Cimarron Rose

But after she had rung up my purchase, her mood changed, as though she were stepping across a line she had drawn between herself and white people.

'The other day when you was here? You gone on to your car, but a man with red hair was watching you. He had a coat on without no shirt,' she said.

'What about him?'

'The look in his face, honey. He started to come in here and I locked the door.' She shook her head, as though she feared her words could make the image a reality.

That evening I drove to Lucas Smothers's house. Vernon was sitting on the steps, a bottle of strawberry soda beside him. His clothes were dirty from his work, his face lined with streaks of dried sweat. A wheelbarrow filled with compost and crisscrossed with rakes and a shovel stood in the front yard. Under Lucas's screen was a bright patch of white paint.

'Is Lucas home?' I asked.

'He took the truck to town.'

'Did the sheriff do anything about those kids who tore up your lawn?'

'That tub of guts is doing good to get himself on and off the toilet seat.'

'Is Lucas at the poolroom?'

'No, they're handing out free beer at the Baptist church tonight.'

'It's always a pleasure, Vernon.'

But Vernon had another side, one that wouldn't allow me the freedom to simply condemn and dismiss him. When I was almost out the drive, he rose from the steps and called my name and walked out to the road. He pulled a cloth cap from his back pocket and popped it open and flicked it against his thigh, as though he could not bring himself to admit the nature of his fear and love and his dependence upon others.

'What kind of chance has he got? Don't lie to me, either,' he said.

'It doesn't look real good right now.'

'It ain't right… I swear, if they send that boy to prison…' He breathed hard through his nose. 'I killed people in Vietnam didn't do nothing to me.'

'I'd get a lot of distance between me and those kinds of thoughts, Vernon.'

'Damn, if you don't always have to get up on the high ground. Excuse me for asking, but who died and made you God?' he said, and went inside the house. You didn't win with Vernon Smothers.

I drove downtown and parked in front of the poolroom, a gaunt, two-story building that was over a hundred years old. It had a wood colonnade and elevated sidewalk inset with iron hitching poles, a stamped tin ceiling, oak floors as thick as railroad ties, a railed bar with spittoons, card and domino tables, a woodburning stove, and a toilet down a back hallway with the water tank high up on the wall.

Down the row of pool tables, I saw Lucas chalking a cue, sipping off of a long-neck beer. He wore a pair of gray slacks and loafers and a starched lavender shirt and he had put gel in his hair.

'Come on outside,' I said.

'Now?' he asked.

'Half the people in here are my clients… I'd like to stay off the clock.'

His face pinched with confusion. 'What?' he asked.

It was cool outside, and down the street the live oaks on the courthouse lawn were gold and purple and freckled with birds in the sun's afterglow.

'You got a date?' I said.

'I'm supposed to talk with this guy about a job,' he said.

'Have a seat in my car. I want to show you something.'

As soon as he opened the passenger door he saw the twelve-string guitar propped up on the seat.

'Man, where'd you get that at?' he said.

'A client. I never could play one for diddly-squat, though. You want it?'

'Do I?'

'It's yours. I hate to use it for a fly swatter.'

He corded the neck and ran his thumbnail across the strings.

'Wow, what a sound. Mr Holland, I'll make this right with you.'

'Don't worry about it. Look, those kids who tore up y'all's lawn?'

'My father and me fixed it. I don't care about kids like that.'

'Listen to me. I don't know why anyone would…' I shook my head and started over. 'Maybe they have too much money, maybe they're just mean, but it's important you understand what and who you are… Sometimes we look at the reflection in other people's eyes and that's who we think we are and the truth is we're a whole lot better than that.'

'You're a good guy, Mr Holland. But I don't want to talk about this.'

'Suit yourself. But you're an artist, the honest-to-God real article, Lucas. Some people will always envy and hate you for the talent you have.'

He turned the guitar over in his hands and felt the polished mahogany and walnut belly and the spruce soundboard.

'It's funny, I seen one just like this in Ella Mae's pawnshop. She wanted three hundred dollars for it,' he said.

'No kidding?'

His gaze wandered over my face, then he looked out the window at a man in cream-colored slacks and a tropical hat walking toward the poolroom.

'There's the guy I'm meeting,' Lucas said.

'Felix Ringo? He's the guy talking to you about a job?'

'Yeah, I told you about him. He's got a furniture factory down in Piedras Negras.'

'He's a Mexican drug agent.'

'Yeah. He's got a furniture business, too.'

'Wait here.'

I got out of the Avalon and approached the man named Felix Ringo. His expression was flat, his eyes registering me with the valuative pause of a predator waking from sleep.

'I don't know why, but you're running a game on the kid in my car. It stops here,' I said.

'You got some bad manners, man.'

'I'll say it once. Stay away from him.'

'I was at Fort Benning. The School of the Americas. I'm here with the permission of your government. I don't like to provoke nobody, but I don't got to take your shit.'

'Don't bet on it.'

'Hey, man, I got a good memory. I'm gonna remember where I seen your face. When I do, maybe you ain't gonna have a very good day.'

I stepped off the sidewalk and got back in my car. He remained under the colonnade, staring at Lucas. Then he jerked his head at him, motioning him inside.

'He's dirty, Lucas. It's something you can smell on a bad cop. He'll take you down with him,' I said.

'I cain't get on at any clubs. What am I gonna do, keep working for my dad the rest of my life?'

'It might beat chopping cotton with a gunbull standing over you,' I said and started the car and drove down the street before he could get out.

'Why don't you treat me like I'm three years old?' he said, his face red with anger and embarrassment.

'I want the names of all Darl Vanzandt's friends,' I said.

That night I sat at my library desk and read from Great-grandpa Sam's faded, water-stained journal that he had carried in a saddlebag through Oklahoma Territory.

L.Q. Navarro sat in a burgundy-colored stuffed chair in the corner, fiddling with his revolver, an armadillo-shell lamp lighted behind his head. He spun the revolver on his finger and let the ivory handles snick back flatly in his palm. The blue-black of the steel was so deep in hue it looked almost liquid. He opened the loading gate with his thumb, pulled back the hammer on halfcock, and rotated the cylinder so that one loaded chamber at a time clicked past his examining eye.

'That Garland T. Moon? You can take it to him with fire tongs. That boy's not a listener,' he said.

'I'm trying to read, L.Q.,' I said.

'You going to find your answers in there? I don't hardly think so.'

I rested my brow on my fingers so I wouldn't have to look at him.

I read from Great-grandpa Sam's journaclass="underline"

In the Indian Nation, July 4, 1891

I always heard women in the Cherokee Strip was precious few in number and homely as a mud fence, but it was not held against them none. The Rose of Cimarron surely gives the lie to that old cowboy wisdom. She is probably part colored and part savage and perhaps even related to the Comanche halfbreed Quanah Parker. She is also the most fetching creature I have ever set eyes on. I would marry her in a minute and take her back to Texas, but I am sure I would not only be run out of the Baptist church but the state as well, provided she did not cut my throat first.