Mixing the profile with the personal essay, plain storytelling with reporting and the fanciful, Bill Porterfield, in this collection of short pieces, prances out a memorable cast of his characters from the Texas heartland. "Loose herd" is about as tight a noose of definition as you can draw around their collective necks. Clarence of Green Mansions is a mystic with a two-thousand-year-old memory; J. D. Graham ekes out a living as owner of a general store in the dried-up crossroads of The Grove; Old Juan lives in a hole in the ground and defies anyone to bother him; Larry Bowman became famous by winning the jackpot on TV bowling; George White was a self-proclaimed genius until he picked his toe with a rusty knife and died of gangrene; John Waggoner, scion of great ranchers, has given up the New York stockbroker's life for stock raising; and Goyo Maldonado stopped going to church when he found the Stone That Cries Like a Child. Obscure eccentrics and ordinary folk outnumber the rich and famous