lever that would feed a round into the rifle's chamber, but she didn't know if there were bullets in the magazine or if in fact a round wasn't already seated in the chamber.

  There ain't no such thing as an unloaded firearm in this house.

  What had he meant?

  She remained motionless on the bed and left the lever in place. Then she felt the safety and clicked it off and hooked her index finger around the trigger.

  The winged man's eyes had adjusted to the darkness now and he didn't need to turn on the light when he entered the bedroom. In her mind the room was filled with moonglow and the winged man stood above her, his eyes fixed on the rifle, unsure whether the next sound his feet made would offer her a target.

  She raised the rifle toward his chest and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing.

  The winged man exhaled his breath in a fetid plume of alcoholic air that touched her skin like damp wool.

  "Darlin', you aged me ten years," he said, and gently pulled the rifle from her hands and sat next to her on the bed. He set his bottle on the floor by his feet and pulled the lever loose from the stock of the rifle.

  "Magazine's full. You could have boiled my cabbage," he said. When she didn't reply, he moved closer to her and fitted his arm around her waist. "Wilbur due back directly?"

  She looked straight ahead, her right hand resting under a pillow.

  "I ain't a bad man, darlin'. I always go the extra mile to work things out. Anybody knows me will tell you that. I ain't that fond of Earl Deitrich myself," he said.

  He leaned toward her, his eyes shut, and pressed his lips against her cheek, his forearm gathering her waist closer against him, his tongue quivering slightly against her skin.

  Her fingers closed on the wood grips of the revolver. She slipped it from the holster under the pillow, cocking the hammer back with her thumb, locking the cylinder into place. When she pulled the trigger, the barrel was two inches from the winged man's right eye.

  His weight tumbled to the floor. But he was still alive, one hand cupped on the angular wound that had torn away the edge of the socket. His metal-sheathed, pointed boots kicked at the bed frame and his other hand tried to lock around her ankle.

  She stood above him and cocked the revolver and fired a second time. She heard his weight flatten into the floor and one boot vibrate briefly like a woodpecker's beak against the wall.

  Then she sat down on the bed again and waited.

  An hour later, when Wilbur burst into the house, turning on lights in every room, shouting, "Kippy Jo, what's going on? There's a plane out in the field… Oh Lord, what's happened here? What'd this guy try to do?," she was still sitting on the bed, the revolver on top of the pillow, her white cloth slippers patinated with blood.

  Wilbur sat beside her and held her against his chest. It seemed a long time before he spoke.

  "He hurt you?" Wilbur said.

  "No."

  "It's that guy Bubba Grimes," he said.

  "I know," she said.

  Wilbur took a deep breath, like a man who accepts the fact that the world is indeed beyond him.

  "His coat's got buckskin fringe on the arms. His teeth look like they was soaked in Cold Duck. He's the guy with wings, ain't he?" Wilbur said.

  "Yes."

  "You shot both his eyes out, Kippy Jo. That's what Indians do when they don't want somebody's spirit to find the Ghost Trail. They're gonna say you murdered him."

  She put one hand in his, then drew her bare feet under her so they would not have to touch the floor.

  11

  The next morning I sat in Marvin Pomroy's office. He was reading the homicide report filed by one of Hugo Roberts's crime scene investigators. He was reading it for the third time, his elbows propped on his desk blotter, his forehead resting on his fingers.

  He blew out his breath and tapped a pencil on the
blotter.

  "Hugo's calling it homicide, Billy Bob. His work's sloppy, but I can't argue with him on this one," Marvin said.

  "She's blind. He broke in her house. He had a. 38 on him. He was probably going to rape her, then kill both her and her husband."

  "Why would Grimes want to kill them?"

  "Because Wilbur won't cop a plea and let Earl Deitrich collect from his insurance company," I said.

  "Kippy Jo blew out both the victim's eyes. You think that might show deliberation?" Marvin said.

  "I'll say it again. She's blind. From birth."

  "You told me she sees things inside her head," he said.

  "You're going to tell a jury that?" I said.

  "When they shoot once, maybe it's self-defense. A second shot, point-blank in the head, is an execution."

  "How'd you like to have Grimes in your wife's bedroom with a. 38 revolver?" I asked.

  "Just get out of here, will you?" he said.

  I walked down the corridor to the concession stand by the stairs, drank a root beer, and used the pay phone, then went back into Marvin's office. He was talking angrily on the phone, the overhead light shining on his close-cropped scalp, his face bright with a pink glaze.

  "Who was that on the phone?" I asked after he hung up.

  "Hugo Roberts, who else? What do you want?" he said.

  "I called the FBI and a homicide cop in Houston. I thought they ought to know another associate of Earl Deitrich has shown up dead, this time while breaking into the house of a man Earl accuses of stealing from him."

