Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Chapter Thirteen

It’s Monday morning, the pinkness of the sun buried inside the fog that shrouds the Sapphire Mountains. I feed the horses and chickens and fill all three stock tanks on the property. Dawn in Montana, no matter the season, is like a rose opening unto the light. As John Steinbeck said, Montana is not a state; it’s a love affair. I’ll go a step further: The rising of both the sun and the moon in Montana are moments either a Druid or a genuine Christian would recognize as sacramental. In my opinion, to treat them as anything less is to exile oneself into the land of Nod, east of Eden, where Cain was forced to live after he murdered his brother. I know that’s grandiose, but Paradise is real; it’s right here in the northern Rockies, and the winds that blow down the slopes, I’m convinced, have a mystical source.

With these kinds of unusual thoughts in my head and Spotted Horse’s advice to leave the house early in the morning, before the police arrive, I drive north through Missoula, then give my old truck the gas and climb the long green-black, cliff-shaded slope called Evaro Hill and find myself once again in Indian country and the sunlit grandeur of the Jocko Valley.

I find the place where Clayton Wetzel died and am almost sorry I did. Wetzel was a criminal, maybe even a hit man, but he was also a kid who deserved a second chance. Blue clouds of wood smoke hang over the hills, and a train track curls along the highway into a billowing bank of fog as thick and white as cotton. Not far away, I can see the neon on the nightclub that Spotted Horse mentioned. There’s only one car in the lot. The grass in the field between the nightclub and the train tracks is waist-high and wet with dew. There’s no crime-scene tape anywhere. The grass is crisscrossed with tire impressions, probably from the emergency vehicles. There’s blood spatter on one rail tie, then more in the grass, where tiny yellow flags have been stuck in the ground.

I go inside the nightclub. The bar and red stools and booths are wiped down and glistening, the jukebox and beer signs and pinball and gambling machines all lit. “We’re closed,” the bartender says.

“What time do you open?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“I haven’t quite processed that.”

“My name is Aaron Broussard,” I say. “I’m a writer. I wonder if I can ask you a couple of questions about the accident that happened by the tracks.”

He’s a big man. He wears pigtails and a sparkling white snap-button shirt and a rodeo champion’s belt buckle. His sleeves are rolled. “Yeah, I know who you are. I don’t know anything.”

“I knew the kid who was killed. He had a brother. I was interested in talking to him.”

The man leans on his arms. His triceps ridge like rolls of quarters. “You’ve made movies, haven’t you?” he says.

“The scripts were adapted by someone else. I was never a screenwriter.”

“You ever see My Darling Clementine?”

“Multiple times,” I reply.

“Henry Fonda says to the saloon keeper, ‘Mack, you ever been in love?’ Mack says, ‘No, I’ve been a bartender all my life.’ I love that line.”

“The brother’s name is Jack Wetzel. He’ll last about five minutes in Deer Lodge.”

A truck has pulled into the lot. Two men and a woman get out. They look like they’ve had a hard night. The woman cups her hand over her eyes and stares through the nightclub window, then says something to the men. They get back in the truck and leave. The bartender picks up a dishrag and tosses it into a sink.

“I cost you a customer?” I ask.

“This isn’t a country club.”

“Sorry.” I get off the stool.

He blows out his breath. “Three months ago the Wetzel boys were slinging dope behind my building. I told them I’d break their necks if they came around again. But they came back two nights ago, driving a junker, no plates. They probably boosted it. They were selling dope out the car window. I can’t figure it.”

“Figure what?”

“I went outside and was gonna slap the shit out of them. Then the younger kid, what’s-his-name, he says, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ ”

“Jack Wetzel?”

“Yeah, that’s it. The one the cops had a mug shot of. But I think he was all show, like he wanted to get involved with me, like I was a safer bet than somebody else.”

“What about Clayton, the older brother?”

“Stoned. His head was glowing in the dark.”

“What time did this happen?”

“About one-thirty in the morning.”

“You think Clayton fell under the train?”

“If you fall under a train, you stay under the train,” he replies. He starts to walk away from me.

“You know where the younger boy might be?” I ask.

He walks back on the duckboards and rests one hand on the bar. “No, I don’t. But you know what you haven’t asked me about?”

I shake my head.

“The cops had the younger kid’s mug shot and not the older kid’s. I thought maybe that was because the older kid was dead. The younger kid looked like a shrimp to me. But the cops said the shrimp set fire to his house when he was twelve. The father was locked in the bedroom.”

“What happened to the mother?”

“They didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”

The sky is a translucent blue and the tops of the Mission Mountains are streaked with fresh snow as I drive up to the Tribal Police Department in Pablo. I go inside and am welcomed by the same young officer who helped me previously.

“Officer Bronson is at the café in Ronan,” he says. His eyes are merry, full of goodwill. “He eats lunch a bit early sometimes.”

“Which café?” I say.

