"I'll drive you back to your truck," she said.
"Where's Clete?"
"Up at Sal's."
"Does he know where you are?"
"I guess he does. I don't hide anything from him."
"Nothing?" I said.
She looked at me and didn't answer. We walked toward her jeep in the parking lot. The sheen on her hair was like the purple and black colors in a crow's wing. We got in and she started the engine.
"What's China pearl?" she asked.
"High-grade Oriental skag. Why?"
"You knocked out one of Sal's teeth. They gave him a shot of China pearl for the pain. You must have been trying to kill him."
"No."
"Oh? I saw his face. There're bloody towels all over his living room rug."
"He dealt it, Darlene. He's a violent man and one day somebody's going to take him out."
"He's a violent man? That's too much."
"Listen, you're into some kind of strange balancing act with these people. I don't know what it is, but I think it's crazy. Clete said he met you when you drove Dixie Lee all the way back to Flathead from a reservation beer joint. Why would you do that for Dixie Lee?"
"He's a human being, isn't he?"
"He's also barroom furniture that usually doesn't get hauled across the mountains by pretty Indian girls."
She drove up the east shore of the lake without answering. The trunks of the aspens and birch trees were silver in the moonlight, the rim of mountains around the lake black against the sky. I tried one more time.
"What does it take to make you understand you don't belong there?" I said.
"Where do I belong?"
"I don't know. Maybe with another guy." I swallowed when I said it.
The scars on the backs of her hands were thin and white in the glow of moon- and starlight through the window.
"Do you want to take a chance on living with me and my little girl?" I said.
She was silent a moment. Her mouth looked purple and soft when she turned her face toward me.
"I won't always be in this trouble. I've had worse times. They always passed," I said.
"How long will you want me to stay?"
"Until you want to leave."
Her hands opened and then tightened on the steering wheel.
"You're lonely now," she said.
"After we were together, maybe you'd feel different."
"You don't know that."
"I know the way people are when they're lonely. It's like the way you feel at night about somebody. Then in the daylight it's not the same."
"What would you lose by trying?"
She slowed the jeep on the gravel shoulder a few feet behind my parked pickup truck and cut the engine. It was dark in the heavy shadow of the pines. Out over the lake the sky was bursting with constellations.
"You're a nice man. One day you'll find the right woman," she said.
"That's not the way you felt this morning. Don't put me off, Darlene."
I put my arm around her shoulders and turned her face with my hand. Her eyes looked up quietly at me in the dark. I kissed her on the mouth. Her eyes were still open when I took my mouth away from hers. Then I kissed her again, and this time her mouth parted and I felt her lips become wet against mine and her fingers go into my hair. I kissed her eyes and the moles at the corner of her mouth, then I placed my hand on her breast and kissed her throat and tried to pull aside her shirt with my clumsy hand and kiss the tops of her breasts.
Then I felt her catch her breath, tear it out of the air, stiffen, push against me and turn her face out into the dark.
"No more," she said.
"What-"
"It was a mistake. It ends here, Dave."
"People's feelings don't work like that."
"We're from different worlds. You knew that this morning. I led you into it. It's my fault. But it's over."
"Are you going to tell me Clete's from your world?"
"It doesn't matter. It's not going anywhere. Maybe at another time"
"I'm just not going to listen to that stuff, Darlene."
"You have to accept what I tell you. I'm sorry about all of it. I'm sorry I'm hurting you. I'm sorry about Clete. But you go back home or you're going to be killed."
"Not by the likes of Sally Dee, I'm not."
I put my arm around her shoulders again and tried to brush back her hair with my hand.
"I'm sorry," she said, but this time calmly, with her eyes straight ahead. Then she got out of the jeep and stood in the dark with her arms folded and her face turned toward the lake. The water's surface was black and flecked with foam in the wind. I walked up next to her and put my fingers lightly on her neck.
"It's no good," she said softly.
I could not see her face in the shadows. I walked away from her toward my truck. The gravel crunched loudly under my feet, and the wind was cold through the pines.
The next morning was Friday. I was headed back to the other side of the Divide when my water pump went out at Bonner, on the Blackfoot River, ten miles east of Missoula. I had my truck towed to a garage in town and was told by the mechanic that he would not have the repairs done until Monday at noon. So I had to mark off two days that I could sorely afford to lose.
The air was cool and smelled of woodsmoke when I woke Monday morning, and the sun was bright on the lip of Hellgate Canyon and the valley was filled with blue shadows. I made cush-cush for Alafair and me, walked her to school in the spreading sunlight, then sat on the front porch in a long-sleeved flannel shirt and drank another cup of coffee and read the paper. A few minutes later a Landrover with a fly rod case in the gun rack pulled to a stop in front. Dan Nygurski got out, dressed in a pair of belt less jeans, an army sweater, and a floppy hat covered with trout flies.
"I've got a day off. Take a drive with me up the Blackfoot," he said.
"I have to pick up my truck in the shop later."
"I'll take you there. Come on. You got a fishing rod?"
His seamed, coarse face smiled at me. He looked like he could bench three hundred pounds or break a baseball bat across his knee. I invited him in and gave him a cup of coffee in the kitchen while I got my Fenwick rod out of the closet and tied on my tennis shoes.
"What have you got in the way of flies?" he asked.
"Nothing really, popping bugs."
"I've got what you need, brother. A number-fourteen renegade. It drives them crazy."
"What's this about?"
His mouth twitched, and the muscles in the side of his face and throat jumped.
"I thought I'd pick up some tips from you on how to handle Sally Dee," he said.
"I think you've got a first there. I don't believe anybody's ever cleaned Sal's clock before."
"How'd you hear about it?"
"The sheriff's office reports to us whenever Sal comes to their attention. A deputy told me you tried to use Sal's face to repaint the side of his van. I always knew he had some worthwhile potential."
"He's got skag and coke in that house."
"How do you know?"
"A friend told me."
"Purcel?"
"No."
"Ah, the Indian girl."
"What do you know about her?"
"Nothing. She's just some gal Purcel picked up. They come and go at Sally Dee's. What's your point about the coke and the skag?"
"Get a warrant and bust the place."
"When I put Sal away, it's going to be for the rest of his worthless life, not on a chickenshit possessions charge. He'd have one of those lamebrain beach boys doing his time, anyway."
"I spent some time up at the Flathead courthouse. Why's he buying and leasing up property around the lake?"
Nygurski set his cup in the saucer and looked out the window at the backyard. The grass was wet and green in the shade, and the sunlight was bright on the tops of the trees across the alley.
"He thinks casino gambling's going through the legislature," he said.
"The time's right for it. People are out of work, they've used up all their compo, agriculture's in the toilet. Casino gambling could turn Flathead Lake into another Tahoe. Sal would be in on the ground floor."