Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"She said the biker's whole name to me-Lamar Ellison. Like she wanted to make sure I'd remember it and tell somebody else."

"I'd like to forget those people," Cleo said.

"She made me for a cop. Two kinds of people can do that. Jailwise hard cases and other cops."

"Who cares what a person like that does?" she said.

I didn't pursue it.

The girl was joined at the fence by two men in scalped haircuts. They could have been bikers or paratroopers on furlough, but in all likelihood they were simply brain-dead misogynists who daily had to convince themselves of their gender.

A third man, with white hair and a trimmed white beard, joined them. He smoked a corncob pipe and stood very stiffly while he talked to the others, never quite looking at them, his gaze wandering around the arena and the stands, as though the environment around him was subject to his approval.

"I've seen that guy's picture," I said.

"That's Carl Hinkel. He's head of the militia movement here. They have a way of showing up in small towns that can't afford a police force," she said.

A rider climbed down on top of a bull in a bucking chute, working his gloved hand under the bull rope. The bull was rearing its head, blowing mucus, hooking its horns against wood, while the rider tied down his hand with what rodeo people call a suicide wrap. He straightened slightly, humped his shoulders, and clamped his legs tightly into the bull's ribs.

"Outside!" he hollered, his right hand in the air.

The gate to the chute flew open, and the bull exploded into the arena, a cowbell clanging on its neck, its body twisting, hooves slashing at the air, barely missing the two rodeo clowns who stood by the chute behind a rubber barrel.

The bull came down hard on its forequarters, jarring the rider's tailbone, then twisted in mid-stride and reared its head into the rider's face. The rider bounced once on the bull's back, one leg stabbing at the air for balance. Then he was over the side.

Except his gloved hand was caught under the bull rope, the arm bent backward, the rider's body flopping against the bull like a cloth doll's.

A brown balloon of dust rose from the arena as the bull spun in a circle, whipping the rider into the dirt, stomping him under its hooves, trying to hook the rider with one horn.

One of the clowns, a man wearing polka-dot pants, a striped cowboy shirt, firehouse suspenders, football cleats, and an orange fright wig and bowler hat, got in the bull's face, hitting its nose with his hat, actually stiff-arming it up the snout, directing its rage at himself while the other clown jerk

ed loose the flank strap and dragged the rider free of the bull's hooves.

The crowd had risen to their feet, first in horror, then in relief and admiration as they witnessed the bravery of the clowns and the rescue of the rider.

For some reason the scene in the arena seemed to freeze, as in a photograph, but with a wrong detail, one that was out of sync, a flaw in what should have been a tribute to what is best in us. The bull was gone now, through a gate at the far end of the arena. The paramedics were working the rider onto a stretcher. He lifted his hand to the crowd and grinned weakly, his face streaked with dust and blood. The clown who had freed the rider's trapped hand from under the bull rope picked up the rider's hat and carried it over to his stretcher.

But the man who had behaved most bravely, the clown in the orange wig, never looked at the downed rider. Instead, he fitted the stub of a narrow cigar between his teeth and lighted it and looked up at the stands, smoking, his greasepaint grin like a fool's at a funeral.

He climbed over the slat fence by the bucking chutes, dropped to the ground, and accepted a can of soda from the militia leader, the white-bearded man named Carl Hinkel. He drank until the can was empty, his Adam's apple working steadily, and crunched the can in his palm and tossed it into a trash barrel. Then he studied the crowd again, and I would have sworn his eyes settled on me.

He walked to the bottom of the stairs that led to our seats, his cleats clicking on the concrete, and pointed into the stands, as though recognizing an old friend.

"Billy Bob?" Cleo said.

"Yes?"

"I think that man's trying to get our attention."

"I don't know any rodeo clowns."

She looked down at the program in her hand. When she glanced up again, her hand touched the top of my wrist.

"He's coming up here. Billy Bob, look at his eyes," she said, staring straight ahead.

They were recessed and wide-set, filled with an irreverent, invasive light.

He walked up the stairs two steps at a time, his legs lifting him effortlessly. He stopped at our row and pulled off his fright wig and held it on his heart.