In the Moon of Red Ponies: A Novel (40 page)

But he consoled himself with the changes he had witnessed in Wyatt Dixon, even though some of Wyatt’s friends were a challenge to Elton’s attempts at unconditional charity. His church and his larder remained opened to the worst of the worst. Who was he to judge? If he’d been dealt the lot of these poor souls, he would have probably turned out as corrupt and profligate as they, he told himself.

Look at the two men who had just pulled their pickup truck into his yard. The evening light was weak, the western sun veiled by smoke from dead fires, but Elton could see the faces of the two men getting out of the truck, and he wondered if both of them had been in a terrible accident or malformed in the womb.

The shorter man had a gnarled forehead, like the corrugation in a washboard, a squashed nose, and missing teeth. His eyes were set too low in his face and his upper torso was too long for his short legs, so that he gave the impression of a walking tree stump.

His friend was tall, with the flaccid muscle tone of a gorged serpent, a disfigured mouth that looked as if it had been broken with a hard instrument, and a hairline-to-cheek burn scar that had tightened the skin on one eye into a tiny aperture, as though he were permanently squinting.

Elton stepped outside the door of the parsonage, which was actually a house trailer enclosed in a wood shell, and nodded at the two visitors walking up the incline toward him. The air was damp from the rain and smelled of smoke and river stone and wet trees, and he thought he heard geese honking high overhead.

“Hep you boys?” he said. There was grease on his hands from his dinner, and he wiped his hands on a paper towel.

“Looking for work. Man at the State Employment said you might get us on bucking bales here’bouts,” the tall man said, his eyes going past Elton into the backyard.

“Haying is all done by machine today. Don’t many buck bales no more,” Elton said.

“We’re not choicy,” the tall man said. “Haven’t ate for a day or so.”

The two visitors stared at Elton, as though their problems had not only become his but somehow had originated with him. Elton put the paper towel in his pocket self-consciously. “I expect I could fix you something,” he said. “But it looks like y’all need a job more than anything else.” He tried to grin, and his face felt stiff and self-mocking.

“Nice of you to invite us in,” the shorter man said, walking past Elton into his home. His friend followed him, passing inches from Elton’s chest, the burned area on his face puckered like dried-out putty.

Elton stepped inside but did not close the door behind him. “I got peanut butter and jelly, if y’all don’t mind something simple,” he said.

But they seemed not to hear him. They looked at the meagerness of his possessions—the footworn carpet, the secondhand furniture, the imitation wood paneling on the walls—with the curiosity of people who might be visiting a zoo.

“Your wife here?” the truncated man asked.

“She died. Eight years back. In Arkansas. Say—”

“It’s true y’all talk in tongues?” the tall man said.

This time Elton did not try to answer their questions because he knew they did not care about the answers he would give them. The truncated man sat down in a soft chair and clicked on the television, flipped the channels, his eyes like angry chunks of lead as he stared at several blurred images. He clicked the set off. “It’s this Mideastern crap. That’s all that’s on there. Guys who wipe their ass with their hands shaking their fists at the camera,” he said.

Elton remained silent, knowing in his heart of hearts that everything that was about to happen was part of a higher plan.
Just don’t be afraid,
he told himself.
Think of the children of Israel in the fiery furnace. Think of Dan’el in the lion’s den. Think of Paul and Silas locked in jail, the angel of the Lord flinging back their door in a burst of light.

But he could not suppress the fear that was invading his body, stealing his courage and his faith, causing his face to twitch, his brow to break into a sweat, his buttocks to tremble. “It’s Wyatt you’re after, but he ain’t here. He’s trading some horses up at Flathead,” he said.

“
You’ll
do just fine, Preacher,” the tall man said.

“Wyatt’s friends are here. Three fellows y’all don’t want to meet. They went up to the grocery for me,” Elton said.

“They
were
here,” the short man said. He was still seated in the soft chair. His elongated forehead was tilted forward. He raised his eyebrows at Elton, as an ape in a cage might. “But they’re not here now. That’s because they’re locked in the back of a van.”

The room was silent again, so quiet Elton could hear his own breathing, an imperceptible creak under his foot when he shifted his weight. A drop of sweat ran into his eye, and he wiped it out of his eye socket with the heel of his hand.

