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

The reception was in a saloon, the dinner a pig and half of a buffalo barbecued over a pit of flaming wood dug in a grove of cottonwoods. The orchestra was a western string band put together by my son, Lucas, and the dance was held on a cement pad under a lilac sky, the snow on the Missions red in the sunset, the music of Bob Wills and Rose Maddox floating out over a countryside knee-deep in alfalfa and pooled with duck ponds.

Everyone important in Amber’s life was there. Except for her father, United States Senator Romulus Finley.

SENATOR FINLEY was at my office by 8 A.M. Monday. When he didn’t find me there, he went to the courthouse, where I was involved in a trial, and caught me in the corridor outside the courtroom. “What in the goddamn hell do you think you’re doing, son?” he said, his grip biting into my arm.

“I’d appreciate your taking your hand off my person,” I said.

“A murderer just married my daughter, and you helped him do it.”

“I’m not going to ask you again,” I said.

He released me and took a step back. “I won’t put up with this bullshit, Mr. Holland.”

“I think you embarrass yourself, sir,” I said.

“Say that again?”

“Your daughter is a good person. Why don’t you show her a little respect?”

“Son, I’m just about a half inch from busting you between the lights.”

“My father was a stringer-bead welder on gaslines all over the Southwest. He was a fine man and called me ‘son.’ Other men don’t.”

“Have it your way. As far as I’m concerned, Johnny American Horse is a subversive and a traitor. He’s taken advantage of my daughter’s naïveté and you, an educated man and officer of the court, have helped him do it. I won’t put up with it.”

He walked back down the corridor toward the courthouse entrance, his leather soles loud, his meaty shoulders and neck framed against the light outside.

I should have dismissed the insult, even the implied threat, as the expression of wounded pride in a childish man. But there wa

s something about Finley that was hard to abide, a prototypical personality any southerner recognizes—one characterized by a combination of self-satisfaction, stupidity, and a suggestion of imminent violence, all of it glossed over with a veneer of moral and patriotic respectability.

I followed him down the sidewalk through the maples on the courthouse lawn to a steel-gray limousine with charcoal-tinted windows that was parked by the curb. He opened the back door to get in, and on the far side of the leather seat I saw a man in his fifties who had a good-natured face, blond hair that was white on the tips, a smile that was both familiar and likable. His eyes were friendly and warm, his teeth almost perfect. There were gin roses in his face, but they gave his countenance a vulnerability and consequently a greater humanity. I was sure I knew him and at the same time equally sure we had never met.

Romulus Finley started to raise a remonstrative finger at me, but his companion leaned over so he could look at both of us and said, “Now, now, let’s don’t have this. Mr. Holland, take a ride with us. We’ll have coffee at a dandy place on the river.”

“Thank you just the same, but I have an issue here with Senator Finley,” I replied.

“Whatever it is, we can work it out,” Finley’s companion replied. He stretched out his arm and handed me a business card that was inserted between two of his fingers. “My home phone is on the back. I’m impressed with your legal reputation. Your father died in a natural gas blowout down in Texas, didn’t he? I bet he’d be mighty proud of you today.”

“What did you say about my father?”

“Call me,” he said. “I’d like to help you cut through some of the problems you’re encountering.”

He was still smiling at me when Finley got in the limo and closed the door. I stared dumbly at the tinted back window of the limo as it drove away, then looked at the business card in my hand. The name on it was KARSTEN MABUS.

THAT EVENING, Temple and I fixed sliced chicken and mayonnaise sandwiches and iced tea and fruit salad for dinner and took it out on the side gallery to eat. The sky was blue above the valley, the sunlight a pale yellow on the hillsides, and hawks floated above the trees up in the saddles. But I couldn’t concentrate on either our conversation or the loveliness of the evening. I wiped my mouth with a napkin and pushed away my plate.

“Want to tell me what happened today?” Temple said.

“I had a run-in with Senator Finley. He seems to think I’m responsible for his daughter marrying Johnny American Horse.”

“Tell him to grow up.”

“I think I did, but I don’t remember. I was pretty angry.”

“So that’s what’s been on your mind all day?”

“Finley was with another man. I’d swear I know him but I don’t know from where. He gave me his business card.”