I gaze upon the season from my veranda and know all too well its gaseous vapors and fading colors and deceptive embrace. An orange sun hangs in the cottonwoods down by the river, backdropped by the razored peaks of the Bitterroot Mountains. For me, the sun�s lack of warmth is a harbinger of our times, or at best a sign of our collective ephemerality. But please don�t be taken aback. Age is not kind, and it leaves a mean stamp on an elderly man�s perceptions.

A red Ford F-150 pulls to a stop on the dirt track between my barn and the river. There�s a bullet hole in the back window, frosted around the edges like a crisp of ice. A gangly teenage boy vaults over the tailgate and can-sprays a black swastika on the door of my barn. His stomach is flat as a plank, his hair grown over his ears. He pisses in my cattle guard while rotating his head on his neck, his urine flashing in the sunlight.

I walk down the slope, the air damp and tannic from the decomposition of leaves. The boy climbs back into the bed of the pickup and bangs his fist on the cab�s roof. The driver wears a red cap. A man in the passenger seat turns his head slowly toward me, his salt-and-pepper hair scalped around the ears, his face insentient, perhaps hardened by the elements or a life ill chosen. A beer can rests on the dashboard. The truck drives away, swaying in the potholes.

�You don�t belong here!� the boy shouts, trying to keep his balance, a childlike grin on his face, one that seems incongruent with the nature of his visit. �Go somewhere else!�

He shoots me the bone, his free hand cupping his package.

The worst day in my life began the first of August and has continued as though it has no end, no direction, no resolution, no meaning, no purpose. My daughter�s name was Fannie Mae Holland Broussard. She was fifty-four when she died. Her body was not discovered for three days. The medics had to put on hazmat suits before they entered the house.

In the early hours of each morning I wake with that image in my mind and a hole as big as a pie plate in the center of my chest. I cannot breathe. I feel I�m living in a nightmare that belongs in the mind of someone else. I close my eyes and see through the hole into a blue sky that offers no respite and is filled with the cacophony and the fury of carrion birds, like a dirty infection of the firmament itself.

Fannie Mae�s mother was killed in a car accident when our daughter was three. Fannie Mae had no siblings and I never married again. She never loved a man; she married one and lived with others and remained friends with some but, for good or bad, had no romantic feelings toward any of them. She loved animals more than human beings. Regardless of her age, she remained a girl and never grew completely into a woman. The interior of her home was coated with animal fur and smelled like a barn; birds flew in and out the doors; the counters and tabletops were chained with seat smears from her cats and sometimes the dogs. She brought a pair of goats, Okie and Dokie, into the living room to watch television with her. An industrial cleaning service burned out its machines trying to vacuum the rugs and couches. Her favorite song was �Me and Bobbie McGee.�

That�s the anecdotal story, the one that makes everyone smile. Her life was made forfeit by alcohol and Ambien and, when that wasn�t enough, by sojourners who posed as friends and took from her every dollar they could.

Four days later, on a cold Sunday morning, I drive up a long, steep-sided pass that opens onto the Flathead reservation and the Jocko River and mountain peaks that pierce the clouds and stay snowcapped year-round. The valley is elevated above Missoula, as though it were scooped out of the sky and created separate from the rest of the earth, a place where the moon and stars hang atop the hills even as the pinkness of the morning rises to meet them.

I fill my gas tank, the pump spout like a chunk of ice in my bare hand, my eyes watering in the wind, then I rumble across a wood bridge and follow a dirt road along the Jocko, the boulders steaming in the current, the gold leaves of the willows floating like fish eels on the riffles. The remoteness of the countryside, the sparsity of human structures, the absence of traffic and commerce, and the hush of the morning leave me in awe and make me wonder if the traces of Eden are not still with us.

I pull into a driveway and park in front of an old two-story house surrounded by birch trees, half of the house lit by the sun, the glass in the dormers as black as obsidian. A cruiser is parked in the barn, the front end pointed out. There are no other vehicles in sight, not even a tractor. My tap on the door sounds like a gunshot.

Ruby Spotted Horse opens the door, keeping the chain on, in a blue robe with a towel wrapped around her head.

�What are you doing on my porch?� she asks.

�I�d like to speak with you.�

�Have you heard about calling someone before you go to their house, particularly early on Sunday morning? How�d you get my address?�

�I fish up here with the tribe lawyer.�

�How convenient,� she says. Her eyes have a purple tint, and I cannot tell if it is because of the shadows or because they are deeply recessed in her face. �Sir, you�re staring at me.�

�Sorry.�

�Mr. Broussard, I respect you, but you shouldn�t have done this.�

�What if I come back in a few hours and take you to lunch?�

�This isn�t about the swastika, is it?�

�Not directly.� The grass in the lawn is brown and stiff with frost. I can smell a smokehouse and meat dripping into the ash. I hear bugles blowing and echoing out in the hills, sounds that are imaginary but which I never rid myself of. A fat tabby cat walks down the porch rail and jumps with a thud by my foot, then begins doing figure eights on my legs.

�A man named John Fenimore Culpepper threatened me,� I say. �He also goes by the name Johnny B. Goode. I strung a tripwire full of aluminum cans around my house.�

�So?�

�Montana is a stand-your-ground state.�

Her jaw tightens. She takes off the chain. �Get in here, Mr. Broussard.�

The living room wallpaper is water-stained and cracked, the design faded into extinction, the carpet threadbare. The couch and chairs look as though they have never been vacuumed. The woodwork in the trim and the staircase is probably mahogany or walnut and a hundred years old. A solitary light fixture hangs from the ceiling, the tiny yellow bulbs flickering inside the fluted shades.

�Why are you looking that way at my house?�

�I didn�t know there was a Victorian home on the reservation. I�ve never noticed it.�

�So now you know. Let�s get back to the man who threatened you.�

�I bear an animus toward people who preyed on my daughter, and I�d like to shorten their life span. So instead of doing that, I started thinking of ways to take out my anger on an ignorant man who probably forced his son to vandalize my barn.�

She looks sideways, then back at me. �You�re actually talking about capping someone? And you�re telling this to a police officer in her home?�

�I guess that sums it up.�

�One of us has a problem, Mr. Broussard. Either you�re insane or I have shit for brains, meaning I just let you in my house.�

�Goodbye,� I say.

My shoes leave wet prints through the frost on the lawn as I walk toward my Toyota pickup. I bought it twenty years ago when I had far less money than I have now. Back then I lived a simpler life with my daughter, and now I would burn every dollar in my possession in order to get her back. The sun is yellow and cold above the hills, and snow is blowing off the peaks of the Mission Mountains. I feel a loneliness that is almost unbearable.

I pull open the driver�s door of the truck, my hand dead to the cold of the handle, my stomach flopping for the fool I have made of myself.

�Come back, Mr. Broussard!� Ruby Spotted Horse calls from the porch.

I smile and shake my head.

�I was too hard on you! Please, Mr. Broussard. I don�t want you on my conscience.�

I retrace my steps and reenter the house. The cat goes inside with me, tail straight up, stiff as a broomstick.

�I need to get dressed,� she says. �There�s some muffins and coffee in the kitchen.�

�That�s very nice of you, Miss Ruby.�

�You�re from the South?�

�Why do you think that?�

�Your manners.�

�Thank you, but the South is a state of mind rather than a place. Much of it is good, but much of it dark, thanks to our replication of original sin in the form of the Middle Passage. John Calvin and Cornelius Jansen spat in the punch bowl as well.�

She seems to examine my words inside her head, then picks up the cat and drops him heavily in my arms. �Meet Maxwell Gato.�

She goes upstairs and I go into the kitchen with the cat. Through the window I see lambs playing in a shed built on the side of an unpainted barn, stacks of baled hay, a swayback mare with a blind eye and skeletal ribs, a blue roan in a pen (part of the treatment for laminitis), a fawn without a mother at the stock tank, a cat with a pasty pink medicine smeared on a patch of mange, an Old English sheepdog, its eyes buried deep in its fur. I pour some dry cat food in a bowl for Maxwell Gato. He crunches a few pieces, then jumps on the counter and stares out the window.

�Want to go outside with your pals?� I say. �Well, let�s go out there and see what these fellows are up to.�

I cradle Maxwell Gato in my arms again. I can hear him purring and feel his warmth against my chest. Then I start toward the back door. To my left is a stairwell that descends into the cellar. Maxwell Gato is tensing in my arms, trying to straighten his body, digging in wherever he can.

�What�s wrong, Maxwell?� I say.

One claw almost takes off my right nipple; he tumbles on the floor, then bolts for the living room. I let him outside and watch him run past my truck into a field of unharvested pumpkins that resemble deflated basketballs. I return to the stairwell and the back entrance. I have no idea why the cat became so frightened. I click the stairwell light on and off. Nothing happens. In the gloom at the bottom of the steps I can make out a door and a steel U-shaped padlock hanging from the hasp.

I unconsciously touch my shirt where Maxwell Gato hooked me and realize I have dropped a gold ballpoint given to me by my daughter. I descend the stairs in the semi-darkness, one hand tight on the rail, feeling each step with the heel of my shoe. The air is cooler now and smells like a cave.

Something slams into the wood from the other side of the door, rattling and stressing the padlock, knocking dust into the air. After a pause, there�s another blow against the door, this one even harder. The object on the other side of the door, one that is obviously mobile, has weight and density and a ferocious level of self-destructive energy and is driven by an intelligent source, one that may possess arms or legs or fingernails or claws, because I heard scraping sounds against the wood.

I go up the stairs two at a time, my heart pounding. Ruby Spotted Horse is at the top of the stairs. �What are you doing down there?� she says.

�The cat scratched me and I dropped my ballpoint.�

She clicks the light switch up and down. �The bulb must have burned out. Come up here before you hurt yourself.�

�What�s in that cellar?�

�Preserves and canned goods. Why?�

�Something hit the door.�

�Sometimes my fruit jars blow up.� She motions for me to keep coming up the stairs. �Those steps are not reliable. You�re about to give me a heart attack.�

She�s wearing jeans and a cowboy shirt unsnapped at the top; her hair is damp and uncombed, the towel gone. I know she is lying about the cellar and that she heard the same sounds I did, which caused her to hurry to the back of the house.

�Did you hear me, Mr. Broussard?�

I reach the top of the stairwell, breathing as evenly as I can, the floor solid under my feet, the rectangular world of predictability at the ends of my fingers. �I know what I heard and what I saw, Miss Ruby.�

�I think you�re a little confused.�

�That�s not flattering.�

�Then I don�t know what to tell you.�

�How about the truth?�

She chews her lip. �I can�t believe I�m doing this. Okay, wait here. I�ll get a flashlight. I�ll also try to find the key to the padlock. I misplaced it a couple of days ago. If I can�t find it, I�ll bring a crowbar, and we�ll rip off the hasp and break anything else of your choosing.�

�I�m sorry to make trouble for you,� I say.

�For a few minutes, can you just say nothing at all?�

She goes into the kitchen, and I hear her opening and shutting drawers and cabinets. A phone rings, and she begins talking and walking deeper inside the house. I hear her footsteps coming back toward the brief hallway that leads to the cellar stairs. �You still there?� she says.

�Take your time,� I reply.

She walks away again. Finally she returns with a flashlight and a key. The key is threaded onto a long ribbon of gingham tied in a loop, and I wonder how anyone could lose it.

�Excuse the delay,� she says. �That was my ex. If you have a telephone pole up your ass and want to drop the hammer on a genuine sack of dog turds, let me give you his address. Oh, I forgot. You�re tied up with a swastika on your barn door.

�Anyway, we need to get your ballpoint. You also have blood on your shirt. We need to get that fixed, too. Now get behind me. This is still my house.�

At the bottom of the stairs she picks up my ballpoint and drops it in my shirt pocket. �Okay, we�ve got that out of the way. Here, hold the flashlight.�

She inserts the key in the padlock and twists slowly until the shank pops free from the locking mechanism. She takes the flashlight from my hand, then pushes the door back on its hinges and shines the light inside. The interior is more than simply a cellar. The floor is concrete, the walls an aggregate of subterranean boulders filled in with hand-stacked stones taken from a riverbed. The air is cool and dry, the way cave air is, like a reminder of a pre � industrial age or maybe a monastic wine cellar. The flashlight beam dances on shelves lined with preserve jars.

�Where�s the light switch?� I ask.

�On the back wall.�

�I�d like to turn it on.�

�Enough is enough, Mr. Broussard.�

�What do you mean?�

�Look on the floor. I think that�s what you heard.�

She points the flashlight between two rows of shelves. Three piles of broken glass mixed with a green-and-red mess twinkle in the flashlight�s beam. �Tomatoes,� she says.

�I have a hard time buying that.�

�Well, I�m sorry.�

I do not want to give it up. But my life is not a study in rationality. I have another problem. I do not enjoy my role as an old man in a nation that has little use for antiquity and even less for those who value it. I touch the surface of the cellar door. It is three inches thick and made of oak and rusted metal plates and iron spikes, the kind of door Vikings broke their axes on.

�This could have come out of the castle,� I say.

�Ready to go?� she says.

Accidentally the beam of her flashlight bounces off a piece of hand-carved blond wood into which a deep-brown glass eye has been inserted.

