Light of the World

Chapter 10

I tried to stay mad at Clete for provoking a situation with Dixon, but I couldn’t. Clete was Clete. He didn’t like religious fanatics and believed most of them were self-deceived or mean-spirited and did great harm in the world. I didn’t believe Wyatt Dixon fell into either of those categories. He may have been psychotic, or he may have been an uneducated man who’d found a form of redemption among the only friends he’d ever had, blue-collar people to whom the struggle of Christ was their own story. Regardless, Dixon had said something I couldn’t get out of my mind. He had mentioned Indian presences behind Albert Hollister’s house.

The arroyo that led from Albert’s gun range up the hillside to the logging road had been the route used by Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce after they outflanked the United States Army up on Lolo Pass and tried to escape relocation to Oklahoma Territory. Hundreds of them had filed down the arroyo in the dark, carrying their children and everything they owned on their backs. They followed Lolo Creek down to the Bitterroot River and then went south to the Big Hole, where they thought they would be safe. When the army attacked their village, the soldiers killed man, woman, and child, just as they had on the Washita and on the Marias and at Wounded Knee. It was genocide, no matter what others wanted to call it.

I asked Albert if he had ever seen anything unusual up the arroyo.

“What do you mean by ‘unusual’?” he said.

“Apparitions.”

“You saw something?”

“Not me. Wyatt Dixon may have,” I said.

“One time at sunset, I thought I saw dark-skinned people coming over the ridge and walking down the trail through the trees. I went outside, and nobody was there. Another time, when there was heavy fog, I could hear people talking up there. I walked about fifty yards up the hillside and heard a child crying. I also found the stone head of a tomahawk. I had been over that same spot many times, but I’d never seen any artifacts there.”

“What happened to Chief Joseph and his people?”

“The army put them all on cattle cars and shipped them to a mosquito-infested sinkhole in Oklahoma. What are you getting at?”

“I don’t want to believe that people like Wyatt Dixon have an accurate vision of either this world or the next.”

“Did you know the word ‘Kentucky’ comes from a Shawnee word for ‘bloody land’?”

“What’s the point?”

“When you kill large numbers of people in order to steal their land, they get pissed off, and their spirits have a way of hanging around,” he replied.

I wasn’t up to a barrage of Albert’s morbid polemics, so I went to find Clete. But he had gone off on his own and had not told anyone of his destination. I should have known a bad moon was on the rise.

The saloon where they had arranged to meet was down by the railroad tracks, in a part of town where the brick shell of a three-story nineteenth-century brothel was still standing and cowboys and Indians and bindle stiffs and rounders and bounders and midnight ramblers still knocked back doubles and chased them with pitcher beer. Clete was drinking at the far end of the bar when she entered. The front door was open to allow in the cool of the evening, and the redness of the late sun backlit her hair and the creamy texture of her shoulders and the beige skirt that swirled around her knees. He raised his hand awkwardly to indicate where he was, then tipped his shot glass to his mouth as she approached him.

“Is this place okay?” he said.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“It gets a little rough sometimes.”

“I like it here. They have a western band on Saturday nights,” she replied, sitting on a stool.

“What are you drinking?”

She looked at the shot glass and the small pitcher of draft beer in front of him. She touched the condensation on the pitcher with the ball of her index finger. “A glass of this will be fine,” she said.

“You like Indian culture?”

“Excuse me?”

“The way you dress and all.”

“I wanted to get out of New Orleans as soon as I could. When I had the chance, I took it. Now I live out in the West. It’s clean out here.”

He looked out the door, then back at her. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. “Some people think Missoula is turning into Santa Fe.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been there. It’s the model for something?”

“I’ve never been there, either,” he replied, feeling more and more inept and wondering why he had agreed to meet her.

“There’s always time,” she said. She held his eyes. “Isn’t that the way you look at it?”

Time for what? He ordered a draft beer for the woman and another shot for himself. He waited until the bartender had filled and set down their glasses and walked away. “You said maybe I could help you with something.”

“You and your friend were talking to Dixon. He sold my daughter a bracelet before she died. Do you think he could have killed her?”

“I don’t doubt he’s a dangerous man.”

“Dangerous to women?”

Clete was standing at the bar, one foot resting on the brass rail. In the mirror, he could see her looking at his profile, her face tilted upward. “Who am I to be judging others?” he replied.

“You looked angry when you were talking to him. I don’t think you hide your feelings well. I think we’re a lot alike.”

“In what way?”