“Oh, sorry,” he says, and gives me the name and directions. “Officer Bronson said you’d be along.”

“I wonder how he knew.”

“One thing you can say for sure about Officer Bronson?” he says, as though he’s about to break a great secret.

“What’s that?”

“When he gets on it, he’s on it.”

I look at his name tag. “I’m sure you’re right about that, Officer Hackman. Thanks for your help.”

“You betcha,” he says. “Any time.”

It’s six miles to the café in Ronan. When I pull to the curb, I realize I’m not alone. Fannie Mae is on the sidewalk by the corner of the café, petting a Labrador that is on a leash and held by a man who’s looking at a plane as it flies overhead. The Labrador’s tail is flipping back and forth like a spring. The owner automatically shortens his hold on the leash and looks up and down the sidewalk as if someone is approaching him and causing the dog to wag. But he sees no one else on the sidewalk.

I have seen Fannie Mae several times that I have not told you about: standing by the highway on Evaro Hill and looking at a nineteenth-century railroad bridge built across the canyon; last night in a dream, barefoot at eight or nine in a wash-faded dress too big for her, blowing a dandelion into a balloon of white fuzz; and crossing against a red light on a street in Missoula earlier this morning.

The reason I did not mention these other visitations is my fear that I am having a nervous breakdown. All the signs are there: suicidal thoughts, depression, insomnia, psychoneurotic anxiety, and the ennui and daily misery that can put you in the white-coated custody of people whose gloved hands you will not forget.

But I do not want Fannie Mae to go away. If she does, I know I will want to go with her. In fact, if I’m allowed to bargain, I will ask that I be allowed to step aboard the same vehicle and go somewhere among the stars, maybe in the cold white smoke of the Milky Way, far from where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.

A bell rings when I walk into the café. Ray Bronson is sitting at the counter, telling a joke to five men who have formed a half-circle around him. It doesn’t take long to catch the content. I grew up with it. It always begins with a grinning, shared perception of groups who are a threat to the man telling the joke and a threat to his listeners. Their eyes crinkle, their chins and necks seem to shrink inside their shoulders, like turtles pulling their heads inside their shells. Briefly, there is a warm look of glee and confidence that heats and lights the circle they have drawn around their fears, using ridicule instead of fire to burn the woman or the Jew or the Black man who has robbed them of their God-given superiority. Then they walk away, reempowered, assured they are not alone, that the armies of the night are actually their liberators, a grand awakening about to happen any day now.

Bronson’s listeners laugh in unison, their voices guttural and heavy with phlegm, enough so they have to cough in their hands, proud of their indifference to masks, their gaze already turning on a stranger at the gate whom they haven’t noticed, a threat to the morning that was going so well.

Ray Bronson gets up from the stool and sees me. His mouth flexes, and his perception shifts inward, as though he’s trying to remember the last words he said.

“Hello,” I say. “I heard you were expecting me.”

“I didn’t quite get that,” he answers, his grin broad. “What’s up, bud?”

I ask him to sit down with me in a booth. “If you’re buying,” he replies.

Fannie Mae is looking at me through the window. She mouths the words Watch yourself.

The waitress brings me a menu; Bronson is already looking at his watch. “Ever hear of a kid named Jack Wetzel?” I ask.

“Yeah, we’re looking for him.”

“As a witness to his brother’s accident or homicide?”

“Let’s be honest, Mr. Broussard. You got a thing for my ex. I can’t blame you. But Ruby is crazy as batshit.”

“The question stands.”

“No, it doesn’t. The Wetzel brothers are our concern, not yours. I’m about to order a hamburger. You want one?”

“You ever hear of Major Eugene Baker?”

He looks sideways at nothing, then back at me. His eyes are misaligned, one higher than the other, his eyebrows untrimmed and tangled. He props his elbows on the table and knits his fingers together and points them at me, like a man interrupted in the midst of prayer. “I know you’ve had a loss in your family. But stay out of other people’s business, starting with the tribal police. The Wetzel brothers are part of a meth investigation. That’s all I’m gonna tell you.”

“How long did you live in Ruby’s house?”

“Man, you just don’t quit.”

“Did you ever see any rocks in the cellar that had petroglyphs on them?”

“The only thing I ever saw down there was rotten fruit that stunk up the place and carpenter ants eating up the wood in the ceiling.”

The waitress takes his order, then looks at me. She has a few streaks of gray in her hair. I can smell her perfume. “Coffee,” I say. He stops her before she can walk away. “Irene, we’re still on at six?” he says.

“Roger that,” she says.

He gives me a grin featuring his big teeth. It’s like a rictus.

I get up from the booth and place two one-dollar bills on the table. “For the coffee,” I say. “Whoever or whatever killed Clayton Wetzel wasn’t human. Every one of you bastards knows that, but you’re not going to do anything about it. That’s why you’re cruel.”

Through the window I see Fannie Mae give me two thumbs-up as I walk out of the café.