Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Chapter Twenty-Three

Wednesday morning Jeremiah McNally turns on my dirt lane in a sheriff’s department cruiser and parks in front of the house. Another plainclothes is with him. The two of them get out and begin walking up the incline. The second man is Joe Latour, the sheriff’s deputy who responded to the 911 dispatch when Fannie Mae was beaten and ended up in the ER. He’s wearing a tweed sport coat and a knit necktie. He studies the house, the trees, the weathervane on my roof, the horses in the pasture. I’m on the veranda before he and Jeremiah can make the steps.

“That’s far enough unless you have a warrant,” I say.

“Dial it down, Aaron,” Jeremiah says.

“You want me to call my attorney?”

“We’re not here to bother you, Mr. Broussard,” Latour says. He has a hardcore-gravel New England accent. “We talked to Jack Wetzel at the Poverello. We wanted to warn you about something.”

“No, that is not the reason you are here,” I say. “You want to connect me with some guns that were dropped in the parcel chute at the post office. I’ll make it easy for you. I’m the person who dropped them there. Where I got them and how I got them is my business. If dropping guns in a post office receptacle is a crime, I have not heard of it.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he says.

“Mr. Latour. I’ve made my peace with you—”

“It’s Detective Latour.”

“No, sir, it’s Mr. Latour. You’re not welcome here, sir.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“What the hell is this about, Jeremiah?” I say.

He takes a four-by-five color photograph out of his coat pocket and hands it to me. “You ever see this guy?”

The photo is a close-up of a stout, late-middle-aged, perverse-looking man at a carnival, probably at twilight; behind him, in contrast, a Ferris wheel is printed against the sky, and the red buttes on the rim of a desert have the soft glow of rubies. The man has silver hair combed straight back and a face that looks like it doesn’t work right, as though the motors in it are in conflict with one another. One eye is either half-lidded or sunken deeper than the other. He’s wearing a black suit scrolled with sequins and a turquoise shirt wrinkled with light and a necktie painted with a rearing horse.

“No, I’ve never seen this man,” I say.

“You seemed to dwell on his picture, though,” Latour says.

I crimp my mouth and don’t reply.

“That’s Jimmie Kale,” he says. “Also known as Jimmie the Digger.”

Nor do I show any acknowledgment of his statement.

“Joe is talking to you, Aaron,” Jeremiah says.

“I know no one by the name of Kale,” I reply.

“We think he brought a huge shipment of meth to Montana,” Jeremiah says. “Maybe it got buried and him with it. Or maybe he did the burying. After he shot five or six guys. He’s been known to bury people alive.”

“There’s another thing you need to be aware of, Mr. Broussard,” Latour says. “Jimmie Kale is the single most important drug source on the res. The Indians hate this guy. He ruins their children and destroys their families. We want to give the Indians all the help we can.”

“What does this have to do with me?” I ask Jeremiah.

But Latour answers. “We think Jack Wetzel may have been at the burial of the meth, or the money they got for the meth, and maybe the five or six guys who got a bulldozer load of dirt in their faces.”

I hear Jack crank up the chainsaw and touch it to a log in the barn. “I think you’re after the wrong kid.”

“Yeah, he’s a ball of sunshine,” Latour says.

“I’ve got a deadline with my editor,” I say to Jeremiah. “I’d better get on it.”

“Aaron, I want to say something in front of you and Joe,” he replies. “I’ve given a lot of thought to these fantasies Ruby Spotted Horse is trying to shop around.”

“They’re not fantasies,” I say.

“For whatever reason, she’s jerking both of us around, and you’re buying into it, like those hot coals you dug up and put in my hands. That was some trash you burned and buried. Same thing goes with these rumors about monsters on the res. Clayton Wetzel fell under a boxcar. The waitress was getting it on with a couple of psycho Nazi bikers who thought she was a snitch, so they chain-dragged her and dumped her body under a bridge. That’s not just me talking, it’s the pathologist and a couple of feds.”

“You’ve got the bikers in custody?”

“We’re not there yet,” he says.

“I think you’re full of it, Jeremiah,” I say. “Shame on you.”

