"You're going on the stand, baby cakes. Get used to it," she said.
Later, Maisey got into Doc's truck with a shopping list and headed down the dirt road toward the main highway and the small, independent grocery store in Bonner. As she approached the log bridge over the Blackfoot she saw a low-slung red car in her rearview mirror. The bridge trembled under her as she rumbled across the wood planks and a dust cloud blew out on the water and disappeared in the current. When she swung out onto the highway she looked back briefly and saw the red car again and this time she recognized Terry Witherspoon behind the wheel.
He followed her all the way into Bonner, through the quiet stretch of tree-shaded, company-owned houses, past the sawmill and the piles of green lumber stacked next to waiting train cars, past the normal world that most people lived in, then around a bend in the road to the grocery store parking lot. She got out of the truck and started inside, then went back and locked the door, even though she left the window open.
Terry Witherspoon pulled in close to the store entrance and was now waving at her, as though the only problem between them was her failure to recognize who he was.
Then he got out of his car, smiling at her above the top of the door.
"Didn't you see me back there?" he said.
"Right," she said.
He was dressed in khaki slacks and shined loafers and a gold and burgundy University of Montana sweater.
"I was coming up to your house when you zoomed on past me," he said.
"You were hiding on the side road."
"I wasn't," he said, crinkling his nose under his glasses, waiting to see if she would refute the lie. When she didn't she could see the vindication grow in his face. "Your father attacked me in front of all those people at the concert. I took you home that night when the football players were going to hurt you. I got in a lot of trouble with Wyatt over that."
"You buried a woman alive. You're disgusting. Get out of here," she said.
"You don't know what you're saying. That Indian bitch caused all this."
"Caused what?" Maisey said, then realized she had stepped into the trap of arguing with a person who had probably never told the truth about anything in his life.
"She got those federal agents killed. They're gonna blame Wyatt or me. Everything's coming apart. I had a lot of plans," he said. Then he seemed to grow more passionate, more unjustly injured, his eyes magnifying behind his glasses. "I bought a camera. I want to take pictures of you. Down on the river."
The fact that he was speaking intimately to her, as though she were part of his world, made her stomach turn. She rushed inside the store and got a basket and pushed it down the aisle, trying to concentrate on the list in her hand.
Out in the parking lot Terry Witherspoon stood by Doc's truck, chewing on a hangnail, glaring at the traffic.
"Is everything all right, miss?" the butcher said. He was an Indian, wrapped around the middle with a red-stained apron.
"Yes. Fine," she replied.
"You know that fellow out there?" he asked.
"Not really."
"He was in here once before. That's why he's not in here now. You let me know if he bothers you," the butcher said.
Fifteen minutes later she wheeled her basket loaded with sacked groceries back into the parking lot. Terry Witherspoon was waiting for her, tossing his head to clear a strand of hair from his glasses.
"When I saw you through the window, in the shower that night, you were as beautiful as a movie star," he said. When she didn't answer he started to lift one of the sacks from the basket.
"Don't touch that," she sai
d. "I want to help you."
"Don't put your hands on our food. Get away from my basket."
The wind blew his hair across his glasses. He continued to stare at her as though he could not assimilate what he was being told. Then he said, "Shit on you."
She loaded her groceries into the bed of the pickup, trying to ignore the closeness of his body and the smell of deodorant that rose from his clothes. She got into the truck and started the engine, but Witherspoon remained standing by her window.
"I can't see the street," she said.