“You’re not ashamed of your emotions.”

“I don’t know if I’d put it that way. I don’t like criminals. Sometimes you meet a guy who’s been inside and is on the square, but not too often. Anyone who’s been down at least twice is probably a recidivist and will be in and out of the can the rest of his life.”

“Why won’t you answer my question?”

“A man who strikes a woman is a physical and moral coward. There’s no exception to that rule. We call them misogynists. The simple truth is, they’re cowards. Dixon is a head case and probably a lot of other things, but a coward isn’t one of them. I hate admitting that.”

“What is it you don’t like about him?”

“I don’t like reborn morons who say they understand the mind of God.”

“Could he have been working with someone else?”

“He’s a loner. Most rodeo people are. I got to ask you something, Miss Felicity. The Wigwam, the bar Angel was drinking in the night she died? It was full of outlaw bikers. A lot of those guys are sexual fascists and get off on smacking their women around. Dixon went to the joint for shooting a guy who murdered a prostitute. Why is everybody zeroing in on him?”

“Why were you all talking to him if he’s of no importance?”

“My friend Dave thinks Dixon knows something about a guy who left a message on a cave wall behind Albert Hollister’s place. Sometimes Dave reads more into something than is there.” He motioned to the bartender for a refill. “Look, I’m sorry about your daughter. If I could help you, I would.”

“You can’t?”

“Maybe I could, but not officially.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m licensed as a PI in Louisiana. A private investigator’s license has the legal value of a dog’s tag. Because I chase down bail skips for a couple of bondsmen, I have extrajudicial powers that cops don’t have. I can cross state lines and break down doors without warrants. I can hook up people and hold them in custody indefinitely. See, when a guy is bailed out of the can by a bondsman, he becomes property. The law lets you go after your property. You can hang the guy up like a smoked ham if you want. I’m not proud of what I do, but it’s what I do.”

“I want the person who killed my daughter.”

“The locals will nail him sooner or later.”

“Do you really believe that?”

He scratched at his cheek with three fingers. The jukebox was playing a country song, but it wasn’t Hank or Lefty; it came from a new era in Nashville, one that Clete didn’t understand. “The locals are like cops anywhere. They give it their best shot. The bad guys go down, but usually because they do something really stupid.”

“My father was a policeman in New Orleans.”

“Yeah, I knew him. He was a good guy.”

He saw the recognition in her eyes. “You researched my background.”

“Like I said, it’s what I do.” He had put on a summer suit and a blue dress shirt and his Panama hat and had shined his loafers before meeting the woman. Now he felt foolish and old and duplicitous. “I blew my career in law enforcement with booze and weed and pills and the wrong kind of women. I had a daughter out of wedlock, too. She grew up without a dad, and some bad guys did a lot of hurtful things to her. That’s why I admire somebody like you who’d adopt a kid from the rez. This is great country around here, but the Indians get a bad shake.”

“How well did you know him?”

“Your old man? I’d see him at roll call. That was when Dave and I walked a beat on Canal and in the Quarter, in the old days when cops signaled each other by hitting their batons on the pavement. We’d bounce the stick on the curb, and you could hear it a block away.” He knew she wasn’t listening and that he was making a fool out of himself.

“My father was such a good person that he took care of everybody except his family,” she said.

“Beg your pardon?”

“He wasn’t happy unless he was wearing sackcloth and ashes for other people’s sins. He named me for Saint Felicity.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“She was the slave of a Roman aristocrat named Perpetua. Perpetua kept a record of the events leading up to her and Felicity’s deaths in the arena. It’s the only account that we have by a victim of the persecutions.”

“I don’t know much about that stuff. From what I remember, your dad was pretty religious.”

“If that’s what you call it.” She pushed back his sleeve from his watch and glanced at the time. “I wonder if each one of us is allotted a certain number of days. We’re here, then we’re not. We look back and wonder what we’ve done with our lives and think about all the opportunities we let slip by. Do you ever feel like you lived your life for somebody else?”

“I was always getting in trouble. I didn’t have time to think about things like that. I’m not too profound a guy.”

“I think you’re a much more complex man than you pretend.” She rubbed her finger on the dial of his watch.

He could feel the heat in the back of his neck, a tingling sensation in his palms. He poured the remainder of his whiskey into his beer and drank it. It slid down inside him like an old friend, lighting the corners of his mind, stilling his heart, allowing him to smile as though he were not beset with a problem of conscience that, in the morning, could fasten him wrist and ankle on a medieval rack.