“You’re a hard man to talk to, Mr. Broussard,” Latour says.

I look him full in the face. “You didn’t kill my daughter, Mr. Latour. But you didn’t help her, either. I think there was gloat in your eyes when you left the ER. Why, I don’t know. Maybe my daughter threw the first punch, but that would be out of character for her. I hope you have a good life, and I have nothing else to say.”

That night I have a visitor in my bedroom. I knew he would come. I don’t know if I believe in destiny, but I do believe we make bad choices that occur in a split second — say, a glance at a face in the crowd, a bump against someone in an elevator — and find ourselves in the company of people who can suck the life out of us. The average person does not do well when he or she falls under the sway of the benighted, or what I call the descendants of Cain. Maybe the metaphor I borrow is excessive. But the creature who has just appeared in my bedroom in the middle of the night is not one whose physiognomy can be easily explained.

His radiance is as bright as the fire in front of a smithy’s bellows. The suppuration on his skin glistens like glue. His blue uniform is torn and streaked with ash, stinking of cordite and feces and the raw smell of blood, his epaulettes caked with mud, the scabbard of his sword dinged from battle.

But I don’t fear him, and that’s because I have never known a bully who was not a coward. I sit on the side of my bed, my bare feet on the floor, and look at him indifferently. “Back again?” I say.

What do you mean, “again”?

“You showed up here in the guise of Ruby Spotted Horse’s niece. Pretty cheap way to behave for a United States army officer, don’t you think?”

I’m here to speak to you as one gentleman to another.

“Sorry, I’m not keen on the way you do business, Major Baker. You know, the mass murder of indigenous people and that sort of thing?”

I can bring your daughter back to you. I can give you powers you cannot imagine.

“If you have any power, why is your name synonymous with nineteenth-century genocidal scum?”

I was carrying out the orders passed down by others.

“That was Adolf Eichmann’s defense.”

Who?

“What do you want from me, Major?”

It is not I who asks anything of you, sir. It is for others far greater in historical importance than I. Look about you. The Second American Revolution has begun. Join us.

“You stay away from my little girl, you piece of shit.”

How dare you!

I pick up a straight-back chair and throw it at him. It bounces harmlessly off the wall. The major disappears with the ease and rapidity of someone stepping through a black curtain that subsumes and folds around him and leaves no trace of his former presence.

I get dressed and go downstairs and build a fire in the fireplace, but I cannot get the coldness out of the house. I put on a wool jacket and gloves and double-lined trousers and an overcoat and still cannot get warm. I drive to a truck stop in Lolo and drink coffee until dawn, the snow spitting against the windows, the glass vibrating from the tractor-trailers grinding up Lolo Pass. I want to believe in the normal world, one that is governed by reason and humanity. I want to believe that the Major Bakers of the world are anomalies, that the sun will rise in the east and light the snow blowing from the trees on the mountaintops and drive the shadows from the hearts of good men and women everywhere, undaunted, the green republic just over the next hill.

That same day Jack Wetzel shows up at work right on time, but with a mouse under his eye and booze on his breath. I bring him into the kitchen and tell him to sit down at the table while I get him a sweet roll and a glass of chocolate milk. He sits with his hands clapped between his thighs, his cap pulled down tight on his head. “It’s cold in here,” he says.

“The issue is showing up for work still drunk.”

“I ain’t drunk.”

“Yes, you are. And on top of it, you were in a fight.”

“Me and Leigh Culpepper got into it with some guys. Over a girl. It was dumb.” He blows his nose in a handkerchief.

“You know Leigh Culpepper?”

“We hang out sometimes. Why?”

“I’ll drive you back to the Poverello and we’ll start over tomorrow.”

“I got here on time.”

“There were some cops here yesterday, Jack.”

“About me?”

“You ever hear of a man named Jimmie Kale? Or Jimmie the Digger?”

His eyes have become sleepy, as though he’s a couple of quarts down. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“I don’t know anything. Leigh copped a little acid last night. I had a bad trip. Leigh’s got a big commitment to it.”

“This man sells meth and buries people alive. At least that’s what the cops say.”

