James Burke - Bitterroot

"Pardon?"

"He likes you. He gets that possum grin on his face and I know what he's thinking about." "Lay off it, Wyatt," Terry said. Wyatt's hand lay close to her shoulder. The nails were clipped and clean, the fingers as pale and thick and gnarled as turnips. The back of his ring finger touched her skin. She felt herself jerk, as though she had been burned with a piece of ice.

"Mr. Holland got a young'un up at Dr. Voss's place? A boy named Lucas?"

"Yes," Maisey said, looking straight ahead now, watching a lighted gas station slide behind them in the darkness.

"You know who I am, don't you?" Wyatt said at the back of her head.

"No."

"You ever go to Sunday school?"

"Yes."

"Then you know it's a sin to lie."

"Give it a rest, Wyatt," Terry said. The inside of the car became very quiet. Maisey forced herself to turn and look in the backseat. Wyatt was staring at Terry, his head tilted slightly. Terry glanced in the rearview mirror, his eyes like two marbles caught inside the glass.

"I'm gonna pull in for gas," Terry said.

"You do that," Wyatt said.

"Wyatt?"

But Wyatt only grinned and didn't answer. "Wyatt?" Terry said again.

"Lend me your comb. This beautiful girl has made me sweat inside my hat," Wyatt said.

Terry pulled off the highway into a truck stop and parked the car by a gas pump. He got out and put the nozzle into the gas tank and began cleaning the windows. He seemed to study Wyatt's face through the glass.

"You want me to pay for it?" Terry asked.

"No, I'm going in. Maybe get us some fried pies. Other supplies, too," Wyatt said, as though coming out of a trance. He smiled in a knowing way at Terry and pushed Maisey's seat forward and got out of the car.

Terry watched him enter the truck stop, then he pulled the gas nozzle from the tank and clanked it back on the pump and got into the car. Through the truck stop window he watched Wyatt pay for the gas, then return to the counter and exchange a dollar bill for silver and go into the men's room.

Terry chewed on his lip, his eyes busy with thought.

"What are you doing?" Maisey said.

"Don't worry about it," Terry said, and started the car and burned rubber onto the highway.

They roared through Bonner, passing the lumber mill and a church and a school and rows of company houses with birch trees in the yards. Terry poured on the gas at the edge of town and the tires squealed on the curves above the Blackfoot River.

"Slow down," she said.

"Don't be telling me what to do, Maisey," he said.

"Where are we going?"

"To your house. Where you think?" he replied.

"I didn't tell you where I live."

"Yeah, you did. You just don't remember."

He had his glasses on now and he was breathing through his mouth, like a fish on land, his cheeks and neck bladed with color.

"You were the man at my window," she said.

"I'm taking you home now. That's all you should care about. Then I'm going back for Wyatt. You don't realize what you've made me do."

"Made you do what?" she asked.

"Things just don't work out for me," Terry said, and hit his fist on the steering wheel. "I just don't know why. They just never work out. I'd like to tear somebody apart right now."

He squeezed the floor shift knob tightly in his hand and passed a camper on the double stripe, whipping back into the proper lane an instant before an oncoming log truck crested the hill in front of them. He shot the finger at the truck's headlights.

After Terry Witherspoon had dropped Maisey off and she had told Doc of the events of the evening, I thought he was going to go after either Witherspoon or Wyatt Dixon or the three football players at the nightclub.

Or at least lecture Maisey on her recklessness.

"Wyatt Dixon went into the rest room with a handful of change? That's when this kid Witherspoon decided to bag it down the road?" Doc said.

"Yes. Was the older man going to buy-" Maisey began.

"Come on into the kitchen," Doc said.

"What is it?" she said.

"You didn't eat supper," he said, and removed two steaks from the freezer and unwrapped them from butcher paper at the sink and began thawing them with hot water. "Why don't you help me slice a few potatoes and we'll cook some hash browns?"

Maisey looked at him curiously.

"You're not mad?" she asked.

"Not at you, Maisey. Never at you," he replied.

She placed a chopping board on the counter top near the sink and began peeling an Idaho potato, pausing to glance at her father's profile, as though seeing him for the first time.

Nicki Molinari didn't give up easily. I saw him in downtown Missoula the next morning, coming out of a sporting goods store. He carried a tennis shoe box under his arm.

"You saved me a trip out to your place. Come out to the ball field with me. It's right down by the river," he said.

"No, thanks," I replied.

"You want this guy Wyatt Dixon out of your hair? Or maybe you'd like him climbing your investigator, what's the lady's name, Temple something? Give it some thought, Mr. Holland."

He got into his convertible and drove away.

I tried to ignore what he had said, but he had planted the hook. I drove my truck down to the ball diamond by the Clark Fork and parked behind the stands and walked toward the third-base line. Nicki Molinari was hitting grounders to three other men out on the diamond, splintering the ball low and hard across the grass.

Two people were sitting on the top row of the otherwise empty stands. The man lifted his hand in recognition, but the woman with him kept her gaze fixed on the field, her face as hard-planed as refrigerated wax.

Nicki Molinari tossed his bat to another player and walked toward me.

"What are Xavier and Holly Girard doing here?" I asked, nodding toward the top of the stands.

"He's writing a book about me. I got stock in her new movie. It's being shot on the Blackfoot. Why, that bother you?" Nicki said.

"You said something about my investigator, Temple Carrol."

"Yeah, I want my seven hundred large back from the skank. That's Cleo Lonnigan to you. You're not interested in a finder's fee, I can shake and bake Wyatt Dixon for you or anybody else who might be giving you a hard time."

"Why'd you mention Temple?"

"Dixon almost tore out your son's package. What do you think he'd do to a woman?"

"How do you know all this stuff, Nicki?"

"Ah, my first name again. It's my business to know."

"Good. Stay out of mine," I said, and turned to leave.

He caught up with me and placed two fingers on my arm. They were moist with perspiration. He looked at my face and took his hand away.

"It's not my purpose to be enemies with you," he said. "We got a, what do you call it, a symbiotic relationship. You see that big guy out by second base? He works for me. He's incontinent and blows gas in crowded elevators and thinks Nostradamus is a college football team. But he's got a talent. Know what it is?"

"He kills people?"

"He's a great second baseman. We were on the same team at TI. In a playoff game nobody could figure out how I was wetting down the ball. I didn't touch my face or hat or belt, but my curve was jumping out of the catcher's mitt. Know how I did it?"

"No."

"We'd whip the ball around the infield. Frank out there had a hole cut in the pocket of his glove and a sponge inside it. He'd be the last infielder to handle the ball. When it came back to me it looked like it'd been through a car wash." Nicki smiled, his dark eyes dancing on my face.

"What's the point?"

"Everybody has a function. You put the right people and the right functions together, everybody wins. Help me out, man. I don't want to sell Cleo's debt."