The tall man took a carton of orange juice out of Elton’s icebox, shook it, and drank directly from the carton. Then he glanced at his watch and exhaled his breath wearily. He wore a dark green shirt that was tucked into his khakis and dusty alpine boots, and his clothes gave off an odor like detergent that had been ironed into the fabric. He set the orange juice carton on the counter and looked at Elton evenly, his half-destroyed face seeming to study the forms of redress the world owed him.

“Wyatt took a lockbox that’s not his and hid it someplace. We think it’s on your property,” he said. “My buddy here is gonna fill up the bathtub now and then the three of us is gonna clear up this whole problem about where that lockbox is located. You’ll be doing a good deed. I’m here to give witness to that.”

The eye that had been shrunken to the size of a dime by the scar tissue on his face glistened brightly.

“You was raised in the church, I can tell. Why do you want to do this, boy?” Elton said.

“ ’Cause it makes me feel good,” the tall man replied.

Outside, the evening light had gone from the sky, and through the open window Elton thought he could hear the dull clatter of stones under the river’s surface and the sound of geese flying north, perhaps to a warm-water refuge that they would never have to leave.

I HAD NOT FORGOTTEN
our anniversary, at least not entirely. I had bought Temple an Indian concho belt and a new western saddle, one made by a famous craftsman in Yoakum, Texas. I had iced down a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne and arranged for flowers to be delivered to the house. But after the telephone threat on her life, I had lost all consciousness of the date.

Then, rather than act on my anger and take it to Mabus with hot tongs, I had made a sacrificial offering in the form of Wyatt Dixon, and I knew in all probability I would never feel the same about myself again. I told Temple all these things, brought the saddle from the barn and splayed it across the gallery railing, popped the cork on the champagne, flopped two heavy trout wrapped in perforated tinfoil on the grill, and slipped the concho belt around Temple’s waist. She stared at me, bemused, perhaps concluding, as she often did, that the man she lived with had long ago severed his ties with the rational world.

Temple went into the bedroom and put on a white lace dress and I put on a suit, then we both put on heavy coats and ate dinner on the side gallery. The rain had stopped, and for the first time in six weeks the moon rose into a clear black sky chained with stars. The meadow was pooled with water, and elk were drinking from the pools, their tails flicking, their racks as hard-looking as sculpted bone in the moonlight. Temple lifted her wineglass to her mouth and drank, her eyes on mine. I had never known a woman who had shadows inside her eyes, but Temple did.

“What’s on your mind?” I said.

“It took courage for you to call Karsten Mabus. Back in the old days you and L.Q. would have done things differently. It’s important for you to remember that, Billy Bob. Don’t look back on what you did. You’re a brave man.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I know you better than you know yourself. I always did. You fault yourself for your violence. But when you and L.Q. did those things down on the border, you did them to protect other people.”

“L.Q. paid the price for it, Temple.”

“He knew the risks going in. He was a brave man, just like you are. Don’t treat him like a victim. Don’t do that kind of disservice to either him or yourself.”

The wind came up and made a rushing sound in the trees on the hillside, and a shower of wet pine needles sifted down the slopes of the roof. I got up from my chair and went around behind Temple and bit her softly on the neck. She reached behind her and clasped the back of my neck, pushing her fingers into my hair, tilting up her chin, her eyes closed.

We left the rest of our food uneaten and went into the bedroom. I slipped her dress over her head and lay her back on the bed, then lifted a strand of hair off her eye and kissed her mouth and the tops of her breasts and stroked her thighs. Then I undressed and lay down close against her, my body against hers, our feet, thighs, and stomachs touching, my face buried in her hair, my fingers tracing the stiffened points of her breasts.

When I was inside Temple Carrol, I could never understand how any moment of anger, fear, resentment, or suspicion could have come between us. Temple’s skin glowed with love for the man she was with. Her arms, thighs, calves, mouth, her womb, the warmth of her breathing against my cheek, were the most encompassing, unrelenting expression of loyalty and affirmation I had ever experienced. She went about making love with a selfless abandon that was both humbling and beyond what any man expects. She was never stintful, never sought her own satisfaction, and was never dependent, self-conscious, or embarrassed. In fact, she radiated a kind of visceral purity, even in the way she perspired, that made me think of flowers opening, sunshowers, a salty wave full of kelp cresting inside a groundswell.

