started digging around in his wheelchair's side bag until he found a Ziploc full of marijuana. He got out a fivedollar bill and a paper and started rolling himself a joint.
"So tell me about it," he said. "What's with the flies? Why the sudden interest in country music?"
I told him about my last two days.
There are no confidentiality issues when I talk to Garrett. It's not so much that he's incredibly honourable about keeping secrets. It's more that Garrett doesn't ever remember what I say long enough to tell anybody. If it's not about programming or Jimmy Buffett or drugs, Garrett never bothers to save it into the old hard drive.
When I finished talking, Garrett shook his head slowly.
He blew smoke up toward the parrot. The parrot leaned into it.
"You scare me sometimes, little bro."
"How do you mean?"
Garrett scratched his jaw line under the beard, using all ten fingertips. "I see you sitting in that chair, drinking and talking about your cases. All you need is a cigar and about a hundred extra pounds."
"Don't start, Garrett. I'm not turning into Dad."
He shrugged. "If you say so, man. You keep playing detective, hanging out in the Sheriff's old territory, working with his friends on the force—the Man's dead, little bro.
Murder solved. You can take off the Superman cape, now."
I tried to muster some irritation but the tequila and the easy chair were working against me. I stared at the tips of my deck shoes.
"You think I like being known as Jackson Navarre's kid every time I work a case? You think that makes it easier on me?"
Garrett took a toke. "Maybe that's exactly what you like. Saves you the trouble of growing up and being something else."
"My brother, the expert on growing up."
He grinned. "Yeah, well—"
I leaned back farther in the recliner.
Garrett noticed how short his joint was getting and reached behind him to get a roach clip out of the ashtray. His left leg stump peeked out briefly from his denim shorts. It was smooth and thin and pink, like part of a baby. There were no signs of scars from the train tracks that had long ago severed Garrett's lower third.
"You remember Big Bill?" he asked.
Garrett's favourite strategy. When in doubt, bring up something embarrassing from Tres' childhood.
"Gee, no I don't. Why don't you remind me?"
Garrett laughed.
Big Bill had been a roan stud Dad used to keep out at the ranch in Sabinal. Randiest, meanest sonofabitch stallion ever born. The horse, I mean, not my dad.
The Sheriff had insisted that I learn to ride Big Bill when I was a kid on the theory that I could then handle any horse in the world. Each time I tried, Big Bill would intentionally head for lowlying tree branches to try and knock me off. On our third ride together he succeeded, and I'd gripped the reins so tightly as I fell that I couldn't let go when I hit the ground. My hands stayed wrapped around the leather straps as Big Bill galloped on for a good quarter mile, dragging me through as many cactus patches as he could find. When I returned home with half the back forty stuck to my clothes and my hair, my father had judged the ride "a little too wild."
"I found his saddle at the ranch last month," Garrett said. "Had it polished up. I've got it back in my bedroom if you want to see it."
"For the biker women, no doubt."
Garrett tried to look modest. "Actually it made me think of my little brother. I still got this image of you, man—nineyearold kid being dragged behind a runaway horse."
"Okay. I get the point."
"How old are you now, twentyeight?"
"Twentynine," I said. "There's a difference."
Garrett laughed. " 'Scuse me if I don't feel sorry for you. Just seems to me you got time to try some different things, little bro. Maybe you could get yourself a life that doesn't get you shot at so often and your girlfriends pissed off and your old brother kicked out of bars when you come to visit."
"I'm good at my work, Garrett."
"That what your boss says—you're good at your work?"
I hesitated.
"Yeah," Garrett said. "Like I said, you never could let go when you needed to."
"You saying I should've been like you—hop a freight car every time things at home started to get bad?"
It was a mean thing to say, but Garrett didn't react. He just kept smoking and looking at a point somewhere above my head.