Esbeth was plodding her way toward her cottage home at ten minutes after ten that night. Her legs felt as if made of lead, and she’d made the walk home on automatic pilot, thinking over the chaos of the day—or rather, trying not to think of it. She’d been held over by the late arrival of the media crews, and it had been a sullen and unproductive visit by them, until just as they were packing to leave. That’s when the call came from Logan about finding Thirsty. Those media jackals were happy then, almost as happy as Sheriff Eldon was unhappy, even though she knew he didn’t care a fig for Thirsty. Each lift of a leg now was a concerted effort, and she stared down at the sidewalk where there was one. The fourteen blocks seemed to stretch on forever into the darkened streets.
A mockingbird scolded her from a persimmon tree, and, half a block later, she heard the single sharp squawk of a scissor-tail flycatcher. Either call on a normal evening walk would have had her looking up into the dark clusters of leaves in the trees, wondering what the birds were doing moving around so late. She even ignored a neighbor’s yappy little dog that crashed against the chain link fence of that yard in a way that usually gave her a start. Tonight the little annoying furball didn’t even succeed in making her miss a single, plodding step. It would be a good night for a diet. She wouldn’t even bother to fuss over making dinner. She could picture her bed and planned to head right for it and climb right in, and the only positive to the whole mess was knowing she didn’t have to go in to work until noon tomorrow.
She turned left and wove along the final winding half-block until she came to the small crepe myrtle bushes she’d planted at the end of her walk. They were drooping a bit. She’d water them in the morning. Esbeth went down the walk, staring at the flagstones, too tired to lift her head and see if the bougainvillea she’d put in along the edge of the porch was coming along. She picked up the newspaper that lay across the doormat, creaked back upright, and had the key in her hand reaching for the door when someone appeared out of the dark a couple feet to her left and said, “Pssst.”
She jerked and spun. Karyn and Donnie stood in the dark shadow of the porch. “Great gobs of grits. You just scared me out of three years of growth,” she said.
“Sorry. We’re kind of in a jam and want to see you,” Karyn said.
“Didn’t know you’d be this late,” Donnie said. It was still a little hard for him to get started talking.
The tremble was still rippling through Esbeth. The start had almost awakened her. But even that wasn’t enough, tired as she was. “You might as well come in,” she said.
She opened the door and flipped on the lights. They followed her inside.
“You sure have a lot of books,” Donnie said.
“The better to . . . oh, the heck with that. Why don’t you two sit down and tell me what’s on your minds.” Esbeth dropped her purse and plopped the unread newspaper down beside the easy chair in the room, her power spot. She eased down into the cushions, wondering if she’d feel like getting up again, or if she’d sleep right here, as she had once or twice in the past.
Donnie started to sit on the couch, but when Karyn stayed standing so did he. That was fine with Esbeth, as long as she got to sit. “Go ahead, tell me what made you almost scare the gizzards out of me.”
“Someone was waiting outside Donnie’s house,” Karyn said.
“Two of them,” he said. “One was in a car, waiting, the other around to the side of the house.”
“Who?”
“We couldn’t see.” He glanced at Karyn, but she was still fixed on Esbeth.
“It was dark,” she said.
“The two of you coming in late like that, to Donnie’s house, where he lives alone. What were you up to?” Esbeth was comforted to see the question flustered them a bit, Donnie as much as Karyn.
“I’m . . . I’m not supposed to be out. Dad grounded me.”
“Karyn,” he cautioned.
“It’s okay, Donnie. We can trust Esbeth.”
“But you can’t count on me to harbor you while your dad is going frantic, looking all over the place for you.”
They were looking at each other, and her tone as much as her words made them both snap back to her.
“But, Esbeth, I’m eighteen. He has no right,” Karyn said.
Donnie said, “I thought we could trust you.”
“I don’t know about kids today, but when I was growing up we always had a kind of rule about that, one so automatic we could all understand. It went like: ‘As long as you’re putting your feet under my table, you’ll abide by the rules of this house.’”
