High White Sun Read online

  He looked into Jesse Earl’s shining eyes, searching for something, anything, moving behind them.

  Then Jesse laughed, that moment all gone, blown away like smoke, and he reached in his pocket for a lighter and a cigarette. But he didn’t make any move to light it. “Well, okay then, a fight, huh? I think if this friend of that beaner girl was out there and had seen anything worth a damn, we might be having a different talk. So you go ahead and get your fuckin’ warrant. You know where to find me. I ain’t goin’ anywhere for a while.”

  Harp stood, glancing at Amé’s notes as he did so, at the handful of words written there. “Why are you and your family down in Killing? Why here, why now?”

  Jesse put the unlit cigarette between his lips. “Just meetin’ some friends, that’s all, sort of a family reunion . . . call it family business.”

  “Who’s outside waiting in the car?” Amé asked. “¿Tu familia? Maybe we should go talk to them about Billy Bravo?”

  “Who? Oh, that’s Hero.” Jesse pulled out the unlit cigarette and spit on the floor. “He’s got nothin’ to do with nothin’. He’s a damn chauffeur, nothin’ more. Guess ole JW don’t trust me out all on my own.” Jesse laughed, but it was clear to Harp he didn’t think it was funny at all. It was the second time he’d mentioned Earl, and both times it was like he was chewing on glass. “And you met him already, anyway. Last time you and the spic here was down our way.” Then he walked straight between Amé and Harp.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, Jesse. We’re going to see you again real soon,” Harp tossed at his back.

  Jesse raised a hand goodbye. “Not if I see you first, Deputy.” Then he turned and aimed another long, last look at Amé. “But, come to think of it, since I ain’t so welcome in that shithole bar in Terlingua no more, maybe I’ll start comin’ up around here.” He winked right at her, pointed his cigarette at her chest. “And maybe I’ll have another chance to catch up with you.”

  Harp gripped the handle, but finally opened the door and let Jesse go, as Amé stood and followed them.

  On her way out, she crumpled her notes into a small ball that she tossed into the trash, but Harp had already seen the words she had written to herself.

  Muy malos . . .

  Jesse Earl had been in Killing when they were first there, either hiding out in the house or that old RV, just as Harp had suspected. Those eyes on them the whole time. Watching.

  But there was another thing they’d learned, even more important . . . and that had been Jesse’s relaxed reaction to Harp’s alleged “fight.” Jesse knew there hadn’t been a real fight outside the Wikiup because he’d been there. Most likely, he’d jumped Billy from behind, and the man had never had a chance to defend himself.

  Jesse had gotten the drop on all of them, and Harp was going to make sure that didn’t happen again.

  Not if I see you first.

  12

  Just before things got bad with Sheriff Ross and Chris’s life changed forever, Chris took a phone call from a number he didn’t recognize and a man he didn’t know.

  That man, who later visited him in the hospital after the ambush at the Far Six and showed him pictures of the three men Chris had killed there, was Joe Garrison, a DEA supervisor from El Paso. Two of his agents had been watching Murfee for weeks: watching the sheriff and Duane Dupree, even Chris. But by the time Garrison finally made that call to Chris, Dupree had hunted those agents down in the desert outside of town, killing one, Darin Braccio, and burning the other, Morgan Emerson, alive. Garrison had wanted . . . demanded . . . answers, and he came to Chris looking for them.

  In the two years since, they’d stayed in touch, but it was a stretch to say they were friends. In some ways, both too much and too little had passed between them. Chris never fully explained that last night in Murfee that left both Ross and Dupree dead—could never quite find the words for it—and Garrison never fully got past the night Darin and Morgan were attacked. Like Harp’s Andre Lawson, Morgan Emerson did survive, but she also never carried a badge or gun again, either.

  In the end, the burns were too bad, the scars were too deep.

  Maybe that was true for all of them.

  It would be easy to point to the night at the Far Six as the moment that had changed Chris’s life forever, or even the night he’d confronted Sheriff Ross in his own office—the big room upstairs where his deputies now all sat—and nearly bled to death all over the sheriff’s massive mahogany desk. A desk that he’d since ordered Buck Emmett to chop down and use for firewood.

  But the real moment was when he took that call from Garrison. When Garrison had angrily asked: Who do you trust, Deputy Cherry? And Chris had hung up, not knowing how to answer that at all, knowing even less about the voice on the phone that had asked the question.

