James Burke - In the Moon of Red Ponies

Later, in the early hours of Sunday morning, a diminutive man, one for whom joy was an emotion he experienced only in stealing it from others, lay in the semidarkness of his hospital room, the maples outside alive with wind, the mountains to the east rounded softly like a woman’s breasts, the clouds veined with lightning.

The Demerol flowing out of the IV into his finger was the best dope he’d ever had. It made him neither high nor low but instead created a neutral space inside him that was like warm water in a stone pool or the fleeting sense of tranquillity he experienced after sexual intercourse. He paid little attention to the deputy who looked in on him occasionally or the nurses who came and went or a solitary figure in greens who gazed benignly at him out of the shadows, then reached down to puff up his pillow.

In fact, the Demerol made Charlie Ruggles feel so good about his situation he was sure the right people would once again show up in his life, as they always did, and set matters straight. It had started to rain, a warm, beautiful, steady rain that pattered on the tops of the maple trees. He could not remember a night that had been as perfect in its combination of colors and sensations. When he turned his head toward the figure in greens, the coolness of the pillow being placed across his face made him think of a woman’s kiss, perhaps from years ago, although in truth he did not recall any woman whose touch had been this cool and gentle.

Then a terrible weight crushed down on him, sealing his eyes, pressing his skin back from his teeth, as though he were trying to smile for the first time in his life.

Darrel McComb and another detective served the search warrant at Johnny’s house on Monday morning. What happened as a result became a matter of perspective. Amber Finley told one story, Darrel McComb and his partner another. I tended to believe Amber.

“What do you expect to find in his closet?” she said to McComb.

“A set of greens, the kind hospital personnel wear?” McComb said.

“You’re an idiot,” she said.

While Johnny sat on the porch, McComb tore the closet apart, throwing all Johnny’s hangered shirts and trousers out on the floor. Then he reached down and picked up a pair of tennis shoes and placed them in an evidence bag. He was resting on one knee now, his stomach hanging over his belt, his broad shoulders about to split his suit coat. He squinted up at Amber’s silhouette framed against the window, the tautness of her shirt against her breasts. His eyes drifted to the bed, where the sheets and covers had slid off the mattress onto the floor.

“It’s true Indians do it dog-style?” he said.

“Ask your wife,” she replied.

McComb threw the bagged shoes to his partner and laughed. “Keep your eye on American Horse,” he said.

McComb ripped a sheet loose from the bed, then dumped the contents of Johnny’s chest of drawers on the mattress, poking through socks and underwear. “I’m not married,” he said.

“I’m shocked,” she replied.

“If he’s dirty, you’re probably going down with him. Your old man will be hard put to bail you out of this one.”

“Why is it I think you’re full of shit?” she asked.

He surveyed the room and pulled his collar off his neck, as though it chafed him. “I’d like to help you with any troubles that might come out of this,” he said.

He was positioned between her and the door, massive, the bulk of his shoulders like small sacks of cement. She could hear him breathing through his nose, smell his hair oil and the body heat and odor of testosterone in his clothes. He took a business card from his shirt pocket and lifted her hand and slipped the card between her fingers. She could feel the sharp edges of his calluses against her palm. “You get jammed up, just call me,” he said. “I grew up in a midwestern farm town, just like your old man did. We’re the same kind of people.”

He tried to keep his eyes respectful, his expression neutral. But she saw his tongue touch his bottom lip, the slackness in his jaw, the flush in his throat, the way his stare dipped momentarily.

She crumpled the card, letting it drop into a trash basket as she brushed past him into the front of the house. Behind her, she heard him make a sound like he had bitten a word in half.

“What did you say?” she asked, turning toward him.

“Maybe one day you’ll learn who the good guys are.”

“I can’t wait. In the meantime, kiss my ass,” she said.

Outside, the air was clear and bright, the mountains a deep blue-green against the sky. Johnny American Horse was still sitting on the edge of his porch, his legs crossed, his coned straw hat slanted forward. “You really think I snuffed that guy at the hospital?” he said to McComb.

“I think you’ll do anything you can goddamn get away with,” McComb said. He picked up the evidence bag containing Johnny’s tennis shoes from the hood of his cruiser. He shook the bag and grinned. “Size ten and a half. I think we might have a match.”

Johnny stared into space, his hands pressed between his thighs, his face in shadow. He pushed himself off the porch and approached McComb, his hands pushed flatly into his back pockets. “I want a property receipt for the shit you took out of my house,” he said.

“It’s on your table,” McComb said.

“I didn’t sign it.”

“You don’t need to, asshole.”

“I think I do,” Johnny said, his face averted.

McComb stepped closer to him, covering Johnny with his shadow. The men were now so close together they looked almost romantically intimate. “You don’t deserve to live in this country,” McComb said.

“Could be. You gonna write out another receipt?” Johnny scratched an insect bite on his forearm.

Maybe his boot brushed against McComb’s shoe, or his coned hat touched McComb’s face. Or maybe McComb, staring at Amber over Johnny’s shoulder, simply could not deal any longer with his own rage and sense of sexual rejection. He swung his fist into the middle of Johnny’s face, then pulled his blackjack from his back pocket and whipped it down on Johnny’s head, neck, and shoulders, slashing with all his strength, as though attacking a slab of meat on a butcher block.

That afternoon I went into Fay Harback’s office without knocking. “I just left St. Pat’s. Go down there and look at what your trained goon did to Johnny American Horse,” I said.

“I know all about it,” she replied.

“No, you don’t. McComb used a blackjack on him, for God’s sake. Without provocation.”

“That’s what you say. Both detectives tell a different story.”

“McComb came on to Amber Finley. She told him to take a walk, so he tore Johnny up. That’s what happened.”

“American Horse is a violent man. Quit pretending he’s not.”

“You ran on a platform of personal integrity. You’re a big disappointment, Fay.”

“At least I’m not an ex-prosecutor who became a hump for any criminal with a checkbook.”

She was standing now, her nostrils white-rimmed, her throat streaked with color.

“ Adios,” I said.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said at my back.

I walked across the grass, through the shade trees on the courthouse lawn, toward my office at the intersection, my blood singing in my ears. Parked by the curb was a dented, paint-skinned pickup truck with slat sides bolted onto the sides of the bed. Wyatt Dixon lay on the hood, wearing aviator shades, his shoulders propped against the windshield, his fingers knitted behind his head. The muscles in his upper arms were as big and hard-looking as cantaloupes. He wore dark Wranglers brand new from the box and an elastic-ribbed, form-fitting T-shirt stamped with the words SEX, DRUGS, FLATT’N’ SCRUGGS. He pulled a matchstick from his mouth. “I hear that Indian boy got his ass kicked,” he said.