Karyn’s face flushed as if she’d been slapped. “Just because someone is feeding you doesn’t mean they own you. It means they love you.”
“You’ve put the whole thing more eloquently than I could, tired as I am. Now, do we call your dad and try to make peace with him?”
They glanced at each other, sharing their disappointment. When Karyn turned back, she nodded slowly.
“And you, young man, need to talk with the Texas Ranger.”
“I won’t.” His head tilted and he looked at Esbeth. “I don’t get it. One minute you’re our friend and helping us, then you want to rat out Karyn and make me talk to that Ranger. This is the only place we knew to come, and now you . . .”
“I know, I know. I’m tired and a little cranky, but you might understand if you let me finish. You two were right to be leery of going into Donnie’s house. Someone was killed there tonight.”
“Killed?” Karyn went pale and lowered herself onto the couch. Donnie sat down beside her.
“Who?” Donnie could barely speak.
“A reporter. Thirsty Mills. Thurston Mills, really. Everyone just called him ‘Thirsty.’” Esbeth got no pleasure from their shocked expressions. She knew they hadn’t known the reporter, at least more than to hear about him, maybe meet him once or twice. But to her, Thirsty’s death was the capstone of pity that summed up the tail end of his sad life. She watched their faces wash pale. The kids’ brush with their mortality hit them hard, but no harder than did Esbeth’s sadness at anyone with Mills’ potential who had come down in the world to his level, only to dip lower in death.
“How did he . . . what killed him?” Karyn asked.
“Someone hit him over the head hard enough to do the job. They may not have meant to kill him, but the sheriff and Ranger Macrory think whoever did it knew enough to pull the punch if they’d wanted to.”
Esbeth watched their faces for a minute. She knew she would have to call Logan Rainey in a minute, and maybe arrange a place for Donnie to stay until it was safer for him to sleep at home. Finally, she said, “The reporter was digging around under your porch, Donnie.”
“What for?”
“He’d found a box and was digging it up. Any idea of what was in that box?”
“Yeah, Spikeroy.”
“Spikeroy?”
“He was our Boston Terrier. Died about three years ago and we put him in a box and buried him under the porch because he used to like to go under there to get out of the heat. I always complained about having to shovel back the dirt from the holes he made getting under the lattice, until he was gone. Then I kind of missed the chore.”
“Hmmm.” Esbeth looked down at the carpet for a minute, too tired to make sense of any of it right then. She heard Donnie say something and looked up. “What?”
He said it again. “Why would someone dig up Spikeroy?”
* * * * *
Esbeth woke with a jerk at a little after five a.m. She lay waiting to see what sound had awakened her. But it was her heart slamming away, and the events of the previous evening reeling past like some anxiety dream, the kind she hadn’t had in years. She knew there was no use in trying to get back to sleep, so she pushed off the covers and got out of bed. Besides, after missing supper she was hungry.
When she was cleaned up and dressed, she made breakfast. It was a wrestle not to call the department office to see if there was anything new. That would be being nosy.
She’d been real glad last night that Tillis came along with Logan to keep him calm, and that the Ranger had agreed to take the boy home and have him camp there until they were sure the Spurlock house was safe. Logan had barely spoken three words, and if Karyn hadn’t assured Esbeth that he’d never touched her in a disciplinary way, she’d have figured that Karyn was in for a lively time at home. That would have made her feel worse than she already did about ratting on the poor girl.
She concentrated on scrambling three eggs to go with the three slices of bacon and toast. Then she carried the plate over to the table and rounded up the newspaper she’d been too tired to read last night. She read while eating, but there was little to add to what she’d already heard and witnessed at closer range. The couple of copies of The New York Times that had stacked up while she’d been distracted had even less on the local scene, but she did what she could to catch up with that perspective of the country and world too.
When she was done eating, she piled the breakfast things in the sink, too recharged and full of energy now to labor over washing up the plates. She knew what she had to do next, though she didn’t look forward to it.
