Bitterroot (Billy Bob Holland 3)

"I'm a great admirer of womanhood, son. I respect every part of their God-made bodies, and this 'un here done won my heart a long time ago. Now go over yonder and sit down and drink you a soda pop. Ask your daddy to tell you about my sister, Katie Jo Winset. Her fate was a great Texas tragedy."

Dixon reached out with two forked knuckles toward Lucas's nose, but Lucas stepped backward and slapped Dixon's hand away, disbelieving the insult to his person even as it took place. Dixon smiled and glanced toward the purple glow on the hills, breathing in the heavy fragrance of the evening, then lowered his hand between Lucas and Sue Lynn and fastened it on Lucas's scrotum. That's when Lucas hit him.

The blow knocked Dixon's hat off his head, but the grin never left his face.

"I still got your package in my hand, boy. You want, I can tear it out root and stem," he said.

I swung my fist into Dixon's ear but it was like hitting stone. He turned his head slowly toward me, his ear bleeding, his right hand tightening on my son's genitalia.

"I'm gonna come for you, Mr. Holland. You'll smell me in the dark, then you'll feel my hand fasten on you, and the next day you'll be somebody else," he said.

I swung my fist into his mouth and felt the edges of his teeth cut into my skin. Then his friends were upon me.

The fight rolled through the concession area. I can't describe what happened with any certitude, because since I had been a young boy anger had always affected me in the same way whiskey does a drunkard. I would hear whirring sounds in my ears, then I would be inside a dead zone filled with shards of red and yellow light, a place where I felt neither physical pain nor any form of moral restraint.

I remember being knocked into the side of a horse tank, of hearing hooves thudding inside the livestock pens, then picking up a shaved wooden pole, about four foot in length, and smashing it into the face of a man who had a swastika tattooed between his eyes. I kicked a man who was on the ground, hard, in the spleen, and again in the head. Women were screaming, an overweight rent-a-cop was flung into a water puddle, and I swung the wood pole like a baseball bat and saw blood fly against the canvas side of a tepee and saw the man I'd hit fall on his knees and weep.

But it was Wyatt Dixon I wanted. As in a dream, I flailed at my attackers, but the source of my rage stood on the edge of the fray and grinned, adjusting the garters on his sleeves, one ear leaking a scarlet line down his jawbone.

The rent-a-cop struggled to his feet from the water puddle, wheezing for breath, his uniform flecked with mud. The strap on his revolver had popped loose and the checkered handle protruded loosely from the holster, the heavy, brass-cased rounds fat and snug inside the cylinder.

I pushed someone out of the way and reached for the revolver. Then I heard horse's hooves and suddenly the side of an enormous buckskin mare knocked me senseless into a rick fence.

I stared up from the ground at the silhouette of the rider. He was huge, the backs of his hands traced with scar tissue, his face a mixture of pity and incomprehension.

"I ain't playing with you, son. I'll whip you with a blackjack if I have to," he said.

Then I felt the world come back into focus and saw Temple and Lucas bending down toward me, touching me with their hands.

"Why, how you doin', Sheriff?" I said to the man on horseback. "You like Merle Haggard?"

Chapter 14

My wrists were cuffed behind my back, and I was put in a holding cell at the county jail, where I stayed, without being booked, until early the next morning.

Sheriff Cain walked dow

n the corridor behind a trusty who was wheeling a food cart from cell to cell. The sheriff picked up a Styrofoam container of scrambled eggs and tiny sausages and a cup of coffee and a cellophane-wrapped plastic fork from the tray and set them on the apron of the food slit.

"Them three skinheads you whacked with that pole are still in the hospital," he said.

"Gee, I'm sorry to hear that," I replied.

"I was gonna ride in the parade last night. I was really looking forward to it. Somebody should glue warning labels on you. You're a traveling shit storm."

"Do I get out of here?"

"You got a bloodlust, Mr. Holland. I seen it in your face."

"I don't apologize for it."

"Then I hope you can live with it, 'cause it'll plumb eat you up. A federal agent wants to talk with you. When he's done, I'll kick you loose," the sheriff said, and walked away heavily, like a man who knew his knowledge of the world would never have an influence upon it.

I sat down on the bench in the cell and drank from the Styrofoam coffee cup. Amos Rackley, the ATF agent who had told me he'd break my nose off if I put it in government business again, walked to the cell door and propped his arms across a horizontal iron plate, then removed them and dusted off his sleeves.

His face was smooth-grained and handsome, his sandy hair neatly parted. He took a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and kept clicking the button on top with his thumb.

"Can you explain to me what your son is doing with Sue Lynn Big Medicine?" he said.