�What�s that in the corner?�

�My niece�s rocking horse.�

�She plays down here?�

�She died a few years ago.�

�I see.�

�I have to go, Mr. Broussard. I�ll put a Band-Aid on that scratch before you leave, okay?�

Just before she clicks off the flashlight, the beam lights up a page of tightly folded yellow notepaper on the concrete. I can see threads of green ink on the paper, the strokes as thin as a cat�s whisker. I pretend to sneeze and take my handkerchief from my pocket, then drop it. When I pick it up, I scoop the notepaper inside it. Before we go, Ruby Spotted Horse locks the cellar door, her face thoughtful. �The Culpepper man you mentioned earlier? He�s on a list at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The FBI knows him, too.�

�Culpepper is a terrorist?�

�An imperial wizard in Alabama. I don�t know if he�s active now. Let�s get some peroxide and bacitracin on you.�

She had brought up Culpepper out of nowhere and just as quickly and mysteriously dropped the subject. I follow her up the stairs. �I�ll skip the first aid, Miss Ruby. How about dinner sometime?�

She walks ahead of me into the kitchen, glancing over her shoulder as though making sure I�m with her. I wait for her to speak, but she doesn�t.

�Do you eat dinner with old people?� I ask.

�Sure, give me a call.�

�One more thing?�

�Oh, boy,� she replies.

�I�m still deeply disturbed about that cellar.�

�Then I don�t know what to say,� she says. �Steamed vegetables and fruit packed in airtight glass jars can explode as loudly as an M-80. You saw the mess on the floor. How about giving it a rest?�

�I saw dust fly off the door.�

�All right, you asked for it. This is the res. Things happen here that don�t happen in other places. The same on the Marias River and at the Big Hole and the Custer battlefield. Don�t question the power of the dead, Mr. Broussard.�

�You�re saying you have spirits in your house?�

�Look for them and you�ll find them. Don�t look for them and you won�t.�

Her thick dark hair is prematurely gray in places, her eyes mysterious, her petite stature and full bosom the kind that causes a mixed form of desire that men seldom untangle.

�Why do you keep looking at me like that?� she says.

�I don�t want to give you any grief. I�ll say goodbye now.�

�Listen, my great-grandfather was Nez Perce and at the Big Hole. My great-grandmother was Blackfeet and killed at the Baker Massacre. I get the feeling you think you have the right to invade my privacy because you sympathize with Indians. If that�s so, lose the attitude right now.�

�You got it,� I say. �I love your cat.�

I walk back to my truck and drive along the side of the Jocko, the spray on the boulders iridescent in the sunshine, the waterfalls high up on the Missions frozen like the teeth of animals. A moose with a huge rack is grazing in a grove of cottonwoods, the ground wet and green and shining. I try to take solace in the beauty of the day and the time on earth that I shared with my daughter, Fannie Mae. I think of her every day, over and over, and pray that she is with me and that one day she will contact me in an undeniable fashion and tell me that�s she safe from all the evil.

I almost forget the folded page of yellow notebook paper I picked up from the cellar floor. Could it be from Fannie Mae? Why can�t I receive a sign today rather than in the future? I hold the steering wheel with one hand and unfold the notepaper with my thumb and read the words that are written in a frail hand, perhaps by a child, perhaps by an elderly person: Help me. Please. I don�t want to die.

That night I sit alone in the darkness of my kitchen and try to think my way out of the situation I have stumbled into. No, �stumble� is not the word. I�m the creator of my troubles, and I entered into them with enthusiasm and forethought. I confronted an ignorant and probably dangerous man and took the consequences to a woman who, to all appearances, cares for abused and neglected animals. Now I must decide if I should keep silent about my experience when I neared her cellar door. Even more distressing, what should I do about the plea on the notebook paper? The childlike penmanship belongs to someone very young or frail or very old. To deny that person help could blacken my soul forever, and I mean forever. The message is so simple and earnest that I cannot get its plaintive desperation out of my head. But must I report Ruby Spotted Horse to her superiors � the same police officer who gave me her phone number because she worried about my safety?

Had not her people paid enough dues? She said her ancestors had been at the attack on the Nez Perce at the Big Hole and at the Baker Massacre on the Marias, two of the cruelest and most unwarranted examples of inhumanity in our national history. In January 1870, a drunkard named Major Eugene Baker attacked a sleeping village of innocent Blackfeet in subzero weather. The soldiers slew them without mercy, and the ones they slew in largest numbers were women and children. The suffering and misery imposed on the survivors has no equal in the Plains Wars. They were driven into freezing water, their wickiups and clothes and food burned. That afternoon, prisoners who tried to escape were chopped to death with axes to ensure the others did not attempt the same. Others had to find their way in arctic conditions to Fort Benton, seventy-five miles from the massacre site. When it came to fighting the Indians, General Sheridan had formally instructed Baker to �hit them hard.� Baker was hailed as a hero and never charged for his crimes or the sadistic and mindless way in which he committed them. Is it surprising that Hitler made use of our racial attitudes in support of his own in Mein Kampf?

Chief Joseph was one of the most gentle and spiritual people among the Indian nations, to say nothing of his moral superiority to the politicians and land-grabbers who promoted the extinction of the buffalo herds in order to starve the Indians onto the reservations. Joseph�s only crime was his desire to take his people into Canada � called �Grandmother�s Land� by the Indians � and live close by Sitting Bull and the Sioux, who had fled the country after the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The Nez Perce fought a running battle of eleven hundred miles across Washington State and Idaho and into Montana and outwitted the army at Lolo Pass and, in the dark, filed across the land my house is built on, the women carrying their babies on their backs, the wounded and the sick dragged by travois and Appaloosa ponies. Then they entered the wide magnificence of the Bitterroot Valley and, for the first time since they left Washington, began to feel they had eluded the army or, better yet, the army had tired of them and given up. They even bought clothes and supplies from the white traders in the valley without incident. Perhaps the warm late-summer haze on the meadows and the silence in the hills were signs that the war�s ferocity had burned itself out.

They headed for the Big Hole, a high-country paradise of rolling foothills and meadows filled with game and arroyos strung with fir trees where they could hunt grouse. The countryside seemed magical. The mountains in the distance were capped with snow and turned as red as a jewel in the sunset, and the riffles in the Big Hole River so cold among the rocks that the broad lateral stripe on the rainbow trout was a brilliant purple.

At dawn on August 9, 1877, General Gibbon�s men waded quietly through the fog on the river and, once on dry ground, formed into squads and knelt on one knee as though about to pray. But the white man�s most favored prayer was a gun, in this instance a single-shot trapdoor .45�70 Springfield rifle. The Springfields were heavy and cumbersome and had been converted by the army from Civil War muskets to save money, and they did not have the rapidity of fire that the Henry did. But on the perimeter of an unsuspecting people wrapped in warm dreams, they would do just fine.

In unison the soldiers fired three volleys blindly into the wickiups. The effect was devastating. Women clutching as many children as they could ran for the cover of downed cottonwoods or dunes along the riverbank or a gap in the rocks above. The slaughter was on, aided by a howitzer. The braves stood and fought, and the women and children ran. And ran. And ran. The oddity was their silence. They were obviously terrified, but they fled in groups like desperate shadows on a rock wall, without sound, as though they already knew their fate because they had already lived it. They ran anyway, until they were shot down and their children thrown wide-eyed from their grasp, the .45�70 rounds whining into the distance.

These thoughts and images do not give me rest. I know they are associated with depression. I pace my living room floor. I want to drink, and I think about women, and I think about death and wonder if it isn�t a better choice than the life that has become mine. I speak out loud to Fannie Mae. When I hear no response, I ball my fists until my nails cut my palms. The moon is high above the Bitterroots and streaks the yard with shadow and paints the veranda the color of tarnished pewter. I can see the aluminum cans in which I poured pebbles out of my palm and strung through the trees three inches above the ground. They might tinkle when the wind blows or a rabbit crosses the yard, but I know the difference between the innocent work of the wind and animals and an ankle or a boot catching on the wire and rattling cans all over the yard. When the latter does not happen, I�m disappointed and at the same time feel shame for the secret fires that have been with me since Pork Chop Hill. A car passes on the highway, probably a late-Sunday-night drinker on his way down to Ravalli County, where the saloons and casinos stay open until two and no one worries about distancing or masks.

Where are you, Fannie Mae? Why are you not with me in my darkest hour?

I unlock my gun cabinet and remove my M1 and push back the bolt with the heel of my hand and, with my thumb, press an eight-round clip into the magazine, then remove my thumb quickly so it doesn�t get caught when the bolt snaps shut. I try to convince myself that my behavior is thespian. True, I hate the violent history of the Holland family, and I hate the martial mentality of those who love wars but never go to them. Why am I arming my M1? I fit the front sight under my upper teeth and touch the roof of my mouth; I can taste and smell the oil and the coldness of the steel. My heart is beating, my thumb on the trigger. Oh, God, don�t let me do this.

I pull the barrel from my mouth and prop the M1 against the divan and call a friend in the Missoula Sheriff�s Office named Jeremiah McNally. He�s in his late thirties, educated, taciturn, unmarried, handsome, genteel, a former DEA agent, although no one knows why he gave up his position. He wears a suit wherever he goes and doesn�t use profanity and plays bingo at a Catholic church.

I ask him to meet me tomorrow at a caf� near the courthouse.

There�s a pause. �What�s going on?� he says.

Before I can reply, I hear a woman�s voice speak in my left ear: Don�t tell him. I not only hear the voice, I also feel it, like the tickle of a feather against my skin. I look around me and open and close my mouth to clear my hearing. �It�s about meth on the res,� I say.

�Small creatures with no eyes are living in my in-basket,� Jeremiah replies. �Can you just tell me what the problem is?�

�Not over the phone.�

The wind buffets the house, and a pinecone pings on the roof of the veranda and bounces into the yard. Tell Jeremiah he�s the only friend you have in the courthouse, the female voice says, and this time I have no doubt whose voice it is. My mouth is dry, my windpipe like a hose someone just stepped on.

�Are you all right?� Jeremiah says.

�Sure,� I lie. �I need to see you. In person.�

�The CIA has a tap on your phone?�

�You�re my only friend in the courthouse.�

That one works. �Okay, ten o�clock at the caf� across from the courthouse,� he says. �Who�s that with you?�

�No one.�

�Really?�

�You actually think you heard someone?� I ask.

It�s Monday morning, and the crowd at the caf� is thinner than I have ever seen it. The pandemic is taking its toll in many ways. In rural areas all over Montana, a majority have refused to practice respiratory protection. Many of the quarter million bikers traveling to and from the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally left their fluids and fouled air for us to deal with.

Down the street, kids in Black Lives Matter T-shirts and masks are singing �We Shall Overcome.� Twenty yards away, a counter-group wearing red MAGA hats has gathered around a flatbed truck flying the Stars and Stripes and blue-and-white Trump flags. Individuals from each group stray to the other and chat or shake hands. This is Missoula. The year is still 1968 and the flower children are everywhere. The symbol most associated with the city is the peace sign that overlooks the downtown area and the university campus. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to hold federal office, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the sweetheart of the IWW, are patron saints. When Donald Trump came to town during the 2020 campaign, the word �liar� was spelled out in large white letters on the side of the mountain behind the university so the president could have a good view from Air Force One.

In front of a pawnshop across the street from the courthouse is a different kind of group. They have long rifles. At least one is carrying an AR-15. Jeremiah and I are sitting by the caf� window with a view of Broadway and the daily traffic and the Doughboy statue on the courthouse lawn, one hand hefting his �03 Springfield with the bayonet fixed, the other hand frozen above his head, bringing up his squad, men who may have disappeared inside clouds of mustard gas over a century ago. I think of my father, who went over the top at both the Marne and the Somme.

It�s a bluebird day, the kind that shouldn�t go wrong, the kind you want to lock in a safe as proof that the earth abideth forever. The boy with the AR-15 has his back to me; he�s tall and wears a camouflage jacket and half-top boots and a flop hat; his hair hangs over his ears. A thirty-round magazine juts from the well of his weapon. With a bump stock, he could spray down dozens in under one minute.

Jeremiah and I order, then he follows my line of sight. �We�re watching them,� he says.

�Watching whom?�

�The Second Amendment crowd.�

�They�re not out there about the Second Amendment, Jeremiah,� I say. �They�re there to menace and intimidate.�

�How do you prove it?� he replies. His hair is dark, freshly clipped, lightly oiled, his skin without blemish. His features make me think of a 1930s leading man. He�s wearing a cheap suit with a checkered shirt and a navy blue tie. He looks more scholar than cop, more outlier than joiner. His eyes brighten in the hope that I won�t comment anymore on the latitude given to people who belong on an ice floe south of the Aleutians. �What did you want to tell me?� he asks.

�Know a state trooper named Ruby Spotted Horse?�

His eyes are flat. �Lives on the res? Yeah, she got some ink about three years ago.�

�For what?�

�Shot and killed a guy at a rest stop on I-90. He�d busted out of a holding cell in Washington. He raped and murdered two children.�

Since Fannie Mae�s death, every coarse or cruel word or image I hear or see is a serpent that curls around my heart and then slithers away and goes to work on another organ, all of this before I can process what I�ve seen or heard. �Give me the short version, okay?�

�She smoked him in the dark,� he says. �No witnesses. She thought he had a gun. He didn�t. She popped him four or five times. It looked like a bad shoot to me. But she didn�t use a throw-down, so that was on her side. You didn�t read about it?�

�Fannie Mae developed seizures about three years back. Her feet curled up like claws. I didn�t pay much attention to local news for a while.�

I just became the martyr with his tragedy on his sleeve. I�ve done it before. Why? To get even with the world.

The waitress puts plates of waffles and scrambled eggs and hash browns and bacon for Jeremiah in front of us. She�s stout and in her late thirties and has pale red hair with streaks of blond in it. She leans across the table to put a fresh ketchup bottle with the salt and pepper and hot sauce; her hip brushes against Jeremiah�s shoulder. �You guys need anything else?�

�We�re fine, Betty,� Jeremiah says.

