Dust Devil (29 page)

Striding
among the plants, a bowie knife in hand, he ruthlessly cut down the
males, tossing them into an ever-increasing pile. Later, he would
hang them up to dry in the old, rundown wooden shed out back of his
grandmother’s house. Then he would crumble them up, mix them in
with the least potent parts of the female plants and divide up the
resulting grass, sealing it into sandwich bags. Lamar always used
Glad bags; he got a kick out of that, telling himself it was only
appropriate, since his bags made his clients so glad. He invariably
sold the male mixture to school kids on the commons, because the
majority of them couldn’t tell if they were smoking pot or
oregano. He saved the buds and upper leaves of the female plants—all
the good stuff—for customers who knew better.

Lamar
broke a heat-withered leaf off one of the male plants and, figuring
it was dry enough to try, crushed it and sprinkled it into one of the
thin white cigarette papers he took from the orange Zig-Zag package
in his pocket. Carefully, he rolled the joint, licked the edge to
seal it, then lit up, inhaling deeply. He held the smoke in his lungs
for as long as he could, then blew it out, coughing and choking.

“
Not
bad shit,” he observed to himself, wiping at his abruptly red,
teary eyes. “Not good, either—but then, what do them
dumb-ass whitey jocks at school know? Hell. The only letter they can
read is the one on their letter jackets.”

Popping
the trunk on his rusty, beat-up old car, he began to load his haul,
whistling cheerfully as he worked, cocking one ear as he heard the
drone of a motorcycle in the distance, drawing steadily nearer. Lamar
wasn’t too
concerned
by the noise, as he had both a shotgun and an automatic pistol in his
clunker. But it paid to be careful, even if the only two people he
really had to worry about were Sheriff Laidlaw and Deputy Truett. And
even they posed little threat. After all, they weren’t for
nothing routinely referred to behind their backs as Tweedledum and
Tweedledumber.

Despite
how hard he fought against the magnetic sensation as he traversed the
dusty country roads, the grassy green meadows and the cool, shaded
woods of his past, Renzo found he was like a criminal—inevitably,
irresistibly drawn to the scene of his crime. He had intended to go
straight to Sarah’s old house. Really, he had, he told himself.
But somewhere along the way, he had got lost in the past, been pulled
to the old quarry where he had made love to Sarah and where Sonny had
died that fatal day.

It
was a weekday. At this hour, both summer school and
summer
classes at the university were still in attendance; the Sideshow—the
local amusement park—was in full swing; and there was a band
playing an outdoor concert somewhere in one of the town parks.
Perhaps all that accounted for the fact that this afternoon, the
quarry was strangely deserted. Or, more likely, its emptiness was due
to the large, authoritative signs that had never been here before,
but that were now prominently posted in several locations and that,
in bold black letters, read:
Positively
No Diving or Swimming, By Order of Sheriff. All Violators Will Be
Prosecuted to the Fullest Extent of the Law,
Without
Exception
.
As a result, Renzo had the place to himself. He rolled the Harley to
a halt and got off, staring at the rough-hewn diving platforms, at
the top rock, from which he and Sonny had fallen. It was a long
drop—just as far as he had recollected.

After
several minutes of contemplation, Renzo, driven by some dark, unknown
compulsion, slowly undressed, leaving his clothes where they fell,
tossing his mirrored aviator sunglasses onto the pile. Then, naked,
the gold St. Christopher’s medal he always wore around his neck
gleaming in the sunlight, he strode toward the rocks and began to
climb. When he had reached the top, he paused, as though expecting to
find something, anything, that would tell him what had happened that
day. But there was nothing. He looked down, feeling momentarily
giddy, as he had so many years before. His heart seemed to pound in
his throat. His blood roared in his ears. A wasp buzzed around his
head, and his hand lashed out to knock the insect away. In his mind,
a gunshot sounded; the bullet grazed the side of his shoulder, the
sudden, sharp sting startling him. He turned, saw Sonny standing
beside him,
heard
Sonny’s voice on the breeze that stirred lethargically.

Onward,
Watson.

“
Right,
Holmes,” Renzo answered quietly.

He
closed his eyes, took a deep breath and launched himself strongly in
a perfect swan dive from the top rock.

Down—

Down—

Down—

He
seemed to drop forever. His last thought before he struck the cool,
murky water was that he had gone crazy from sunstroke and would
surely be killed. Against his eyelids, Sonny’s image swam,
melting into Sarah’s as the surface broke at Renzo’s
impact and, like a knife into a target, he plunged deep, feeling the
water close over him, engulf him, taking him inside like a welcoming
woman. At long last, he opened his eyes, batting with his hands at
the mass of long, thin, gnarled willow roots that reached out to
embrace him in a death grip, as they had embraced Sonny. But Renzo
was like a fish, twisting and turning, eluding the tangle that would
have entrapped him. He kicked his feet hard, propelling his body
toward the sunlight glinting above. His heart raced. His lungs felt
as though they would burst inside him. He couldn’t breathe. But
he knew the terrible sensation would pass, that he would have more
air in his lungs the higher he ascended, something to do with
pressure or the lack of it, he thought, although he couldn’t
remember for sure.

He
finally surfaced, swam toward shore and hauled himself from the
water, his breath coming in hard,
uneven
rasps. He rolled over, one arm flung across his eyes to
shield
them
from
the glare of the bright, burning
sun.

