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

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie.”

“He came to see me a week ago. He’s got some notion I’m a river-baptized crusader or something. He said to tell you he was sorry for what he did.”

“You believe this guy’s horseshit?”

“No.”

“Then don’t tell me about it.”

We were in the parking area now. The air smelled of livestock

and heat and dry manure, and the sun was red and veiled with dust over the western hills. “I can’t keep him from coming around,” I said.

“I can,” she said. “He’ll be the deadest ex-convict in the state of Montana.”

“Why are you so angry?”

“Because Dixon can read you like a map. Your causes come before your family. Sometimes you break my heart.”

We drove home in silence. I believe it was the worst Fourth of July in my life.

THE NEXT MORNING was Saturday and I got up before Temple did, packed a lunch, and drove up Rock Creek, which is rated by outdoor magazines as one of the ten top trout streams in the United States. But I didn’t fish. In fact, I was not even sure why I was there, except for the fact the morning was cool, the woods deep in shadow, the riffle flowing over a smooth, pebbled creekbed streaked with green moss.

Soon I was back into my old, futile habit of trying to think my way out of conflict or worry. There was no doubt that Dixon had set the hook, either consciously or by accident. I was baptized at age nine under a canopy of hardwood trees that were turning to flame against the blue outline of the Ozark Mountains. The preacher who leaned me back under the water had a face like a horse and teeth like barrel slats. The water was spring-fed and cold, and my skin burned as though it had been held over a cool fire. I broke the surface gasping for air and my father wrapped me in his World War II Army shirt, one with an Indian-head Second Division patch on the sleeve, while the preacher clog-danced on a wood platform, Bible in hand, and the congregation thundered out “I Saw the Light.”

But perhaps the ritual was less important than what the preacher told me afterwards, or at least as I recall his words: “You done been joined in spirit to God, to earth, to sky, to water and trees. Jesus is your light, your sword and shield. There ain’t no place in his kingdom you don’t belong. You ain’t never got to be afraid again.”

But I cannot say my baptism made me a good Christian. I know for certain L. Q. Navarro and I killed at least seven men. I believe they deserved what they got and the world is a better place without them. But my latent desire for violent recourse did not die with them. The Hollands were violent people, going all the way back to our patriarch, Son Holland, who fought against Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jac-into. The penchant in our family for red-black rage and the shedding of blood lay as strong a claim on our souls as a genetic desire for alcohol. Except that drunkards are consumed by their own energies. The Hollands were not.

A helicopter flew by overhead, low over the canopy, filling the canyon with the roar of its blades. I watched it tip upward into the sunlight, climbing abruptly over a wooded hill, then circle back toward me, the pilot as tiny as a bug inside the Plexiglas. Deer and a moose spooked out of the trees, clattering over stone, then the helicopter lifted once again over a hill and was gone.

It was after 8 A.M. I called home on my cell phone, but Temple didn’t pick up. A family in a campground was cooking breakfast, and an old man and a young boy who was probably his grandson were fishing in a pool behind a beaver dam, the current cutting around the tops of their waders. The old man helped the boy unhook a rainbow and put it in his creel, then the two of them walked up on the bank and joined their relatives in the campground.

I thought of my own father and mother, both gone now, and the town in the Texas hill country where I had grown up, a place of green rivers, fried-chicken picnics, and downtown streets that still had elevated sidewalks with tethering rings set in them. I fed my packed lunch to a family of red squirrels and walked back toward my truck. The mystics may have found solace in the meditative life, but I think there are days when memory and solitude are not one’s friend.

I was only a short distance down the road when a black car with tinted windows cut me off and a second one pulled in behind me. Two men in suits and shades stepped out of the first car and approached both sides of my truck. The one closest to me opened his identification. “Mr. Mabus would like to invite you for coffee or a brunch,” he said.

Farther up the road a steel-gray limo was parked in the dappled shade of cottonwood trees. Beyond the trees, I saw the helicopter that had buzzed the creek sitting idly in an open field where the grass was turning yellow, the pilot smoking a cigarette.

“That’s a P.I. badge, partner. It doesn’t carry a lot of weight on a rural road in western Montana,” I said to the man at my window.

“Whatever you say, sir. But Mr. Mabus would like the pleasure of your company,” he replied. He was thick-necked, his blond hair neatly combed, his gaze focused down the road so as not to give the impression his eyes were being invasive behind his shades.

“Need you to move your vehicle,” I said.

“Yes, sir, we’ll gladly do that. Will you first walk over and speak to Mr. Mabus?” He removed his shades and tried to smile. His facial skin was like pig hide, his eyes dead-looking in the same way a barroom bouncer’s are.

“All right, brother,” I said.

He opened the door for me and continued to hold it while I got out on the road. “You want to take your hat, sir?” he asked.

“No, because I’ll be coming right back. Then we’ll have this bullshit behind us,” I replied.

He smiled again, his eyes unfocused.

But I was making a point to the hired help, a man for whom restraint was built into his paycheck. The very fact that I was approaching Karsten Mabus’s limo indicated I was accepting his imperious behavior. He pushed open the back door and waited for me to get in. He was dressed in the soft, earth-tone fabrics of a gentleman rancher or horse breeder, one arm propped across the top of the creamy, rolled leather seat. Two young women in pin-striped suits and white hose sat across from him, their knees close together, their hands folded in their laps. “Please join us for a late breakfast or an early lunch,” he said.