James Burke - Bitterroot

"She's caught air, bud."

He kicked a toadstool into a pulpy spray.

"I'm going to her uncle's and get the dog. I bet she didn't even take the dog," he said.

I walked back to Doc's alone.

I went INTO the barn and took down Doc's ax from between two nails and ripped stumps out of the pasture and weeded Doc's vegetable garden and sprinkled all his flowers and curried his horses and swept the stalls and hauled a truckload of trash down to the dump and buried it with a shovel and generally wore myself out, but I could not think my way out of the problems that seemed to beset me from every direction.

A sun shower was falling on the mountains in the west when I put my shirt back on and went into the barn and hung Doc's ax back on the nails. My skin was filmed with sweat and the wind was cool through the open doors and dust puffed up off the barn floor in my eyes.

At the far end of the barn L.Q. stood against the light, his face lost in silhouette, his coat open and his thumb hooked above the brass cartridges in his gun-belt.

"What are y'all gonna do about that Witherspoon boy?" he said.

"I'd like to cap him and drag the body inside the house. But I've had a bad day and I don't need you to vex me, L.Q."

"If I recall correctly, you told the priest you wasn't gonna gun nobody."

"Maybe I'll have to adjust," I said.

"I'm for it. I'd suggest a ten-gauge loaded with pumpkin balls. Start with Carl Hinkel and Wyatt Dixon and work your way on down. Remember when we caught that bunch coming out of the arroyo outside Zaragoza? They was passing around a bottle of yellow mescal. The first round blew glass right through one fellow's face."

"I stole your life, L.Q."

"I never held it against you. You're still my bud."

"Your words are a crown of thorns," I said. He canted himself sideways and looked at someone behind me, then turned and walked through the barn doors, into the evening and the flicker of lightning on the fields.

"Temple just called. Should I tell her we're on our way to pick her up or you're too busy having a conversation with yourself?" Maisey said.

Early the next morning I drove into town and took Temple for breakfast. On the way back to the motel I saw Terry Witherspoon come out of a medical clinic and get into a battered car by himself and drive away. Temple did not see him.

"I'll drop you off and call you a little later," I said.

"You don't want to come in?" she asked.

"I need to take care of something."

She reached across the seat and ran her fingernail up the back of my neck.

"Secrets have a way of undoing a relationship," she said.

"I think Terry Witherspoon plans to hurt Maisey. Somebody needs to step on this kid's tether," I replied.

She squeezed her thumb and forefinger on my neck, then released the pressure and squeezed again, on and off, and tried to see into the corner of my eye.

"When Dixon and Witherspoon go down, I'm going to be there? Right?" she said.

"You bet," I said.

She leaned forward so I could not avoid looking into her face.

"Don't take what I say lightly," she said. Her milky green eyes held on mine and never blinked. I felt my truck tire hit the curb.

Back at Doc's place I borrowed Maisey's laptop computer and set it up in a sunny spot on a folding table down by the river, fixed a glass of iced tea, and began composing a letter to Wyatt Dixon. It read as follows:

Dear Mr. Dixon,

I interviewed Terry Witberspoon in the Ravalli County Jail after Nicki Molinari's goons dumped him in front of your ranch. Here are a couple of observations I would like to share with you.

It appears Terry has made up a story about my trying to shoot you in the back with a pistol. I don't know if you believe his account or not, but you might ask yourself why an ex-Texas Ranger would try to pop you with a handgun, on your own property, when a man with a scoped.30-06 rifle could punch out your brisket from a mile away.

Terry told me and several others at the jail that you did not have the guts to take on Nicki Molinari because he was Mobbed-up and in Quentin you were a punk for two greaseballs and had run scared of them ever since. He said Molinari already made you look like an ignorant peckerwood in a cafe someplace but you were too stupid to know you had been made a fool of. I'm not sure what he was talking about. He just said Molinari told him rodeo clowns risk their lives for chump change, and that's why only bozos from backwater Southern shit-holes are hired for the job.

In closing I'm obligated to inform you of the following as a matter of social conscience. My associate has accessed Terry's welfare and police and medical records back in North Carolina. It looks like Terry has AIDS. Has he been going for medical treatment here? If I were you, I'd get tested. There are ninety-nine strains of the virus. I suspect Terry has most of them. By the way, conclusive test results take four months.

To be honest, I have a hard time believing anyone who did time in Huntsville and Quentin could be reamed this bad by a box boy whose biggest score was rolling fudge packers. Maybe my perceptions are incorrect. If so, please forgive me.

Have a nice day, Billy Bob Holland

I went back into Missoula and had the letter delivered to the Hinkel compound by a florist, along with a cluster of pink and blue balloons.

The next day Temple and I walked inside the Montana State Prison at Deer Lodge and waited for a turnkey to escort a trusty gardener by the name of Alton Dobbs to an interview room. He had salt-and-pepper hair that was cropped short, workingman's hands with clean nails, square shoulders, and direct eye contact you do not normally associate with a pedophile. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and state blues, but the pants were creased, as though they had been pressed under a mattress, and his shirt was buttoned at the throat and the wrists.

He sat down across from us, his right hand resting in the center of the wood table. When I did not offer to shake hands with him, he removed his hand and put it in his lap. His eyes narrowed once at the insult, then they became totally devoid of expression.

"Your sheet says you've been down four times on the same count, Mr. Dobbs," I said.

He inched a chrome-plated wristwatch out from under his shirt cuff and looked at it.

"You're a lawyer for who?" he asked.

"Dr. Tobin Voss. He's charged with killing a biker by the name of Lamar Ellison. Does that last name mean anything to you?" I said.

"Never heard of him."

Temple looked at the first page on the clipboard she carried.

"How about the name of Billy Shuster?" she said.

"The kid in Sioux Falls? I was three hundred miles away when that happened. I was working in a bakery."

Temple's eyes shifted on mine. It was the use of his vague reference to the event, the lack of a noun or verb that would call up a visual image, that gave us our first hint of the manipulator behind the hornrimmed glasses.

"He was thirteen. Pretty bad crime, don't you think?" I said.

"I wouldn't know. Like I say, I wasn't around," Dobbs said.

"Anyway, that's past history. But I think you got a bum beef on this Montana deal," I said.

"Run that by me again."

"You got nailed in Carl Hinkel's front yard five years ago. Carl told everybody he didn't know you and was glad the authorities had you in custody. I don't think you ever got to tell your side of the story."

"You see Carl Hinkel?" he said.

"With some regularity," Temple said. Dobbs nodded and looked at a spot between me and Temple. "I never met him. I never had a chance to. So I'm not much help to you," he said.