Bitterroot

by James Lee Burke

"Sue Lynn didn't call. I don't blame her. She tried to tell me all along she was in over her head. It don't seem right, though."

  "What's that?"

  "She's on the run and all them other people-that fellow Wyatt Dixon and Witherspoon and the people who killed her little brother-these guys just go on hurting folks and nobody does anything about it."

  "Eventually they'll go down," I said. "It sure does take a long time," he replied. He got up from the rock he was sitting on and rinsed his tin plate and cup and fork and meat knife in the river, then scrubbed them with sand and rinsed them clean again and put them into his grub box. He poured the coffeepot on the fire and refilled it with water and doused the fire a second time while steam boiled off the stones in the fire ring.

  Both our fly rods were propped against his tent, the dry flies snugged into the cork handles, the tapered leaders tight inside the guides. He picked both rods up and handed me mine.

  "Come on, there's a fat rainbow up yonder that wants to add your flies to his underwater collection," he said.

  "You're growing up on me, bud," I said.

  He looked back over his shoulder at me, not quite sure what to make of the remark.

  WHEN THE LETTER for Wyatt Dixon arrived at the compound, delivered by a nervous florist gripping a handful of pink and blue balloons, Wyatt was out in the equipment lot, barefoot and bare-chested, his jeans on so tight they looked like they'd split, working on Carl Hinkel's tractor engine. Wyatt paused a wrench on a nut and stared over his shoulder at the florist, then walked to the fence and took the letter and clutch of balloons from the florist's hands.

  "Sir, you look like you're fixing to piss your pants," Wyatt said.

  "No, sir. I wouldn't do that."

  "Good. Get out of here," Wyatt said.

  He thumbed open the envelope and read the letter inside, the wind blowing the paper, the tethered ribbons on the balloons tugging in his hand.

  Terry watched Wyatt's face. Wyatt had only two expressions. One was the idiot's grin off a jack-o'-lantern. The other was a nonexpression, a total absence of any feeling or thought or content whatsoever, at least not any that could be seen. It made Terry think of a clay mask that a sculptor might have molded on an exhumed skull, with prosthetic eyes stuffed into the sockets.

  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.

  Chapter 30

  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.

  "That ATF agent, Rackley, the one who was hassling you?" he said.

  "What about him?"

  "He called while you were still asleep. He left this number," Doc said.

  "He must be an early riser," I said.

  "Why you been sleeping with L.Q.'s gun on your nightstand the last couple of nights?"

  "I sent a letter to Wyatt Dixon and told him a few things about Witherspoon, including the fact he had AIDS."

  Doc nodded reflectively. "Where'd you come by all this information?" he asked.

  "Temple got ahold of Witherspoon's welfare and juvie records. I made up the stuff about AIDS."

  Doc got up from his chair and propped his hands on the windowsill and stared out at the morning.

  "I thought I had an iron bolt through both temples," he said.

  I shaved and brushed my teeth and dressed and called the number Amos Rackley had left.

  "Meet me inside the University of Montana football stadium in a half hour," he said.

  "What for?"

  "I have something for you. You bring anybody with you, I'm gone."

  I drove through Hellgate Canyon and took the university exit and parked by the stadium. A half dozen hang gliders were floating on the breezes high up on Mount Sentinel, their shadows swooping across the green slopes beneath them. I walked into the great emptiness of the stadium and saw Amos Rackley sitting twenty rows up on the fifty-yard line.

  He wore shades and a brown rain hat and an open-neck checkered shirt and khakis and sandals with white socks. He could have been an academic who had strolled off for a moment's respite from his summer classes. For the first time I noticed a religious chain around his neck.

  "Open your shirt for me, would you?" he said.

  "That's a little silly, isn't it?" I said.

  "So you don't have to be offended," he replied, and waited.

  I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it out of my trousers and turned in a circle.

  "Sit down and let me explain something, although you probably already know the drill," he said. A manila envelope rested on his knees. "All federal law enforcement agencies use informants. A good agent flips the right guy and puts a lot of nasty people in the gray-bar hotel chain. But once in a while an agent gets too jacked up on a case and forgets he's allowed a sociopath to run loose with a baseball bat."

  "You're talking about Lamar Ellison?"

  "As time went by we became more and more convinced he and some other bikers tried to kidnap Cleo Lonnigan's child. The father probably showed up and the bikers killed them both. We couldn't prove it, though, so we gave Ellison a long leash and used him."

  "Except you didn't nail anybody and Carl Hinkel probably had other children kidnapped and sold to perverts, including Sue Lynn's little brother?"

  Rackley looked out at Hellgate Canyon and the wind bending the ponderosa along the edges of the cliffs and the hang gliders that hovered and dipped against the immense blueness of the sky.