  Now, for the second time in his life, he found himself taking such a call; listening to a man he didn’t know, telling him things that were tough to fit together and asking questions he couldn’t really answer. So even after he hung up, he had to stand there for a long time, staring down at his phone, like he expected it to ring again, or because he’d left too many things unsaid.

  Maybe he needed to stop answering the damn phone.

  * * *

  • • •

  FINALLY, CHRIS PULLED AWAY from his silent phone and already summoned Harp and Amé into his office. Jesse and T-Bob Earl had been gone a couple of hours, and they’d been waiting to talk to him about their interviews. He’d been back from visiting Tommy for a while, but had been trapped on that strange call most of that time.

  Harp started in right away, not giving Chris a chance to say anything, talking even as he came through the door.

  “I actually didn’t think they’d show up here, Sheriff. My guess is they don’t want us poking around whatever they’re doing in Killing. But it’s going to be Jesse Earl or the uncle. It’s got to be.” Harp sat down, while Amé followed him but remained standing, leaning against the wall. “Those racist pieces of shit got into it with Billy Bravo over his girlfriend and killed him.”

  “And they said all that, in there?” Chris pointed out his office door back toward the interview room.

  Harp shook his head. “Hell no. They only confirmed they were there, but I didn’t expect them to lie about that. They’ll alibi each other, but we’ll find someone who can definitely nail them down as the last people drinking with Billy. We’ll talk to the barflies again, make sure we have them all. There’s got to be someone.” Harp sat back, talking as much to himself as to the others in the room. “I think Jesse followed Billy outside the bar and jumped him in the dark. Billy probably never had a chance.” He looked over to Amé. “I was bullshitting when I threatened Jesse with a DNA warrant, but there still might be something to that . . . it might be worth a shot. If nothing else, it keeps the pressure on him.” He focused a stare on Chris, thinking out loud. “I’m sorry, I thought about it too late. I should have let the fuckin’ uncle smoke. If he’d tossed the cigarette, maybe I could have pulled it from the ashtray. The one they shared outside at the curb is too tainted now. And T-Bob never drank any of that coffee I gave him either, so that cup is also worthless. I don’t blame him, though, since Miss Maisie made it . . . but damn, I had it right there in front of me, staring me in the face. Jesse and that cigarette in his mouth. He’s a smart son of a bitch.” Harp slumped. “I imagine Moody won’t give me one, unless you push him into it.”

  Chris nodded. “A warrant? No, I imagine he won’t. And I don’t think any amount of pushing from me or anyone else is going to make a damn bit of difference.” Chris paused, trying to work out how to say something he knew neither Harp nor Amé was going to want to hear. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, it’s over. Look, I know you two are working hard on this, and maybe you are right about those two. Hell, I’d bet money on it. But it doesn’t matter, not now. I just got off the phone with the Rangers . . .�
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  Harp waved his hands, cutting Chris off. His face was dark, thundering. “Goddammit, Chris . . . Sheriff . . . I thought you’d gotten Moody to give us more time. I just need a little more time. I told you Bethel Turner will fuck this up—”

  Chris raised his own hand for Harp to stop. “It wasn’t Bethel, Harp. It was Major Carl Dyer, from Region C. He wants to meet with us and have a sit-down about the Earls. About a lot of things.”

  Harp was searching for the name, coming up empty. “But that’s not even this region. Why would this Dyer care about this? Hell, how does he even know about it?”

  “I think your calls to the Department of Public Safety or back to the Midland PD rattled a few cages. And not just with the Rangers, but the FBI, too.” Chris slowed down, trying to explain it the way Major Dyer had explained it all to him. “It seems that one of those bikers down there in Killing might actually be a cop . . . or at least was one, not all that long ago. And to make matters worse, another one of them is a federal witness, a very important one. Dyer didn’t say a whole lot, but what he did say was, well, complicated, and that’s a goddamn understatement.”

  Harp stood. “It’s bullshit, that’s what it is.”

  “Yeah, and it looks like we’ve stepped right in the middle of it.” Chris rubbed his chin, feeling stubble. He couldn’t remember when he’d last shaved. “Did either T-Bob or Jesse Earl mention someone named Flowers, a Thurman Flowers?”

