Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Chapter Twenty-Six

Do you ever have this feeling about your time on earth? It’s the second inning, then the fifth and the top of the eighth, and you look at the scoreboard and the angle of the sun and feel the chill in the air, and you wonder where your life has gone.

I have that feeling now. Jack Wetzel’s description of Major Eugene Baker and the murder of Jack’s brother was more than stark. It was proof that Baker had the power to commit crimes in the present and not simply re-create them in the form of an apparition.

In his career he was obviously an implementer of Manifest Destiny. He asked me to join his cause without describing what it was, but I have no doubt he wants to continue his war against indigenous people under a black flag and, for whatever reason, wanted me on board. So far he has not tried to hurt me physically. Why, I don’t know. My guess is he doesn’t have many arrows in his quiver. I think he is probably an emblematic character, one if given flesh and blood again would wage war against the third world in search and control of natural resources.

I mentioned Ernest Hemingway. Many years ago in Miami I was friends with his brother Leicester and the crime writer Charles Willeford. Leicester was at the Hürtgen Forest during the Battle of the Bulge; Charles was at Arnhem and at night took his tank through German lines and piled twenty-three grunts on it and brought them home. Both Charles and Leicester were at the liberation of Dachau, as was my first cousin Weldon Holland, and not one of them would talk about the experience, except for one statement made by Weldon: “The inmates wanted to touch and hold us. They wouldn’t let go.”

I believe all three men represented what is best in us. Now, on a quiet evening when I hear a coyote howl behind my house or a whirring sound like a windup clock about to strike the hour, I wonder if my time has come and if I have done enough to justify my span on earth. I wonder, as Robert Frost once said, if my sacrifice is acceptable in the sight of the Creator. I wonder if I have made a difference.

Why do I brood in this fashion? I’ll tell you. Maybe we have already entered the time of Major Eugene Baker and those like him. Maybe we’re about to see the horses in the Book of John up close and personal, their chests heaving, their breaths hot, their mouths and necks lathered, thundering across a ruined world peopled with skeletons. But the darkest hour is not in the prophecy of a Hebrew evangelist who lived two thousand years ago; it’s in the soul. That’s why I sit here shaking in the dark, the way you shake when the malarial mosquito has its way, wondering if my legs will fail me, as the Yankee soldiers must have wondered at Marye’s Heights when they slipped on their own gore and asked that this bitter cup be taken from their lips. Is it now my turn?

It’s four-twenty the next morning. I have stared at the ceiling since midnight. The moon is full, marbled with shadows that look like a bruise. A V-shaped flock of geese headed south interdicts the light between the moon and my window, then makes a turn and descends into the yard. In seconds a figure dressed like a late-nineteenth-century dandy comes through the wall and sits at the foot of my bed. His mustache is waxed and pointy on the ends, like a villain’s in a silent movie, his eyes as shiny and black as oil. Top of the morning to you, he says.

“I thought you’d be along,” I reply.

His eyes twinkle. He takes a long drink from a dark green bottle, then balances it on his thigh and wipes his mouth with his hand. Now, how would you be knowing my goings and comings?

“I suspect you’re a rake at heart?”

I let my boys have a stop-off with the girls in Wallace, Idaho. I don’t do that sort of thing myself. They’re good boys, actually, considering the severe orders given them by General Sheridan.

“I know who you’re working for, Major.”

I doubt that.

“The same people T. E. Lawrence warned us about.”

I don’t know the fellow.

“The issue is energy. Humps like yourself do the scut work.”

I know your daughter’s secrets. I know the men in her life. A sorry bunch, if you ask me.

“A few were no good. But at least they didn’t murder women and children.”

That old saw about extractive industries. I rode a horse. You own and drive a motorized vehicle. Which of us has used up more of the earth’s resources?

“I’ve seen your work, sir. There is no cruelty, no form of atrocity, that isn’t attached to your name.”

Yes, and believe it or not, it pains me. I get no rest, no sleep. It’s not an easy go, sir.

“Why haven’t you tried to do me physical injury?”

He offers me the bottle, but I shake my head.

You like to play rounders?

“Baseball?”