�Just holler,� she says, and winks.

�Go ahead,� he says to me, although his eyes are on the waitress�s rump.

�I got into a situation with a man named John Fenimore Culpepper. He had his son paint a swastika on my barn door. I should have let it go. Instead I went to Culpepper�s house. Ruby Spotted Horse had been the responding officer when I made the 911 call because of the swastika. So I went to her home yesterday morning to tell her I had shown bad judgment.�

Jeremiah�s eyes are veiled. He drenches his waffles with maple syrup and parks a fork-load in his mouth. �That was the only reason you went there?�

�Sunday is a bad day to be alone,� I reply.

He tries to smile and is probably embarrassed by my candor. �I know what you mean,� he says. �But I�m kind of lost here. What can I do to help?�

I can�t concentrate. Someone is shouting through a megaphone. The Trumpers, the BLMs, and the people with guns are looking down the alley on a side street. Two uniformed policemen are running through the traffic toward the alley. Jeremiah drops the blind on the window glass and says, �Forget those guys. What happened at the res?�

I tell him everything: the incongruity and Gothic ambience of Ruby Spotted Horse�s nineteenth-century home, her care of injured or neglected animals, the field of pumpkins left to rot when her neighbors could probably use the food, the lock on a cellar that supposedly contained only preserves, the huge object that thudded twice into the door like the heavy bag in a boxing gym, worse, the scraping of claws, her disingenuous explanation about preserve jars exploding.

�You searched the cellar?� Jeremiah says.

�No, the light switch was in the back.�

�There was no sign of anyone in the room?�

�Not that I saw.�

�I�d just blow it off,� he says.

�Blow it off? Whatever hit the door must have weighed over two hundred pounds. It knocked dust in my face.�

�Did you talk to the tribal police?�

�I don�t want the lady to look bad in front of her people.�

He squeezes his temples. �I don�t know what to say. Maybe she keeps a crazy relative down there.�

�One that has claws?�

�Look, Aaron, there are times in our lives when we shouldn�t trust our senses. Maybe this is one of them.�

�Say again?�

�It�s just a thought.�

I try to control my feelings. People of my generation have few confidants, because there are fewer and fewer people who understand the America we grew up in. Most would not recognize the names that to us were as important as Bunker Hill. I carried my best friend down a trench in a place called Pork Chop Hill and dropped him when a 105 burst ten yards from me. My friend may have ended up a lab rat north of the Yalu. The Communists transported four hundred POWs with them into China, perhaps even into Russia, for use in medical experiments. I will never find out the fate of my friend, and thinking about it is for me a perfect hell.

I stick two fingers in my shirt pocket and remove the folded piece of yellow notepaper I picked up from Ruby Spotted Horse�s cellar floor. I unfold it and press it flat on the table and slide it toward him. I can see the ink and the wispy penmanship clearly on the yellow paper and almost hear the voice of the poor soul who wrote the message. �I took this from the cellar.�

�What is it?�

�Read it.�

He glances at the page. Then picks it up and turns it over. �What�s going on here, Aaron?�

�What�s going on? Someone�s life is in peril.�

�There�s nothing on this paper.�

�Cut it out.�

�Look for yourself.�

�I don�t have to.�

He lets out his breath slowly. He looks at the waitress, and I know he wants to be with her and not me. Or with anyone except me. �I think you need to rest, Aaron.�

�Look me straight in the face and tell me again there�s nothing on that paper.�

He makes a sucking sound with his teeth. A crowd has formed by the alley. A thin Black kid with gold-peroxided hair is sitting on a bicycle, talking to the cops. Three white kids have taken the position against a brick wall inside the alley, leaning on their arms, their feet spread, all of them in tight, dirty jeans and biker boots, a cop shaking them down. One of the kids is the boy who was carrying the AR-15, although he is not carrying it now. He�s also the same kid who painted the swastika on my barn door.

I get up from the table and refold the notepaper and return it to my shirt pocket. I remove a crisp bill from my wallet and lay it on the tablecloth. �You think Jackson�s face should be taken off the twenty-dollar bill?�

�Haven�t given it much thought.�

�You ought to. The Indians were his loyalest allies. He betrayed them and put them on the Trail of Tears. On the way to Oklahoma, they were raped, starved, and murdered.�

�Sit down, Aaron. We�ll work this out. What would Fannie Mae want you to do?�

�Don�t you or your colleagues use her name.�

I feel naked, as in a dream. The sounds in the room slow to a crawl, then drain through the floor. The people at the tables are frozen in place and stopped in midspeech. Our waitress gives me the blank look of a mannequin, her face distorted, her tray about to spill. Jeremiah has also become painted on the air. I leave the room hurriedly, bouncing against chairs that seem bolted to the floor.

It�s still Monday. The moon is up, white and cold and ringed with vapor, the current of the Bitterroot lit by its reflection and running hard, the middle of the river bladed with small waves. I take a 1911-model army .45 from my gun cabinet and slip an eight-round magazine in the handle, push it into the back of my belt, and walk along the riverbank and then through the cottonwoods whose leaves are above my ankles.

I have beseeched Fannie Mae to contact me. She died in a strange fashion. She was finally clean and sober. Her anti-seizure meds were working; she was looking forward to another trip to Hollywood, where she had negotiated a film adaptation of my work, now in production. The heart attack seemed to come out of nowhere. She was watching television in bed and eating cherries from a bowl on her night table. Her death was probably instantaneous, although she bit her lip severely and bled heavily on the bedclothes. Three days later, when the medics broke into the house, she still had a cherry stem between her thumb and two fingers. Since then I have believed this was Fannie�s way of telling us she did not suffer.

The day after her funeral, I found a cherry stem on the stairs in my house. I had no cherries in the house and could not remember when I had bought any. Other peculiar phenomena began to happen. Fannie Mae used to make what I called �animal safety tours� around the ranch. She hand-molded chicken wire around the edges of my three stock tanks so gophers and chipmunks could climb out of the tanks if they fell in. She also made sure all empty buckets or feed tubs were turned upside down so no small animal could get in and die of starvation. One night recently an electrical storm flashed its way down Lolo Pass and blew one of my barns apart and brought down a ponderosa on my brooder house. Poultry feathers, horse tack, buckets, split feed sacks, and Fannie�s tub of alfalfa treats for the horses were scattered everywhere. I looked at the wreckage through my bedroom window and promised myself I would start a cleanup by nine and went back to sleep.

I woke to a dripping dawn and a barnyard that had been cleaned and cleared of any hazard to the animals. There were no footprints in the mud. The alfalfa treats had been put in a gunnysack and hung from a peg inside the barn. The stock tank was filled to the brim, the water as clear as high-country snowmelt, the surface ringed with raindrops. Chicken wire taken from a new roll was snugged around the sides of the tanks with clips and plastic ties.

As I stood in the midst of the barnyard, the horses and sheep motionless inside the mist, I knew that Fannie Mae was perhaps no more than twenty feet away. I called out her name again and again, but there was no reply.

Now I walk up the slope through ponderosa and fir trees whose elongated shadows resemble shaggy animals stretched out on the ground. On this same slope I have found fractured chert that was probably the detritus of Nez Perce work mounds. I have also found traces of mercury where members of the Lewis and Clark party almost certainly urinated, tattooing their venereal disease and its primitive curative into the soil. In the middle of the night, out in the trees, I have seen entities that glow like phosphorus and are humped like bears, but they are neither bears nor monsters. I believe they are part of Chief Joseph�s people trying to escape the army, the women and infants wrapped in the fur of animals, the pain and passion of their struggle no less an agony than the path up Golgotha.

At the top of the slope is a spring that usually dries out in the summer. But this year has been a wet one, free of forest fires, at least around here, and water is swelling like liquid silver out of the ground, pooling over the rocks that Fannie Mae stacked in a circle when she was a little girl, which is why I named this place �Fannie Mae�s Little Altar.�

The fog is blue and hangs in the trees and puffs along the ground, and inside it I can see the gnarled horns and glassy brown eyes and wet noses of the deer who come here to drink. The air is heavy with the smells of pine needles and mushrooms and lichen on the rocks and fallen trees that have rotted and been reduced by worms to the weight of balsa wood.

I stand by the spring and toss a pinecone up the hill and watch it roll back down. �Fannie Mae?� I say.

There�s no answer.

�It�s your old man, and he�s in a mess of trouble.�

No response.

�Don�t be like this, Fannie Mae. Give me a sign.�

The wind is not a good companion. It courses through the canopy and sprinkles my hat with droplets of water that run down inside my long underwear. �It�s not right to leave me in the lurch.�

Fannie Mae invented stubbornness. If you tried to influence her behavior, she would make a religion out of doing the opposite.

�I know you�re out there. You left the cherry stem on the stairs, and you cleaned up the barn and the yard after the storm. I know it was you.�

In truth, I don�t know that it was Fannie Mae. It could have been a neighbor. A local religious group is constantly doing anonymous good deeds for others, paying checks in restaurants and even at the Lolo Dairy Queen, whether the recipients like it or not.

The fog is thicker and grayer now and clings to my skin like moist rags, reminding me of my childhood home in the bayou country of southern Louisiana. I remove the .45 from my belt and stick it in my boot, and sit on the boulder by the spring and feel the coldness of the stone seep through my trousers. In moments like these I cannot separate reality from madness, and in my sickness I often reach out to dead members of my family. It is not a good way to be.

My father always referred to death as the Great Veil. He believed you could put your hand through it and touch not only the dead but the unborn; he also believed that all events occur simultaneously rather than sequentially. As a boy, he had seen Confederate soldiers in the early-morning fog on Spanish Lake, outside New Iberia, and Saxon warriors in a cloud above the German fortifications on the Somme. But if these visions were real, why has my father not tried to contact me, or appeared in a dream, or simply whispered, Keep a brave heart? I have no answer. And I feel myself teetering on the edge of despair.

Then I hear the voice: Why did you bring the .45, Pops?

I feel like an icicle has just been driven through my chest.

You�re not thinking about doing the Big Exit, are you?

�You knocked the breath out of me, kiddo. Where are you?�

Up here, in the tree. She drops to the ground. She�s wearing jeans and sandals and a faded Mike the Tiger LSU T-shirt I gave her, and she looks like she did just before she died, which was always youthful.

�Aren�t you cold?� I ask.

I�m not the problem, Pops. Answer my question. What�s with the gun?

�I thought you might need it.�

You�re still the worst liar on the planet.

I tell her about the Indian trooper and the possibility of a prisoner in her cellar, and about the note I took from the cellar on which Jeremiah McNally denied seeing anything but which enraged an unlettered, violent former Klansman who called it the devil�s work. �Why could he see the writing but not Jeremiah?� I ask.

We�re not all from the same tree. There�s more than one gene pool. Some of them got pissed in.

�Who told you that?�

It�s common knowledge on this side of things. Your father is here. He�s been here since you were eighteen.

�What?�

He�s a real gentleman.

�Why doesn�t my father give me a sign he�s all right?�

He thinks he let you down. The drinking and whatnot.

�He shouldn�t feel that way.�

You got it turned around, Pops. He feels that way because you haven�t forgiven him.

�That hurts, kiddo.�

Quit it with the names. I�ve got to run.

�Come down to the house.�

I don�t make the rules.

�Did you suffer?�

I was afraid. Then I saw your cousin Weldon and I was all right. He said to tell you hello.

I lose control. Weldon was my first cousin, but I thought of him as my big brother. He was at the liberation of Dachau and came home with the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and three Purple Hearts. I stumble and almost fall and grope behind me until I can steady myself on a boulder.

Don�t cry, Pops. We�re happy here.

�What�s it like?�

A green valley. There�s animals grazing in it and a rainbow overhead and wildflowers on the hillsides.

�Stay just a little longer.�

Don�t fret, Pops. You were always my best friend. You never let your little girl down.

My knees buckle, then I try to enter the fog with her. Instantly I feel like I have been dipped in ice water. The fog rises into the canopy and is burned into a thousand droplets by the sun. Fannie Mae is gone, and I feel as though she has died a second and third and fourth time. I walk downhill with the abandon of a drunk, my heart thudding, my coat and shirt ripped on a tree, my rib cage gashed by a broken tree limb, a scream rising from my throat, my hands raised at the sky. �Why have you done this to me?� I shout. �Why? Why? Why?�

I cross the barnyard and the veranda and crash through the door and into the living room. I see my reflection in the glass on the gun cabinet. My head could as well have been severed and placed on a tray. My eyes are out of focus. I smash my reflection with my forehead and watch my expression shatter in shards on the stocks of the rifles lined erect in the cabinet.

But a greater pain is that I cannot undo the loss of my daughter, and the greatest pain is that it didn�t have to happen. It didn�t have to happen. It didn�t have to happen.

How do you live with it, family and friends ask. The answer is I don�t. When you lose your kid, the best you can hope for is a scar rather than an open wound. I feel I�m in a house of mirrors, and I want to break every one of them.

It�s three p.m. Tuesday. I�m in Pablo, Montana, pulling into the Flathead Tribal Police headquarters way up on the res, almost to Flathead Lake. The vastness of the country, the enormity of the Mission Mountains, is literally breathtaking. The ranches, particularly the old ones with giant slat barns, seem miniaturized and clinging to the earth.

I called earlier and told the dispatcher I wanted to make an appointment and report an event that occurred at the home of a resident on the Flathead Reservation. It was not an easy call to make.

�What kind of event?� the dispatcher asked.

