“No, not at all,” I replied, handing it to her.
“Was that the mother of Angel Deer Heart I saw sitting in the back row?”
“That’s correct. How did you know my name?”
“I saw you in the grocery with Albert Hollister and asked someone who you were.”
Though that didn’t quite come together for me, I didn’t pursue it. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, Ms. Phelps. What’s up?”
“It’s terrible what happened to that young girl. I don’t understand why her mother is here listening to that man.”
“Wyatt Dixon?”
“A sheriff’s detective told me Dixon was the last person to see her alive.”
“I’d say he’s not a viable suspect.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“I’m not qualified to comment, Ms. Phelps. It was nice meeting you.” I turned to go.
“It was just a question,” she said at my back.
The Caddy was locked. I looked back at the pavilion and saw Clete talking to Felicity Louviere. I also saw Wyatt Dixon carrying a paper plate stacked with fried chicken to a picnic table. One more try, I told myself.
I made my way through the crowd and, without being invited, sat down next to him. He never looked up from his food. “You weren’t truthful about your testimony,” I said.
“I’m done talking with you,” he said.
“You indicated you had no memory of it. That was a lie, wasn’t it?”
His forearms rested on the edge of the table, his hands empty and poised above his plate. He kept his eyes straight ahead, the late sun catching in them like reflected firelight. “I’d be careful what I said to the wrong man.”
“You’re an honest-to-God believer, Wyatt. You see things out there in the world that other people don’t. Does the name Asa Surrette mean anything to you?”
“Never heard of him.”
“You’re sure?”
“You got a hearing disorder?” he asked.
“The man who left that message in the cave was no ordinary man, was he?”
“You got it wrong.”
“Got what wrong?”
“It wasn’t no man that was up in that cave,” he said.
“Want to spell that out?”
“He’s goat-footed and has a stink on him that could make a skunk hide. Think I’m taking you on a snipe hunt? Ask Albert Hollister if he ain’t seen presences in that arroyo behind his place. Indians and such.”
“A goat-footed creature was in that cave?”
“There’s a hearing specialist in Missoula I can recommend,” he replied.
I decided it was time to get a lot of distance between me and Wyatt Dixon.
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.