  Harp shook his head. “No, nothing.” Chris looked over to Amé, who had remained silent with her arms folded the whole time. She shook her head as well. The name hadn’t meant anything to Chris, either, when he’d heard it from Dyer, and he hadn’t had the chance yet to run it down. But it was important.

  “Okay, so you both know what I know, and that isn’t much. Harp, you and I will drive up to Lubbock in a few days and meet with this Major Dyer, as well as someone from the FBI. Hopefully, we’ll get some answers. But until then, Killing is off-limits. The Earls and anyone associated with them is off-limits.” Chris looked straight at Amé again, pinning her down and making it clear. “Is that understood?” She nodded, a slight movement that was hardly a movement at all, and continued to say nothing.

  Chris knew Harp wanted to argue, keep pressing the point, but instead, his chief deputy turned to Amé. “You need to call that girl, Vianey, right? Tell her to stay with family or someone in Presidio. She needs to keep the hell out of Terlingua, just in case.”

  Chris glanced back and forth between them. Although Harp had put the question to Amé, it had been squarely aimed at him. Like a gun. “Why, what for?”

  Amé must have known it, too, because she stepped in before Harp could answer, trying to steer them all clear of a fight. “Her name came up in the interview, that’s all. No es un problema, voy a cuidar de ella.”

  Chris: “Is there an issue here?”

  Harp shrugged, staring up at the ceiling. “Not unless one of the Earls wakes up one morning and decides that it is. She’s a potential witness. She can put the Earls and Billy together. So far, she’s the only person who can. She knows they were arguing in the Wikiup, about her. Motive. And to push on Jesse, we might have suggested she knows even more than that. But hey, Billy’s murder doesn’t mean shit anymore and the Earls are off-limits, so . . .”

  “Goddammit, do not put words in my mouth, and do not make this harder than it has to be,” Chris said, feeling his anger rise like the day’s heat. “That’s not fair, and I’m not the one who put a target on this girl. That’s on you two. What the hell do you want me to do? We’ll clear it up in Lubbock. We’ll ask all the damn questions you want then.”

  Harp pulled his eyes down from the ceiling, fixing them on Chris. “You’re the goddamn sheriff, you can goddamn do what you want, what needs to be done. You don’t need anyone’s permission. Don’t worry, we’ll look after this girl Vianey, but it is what it is. We both know nothing that happens in Lubbock is going to make it any clearer.” Harp started reaching for the door, even though Chris hadn’t dismissed him. “Are we done here, Sheriff?”

  Chris almost ordered him to sit his ass back down, but with Amé watching the both of them, thought better of it. This was the closest Harp had come to questioning him, arguing with him, in front of another deputy, and he didn’t want to make it worse. Not now. Once Harp cooled down and could see it clearer, Chris would talk to him about it again. He dismissed him with a nod. “Yeah, we’re done.”

  Harp turned his back on him and walked out without another word, leaving the door open for Amé, who wouldn’t look at Chris when she fell in step behind the older man.

  She shut the door quietly behind them both, leaving Chris standing alone, staring down again at that goddamn phone on his desk.

  13

  I’d been with Jesse for about three weeks when I nearly died, and finally met the man who killed my father.

  We’d gone to a skinhead party in Terry County, just outside Lubbock. It was at an old Hammond single-wide trailer, where the blue siding had long ago faded to the color of asphalt, and it was spray-painted with rough approximations of what were supposed to be Confederate flags, with red wooden letters as wide as your outstretched arms—SWP, for Supreme White Power—nailed up by the front door. The trailer sat on a couple of acres bordering cotton fields, and I could see the orange tarpaulin tops of cotton modules marching into the distance; could hear the wind whipping off them and stray cotton turning end over end like snow, slow enough to catch in your hands. The property was surrounded by a chain-link fence hung with dead birds and cat carcasses and old trick-or-treat pumpkins filled with rainwater, those cheap orange plastic ones, along with a small fleet of rusted cars on rims. All of it was screened from the road by a row of battered wind-block trees that reminded me of Halloween skeletons and scarecrows, or maybe the big wind turbines back home in Sweetwater, and the wind through the branches made the same sort of sound. Like a heart beating, far away.