“I just barely made a plane to El Sal before I went down on a murder beef,” he said. “My liver probably looks like a block of Swiss cheese with a skin disease. Dave is the only cop from the old days who’ll hang out with me. I’m not being humble. I worked for the Mob in Vegas and Reno. I’ve done stuff I wouldn’t tell a corpse.”

“If you’re thinking about my marital status, my husband is the most corrupt, selfish man I’ve ever known.”

“Maybe he had a good teacher.” He saw the look on her face. “I’m talking about his father, Mr. Younger. He doesn’t just vote against politicians he disagrees with, he smears their names.”

“Caspian couldn’t carry his father’s briefcase.”

“Why’d you marry him?”

“I was the little match girl looking through the window. I took the easy way.”

Her fingers rested on the bar, inches from his hand. Her nails were tiny and clipped, the bones in her wrist as delicate as a kitten’s. Whenever she lifted her eyes to his, her mouth became like a compressed flower, the black mole at the corner a reminder of how perfect her complexion was. Her blouse hung loosely from her shoulders, and he could see the sunlight from the door reflecting on the tops of her breasts. He wanted to reach out and touch the mole.

“I’m alone, Mr. Purcel,” she said. “My daughter is dead. My husband is a satyr. Think ill of me if you wish. I don’t apologize for what I am.”

“I don’t think you ought to apologize to anybody. I think you’re a nice lady. Maybe you don’t like New Orleans, but you don’t know how beautiful your accent is. It’s like a song.”

“I haven’t eaten supper yet. That’s why I didn’t want to drink a lot,” she said. “Have you eaten, Mr. Purcel?”

“You want to go to the Depot? It’s right down the street. We can eat on the terrace. In the evening you can see the deer up on the hills above the train tracks. I always like this time of day.”

“You really worked for the Mafia?”

“Just one guy. His name was Sally Dio. Sometimes people called him Sally Deuce or Sally Ducks. Somebody put sand in the fuel tank of his airplane. He survived the crash, but he was turned into a french fry. Dave and I ran into him again a few years back.”

“Where is he now?”

“Sally Dee caught the car to Jericho. That’s an expression people in the life used in New Orleans years ago.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Jericho is a dead city. If you got on the streetcar to Jericho, you weren’t coming back.”

Maybe, he thought, he would scare her and she would go away. She got up from the stool and pushed a strand of hair away from her eye, her profile as perfect as a miniature inside a Victorian locket. She tripped in the doorway and fell against him, then blushed and apologized and walked with him into the twilight, neither touching the other.

They did not pay attention to a man leaning against a parking meter down the street. He was smoking a pipe and gazing at the freight cars pulling out of the train yard. His hair was oiled and combed back over the tops of his ears. He puffed on his pipe and let the smoke curl out of his mouth into the breeze. He seemed to take a special pleasure in the purple cast of the hills, backdropped by a sky that was the blue of a robin’s egg. He did not seem to notice Clete and the woman as they walked past him into the restaurant called the Depot.

A locomotive backed into the train yard, pushing a long row of boxcars ahead of it, the couplings clanging with such force that chaff from the boxcar floors powdered in the sun’s afterglow. The man leaning against the meter tapped the bowl of his pipe on his hand, ignoring the live cinders that stuck to his skin. Then he put away his pipe and entered the restaurant through the terrace and took a seat at the bar, staring with self-satisfaction at the face he saw in the mirror.

“What are you having?” the bartender asked.

“A glass of ice water and a menu,” the man said.

“You got it. Visiting?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Saw your tag through the window. How do you like Montana?”

“The state tree of Kansas is a telephone pole,” the man said. “Does that tell you something?”

Two hours earlier, Gretchen had gone up to the main house and thrown a pebble against Alafair’s screen on the third floor. “Want to take a ride?” she said.

“Where to?” Alafair replied.

“A dump by the old train station.”

“What for?”

“To find Clete.”

“Call him on his cell.”

“He turned it off. If he’s doing what I think he is, he doesn’t plan to turn it on again.”

“Leave him alone, Gretchen. He’s a grown man.”

“Except he needs someone to strap a cast-iron codpiece on his stiff red-eye.”

“Do you know how bad that sounds?”

“I heard him talking on the phone to Love Younger’s daughter-in-law. Are you coming or not?”

