Bitterroot

by James Lee Burke

  "You talking about me?" I said.

  "Your jacket says you were investigated for capping some Mexicans across the border. The Mexican authorities claimed they were wets wandering around in the desert," he said, turning his head so I could hear his words.

  I leaned forward in my seat. "I remember some guys shooting at me down there. It's kind of fuzzy, though. I got hit twice. Maybe that's why my recall isn't as good as it should be," I said.

  "He's a fast thinker, too," the agent in the passenger's seat said to the driver.

  "That's enough, fellows. Pull in there," the agent named Amos Rackley said. He got out on his side of the car and waited for me to join him.

  He put on his sunglasses and stared at the sunlight on the river's surface, then took them off again.

  "You see the trout feeding in the shade? You can always see them better with dark glasses on. They cut the glare off the water," he said. He looked at me. "You're not interested in fish?"

  "Yeah, I am."

  "You got to forgive Jim. He lost some friends in the Oklahoma City bombing," Rackley said.

  "A guy named Wyatt Dixon followed me up here. He's bad news," I said.

  "You got that right. But that's our worry, not yours."

  "Then get him out of my life-"

  He raised the ball of his index finger at me before I could continue.

  "Jim wasn't the only one who lost friends at Oklahoma City. You quit the Justice Department. You don't have a vote in what we do. If one of our people gets hurt because you've got your nose in the wrong place, I'm going to break it off," he said.

  He got back into his car, and the three agents drove away. I stared after them, my face tight and insentient, as though a cold wind had just died and left my skin dead to the touch.

  I went to the restaurant where I was supposed to meet Cleo but she wasn't there and she didn't answer her phone, either. I waited an hour, then drove back up the Blackfoot to Doc's house. I went to bed without seeing either Doc or Maisey and dreamed of Texas and a field of bluebonnets in which a white stallion splattered with blood tried to mount a mare that turned and bit him in the forequarters.

  Chapter 9

  In the morningI discovered that Cleo had left three messages on Doc's answering machine. The messages said only that she had gotten to the restaurant late and did not explain why. I called her at home.

  "It was Lamar Ellison. I'd gone up to the Indian family's house to check on the children. He followed me," she said.

  "Ellison? Why's he coming around you?" I said.

  "I don't know. I saw him on his motorcycle out on the road. The Indians don't have a phone. I couldn't get back to the house. It was awful," she said.

  "Did he do anything?"

  "No, he just sat out there in the twilight, looking up and down the road. Then he left."

  "I'm coming out," I said.

  "No, I have to go to work. I'll call you this afternoon."

  "Cleo-"

  "I'm sorry. I have to go. I didn't sleep much last night."

  "Does this have anything to do with your son?"

  "How would I know? I just hope this man Ellison dies a horrible death. I hate him," she said.

  I WENT outside and lifted my fly vest and canvas creel off a wood peg on the front porch and put on my hip waders and drove my truck along the dirt road to a spot on the river that was seldom fished. I walked a quarter of a mile through woods and down a soft, green slope where huge gray boulders seemed to grow out of the soil like mushrooms without stems. I waded into the river, which was ice-cold from the melt and lack of sunlight, and fished a deep pool that was fed by a small waterfall.

  The days were growing warmer now, and each morning the snow line in the mountain crests was receding and the rivers and creeks were rising and turning from green to copper-colored.

  I tied on a royal coachman and coated it with fly dressing and cast it out twenty-five feet into the riffle at the head of the pool. A rainbow rose from the gravel bed and hit the coachman as it floated toward me, high and stiff and flecked with red hackle on top of the riffle.

  The rainbow must have been sixteen inches and should have been mine. But just as I saw the strike, like a flickering of quicksilver on top of the current, and jerked up my rod, I heard the loud roar of a motorcycle out on the dirt road. I cut my eyes in the direction of the road and the fly went whipping past my head into a tree limb and the rainbow's dorsal fin roiled the surface and disappeared.