My lads and I are good at it. Be among us, Mr. Broussard. You were a soldier. Enjoy the tankard of ale, the kiss of a fair maid, the rumble of the caissons, the thrill of the charge, and the ring of the sabers.

“You tore up Clayton Wetzel, Jack Wetzel’s brother?”

It was his time to go. He didn’t like that.

“Why him and not me, Major?”

Because you’re a Goody Two-shoes.

“I wish you wouldn’t insult me in my own house.”

You’re what they call a bleeding heart, sir. War can be grand.

“This is what I think, Major. You have power to hurt only the afflicted. You’re part of a disease. War is your cathedral, death and suffering your paramours, and failure your legacy. In other words, you’re a bloody fucking sod in a charnel house.”

He gets up from the bed and toasts me with the bottle. Grandly said, sir. You’re right, I live in the Book of Revelation. You sleep in a clean bed among the angels. You try to help young ruffians who will probably end up with the likes of me. But praise me just a little, will you, sir? I tried. It wasn’t easy to serve under men who burned and laid waste from Atlanta to the sea.

“You fought under a black flag, just like Quantrill, Major. Take your shame somewhere else.”

You’ve hurt me deeply. But so be it. The major drains the bottle, then drops it, letting it roll across the floor. He walks through the wall, and a second later there is a clapping of wings and he rises with the geese and flies away, silhouetting against the moon. I push myself off the bed, the room tilting, my gyroscope gone. I pick up the bottle by the neck. The glass is thick and handblown, moist and sticky to the touch, the major’s handprint like the webbed smear of a transitional creature from an earlier time.

Three days have passed. An Indian boy was throwing stones in the Flathead River when he saw an object stuck on the limb of a downed cottonwood close to the opposite bank. The object was large, asymmetrical, puffed, bobbing in the tangle of branches, colorful rags streaming in the riffle. A magpie was perched above it on one of the tree branches. The boy threw another stone and the magpie flew away. It was evening and the sky was bone-white and empty, the hills brown, the wind raw. The boy picked up a piece of driftwood and jumped from one boulder to the next until he could grab one branch of the tree and poke the object. Before he could make contact, he slipped and fell into the current and was swept into the cottonwood and a woman’s body that had probably been pinned for days under the surface.

Her long hair was dull red with streaks of blond. She was submerged faceup, her hair undulating with the current, her eyes blue and doll-like, her mouth open, as though she had been startled, maybe by an innocuous source. The river pressed the boy against her, her arms floating unrestrained and flaccid and curling around him. He began thrashing, swinging his arms in front of him, screaming for help. But he had pulled her loose from the tree, and her weight and the entanglement of the tree branches were about to take him under. That was when he realized he had become witness to the creation of a flaw in the world that should not have been there, a monstrous deed he would be afraid to report, a deed no one would want to hear about.

He was revolted by her body and hit her with his fists and crawled across her and tried to shove her away from him. But her body bobbed along with him until the two of them struck a sandbar and he felt his feet touch the gravelly bottom of the river. He stared down at her face as he rose from the water. Her eyes would not leave his, as if she were begging him to undo her fate.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”

Then he felt like a fool for the inadequacy of his words. And for his inability to look at the rest of her body. The stonelike immobility of her eyes, the bluish discoloration of her skin, the hair twisted around her throat were permanently stamped in his memory; but those were not the images that caused him to vomit in the water. She had been eviscerated. When his parents found him, he could not stop sobbing.

The reader of this account might wonder why I would write in such arguably offensive detail about the Indian boy’s traumatization. The question is a valid one. My answer: Evil is real. It is not an abstraction. The little boy will carry a reel of film inside his head until his death, and over the years few people will understand the haunted look that will swim into his eyes without apparent cause. What are its origins? I don’t know. A serpent in a tree? Maybe the La Brea Tar Pits? That’s not the issue. The real question is its level of intensity, its constant growth and replication, the incredible power it gives to political simpletons and street people alike.

