Light of the World (Dave Robicheaux 20)

“In my opinion, that’s wishful thinking. That wolf is not afraid. He knows there’s food here.”

“It’s nature’s way.”

“If that wolf had its way, it would have grabbed one of your horses by its face, pulled it down on the ground, and ripped out its throat.”

“I guess that’s possible.”

This is not a rational discussion. Don’t say anything else, I told myself.

The creek bed in the pasture was swollen with rainwater and running brown and fast over the banks in the grass, the cottonwoods dripping, the clouds of fog in the fir and pine trees so white and thick that we couldn’t see the tops of the hills.

“I wish you hadn’t shot toward the end of the pasture, Dave,” Albert said. “There’s a house inside that box canyon.”

“I know where it is. My angle was such that even if the bullet ricocheted, it would have gone into the hillside. I exposed no one to risk when I took those shots.”

“Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

“You want me to walk down there and knock on the door? I’d be happy to do that.”

“I said forget it. I’m sure they’re fine.”

Albert really knew how to plant the harpoon. “Who lives there?” I asked.

“A part-time preacher and his wife and two teenage daughters,” he replied. “I’ll talk to them later, in case they wonder why we were shooting down here.”

I ejected the spent cartridge from the chamber into the mud, and the rounds from the magazine, and did not bother to pick up the unfired rounds. I think I stepped on them and pressed them into the mud. I closed the bolt and handed Albert his rifle. “The next time I try to save your horses from a predator, please reload this and shoot me, and after you’ve shot me, please shoot yourself. The world will be better off all the way around.”

“What set you off?” he asked.

CLETE HAD MADE a lifetime practice of not arguing with fate. He had also accepted the harsh reality that most experience, whether good or bad, comes at a price. Was a hangover worth the experience of the previous night? Rarely if ever, he would probably reply, though he repeated the same behavior over and over. Was falling in love worth the cost? He didn’t have to dwell on the answer to that one. Life had no value if it didn’t contain love.

Was there any worse fate than not loving another and not being loved in turn? If the color gray could be applied to an emotional condition, it was a life without affection or human warmth. The absence of love ensured depression, resentment of self, feelings of guilt and fear and hostility, and an inexplicable sense of personal failure that tainted every relationship and social situation. If you wished to destroy a person, at least in Clete’s opinion, you only needed to teach him that he was not acceptable in the eyes of God or his fellow man.

These were the lessons he had to learn as a child in order to survive. He didn’t talk about the dues he’d paid, and he considered self-pity the bane of the human race. The downside of his stoicism was the emotional isolation it imposed upon him.

On Thursday morning Clete arranged to meet Felicity Louviere in downtown Missoula. He thought they would visit a fly and tackle shop or perhaps investigate the antique and secondhand stores by the railroad tracks, or just enjoy the weather, the way other couples did. And that was what they did, under a blue sunlit sky that seemed to stretch infinitely over the horizon. At noon they ended up at a grocery store and deli that had been open since the late nineteenth century. They ordered salads and cold drinks and sandwiches bulging with sliced meat and cheese and lettuce and tomatoes, and found a table outside, under the canvas awning flapping in the breeze. The lampposts were hung with ventilated steel baskets that overflowed with petunias; bicyclists in spandex togs powered through the traffic; the mountains and hills surrounding the town were green from the spring rains, the air as pure and clean as wind blowing off a glacier.

There was only one problem: Clete had brought his own rain cloud with him, and he didn’t know how to make it go away without paying a price that so far he had not been willing to pay.

She ducked her head until she made his eyes meet hers. “You’re deep in thought,” she said.

“It’s my kid. I think she’s getting a bad deal.”

“With the sheriff?”

“People are trying to kill her, but she gets rousted. I’d call that a bad deal. This guy who ended up with a pistol ball in his head? What’s-his-name?”

“Tony Zappa. He was part of Love’s grounds crew.”

“That’s not all he was. When he wasn’t clipping hedges, he was raping the girlfriend of this character Wyatt Dixon.”

“I didn’t know him, Clete. Love hires ex-felons. I think that’s how he convinces himself all the other things he does don’t matter.”

“What other things?”

“Political intrigue. Despoiling the environment. Bribing Arabs. Whatever works. He grew up in a dirt-floor shack and thinks of the world as a shark tank.”

“Because guys like him are in it, that’s why.”