“Wyatt took a lockbox that’s not his and hid it someplace. We think it’s on your property,” he said. “My buddy here is gonna fill up the bathtub now and then the three of us is gonna clear up this whole problem about where that lockbox is located. You’ll be doing a good deed. I’m here to give witness to that.”
The eye that had been shrunken to the size of a dime by the scar tissue on his face glistened brightly.
“You was raised in the church, I can tell. Why do you want to do this, boy?” Elton said.
“ ’Cause it makes me feel good,” the tall man replied.
Outside, the evening light had gone from the sky, and through the open window Elton thought he could hear the dull clatter of stones under the river’s surface and the sound of geese flying north, perhaps to a warm-water refuge that they would never have to leave.
I HAD NOT FORGOTTEN our anniversary, at least not entirely. I had bought Temple an Indian concho belt and a new western saddle, one made by a famous craftsman in Yoakum, Texas. I had iced down a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne and arranged for flowers to be delivered to the house. But after the telephone threat on her life, I had lost all consciousness of the date.
Then, rather than act on my anger and take it to Mabus with hot tongs, I had made a sacrificial offering in the form of Wyatt Dixon, and I knew in all probability I would never feel the same about myself again. I told Temple all these things, brought the saddle from the barn and splayed it across the gallery railing, popped the cork on the champagne, flopped two heavy trout wrapped in perforated tinfoil on the grill, and slipped the concho belt around Temple’s waist. She stared at me, bemused, perhaps concluding, as she often did, that the man she lived with had long ago severed his ties with the rational world.
Temple went into the bedroom and put on a white lace dress and I put on a suit, then we both put on heavy coats and ate dinner on the side gallery. The rain had stopped, and for the first time in six weeks the moon rose into a clear black sky chained with stars. The meadow was pooled with water, and elk were drinking from the pools, their tails flicking, their racks as hard-looking as sculpted bone in the moonlight. Temple lifted her wineglass to her mouth and drank, her eyes on mine. I had never known a woman who had shadows inside her eyes, but Temple did.
“What’s on your mind?” I said.
“It took courage for you to call Karsten Mabus. Back in the old days you and L.Q. would have done things differently. It’s important for you to remember that, Billy Bob. Don’t look back on what you did. You’re a brave man.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I know you better than you know yourself. I always did. You fault yourself for your violence. But when you and L.Q. did those things down on the border, you did them to protect other people.”
“L.Q. paid the price for it, Temple.”
“He knew the risks going in. He was a brave man, just like you are. Don’t treat him like a victim. Don’t do that kind of disservice to either him or yourself.”
The wind came up and made a rushing sound in the trees on the hillside, and a shower of wet pine needles sifted down the slopes of the roof. I got up from my chair and went around behind Temple and bit her softly on the neck. She reached behind her and clasped the back of my neck, pushing her fingers into my hair, tilting up her chin, her eyes closed.
We left the rest of our food uneaten and went into the bedroom. I slipped her dress over her head and lay her back on the bed, then lifted a strand of hair off her eye and kissed her mouth and the tops of her breasts and stroked her thighs. Then I undressed and lay down close against her, my body against hers, our feet, thighs, and stomachs touching, my face buried in her hair, my fingers tracing the stiffened points of her breasts.
When I was inside Temple Carrol, I could never understand how any moment of anger, fear, resentment, or suspicion could have come between us. Temple’s skin glowed with love for the man she was with. Her arms, thighs, calves, mouth, her womb, the warmth of her breathing against my cheek, were the most encompassing, unrelenting expression of loyalty and affirmation I had ever experienced. She went about making love with a selfless abandon that was both humbling and beyond what any man expects. She was never stintful, never sought her own satisfaction, and was never dependent, self-conscious, or embarrassed. In fact, she radiated a kind of visceral purity, even in the way she perspired, that made me think of flowers opening, sunshowers, a salty wave full of kelp cresting inside a groundswell.
Later I placed my ear against her stomach and listened. Her skin was moist against the side of my face, and I could hear the whirrings of the life inside her. Then I kissed her stomach and her mouth and pulled the sheet over her breasts. “Don’t catch cold. We’ve got the best baby in the history of babydom in there,” I said.
She touched my cheek with her hand.
That’s when the phone rang.
Chapter 23
IT WAS FAY HARBACK, and she wasn’t doing well with what she had to tell me. “We’ve got another homicide on the res. At the home of a minister named Elton Sneed. You know him?” she said.
“He’s a Pentecostal of some kind. Wyatt Dixon belongs to his church,” I said.
“He’s dead, drowned in his own bathtub. I just got back from there. I don’t know if I’m up to this damned job. Know that old joke about the definition of a liberal? A humanist who hasn’t been mugged yet or something like that?”
“Start over, Fay.”
“It looks like somebody held Sneed down in the bathtub, then tried to make it look like an accident. Water was all over the floor and the walls. He’d been stripped naked and dropped in the tub, but his shirt and undershirt were soaked with water and stuffed in the bottom of a clothes basket. The pants had water on the knees, and there were abrasions all over his arms and shoulders.”
I was standing in the kitchen and had to sit down in a chair as she told me the details of Elton Sneed’s death. There was a weak feeling in my chest, as though weevil worms had worked their way into my heart.
“You there?” she said.
“You have any suspects?” I asked.
“No, nobody saw anything. But that’s life on the res. Nobody sees anything, nobody knows anything, but that doesn’t stop them from complaining constantly about Whitey dumping on them and not enforcing the law. Look, Wyatt Dixon showed up while I was there and went apeshit. No, that doesn’t quite describe it.”