She was ready to go by eight a.m., but she knew the liquor store didn’t open until ten a.m., so she had to wait, knowing that narrowed her window if she was to drive to and from Hoel’s Dam and still be at work by noon.
It was already getting hot by nine forty-seven, when Esbeth started for the store. She waited a minute for them to open, took the looks in stride of someone her age buying a fifth of Old Overholt the minute they opened, then heading for her car.
Esbeth had seen the address often enough on the blotter recently, so it was just a matter of finding the street. She felt conspicuous walking down the street with the bottle in its sack, the end of the brown paper twisted in the prescribed spiral. Anyone seeing her would think she was off to an early morning toot, which she figured was at least partially true.
The streets narrowed to some of the older streets in town, where now, with cars parked on either side, there was just one lane down the middle. No one cared much, and gave way when they had to get cars up and down to the homes. Way at the back, near the dead end sign, stood a small, gray, wooden house all by itself. The lot was almost an acre, but the house probably had less than eight hundred square feet inside. Lots of people used to live in even less space. Esbeth’s cottage wasn’t a whole lot bigger.
She went down a long walkway where hedges of sage had grown up. She could tell they had once been trimmed, but had been let go and had lost whatever shape they’d had so long ago. They lined the walk to guide the visitor to a house that didn’t look visited much. Along the sides, Esbeth saw flowerbeds that had run to weeds, and even those had been beat down to a yellowish tangle by the sun and neglect.
There was a three-by-five card Scotch-taped by the doorbell that said in blockish printed letters that the bell didn’t work and advised her to go ahead and knock. She held the neck of the bottle in its sack and gave the door a couple of firm taps with the bottom edge of the bottle. It was a bit like christening a ship, only the gray and weathered house didn’t slide off into the ocean, although it looked like it wanted to, and would if the chance came along.
The door swung slowly open, and there stood Floyd Bettles in a long, blue, terry bathrobe with a look on his face of mingled surprise and delight. It made Esbeth even more sorry she had come.
“Come in, come in. You’re sure a sight for sore eyes.”
“Your eyes are sore because you’re drinking too much.”
“I know, I know. It’s a weakness. But I . . .” He let that hang.
But Esbeth sidled past him where he hovered by the door. He clutched his robe about him tighter and snugged up its belt, for which she was glad.
“Take a seat and I’ll be back out in a sec,” he said.
She looked around. There was, of course, a favorite chair. It was a worn cloth-covered wing chair, with an ottoman between it and the thirteen-inch television that sported a rabbit-ear antenna. There was barely room to walk between them, but Esbeth wove through and sat in a rocker that must have once belonged to the late Mrs. Bettles. A small, antique-looking floor fan swayed slowly back and forth, stirring the air through the room that would get warmer as the day wore on. The room was a whole lot more comfortable than it had looked at first glance, and Esbeth settled into the rocker, clutching her purse and the bottle, waiting on Floyd to reappear.
He came back into the room and his hair was slicked back, what there was of it, and that was gray and stringy. He’d put on a light blue short-sleeved shirt that was too big for him now, though it had probably fit once, and he had on khaki slacks and worn but polished loafers without socks. It was as dapper as he could get. Floyd was a tall man, or had been. Now his stoop took him to about six feet, and his bony arms hung out from the short sleeves with occasional little scabby spots and liver marks. He had a long, narrow face with only a single nick where he’d shaved too close. His eyes were red-rimmed and sad, even when he looked eager, as he did now. He came across and lowered himself into his power spot chair. He worked up a smile and his expectant eyes swept across Esbeth in a way that made her even more uncomfortable, until they landed on the bag she held.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Oh, I brought you a little something.”
She pulled the bottle out of the sack and held it up. Years ago, she’d watched a man trying to put a shoe on a mule. It had given a jerk and kicked him briskly in the stomach. The man had dropped the mule’s foot and reeled back, the look on his face not too different from the one Floyd wore now.
“Oh,” he said.
“Is it the wrong brand? I thought you drank rye.”