“That’s just a story on the res. The cops probably want you to make a movie out of it.” He stares me in the face. “Hey, come on, Mr. Broussard, I had a slip. I can work. I like it here. I don’t want to go nowhere else.”

I put the chocolate milk back in the icebox and wrap the sweet roll in a paper towel and put it in his hand. “You can’t run machinery with booze in your system, Jack. I’ll take you back to the Pov now. If this happens again, we’re done.”

He tilts up his face. “It ain’t right the way you’re treating me.”

I pick him up by one arm and walk him to my truck. He feels as light and delicate as a crippled bird, stripped of the strength and willpower that he exhibited while splitting firewood. The sun is hardly over the mountain and his day is already mortgaged. I open the passenger door on my pickup and help him inside. “Where’d you get the acid?”

“Leigh Culpepper. He kept pestering me and finally I took it.”

I close his door, then get behind the wheel and start the engine. “You know what the hard road is?”

“Chain-ganging or something.”

“It’s also a metaphor for a way of life. When you’re thirty, you’ll look fifty.”

“I got no plans on being thirty,” he replies.

When I return home, I call the tutor I hired to help Leigh Culpepper at the vocational college. “How’s Leigh doing?” I ask.

“Real good, Mr. Broussard. He’s a nice young guy.”

“No problems of any kind?”

“He wants to please his father. They belong to a church down in the valley. Fundamentalist and racial stuff, I think. Not good. Anything wrong?”

“Nope. Thanks for your help. Send me a bill whenever you want.”

At 10:45 a.m. I call Ruby Spotted Horse on her cell phone. “Can I come out to your place this evening?”

“This is my day off,” she says. “You can come out now.”

I pull into her yard one hour and fifteen minutes later. At this juncture I need to make a confession, one that is a bit personal and involves a lie of omission and the penchant of a man from a bygone era. On my last visit to Ruby’s house, I picked her up on my chest and buried my face in her neck and swung her around, but I did not feel it proper or honorable to take advantage of her loneliness or her willingness to be charitable to a grieving elderly man.

She has obviously seen me through her front window and is waiting at the door before I can knock. She is wearing a loose yellow dress that could have come from any American decade, the kind of dress the girl next door used to wear, or the girl at your church picnic, or the girl you took in your convertible to the drive-in restaurant.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey, yourself,” she says. “I fixed a lunch.”

“Let’s talk first.” We go inside, and I put my arm across her shoulders and walk her to the couch and ease her down on the cushions, then sit beside her. “That’s a lovely dress.”

“Will you stop acting so weird?”

“I had a visit last night from Major Baker.”

“It wasn’t a dream?”

“No, he wants to enlist me in his cause.” She starts to speak. “Listen to me, Ruby. This is about us, not about Baker. I was thinking about how he came into my life. It was through you.”

Her face starts to drain.

“No, no, listen. We met by chance. A 911 call. There’s a reason for our meeting. You’re one of the Guardians, and it’s obvious that one way or another I may take on the same role. In fact, I may not have a choice. My daughter is being harassed by Baker and probably by people worse than he. What I am saying is I’d really like to spend a lot of time with you. But you have to make an informed choice. Elderly people can be a burden. It’s not coincidental that large numbers of people in this country are indifferent to the rate of virus contagion in our old-age facilities.”

“I already told you, Aaron. We’re not like other people.”

“People will call you a gold digger. Some of your colleagues will make cracks behind your back. Others will grin at each other when we walk by.”

“Fuck them.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” I say.

“Good. We’ve got that out of the way. Let’s eat. Do you mind if Maxwell Gato joins us?”

After we finish, she picks up the cat and puts him outside. He hangs in her hands like a sloth. The snow is blowing sideways, and dust is swirling out of the pumpkin field. But my conscience still bothers me. I feel uncomfortable, too easily self-convinced that I’ve been forthcoming and protective and honest about the price she will have to pay in a relationship with a man my age. The United States prides itself on the freedom of the individual, but we are still a Puritan nation and obsessed with sex. Also, small towns are small towns, on the res or in Missoula, which right-wingers here call “the People’s Republic.”