�One that might involve a kidnapping. Or worse.�

�What�s the name of the resident?�

�Ruby Spotted Horse.�

�She�s a state trooper,� the dispatcher said.

�That�s why I�m troubled.�

�Well, you sure came to the right place.�

His comment sounded strange. I would soon find out why. I introduce myself to an officer at the counter by the entrance of the building. He points at a uniformed officer at a desk in the corner. �That�s Ray Bronson,� he says. �He�ll be glad to take care of you.�

I walk to Bronson�s desk. He�s drinking coffee and looking out the window either at the mountains or two young women who have parked their camper in the police parking lot and are photographing a pasture with llamas and horses in it. The wind is up, flattening the long stretches of yellow and brown grass, blowing the young women�s hair back in their faces.

�I�m Aaron Holland Broussard,� I say. �Do you know Trooper Spotted Horse?�

�I should,� he says. �Have a seat. You want some coffee?�

�No, thank you.�

He has brown hair and a narrow face and the biggest, most unnaturally white teeth I have ever seen. �Ruby�s in trouble of some kind?�

I don�t know where to begin. �I was at her house Sunday morning. I think somebody was locked in her cellar.�

�It doesn�t surprise me.�

�Sir?�

�She�s a little crazy. Was it a guy down there?�

�I don�t know.�

�You didn�t see anyone?�

�No, but I��

�You heard the person?�

�Yes. I also found a note on the floor. The person who wrote it was begging for help.�

�The note was on the floor of the cellar?�

�Correct.� I notice a strange mannerism in him. His gaze is invasive, as though others are public property.

�You were inside the cellar, but you didn�t see anyone?�

�Yes,� I say.

�I�m getting kind of confused. You have the note with you?�

�It got blown away in the wind. In the traffic in front of the Missoula courthouse.�

He has a ballpoint in his hand and a legal pad on the desk but has written nothing down. �What happened to your head?�

�It�s just a little cut.�

�Fall in the bathroom? That�s where most home accidents happen. I mean with older people.�

�Who cares?�

�You�re telling me some strange things here, Mr. Broussard.�

�Maybe I�m talking to the wrong man.�

His gaze wanders around on his legal pad. �No, you got the right man. I�m Ruby�s former husband. Eight years ago her niece was raped and murdered. Nobody was ever in custody. Three years back she shot and killed the same kind of guy who killed her niece. Ever since, she�s developed a few kinks in her head. Unless you subscribe to that artsy-fartsy stuff that goes on in Arizona.�

My temples are throbbing. �Two things, sir. Number one, you shouldn�t be interviewing me, and number two, I don�t know what the state of Arizona has to do with any of this.�

�They got these cults around Sedona. They think corn came out of a hole in the ground. That�s where they say the gods live. I�m not making this up. You want me to talk to Ruby or not?�

�I didn�t mean to encumber your day.�

�What did you say your occupation was?�

�I�m a novelist.�

�Science fiction?�

�How�d you know?�

I get up and go out the door. The dispatcher catches me outside. He�s very young and has a tight haircut and earnest eyes and the kind of innocence I hope he will never lose. �Got what you needed?� he says.

�Yes, thank you,� I reply. �Why did you send me to Officer Bronson?�

�I didn�t. He heard me and you talking on the phone and said he knew you and he�d take care of whatever was going on at Ms. Spotted Horse�s place. That was okay, wasn�t it?�

�You bet,� I say.

At two a.m. I hear the wind, and pine needles sifting off the roof, and the clicking of tiny pieces of snow against the windowpanes in my upstairs bedroom. I stare at the ceiling, unable to sleep, wondering if I have given myself over to a bizarre frame of reference for those who cannot contend with the realities of ordinary life. I lay my forearm across my eyes and try to keep my mind empty and am almost on the edge of sleep when I hear a clinking sound in the yard. Then I hear it again, this time louder.

I put on my slippers and go to the window. The moon is bright, the remaining leaves on the maples stiff with frost, the ground frozen and definable, empty of movement. Then I see a wood rabbit hop through the yard and disappear in the shadows. The wind begins to gust, strong enough to rattle my window and bounce a cardboard box across the yard, but there is no sound from the cans I strung between the trees. There�s a rail fence between the yard and the barn. I tied the trip string to one of the posts. The string is broken, and the cans and string lie on the ground like a broken worm.

I move to the edge of the window so I don�t silhouette. Two men are standing by the chicken house in the moonlight, evidently undecided about their next move. They seem out of context, inadequately dressed in hoodies and tennis shoes and thin khakis that flatten against their legs in the wind.

I have no telephone on the second floor. I go downstairs and take my .45 from the stuffed chair and go into the kitchen. Through the glass in the back door, I can see them crossing the yard, one gripping a chromed semi-automatic with two hands, the other carrying a hammer whose head is wrapped in cloth, a roll of duct tape, and a handgun with the squat ugly lines and extended magazine of an Uzi. Both men are thin, young, with narrow, pale faces and dark hair that bunches up inside their hoodies.

I can call 911 and report what is happening at my house while I lose the visual advantage over the intruders. I dial the emergency number, leave the phone off the hook on the drainboard, and go into my office, which gives me a side view of the men as they approach the kitchen door.

The moon slips behind a bank of snow clouds and drops the backyard into darkness. I pull back the slide on the .45 and ease a round in the chamber. My adrenaline has kicked into overdrive; a brass band is playing in my head; my saliva tastes like WD-40.

In one way or another, all the things I love are within my touch: photographs of my daughter and my parents, at least a thousand books on the shelves, my first editions and those of friends in a glass case, my Gibson acoustic guitar, my Fenwick fly rod, my father�s baseball glove from his time in the Texas bush league, my boyhood collection of baseball cards and arrowheads and coins and Civil War bullets, all symbols of the America I grew up in, whether Norman Rockwell invented it or not.

Only a few feet and a wall separate me from the young men in the yard. But the difference in our worlds and cultural experience is enormous. In my teens I was on a road gang with a dozen boys my age, slinging gravel from cain�t-see to cain�t-see behind a truck that sprayed tar in our faces, oversight courtesy of a mounted gunbull like a black cutout pasted against a molten-red sun, our reflections shrunken inside his mirrored sunglasses. The boys I stacked time with were inured to pain and abuse and tougher than I, but I was spared, and most of them probably fell by the wayside. Perhaps the young men on the other side of my wall are like those boys of years ago. Did their parents love them? What a laugh. What kind of orphanage were they in, one that made them polish the floors by wrapping rags around their knees? A tiny tick of a dial in the back of their heads could have made all the difference. Am I willing to take their lives? By the same token, am I willing to let them take mine?

One of them begins taping the window on the kitchen door, preparing to break it with the cloth-wrapped hammer and ease the shards out of the frame. I put on a battered Stetson and a canvas coat that hangs on the back of my desk chair, unbolt my office door, and step out on the flagstones.

�How you doin�, fellows? I�m the owner of this house, and I have an army .45 pointed at your backs. It is my belief that you are breaking into my home with the intention of doing me harm. That means I can blow you all over the yard and go back to sleep and in the morning hose you off the walk, and the authorities will yawn when I call in the 911. Very gently set down the hammer and tape and the chrome job and the Uzi. Do it all at once.�

Both of them are motionless, their eyes on each other.

�You have two seconds, then I�ll shoot both of you,� I say.

They half-squat, putting down their weapons with the care of two aerialists balancing themselves on a high-wire.

�Now step backward, please.�

�No problem,� one of them says.

�Now get on your knees and pull out your wallets and place them on the ground.�

Again they obey.

�Are you the guys who have been terrorizing Lolo?�

No reply.

�Let�s see your ink.�

They look at each other.

�Want me to say it again?� I ask.

One is a little taller and older than the other. �It�s cold,� he says.

�It�s a lot colder when you�re six feet down,� I say.

They pull off their hoodies and roll up their shirtsleeves. The moon has broken free from the clouds. Both boys are unnaturally pale and have pits in their cheeks. Their arms are like pipe stems, their skin almost luminescent, twined with blue serpents and sprinkled with SS lightning bolts and small death�s-heads.

�Did anyone ever tell you the Nazis lost the war?�

My words seem to bounce off them. I doubt they could find Germany on a map.

�You look like brothers.�

No response.

�Who sent y�all?�

�Nobody,� the taller boy replies.

�I got it. Just passing by,� I say. �Put your jackets on. We�re going to go inside the barn, and you�re going to tell me what I want to know. If you don�t, I�m going to bury you up to your necks in my compost pile. Lace your fingers on top of your heads.�

I suspect neither of them is over twenty. Their tats represent the symbology of the dumbest people on earth. Their histories never change: petty theft, joyriding, possession, intent to sell, probation, juvie, reform school, then an adult facility where they are either raped or they rape others. We cross the yard into the barn. I jerk the chain on a bare bulb that hangs from the ceiling.

�Sit on the floor.�

�Yes, sir,� the taller boy says.

They slide down the wall and pull up their knees. I stick the .45 in the back of my belt. The safety is on. The eyes of the boys are like glass. �We weren�t gonna hurt anybody,� the taller one says. He tries to smile. �We thought maybe we�d get some food.�

�With an Uzi and a cannon?� I say.

�It�s just to scare,� he says. �The Uzi is semiauto. I mean, it�s legal. Right?�

�Where�d you get it?�

�Boosted it,� he says.

�Where?�

�A pawnshop in Idaho.�

�You guys just attempted an armed robbery,� I say. �That can get you twenty years. You�re willing to risk twenty years for some food?�

They stare at the lightbulb, the pupils of their eyes dilated to the size of dimes.

�Did you fellows see that news story about somebody putting swastikas on the Anne Frank memorial in Boise a couple of days ago?�

�The what memorial?� the younger boy says.

�Y�all didn�t stick a little meth up your nose, did you?� I say.

Their eyes travel all over the barn, as if the conversation is of no more interest. Their trousers are smeared with hay and chicken excrement. They smell like urine and look like they might fall asleep.

�You know a woman named Virginia Stokes or a man by the name of John Fenimore Culpepper?�

They shake their heads as though they have just searched their souls and cannot say, to save their lives, they have ever heard those names before.

�I bet Ms. Stokes has an interesting background,� I say.

�We don�t know anybody by that name,� the smaller boy says.

�You�re both lying, but I suspect you�ve been doing that all your lives,� I say. �Here�s my problem, fellows. I don�t want to turn you over to the police. I�d rather shoot you and dump you up in the high country and let the griz have a picnic. Know why that is?�

They shake their heads, this time in earnest.

�I had a daughter named Fannie Mae Broussard. She got hurt by some bad people, but they skated. So I�ve got a bias about the system.�

They look at each other. The younger boy lifts his eyes to mine. �Fannie Mae was your daughter?�

�You knew her?�

�Just around. Concerts at Caras Park and shit,� the older boy says. �She was big on animals. She�d bring her pups to the concert and feed them Popsicles.�

I stare at them a long time. �If you guys feel that way toward her, why are you robbing and terrifying people?�

They drop their eyes.

�It�s not a difficult question,� I say.

The older boy picks at his nails; both of them are sullen, as are all recidivists when forced to examine the vacuity of their lives. I kick the older boy in the foot. He flinches. �You�re here to pop me, aren�t you?� I say.

�No, sir,� he replies. �We don�t hurt people.�

I kick the other boy in the foot. �How about you? You think it�s manly to kill people?� He doesn�t answer, and I kick him again. �You want me to submerge you in the stock tank?�

He looks up, his face pinched. The thinness of his voice makes me think of a stiletto: �Then do it, you arrogant son of a bitch.�

I step back. He wipes his nose on his sleeve. The older boy tilts his head forward and spits a long stream of tobacco juice between his legs.

�Tell you what,� I say. I open the tack-room door and click on the light and gaze at the bridles and halters and coiled ropes and saddle blankets hung in a row on wood pegs, and also at the snow shovels and garden rakes and pickaxes and posthole diggers and hayforks propped against the wall. The two boys can see me through the door. I pick up a hayfork and touch the tips of the tines, ground into conical points. I lean the hayfork against a snowblower and reach into the shadows and remove a broom from a steel hook.

I step back outside the tack room and close the door behind me. �Get up and lean against the wall,� I say.

�What are you gonna do?� the older boy says.

�You�re about to find out.�

�Look, man�� he begins.

�Don�t address me as �man.� �

The younger boy says nothing. His eyes are fixed on mine, liquid and brimming with malevolence. With my left hand, I pull the .45 from the back of my belt.

They get to their feet and prop their arms against the wall.

�Spread your feet,� I say.

�Sir, what are you doing?� the older boy asks.

�Shut up,� I say.

The younger boy hangs his head as though he�s nodded off or is long inured to abuse. The older boy twists his neck and tries to see what I�m doing. He starts to cry.

�Who sent you?� I ask.

�Santa Claus, asshole,� the younger boy says. �Do whatever you�re gonna do. And fuck yourself while you�re at it, you cocksucker.�

�You might regret that,� I say. �But look at things another way. If you�re stand-up, why take somebody else�s fall?�

�Oh, you�re con-wise,� the younger boy says. �We�re really impressed.�

�You guys are a lot of laughs,� I say.

I sweep their clothes clean of hay and chicken manure, from their shoulders down to their heels, slamming them against the wall when they resist, jabbing the broom end into their necks and faces. Both of them roll up in balls.

I blow out my breath. �That�s it, fellows,� I say. �You just got reborn.�

�Reborn?� the younger boy repeats.

�You got it, partner. Your weapons and your hammer and tape and your wallets stay here. You�re free. The next time you�re in church, burn a candle for Fannie Mae.�

�What�s the catch?� the older boy says.

