Cimarron Rose

'I'm sorry for the stupid remark I made to you yesterday.'

'I already forgot about it.' She picked up her coffee spoon from her napkin and set it in her saucer.

I waited, but her eyes were deliberately empty, the balls of her fingers motionless on the table, and I said, 'What's he want with a pair of U-bolts and twenty feet of steel cable?'

She shook her head, then said, 'For some reason, those words and the name of Darl Vanzandt make my stomach crawl… You really gonna strike a match on Bunny's soul?'

'It's going to get even worse later.'

She looked at me and then looked through the screen. Her face was quiet, full of the thoughts and connections that she seldom shared. Her shirt had pulled out of her jeans and her baby fat creased on her hips. 'You want to have dinner with me and Pete?' she asked.

Pete's mother had consented to let him return to Temple's house for the next few days. That night we ate at a cafeteria, then I dropped them off and parked my car in back, turned on the flood lamps in the yard, poured some oats in Beau's stall, and walked all the way around the outside of the house with L.Q.' s.45 revolver under my raincoat.

Then I fell asleep on the third floor, with Great-grandpa Sam's journal open in my lap, an illogical image of torn steel cable and roaring car engines threading in and out of my dreams.

Bunny Vogel was dressed in a brown suit and sandals and a wash-faded pink golf shirt when he took the stand. He kept scratching his face with four fingers, as though an insect had burrowed into his cheek, and staring out into the courtroom, as though looking for someone who should have been there but wasn't.

I walked toward the jury box so Bunny would either have to face them when he answered my questions, or avert his eyes or drop his head. It wasn't a kind thing to do.

'Did you sleep with Roseanne Hazlitt, Bunny?' I asked.

'We went out in high school.'

'Did you sleep with her?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Would you say you loved her?'

'Yeah, I reckon. I mean, the way kids do.'

'You were a senior and she was only fifteen when y'all met, is that right?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Was she a virgin?'

'She told me she wasn't.'

'You found out different, though, didn't you?'

He knitted his fingers together, glanced out at the courtroom, at the Vanzandts, the boys he had played football with, the Mexican girl he dated now, at the few empty seats in back where maybe his father would come in late and sit down.

'Bunny?'

'Yes, sir, I found out I was the first,' he said.

'You hurt her, didn't you? You thought you should take her to a hospital?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But not in the county where people might know you?'

He turned his head away from the jury and cleared his throat. 'That's right,' he said.

'The witness will speak up,' the judge said.

'I was afraid. She was underage,' Bunny said. He pushed himself up in the chair and rubbed his hand on the back of his neck.

'Then you went to A amp;M and dumped her?' I said.

'She didn't lack for boyfriends. She found some a whole lot better than me.'

'Did you punch out Virgil Morales at Shorty's?'

'Yeah, we got a bad history.'

'He called you a pimp?'

Bunny's right hand squeezed on his thigh. He ran his tongue over his lips. 'Yeah, that's what he did,' he said.

'How did Roseanne Hazlitt come to know Mr and Mrs Jack Vanzandt, Bunny?'

'I took her out to their house once. I intro-'

'Introduced her to whom?'

'Just what I said. I took her to their house.'

His words were binding in his throat now, the scar along his jaw turning as dark as blood against his tan.

'Did you have sexual intercourse with Mrs Vanzandt?' I asked.

'Relevance, your honor,' Marvin said.

'I'll allow it,' the judge said. 'The witness will answer the question.'

'I did it once. It was 'cause she was mad over something, I mean with her husband. She was like that,' Bunny said.

'Did Roseanne ever slap you before that night at Shorty's?'

'No, sir.'

'Roseanne said her baptism might wash off on you. Why was she so angry at you, Bunny? Why did she feel so betrayed?'

'Cause she didn't have no friends left. Except Lucas. He's the only one done right by her.'

'But she wanted you to take her to her baptism? Because you owed her in a big way, didn't you?'

'I guess that's what she thought.'

'Why did you owe her, Bunny? Why did she say her baptism might wash off on you?'

He kneaded his hands between his thighs, the balls of his feet tapping neurotically on the stand, his head pulled down on his chest. His long hair fell down around his throat like a girl's.

'Answer the question, please,' I said, but I had lowered my voice now, the way you do when you hope your own capacity for cruelty will be forgiven.

'I drove her to Dallas to meet Mr Vanzandt. He rented three rooms at the Four Seasons, like there wasn't nothing unusual about him being with a couple of young people. But we all knew why we was there. I took her down to his room the first night, for drinks out on the balcony and all, but I left by myself,' he said.

He rested his forehead on his fingers, staring numbly at the floor. Then he added, as though his own behavior had been explained to him by someone else, 'That's what I done, all right.'

Emma Vanzandt rose from her chair and walked down the aisle and out of the courtroom, her face like parchment about to wrinkle in a flame.

'How many times did you do this?' I asked.

'Whenever he wanted her. At least up until she thought she was pregnant and he told her to get it cut out of her, 'cause he wasn't gonna have no woods colt with his name on it…'

The only sound in the courtroom was the hum of the fans and the rain clicking on the windowsills. No one looked at Jack Vanzandt, except his son, who studied his father as though a strange and new creature whom he didn't recognize had just swum into his ken.

Fifteen minutes later a power failure darkened the building for three hours, and Temple and Lucas and I drove to a barbecue restaurant on a hill that overlooked the river outside of town. It had stopped raining, and the sky in the west was blue and you could see the shadows of clouds on the hillsides.

Lucas couldn't eat. I reached over and picked a piece of blooddried tissue paper off his cheek where he had cut himself shaving.

'There's nothing to it. Just be who you are,' I said.

'Be who I am?' he said.

Temple was watching my face.

'You heard me. Tell the truth, no matter what it is. When you go on that stand, you just be Lucas. Don't try to hide anything, don't try to manipulate the jury, don't back away from a question,' I said.

'What are you gonna ask me?'

'I don't know.'

He looked seasick.

'Do what Billy Bob tells you,' Temple said.

He pressed his napkin to his mouth, then got up from the table and walked quickly to the men's room.

'You're gonna take him apart, huh?' Temple said.

We waited in my office until the power went back on in the courthouse, then a bailiff phoned me and we went downstairs and across the street and met Marvin Pomroy coming down the courthouse walk.

'I need to talk to you,' he said to me.

'What's up?'

He looked at Temple and Lucas.

'I bet it's earth-shaking stuff, like prosecuting parking offenders in the most corrupt shithole in Texas,' Temple said, and went up the walk with Lucas.

Marvin looked at her back, his eyes involuntarily dropping to her hips.

'You think she'd work for me?' he asked.

'How about getting to it, Marvin?'

'Getting to it? You stoked up Garland Moon and aimed him at this Mexican drug agent, didn't you?'