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Authors: James Crumley
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permit.”
“Everybody’s got a permit as far as I can tell,” I said, wondering why all the major decisions of my life had to be made while I was slightly tipsy, mildly high, and stinking of bodily fluids. Or maybe it wasn’t just the bad decisions, maybe it included the good ones, too. Whichever, I had no way to resist. “Okay. I’ve got a black cherry El Dorado. Meet me in the parking lot at nine. I’ve got to look over the ground.”
She put her arms around my neck, saying, “How can I ever thank you?”
“Consider me thanked, and I’ll give you the family rate for a bodyguard day.”
“Family rate?”
“Three hundred instead of five,” I said, smiling, “in cash, in advance.”
“The fuck doesn’t count?” she asked.
“Nothing solidifies a deal like folding money. It doesn’t change its mind and doesn’t whine about respect the next morning.”
“That’s for sure,” she said as she dug into her purse and handed me the money with a quick burst of nervous laughter. “That’s what I always tell my clients,” she added. “The ones who are guilty, that is.” Then we laughed, shook hands, and I left her standing in the hard moonlight, listening to the faint murmur of the creek.
* * *
The upper reaches of Blue Creek wandered weakly through Betty’s ranch, then crossed another ranch, before it wound onto her other uncle’s place — Tom Ben Wallingford owned several sections — before it dropped in a small stream off the Balcones Escarpment to join the gush of the huge artesian spring at the base of the hollow, where Blue Creek became a wide, beautiful stream, pellucid water slipping over limestone ledges, pausing occasionally to form perfect swimming holes. Travis Lee, who had his job at the law school and later his private practice, donated most of his part of the old family ranch to the county for a park, taking a huge tax write-off and keeping a narrow strip of land on the north side of the creek. Leaving his older brother with his sections of mostly worthless scrub, particularly after the government dropped the mohair subsidy, land good only for deer leases, which the old man wouldn’t allow. And, as Austin expanded northwesterly, development, which the old man hated. Tom Ben’s sections nearly were surrounded by upscale developments, but the stubborn and childless old cowboy was dickering with the Blue Creek Preservation Society, of which Betty Porterfield was president and probably the major financial angel, to put the land into a conservancy, but only if they could come up with a deal to keep it a working ranch. But nobody could come up with the deal he wanted, and it seemed that Tom Ben Wallingford was going to dicker until he died, and he seemed to think he was going to live forever.
The Overlord Land and Cattle Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Overlord Minerals, Inc., owned most of the land around the ranch — hell, most of Gatlin County — and the CEO, Hayden Lomax, insisted the old man had signed an option to sell the ranch, which Tom Ben Wallingford had denied completely. The whole thing had been simmering toward court for a couple of years before I came to stay in the Hill Country.
When Betty Porterfield asked me to move into her ranch house, I told myself that I had buried my Montana past and intended to finish out my life in the Hill Country. Betty and I had met over a gunshot dog and fallen in love over stories of loss and gunfire. And I loved Betty’s ranch, a section of Hill Country heartland, and the crippled animals Betty brought home from the emergency veterinarian clinic where she worked nights, loved the bright glow of the plank floor and the homemade cedar furniture, the wood cookstove and the hissing Coleman lanterns, the reassuring scratch and peep of the chickens in the yard dust, the yawns of sleeping cats, throwing the tennis ball for the three-legged Lab, Sheba, until my arm hurt, watching the sweep of weather across the wide Texas sky as I sat
“Everybody’s got a permit as far as I can tell,” I said, wondering why all the major decisions of my life had to be made while I was slightly tipsy, mildly high, and stinking of bodily fluids. Or maybe it wasn’t just the bad decisions, maybe it included the good ones, too. Whichever, I had no way to resist. “Okay. I’ve got a black cherry El Dorado. Meet me in the parking lot at nine. I’ve got to look over the ground.”
She put her arms around my neck, saying, “How can I ever thank you?”
“Consider me thanked, and I’ll give you the family rate for a bodyguard day.”
“Family rate?”
“Three hundred instead of five,” I said, smiling, “in cash, in advance.”
“The fuck doesn’t count?” she asked.
“Nothing solidifies a deal like folding money. It doesn’t change its mind and doesn’t whine about respect the next morning.”
“That’s for sure,” she said as she dug into her purse and handed me the money with a quick burst of nervous laughter. “That’s what I always tell my clients,” she added. “The ones who are guilty, that is.” Then we laughed, shook hands, and I left her standing in the hard moonlight, listening to the faint murmur of the creek.
* * *
The upper reaches of Blue Creek wandered weakly through Betty’s ranch, then crossed another ranch, before it wound onto her other uncle’s place — Tom Ben Wallingford owned several sections — before it dropped in a small stream off the Balcones Escarpment to join the gush of the huge artesian spring at the base of the hollow, where Blue Creek became a wide, beautiful stream, pellucid water slipping over limestone ledges, pausing occasionally to form perfect swimming holes. Travis Lee, who had his job at the law school and later his private practice, donated most of his part of the old family ranch to the county for a park, taking a huge tax write-off and keeping a narrow strip of land on the north side of the creek. Leaving his older brother with his sections of mostly worthless scrub, particularly after the government dropped the mohair subsidy, land good only for deer leases, which the old man wouldn’t allow. And, as Austin expanded northwesterly, development, which the old man hated. Tom Ben’s sections nearly were surrounded by upscale developments, but the stubborn and childless old cowboy was dickering with the Blue Creek Preservation Society, of which Betty Porterfield was president and probably the major financial angel, to put the land into a conservancy, but only if they could come up with a deal to keep it a working ranch. But nobody could come up with the deal he wanted, and it seemed that Tom Ben Wallingford was going to dicker until he died, and he seemed to think he was going to live forever.
The Overlord Land and Cattle Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Overlord Minerals, Inc., owned most of the land around the ranch — hell, most of Gatlin County — and the CEO, Hayden Lomax, insisted the old man had signed an option to sell the ranch, which Tom Ben Wallingford had denied completely. The whole thing had been simmering toward court for a couple of years before I came to stay in the Hill Country.
When Betty Porterfield asked me to move into her ranch house, I told myself that I had buried my Montana past and intended to finish out my life in the Hill Country. Betty and I had met over a gunshot dog and fallen in love over stories of loss and gunfire. And I loved Betty’s ranch, a section of Hill Country heartland, and the crippled animals Betty brought home from the emergency veterinarian clinic where she worked nights, loved the bright glow of the plank floor and the homemade cedar furniture, the wood cookstove and the hissing Coleman lanterns, the reassuring scratch and peep of the chickens in the yard dust, the yawns of sleeping cats, throwing the tennis ball for the three-legged Lab, Sheba, until my arm hurt, watching the sweep of weather across the wide Texas sky as I sat
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