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Authors: James Lee Burke
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arm and dragged
him on his knees to the far side of the truck. Then we saw the humped
silhouettes by the back tire and the balled fists and the batons rising
and falling, like men trading off hammer strokes on a tent post.
I touched the brake, pulled to the shoulder, and
began backing up in the weeds.
From under the overpass a second cruiser came hard
down the road, its blue, white, and red emergency flasher on, water
blowing in a vortex behind it. The driver cut to the shoulder, hit the
high beams, and the airplane lights burned into the faces of the two
deputies and the bloodied man huddled at their knees.
The driver of the second cruiser got out and stood
just behind the glare that blinded the two deputies, a portable radio
in her left hand, the other on the butt of her holstered
nine-millimeter.
'Y'all got a problem here?' Mary Beth Sweeney said.
That night I fell asleep as an
electrical storm
moved across the drenched hills and disappeared in the west, filling
the clouds with flickers of light like burning candles in a Mexican
church that smelled of incense and stone and water.
Or like cartridges exploding in the chambers of L.Q.
Navarro's blue-black, ivory-handled, custom-made .45 revolver.
It's night in the dream, and L.Q and I are
across the river in Mexico, where we have no authority and quarter
comes only with dawn. We're dismounted, and our horses keep spooking
away from the two dead drug transporters who lie in a muddy slough,
their mouths and eyes frozen open with disbelief.
L.Q. pulls a pack of playing cards
emblazoned with the badge of the Texas Rangers from the side pocket of
his suit coat, unsnaps two cards from under the rubber band, and flicks
them at the corpses.
I pull their guns apart and fling the
pieces in different directions.
'The tar is still up in one of them
houses. You take the left side and don't silhouette on the hill,' L.Q.
says.
'Burn the field and the tar will go with
it, L.Q.,' I say:
'Wind's out of the south. I'd sure hate to
lose a race with a grass fire,' be says.
The houses are spread out along a low
ridge, roofless, made of dried mud, their windows like empty eye
sockets. My horse is belly deep in a field of yellow grass, and he
skitters each time the withered husk of a poppy jitters on the stem.
The rifle fire erupts from the windows
simultaneously all across the ridge. My horse rears under my thighs,
and I feel myself plummeting backward into darkness, into a crush of
yellow grass while tracer rounds float into the sky.
But it's they who set fire to the field,
who watch it spread behind a thirty-knot wind that feeds cold air like
pure oxygen into the flames. I feel my left foot squish inside my boot,
feel my knee collapsing as I try to run uphill and realize that this is
the place where all my roads come together, now, in this moment, that
the end I never foresaw will be inside an envelope of flame, just as if
I had been tied to a medieval stake.
Then I see L.Q. bent low on his mare,
pouring it on through the grass, his Stetson low over
his eyes, his coat flapping back from his gunbelt, his right hand
extended like a rodeo pickup rider's.
I lock my forearm in his, palm against
tendon, and swing up on his horse's rump, then feel the surge of muscle
and power between my legs as we thunder over the top of a ridge, my
arms around L.Q's waist, my boot splaying blood into the darkness, my
face buried in his manly smell.
Then, as in a dream, I hear the horse's
hooves splash through water and clop on stone and L.Q. holler out,
'Why, goodness gracious, it's Texas already, bud!'
----
chapter
eight
At five-thirty Monday morning I went
to Deaf Smith's
sole health club, located a block off the town square in what used to
be a five-and-dime store, where I worked out three times a week. I
lifted in the weight room, then exercised on the benches and Nautilus
machines and was headed for the steam room when I saw Mary Beth Sweeney
on a StairMaster machine, by herself, at the end
him on his knees to the far side of the truck. Then we saw the humped
silhouettes by the back tire and the balled fists and the batons rising
and falling, like men trading off hammer strokes on a tent post.
I touched the brake, pulled to the shoulder, and
began backing up in the weeds.
From under the overpass a second cruiser came hard
down the road, its blue, white, and red emergency flasher on, water
blowing in a vortex behind it. The driver cut to the shoulder, hit the
high beams, and the airplane lights burned into the faces of the two
deputies and the bloodied man huddled at their knees.
The driver of the second cruiser got out and stood
just behind the glare that blinded the two deputies, a portable radio
in her left hand, the other on the butt of her holstered
nine-millimeter.
'Y'all got a problem here?' Mary Beth Sweeney said.
That night I fell asleep as an
electrical storm
moved across the drenched hills and disappeared in the west, filling
the clouds with flickers of light like burning candles in a Mexican
church that smelled of incense and stone and water.
Or like cartridges exploding in the chambers of L.Q.
Navarro's blue-black, ivory-handled, custom-made .45 revolver.
It's night in the dream, and L.Q and I are
across the river in Mexico, where we have no authority and quarter
comes only with dawn. We're dismounted, and our horses keep spooking
away from the two dead drug transporters who lie in a muddy slough,
their mouths and eyes frozen open with disbelief.
L.Q. pulls a pack of playing cards
emblazoned with the badge of the Texas Rangers from the side pocket of
his suit coat, unsnaps two cards from under the rubber band, and flicks
them at the corpses.
I pull their guns apart and fling the
pieces in different directions.
'The tar is still up in one of them
houses. You take the left side and don't silhouette on the hill,' L.Q.
says.
'Burn the field and the tar will go with
it, L.Q.,' I say:
'Wind's out of the south. I'd sure hate to
lose a race with a grass fire,' be says.
The houses are spread out along a low
ridge, roofless, made of dried mud, their windows like empty eye
sockets. My horse is belly deep in a field of yellow grass, and he
skitters each time the withered husk of a poppy jitters on the stem.
The rifle fire erupts from the windows
simultaneously all across the ridge. My horse rears under my thighs,
and I feel myself plummeting backward into darkness, into a crush of
yellow grass while tracer rounds float into the sky.
But it's they who set fire to the field,
who watch it spread behind a thirty-knot wind that feeds cold air like
pure oxygen into the flames. I feel my left foot squish inside my boot,
feel my knee collapsing as I try to run uphill and realize that this is
the place where all my roads come together, now, in this moment, that
the end I never foresaw will be inside an envelope of flame, just as if
I had been tied to a medieval stake.
Then I see L.Q. bent low on his mare,
pouring it on through the grass, his Stetson low over
his eyes, his coat flapping back from his gunbelt, his right hand
extended like a rodeo pickup rider's.
I lock my forearm in his, palm against
tendon, and swing up on his horse's rump, then feel the surge of muscle
and power between my legs as we thunder over the top of a ridge, my
arms around L.Q's waist, my boot splaying blood into the darkness, my
face buried in his manly smell.
Then, as in a dream, I hear the horse's
hooves splash through water and clop on stone and L.Q. holler out,
'Why, goodness gracious, it's Texas already, bud!'
----
chapter
eight
At five-thirty Monday morning I went
to Deaf Smith's
sole health club, located a block off the town square in what used to
be a five-and-dime store, where I worked out three times a week. I
lifted in the weight room, then exercised on the benches and Nautilus
machines and was headed for the steam room when I saw Mary Beth Sweeney
on a StairMaster machine, by herself, at the end
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