  I saw the rider of the motorcycle pull to the top of a knoll above me and look down at me through the trees. He gunned his engine, the straight exhaust pipe violating the green-gold, pine-scented stillness of the air, reverberating off the boulders on the hillsides and through the gullies that fed into the river.

  Then he drove back toward my truck.

  I pulled my royal coachman loose from the tree and walked back up the slope toward the road.

  The motorcycle driver went past me, looking me full in the face, then turned around a hundred yards down the road. I removed my fly vest and laid it on the hood of my truck and took L.Q. Navarro's.45 revolver out of the cab and put it under the vest.

  Lamar Ellison cut his gas feed and let his bike coast to a stop next to the truck. He slid his sunglasses up on top of his head, his eyes wandering over my person.

  His body seemed larger in the shadows of the trees, his bronze skin darker. He swung one leg over the motorcycle seat, like a man getting down from a horse, and stood two feet from me. The wind puffed at his back and I could smell reefer in his clothes and hair and an odor like rotted teeth or decaying meat on his breath. I leaned my fly rod against the truck and rested my forearm on top of my fly vest.

  "Say it quick," I said.

  "I didn't know the guy was a SEAL. I was in the Corps. I'm sorry about his daughter," he said.

  "You didn't sound that way over the phone."

  He touched at his nose with his wrist and blew air out his nostrils. He glanced up and down the road, and put an unlit cigarette in his mouth, then pulled it back out and stared at it stupidly.

  "Other people were listening. It was all flash, man. They got me made for a snitch," he said.

  He was bare-chested except for his cracked, black leather vest. He inserted his hands in his armpits as though he were cold.

  "What were you doing up around Cleo Lonnigan's place?" I asked.

  "Looking for you. I got Sue Lynn to call and ask where you was at. Sue Lynn's an Indian broad who digs bikers. I mean, she'll pull a train if she has to."

  When I didn't reply he stuck his hands into his pockets, then refolded his arms across his chest and gripped the outside of his triceps.

  "I can't go back inside, man. I got the Mexican Mafia and the Black Guerrilla Army down on me. When you're inside, they can reach out anywhere you're at. The Aryan Brotherhood ain't always there. The BGA is. Main pop anywhere is seventy percent boon."

  "It's time for you to go," I said.

  His lips were dry in the shade, the skin of his face grained with dirt. He shifted his weight and dust powdered around his boots. His eyes were like those of a man trying to figure out how to get inside a bus after the doors have been closed on him.

  "Two other guys nailed her first. I'll give them up," he said.

  "Are you that afraid of Doc?"

  "I want Witness Protection. I talked to an ATF guy. He made fun of me. He said Voss was in the Phoenix Program. He said Voss would find me and cut off my ears and put out my eyes and paint my face."

  His eyes were dark green, with cinders for pupils, and now they were wet along the rims.

  I lifted up L.Q. Navarro's revolver from under my fly vest and cocked back the hammer.

  "You either get out of here now or I'll shoot your sack off. My hope is that you don't believe me," I said.

  That afternoon I picked Cleo up at her house and we drove toward Flathead Lake to have supper, through ranchland and low hills, along an undulating, boulder-strewn river, into a golden s
un. I told her about my encounter with Ellison and the fact that his interest had been in me, not her.

  "Why do you believe anything a man like that says?" she asked.

  "Because the ATF has obviously jammed him up. Because he's a coward and could hardly hide his fear. I don't think he was lying."

  "Why does the ATF care about him?"

  "He's mixed up with this militia bunch. Maybe he's dealing guns for them."

  We drove through a long, green valley, past the Mission Mountains, whose timbered slopes rose into the clouds. Then I saw Flathead Lake for the first time, so vast it looked like an ocean, its blue water ringed by hills, its eastern shore terraced with cherry orchards. The sun had dropped below the mountains and the air was suddenly cool and touched with rain and the smell of wood smoke, and I looked at the shadow that never seemed to leave Cleo's eyes and squeezed her hand.

  "Why'd you do that?" she said.

  "You ever read Ernest Hemingway?" I asked.

  "A little."