�You�ll figure it out,� I say.

I walk back into the house and bolt the door and leave them stupefied in the yard. The cops come by later, but I tell them my 911 was a false alarm and apologize for bothering them.

At the kitchen table in the light of day, I put on rubber gloves and unload the Uzi and the chrome job, a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson, and shake the contents from the boys� wallets. Both boys have Idaho driver�s licenses. The older boy is Clayton Wetzel. The younger is Jack Wetzel. Jack has a Missoula library card. Clayton carries a condom. Their wallets contain a total of thirty-seven dollars. Their names don�t show up on Google or Facebook.

I put their tape and hammer in one reinforced plain paper bag and their weapons in another. Today is still Wednesday, and I do nothing of consequence until sunset, then dig a hole behind my barn and bury the boys� wallets and the bullets from their weapons and drive to the main post office in Missoula and park in front. Because of the pandemic, few people wish to enter the building and instead use the drive-by boxes to mail their letters. I put on a mask and my rubber gloves and wait until the building is empty, then walk through the glass doors to the parcel drop, pull the handle, and slide the paper bags inside. They make a clunking sound when they hit the bottom of the receptacle.

All the way home, Fannie Mae will not let me alone.

Have you lost your mind, Pops? That woman belongs in a cage.

�People are always better than we think,� I say. �That�s from George Orwell.�

That was just before he got shot through the throat in Spain and almost executed by the people he was fighting for.

�Will you give it a rest?�

Those people are evil, Pops. If they had their way, we�d go up the chimney.

�What about the Wetzel boys? You think they�re Nazis?�

No, they�re meth heads. They�ll be used by others, then thrown away. They�re not your responsibility.

The sun is yellow and low on the horizon, dust rising in strings from the fields. Up ahead is a ghost ranch, with a house and barns and loading chutes that now consist of boards as wind-hewn and weightless as air, tumbleweeds bouncing through them, the original red paint barely visible.

You�re turning sad on me, Pops.

�You were always my little pal.�

Don�t go down that road, Popsie. It really sucks.

�I�m angry at you for dying.�

The inside of the car becomes silent. A semi goes flying by, air horns blowing, the trailer swaying. I�m on the yellow stripe. I overcorrect and swing onto the shoulder.

�I probably dozed off,� I say. �But we�re okay.�

Tell that to the guy in the Mack shaking his fist out the window.

I did not mean to seem cynical about belief. Age has brought me little if any wisdom. I knew more at twenty-one than at forty. Why is that? Because at age forty I was dumb enough to believe I knew anything at all. The only lesson I�ve learned in life is that the human personality does not change, and our propensity for destroying the earth and our fellow man is stronger and more wanton than it has ever been, and if the incineration of our cities and civilians and the increased lethality of our weapons during the last one hundred years has not taught us that, nothing will.

I cannot envision eternity or infinity. I cannot understand the concept of endlessness. Nor do I understand how a primeval swamp can produce life-forms that can plan their own evolution and become sentient and functioning creatures with eyes and neurological systems and the ability to survive on a planet that had not cooled and whose skies were streaked with smoke from volcanoes as numerous as anthills. And for those reasons I try not to discount or reject possibilities of any kind, including the possibility that unseen entities exist just the other side of our fingertips.

The great inventions and geographical discoveries have often come about because of the inventor�s or the explorer�s blunder. The same applies to my life. The greatest events or changes in it were not planned and have occurred in an unpredictable and illogical fashion. That�s a humbling thought. I would like to claim power and personal direction over my life. But a day does not go by that I do not experience a reminder of an event that left me at the mercy of strangers. The trigger can be one of many: the sound of rushing water, the press of bodies inside an elevator, a piece of food sticking in my windpipe. In seconds I�m back to a wintry day in 1935, three months after exiting my mother�s womb and about to be baptized by immersion in the San Antonio River, not far from the Alamo.

Model T cars were parked on the mudbank, and people had put on their best clothes and, in spite of the weather, had brought picnic baskets and pitchers of lemonade to celebrate the occasion. As would be expected in that time period, all of them were white, uneducated, and very poor; better and more respectfully said, they were people who cut their own hair and sewed clothes for their children from colorfully stamped Purina feed sacks and thought corn pone with maple syrup was a treat. They also thought a baptism was a big event, one that took the congregation away from the endless privation that seemed to characterize their lives.

It should have been a grand day, except the preacher was drunk and stepped in a deep hole and dropped me in the current.

In seconds I was whisked away. The wool blanket I was wrapped in turned to lead. Thirty yards downstream, a fat Black woman who had no name except Aint Minnie was washing clothes in the cattails. Her only family was her thirteen-year-old daughter, who was as big as her mother and known as Snowball.

Aint Minnie turned her washtub upside down and dumped the clothes in the water and waded into the current, using the tub as a buoy, her dress floating above her hips. In the meantime I had gone under. I was not told that. I know it because I still have nightmares filled with enclosure, graves, tunnels, entrapment in a sewer pipe, a cold liquid darkness that seeps into the bone. I try to flee the blanket, but my arms are pinched against my sides. In the dream I know I�m about to die, and I know that no power on earth can save me.

Aint Minnie clutched my blanket, then my diaper, and lifted me from the water and placed me in the washtub and pushed me ahead of her into the cattails. Snowball grabbed one side of the washtub, and she and her mother slogged in men�s work boots through mud that was up to their calves until they were on high ground. My grandfather was the first person to reach us. He was a Texas Ranger and owned a sizable ranch, although the drought had burned up his cotton and blown away a third of his topsoil. He picked me up and wrapped me inside his coat.

�Aint Minnie, you and Snowball got a home at my ranch the rest of y�all�s lives,� he said. �I swear that before the throne of God.�

Grandfather kept his word and then some. When he died, Aint Minnie and Snowball were in his will. Aint Minnie lived to be ninety-seven years old, and Snowball became a professor at Texas Southern University in Houston. For years members of my family called me �Aint Minnie�s little boy.� And that�s why I try never to reject the perceptions of others or the stories they might tell about their lives, no matter how improbable the account might be, and that includes Ruby Spotted Horse�s stories about monsters and rogues who are imprisoned under the earth.

It�s Monday morning, the pinkness of the sun buried inside the fog that shrouds the Sapphire Mountains. I feed the horses and chickens and fill all three stock tanks on the property. Dawn in Montana, no matter the season, is like a rose opening unto the light. As John Steinbeck said, Montana is not a state; it�s a love affair. I�ll go a step further: The rising of both the sun and the moon in Montana are moments either a Druid or a genuine Christian would recognize as sacramental. In my opinion, to treat them as anything less is to exile oneself into the land of Nod, east of Eden, where Cain was forced to live after he murdered his brother. I know that�s grandiose, but Paradise is real; it�s right here in the northern Rockies, and the winds that blow down the slopes, I�m convinced, have a mystical source.

With these kinds of unusual thoughts in my head and Spotted Horse�s advice to leave the house early in the morning, before the police arrive, I drive north through Missoula, then give my old truck the gas and climb the long green-black, cliff-shaded slope called Evaro Hill and find myself once again in Indian country and the sunlit grandeur of the Jocko Valley.

I find the place where Clayton Wetzel died and am almost sorry I did. Wetzel was a criminal, maybe even a hit man, but he was also a kid who deserved a second chance. Blue clouds of wood smoke hang over the hills, and a train track curls along the highway into a billowing bank of fog as thick and white as cotton. Not far away, I can see the neon on the nightclub that Spotted Horse mentioned. There�s only one car in the lot. The grass in the field between the nightclub and the train tracks is waist-high and wet with dew. There�s no crime-scene tape anywhere. The grass is crisscrossed with tire impressions, probably from the emergency vehicles. There�s blood spatter on one rail tie, then more in the grass, where tiny yellow flags have been stuck in the ground.

I go inside the nightclub. The bar and red stools and booths are wiped down and glistening, the jukebox and beer signs and pinball and gambling machines all lit. �We�re closed,� the bartender says.

�What time do you open?�

�It depends.�

�On what?�

�I haven�t quite processed that.�

�My name is Aaron Broussard,� I say. �I�m a writer. I wonder if I can ask you a couple of questions about the accident that happened by the tracks.�

He�s a big man. He wears pigtails and a sparkling white snap-button shirt and a rodeo champion�s belt buckle. His sleeves are rolled. �Yeah, I know who you are. I don�t know anything.�

�I knew the kid who was killed. He had a brother. I was interested in talking to him.�

The man leans on his arms. His triceps ridge like rolls of quarters. �You�ve made movies, haven�t you?� he says.

�The scripts were adapted by someone else. I was never a screenwriter.�

�You ever see My Darling Clementine?�

�Multiple times,� I reply.

�Henry Fonda says to the saloon keeper, �Mack, you ever been in love?� Mack says, �No, I�ve been a bartender all my life.� I love that line.�

�The brother�s name is Jack Wetzel. He�ll last about five minutes in Deer Lodge.�

A truck has pulled into the lot. Two men and a woman get out. They look like they�ve had a hard night. The woman cups her hand over her eyes and stares through the nightclub window, then says something to the men. They get back in the truck and leave. The bartender picks up a dishrag and tosses it into a sink.

�I cost you a customer?� I ask.

�This isn�t a country club.�

�Sorry.� I get off the stool.

He blows out his breath. �Three months ago the Wetzel boys were slinging dope behind my building. I told them I�d break their necks if they came around again. But they came back two nights ago, driving a junker, no plates. They probably boosted it. They were selling dope out the car window. I can�t figure it.�

�Figure what?�

�I went outside and was gonna slap the shit out of them. Then the younger kid, what�s-his-name, he says, �Go fuck yourself.� �

�Jack Wetzel?�

�Yeah, that�s it. The one the cops had a mug shot of. But I think he was all show, like he wanted to get involved with me, like I was a safer bet than somebody else.�

�What about Clayton, the older brother?�

�Stoned. His head was glowing in the dark.�

�What time did this happen?�

�About one-thirty in the morning.�

�You think Clayton fell under the train?�

�If you fall under a train, you stay under the train,� he replies. He starts to walk away from me.

�You know where the younger boy might be?� I ask.

He walks back on the duckboards and rests one hand on the bar. �No, I don�t. But you know what you haven�t asked me about?�

I shake my head.

�The cops had the younger kid�s mug shot and not the older kid�s. I thought maybe that was because the older kid was dead. The younger kid looked like a shrimp to me. But the cops said the shrimp set fire to his house when he was twelve. The father was locked in the bedroom.�

�What happened to the mother?�

�They didn�t say. I didn�t ask.�

At exactly midnight a gale shakes the entire house. I had fallen asleep watching the late news on the couch. The inside of the house is black, the television screen dormant. Through the kitchen window I can see flashes in the trees way up the hill, like ball lightning splintering in a swamp. At first I think I�m seeing the reflection of Missoula in the clouds. But the blue clouds on the hill resemble smoke more than fog or impending rain, and also they are too low to reflect the city lights that are over ten miles away.

There�s a quaking under my feet. The pots and pans hanging above my stove are clinking. The handle on the faucet in the sink squeaks and twists by itself and splashes water on the counter and floor, then stops as quickly as it started. The horses are nickering and blowing in the corral, clattering against the rails, the way they do when they smell wolves or a forest fire. My trip string is broken in many places, the aluminum cans scattered by the wind.

I take the gun-cabinet key from my pocket and start to insert it in the lock, then realize the cabinet is already open. I have no explanation. I paid the glazier to replace the glass I broke, watched him leave, then locked the cabinet and have not touched it since. I pull the door open and remove my M1 and pull back the bolt and push an eight-round clip into the magazine. My thumb has barely cleared when the bolt snaps shut. A great brilliance bursts inside the trees up the hill, lighting the barn, the backyard, a small statue of Saint Francis that Fannie Mae had since she was a child, the horses walleyed and terrified and running and kicking each other.

I put on my canvas coat and step into the backyard. The light up the hill seems to emanate from the ground and extend over an area half the size of a football field. I can hear the popping of small-arms fire and smell burned gunpowder and a stench like offal or animal hair going up in flames. I circle around my barn and keep going up the grade. I can hear infants crying and women screaming and horses squealing, maybe going down with their riders or being shot in large numbers.

I splash through half-frozen ice in a streambed, the gunfire growing louder and more sustained until it is one sound rather than many. I can see wickiups burning, blue-jacketed soldiers with fur caps shooting at close range, Indian women tearing open their shirts and exposing their breasts in the hope that they and their children will be spared. An officer with a drawn revolver is pacing back and forth in the firelight. He�s a mustached, grim man and wears a mashed flattop hat and shoulder straps framed in gold. His free hand is knotted in a fist, propped primly on his hip. He watches as an enlisted man shoots an infant through the head.

I kneel behind the trunk of a ponderosa tree and aim through the peep sight at the officer�s back and begin firing, the stock snugging into my shoulder, six inches of flame leaping from the barrel, the ejected shells sticking like darts in a patch of soft snow. Then the bolt locks open with a ping. The magazine is empty. The officer has shown no acknowledgment of my presence.

I take another clip from my coat pocket and press it with my thumb into the magazine and roll the heel of my hand from the bolt. The officer seems to hear the bolt feed the round into the chamber. He turns and looks at me in a quizzical way. Behind him, his men are piling buffalo robes and blankets and clothes and bundles of food on a giant fire. A cone of sparks and heat and smoke and ash twists into the sky and flattens like a greasy stove lid on the tips of the trees. I have the officer�s chest locked inside my peep sight. I begin shooting and do not stop until my second clip ejects.

