Chapter 1

   Joe Esquibel looked acceptable in his coffin, considering it was lined in baby blue satin and was too small. I hadn't gone to the funeral, but Pam told me about it later. She was a narrow-hipped, broad-shouldered, flat-bellied woman with brown hair and blue eyes who usually looked tired. She wore an old-fashioned navy blue dress she borrowed from her own mother. The dress was too long, and she admitted she looked like hell in it, but then nobody is supposed to look good at funerals, except the corpse. Everyone, everything, every flower and bug and bird has its time, and the funeral is the time for the corpse. She said the main point of contention she had with Agneda, the mother, was the suit he wore. Pam said he looked awful. She said she told Agneda, "It's an old man's suit, and Joe is not an old man." But Pam was his last woman.

   "He look good," Agneda answered, and then Pam told me she felt helpless, and had these crazy fantasies about snatching the body, and running off with it to bury him right. She felt a frenzy coming over her. But she tried to be patient with Agneda, the mother, and there was Elma, the sister, and the others standing farther back beside the mortician. Pam wanted to scream out, "He's my man," but she said she knew Agneda would only say something like, "He no is your man. You no marry him." Pam, said she knew she had no rights. Love creates no rights.

   "Mother, I brought along Joe's nice brown suit, the one he wore through the trials. He always looked so nice in his brown suit. Here," Pam said, handing Agneda the brown paper bag containing the suit. But, no, she said, Agneda turned away and wouldn't reach for the sack.

   "You keep," Agneda said, and then Elma, the sister, a couple of years older than Joe but not much larger than a ten-year-old, came up to Pam and touched her on the hand. Elma had large eyes, which were red and swollen from having wept a long time. People usually commented that Elma had a face like a Madonna; it was Elma who had really been the mother to Joe Esquibel. Elma took Pam's hand into her own, and she held it for a while. Finally she said, "Mama bought that suit this mornin' for Joe, and she say it looks like the suits them bankers wear, and she say Joe is as good as them bankers."

   The suit on the body was navy blue, with narrow pin stripes, three-pieced, and the hands were crossed and nicely relaxed. He had what looked to be a sapphire ring on his left ring finger. The face was waxen and more yellow than brown, as if the mortician had tried to make the corpse look like a white person. He had jet black hair in a neat crew cut, and one would have to say his features were more regular than anything else. One could tell he had been handsome all right, not like someone well bred, but a more primitive sort of good looks, and he had a small grin on his face-a "shit-eatin"' grin someone later called it. The mortician and the family talked about money. "How much is for the place to put him?" Agneda asked, and her voice was loud enough, but lifeless.

   "Oh, you mean the lot?"

   "Yeah, the lot," Agneda said.

   "That lot is in one of the best parts of the cemetery, and it goes for the standard price of two hundred and twenty-five dollars, same to you as to the president of the bank, Mrs. Esquibel," the black-suited mortician said.

   "They don' bury no bank presidents in that part," Elma said in a kind way, speaking mostly to her mother and not meaning to contradict the mortician.

   "We want that other lot," Agneda said.

   "Oh," the mortician said, "you mean the one down here in the low side of the cemetery?" He pointed a white, stubby finger to a plat pinned up on the wall. "Well," he said, "that lot is quite a bit cheaper." And then Elma looked up at the man, and in her quiet way Elma said, "We are poor people."

   "We are no poor people," Agneda said, and she spoke with a firm voice that sounded like it came from a one-noted flute.

   "That lot is a hundred twenty-five," the mortician said. "Standard price."

   "Oh." Agneda looked as if she suddenly understood and approved. "And how much for the rock?"

   "You mean the headstone?" the mortician asked. "Well, I can give you . . .

   "We are poor people," Elma said. "Well, a nice stone with his name and the dates and all, well, a hundred twenty-five, too."

   "And for the diggin'?" Agneda asked, but her eyes were not like her voice. People said that Agneda Esquibel was in her eyes.

   "The whole thing, Mrs. Esquibel, the casket, the lot, the stone, all services-seven hundred dollars. Everything right. Everything okay, you understand?" He patted her lightly on the back and flicked her a smile. "However, I would recommend the other casket. It's a little longer, a little more roomy one would say."

   "Is okay," Agneda. gestured toward the body.

   "She like the blue one," Elma said.

   The next morning they buried Joe Esquibel in the low part of the cemetery in Rawlins, Wyoming. I didn't hear about Joe's death until two days later.

   I had been hiding out at the ranch trying to get a little rest from my clients, who sometimes ate me alive, and who also kept me eating, when Raymond Whitaker, a brother of the bar, called. The last time he called like this out of the blue, I was writing some poem about hollyhocks, and I was leaning over the deck railing of my little ranch cabin staring down into the clear mountain water which rippled and gurgled by. I tossed a sliver of firewood into the creek, and watched it float on down out of sight, and I felt at peace, because it was hard to be any other way in the presence of the North Fork of the Wind River.