Brigands, confidence men, Robin Hood, Blackbeard, Moll Cutpurse, Cattle Annie and Little Britches, William Clarke Quantrill, Belle Starr, the Daltons, jolly madams the size of blimps, the James-Younger Gang, the Rose of the Cimarron, Billy the Kid, all morph into folk myth and thread in and out of our history and literature. But individually or collectively, few of them could compete in terms of damage with their modern descendants. Why? If there was ever a war against drugs, we lost it years ago. One man like Jimmie Kale can destroy an entire community. Or a state. The metastasizing of the addiction doesn’t sleep; it spreads twenty-four hours a day. And most of Kale’s products, in particular meth, are a surefire ticket to psychological and moral insanity.

There are some who would not consider the little boy on the Flathead River a crime victim. But he is, and he will remember the dark handiwork of a stranger or strangers every time he hears the singing of water.

A week after the discovery of the missing waitress, I receive a call from Jeremiah McNally. It’s a call I do not want to take.

“I wonder if you can help me out,” he says.

How about that as a conversation starter? “What can I do for you, partner?”

“The coroner says Betty Wolcott died from blunt trauma, maybe done with a tire iron. I think they’re going to stick it to me.”

“I thought you said Jimmie Kale might be a suspect.”

“Not like I am.”

“Will you please spit it out.”

“The coroner thinks Betty was pregnant.”

“So?”

“She was,” he replies. “She told me a few days before she went missing. I told her I would pay for the adoption or whatever else she wanted to do. She told me to fuck off.”

“I’m sorry to hear all this, Jeremiah. I don’t know how I can change anything.”

“You know what’s inside a guy like Kale. He did it. I know he did. Jimmie the Digger isn’t just a criminal. He’s evil incarnate. And nobody I work with gets it.”

“You’ve got some good cops there,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Try this. Jimmie Kale cruised your house. With one of our guys trailing him. Did somebody bother to inform you a creep with the morals of Richard Ramirez was looking in your windows?”

“Kale is lots of things, but not a voyeur.”

“Kale was at the Pov looking for Jack Wetzel. He played a few tunes on his guitar for the residents. They gave him a big hand. Starting to get the picture? You’re shit and Kale is a great guy and I’m about to get a two-by-four with nails in it kicked up my ass.”

“What about Betty Wolcott?” I ask.

“I’m not following you.”

“I’m sorry to say this, but it seems most of your concern is about yourself.”

The phone goes silent.

“Did you hear me?” I ask.

“I told you about the medical report. She was beaten to death with a tire iron or something like it. How do you think I feel?”

“Why are you so sure Kale did it?”

“Because it’s either a guy like him or these monsters you and Spotted Horse believe in.”

“I see.”

“You’re angry?” he asks.

“No.”

“I’ve said the wrong things?”

“Jack Wetzel has disappeared from the motel where I arranged for him to stay. If I learn anything about him or Kale, I’ll call you. Take it easy, partner. The night is darkest just before the dawn.”

“Where’d you get that crap?”

On Pork Chop Hill, I think. But I keep my history to myself and quietly hang up.

I hook a fresh haybale from the top of the stack and drag it to the barn door and pop the string and feed the horses. I love the grassy smell on the horses’ breath, their nuzzles when they think I have treats for them, their physical disclaimers when they’ve been up to mischief, such as downloading in the barn, jerking loose the electric cord on the tank warmer, scratching their rump on the fence rails and getting their tail caught between the rails and the posts.

I give each of them alfalfa nuggets or apple and berry cubes for their treats. Another of their favorites is pulped sugar beets. Friends say I spoil them. I tell my friends the horses don’t feel that way at all.

Snow is blowing like chicken feathers in the sunlight. The water in my tanks comes from wells and is always ice-cold and smells like water probably smelled on the first day of creation. The horses let the wild turkeys and the whitetails share the tanks with them. They pretend they’re frightened and let the yearlings chase them around the pasture.

While having these thoughts as I walk down the slope, I see a familiar Ford truck turn into my drive. It’s Sister Ginny. I go around the side of the house to head her off before she can reach the veranda. Too late. She’s hammering on the front door with such force that the side of the house is vibrating.

She sees me when I round the corner. “Why don’t you get a doorbell?”

“I don’t have many visitors.”

“You got a nice house here. Show me the inside while we talk.”

“Beg your pardon?”

She’s wearing a straw cowboy hat and a long coat with a fur collar and a pink dress that sticks out from the bottom of the coat. “You got earplugs on?”

I put on a mask. “You mind wearing one of these?”