My right ear is ringing. There�s a coppery taste like blood in my mouth. My back aches when I stand up. But I have changed nothing in the equation. The officer grins at the corner of his mouth and beckons for me to join him. His junior and noncommissioned officers are already gathering around him, as though posing for a historical photograph.

�Never,� I say. �Let your cloak be rolled as fuel for the fire. Let hell be your home.�

I begin backing away, my sniper�s nest scattered with empty cartridges, smoke billowing skyward in huge curds. I cannot keep the screams of the infants out of my ears, or the wails of the wounded and dying. I weep and stumble down the hill, the sparks and ash and the chorus of suffering and pain rising into the darkness, the soot soiling the heavens.

Jeremiah McNally is at my house at 8:37 a.m. I open the door and let him in after looking past him to see if anyone is in his vehicle. I close the door behind him. �What�s up, partner?� I ask.

�I�m going out on a limb. You�d better have an explanation for dropping those guns in the parcel chute at the post office.�

�Who says I did anything at the post office?�

�Only you would do something like that,� he replies.

�You went out to Ruby Spotted Horse�s place and gave her a bad time, and you used me to do it.�

�Wrong,� he says. �Spotted Horse can�t accept the death of her niece and needs to see a psychiatrist. I hate to say this, Aaron, but I think you�ve got the same problem.�

�Get out,� I say.

He looks at the couch. �Is that an M1?�

�What about it?�

�I think you�re a threat to yourself.�

�Really? Take a walk with me,� I say. �I�ll get my coat.� He can�t make up his mind. �Afraid?� I say.

The sky is blue, the sun warm, the frost on the barn roof sliding in sheets off the edge. We walk up the hill, Jeremiah behind me, his breath fogging, his irritability growing. �No more of this,� he says, �I�ve got to get back to work.�

There�s a rectangular flat rock in front of us, wet and striped with lichen. �Have a seat,� I say.

He�s wearing an expensive overcoat. He remains standing. �Has this got something to do with Fannie Mae?�

�Maybe. I�ve seen her up here. I saw fires here last night. And Indians being killed.�

�I think I�ll head back to the office now.�

�See the snow in the trees? I was there last night. I burned two clips on the back of a United States army officer from the nineteenth century.�

�Yeah, there are a lot of those kinds of guys running around these days.�

I walk another twenty yards up the slope to the stand of trees where I knelt and aimed through iron sights at an officer I believed was Major Eugene Baker. �Take a look.� My brass casings are scattered in the snow, half-buried, gleaming in the sunlight.

�You did some target shooting here? That�s the big story?�

The sun is shining on the clearing where I saw the massacre of the Indians and the burning of their wickiups and their clothes and blankets and bearskins. I walk to the spot where the biggest fire was and pick up a stick and start gouging the dirt. The stick breaks and I get another one and dig harder. �Come look,� I say.

�This is embarrassing, Aaron.�

I get down on one knee and scoop up a handful of dirt and hold it up to him. �Smell it.�

�It�s carbon. You know how many forest fires we�ve had here?�

I bring the dirt up to my face and blow on it. �Look.�

�Those are berries,� he says.

�No, they�re beads.�

�I think you should see a counselor, Aaron. I�m going now.�

I get down on both knees and scoop up with two hands what looks like particles of wood and bone and ash and antler and animal hide that have calcified into stone, all of it mixed with black silt.

�Give me your hands,� I say.

�No.�

�Do it, Jeremiah. Honor your namesake.�

�What?�

�Shut up and do what I say.�

The pain in my hands is more than I can bear. My eyes start to water. �Take this or I�ll rub it in your face.�

He turns up his palms. I drop everything from my hands into his. His eyes pop. �Jesus!� he says. He flings his hands into the air, then stares at them, his palms and the undersides of his fingers puffed with welts. �What are you messing with, Aaron? What in God�s name have you gotten into?�

�I think we�re standing on dead people.�

But he�s already halfway down the hill, his necktie streaming over his shoulder.

On Saturday morning there is a story below the fold in the Missoulian about the discovery of a woman�s body by hunters in a dry creek bed under a bridge outside St. Ignatius. The woman was single and had been missing for four days. The sheriff�s office and the Tribal Police Department have now confirmed that the deceased is Irene Barr, age forty-two, who was employed as a waitress in a Ronan caf� fifteen miles from St. Ignatius. The county medical examiner has not revealed the cause of death.

There is something wrong with the story. Every newspaper journalist knows that in police reporting, the issue is not the content of the story but what is left out. People fall from high places and die of a broken neck. No mystery. They have heart attacks and float down a stream, or accidentally shoot one another. They drive their cars off cliffs. The visuals tell most of the story within five minutes of discovery. Was she bruised? Was she naked? Was she without warm clothes? Did she have on shoes or have a purse? Single women don�t wander out in rough country in cold weather without telling anyone, particularly their employers, and then lie down on rocks under a bridge and die of natural causes.

Regardless of the story�s content or noncontent, I have a sick feeling in my stomach and also a problem of conscience, because I do not want to get any deeper in my relationship with Ray Bronson, with whom I drank coffee Monday morning in the caf� where Irene Barr worked. Ray Bronson said he was picking her up at six o�clock that evening.

I dial Jeremiah McNally�s cell phone number. He must look at his caller ID. Without preamble, he says, �I�m through with that problem behind your house, Aaron. Whatever is up that hill isn�t my business.�

�I�m not calling you about that,� I reply. �Do you know anything about the woman who was found dead in a ravine outside St. Ignatius?�

�That�s Lake County, that�s the res, it�s not my business.�

�I was in her place of employment Monday morning. I was with Ruby Spotted Horse�s former husband. The waitress�s name was Irene. He told her he was picking her up that evening.�

The line goes silent.

�That�s the first you�ve heard about Bronson�s possible involvement?� I say.

�That�s right.�

�What are you not telling me?�

�Both Lake County and the tribal cops are sitting on this one.�

�Why?�

�The woman was moved under the bridge. After she fell two hundred feet and bounced on rocks all the way down or somebody chain-dragged her behind a car or truck. Bronson was taking her somewhere Monday night?�

It takes me a couple of seconds to get the implication. �Bronson hasn�t told anyone he had a date with her?�

�Check it out if you want. I haven�t heard Bronson�s name mentioned in the investigation.�

�He said it in the caf�. He was picking her up at six. She said, �Roger that.� �

�Yeah, I got it. Talk to Lake County or the tribal police. They�ll appreciate it.�

�That�s it?�

�It�s called good citizenship. It beats anonymously dropping off guns and other shit in a post office box and muddying up a homicide investigation.�

�I�ve never heard you use profanity.�

�The pope gave me a dispensation.� He breaks the connection.

I call the Tribal Police Department. The young dispatcher, Officer Hackman, answers.

�How you doin�, partner?� I say.

�Is that you, Mr. Broussard? I just started one of your books.�

�I hope you like it. Is Officer Bronson there?�

�No, sir, he�s off today. Can I help you?�

�I wanted to talk to him about that woman who was found in a ravine outside St. Ignatius.�

�Yeah, she worked at the caf� I sent you to,� he replied. �She was a nice lady.�

�Is Officer Bronson taking this hard?�

�Sir?�

�I mean they were pretty close friends, right?�

�I guess he knew her from the caf�. Heck, I don�t know. You�d better ask him.�

�Know where I can find him?�

�He likes to whitefish in late fall. Up at Alberton, where Fish Creek dumps into the Clark Fork. Mr. Broussard?�

�Yes?�

�Officer Bronson might could use a friend.�

Three days have passed. I have not been bothered by the authorities regarding the drop-off I did at the post office with the Wetzel belongings. I suspect this is because Jeremiah McNally has already told his colleagues I intend to stonewall whatever questions they ask me. When they have evidence, they�ll come after me with a chainsaw.

Tuesday morning I call Ruby Spotted Horse on her cell phone. �What is it now?� she answers before I can speak.

�Has your ex been sticking anything up his nose besides virus swabs?�

�You had trouble with him?�

�He thinks I have an agenda.�

�An agenda with me?� she replies. �He�s paranoid. He always has been.�

�Do you have any information about the murder of the waitress in Ronan?�

�No one has called it a homicide. The body was found on a federal reservation, so the FBI may have gotten involved.�

�You ever hear about a hundred thousand dollars being buried on the res?�

�Where�d you hear that?� she asks.

�From your ex.�

�It�s one of those legends. Except I heard five hundred thousand. Some dealers drove in a house-trailer load of crank that�d been cut with lithium and hydrochloric acid, and there was a big firefight with the mules and a lot of people got killed and the money got buried in an iron box, and the only guy who knew the location got capped. It�s the kind of crap Ray would believe.�

I feel my attention draining. �I saw Eugene Baker. I looked right into his face. I saw him burn the village. I pumped sixteen rounds into him with no effect.�

�You saw this in a vision or what?�

�On the hillside behind my home.�

�When did this happen?�

�Six days ago.�

�You�re just telling me now?� she says.

�I�m cautious about what I tell people. So are you, Miss Ruby.�

There�s a long silence. Through the window I see a yellow rust-eaten battered Mazda with no hubcaps, oil smoke welling from under the frame, come up the drive and stop. John Fenimore Culpepper gets out and peers at my windows, the car door open, one foot still on the floor, as if he�s afraid to disengage from his portable fortress.

�I�m a little hurt, Mr. Broussard,� Spotted Horse says. �I�ve trusted you. You should have told me you had an encounter with Baker.�

�There�s one other thing I need to tell you. Your former husband said I shouldn�t come around you. In fact, he used the word �touch.� �

�He did, did he? Well, fuck him.�

�I�d better run.�

�Did you hear what I just said?� she asks.

�You mean fuck him? Yes, that came through pretty clearly.�

�Meet me at Applebee�s at noon.�

�Ten-four on that,� I say, and ease the phone receiver into the cradle. When I turn around, Fannie Mae is standing three feet from me. Bad Da-da, she says.

�Stop giving me those stupid names.�

How about �Parental Unit�?

I go through the front door and greet Johnny B. Goode Culpepper before she can say another word.

At four-twenty a.m. a shock hits the house and almost knocks me out of my bed. The moon is up and I can see snow flying parallel to the ground. Then something hits the house again, shaking snow off the roof, sending a load straight down past my window, thudding like lead when it hits the flower bed and wheelbarrow and coiled garden hose that has frozen as solid as concrete from the water I left in it.

I go downstairs and look through the back kitchen window. A little girl in a thin lavender dress without a coat or hat or shoes is looking back at me from the center of the yard, her blond ringlets touching her shoulders, her short, puffed, lace sleeves exposing most of her arms. The prints of her bare feet on the lawn lead back to the chicken house, which is built onto the side of the barn. I pull a coat off a peg in the mudroom and go down the back steps into the windstorm.

�What�s your name, little girl?� I ask.

Mary, she says.

�Are you lost?�

No.

�What are you doing here?�

Looking for Fannie Mae. I can�t find her.

�How do you know my daughter, Miss Mary?�

She saw me playing with the animals and showed me how to make their shapes with my hands in front of a lamp. Want to see?

�What were you doing in the chicken house?�

Playing. Can I come in your house?

�If you�ll let me take your picture. Otherwise no one will believe you�ve been here.�

She looks sideways and seems to frown.

�Did I make you mad?� I ask.

I don�t like being dead. Where is Fannie Mae?

�She comes and goes. Can I do something for you?�

I saw you shooting at a soldier.

�He was killing the Indians, Mary. Little children.�

Don�t talk bad about the soldiers.

�Let me go in the house and find a coat for you.�

I don�t care about coats. Fannie Mae was supposed to wait for me. Then she ran off. I don�t like that.

�That doesn�t sound like Fannie Mae,� I say.

You think you�re smart? Listen to this: �Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells and pretty maids all in a row.�

�I�m cold, Mary. Come inside with me. I bet you�re hungry.�

Did you hear the poem or not? The silver bells are thumbscrews. The cockleshells put the squeeze on the prisoner�s private parts. The queen of England used those things on the people she hated.

�You shouldn�t talk about things like that.�

Aunt Ruby has to release the Old People.

�I�m not sure you�re her niece, little girl.�

You better watch how you talk. Watch this.

She stands on the tips of her toes in the frozen grass and stretches her arms toward the sky and speaks in a language I cannot understand. The snow in the air and the snow on the ground begin to swirl, forming a funnel that peels the remaining ice and snow off the roof and scoops up the topsoil and the bricks that border the flower beds and spins all of it cyclonically, along with the frozen garden hose that is now as supple as a snake and straightening like a whip. Mary snatches the hose from the funnel and points the nozzle at the carpet of frozen green grass and uses it like a welder�s torch and burns the date July 4, 2012, into the sod.

Then she�s gone and the funnel disappears and everything inside it clatters to the ground. There is no sound other than the door to the chicken house squeaking in the wind. I cross the lawn, the grass like spikes under my shoes, and go inside the chicken house. The walls and floor are splattered with blood and feathers and wings torn from the chickens� dead bodies. The stench is unbearable, its rankness far more stringent and feral than that of blood and feces alone. The only odor I remember like it came from body bags on a six-by that was blown off the road by a land mine south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel and left in a ravine for a week in ninety-degree heat. But even that doesn�t quite describe it. I think of a brothel area in a town on the Gulf Coast where I lived many years ago, and I think about the ditch behind the cribs where the whores emptied their buckets in the early-morning hours, and I think about the stink rising from that ditch as well as the smoke from the sugar refinery and the raw garbage burning in the trash barrels behind the cribs and the occasional sheets and tick mattresses that would be stacked on the fires and the salty smell like rotten fish that seemed to live in the soil. The stench of all these things would flatten in the wind and hang in a gray cloud over the shacks of Black people, then seep into the white part of town, at which time the sheriff would send inmates from the parish prison with cans of kerosene to set the ditch aflame.