“What do you want to do?” she asks. We’re in the middle of the kitchen. She puts one hand on her hip, causing the yellow dress to become lopsided.

“You don’t have a video of Shane or Red River, do you?”

“No.”

“Red River is John Wayne’s best film. Montgomery Clift is great in it, too.”

“Would you please tell me what you want to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to kick you in the shins.”

“Do you have some blankets?” I ask.

“What do we need blankets for?”

“Emergencies. This is Montana. Put on a warm coat. Maybe a fur hat.”

“Are you having a psychotic break?”

“Could be. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Out there.” I point through the glass at the Missions. “Better bring Maxwell Gato back inside in case we’re gone for a while.”

She chews on her lip, her body ten inches from mine. She smells like flowers, even though I don’t think she uses perfume. Her dress looks like it’s made from crepe paper. My face is burning, my throat dry.

“I’ll be back down in a few minutes,” she says. “You’re really nuts, Aaron.”

We drive deep into the Mission Mountains. It’s difficult to describe their magnitude. The peaks are seldom visible because of their altitude. From a distance the forests resemble lichen on the slopes. Rocks as big as five-story houses lie in streambeds. One wheel hooking over the road’s edge could send us fifteen hundred feet straight down. The air is not only cold but rarified and feels like a razor blade sucked into your lungs. The hunters and trappers are gone with the season, like primeval people whose claim on the land amounts to a scratch on a pebble.

The road was cut by a bulldozer decades ago and is littered with slag and splintered pieces of dead ponderosa that have fallen from above. We go through a dip, then ascend through a cloud thick with ice crystals and pop out on a vista that makes you dizzy. Down below is a lake that resembles a blue teardrop among evergreen forests that roll over the hills as far as the eye can see. I shift into low and we begin a descent akin to an elevator that has snapped its cables. Rocks are banging under the fenders, the brakes squealing, the tires thudding in the potholes because my springs and shock absorbers are shot. We go through a washout, the frame slamming the road so hard the glove box springs open, scattering road maps and junk all over Ruby’s lap. Then the road levels out, and in the distance we can see a meadow that slants down to the lakeshore. There are no boats or cabins or machinery of any kind on the lake. Even the Forest Service signs have been broken off and ground to pieces by winter avalanches. A mother bear and her two cubs, one black, the other rust-colored, are chugging up the hillside from the lake. They look as small as chipmunks when they enter the forest. I roll down the window and realize I’m soaking with sweat. I let the truck coast through the meadow all the way to the lakeshore, the grass whispering under the truck’s frame.

“I never knew this was here,” Ruby says. “How did you find it?”

“I got lost on a backpack hike and ran into an elderly Indian man in the middle of nowhere. He was wearing buckskin. He walked out of the trees and gave me some smoked venison and told me about the lake and then disappeared.”

“Who was he?” she says.

“I think he was a spirit. I think the natural world is full of spirits.”

We get out of the truck and walk down to the water. The surface of the lake looks to be dented with raindrops. But these are not raindrops. The cutthroat are feeding, their backs gently roiling the surface, their gills painted with fire. The sun is bright overhead, the slopes around us forming a great green bowl, one that may have boiled with lava millions of years ago.

“Why did you bring us here?” Ruby asks.

“I want to make a pact with you. This place is the one where we make our bond. If a day comes when one cannot find the other, this is where we go and wait for the other, no matter how long it takes. No exceptions allowed.”

She’s wearing a long wool coat over her yellow dress, with a black kerchief tied under her chin. “I’ve never had anyone say something like that to me,” she says.

“So what do you say?”

She looks at the lake. “It’s actually blue. Not green-blue but blue.”

“The bad road keeps most people out. I’ve never taken anyone else here.”

But she has not answered my question. She hugs me and presses the side of her head against my chest.

“You okay?” I ask.

“I think so.”

“Want to build a fire and make a tent? I have an air mattress, and I filled up Maxwell Gato’s bowl. I’ve got some cans of beans we can put in the fire.”

“I’d really like that,” she says. “I really would.”

She tightens her arms around my back. I can feel her breath inside my shirt.