Excerpt from The Fruit of Stone by Mark Spragg, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Ansel squints up through the smoke. "I thought it'd be better if I said something. I didn't want you to worry about what I knew."

"I wasn't worried."

"And you don't have to worry about what I might say."

"I'm not worried about that either."

Ansel shifts against the fender and turns away. "I'd be worried," he says.

He stubs his cigarette in the wheelwell and pulls his irrigation boots from behind the truckseat and steps them on. He shoulders his shovel. "Let's get this water spread," he says. "I've got other things I want to do today."

McEban opens the wheel-valve, and the water turns into the top ditch, pollen-thick, twisting out of the gate in a stained froth, and then smoothly luteous. Woody chases along the ditchbank, biting at the wet swell, barking, sitting to sneeze and snarl, snapping his muzzle in delight.

Ansel shovels his first dam tight where it seeps and works back along the ditch and levels the bank with his shovel. He brings the flood out evenly over the field. McEban carries two dams to the ditch below and drops them where they'll be needed. On these pastures, under this sun, these two men have spent their lives spreading water. They don't wonder what must be done next.

A flash of metal catches, turning in the sun, and McEban looks to Ansel's cabin and watches the sheriff's four-wheel drive nose in at the porch and park.

He hears Ansel walking toward him, the old man's feet sticking in the spread of water-darkened earth. Ansel stops by McEban's side and spits.

The sheriff is far enough away to present just a turd-size lump of county-brown uniform. He stands beside his outfit. They watch him reach back through its window and bring out his Stetson and seat it on his head.

Ansel stabs his shovel into the ditchbank. "Until I see the man I always forget what a fat bastard he is. Why do you suppose that is?"

"You still shooting out our neighbors' yardlights?"

"Course I am." Ansel snorts and turns toward his truck. The spread of water sends up a glare around him. "They aren't my neighbors."

"Their land borders ours."

"It didn't five years ago."

"Things change."

Ansel turns and squints toward McEban. "Then the ranchette-owning, mercury-light-installing sons of bitches ought to get used to it changing from day to night."

"You want me to walk down there with you?"

"I want you to creep up behind him and slap him on the ear with your spade, but you won't."

"You think about what it might be like to spend time in jail?"

"Probably no more than you."

"I'm not shooting out anyone's lights."

"And I'm not sleeping with my neighbor's wife."

Ansel turns with his eyes wide for emphasis and steps into the truck's cab with his boots shining wet. He idles toward the cabin and stops the truck and leans out its window.

"There aren't supposed to be lights at night," he yells, and after just a moment of thought, his head and shoulders still thrust out the window, "It bothers the goddamn wildlife."

McEban waves to the fat sheriff and the man waves back. He sets his dams and walks a hundred yards along the ditch toward the house. He bends through the fencewires and weaves into a windbreak of cottonwood, Russian olive, brush willow, and caragana. He skirts the olives, careful of their thorns, stomps down a stand of thistle, and squats at the northernmost end of the windbreak, looking back at the house.

Woody digs and snaps at a sage gnarl, and McEban hooks his armpits over his kneecaps and settles his butt against his boot tops. He searches the porch for movement. He wonders what it would be like to see Gretchen on the porch, sipping her morning coffee, tucked up safely in the throw of mild shadow.

When his grandmother had the store-bought fruit canned and the kitchen cleaned and they'd had a sandwich, she told him she was done with him.

Copyright © 2002 by Mark Spragg. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, Putnam.