Later I placed my ear against her stomach and listened. Her skin was moist against the side of my face, and I could hear the whirrings of the life inside her. Then I kissed her stomach and her mouth and pulled the sheet over her breasts. “Don’t catch cold. We’ve got the best baby in the history of babydom in there,” I said.

She touched my cheek with her hand.

That’s when the phone rang.

Chapter 23

IT WAS FAY HARBACK,
and she wasn’t doing well with what she had to tell me. “We’ve got another homicide on the res. At the home of a minister named Elton Sneed. You know him?” she said.

“He’s a Pentecostal of some kind. Wyatt Dixon belongs to his church,” I said.

“He’s dead, drowned in his own bathtub. I just got back from there. I don’t know if I’m up to this damned job. Know that old joke about the definition of a liberal? A humanist who hasn’t been mugged yet or something like that?”

“Start over, Fay.”

“It looks like somebody held Sneed down in the bathtub, then tried to make it look like an accident. Water was all over the floor and the walls. He’d been stripped naked and dropped in the tub, but his shirt and undershirt were soaked with water and stuffed in the bottom of a clothes basket. The pants had water on the knees, and there were abrasions all over his arms and shoulders.”

I was standing in the kitchen and had to sit down in a chair as she told me the details of Elton Sneed’s death. There was a weak feeling in my chest, as though weevil worms had worked their way into my heart.

“You there?” she said.

“You have any suspects?” I asked.

“No, nobody saw anything. But that’s life on the res. Nobody sees anything, nobody knows anything, but that doesn’t stop them from complaining constantly about Whitey dumping on them and not enforcing the law. Look, Wyatt Dixon showed up while I was there and went apeshit. No, that doesn’t quite describe it.”

“I need to confess something to you—”

“Let me finish. Dixon cried. I didn’t believe he was capable of feeling anything about anyone. But tears actually ran down his face. It took four cops to get him back outside. The coroner wanted to tranquilize him.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“We didn’t want another homicide. What were you going to say?”

“Karsten Mabus knows Wyatt has the goods from the Global Research robbery. His people probably went after Reverend Sneed when they couldn’t get to Wyatt.”

“That billionaire or whatever out on Highway Twelve again?”

“Right.”

“He’s behind the attacks on Dixon?”

“Right. He owns Global Research. He plans to run for office here in Montana. Global Research is the outfit that sold Saddam Hussein part of his chemical and biological weapons program in the eighties. I told you all this.”

“Were you a fan of Marvel comics as a kid?”

“Don’t make light of this, Fay. He’s an evil man,” I said.

“You said you were going to confess something to me? How does Karsten Mabus know Dixon has the stuff from the Global job?”

“I told him,” I said.

“To get the heat off yourself?”

“Read it any way you want.”

“I knew somehow you were involved in this. I just didn’t know how. I have some crime scene photos. Maybe you should look at them.”

“By assigning indirect responsibility to me, you’re conceding that Mabus sent his men after the preacher.”

“What I’m saying is—” But she had trapped herself and couldn’t finish.

“Where’s Wyatt now?” I asked.

“On the loose. You stop pulling strings on all these people. You stay out of a police investigation, too,” she said, and hung up.

The kitchen lights were off, and I could hear the easy sweep of wind in the trees and the clatter of a pinecone on the roof. But the tranquillity of the night would not ease the pang in my heart. My call to Mabus had brought about the death of Elton Sneed, a gentle, decent man who had honestly served his vision of this world and the next. Also, for the first time, I had begun to seriously wonder about my assessment of Fay Harback.

THE SHOOTER WHO
came onto Karsten Mabus’s property that night would prove a mystery in many ways for both Mabus’s security personnel and the investigators from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department. It was safe to say he did not enter the property from Highway 12, as the front gate was electronically locked at 9
P.M
. and a sophisticated alarm system, including sensor lights, that ran the length of the fence line automatically activated at the same hour. Two boys who had been camping up on a mountainside behind the ranch said they had seen a lone horseman come off a ridge and follow a creekbed to the back of the property, then enter the woods and disappear. They said the rider wore a hat and had binoculars strung around his neck and perhaps was carrying a rifle in a saddle scabbard.