Those sad eyes of his got a whole lot sadder and welled up. A drop started down from the center of each sagging eye, and he looked away while digging in his pocket for a large white handkerchief. He wiped at his face with it.
He shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket and pushed on the arms of the chair to stand slowly. He went over to the small window that looked over his back yard. Esbeth had no idea what he was seeing out there, but it didn’t seem to cheer him up much.
“I suppose,” he said slowly, “that the fault is mine. I went about this all wrong.”
“What?”
“Trying to get you interested in me this way.”
“How’s that?”
He turned to face her. The light coming in through the window made it hard to catch his expression. “Truth is, I don’t really drink.”
“You’ve been doing a pretty fair imitation of it, then.”
“I guess I have that coming. But, the fact is, I just thought if I could be around you, let you get to know me, that, you know . . .”
“Sparks would fly?”
“Well, not that at my age, or yours either for all that, though you’re a chunk younger than me.”
“You thought I’d find a guy ten years my senior more attractive, if he was lying around sleeping off a drunk in a jail cell?”
“Look, I said I wasn’t thinking as clear as I like.” There was the first bit of edge to his voice, and Esbeth found that heartening.
He went back across the room and lowered himself into his chair again. One hand rubbed across the other in an unconscious way. He looked at her. “Look, you came here for something. What is it?”
“I was hoping to ask you some questions.”
She had put the sack containing the bottle on the floor beside the rocker where she sat. He glanced down at it, and though he didn’t shudder, his expression registered the same effect.
“And you’ve read those stories where the detective liquors up the drunk and he spills his guts before passing out. Then the detective leaves.”
“Yeah, I suppose that was the sort of script I had in mind.” Esbeth didn’t feel too sanctimonious now herself. “But I’m not really a detective. I’m more of a busybody.”
“Same difference.”
“I guess. But what I’m having trouble with is figuring out what went on around here as much as forty or fifty years ago. I wasn’t around here back then. But you were.”
“Hell, I was a dashing young man about town then.”
“Well, I’m having a hard time getting anyone to talk about what happened.”
“I’m not surprised. It was a damned embarrassment.”
“In what way?”
“That’s why it’s so hard to talk about. Stuff just happened, and then, when it was all over, no one really cared to stir it up again much.”
“Were you involved?”
“Me? Oh, everyone was. But the really bad stuff? No, not me personally. Most of what happened was among the big families.”
“The Hoels, Granites, and Spurlocks?”
“That’s the heart of the lineup.”
“What started it?”
“My own hunch is that there’s always been a curse on the area.”
“Oh, come on.”
“No, I mean it. And I don’t mean like voodoo, or none of that. But there’s always been a get-rich-quick cloud that hung over everything around here and kind of spoiled anything good sooner or later.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it goes all the way back. You sure you wanna hear all of it?”
“Don’t leave out a thing.”
“It goes back to the valley first. All that used to belong to the Indians. Them Kiowas had one of their biggest villages down in the valley. I guess that’s why they call it Lake Kiowa now.”
“But we white folk came along and pushed them out.”
“The attitude way back then was that it was like free land, and the more of it you could grab, the richer you could be. The Indians already being on the land was just a wrinkle to work out, and to people wanting to get rich quickly without a lot of work, killing a few Indians didn’t weigh much.”
“And the ancestors of the richest of the local time-honored families were the best grabbers?”
“Mostly the early Hoels and a few of the Granites ended up with the bigger chunks. There were some others, but once the Hoels got going, the land seemed to just turn itself over to them until they had almost everything. Those Hoels, they were world-class champion grabbers.”
“They run out the others?”
“That’s what everyone thinks. It was too early for me to know anything about that. The Hoels were just there. I was born down in the valley, you know, and in those days the Hoels were everything.”
“Things haven’t changed much. What about the Granites?”
“They were the only ones too stubborn to give ground, and they were hardy pioneer stock, good shooters too, I understand.”
“And the Spurlocks?”
