Light of the World (Dave Robicheaux 20)

Tell Ms. Horowitz she should stay out of the boys’ room or someone will think she’s not all girl.

Are you still interested in doing a book on me? I think there’s enough material for a movie. I will tell you later who I would like to see cast in my role.

As ever,

A.

WYATT DIXON HAD never been keen on picnics, at least not until Bertha Phelps called and invited him to go on one way up the Blackfoot Valley, a lovely spot she said she’d found on a drainage that flowed down through cottonwood trees into the river. When she met him at the bridge by his house, she was wearing a flowery sundress and a straw hat with a blue band and brand-new white tennis shoes that looked cute on her large feet. She was carrying a wicker basket loaded with cheese and cold cuts and potato salad and French bread from the deli, plus a half-gallon capped jar of homemade lemonade. “You put me in mind of this countrywoman who drove an ice cream truck out to the rural area where I growed up,” he said. “She had apples in her cheeks and smelled like peach ice cream. I asked her once if I could hide under her dress and run off with her.”

“You have a way with words, Mr. Dixon. Are you telling me you like big women? I might be too big for you.”

“Ma’am?”

“You’re trying to make me blush.”

If she wanted to turn his head into a Mixmaster, she was doing a good job of it.

They drove in his truck up the Blackfoot Valley and crossed a wood bridge and entered a wide alluvial landscape that seemed left over from the first days of creation. Wyatt shifted into four-wheel drive and clattered over a bed of white rocks and parked up on the slope and lifted the wicker basket out of the camper shell. “I declare, Miss Bertha, there must be thirty pounds of food in here,” he said.

“You’re a nice gentleman in every way, Wyatt, but you must stop calling me ‘miss.’ We are not on the plantation,” she said.

“I need to own up to something.” He folded his arms and looked at the ground, a strange tingling in his wrists that he didn’t understand. “I hope it don’t make you mad.”

“You know what the problem is? You’re not used to sharing your feelings. How could anyone get mad on a lovely afternoon like this?” She gazed at a towering cliff on the far side of the river and at the thickness of the pines on the top. “In a place like this, we shouldn’t have a care in the world.”

“I went out to Love Younger’s place and had some words with him. I asked if you worked for him. He didn’t have no idea who you were. I was glad.”

“Why would I be angry about that?”

“I doubted your word.”

“Spread the blanket while I make our sandwiches. Tell me about your life in the rodeo.”

He shook his head. “You’re an educated woman. Why are you interested in a man such as myself?”

“Mine to know.”

“There’s people here’bouts who’d take a shithog to church before they’d invite me on a picnic. It’s not adding up for me.”

“Maybe I like you. Did you think of that?”

Wyatt rubbed his wrists, his facial skin as smooth and expressionless as clay, his eyes following an osprey gliding low over the river. “I don’t let people use me,” he said. “I just walk away from them. In the past I did a whole lot worse than that.”

“Someone has taught you that a good woman would never be attracted to you,” she said. “Someone did you a great wrong.”

“I ain’t good at this. That’s a pretty dress. It looks like it come from a florist.”

She was making the sandwiches on the tailgate of his truck. She turned her head toward him and smiled, her face lighting in a way that made something drop inside him. “You’re one of the most interesting men I have ever met. I think one of the nicest, too.”

“You got a way about you that ain’t ordinary. You’re a powerful woman.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You don’t let men push you around. It’s something a man senses. It’s what men admire in a woman most.”

“What are you trying to say?”

The river was wide and flat here, the grass tall and green on both banks of the river, the slopes heavily wooded near the base of cliffs that were gray and smooth and rose straight up into the sky. Why did he feel enclosed, almost suffocated, by either his situation or the feelings churning inside him? Behind her, he could see a white-tailed buck on the edge of the timber, the points of his antlers curled and sharp and hard-looking in the light. There was not a house or a soul in sight. He looked at Bertha, then let his eyes slide off her face. “You’ve been hiding something. I need to know what it is,” he said.