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across the way, carrying a plastic sack of garbage to the slit trench where the offal was dumped, then covered with earth dumped by a backhoe every evening, or they would have skunks in numbers, and one skunk was plenty.
    Booger Tom. That was the man’s moniker. As opposed to a name. Du Pré remembered him from the rodeos of his childhood. Booger Tom had seemed old then, helped in the chutes, too old to ride pickup or play the clown.
    “Booger Tom!” Du Pré shouted, the old man was likely deaf.
    The old cowboy stopped, stared over at Du Pré. Gabriel walked over to him, hand out.
    “Why, if it ain’t Gabriel Du Pré,” he said. “You’re old Catfoot’s boy. Yes, well, I ain’t seen you in years.”
    They talked of nothing much, the water or lack of it, weather, dust, cattle, a few men now dead they both had known.
    “You always work here?” said Du Pré.
    “Forty year. Worked for the Higginses, then these people,” Tom said, spitting in the dirt, these people. “Get to my age, it’s hard to get work.”
    “When did Higgins sell this place,” asked Du Pré. His mind was prickling.
    “Sixty-eight,” said Booger Tom.
    Gabriel nodded. Maybe. Time was a little close, though.
    “But these Fascellis, they leased the place starting in sixty-two … waited a while to drop the hammer.”
    Du Pré’s mind prickled a lot.
    “Well, who owns it now?” He looked up at the Wolfs.
    “Them kids, old man Fascelli died. Them two in the house are his son and daughter. But they ain’t around even if they are. They drink. Their mother’s in a nursing home. Checks come out of Dee-troyt. Regular about that, anyway.”
    “Well,” said Du Pré, “they seem to be having a lot of fun I guess you’d call it. Jesus.”
    Booger Tom looked up at the ridiculous house with an old and rarefied hatred.
    “When they first come here there was four of them kids,” said Booger Tom, “all wild, now there’s just the two.”
    The fat red face Du Pré recalled staggered out of the front door of the gross house, lurching like his feet had forgot where his body was. The man found a lawn chair and fell into it. He turned to the house and yelled something Du Pré couldn’t make out. A maid hurried to him, bearing a tray with bottles and an ice bucket on it.
    “I got to go,” said Booger Tom, staring hard at the drunk.
    Du Pré started walking to the man sprawled in the lawn chair. He was drinking something brown out of a tall glass, and spilling it on his shirt. Shaking his head as though confused.
    But by the time that Du Pré got there he was cold sober.
    “May I help you?” he said pleasantly.
    “Gabriel Du Pré,” said Du Pré. “I just inspected the brands on your cattle. All in order, too, I signed off on them.”
    “I should hope so,” said the man. “Drink?” He waved a red hand at the tray, the bottles, his life.
    Gabriel nodded. The man put a double slug into a glass, added ice and water, handed it up.
    “I’m Bart Fascelli,” said the man, offering his hand.
    The change fascinated Du Pré.
    Gabriel shook the hand.
    “So,” said Fascelli, “you inspect brands. Do you know horses?”
    “A little.”
    “Come and look at my pasofinos.”
    He led Gabriel to the horse barn, a new one, white with blue trim. It would have looked good on some millionaire’s racing farm, in Kentucky, here it looked like it dropped from the moon.
    They talked about horses. Then Bart walked Gabriel to his car.
    “Come anytime,” said Fascelli, his big red hands on the window.
    Du Pré nodded and drove away.
    “Now what’s this shit about?” he said aloud.
    A woolly bear caterpillar crawled across the dashboard. The orange band was wide.
    Sign of a hard winter, some said.

CHAPTER 13
    D U P RÉ STOOD UP and cheered loudly. Maria had just sunk a long jump shot and put her team ahead. The girls raced downcourt, set themselves in their defense. The crowd was fiercely partisan. Three fights had already broken out.
    Girls’ basketball.