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ain’t got no bone.” When she had gotten out of earshot, I said, “Is she legal?”
    “Legal, hell,” Smoke said, “she’s an old maid. Turned nineteen last month. Got a year of JUCO under her belt at the extension college in town.”
    “Got a man, does she?”
    “Nope.”
    “I can’t believe that.”
    “Well, she’s got her some strange ways and standards that rule out damn near every buck in the Ozarks.”
    “I see,” I said. “Strange ways, huh?”
    “Yeah. But you might get in there—she thinks you’re brilliant. Read your books like they were love letters.”
    “No shit,” I said, and my mouth filled with saliva, and I swallowed rather than spit so soon after hearing such an enchanting review of my efforts.
    “But enough about poozle,” Smoke said. “How’s about a stick of boo and a drink? I don’t have ice here, but I got a bottle.”
    “Hold off on the boo and booze, Smoke. We need to talk, so let’s do it now and be done with it.”
    “Say it,” he said.
    I leaned forward, elbows to knees.
    “I’m on a secret mission from the folks.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I accepted this mission for reasons of my own.”
    “Yeah?”
    “They want you to turn yourself in.”
    “It’s come to that, huh?”
    “They want you to try’n plead out some sort of deal.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “They’ve been leaned on pretty heavy up there.”
    “I know.” Smoke stroked at his facial hair, his splayed fingers neatly matched to the pitchfork tines in his beard. “Let me think a bit,” he said. Then, in about four seconds, “Okay, I gave it full consideration.”
    “And?”
    “Ain’t gonna be no days like that. Smoke don’t figure to turn himself in just yet.”
    I got up, fetched the ladystinger from the car, and assumed a gun-totin’ pose.
    “General Jo sent this pistol with me,” I said. “I’m supposed to do whatever it takes. So”—I waved the gun his way—“Freeze, Bubba!”
    Smoke laughed, then said, “He sent that pistol? A li’l ol’ flesh-wounder?”
    “I don’t think he trusts me with his strong armaments.”
    “That figures. A man that don’t trust his grown son to drive his car sure ain’t gonna trust that same son with strong armaments. He’s a smart ol’ man, you know,” Smoke said. “But I got plans that require my presence on this side of the jailhouse bars. So I reckon that wraps that up.”
    I sat back down and relaxed, letting the ladystinger dangle. My eyes stuck on Smoke’s wide, hairless chest, hairless because it was one huge burn scar, the proud flesh thick like a hide, from his nipples to his belly button. That’s how he got nicknamed Smoke, because as a boy he really loved thatbacon. Mom was walking the hot black skillet of bacon toward the table one morning, and Smoke couldn’t wait, leaped up and grabbed the skillet side and doused himself with bubblin’ grease. He was near six, I think, I was about two. I believe I recall his cries, or maybe not. After that, “Smoke” was tagged on him as a name, which he doesn’t seem to mind. And me? I don’t know. We’ve all had our traumas, but I wouldn’t care to be named for any of them.
    “Okey-doke,” I said. “I tried. Gave it my best effort. Let’s have at that bottle and boo now, big bro.”

6
    COW-PATTIE LINKS
    LATER WE WERE out in the bone-white pasture, trying to get in a good eighteen holes of golf on the cow-pattie links Smoke had designed. Everything was a short-iron shot, and the white weeds created a rough the PGA boys wouldn’t go into on a John Deere tractor. The heat was there, of course, and seed ticks and cuff stickers attached to our socks and shorts and legs. Smoke only had two clubs, both nine irons, but he had a grocery sack of nicked balls and we both had the boozy imagination to see this activity as fun.
    “How’d you like to find the path to financial security?” Smoke intoned, sounding somewhat similar to the mellifluous voice of golf on CBS Sports. He then smacked his