In the Moon of Red Ponies (Billy Bob Holland 4)

“They dusted off the electroshock machine, wired me up, and made blue sparks jump off my Johnson. I was definitely in the spirit when they pulled them electrodes off my head, yes sir.”

“Electroshock isn’t used anymore.”

“They said in my case they was making an exception, although they didn’t give me no explanation on that. Put me naked in an isolation cell and hosed me down with ice-cold water, too,” he said, fitting his hand on his scrotum, watching the college girl jog by a few feet away. “I’m putting together a company to provide the best rough stock on the Northwestern circuit. Horses you couldn’t hold in with a barbed wire hackamore. Need you as my legal point man.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

He seemed genuinely puzzled, his jaw hooked forward like a camel’s. “I’ll pay you top dollar, cash money, Brother Holland,” he said.

“Brother?”

“I joined a church when I was inside. You are not looking at the same Wyatt Dixon who traveled the Lost Highway and went to the Wild Side of Life where the scarlet waters flow. You have probably noticed them are lyrics written by the greatest songwriters of our time. I hope you can feel the depth of sincerity in each of them poetic words.”

“I want you to work real hard on this concept, Wyatt. You come anywhere around me or my wife or son, if you send any of your neo-Nazi friends after us, if I see that barnyard, white-trash face anywhere near—”

I stopped. Each of my statements seemed to connect with and energize a neuron inside his head, causing his face to jerk, his mouth to flex, his legs to cave, his feet to splay, as though he were being struck with invisible blasts of air. He stared at me, his eyes dilated with awe.

“I did not believe it possible, but once again your word skills has done blowed away this simple rodeo cowboy,” he said. “I know now I have chose the right man to recommend me to President Bush. God bless you, sir.”

I went inside the office. Through the window I could see him stretched out under a tree on the courthouse lawn, the side of his face propped on his hand, watching the passersby, none of whom had any idea that a man wearing a shirt stamped with the colors and design of the Stars and Stripes was thinking thoughts about them that would cause the weak of spirit to weep.

I called Temple at home, but no one answered. I called the agency where she worked as a private investigator with a man and another woman. “He was waiting for me outside the office,” I said.

“He’s going to reoffend. Just wait him out,” she said.

“Temple?”

“Yes?” she said.

“If he comes around the house and I’m not there, shoot him,” I said.

“I’ll shoot him whether you’re there or not,” she replied.

THE MORNING COURT judge was Clark Lebeau, known for his egalitarian attitudes, short tolerance for stupidity, and unusual sentences for people who thought they would simply pay a fine and be on their way. Businessmen found themselves working on the sanitation truck; animal abusers cleaned the litter boxes at the shelter; and drunk drivers mowed grass and weeded graves at the cemetery. Rumor had it he kept both a gun and a bottle of gin under the bench.

“What the hell were you doing with a pistol?” he asked from the bench.

“I guess I was gonna pawn it,” Johnny American Horse replied.

“You guess?” the judge said.

“I was pretty drunk, your honor.”

“The officers said it was under your coat. That means while you were passed out you managed to commit a felony. Where’s your goddamn brains, son?”

“Left them in the Oxford, your honor,” Johnny said.

I winced inside.

“You took a gun to a saloon?” the judge said.

“Your honor,” I began.

“Shut up, Mr. Holland,” the judge said. “You carried a gun into the Oxford?”

“I don’t remember,” Johnny said.

The judge rubbed his mouth. He was old and sometimes irritable but not an unfair man. “I’m letting you go on your own recognizance. Come back in here on a firearms charge, I’m going dig up the jail and drop it on your head. Am I making myself clear?”