Page 82 of Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“Get in the truck,” he said.

“You turn my stomach,” she said.

He didn’t reply. He opened the passenger door and pushed her inside, then closed the door behind her and walked around the back toward the driver’s side.

Lucas’s stepfather had removed the factory bumper from the rear end of the truck and replaced it with two sections of six-inch steel pipe mounted and welded in a V-shape on a thick, cast-iron bib.

Esmeralda’s face looked numb, beyond tears, freeze-dried with shame.

; “Hitch up your seat belt,” Lucas said.

“You worry about seat belts? You take me to the filling station. I’m going to call the police,” she said.

“Same guys who molested you? Hang on!” he said.

He worked the transmission into reverse and floored the accelerator. The truck’s tires spun gravel under the fenders and the rear end swayed back and forth as it raced toward the three parked cars. The V-shaped welded pipe, ragged on all the edges from the acetylene cut, tore first into the side of an Oldsmobile compact, peeling two long strips out of the paint and metal, then crashed into the rear fender of a Ford, blowing out the taillight and knocking the car’s frame sideways. Then the pipe apex tore into the grille of Chug’s Cadillac, gashing the radiator into a wet grin, crumpling the fenders up on the tires like broken ears.

Lucas dropped the transmission into low and spun away from the Cadillac, twisting the steering wheel to the right, heading straight for the circle of Ronnie’s tormentors. At first they looked at him in disbelief, then scattered in front of his headlights, white-faced, running for either the road or the safety of the field and the trees. He hit the brakes long enough for Ronnie to jump into the cab besides Esmeralda, a cloud of tire dust and raindrops blowing across the dashboard. Then he floored the accelerator again and burned two long divots out of the dirt onto the asphalt, the rear end of the truck fishtailing on the wetness of the road.

Ronnie grabbed the windowsill of the passenger door with both hands and slammed it shut. His eyes were manic with energy, his skin shining with water. He leaned past Esmeralda so he could see Lucas’s face.

“We don’t got no white bread in the Purple Hearts, but sometimes we make an exception,” he said.

“Not in your dreams, Ronnie,” Esmeralda said.

A highway patrol car passed them in the opposite direction, its siren screaming, the rain whipping in a red and blue and silver vortex off its light bar.

Lucas waited for two hours at the house for the Texas Department of Public Safety or a group of Hugo Roberts’s deputies to knock on his door. But no one did. He and Esmeralda drove Ronnie back to his T-Bird and helped him change his tire, passing the parking area that was now empty and pooled with rainwater and streaked with car tracks. Then he returned home and watched Esmeralda go inside the trailer and close the door and click on the lamp in her bedroom. He went into the house and tried to sleep, then gave it up and drank a cup of coffee in the kitchen by himself, the shadows and yellow light from the overhead bulb bladed on his bare shoulders, sure that he would be on his way to jail by midnight.

But no police came.

Were Chug and the others actually stand-up? he wondered.

No, they didn’t want to admit they were taken down by a Mexican girl and a West Ender. They’d find a way to square it down the road. He had no doubt about that.

Why wasn’t life simple? Why couldn’t you simply go to work or attend college or play music in a band and be let alone? Why didn’t time or age or the dues you paid buy you any wisdom?

How about Esmeralda? She hadn’t even bothered to say thank you. In fact, after they dropped Ronnie off at his car, she had hardly spoken on the way back to the house. Go figure, he thought.

He went back into the bedroom and turned on the electric fan and lay on top of the bedspread with his jeans still on and rested his arm across his forehead. The rain had stopped entirely now and the moon had risen over the hills in the distance. Through the screen he could see the glow of Esmeralda’s reading lamp against the orange curtain that hung in the trailer’s bedroom window. She read books by Ernest Hemingway and Joyce Carol Oates. He’d seen the As she had made on her English papers. She was one smart woman but he’d be switched if he knew what went on in her head.

Then her shadow moved across the curtain and she opened the front door and walked out in the yard in a robe and disappeared behind his house. A moment later he heard her knock lightly on the back screen.

He turned on the kitchen light and looked at her through the screen. Her robe was tied tightly around the waist so that her hips were accentuated against the cloth and on her feet she wore fluffy slippers that looked like rabbits.

“Anything wrong?” he said.

“I keep hearing noises. I know it’s just the wind, but I couldn’t sleep,” she replied.

“You want to come in?”

She made a face, as though she were arguing with herself. “If you’re still up,” she said.

“Sure. It’s hot, ain’t it? The rain don’t cool things off that much this time of year,” he said, holding the screen open for her, wondering if the banality of his remarks hid the desire that reared inside him when her body passed close to his.

“Ronnie wanted to come pick me up tomorrow. I told him not to,” she said.