I pull my coat over my nose and back out of the chicken house and clear my throat and spit, then go in my house and open a bottle of mouthwash and gargle with it and spit it in the sink. My armpits are looped with sweat. I left the chicken house door open, and now feathers are blowing in the yard and a fox is standing in the doorway with a chicken�s head in its mouth. I do not want to accept what has happened in the last fifteen minutes. Nor do I wish to tell anyone about it. I lie down on the couch, shivering under a blanket, and watch the dawn crawl over the mountains. I refuse to close my eyes until the sun has driven the darkness from my house and my land and my trees and my animals and I am sufficiently safe to let sleep have its way.

One hour later, I wake in an embryonic ball, my arms clasped around my head, wondering where my daughter has gone.

At one in the afternoon I call Spotted Horse on her cell phone and tell her about the little girl in my backyard. �What�s the significance of July 4, 2012?� I ask.

�That�s the day my niece was kidnapped at the powwow in Arlee. She went to get some fry bread. She was found in a garbage dump the next day.�

�You think the little girl in my backyard is your niece?�

�Maybe physically.�

�The little girl had blond hair.�

�My sister married a white man. Both of them died in a car accident, and I took over Mary.� I heard her blow into the receiver. �My little Mary.�

�Miss Ruby, I think I smelled sulfur in the chicken house.�

�Maybe you did. I think the little girl you saw was Eugene Baker.�

�What does Baker want from me?�

�Your soul,� she says.

�Why me?�

�He doesn�t like you. Can you do me a favor?�

�Sure.�

�Don�t call me �Miss� anymore.�

�I won�t.� Then I say it again before I can stop. �Miss Ruby, can I say something personal?�

�Go ahead.�

�I think you�ve had enough grief without the likes of me around.�

�I�ll make the decision about that,� she replies. �We have a bond, Aaron Broussard. Certain kinds of loss are forever. Not many people understand that.�

I believe those are the saddest words I have ever heard. I have another question for her, one that has confounded me since I saw the piece of notebook paper on the cellar floor, but I cannot bring myself to ask her now.

The next day is Thursday. I put on a mask � not because of the virus but so I can endure the stench of the chicken house and chop a hole in the ground with a mattock and bury the feathers and entrails and frozen bodies and smashed eggs of my poultry, then scrub the wood floors and walls with Clorox and Ajax. But no matter how long I scrub or mop, I can�t get rid of the smell. I light two lanterns and set them on the floor in hopes of cauterizing the air. Then I feel a presence standing behind me in the doorway, and I turn and see a figure backlit by the sun and wearing a Felix the Cat T-shirt and an Easter straw hat with plastic flowers on it.

�Hi, Fannie,� I say. �I was worried about you.�

What�s that smell?

�A little girl named Mary was here. She said she�s Ruby Spotted Horse�s niece. She said you taught her how to make shadows on the walls that look like animals.�

I don�t know her, Pops.

�I didn�t think so. Where did you go?�

To ask for an extension.

�What was the answer?�

Rules are rules. There�re billions of people out there.

�You were clean and sober. It�s not fair.�

Neither is death. I wasn�t ready. I was supposed to promote your new book. That�s why I was allowed to hang around. Now you�ve gotten yourself in a mess.

�Talk to someone.�

Stick with Short Stuff. She can do anything I could.

�I just offended her.�

What am I going to do with you, Pops?

She�s beginning to fade into the light as though molecularly dissolving into pollen.

�Don�t go away, Fannie Mae. Come back. I can�t take this.�

I don�t want to scare you, but there�re creatures following me. I don�t know who they are. I don�t think they�re supposed to be here. They�re frightening to look at. There�s a pause, then her voice changes when she says, Oh, Daddy. Oh, Daddy. Oh, Daddy.

She only called me Daddy when she was afraid. She starts to cry. Her words crackle like static in an electric storm. She breaks apart in the wind like a thunderclap and is sucked away, the remnant of her voice fading into the chirping of a tiny bird abandoned in the nest.

Five years ago Ruby set up a wireless security camera in front of the entrance to the tunnel at the back of the cellar. The tunnel had been breached six times, through guile or someone piercing a piece of crumbling rock and slithering a serpentine finger through the hole onto the petroglyphs that covered the keystones. Ruby did not know how many of the Old People escaped, but each instance was followed by bizarre crimes in the Pacific Northwest that remain unsolved.

We go into her living room, where she turns on the fifty-inch television and uses the security-camera app to pull up a video, the images blurred and fixed in place. The light from the ancient fixture in the ceiling is muted; the room smells faintly of dust and old wallpaper, in essence, the past. �You ready?� she says.

�Sure,� I lie.

�You got it,� she says. She picks up Maxwell Gato and puts him outside. �You want the sound on?�

�Why would I not want the sound?�

�Ask me that three minutes from now.�

She starts the video. The landscape on the screen seems infinite, dotted with burned cities, backdropped by a red sky from the horizon to the heavens. The earth is scorched and the roads threaded with lines of refugees and ox-drawn wagons that have wooden wheels and starved horses half-dead in their harnesses and donkeys and mules who are being beaten with whips. But the screen does not limit itself to one historical period. Roman soldiers plow salt in the ruins of Carthage; Vikings set fire to merchant ships whose sails are painted with the star and crescent moon of Islam; English soldiers called �the goddamns� are executed by Joan of Arc�s soldiers after they have surrendered; the Imperial Japanese use blindfolded Chinese peasants roped to wood stakes for bayonet practice; and on a distant hill, three figures are nailed on crosses against a red sky.

The images are kaleidoscopic, the severity of their visuality an assault on the sensibilities, the kind of material that television producers incongruously warn their viewers not to watch. If the images possess a theme, it�s very simple: The present is no different from the past, and in some ways it is worse. The most haunting images are the flash-burned shadow of a child on the wall of a roofless house at Hiroshima; a Jewish mother leading her three children to a crematorium; and a white mob descending on the Black district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, murdering many and burning out ten thousand, the fires smoldering and the stench clinging for days.

But I quickly discover I do not possess sufficient moral authority to judge others. An event of sixty-seven years ago appears in the lower-right corner, then the images expand until they cover the entire screen.

�I don�t know how that got there,� Ruby says.

�It�s all right.�

�No, I�m going to turn this off,� she says.

�Leave it.�

It�s night on the screen, the monsoon season just beginning. Thirteen other soldiers and I are up to our ankles in an irrigation canal on the edge of a rice paddy. The rain is clicking on my poncho and steel pot and blowing in my face. A Chinese probe is coming toward us inside the fog. They move slowly, spaced apart, their burp guns slung from their necks. A trip flare pops and drifts over the paddy, hissing with smoke and a brilliant incandescence. The Chinese freeze and turn into stick figures, looking at the ground so their faces don�t reflect the light of the flare. Someone down the line coughs, then a Chinese soldier clanks a potato masher on his helmet to ignite the fuse and flings it into the canal. It blows water and mud into the air but hurts no one. Regardless, everyone opens up, a thirty-caliber streaking tracers across the paddy. A Chinese soldier carrying a captured American flamethrower on his back lights us up, arching intermediate bursts of liquid flame into the canal, boiling the water and turning our medic into a blackened cipher.

In my peep sight, I catch the soldier with the flamethrower and burn the whole clip. Even though I�m looking through iron sights and the stock is jerking against my shoulder, I can see his face clearly. He�s no older than I am. Though three rounds hit his tanks, they don�t explode; they leak before fully igniting. The Chinese soldier struggles to get the canvas straps off his shoulders, then is enveloped in flame and runs blindly through the paddy, his mouth open, his pain so intense it absorbs his screams before they can leave his throat.

�Fucking A, Broussard!� the sergeant yells. �Fucking A! Now let�s kick some ass!�

I see myself smiling on the screen. Ruby turns off the television. �That�s enough,� she says.

I look at the floor. My hands are gripped under my thighs.

�You okay?� she says.

�Yes,� I say. I stare at the darkness of the television screen. I see my reflection, but I�m not sure it�s me. My face looks twisted, like those of the gargoyles who live in my sleep.

�I�m going to bring Maxwell Gato back in,� she says.

�You don�t let him watch TV?�

�He�s afraid of the set,� she says.

But I�m not thinking about the cat. I lean forward, a pain like a shard of glass in my stomach. It passes, but instead of feeling relief, I want to drink, and I mean drink: Scotch and soda, vodka with Collins mix and cherries and orange slices, Jack Daniel�s with a Heineken back, buckets of Champale, and the real deal when you want to cook your head, absinthe distilled from wormwood.

Ruby comes back into the room with Maxwell Gato cradled in her arms. �What are you thinking about?� she asks.

I rub my nose with the back of my hand. �Nothing.�

�I worry about you.�

�Don�t.�

She puts Maxwell Gato on the coffee table and sits down next to me on the couch. �We have a lot in common,� she says.

�We�re loners?�

�I�m not like other people. Neither are you. Why should we pretend?�

�I�m old, Miss Ruby. You�re young and beautiful.�

�What does it take for you to stop using the word �Miss�?�

�Search me.�

She stands up and looks at me a long time. �Is there something wrong with me?� she asks. �You think I�m immoral?�

�No, ma�am.�

I don�t know what to say. I can�t quite tell her how I feel. �How about some ice cream?� she asks. �Would you like that?�

�That would be fine.�

�You�re a strange man.�

�Could I use your bathroom, please?�

�It�s just off the dining room,� she says. �Yes, you can certainly use it. Please.�

She walks away, her back stiff with either hostility or dismay. The bathroom door has a milk-glass knob on it, probably one made in the 1890s. I go inside and turn the key in the lock. The floor is made of wood that has never been painted and for years has probably been cleaned with a wire brush and bleach and vinegar. The ceiling is plated with stamped tin; the bathtub has claw feet and a long streak of orange on the porcelain under the faucet. The simplicity of the room and its resistance to time is comforting in a way I can�t adequately explain. Perhaps simply because it�s far from the canal near the Thirty-eighth Parallel. Or maybe because it reminds me of Yoakum, Texas, when I stayed with my grandfather at the end of the Great Depression and woke in the morning to birdsong and the smell of smokehouse meat. Damn the century in which I was born. Would that I could return to the natural world, one of flowers and fruit that could be picked from the tree, one in which the gift of life was gift enough.

But what does this really mean? The truth is, I can�t look at my reflection because I fear I will see the face of an eighteen-year-old who laughed after he incinerated a peasant who probably wanted nothing more from life than a few more bowls of rice for his family. Somehow the callousness I showed in the canal is linked to my inability to find Fannie Mae, as though the absence of goodness in my deeds has empowered my enemies and left me in their sway. I sit on the side of the tub, my angst so great that I see myself loading the M1 again, and this time I tuck the muzzle under my chin.

Then I realize something is wrong, something whose potential is worse than the footage I watched on the television screen.

I go into the kitchen. There are three bowls of ice cream on the table. Ruby has waited for me, but Maxwell Gato has started in on his two scoops of vanilla, his tail straight up, his pink seat pointed at me.

�That scene in Korea is not how it happened,� I say.

�I don�t understand,� Ruby says.

�I took no pride in killing the Chinese soldier who carried the flamethrower. The sergeant was KIA the previous week. I remember him well. His name was Geissler. He was a good fellow from St. Louis. He was not in that canal. Somebody is trying to put my head in a vise.�

�You�re accusing me of doing something like that?�

�No, it�s the nature of evil. It makes you resent yourself. It fills you with guilt. It steals the sunlight from your life.�

�So what am I supposed to do with the video?�

�Destroy it.�

�You think that�s going to get rid of what�s under my house?�

�No, but we don�t have to let it ruin our lives,� I reply.

�You said �we.� �

�I guess I did. Would you stand up, please?�

�What for?� she asks.

�Just stand up.�

She gets up slowly. I put my arms around and press her body against mine, my chin resting on the top of her head. �You�re a really nice lady, Miss Ruby.�

�Thank you,� she says.

I pull her tighter. She steps on top of my shoes. I can feel my heart beating against her cheek, her fingernails seeking purchase in my back. I pick her up on my chest and bury my face in her neck and want to stay there forever.

Two days later, on Saturday morning, I see a boy in laced new work boots and starched and ironed navy blue strap overalls over a pressed denim shirt, with a fresh haircut, walk up my drive and mount the steps and knock on my door. He wears neither a hat nor a coat and seems so frail in stature that a hard wind could blow him down the road. He�s looking over his shoulder and does not see me when I approach the door. �What do you want, Jack?� I say through the glass.

�Need to talk,� he says, turning toward me with neither fear nor anger but a deadness in his eyes that doesn�t go with his years.

�I tried to stop you on the highway, but you climbed into the cab of a log truck. That was rude.�

�I had some people after me.�

I wait for him to continue, but he doesn�t. I unlock the door and step outside. His skin has a translucent bleached look, his tats and his veins like faded print on parchment. �Say it,� I tell him.

�You pissed at something?�

�Yeah, I gave you a break when you came to my house to either rob or kill me. Now your brother is dead, and the cops are probably looking for you. I don�t want you dragging your problems on my gallery.�

�On your what?�

�Get out of here,� I reply.

