Hammer’s sons was married. Each had two children, and Hammer adored every fine
golden hair on their small lovely heads. It was her bleeding, buried fear that they were
growing up in distant cities with only infrequent contact with their rather legendary
grandmother. Hammer did not want to be someone they might someday talk about but
had never known.
“Smith and Fen wanted to come,” said Randy, taking his mother’s hand.
“It’s gonna be all right. Mom.” He felt another stab of hate for his father.
^^ W West didn’t know what to do with her prisoner of the evening. Brazil was slumped
down in the seat, arms crossed, his posture defiant and decidedly without remorse. He
refused to look at her now, but stared out the windshield at bugs and bats swirling
beneath lights. He watched truckers in pointed cowboy boots and jeans strolling out to
their mighty steeds, and leaning against cabs, propping a foot on the running board, hands
cupped around a cigarette, as they lit up like the Marlboro Man.
“You got your cigarettes?” Brazil asked West. She looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
“Forget it.
“I want one.”
“Yeah, right. You’ve never smoked in your life, and I’m not going to be the reason you
start,” she said, and she wanted one, too.
“You couldn’t possibly know whether I’ve ever smoked a cigarette or pot or anything
else,” he said in the strange tone of intoxication.
“Ha! You think you know so much. You don’t know shit. Cops. And their dark, narrow
alleyways for minds.”
“Really? I thought you were a cop. Or have you quit that, too?”
He stared miserably out his side window.
West felt sorry for him, mad as she was. She wished she knew what was wrong, exactly.
“What the hell’s gotten into you?” She tried another tactic, poking Brazil, this time not playfully.
He did not respond.
“Trying to ruin your life? What if some other cop spotted you first?”
She was no-nonsense.
“Got any idea how much trouble you’d be in?”
“I don’t care,” he said, and his voice caught.
“Yes, you do, goddamn it! Look at me!”
Brazil stared out, his eyes swimming as he dully watched bleary images of people in and
out of the truck stop, men and women whose lives were different from his, and who
would not understand what it was like to be him. They would look at all that he was and
despise him for being privileged and spoiled, because they could not comprehend his
reality.
V> Bubba felt precisely this, and just so happened to be parking his King Cab at the
pumps. He spotted the BMW first, then the cop car with the enemy in it. Bubba could
not believe his good fortune. He went in for Pabst Blue Ribbon and Red Man, and picked up the latest Playboy.
t^ Brazil was struggling to control himself, and West could be hard but so long. She
cared about him in a way that fit no easy definition, and this was partly why he unsettled
and confused her so much. She enjoyed him as a talented, precocious recruit, someone
she could mentor and get a kick out of watching as he learned. She did not have a brother
and would have liked one exactly like him, someone young, smart, sensitive and kind.
He was a friend, although she did not give him much of a chance. He was a pretty
incredible-looking guy and didn’t seem to notice.
“Andy,” she quietly said, ‘please tell me what happened. ”
“Somehow he got in my computer basket, my files. Everything over the news channels
before the paper came out. Scooped.” His voice trembled, and he did not want West to
see him like this.
West was stunned.
“He?” she asked.
“Who’s he?”
“Webb.” He could barely bring himself to say that name.
“Same piece of shit screwing your deputy chief!”
“What?” Now West was truly lost.
“Goode,” he said.
“Everybody knows.”
“I didn’t.” West wondered how she could have missed intelligence like that.
Brazil’s heart was broken forever. West wasn’t quite sure what to do as she mopped her
face again.
“W Bubba stealthily made his way back to his truck, his thick face with its misshapen nose averted and shadowed by an Exxon baseball cap.