  "In For Whom the Bell Tolls a Republican guerrilla is about to die on a hilltop in Spain and he tells himself, 'The world is a fine place and well worth the fighting for.' I always try to remember that line when I get down with the nature of things," I said.

  We stopped at a restaurant on the eastern shore. It was too cool to eat by the water, but we took a table near the back window where we could see the afterglow of the sun on the hills on the far side of the lake and a steep-sided wooded island where there was a lighted log mansion set inside the trees and a white seaplane was taxiing in a rocky cove at the base of a cliff.

  "I might have a chance to buy one of those islands out there," she said.

  "You have that kind of money?" I said.

  "Not really. But you only live once, right?"

  It started to rain out on the lake, and the string of electric lights over the marina came on and Cleo gazed at the boats rocking in their slips, her thoughts known only to herself.

  "This is one of the prettiest places I've ever been," I said.

  But she didn't seem to hear me.

  "I talked with an FBI agent about my son once," she said. "I told him my son was killed on National Forest lands. I thought I could get federal help solving his murder. He called back and said he checked, the body was actually on a state road when it was discovered. I hung up. I couldn't find words to speak. I've always regretted that."

  The waitress brought the wine and poured it into both our glasses. Cleo took a sip, ate a piece of bread, then drank deeply from the glass. When she set it down, her mouth was red, her face striped with shadows from the raindrops that ran down the window. Beyond the marina was a motel built on a promontory above the lake. There was a blue neon sign over the entrance and families were eating in a back dining room that was supported by pilings built into the rock.

  "You don't have to work tomorrow, huh?" I said.

  "No."

  "I'm glad."

  "Why?"

  "Maybe we could do something together," I said.

  "You've never been married?"

  "No. I have a son, though. He's twenty. He goes to Texas A amp;M."

  "What happened to his mother?"

  "She died. She was married to another man when she conceived our son. His name is Lucas. He's probably one of the best string musicians in the state of Texas."

  The waitress brought our food and went away. The lake was dark now, and a sailboat was anchored out in the chop, its cabin glowing with an oily yellow light. The back door of the restaurant was open to let in the cool air, and I could hear a band playing at the motel up on the promontory.

  "That's Glenn Miller," I said.

  "Montana is a time warp," she said.

  "So are all good places," I said.

  She was quiet for a moment, then she set down her fork and lifted her eyes.

  "You're not eating," she said.

  "I don't eat much," I said.

  "Billy Bob, you have a tendency to stare at people."

  "Do you want to go?" I said.

  "Where?"

  "Down the road. Any place you've a mind. I don't care."

  She watched my face, then picked up her purse.

  We got into my truck and drove as far as the motel next door. I parked under the porte cochere. Through the lobby window I could see a girl of high school age behind the counter.

  "You sure this is what you want?" Cleo said.

  "Don't you?"

  She didn't answer. She opened the truck door for herself and stepped out in the rain. The neon glow on her skin seemed to disfigure her face. For a moment I thought I saw L.Q. Navarro under the porte cochere, raising his hand in a cautionary way.

  Inside the room I turned off the lights and sat in a chair and pulled off my boots with the awkwardness of a man who in reality had never been good with intimacy. A crack of light shone through the drawn curtains and I could see her silhouette as she undressed, a bare thigh, a crinkle in her hip as she pushed her panties down over her knees. The window was open and down below we could hear sounds from the gravel parking lot. I took off my trousers and shirt and walked up behind Cleo and placed my hands on her shoulders and started to turn her toward me. But her attention had been captured by the voices that rose on the wind from the parking lot.

  "No! Let me alone!" a little boy was shouting.

  "You get in the car, Ty!"

  "I'm not going. You can't make me! Get away from me!" the boy yelled.

  Cleo held back the curtain, indifferent to her nudity, and stared down at a middle-aged man in a white shirt and tie trying to pull a small boy by his wrists inside an automobile. Cleo's face wore an expression of unrelieved sadness.

  "That's the family we saw in the lobby. The kid's probably throwing a temper tantrum," I said.