  The place had been a skinhead crash pad for about a year, changing hands between a few different Aryan groups, but it was no different from the merry-go-round of shitty apartments and motels where I’d found myself in McKinney and Tyler and Ballinger. Skins use the crash pads until they are run off or evicted, leaving hollowed-out shells littered with pamphlets and graffiti and used condoms and broken beer bottles and windows. They’re places for skins on the run to hole up for a few weeks, places to act out mock lynchings and beheadings and to kick off their “city walks” where they cruise looking for enemies, but mostly they’re places to hold recruiting parties. Older skins are always on the hunt for freshcuts, like Little B’s friend Kasper—any lonely and lost teenager they can draw in with free beer and music and a sense of community. That’s the thing most people don’t understand, the real reason these gangs continue to grow and spread like cancers—that at the beginning, it has very little to do with hate, and everything to do with love. In their own fractured way, the gangs provide a family, a home, a place to be something or someone, for kids who don’t have anything or anyone else. It’s like joining the military, but the war is every day and right here at home. That love, that acceptance, is a high as strong as any liquor or any drug and it holds on twice as long, and many of these kids get their first taste of it at the parties, like that one in Terry, where they’d even brought a band out of Austin called Hate Storm, and floated several kegs of beer in a cracked, leaking baby pool. By the time we got there, driving through blowing cotton and arriving well before midnight, the yard was already filled with a handful of wide-eyed freshcuts and more than a dozen lifer skinheads and their girls, all tattooed head-to-toe and somehow still fish-belly pale beneath the bulbs strung up on ladders.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE TATTOOS ARE THE STORIES, their brands. Getting openly inked with their hate and their symbols marks them and makes them different. It draws a line that is hard to recross, a way of never go
ing back. At some of these parties I’ve watched a newer skin getting inked in front of a crowd like it was a hazing, an initiation, so that right after the piece was finished, the other skins could circle in and punch and slap the raw flesh, singing loudly, spraying blood.

  I know because it’s happened to me.

  Tattoos are also a way to sort everyone out. The Aryan Brotherhood favors their “patches” or “shields,” massive tattoos like a coat of arms. And you can tell a Hammerskin from an ABT and an Aryan Knight from a Nazi Low Rider just by reading their skin; someone like Joker, who has a skeletal bird riding atop the letters NLR across his chest. There are outlaw bikers like the Low Riders and “true” skins like Combat 18 and the Confederate Hammerskins and then all the various Aryan prison gangs: Peckerwoods and PENI and the Dirty White Boys and the ABT and the Aryan Circle. There used to be greater differences between skins and the prison gangs, roughly where one might draw a line between pure ideology and just straight-up dope dealing and murder, but that’s not even true anymore. Those lines are now blurred, and there’s no better example than Jesse Earl, who was born in the shadow of his daddy’s prison gang, the ABT, but grew up drifting through the wider white resistance movement, right into the arms of Thurman Flowers. And his own inked skin reflects that, covered with ABT flaming patches, the Aryan Nations’ crowned sword and shield, and the skull and roses of Flowers’s own Church of Purity.

  That’s why the tattoos are important. They tell stories. Who you are and where you come from.

  What story does my skin reveal now?

  And with all those skulls and crosses and nooses and gravestones, they often tell you how your story is going to end.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE TERRY COUNTY PARTY STARTED SLOWLY, like an awkward high school dance, until the beer and booze got working, until the three members of Hate Storm started hammering out the only two chords they knew, screaming until the veins in their necks stood straight up. Then the moshing began, bodies throwing themselves against one another, some yelling Rahowa and Burn nigger burn, and that was just the warm-up before the real fights started. In that scene, everyone always wants to prove how tough they can be, how hard-core and serious they are. Jesse is mostly past all of that, he’s not that sort of warrior anyway, instead using the parties like business meetings, a way to make connections and recruit for Flowers and his Church of Purity. But Little B is all punk, still trying hard to be a meaner, crueler version of his brother or his daddy. And then there’s Kasper, who was with us that night because he had nowhere else to be and no one looking out for him, except maybe for me. Even now he still talks about starting a band with Little B, but that’s not what brought him to that party in Terry County or down to Killing and it’s not what keeps him here—the real draw is Little B himself, and nothing good can come out of that. I can’t help but feel sorry for him, watching him constantly circle Little B and struggle with a whole different type of addiction, one that’s just as difficult to break. No matter what, if he keeps it up, everything good about him is going to get killed, little by little, and if I don’t get him away from the Earls and Flowers, in a few months he’ll be in jail or truly dead, too.