“They weren’t in it then. The Spurlocks were hill folk, always have been highlanders. Their place was right where their house still stands. They didn’t have anything to do with the gold fever, or any of that.”
“Gold?”
“Yeah. Old Slate Granite started turning up nuggets on their place. It made quite a stir for a little while. Oh, Esbeth, you can’t begin to know what a strike and the idea of gold being in a place does to people—that it’s just lying there on the ground in nuggets or dust to be scooped up. Whole parts of America have been swept up in that kind of madness, and besides the miners there’re the dealers, providers, fancy women, everything that goes with it. The valley had a little taste of that, and you’ll never know the kind of things that led to.”
“I’ll have to stretch, but I get the rough idea. Was there a mine? And why didn’t anyone find gold on the Hoel spread? It had to be a lot bigger than the Granites’ land.”
“Now you’re getting to the touchy part. You see, there never was any mine, leastways as far as anyone could ever figure.”
“Where’d the gold really come from, then?”
“I’m not saying you couldn’t have found part of a word or two on any of them nuggets, maybe a piece of ‘In God We Trust,’ or the bend where the nugget was once a ring or some other smashed and reshaped bit of jewelry. The dust was harder to trace, but must’ve been harder to make, too. Everyone suspicioned that the Granites were making their fortune as highwaymen, burglars, robbers one and all. Then they’d grind down, or melt down, the coin, jewelry, whatever, and find it as nuggets. Or, so they said.”
“These days we’d call that money laundering.”
“All I can say is that no Granite ever did time, and the law never put a finger on who was doing some of the stealing and robbing back then. The valley was a pretty isolated place, with no train or other way in and out. Damming up the river and filling in the whole thing was one of the best things ever happened to that crack in the earth.”
“But the diamonds, and all the killing later? What was that about?”
“You recall that everyone in the valley had to be relocated.”
Esbeth nodded.
“Well, the Granites made the transition better than the Hoels. They switched over from agricultural crops . . .”
“And robbing.”
“And robbing, to spend more time raising cattle. Slim Granite, the head of the household and Selma’s husband, didn’t hold with a peaceful life like that. Some folks think his restless boot heels just carried him off one day to where he could get back to the kind of work he liked and was suited for.”
“How do the Spurlocks fit in?”
“They were up here on the hill all the time, and they started to feel crowdy when the dam was being built, and Hank was never too keen that all that land was given over to the Hoels, especially when the diamond business started.”
Esbeth stopped rocking and leaned forward. It was hard not to show her eagerness. This was what she’d been waiting for.
Her look encouraged Floyd.
“You may know that the Hoels owned most of the valley. They were given a wonderfully huge spread up on the hill. Why, it sprawled all the way into the next county. But the land wasn’t near as good as what they’d had down in the valley, or so Bill Hoel said. He was young then and as hard a man as there was around. But he couldn’t get cattle to go, like below. There wasn’t the water, and he had a lot of other stuff he squawked about. But most folks thought it was just the rising cost of labor to run a big spread like that. Wasn’t no new thing. Even the King Ranch had troubles like that, and it’s big enough to make the Hoel place look like someone’s hobby.”
“Did the troubles peak about ten years after Bill Hoel got the new land?”
“That’s about right.” If it bothered Floyd to have Esbeth butt in while he was telling the story, he didn’t show it. “It was all kept pretty quiet, but the rumor was that Hank Spurlock had located a diamond mine. He wouldn’t say where, and most folks didn’t believe it anyhow. But one or two tried to follow him. But they were never able to track or trail him to his so-called mine.”
“Your story made a jump there. You know more than you’re saying, Floyd.” She hadn’t batted her eyes, or done anything to falsely encourage him, but she could see he was wrestling with something. “You don’t have to tell me, though. I don’t want to pry anything out of you like this,” she said. She put her hands on the arms of the rocking chair, ready to push herself upright.
Floyd’s eyes got that rummy, regretful look again. He sat up straight in his chair and then leaned over closer, looked intently at Esbeth. “Oh, don’t go, Esbeth. I’m telling you as much as I think I should, as I dare.”