“
Man
oh man oh man! I ain’t never in my entire life seen nothin’
like what you just done, dude! It was way
cool...totally
un-be-liev-able!
”
His
mouth hanging open, Lamar Rollins stared down in sheer amazement at
Renzo lying on the ground, as though he weren’t quite sure
Renzo was actually real. “I heard your bike, man, and came to
investigate. And boy, am I ever glad I did! I wouldn’t have
missed
seein’
that
dive of yours fo’ nothin’ in the world!”

“
'Who
in the hell are you?” Renzo inquired tersely as he got slowly
to his feet to confront the young black man standing there.

“
Me?
Oh, hey, look, I ain’t nobody, dude...ah... mister,”
Lamar said hurriedly, judging it prudent to take a step back as his
eyes absorbed Renzo’s six feet, three inches of lean, hard,
powerful muscle. “My name’s Lamar Rollins, and I’m
cool. I’m cool. So just relax. Relax. I ain’t gonna
report you to the sheriff or nothin’ like that.”

“
I
didn’t think you were.” Calmly, unembarrassed by his
nakedness, Renzo pulled on his briefs and jeans, then shrugged on his
blue chambray workshirt, letting it hang open, the sun feeling good
upon his wet flesh. Reaching into his shirt pocket, he withdrew a
pack of Marlboros, lit one up and dragged on it deeply, then exhaled,
blowing a cloud of smoke rings into the summer air. All the while, he
never took his eyes off the young man. Unless he missed his guess—and
Renzo seldom did—Lamar Rollins was stoned on pot and probably
on the wrong side of the law
more
often than not. And Renzo wasn’t about to be knifed in the back
for his Harley.

“
You’re
him, ain’t you?” Lamar asked suddenly. “You’re
that reporter dude who’s taken over the
Trib,
the
one who won the Poo-lit-zer Prize, the one who killed Old Man
Holbrooke’s fancy college boy out here some years back. I
knowed it! I knowed it as soon as I seen you make that dive! I says
to myself right then, ‘Lamar, ain’t but one dude ever
made that dive and lived to talk about it, and that’s him right
there.’ That’s right, ain’t it? Well, ain’t
it?”

“
Yeah,
that’s right.” Renzo wondered idly whether he should warn
Lamar that all the while they had been talking, Sheriff Laidlaw had,
on foot, been stealthily circumnavigating the quarry and was even now
coming up on them. Then Renzo decided it probably wasn’t Lamar
the sheriff wanted, but him. “Hoag,” he called out with
feigned casualness, causing Lamar to pivot abruptly. “You been
following me around, Hoag, spying on me?”

“
There
some reason why I should be, Renzo?” the sheriff countered just
as easily, although his eyes, too, were alert. Then he said, “Just
making my usual rounds, that’s all. I saw you make that
frigging dive, boy. What in the hell’s the matter with you?
Can’t you read?” Hoag Laidlaw’s normally pasty face
was red from his exertions as he huffed and puffed his way to where
Renzo and Lamar stood. Sweat ran down into the sheriff’s eyes,
and the khaki shirt of his uniform was practically soaked through.
Grasping his wide leather belt, he hitched his trousers up around his
girth, which was soft from lack of exercise and running to fat from
too many glazed doughnuts at Fritzchen’s Kitchen. “I
can’t believe you had nerve enough to ever show your sly, ugly
mug in this town again after what you done, much less to come out
here and make that dive once more. What was you trying to prove,
boy?”

Taking
another long drag on his cigarette, Renzo reflected wordlessly that
it didn’t matter how high in life he had climbed since leaving
this town behind, that he had broken one of the biggest news story of
the decade, had won a Pulitzer Prize, had sat down to dinner with the
president in the White House and had been addressed by the nation’s
most powerful movers and shakers as “Mr. Cassavettes,” He
had only to return here to be reduced again to “boy”—a
guinea bastard from the wrong side of the tracks. His mouth twisted
derisively. He would have laughed aloud at the bitter irony, except
that he knew neither Hoag nor Lamar would have understood the joke.

“
Why,
I wasn’t trying to prove anything, Hoag, except that I could do
it.”

“
It
ain’t Hoag to you, boy. It’s Sheriff Laidlaw—and
don’t you forget it. ’Cause just in case you don’t
remember, we don’t hold with uppity dagos in this here town.
Nor uppity niggers, neither,” he added for Lamar’s
benefit. “You know, Renzo, there’re hell of a lot of
folks in town already upset about you coming back here. And I reckon
they’d be even more pissed off if they ever learned about this
little stunt you pulled out here this afternoon. They might start to
wondering what’re the chances you made that dive long before
you supposedly ever made it the first time, so you
knew
,
you see, without a doubt, that you could handle it that day you
shoved Sonny Holbrooke to his death. They might start to wondering
what’re the chances you could ride out here after more ’n
a decade and make that dive again just as cool as you damned well
please.”

“
Uh-huh,”
Renzo drawled, in unconscious imitation of Papa Nick. “Well,
I’m certain you’ll be sure to tell them—
Hoag.”
He
deliberately used the sheriffs first name again. “And in
case
you
don’t
remember, Sonny’s death was ruled an accident at the inquest.”

“
Yeah,
and as a result, you weren’t never charged.” Hoag’s
jaw was set with outrage at Renzo’s insolence. “There
wasn’t never no trial. So double jeopardy don’t apply.
And there ain’t no statute of limitations on murder, boy. Why,
I could arrest you right now if I was of a mind to.” The
sheriff pointed toward the signs posted. “That dive of yours
broke the law.”