   "Gerald," Ray Whitaker said in what sounded like a happy voice, and he always called me "Gerald," like my mother called my father, but everybody else, including my mother and my father, called me Gerry. And so, I called Ray Whitaker "Raymond." "Gerald, what are you doing?"

   "I'm writing a poem about being God to the meadow grasses."

   "Gerald. You will never be a poet-a great lawyer, yes, but never a poet."

   I ignored Raymond Whitaker. "It is a poem about the deistic powers of a man over the helpless grass-about a man who takes over for God by irrigation, by digging this ditch and turning the water on the thirsty meadow. God has been a little derelict here recently, Raymond. Things are too dry." I paused. It was time to let Raymond Whitaker tell me why he was calling, but he was silent. Not like him to be silent, and when he said nothing back, I grew uncomfortable and I began again

   "But God is just getting old," I said. "He's been around a long time through eons of time, and He's getting a little senile. Can't keep His attention where it belongs. Lets things get dry up here, and then dumps all the water where nobody needs it, and it causes foods. He's a pain in the ass."

   "Who is?" Raymond asked as if he hadn't been listening.

   "God is," I said. "Hard to manage like any forgetful old man."

   "Yeah," Raymond said back, and he cleared his voice and I could tell he was about ready to say whatever it was he had on his mind. "Well, speaking of God and His erratic behavior-I wondered if you'd heard about Joe Esquibel?"

   "No," I said. "What about Joe this time?"

   "He's dead," Raymond said, just like that. "Buried him a couple a days ago in Rawlins. I didn't go to the funeral or send flowers. Wasn't anything in the paper." And then we talked about Joe being dead for a short time, and Raymond Whitaker hung up before we hardly talked at all. I felt defeated and wasted, and I felt afraid.

   I went back out on the deck and I looked down into the innocent water flowing by, lapping and laughing down to the sea. It was the same, seven years ago, when I received the first call from Raymond Whitaker. Then he was cute and contentious and he began as he always did.

   "Gerald!"

   I stopped him. "Raymond, why did you call? I have been looking at hollyhocks, tall and pink, like gangly choir girls, and I am writing a poem."

   "Gerald, you will never be a poet. How will you ever amount to a damn as a lawyer in Riverton, Wyoming? I have called to plague your poor parochial mind with the thought that you are wasting your life."

   "Yeah," I said. "What are you doing with yours this afternoon?"

   "Well," Raymond Whitaker said. "At least they can never say that I closed down the Little Yellow House." It didn't take much for Raymond Whitaker to get started on the Little Yellow House. "That was an ugly economic sanction to take against the town of Riverton-a serious social crime. Now everybody has to drive a hundred twenty miles to Casper to fornicate at Fifi's." He liked the sound of his words and he let out a little laugh. "But Fifi loves you for it, Gerald. Are you trying any lawsuits? We should try one together some time."

   "Sure," I said, not really meaning it.

   "Oh yes," Whitaker went on, amusing himself and getting into it now.

    "Not just any case-not a case of murder with even the slightest defense, but a case of murder totally without redemption-a hopeless case."

   "A hopeless case," I echoed.

   "Yes. Yes-we will combine our illustrious skills, our supreme beauty as the state's greatest trial lawyers, and we shall show the world the most impossible case of the most guilty, the most desolate and depraved killer, and we will win it together."

   "Yes," I said, egging him on a little. I liked to listen to Raymond Whitaker when he got fired up like that.

   "He will be a killer who is so obviously guilty that the public will demand that he be hauled away without even a trial," Whitaker went on. "Guilty without grace-a crime so horrendous, so plain, so unimaginative, so sordid and disgusting that there could be nothing left to say in the killer's favor-nothing," he said.

   "Absolutely nothing," I echoed.

   "And you and I will hold up the system so it can see itself-its own filthy blemishes and its ugly fat wrinkles. We shall . . ."

   "We shall take the case, twist it, form it, mold it into that infamous surgical tool and do a proctological examination of the very system itself," I said, mocking Whitaker's style.

   "Yes, yes," Whitaker said. "We shall do just that!"

   "Why?" I asked.

   "Why?" Whitaker seemed shocked. "Why? We will do that to amuse ourselves, of course."

   "Yes, of course," I said.

   "Come see me some time, Gerald. We will go visit Fifi and her girls. Fifi is always up for visiting celebrities." He hung up the phone. Then he called me a couple of weeks later-wanted to talk about a new case, about a killer named Joe Esquibel, charged with murder, an indefensible case, Raymond Whitaker said.