“Fuck no,” she says, and takes one from her pocket and puts it on.

“Please come in,” I say.

She goes inside before I can get out of the way.

“You’re thunder and lightning, Sister Ginny.”

“How’d you like to get your mouth washed out?”

I close the door behind us. Before I can speak, she goes to my gun cabinet and begins naming every gun in the rack.

“That’s impressive,” I say.

She takes off her hat and scratches her hair. Her hair is as yellow as paint. “I got a lot on my mind. You got a snack, a candy bar, something like that?”

“I suspect I do. Let’s—”

“You don’t know if you have food in your pantry or fridge?”

“How about we dial it down, Sister?”

“Were you ever in a monastery? Because that’s the way you act.”

“How about this? I’ll fix us a snack, and you sit down and shut up.”

She screws a finger in one ear and looks at it. “I guess that’s direct enough. All right, we’ll do it your way.”

She sits at the breakfast table, her eyes going up and down my body as though she’s examining a side of beef in a meat locker. I know I will have to ventilate and sterilize the entire first floor of the house. “Did you think over the possibility of us making a movie?” she asks.

“With all respect, Sister, you might have good ideas for an adaptation, but I’m not good at it. I’m a novelist.”

“William Faulkner didn’t write the script for The Big Sleep? Mario Puzo didn’t write the adaptation for The Godfather? Tell me that’s not the best movie ever made.”

“You’re right.”

“So I’m the problem?” she says.

I’m pulling food from the icebox now and I don’t want to face her. Nor do I wish to hurt her.

“Want me to shove you inside that box?” she says.

I put the food on the drainboard. “I think you’re probably a talented lady, Sister Ginny. I admire anyone who can write screenplays. For me, it was like packing an elephant in a phone booth.”

“See, that last sentence is a pretty good line.” She stands up and takes off her coat. “It’s hot in here. Got anything to drink?”

“No,” I reply. “You want whole wheat or sourdough?”

“Whatever you got.” She sits back down, her eyes taking me apart again. “You think I’m gonna hurt your reputation, maybe embarrass you in front of your Hollywood friends?”

“I don’t think that at all.”

Her mouth is a tight line, her chest rising and falling. I see Fannie Mae on the other side of the kitchen.

I look back at Sister Ginny. “What’s bothering you, ma’am? And don’t say it’s me.”

“I think about what it might have been like.”

“If you’d been dealt a different hand?”

“Yeah,” she replies. Then she repeats herself. “Yeah, that pretty much says it.”

“It’s never too late.”

“Stuff your bromides up your nose.” She glances over her shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

“You and me could have some fun.”

I begin slicing a roll of sourdough.

“Maybe rip some butt,” she says. “Show those fuckers in Hollywood how to make a movie.”

“Sister, that kind of rhetoric is for punks and douchebags. The real gladiators are the people who weigh ninety pounds soaking wet.”

She gets up and straightens her shoulders and stares out the back window. “What do you really think of me?”

“You were not abused as a child, but you were abandoned by a father you loved. His departure was probably without explanation. Your childhood ended on the day he left. However, you became a survivor. Many of the men at your church are sexual fascists. They know you’re not the wrath of God, but they believe you can call it down on their enemies. Secretly you hate these guys.”

She continues to stare out the window. The hills and fields are dark, and the moon is rising high above them. “You got a fine place here.”

“Yes, it is.”

She looks up into my face. “Last chance.”

“For what?”

“Getting it on.”

“It would be a great honor, Ginny. But you deserve a much better man than I.”

“Good try.”

“I’m being straight with you. I can’t deal with my daughter’s death. It’s like I have a cannonball in my chest. Fannie Mae is standing behind you, just five feet away. I can see and talk with her, but I can’t join her if it’s by my own hand. In so doing, I will lose my soul.”

Her eyes have the mixed coloration and intensity of agate. “How’d you know all that about my father? Don’t lie.”

“Because you’re flat hell on wheels, Miss Ginny. And I said ‘Miss Ginny,’ whether you like cutesy Gone with the Wind rhetoric or not.”

She picks up her coat and straw hat and taps me on the chest with the flat of her fist before I can distance myself from her. “See you around, Buster Brown. I’m not done with you.”