She didn’t say anything, but he must’ve seen something in her face.
“Okay. I’ll tell you something I never told anyone before. Hank swore me not to, but he’s pushing worms himself now, like I will be soon enough myself. So, what’s it really matter? Anyhow, he—Old Hank—took me along a time or two to help him. Hugh was off to the war then, and Denny, why he was just a little sprat. I wasn’t never very bright, and Hank kinda knew that, figured if he could trust anyone, he could trust me. He made me swear . . .” Floyd looked away and swallowed. “I had to swear never to tell. But, like I said . . .” He didn’t try to finish that, just stared off to where the seam of the corner ran up to the ceiling. A cobweb tossed in the current of the floor fan.
“And you found diamonds? Where?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you this, even now. I can’t.”
Esbeth tilted her head at him. It was tempting to flirt her way to more information, but she knew he had buttons she could push and she had to fight herself not to go that way.
“I . . . I really can’t, Esbeth. I mean, I swore.”
“That’s okay. What was it like finding them?”
“We had to go up into some of the highest country around. There were a couple long stretches to hike, then small mountains of rock to go up.”
Esbeth was getting an idea of where that might be, but she chose not to press.
“There was a hill we had to climb, and up on its top the hill dipped back in, a bit like a volcano, but it wasn’t. Hank said the geology was all wrong for a volcano. There was Precambrian rock, he said, but no fresh lava, nothing like that. All of his chatter about that was in geological time and way over my head. He knew a bit about this kind of stuff and had been prowling around looking for the right signs all over the county, ever since topaz was found off a couple of counties from here. He’d been up there to where we went before, and had almost always been run off. But then he started finding diamonds. And it was true. They were there. I found some myself. You could rake through the dirt and uncover them here and there. If we’d of had equipment and some running water up there, we could’ve uncovered more’n we did. But we got run off ourselves. We had to cut out and hide our stash. The owner—the one who run us off—was trying to sell off some of the land then, and we were on part of it he wanted to sell—worthless rocks and other hillsides that could never take cattle, or if it could, you couldn’t get them outta there.”
“Why didn’t you just buy the land?”
“Hank was set to, and I was having some dreams about being rich myself and buying some. But then everything changed and the owner took the land off the market.”
“He say why?”
“I can only suppose it had to do with making more money off the land somehow.”
“You think he found the diamonds?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about all the ones you and Hank found?”
“They were still up there, stashed away. Trying to get them out’s what started all the shooting.”
“I gather the Granites got involved, somehow.”
“They’ve always had a nose for making money, them Granites, especially easy money. You recall what I said about people when gold was mentioned. Well, you oughta seen folks around here when diamonds came up. Oh, God, it was ugly there for a while, Esbeth. I was scared to death to mention I’d ever had anything to do with it, still am, for all that. Don’t you ever tell anyone, or my life won’t be worth spit.”
Esbeth said, “You can trust me, Floyd.”
He gave the door a nervous glance.
“The scorecard I charted out had several Hoels killed, while the Granites also lost quite a few,” she said.
“And don’t forget that Hank Spurlock came up missing about then, too.”
“What about you?”
“That’s when I took a serious disinterest in anything having to do with land and everything else around here. I took off and didn’t come back until everything had settled again. That was almost two years later. Truth is, Esbeth, I’m something of a coward.”
“And that’s the last you ever heard about the diamonds?”
“Except for the version that has Hank going across Lake Kiowa with the strongbox full of diamonds and disappearing out there somewhere.”
“Anything to that?”
“Young Hugh Spurlock must’ve thought so.”
“But what about you?”
“Come on, now. I’ve worked hard all these many years not to think a thing about that. I married Vivian and worked my days and kept my mouth shut like everyone else, and watched as most of the ones who knew or suspected anything died off one by one. Aren’t too many of us left that actually know anything about what really went on. And, until today, we weren’t talking. I’m not sure who started that talk about Hank and the box of diamonds being lost in the lake, but that’s all it was, just rumor, and a flimsy-enough one. Few enough people wanted to even mention diamonds at all.”