They drove in Alafair’s Honda to the saloon where Clete sometimes drank. Gretchen got out and went inside while Alafair waited in the car, the motor running. Gretchen came back out and got in the car and closed the door. “The bartender said he left with a woman five minutes ago.”

“Gretchen, don’t get mad at me. What’s the harm if he’s with this woman?”

“Duh, she’s married? Duh, the Younger family would like to turn Montana into a gravel pit?”

“Sometimes Clete drinks at the Depot.”

“I thought he only drank in dumps,” Gretchen said.

“It was James Crumley’s hangout.”

“Who?”

“The crime novelist. He passed away a few years back. Can I make a suggestion?”

“Go ahead.”

Alafair pulled away from the curb. “Ease up on your old man. He thinks the world of you. He’s easily hurt by what you say.”

“So don’t hurt your father’s feelings, even if he’s about to walk in front of a train?”

“You’re a hard sell,” Alafair said.

They drove up the street and stopped in front of the restaurant. Gretchen went inside by herself. She looked in the dining room, then went into the bar and gazed through the French doors at the people eating on the terrace. A man hunched on a stool a few feet from her had just said something about the state tree of Kansas. Through a door pane, she could see Clete sitting with a small woman at a linen-covered table under a canopy stretched over the terrace. The woman had a shawl across her shoulders. A candle flickered on the table, lighting her hair and mouth and eyes. She seemed captivated by a story Clete was telling while he drank from a tumbler of ice and whiskey and cherries and sliced oranges, both hands lifting in the air when he made a point, the ice rattling in the glass. Gretchen was breathing hard through her nose as though she had walked up a steep hill.

“Buy you a drink, legs?” asked the man hunched on the stool.

“I didn’t catch that,” she replied, not taking her eyes off Clete’s back.

“You’ve got long legs, lady. I should have called you ‘beautiful.’ I didn’t mean anything by the other name.”

“Blow me,” she said without looking at him. She went out on the terrace and approached Clete’s table. “You shouldn’t be driving,” she said.

Clete and the small woman looked up. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes lit with an alcoholic shine. “Hey, Gretchen. What’s the haps?” he said. “Miss Felicity, this is my daughter, Gretchen Horowitz.”

“Did you hear me?” Gretchen asked.

“Hear what?” he said, grinning, squinting as though the sun were in his eyes.

“You’re sloshed,” she said.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Felicity said.

Clete tried to hold his smile in place. He pushed out a chair. “We just ordered. Did you eat yet?”

“Yeah, by myself. After I fixed supper for both of us.”

He looked confused. “We were supposed to eat together? I must not have heard you. Is Alafair with you?”

“Yeah, I’ll drive the Caddy. She’ll follow us home. Let’s go.”

“Maybe we should do this another time, Clete,” Felicity said.

“No, no,” Clete said. “Sit down, Gretchen. I’ll go get Alafair. Order me a refill.”

Gretchen propped her palms on the table and leaned down. “What’s your name again?” she said to the woman.

“Felicity Louviere.”

“You’re married to Caspian Younger?”

“Yes. How would you know that?”

“I’m making a documentary on your family and your oil and natural-gas explorations. You’re not aware of it?”

“Somehow it escaped my attention.”

“I don’t like to say this, Ms. Louviere, but I think you’ve asked for it. You’re out with a man who’s not your husband after just losing your daughter. Does that seem normal to you?”

“Clete, I’d better get my car,” Felicity Louviere said. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness. I hope to see you another time.”

Clete pinched his temples as though the pressure of his fingers could impose a modicum of sanity on the situation. “Tell Alafair to come inside,” he said. “We’re going to have dinner. We’re going to talk like civilized human beings. This bullshit ends, Gretchen. Now sit down.”

Gretchen felt the blood go out of her cheeks. The candle on the table seemed to brighten and change shape and shine as though burning underwater. “She looks like Mickey Mouse’s twin sister,” she said. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Clete said.

“It’s your life, Clete. Be a public fool if you want. You’re really good at it,” Gretchen said.

She walked toward the French doors, her eyes shiny, an electric grid printing itself all over her back. “Don’t go, Gretchen,” she heard him say.

She gripped the brass handle on the French doors and turned to look once more at the table. Clete had stood up and was leaning over Felicity, his hand resting on the back of her chair, as though he were comforting her. His eyes met Gretchen’s. He smiled and walked toward her. Her heart was pounding so loudly, she could hardly hear his words.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Get rid of her. Don’t do this to yourself.”

“There’s no problem. We’re just having dinner.”