  "I quit the Bureau," he said. "There are two signed and notarized affidavits in this envelope. One is from Sue Lynn Big Medicine, admitting she set fire to Lamar Ellison. The other statement is from me, describing her role as an informant for the ATE If anyone wants to question either her or me, I wish them good luck, get my drift?"

  He placed the envelope in my hands.

  "They'll come after you," I said.

  "Could be. I doubt it. A stock brokerage doesn't prosecute the employees it fires for embezzlement." He got up from his seat and removed his hat and ran his hand through his close-cropped hair, then replaced his hat and looked at the panorama of mountains that enclosed the city.

  "I hear the Canadian Rockies are great this time of year," I said.

  "I've always been a flatlander. Stay away from Carl Hinkel's compound, Mr. Holland, unless you want to end up on a recording."

  "You finally got a wire inside?"

  "Put it this way. I've got the sense somebody unscrewed Wyatt Dixon's head and spit inside it. You don't happen to know anything about that, do you?"

  "Not a thing," I said, my gaze fixed straight ahead.

  He walked down the cement steps to the exit. He didn't look back.

  Wyatt Dixon had a simple vision of life. You ate your pain, you shined the world on, and you accepted inequity as the natural state of man. The only unforgivable sin was personal betrayal.

  The paling of the sky at dawn, the place the sun occupied at noon or twilight, the rain or ice or drought that wore away the surfaces of the earth had nothing to do with a man's fate. You took your first breath with a slap. If you were lucky, your mouth found a teat before you starved. You grew out of your own excretions and ate what you were given, carried slop to hogs, shucked chicken feathers in scalding water, split smokehouse wood, chopped and picked cotton, punched and dehorned cows, shot mustangs and wild burros for dog food contractors, and maybe put your seed in a Mexican girl inside a bean field. Then, one morning, at age fifteen, you walked past the waiting school bus to the train tracks and climbed aboard a freight that carried you all the way to Big D and an Army enlistment center.

  Wyatt liked the Army. He liked the food, the good clothes, the PX beer, the access to fine guns. The problem was the Army didn't like Wyatt. Or at least the black mess sergeant didn't after Wyatt asked him if he had a tail tucked inside his pants.

  The base psychiatrist said Wyatt had antisocial tendencies. The mess sergeant probably agreed after Wyatt broke his nose with a bottle behind a bar in San Antonio and cut his stripes off and stuffed them into his mouth.

  While he was in the stockade waiting for his uncle to show up with a birth certificate, Wyatt tried to figure how to avoid getting himself jammed up like this again. He finally figured it out. Stay off the computer.

  He traveled the country as a roustabout for a tent preacher, milked rattlesnakes for a veterinarian in West Kansas, slaughtered cattle below the border, daily pumped a hard rubber ball five hundred times in each palm, and by age twen
ty-one was a fullblown rodeo clown, fearless, twice hooked and slammed into the boards, able to knock a horse unconscious with his fist or snap a steer's spinal cord with his bare hands.

  Beer-joint women kissed his fingers and men feared them. He chewed cigars like plug tobacco, sewed his own wounds, asked no favors, drank tequila like water, borrowed no money, carried all of his possessions in a cardboard suitcase, read a new comic book every night, wore two-hundred-dollar hats, and stitched an American flag as a liner inside the duster he wore in rainy or cold weather.

  But it was the greasepaint grin that bothered his rodeo cohorts. When Wyatt wiped the grease off his face, the lunatic expression was still there, accentuated by eyes that were full of invasiveness and light that had no origin. A female barrel racer claimed he raped her. The board members of the RCA tried to ban him from the circuit.

  So what? The good life was always there, sleeping in a bedroll under the stars, sometimes shacking up in a trailer, carrying plenty of cash, drinking beer and eating Mexican food whenever he wanted and grilling steaks in roadside parks up in the high desert. Everybody loved a cowboy. This was a great country, by God.

  The only problems in life came from disloyalty. That's what Carl Hinkel didn't understand. A man who claimed to be a patriot and should have known better. But Wyatt knew that under the pose of the Virginia gentleman Carl was weak and dependent. That in itself was forgivable. But ingratitude and disrespect were a form of betrayal, and that was not.

  After Carl had called him "boy" and Wyatt had rubbed Carl's nose in it, Carl had tried to straighten it out in the dining room, in front of a half dozen others. Big mistake.

  Wyatt was at the steam table, bagging up a lunch to eat out on the riverbank.

  "I can't abide a soldier sassing me like that, Wyatt,* Carl said.

  "Is that right?" Wyatt said, without looking up from the sandwich he was making.

  "You were out of line, son," Carl said.

  Wyatt filled the side of a butter knife with mustard and layered it on his sandwich bread, nodding, as though digesting a profound statement.