“I’m glad you opened up and told me, Floyd.”
“But it don’t mean much. What can you do with it?”
“It’s information, and the kind I didn’t have. So I appreciate it. I’m the kind doesn’t sit well with a mystery hanging over her head.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, great horny toads. I’ve got to get scampering.”
She creaked up out of the rocking chair and stood up, left the bottle of the floor. She didn’t want it, and Floyd was still focused on her. She doubted if he wanted it either. Maybe the visit would cut out his drinking bouts. If so, all the better.
Floyd was looking at her with those sad eyes again. “So, we’re not gonna date?”
“No. I don’t think so. But we can be friends, and talk. Is that okay?”
He nodded, slowly at first. Then he worked up a reluctant smile.
Esbeth went to the door. But Floyd shot up out of his wing chair and headed toward the door to open it for her. The heat from outside hit her like the slap of a frying pan as soon as she stepped into the sun outside the doorway. She turned and looked up at him. “You mind if I ask you one thing?”
“What?”
“What did you see in an old coot like me anyway?”
“First, you gotta remember, I’m an older coot.”
“But it was more than that, wasn’t it?”
“You didn’t know Vivian, did you?”
“No.”
“She passed on before you ever came to town.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s as natural as rain, and we’ll all get a turn at it.” He grinned, and if it hadn’t been for her slowly cooking out in the sunlight while he stood inside the shadow of the doorway, Esbeth would have smiled back at him. “The truth is, you look a lot like her.”
“It’s a reason for a lot of foolishness, but never the best one.”
“I know. I see that now. But I miss Vivian so much. She was a lot like you.”
“Like how?”
“Well, maybe I shouldn’t put it this way, but Viv was a round little butterball.”
“Oh.”
“I used to look forward to holding her each night, hanging onto the round softness of her. We’d talk then, cuddled up like that, and catch up on the day.”
“You must . . .”
“Yeah.” Floyd got choked up for a second and looked away. When he looked back at Esbeth, his eyes were red and watery again. There was a quiver in his voice. “I miss her so much.”
“I understand. But you know it’s not going to be like that with us. For one, I’m more the prickly porcupine type than the teddy bear type.”
“If you say so. I hope we can be friends.”
“Sure, why not?”
“I’m glad we kinda got this out in the air. Truth is, I was awful tired of drinking like that. I never come to it natural, and it was gonna be the death of me.”
“I’m glad some good came from this.”
“It sure helps to talk things out.”
Esbeth glanced at her watch and knew she’d have to get a move on. Besides, she could feel the clammy sweat forming around her neck from standing out in the sun. She said, “You know, with most the problems of the world, and in ninety-five percent of all television sitcoms, the issue is almost always some kind of breakdown in communication.”
Floyd looked at her, then lowered his head. Oh, now what, she thought. When he raised it to look at her, he said, “You know already anyway, don’t you?”
She hesitated, then slowly nodded. “Sure, the diamonds you found were on Old Bill Hoel’s place, weren’t they? And I’d almost guess it was on land once owned by Hank Spurlock, on which he made money when it was bought by the River Authority people to give to Bill Hoel.”
Relief and fear were in a tangle across his old tired and long face. Then he relaxed. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
“Oh, nothing’s going to happen to you, Floyd.”
He shrugged, an elaborate and bony version of a shrug, like someone shaking off all the cares and fears of a lifetime in one concentrated gesture. He said, “Oh, something will happen, all right. We all die, Esbeth, sooner or later.”
Esbeth wanted to say something reassuring, but she was out of time. She turned and went off. She would have to scurry now to get to work on time. The lather of sweat around her neck had already turned into a small trickle running down the small of her back. Above her, the sun was blasting down on Hoel’s Dam. But she was beginning to be more fully aware of the shadow of fear that had hung over this cursed little town for all these many years now.