“You may have the right to hurt yourself, but you don’t have the right to hurt others.”

“You want me to leave her alone in the restaurant? A woman whose daughter might have been murdered by the same guy who was stalking Alafair?”

“She’ll use you. When she’s finished, she’ll be fucking some other poor halfwit who thinks he’s the love of her life. You make me so mad, I want to get as far away from you as I can and never come back.”

People at the tables turned and stared.

“We’ll talk later. I’ll see you at the cabin,” he said.

“You mean after you get your ashes hauled. After you come home hungover and stinking like a cathouse in Trinidad on Sunday morning.”

She saw the twitch in his face, the injury in his eyes. “Okay, I messed up about supper. I got a long history of being irresponsible,” he said. “You knew that when you signed on.”

“That’s the way you feel? A bimbo lets you scope her jugs and you dump the only family you have? That’s pathetic. I hear there’s a T and A bar on North Higgins. Maybe both of you can get jobs there.”

She went through the French doors into the bar. It was crowded with college boys and tourists, all of whom were talking as loudly as they could. A television set was blaring, and someone was yelling whenever a soccer player on the screen kicked the ball down the field. She wanted somebody to start something with her, to step in her way, to put a hand on her, to make a pass, to comment on the anger in her face. She wanted to twist off someone’s head and kick it down the sidewalk. Where was the smart-ass who had called her “legs”?

She seemed to have become invisible. She walked out the front door and got in Alafair’s car.

“What happened in there?” Alafair said. “You look like someone put you in a microwave.”

“Don’t be clever at my expense.”

“What did Clete say to you?”

“Nothing worth repeating. He’s an expert at empty rhetoric. Fuck him.”

“We’re your family, Gretchen. You need to trust people a little more.”

“I told you to give it a rest, Alafair. You sound like your father.”

“Clete’s charity is his weakness. Manipulative women use it against him,” Alafair said. “And don’t be making remarks about Dave.”

“Porking a bitch like Felicity Louviere is an act of charity? No wonder your family is screwed up.”

Alafair drove down a brick-paved street that paralleled the train tracks. The evening star was bright and cold above the hills in the west. A solitary drop of rain struck the windshield. “I’m going to forget what you just said.”

“Did I need to put this on flash cards? Clete just made a choice. He wants to get in that bitch’s bread. If that hurts his daughter, too bad. His swizzle stick comes first.”

Alafair pulled the Honda to the curb and cut the engine. She waited for a rusted-out Volkswagen bus and two bicyclists to pass. She started to speak, then studied a reflection in the outside mirror.

“Let’s get going. I don’t need any more psychoanalytical crap,” Gretchen said.

“I thought I saw a guy come out of the restaurant and look at the back of my car. He’s gone now.”

“A guy was hitting on me in there.”

“Who?”

“How would I know? The kind of guy who sits on a barstool like a vulture. Who cares? What were you going to say?”

“You have to accept Clete as he is,” Alafair said. “When we take people to task for being what they are, we’re deceiving ourselves. It’s also pretty arrogant. We’re telling others they have to be perfect in order to be our friends. It took me a long time to figure that out. You need to dial it down, Gretch.”

“Oh, really?”

“Clete would lay down his life for any one of us. This stuff with the Louviere woman will pass. Clete has never grown up. He probably never will.”

“How would you feel if your father put another woman ahead of his family?”

The car was quiet.

“Not too goddamn good, right?” Gretchen said.

“You’re right,” Alafair said.

“Start the car and drop me by the Caddy.”

“What for?”

“I have a spare set of keys. If Clete wants to go to a motel, his punch will have to take her car, because I’m going to boost the Caddy.”

“You don’t take prisoners, do you?”

Gretchen didn’t reply and stared out the side window into the darkness. She sniffed and dabbed her nose with her wrist.

“You’re my best friend,” Alafair said. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I’ll drive you to Clete’s car. But after that, you’re on your own.”

“I’ve always been on my own,” she said. “That’s what none of you have figured out. You don’t know shit about what’s in my head.”

They were silent while Alafair circled the block and pulled to the curb by the restaurant parking lot. Gretchen got out and walked to Clete’s convertible, her tote bag swinging from her shoulder. She stuck her spare key into the door lock and looked back at the street. Alafair cut her engine and walked into the parking lot. “I’ll make this brief,” she said. “I’ll always be your friend, no matter what you say or do. Dave and Molly will always be there for you, too. But if you ever speak to me like that again, I’m going to kick your butt around the block.”