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Show 6. That spring when I got hauled into court, while I waited for the J.P. to show up and doom me, I felt abandoned by friends and kin, lost, beyond saving. Not Buck Sanders; he swaggered around the courtroom like he'd been there often enough to give him squatter's rights, grinning like a fool, as cocky as if he had the world by the tail and ready to give it a swing around his head, whoopee. That was Buck all right, a stupid impudent grin on his face when the J.P. was due any minute and he most likely headed for a few days in the clink, and no doubt about it his four upper front teeth missing, but still he's grinning. If I had a hole like that in my face at least I'd keep my mouth shut but not Buck. He's got to give everybody a big smile like it was full of pearly white and he was there for the grinding cameras. Or maybe he was just proud of that hole. His family had showed up about three years before, coming from I doubt if anybody knew where and lighting in western Colorado probably just by chance, old Sanders a heavy slow-talking man who chewed tobacco and always wore faded bib overalls and an even more faded blue shirt, and with an even more yet faded wife, a skinny little woman with a chest flatter than mine and a dead hang to her arms like they'd worn out. The kids all had curly hair as yellow as the sun but that woman was as dried and drab as the adobe they farmed, like scrubbing clothes so long had washed her out too. Buck was the oldest of the kids, probably around seventeen when they first showed up, and there was a girl, Loretta, maybe a year younger, and then three more. Buck was stocky with thick rounded shoulders, and Loretta was as tall as he was and just as heavy but showing it in some incredible curves. They were on the old Mclntyre place a |
