Lunch, at the Lame Horse County jail, was prepared by the inmates—as Marvin Mallomar himself had once suggested as a cost-cutting tip to Sheriff Dudival. The cook was chosen on a round robin basis. Today was Buster’s turn. He wasn’t feeling like doing much of anything lately. Real depression was setting in—an emotion he’d formerly thought reserved for the Mallomars. He had to be ordered off his cot. He half-heartedly prepared a salad Nicoise in honor of Mrs. Mallomar. The inmates, meanwhile, had hoped for chili and gave Buster enormous grief all through the afternoon about his “pussy” menu choice, but they couldn’t dish it out like Mrs. Mallomar. Over his many days in jail, Buster would often think of her and not in a sexual way. He wondered how she was. He wondered if she was wondering how he was. And he wondered whether she had told anybody.
“McCaffrey!” barked the corrections officer. “You got a visitor.”
Destiny Stumplehorst, two weeks after the untimely departure of Cord Travesty and his cocaine supply, was beginning to regain some color in her cheeks—although her nose still dripped like a gas station restroom faucet. She sat primly in a steel chair across the table from him in the ten-by-ten visiting room. She was wearing jeans, boots, and a fringe jacket. Buster took her wardrobe as a possible embrace of the good old days.
“Hello, Buster.”
“’Lo, Destiny. How are you?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Fine,” he said. “Nice jacket.”
“Got it at the This ’n’ That shop before they made it into the Cineplex.”
“Raht,” Buster said, the they being Mallomar, of course. “Can ah fetch you a cuppa coffee or a cold non-alcoholrik bevridge?”
“No thanks, I’m fine.”
There was a long silence.
“Destiny, ah ’ppreciate ya’ll comin down here ta see me today. Ah know the last time we met, we dint ’xactly leave thangs tip-top.”
“I guess we didn’t.” Destiny tried to shift the weight off the buttock she’d been favoring. “You’re a big hero with Ma now.”
“Now why, in heaven’s name’s, that?”
“‘The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.’ Matthew thirteen-thirty-nine. Ma thinks you were my harvestin’ angel.”
“Beg pardon…?”
“You…” Her lips began to quiver, “…killed Cord Travesty and set me free from drugs.”
“Oh.” The smile dropped from Buster’s face. He tried to push himself back from the table, but his chair was bolted to the floor. “Uh, Destiny, lissen here. Ah’m real glad yor mom has a favribull o-pinyin of me an all that, but ah dint kill Cord Travesty.”
“I’m sorry,” Destiny said, quickly looking around the room. “It’s probably ain’t safe to talk here, is it?”
“It’s per-fekly safe. Ah jes…did…not…kill…nobody. Why’s it so hard fer folks t’believe me?”
“Okay, okay,” she whispered. “Sorry. That was stupid of me.”
“People ’round here thank ah did a lot of thangs ah never did. That’s been goin’ on my en-tahr life.”
“But you did sleep with Mrs. Mallomar. That’s somethin’ you did do, right?”
Buster took a deep breath. She was dragging that up again.
“Destiny,” he answered patiently, “Ah’ll tell you true, if ah could take back one dang thang in my life, that’d be the booger…but we all prolly have a thang er two we ree-gret doin’, now don’t we?”
She hung her head and nodded. “Buster, why did this happen to us?”
“You know, ah’ve had a lot of tahm sittin’ here thinkin’ ’bout that very same ishoo. What’d we do to have the whole world come crashin’ down ’round our ears? Ah rahtly don’t know. Alls we did was try to em-prove ourselves a bit. Is it a sin for folks lahk us to do that? Ah don’t think so. Ah reckon, the mistake we made was em-provin’ a mite too fast.”
The corrections officer opened the door and came in—signaling their time together was up.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Ah’d be much o-bliged if you stopped in to see me once and agin.”
“I will,” Destiny said in a broken voice.
Destiny got up to make a quick retreat before she fell to pieces. Buster, obeying the dictates of Ms. Humphrey’s Manners for Men jumped to his feet to see her out.
“Take care now,” he winked good-naturedly. Destiny burst into tears and just shook her head with the heartache of it all. After all this emotion, Buster was actually looking forward to going back to his cell.