Broken Ground. John Keeble

man with a belly and a round brown face like a Buddha. He had small dark eyes. He squinted at Lafleur. “Yes?”

      “Hank Lafleur.”

      “Of course, “the man said. He stuck out his hand, which Lafleur took. The man introduced himself as Victor Sabat. “Vic,” he added. He glanced at the truck, then back at Lafleur. “I thought I heard something.” Lafleur frowned. Sabat grinned, revealing teeth and blue gums. He crinkled his skin all the way up to his forehead, and leaned forward and nodded briskly as if encouraging Lafleur to join in on a joke. Lafleur leaned back. Sabat was short and massively built in the shoulders and torso, but soft, as his palm had been soft, pudgy, and warm. He had tanned, spindly arms and wore beige cords, a white polo shirt, and a large gold ring on his finger. He scrutinized Lafleur's head.

      Lafleur reached up and touched the bandage on his forehead. “Had a little trouble.”

      Sabat's grin vanished. “So I heard.”

      “I'm fine.”

      The grin returned to Sabat's face. He was older than Lafleur had anticipated, perhaps fifty. As he grinned he turned his body and hunched up as if to subordinate himself, and yet he addressed Lafleur directly with his sharp, dark eyes. By his bodily presence he made Lafleur feel at ease, which if he had thought about it a moment ago would have been the last thing he might have expected from this one, who proposed taking surprise into a new dimension, who kept, conceivably, a killer on his payroll. The man's eyes, however, turned from one thing to the next as if to coldly tick them off in an inner ledger. “You didn't find Phil?” he asked.

      “No, I came here first.”

      Sabat moved to the edge of the porch and gazed up toward the outbuildings. Over to the left, but hidden behind the barn, was Phil's equipment, and farther along in the same direction the well-drilling operation. Sabat passed his hand slowly across his belly and brought it to rest at his belt buckle. Then he pointed. “That one's the bunkhouse.” He meant the low-slung building across from the barn. “You and Phil will be in there.” A light breeze blew by them. Lafleur smelled pig shit. “We're going to have you and Phil down for dinner,” Sabat said. “At about eight?” Lafleur understood that he was being told to find his own way to his room and that Sabat wanted to go back inside. He had losses in there, Lafleur supposed, that he wanted to recoup. “Then we need to talk,” Sabat said. “I'm sure you have questions.”

      “Sure, I've got questions.” Lafleur was put off. He looked over at his dog, a lump of shiny darkness lying in the deep shade under the truck.

      “I promise to fill you in,” Sabat said.

      Lafleur turned back to him and nodded.

      “Ned Blaylock tells me you're going to be very good,” Sabat said, and his eyes flicked to Lafleur's bandages again, then to the doorway, out toward the truck, and back to Lafleur. His eyes rested and widened, and his mouth opened. He had a gold incisor on the lower left side. Lafleur felt himself being keenly measured. He shifted his feet. The porch creaked deeply. He looked down at the new board that had been fitted in snugly amongst the old ones. The new board was scuffed, blond, and sappy. The old ones were gray and patinaed by wear and weather. He felt Sabat waiting. He was waiting, too, composing his own response to being measured while not speaking or looking at the man. It was a moment, a hiatus, in which an unspoken transmission passed from one man to the other, something made of fog, a shimmering, osmotic inquiry. The house was silent. Lafleur looked at the river, then at the rock promontories above the river and at the gently mounded earth between them, the sand as if airbrushed to a sheen and tight like skin over the bones of the earth. The river came through like a dark vein. He glanced back at his truck.

      “Your dog?” Sabat said. “Uh huh,” Lafleur said. “A problem?”

      “No, of course not,” Sabat said, grinning. “Here?”

      Lafleur looked down, then up again, and said, “Until dinner, then.”

      “Yes,” Sabat said. He moved quickly across the porch and opened the door. He hung there for a moment, rising buoyantly on the balls of his feet, and grinned again at Lafleur with his rubbery face, and said, “You can meet Iris, too.” It was a deft stroke that threw Lafleur off-balance. Sabat held his grin. His tongue tip was poised in the center of his mouth. The lines of his brow were angled upward. The smile invited Lafleur to smile back. Lafleur obliged by curling his lip. Sabat went in. The screen door's spring sang as it compressed and the door thudded softly against the jamb. Lafleur was left with his curled lip as he watched the cream-colored shape dwindle, then vanish inside the lair like a lion in a zoo. He wondered how long the grin remained fixed to Sabat's face, and how it looked to the woman in there, or what replaced the grin as the man neared her.

      “Iris,” Lafleur said to himself.