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

“Turn over your material to the media. You can do it anonymously.”

“It would never see the light of day.”

“I tried,” I said.

“Yeah, you did. Go burn a candle to yourself. I wish the tribal bondsmen hadn’t shafted you. One of them just made a down payment on a new house. Not on the res, either, since he’s obviously moving up in life. You got screwed and so did we and so did your friend the FBI agent. I don’t have anything else to say, except ta-ta. That’s the way it shakes out sometimes.”

I went back outside, got in my Avalon, and turned around on the edge of the yard. The air was dry and I could see a smoky sheen rising into the sky from fires that were burning close to Glacier National Park. Amber came out on the porch and waved for me to stop. The anger and self-manufactured cynicism had gone out of her face, replaced by a vulnerability I didn’t normally associate with her.

“Do you ever hear from my father?” she said.

“No, I don’t.”

“He was in town. I thought he might have called.”

“Sometimes my answering machine is off when the office is closed.”

“He’s mad about my marrying Johnny, but he always checks on me through third parties. That’s why I was asking,” she said.

I wanted to tell her to be careful, to wrap herself in whatever spiritual shield ancient deities could provide her. But how do you caution a fawn about a cigarette a motorist has just flipped from his car window into a patch of yellow grass, or tell a sparrow that winged creatures eventually plummet to earth?

THAT EVENING Temple and I moved about the house in silence, clicking on the cable news, clicking it off again when the other entered the room, busying ourselves in our self-imposed solitude with inconsequential chores, as though our feigned solemnity were a successful disguise for our depression and mutual resentment.

It was dusk, the valley purple with shadow, when she finally spoke out of more than necessity. “Wyatt Dixon called the house today. He wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I didn’t give him a chance to say. I told him I’d report him to the sheriff’s office if he called again.”

“I’ll have a talk with him.”

“He’s worthless. Let him alone.”

She walked down to the barn and turned on the valve that fed the irrigation line to the pasture. In the distance I saw the water burst from the pipe and spray in the wind. Then she came back in the house, showered, and went to bed. I went into the den I used as a home office and sat in the dark with L. Q. Navarro’s holstered .45 revolver in my lap. It was a beautiful firearm, blue-black, perfectly balanced, with yellowed ivory grips and a gold-plated trigger guard and hammer. I sometimes wondered if my fondness for holding L.Q.’s revolver wasn’t a form of fetish, but actually I didn’t care whether it was or not. I loved guns then and I love them now, just as I loved L.Q. and his courage and his manly smell and his confidence that regardless of what we did, we were always on the side of justice.

The moon above the hills was the same pale yellow as the ivory on L.Q.’s revolver. I could hear heavy animals cracking through the underbrush on the slope behind the house and pinecones pinging off the metal roof when the wind gusted hard out of the trees. For a moment I thought I saw L.Q. moving about in the shadows, his jaws slack, his white shirt water-stained from the grave, death’s hold on him not up for debate.

In my mind’s eye I saw the beer garden strung with paper lanterns where we attended dances in Monterrey; the times he and Temple and I ate Mexican dinners in a sidewalk café by the San Antonio River, only two blocks from the Alamo; the ancient Spanish mission where he was married and I stood as his best man, the same mission where his wife’s funeral Mass would be celebrated six months later.

L.Q. and I had lived a violent life, marked by death and memories of nocturnal events that made me doubt our humanity, but it had its moments. I just wished I could reclaim them.

I felt Temple’s hand on my shoulder. “I’ve acted badly,” she said.

Her nightgown was backlit by the moon, and I could see the outline of her body inside it.

“No, you haven’t. You warned me about Johnny, but I walked into a buzz saw,” I said.

“Your goodness is your weakness. People use it against you. That’s why I get mad.”

“I don’t believe Johnny and Amber meant to hurt us.”

“We’re not going to lose our home, Billy Bob. We’re going to find out who’s behind all this and make their lives miserable.”

“L.Q. couldn’t have said it better.”

“What are you doing with his gun?”

“I hear sounds out in the woods. Sometimes I think it’s L.Q.”