  "You did that?"

  "Sure."

  "Those dope transporters y'all went up against down in Coahuila? You ever take any of them prisoner?"

  "Everybody kept the lines simple, Marvin. The winners got to see the sunrise."

  I thought he was going to make a point, but he didn't. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, his chin propped on his fingers, and looked at me reflectively.

  "We're cutting a warrant for Kippy Jo Pickett's arrest," he said.

  "What was that blowup with Hugo Roberts about?" I said.

  "None of your business. But I'll tell you this much. Kippy Jo had traces of Grimes's blood on the tips of her left hand. I think she felt his face before she parked the second round in his other eye. Forget the blind-girl defense, Billy Bob."

  "You're hiding something," I said.

  That evening my little friend Pete walked from his house through the back of my property to my back screen porch. He carried a huge straw basket that was loaded with fruit, chocolate wrapped in gold foil, and cellophane bags of cactus candy and Mexican pralines. The strap of a brand-new black fielder's glove, with white leather thongs through the webbing, was buttoned around the basket's handle.

  "What you got there, bud?" I said, opening the screen door for him.

  "Ms. Deitrich brung it by the house this afternoon. My mother told me to bring it over here and leave it. She says she ain't letting no rich people look down on us."

  "I'm not following you."

  "She says Ms. Deitrich don't care two cents about me. This has got something to do with y'all." He hefted the basket onto the plank table and sat down on a bench and looked at his tennis shoes. The yellow cellophane and red ribbon that enclosed the basket were undisturbed. A greeting card hung halfway out of an envelope taped to the basket's handle. It read:

  Dear Pete, I don't know if you remember me from church or not. But I know you're a friend of Billy Bob's and that he is very proud of you. Please accept this gift as a congratulations for your hard work at school and your fine performance with your baseball team.

  Your friend,

  Peggy Jean Deitrich

  "I believe Ms. Deitrich has high regard for you, Pete," I said.

  "It don't matter. I cain't take none of this back home. My mother'll throw it in the garbage." His eyes lingered on the fielder's glove, then he twisted his mouth into a button and looked into space, as though the glove meant nothing to him.

  "You want to saddle up Beau?" I asked.

  "No. I got to weed the garden. Things ain't too good at the house right now."

  I nodded, then watched him walk past the chicken run and along the edge of the irrigation ditch, stopping to throw dirt clods at the water. Then he crossed the small wood bridge that spanned the ditch and climbed up the hill into the pine trees that concealed the dirt yard and clapboard house where he lived.

  Peggy Jean sometimes did volunteer work in the evenings at the library. The sky was piled with rain clouds and the sun was a dying orange fire between two hills when I drove into town. The library was a one-story, peaked-roof building with the tall, domed windows that were characteristic of public buildings at the turn of the century. The lights were on inside the windows and the oak trees on the lawn were black-green with shadow.

  Peggy Jean was behind the circulation desk, wearing a flower-print dress and horn-rimmed glasses. I set the candy and fruit basket on top of the desk. The library was almost deserted.

  "Pete's mom won't accept this. He can't keep the glove, either," I said.

  "Is she angry at the boy?"

  "She's a drunk. She's angry all the time."

  "I'm sorry. After that situation at the courthouse, I mean, the way the Mexican girl was treated, I wanted to apologize in some way."

  "You don't owe me one."

  "I didn't say I did. How do you think I felt, watching that girl patronized and dismissed like that? But I couldn't do anything about it, not without starting a fight right there on the street," she replied. She took off her glasses and let them hang from a velvet cord around her neck. "I'm thinking of leaving Earl."

  I felt my hand close and open at my side and a tingling sensation in my throat that I didn't understand.

  "You'll do the right thing," I said.

  "I haven't done the right thing in twenty years, Billy Bob."

  Then I realized who was sitting at one of the reading tables against the far wall, his hands clasped like paws on edges of a huge Life pictorial history, the top of the book obscuring the lower half of his face, so that he resembled the World War II cartoon drawing of Kilroy.

  "That's Skyler Doolittle," I said.

  "The man who claims Earl cheated him out of his watch?"

  "Does Skyler know who you are?" I asked.

  "No, he comes in here all the time. Poor soul, I feel sorry for him."

  The overhead lights blinked to indicate the library would close in five minutes.

  "I guess you have a ride home," I said.

  "Earl's picking me up," she said.

  "I see. Well, good night, Peggy Jean," I said.

  "Good night," she said.

  Outside, a moment later, as the rain clouds pulsed with veins of lightning, I witnessed one of those improbable incidents that you know will result in grave harm to an innocent party, one whose life seems destined to be governed by the laws of misfortune. Skyler Doolittle, in his wilted seersucker, walked down the library steps 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.