Wyatt fixed his hat and steadied himself. “Outside!” he said.
He was once again borne aloft, his legs up, his body springing backward almost to the croup, the rowels of his spurs slashing down, the twelve hundred pounds of gelding thudding so hard into the sod that Wyatt thought his sphincter had been broken and he was about to urinate into his athletic supporter. He’d drawn Buster’s Boogie, a hot-wired gelding that had crippled a rider for life at the Russian River Rodeo in California. Buster’s Boogie sunfished twice, then corkscrewed and twisted sideways unexpectedly, all within three seconds. Wyatt saw the grandstand begin rotating around him, then the bucking chutes, then the Ferris wheel, then the greased faces of the clowns by the rubber barrel, as though he were stationary and the entire world, even the stars embroidered on the pink sky, had all become part of a giant Tilt-A-Whirl that had gone out of control and was doing things that had never happened to him before.
He felt the gelding explode under him with renewed energy, prying Wyatt’s clamped legs loose from its sides, flinging him high in the air, his shoulders and back still hunched in a rider’s position, the suitcase handle slipping beyond his reach, the ground suddenly coming up like a fist, the blat of the eight-second buzzer coming too late, almost like a pent-up mockery that had never been allowed to express itself.
He heard the thud when he struck the sod, then all sound went out of his head, as though he had been plunged deep underwater, his lungs collapsing like punctured balloons, his eardrums about to burst. He saw the pickup rider coming hard toward him, swinging down from the stirrup, a paramedic running with a first-aid bag, the crowd rising in unison, their faces filled with pity and sorrow.
I’m all right, he wanted to say. I just got the wind knocked out of me. There ain’t no problem down here. Just let me get on my feet. Anybody seen my hat? Why y’all looking at me like that? Have I done gone and messed myself?
His shirt was wet. He clutched it in his fingers and pulled it loose from his belt and saw the starlike wound where his championship silver buckle had punched a hole in his stomach, releasing a fluid that felt more like water than blood.
Then he saw Bertha Phelps running toward him, her breasts bouncing inside her oversize dress, her body haloed by the electric lights and humidity and dust and desiccated manure in the arena. He wanted to ask her if someone had just played a terrible joke on him. The kind Pap might play, if he were still alive and full of meanness, ready to work mischief in the world in any fashion he could.
Chapter 31
Asa Surrette called again at noon on Saturday and told her where to park her car. “I’ll be watching you,” he said. “If everything meets my approval, you’ll be given a sign.”
“I need to see the girl,” Felicity said.
“You will. She’ll be glad to see you. She hasn’t seen a human face in some time.”
“What do you mean?” Felicity asked.
“You’re a foolish woman,” he replied.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed. She closed her eyes, shutting out the light from the French doors, and tried to think. What was he saying? “She hasn’t seen your face?”
“She hasn’t heard my voice, either. At least not since somebody came in the back door of her little house up by Lookout Pass. What do you think of that?”
“I’m not interested in your games.”
“You have a strange way of showing it,” he replied. “I have reservations about you. You wouldn’t try to trick me, would you?”
“Why did you kill my daughter?”
“Who says I did? From what I’ve read, it’s an unsolved crime.”
“Tell me where to go or I’ll hang up.”
“You know where the Alberton Gorge is?” he said. “Get off at the Cyr exit. Cross the river and go four miles north on the dirt road, then wait.”
After he broke the connection, she called Clete Purcel and got his voice mail. “Clete, I’m not sure if I’ll ever see you again,” she said. “There’s a good chance you’ll never know what became of me. I want you to know that none of this is your fault. I also want to apologize to Gretchen for stealing her cell phone. You’re a lovely man. I wish we had met years ago in New Orleans. It’s not really such a bad place. We could have had great fun there.”
She stood up from the bedside, her palms dry and stiff, the skin around her fingernails split and painful whenever she touched a hard surface. In the silence, she could hear the pine needles sifting across the roof in the wind, scattering in the sunlight onto the balcony. The house seemed to swell with the wind, the joists and walls creaking in the silence. She had no idea where Caspian was. Maybe he was drunk; maybe he was with his father. Her footsteps were as loud as a pendulum knocking inside a wood clock as she walked down the stairs and into Love’s den. She opened one of the toolboxes on his worktable and lifted out a leather punch that he used sometimes when he made a holster for one of his antique revolvers. It was sharp at the tip and mounted on a T-shaped wood handle. She lifted her dress and taped it inside her thigh, then walked outside and got in her Audi and drove away. The sun had passed its high point, and the shadows of the poplars that lined the road looked as sharp-edged as spear points on the asphalt.
At 1:48 P.M. Clete came up to the main house. I was sitting on the deck by myself, Albert’s potted petunias in full bloom all around me. It was a fine day, the kind that, at a certain age, you do not let go of easily. When I looked at Clete’s face, I knew that whatever plans I’d had for the afternoon were about to change. He played Felicity’s message. “She knows where Surrette is,” he said. “She’s going to meet him.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“You don’t know her. She loved her daughter. She thinks she closed her eyes to what her husband was doing.”
“Maybe she plans to kill Surrette.”
“That’s not like her. Surrette has outsmarted us, Dave. He’ll kill Felicity and the waitress, too.”
“I don’t think that’s the way it’s going down. He has something else planned. I think he’ll let the waitress go.”
“Why?”
“To show his power. He decides who lives and who dies. He also proves he’s not governed by compulsion. Look, Clete, Felicity Louviere may be suicidal. She’s going to let Surrette do it for her.”
“She’s risking her life to help somebody else. Why don’t you show a little respect?”
I had been drinking a glass of iced tea with a twist of lemon. I wished I had not come to Montana. I wished I had the authority and power and latitude that my badge in Louisiana gave me. I also wished I had the option of operating under a black flag and going after Surrette with a chain saw.
“I’m trying to figure out what we can do,” I said. “I think we should contact the sheriff or the feds.”
“They’re not going to believe us. We’re on our own.”
“We should start with Caspian Younger.”
“I kicked the shit out of him. He laughed at me,” he said.
“Who do you know in Vegas and Atlantic City?”
“Lowlifes and warmed-over greaseballs who wouldn’t piss on me if I was burning to death.”
“Dial them up.”
“Talking to those guys is like drinking out of a spittoon.”
I set down my iced tea and looked at it.
“He’s going to kill her, isn’t he?” Clete said.
I lowered my eyes and didn’t reply. The twist of lemon in my glass made me think of a yellow worm couched inside the ice, the canker inside the rose, the inalterable fact that you cannot hide from evil.