I looked at the girl and waited for him to introduce me. When he didn't, I realized the redness in his face was not because I had caught him impressing a girl with his strength.
'I'm Billy Bob Holland. How do you do?' I said to her.
'It's nice to meet you,' she said. A gold tooth shone in the back of her mouth.
'Yeah, excuse me, this is Naomi. We was taking a swim,' he said, and his hand gestured at nothing, as though he needed to offer an explanation.
'So that's what I'm gonna do,' she said, and picked up her towel.
'You ain't got to go, Naomi,' Bunny said.
She smiled and walked into the water, the backs of her thighs wrinkling below the rim of her bathing suit. She leaned over and cupped water on her shoulders and spread it on her arms. Bunny watched her, his jaws slack, his eyes trying to take him out into the sunlight, away from the conversation he was about to have.
'I'm calling you as a witness at Lucas's trial,' I said.
'Oh man, don't tell me that.'
'You'll have a lot of company—Darl Vanzandt, Virgil Morales, a biker girl named Jamie Lake, an elderly black man who saw Roseanne Hazlitt slap you.'
'Morales? That pepper bel… that kid from the Purple Hearts? What's he got to do with this?'
'Why'd Roseanne hit you? Why'd Morales call you a pimp, Bunny?'
Bunny put the tips of his fingers on his temples.
'You don't know what you're doing. You're setting my life on fire, Mr Holland.'
'Your life? How about the girl who's in the cemetery? How about Lucas Smothers's life?'
Above his left nipple was the tattoo of a small heart.
'I didn't want none of this to happen. People don't plan for stuff like this to happen,' he said.
'Emma Vanzandt called me a fool yesterday. When I asked her why, she used your name. Like you were a key I didn't know how to fit on the ring.'
'Emma done that?' He twisted around on the bench and stared at me, his eyes burning. 'That bitch done that?'
'That doesn't sound like you, Bunny.'
'Yeah, what does? Human dildo?'
He waited for me to comprehend his meaning. I kept my expression flat.
'Rich woman catches her husband milking through the fence, how does she stick it to him? She gets a young guy to put the wood to her.'
'You and Emma?'
'It was a one-time deal. She drove a hundred miles to a motel that was between two oil rigs. The walls was vibrating off the foundation. I think she was whacked out on speed. She wanted to call him up on the phone during a certain moment. I had to talk her out of it.'
He stared out at the river and at the Mexican girl whose body was bladed with the sun's reflection off the water. After a while he said, 'She's a nice girl. Naomi, I mean. She don't know about none of this. She thinks I'm hot shit 'cause I played football at A&M.'
'Maybe you're a better guy than you think,' I said.
'No, I know what I am. I blame my trouble on the Vanzandts, but they knew the kind of person they was looking for.'
'You're still a young man. You haven't done anything that can't be undone.' When he didn't answer, I said, 'Have you?'
He looked down at the tops of his feet. His fingers were pressed into his bronze hair like white snakes. When I walked to the car I realized I had forgotten to deliver his father's message, but I felt Bunny didn't need another reminder that day of who or what he was.