James Burke - Bitterroot

Wyatt finished reading the letter, then folded it and stuck it inside his belt, against his skin. His left hand opened and the balloons rose into the wind and floated out over the Bitterroot. He turned slowly toward Terry, the clay mask transforming itself, cracking into the idiot's grin again.

"I got to run to town. By the way, what's the name of that clinic you go to sometimes? I got to get me a flu shot," he said.

What did Wyatt mean by "go to sometimes"? Terry thought. He'd gone to the clinic only because he'd been beaten up by either Wyatt or that grease-ball Nicki Molinari. "The one off the Orange Street Bridge. Anything wrong?" Terry said.

"In a country like this?" Wyatt tilted his face up toward the heavens, his palms lifted as though he were requesting grace, his shaved underarms white with baby powder. "Ain't no place like the U.S.A. Don't ever doubt it, either." Then he aimed one finger at Terry, a nest of veins rippling over his shoulder.

Wyatt drove away in his low-slung red car, with its exposed new radiator and hammered-out fenders bouncing through the dust. He returned two hours later and pulled off his shirt and strapped on his tool pouch and went back to work on Carl's tractor.

"I didn't think you could get flu shots in the summer," Terry said.

"A dumb fellow like me had to drive all the way to Missoula to find that out," Wyatt said, grinning from under his hat.

Terry went up to the dining room and put three dollars into the tin can on the steam table and ate lunch with Carl and the others. He glanced out the back window just as Wyatt stopped work on the tractor and threw his wrench down and climbed through the railed fence and took a shortcut across the pasture to his log house.

Except Wyatt was now in the pasture with a young bull that did not willingly share its territory. It began running the length of the fence, then it whirled and headed for Wyatt, blowing mucus, its horns lowered.

Wyatt could have made the fence and vaulted across it with time to spare. Instead, he pulled his wadded-up shirt from his back pocket and slapped it across the bull's snout and eyes, then dangled it in the dust, working it like a snake, charming the bull to a standstill.

Wyatt inched his hand forward, then grabbed one horn and pivoted behind the bull's angle of vision and grabbed the other and twisted the bull's neck until it fell to the ground in a puff of dust and manure that had dried into fiber.

Everyone in the dining room had risen to his feet and was now watching the scene in the pasture. Wyatt continued to twist the bull's neck, his boot heel hooked hard into its phallus, the tendons in the bull's neck popping against its hide like black rope, the one visible eye bulging from the socket as though it were about to hemorrhage.

Carl Hinkel dropped his fork onto his plate and ran out the back door to the pasture, tripping over the bumps in the ground, waving one arm at Wyatt.

"What in God's name are you doing? You know how much that animal cost me?" he shouted.

Wyatt rose to his feet and threw a small rock at the bull's head and kicked it in the rectum. Grass and grains of dirt were matted on Wyatt's naked back.

"I think I'll bag me up a lunch today and eat on the river," he said.

"Is something bothering you, boy?"

"Ain't no man calls me 'boy,' Carl." Wyatt picked up his hat out of the dirt and fitted it on his head and straightened the brim with his thumb and forefinger. He grinned at Carl, then inserted a pinch of snuff inside his lip. "No-sirree-bob."

The men standing around Carl dropped their eyes to the ground.

For the next half hour Terry paced about on the slope of the river, while down below him Wyatt ate his lunch out of a paper bag and drank from a quart bottle of buttermilk. Wyatt's back was a triangle of muscle cut with scars from a horse quirt. Wyatt had never told Terry who had used the quirt on him or why. That was Wyatt's way. He recycled pain, stored its memory, footnoted every instance of it in his life and the manner in which it had been visited upon him, then paid back his enemies and tormentors in ways they never foresaw.

Now Terry was afraid to talk to him. Should he stay or hitchhike home? What was in that letter? Had he done something disloyal, made a careless remark that someone else had reported to Wyatt? Was this over Maisey Voss? Or maybe Molinari or that damn lawyer was behind it.

But before Terry could find an answer to any of his questions, Carl Hinkel sent word he wanted to see him in his office.

Terry entered the stone hut by the side of the main house and sat down next to Carl's computer table. It was the first time he had been invited inside Carl's office, and he realized his palms were sweating. Carl's beard was freshly trimmed, his suspenders an immaculate white against his dark blue cotton shirt, his cob pipe cupped regally in his hand.

"I've been watching you. My staff has, too," Carl said, and fixed him with a dead stare. Terry shifted in his chair and looked at the framed photo of Carl in a paratrooper's uniform and felt his mouth go dry.

"If I did something wrong-" he began.

"You have what soldiers call fire in the belly. It's the fire that burns in every patriot. It's in your eyes. It's in the way you carry yourself."

Terry felt his cheeks burn.

"It's a great honor to-" Terry began.

"I'm promoting you up to the rank of lieutenant, with duties as an information officer. That means you'll be representing us at meetings in Idaho and Washington State. Of course, we'll be paying all your travel expenses."

"I don't know what to say, sir." For a moment Terry could feel tears coming to his eyes.

"We don't wear uniforms or wear gold or silver bars here. But I have a gift for you," Carl said.

He opened his desk drawer and removed a chrome-plated, double-edged dagger with a gold guard on the blade and a snow-white handle that had been inset with two red swastikas.

It was the most beautiful knife Terry had ever seen. He held it in his palms and started to slip the blade from the white leather sheath but first lifted his eyes to Carl's to seek permission.

"Go ahead," Carl said, and fired his pipe, cupping the match flame as though there were wind in the room.

Terry turned the blade over in his palm. He could see his face in the oily reflection and feel the coolness of the steel like a kiss against his skin.

"Later you and I will bust some clay pigeons out over the river. How's that?" Carl said.

"Yes, sir," Terry answered.

Carl puffed on his pipe and gazed reflectively into the smoke, his brow furrowing slightly.

"You notice anything different about Wyatt?" he asked.

"Wyatt's a mite moody sometimes." That was the right answer, he thought. He was giving Carl what he wanted without saying anything Wyatt could use against him. His statement even sounded sympathetic. Way to go, he told himself.

"I'd like to think he's just off his feed. But we can't have loose cannon on board our ship, Terry."

"Yes, sir, I know what you mean," Terry said.

"You're a fine young man," Carl said, and held out his hand. Carl's grip was meaty, encompassing, the skin warmer than it should be.

"Carl, my rent's due on my place above the Clark," Terry said.

"Yes?"

"I wonder if I could move out here. Work for room and board."

"I don't see any reason you shouldn't get the first vacancy," Carl replied.

It rained just before dawn, then the sun rose inside the mist on the hills and through my window I could see the pale green shapes of cottonwoods swelling in the wind and a lone black bear running past Lucas's tent, as though the pinkness of the morning had caught it in a dishonest act.

Doc came into my bedroom and set down a cup of coffee for me on the nightstand and pulled up a chair next to my bed.