  "I know," she said.

  "He's all right," I said.

  "I know that. I know that he's all right."

  Later, in bed, I tried to pretend to myself that I wanted to give more than I wanted to receive. But I knew the selfishness that was always at work in my life, the heat and the repressed nocturnal longings and the violent memories that made me wake sweating in the false dawn, the dust and blood splatter that flew from L.Q. Navarro's coat the night I shot him, all these things that burned inside me, that made me ache for the absolution of a woman's thighs and breasts and the forgiveness of her mouth and the kneading pressure of her palms in the small of my back.

  I buried my face in the smell of Cleo's hair and held her tightly against me and felt my heart twist and a dam break in my loins and all the sound and light in my body enter her womb.

  I propped myself up on my arms and looked down into her face. Her stomach and thighs were moist against mine, and I was smiling at her and expected her, at least perhaps, to open her eyes lazily and smile back, her mouth ready to be kissed again. But her eyes were tightly shut, her brow creased with three deep lines, as though I had just made love to a fantasy and she was looking up into a hot sky that was tormented by carrion birds.

  And I knew what Doc had meant when he said that neither the weight of headstones nor our heartbreaking and vain attempts at re-creating first love would ever disallow the hold of the dead upon the quick.

  The next night Lamar Ellison was in a bar up the Blackfoot River, crashed on beer and reds, listening to the country band, talking to Sue Lynn, splitting a pitcher with Hollywood movie types who liked to float the Blackfoot and the Little Big Horn in safari hats and fly vests that showed off their suntans. Who knows, maybe he'd end up in the movies himself. Hey, look what happened to the Angels when they latched on to Leary and all these middle-class pukes who couldn't wait to fry their heads with Osley purple.

  There was Holly Girard over at the bar, her husband, too. Xavier was big shit with the writers' community around here. Big shit in New York and Hollywood, too. European television crews interviewed him in lowlife bars, which Lamar couldn't figure out, because why would a guy who owned a mansion above the river wan
t everybody to see him on camera with drooling rummies?

  Had Xavier heard about that rape beef? That doctor, the SEAL, was a writer or poet, too, wasn't he? Man, that wasn't good. Xavier had keys to the right doors and got an artistic buzz or something goofing with bikers and guys who'd been inside. Besides, the guy's wife was a first-rate box of chocolates.

  Lamar took the pitcher back up to the bar and stood next to Xavier, nodding at both him and his wife, blowing his cigarette smoke at an upward angle to show the right respect.

  "Hey, my man Xavier," Lamar said.

  "Yeah, Lamar, what's happenin'?" Xavier said. But his eyes were oblique, focused on the band and the dancers out on the floor, a swizzle stick deep in his jaw.

  His wife was even worse, gazing out the door, chin in the air, like her shit should be bronzed and used for paperweights.

  "I got some bad press. It was a bum beef, though. The sheriff knew it from the get-go. That's why he cut me loose. I got no bad feelings against that doctor. The dude was in Force Recon. I went to Wal-Mart to buy his book but they didn't have it," Lamar said.

  "I don't read the papers a lot, so I'm not real tuned in on it. We're about to boogie, Lamar," Xavier said.

  "How you doin', Ms. Girard?" Lamar said, leaning forward so she could see his face.

  "I'm quite well," she said. But she didn't turn her head toward him and her eyes were lowered, as though she did not want to see him even on the corner of her vision.

  "I'm a big fan," he said.

  "Thank you. That's very kind," she replied.

  He started to speak again, but she picked up her purse and walked past him to the rest room. She wore a silvery-blue dress that trembled like ice water on her rump.

  "Man, she's-" he said to Xavier.

  "She's what?" Xavier said, turning toward him.

  "Real talented." Lamar watched Xavier sip from his shot glass, then chase the whiskey with beer. The guy must have a liver the size of a football, he thought. How's a drunk fuck like that end up with money and fame and educated broads falling all over him in bookstores?

  He felt his irritability growing. "I'm starting to get a big chill here. I do something to you or your lady?" he said.