�You said I was stand-up and had moxie.�

�What about it?�

�Nobody else ever said that to me.�

�So?�

�I need a job. Anything. I want to start over.�

�What about the cops?�

�Unless you file charges, they don�t have anything on me. Plus I�m not a big ripple in anybody�s life.�

�That�s not what I�m talking about. Your brother was torn apart. I think the cops have a few questions for you.�

�My brother tried to slam a gram, then went crazy and climbed between two boxcars while they were moving.�

�I was told you set fire to your home when you were twelve.�

�I was cooking my father�s dinner while he was balling a woman he brought home from a truck stop. I burned his food, so he slapped me all over the kitchen and threw me out. He must have left the burner on. But I didn�t do it.�

I wonder how much of his story is a lie and how much is true, and more importantly, I wonder if he knows the difference.

When I don�t speak, he gazes down the slope, his expression whimsical, narcissistic, the kind of kid who feeds on thoughts about the importance of his own mortality. Then he looks at me again. His eyes are flat, impenetrable, like watermelon seeds. �You think I�m some kind of monster?�

�If you work for me, it�s hit-it-and-git-it all day long, and no profanity while you�re on the property.�

�You didn�t answer my question.�

�Yeah,� I say. �I didn�t.�

�Why?�

�Because you shouldn�t have asked it.�

His face clouds as he looks at the river and the undulation of the waves in the mid-current and the tangle of cool green-yellow light sealed under it. His face is fine-boned, his skull probably as fragile as an eggshell. �I didn�t have much of an upbringing. But I learned early that manners and morality aren�t the same thing.�

�Where you staying?�

�At the Poverello,� he says.

�You need a few dollars until you can make a payday?�

�Yes, sir, I sure could.�

I hand him a twenty-dollar bill, but I don�t quite let go of it. �You wouldn�t jump me over the hurdles, would you, Jack?�

�I don�t know what that means, sir,� he replies.

�That means you wouldn�t play a trick on me, would you?�

�No, sir.�

I release the double sawbuck and shut the door and softly slip the bolt.

Wednesday morning Jeremiah McNally turns on my dirt lane in a sheriff�s department cruiser and parks in front of the house. Another plainclothes is with him. The two of them get out and begin walking up the incline. The second man is Joe Latour, the sheriff�s deputy who responded to the 911 dispatch when Fannie Mae was beaten and ended up in the ER. He�s wearing a tweed sport coat and a knit necktie. He studies the house, the trees, the weathervane on my roof, the horses in the pasture. I�m on the veranda before he and Jeremiah can make the steps.

�That�s far enough unless you have a warrant,� I say.

�Dial it down, Aaron,� Jeremiah says.

�You want me to call my attorney?�

�We�re not here to bother you, Mr. Broussard,� Latour says. He has a hardcore-gravel New England accent. �We talked to Jack Wetzel at the Poverello. We wanted to warn you about something.�

�No, that is not the reason you are here,� I say. �You want to connect me with some guns that were dropped in the parcel chute at the post office. I�ll make it easy for you. I�m the person who dropped them there. Where I got them and how I got them is my business. If dropping guns in a post office receptacle is a crime, I have not heard of it.�

�Yeah, you�re probably right,� he says.

�Mr. Latour. I�ve made my peace with you��

�It�s Detective Latour.�

�No, sir, it�s Mr. Latour. You�re not welcome here, sir.�

�I�m sorry you feel that way.�

�What the hell is this about, Jeremiah?� I say.

He takes a four-by-five color photograph out of his coat pocket and hands it to me. �You ever see this guy?�

The photo is a close-up of a stout, late-middle-aged, perverse-looking man at a carnival, probably at twilight; behind him, in contrast, a Ferris wheel is printed against the sky, and the red buttes on the rim of a desert have the soft glow of rubies. The man has silver hair combed straight back and a face that looks like it doesn�t work right, as though the motors in it are in conflict with one another. One eye is either half-lidded or sunken deeper than the other. He�s wearing a black suit scrolled with sequins and a turquoise shirt wrinkled with light and a necktie painted with a rearing horse.

�No, I�ve never seen this man,� I say.

�You seemed to dwell on his picture, though,� Latour says.

I crimp my mouth and don�t reply.

�That�s Jimmie Kale,� he says. �Also known as Jimmie the Digger.�

Nor do I show any acknowledgment of his statement.

�Joe is talking to you, Aaron,� Jeremiah says.

�I know no one by the name of Kale,� I reply.

�We think he brought a huge shipment of meth to Montana,� Jeremiah says. �Maybe it got buried and him with it. Or maybe he did the burying. After he shot five or six guys. He�s been known to bury people alive.�

�There�s another thing you need to be aware of, Mr. Broussard,� Latour says. �Jimmie Kale is the single most important drug source on the res. The Indians hate this guy. He ruins their children and destroys their families. We want to give the Indians all the help we can.�

�What does this have to do with me?� I ask Jeremiah.

But Latour answers. �We think Jack Wetzel may have been at the burial of the meth, or the money they got for the meth, and maybe the five or six guys who got a bulldozer load of dirt in their faces.�

I hear Jack crank up the chainsaw and touch it to a log in the barn. �I think you�re after the wrong kid.�

�Yeah, he�s a ball of sunshine,� Latour says.

�I�ve got a deadline with my editor,� I say to Jeremiah. �I�d better get on it.�

�Aaron, I want to say something in front of you and Joe,� he replies. �I�ve given a lot of thought to these fantasies Ruby Spotted Horse is trying to shop around.�

�They�re not fantasies,� I say.

�For whatever reason, she�s jerking both of us around, and you�re buying into it, like those hot coals you dug up and put in my hands. That was some trash you burned and buried. Same thing goes with these rumors about monsters on the res. Clayton Wetzel fell under a boxcar. The waitress was getting it on with a couple of psycho Nazi bikers who thought she was a snitch, so they chain-dragged her and dumped her body under a bridge. That�s not just me talking, it�s the pathologist and a couple of feds.�

�You�ve got the bikers in custody?�

�We�re not there yet,� he says.

�I think you�re full of it, Jeremiah,� I say. �Shame on you.�

�You�re a hard man to talk to, Mr. Broussard,� Latour says.

I look him full in the face. �You didn�t kill my daughter, Mr. Latour. But you didn�t help her, either. I think there was gloat in your eyes when you left the ER. Why, I don�t know. Maybe my daughter threw the first punch, but that would be out of character for her. I hope you have a good life, and I have nothing else to say.�

The next day, as I�m about to leave the Lolo post office, John Fenimore Culpepper taps one knuckle on my truck window. He�s wearing a mask emblazoned with the American flag. I roll down the window. As most of us have learned in our virus culture, it is hard to read the intentions or state of mind of a fellow American when the lower half of the face is covered.

�Yes, sir?� I say.

�Can I have a talk with you? Out under the tree?�

I cut the engine. �Sure. What�s going on?�

We walk into the shade of a tree by a drop box. �I want to thank you for getting that tutor for my boy,� he says.

�It was no trouble, Mr. Culpepper.�

�My boy likes the campus and the instructors they got out there, and he says the kids ain�t bad, either. But the tutor has made all the difference, I mean with Leigh�s special needs and such.�

I want to change the subject because I do not want him to know I�m subsidizing the tutor. But my general discomfort with John Culpepper is for reasons far more serious. Jack Wetzel told me that Culpepper�s son gave him LSD. Maybe Jack was lying, maybe not; however, there was no reason for him to lie. My other problem is I believe Culpepper is more victim than perpetrator. I think he�s carrying a wire for at least one law enforcement agency. If so, he�s doing it for money, or he�s terrified at the prospect of confinement.

�Maybe someday I can play you a few tunes or do some house repairs for you,� he says. �I was a right good carpenter before me and John Barleycorn fell off the roof, know what I mean?�

�Sir, I don�t want to intrude in your personal life.�

I have barely gotten the words out of my mouth when I see Fannie Mae by my truck, waving her hands for me to shut up.

�Go ahead,� Culpepper says. His face looks carved from wood, his gray eyes no more readable than a pair of Life Savers.

�I think you�ve got yourself in a nest of hornets, and if they don�t sting you to death, the cops will.�

�Run that last part by me again.�

�Were you in a war?� I ask.

�No.�

�In a war a significant number of people are considered expendable. Eventually Sister Ginny and her cohorts will go down. Don�t take their fall. Don�t be one of the expendables.�

His eyes are frozen, his mask puffing in and out with his breath. �Where�d you get your information?�

�Nowhere. It�s a surmise on my part.�

�A what?�

�A feeling.�

�My wife has pancreatic cancer. She�ll be dead in another year. Then it�ll be just me and my boy. I cain�t go to prison. Leigh gets in trouble when I�m not around. You hearing me, Mr. Broussard?�

�Yes, sir.�

�Thirty years ago I fired a gun from a car into a colored church. I killed a little boy. I see him every night in my sleep. That�s why I got out of the Klan.�

I look away from him. The image he has created is one of the worst I have ever dealt with.

�Sister Ginny says I been baptized in the blood and I don�t have to worry about going to hell,� he says. �What�s your opinion?�

�I don�t have that kind of knowledge.�

�You don�t understand what I�m saying, do you?�

�Understand what?�

�I�m already in hell. I ain�t got no way out. It waits for me every night and day. That�s what hell is really about.� He crosses the post office driveway and walks through Fannie Mae and out the other side as though she�s not there.

The next day, in the late evening, a waxed purple Cadillac convertible with fins and chromed wheels and blue-dot taillights and a starched-white top drives slowly up my lane, passes the house, then stops and backs up the lane and into the driveway and all the way to the lawn. The driver cuts the lights but remains in the car. I click on the outside light and step outside. I can hear the heat ticking under the Caddy�s hood.

�Who�s that?� I say.

The driver rolls down the window and flicks a cigarette onto the lawn. Then he gets out and closes the door, which means he has fixed his interior lights so he cannot be illuminated when he enters and exits the car.

�I need to know who you are, partner,� I say.

There�s a mauve glow on the river and the meadowland beyond, enough to silhouette the driver but not enough to reveal his features.

�You want me to call 911?� I say.

He fires up another cigarette, the lighter�s flame as warm and soft as a candle�s. �I�m looking for a young fella,� he says. �Jack Wetzel is the name. I�d like to tell you I got a barrel of money for him, but truth is, I ain�t got dick except a message from his mother. Can I come up without getting shot?�

The accent is five-star peckerwood, like a bobby pin twanging. He walks into my outside light without waiting for an answer. He�s wearing shined needle-nose oxblood boots, a dull-white suit with a vest that has the color and design of a sliced pomegranate, and the most beautiful black John B. Stetson hat I have ever seen. His cigarette is of foreign make and gold-tipped. He takes it from his mouth and blows a smoke ring. �Where�s Jack at?�

�Jack who?�

�Jack Wetzel. My nephew.�

�He�s not here.�

His eyes are not symmetrical and his facial skin is like tallow and seems to knot and unknot itself. �Know where he went?�

�I couldn�t say.�

�Can I use your bathroom?�

�The plumbing is stopped up.�

�You don�t have a shitter in back?� His face is solemn. Then he starts laughing. �Just kidding. Hang on.� He walks to the flower bed and unzips and urinates into the shadows. Then zips up and whistles. �Wow, I must have had a quart backed up. I tried not to hit your rosebushes.�

�You�re Jimmie Kale,� I reply. �A couple of cops told me you might be around. You were a country musician up in the Texas Panhandle.�

�Goddamn, son. You did your homework. Now, about Jack��

�With respect, Mr. Kale, I can�t give out information about other people. I also have to get back to work.�

�I was hoping you�d h�ep me find him. I�ve had three or four people tell me he�s working for you. Is he staying with you or in town?�

�I think you bear Jack ill will.�

�That�s the silliest thing I�ve ever heard.�

�This is about meth, Mr. Kale. I�m not fond of people who make or sell it. Neither are the Indians.�

He tries to see past me, his face knotting. �Who the hell is that? Why�s she giving me that look?�

I glance behind me. �What are you talking about?�

�The woman in your doorway.�

�What woman?�

�The squaw. Right yonder.�

I open the screen and stick my arm inside the door and click the overhead light off and on three times. �I�m the only person here.�

Half his face seems to soften, as though it�s beginning to melt and he has no control over it. �She�s gone now, but what I seen was a short little bitch in white buckskin with dark hair and a knife in her hand.�

�I�m afraid you didn�t.�

�She�s got knockers and deep-set eyes. She looked me up and down, like I was trash. I won�t abide that. Get her out here.�

�I don�t know what to tell you, partner.�

He�s breathing through his nose. But I am probably more disturbed than he is, particularly after his description of the Indian woman.

�Okay, I ain�t gonna press it,� he says. �Tell Jack I�m at the DoubleTree.�

�No, sir, I will not give him any message at all.�

�You�ve got yourself an attitudinal problem, Mr. Broussard. You�re too damn snooty for your britches.�

�The Indian woman you saw?�

His eyes fill with expectation. �She was there, wasn�t she?�

�You were probably looking at your worst nightmare, Mr. Kale.� I glance at his Caddy. �I love your wheels. Those were the days, weren�t they?�

He stares at me, his mouth open, waiting for me to continue. But I don�t.

Do you ever have this feeling about your time on earth? It�s the second inning, then the fifth and the top of the eighth, and you look at the scoreboard and the angle of the sun and feel the chill in the air, and you wonder where your life has gone.

I have that feeling now. Jack Wetzel�s description of Major Eugene Baker and the murder of Jack�s brother was more than stark. It was proof that Baker had the power to commit crimes in the present and not simply re-create them in the form of an apparition.

In his career he was obviously an implementer of Manifest Destiny. He asked me to join his cause without describing what it was, but I have no doubt he wants to continue his war against indigenous people under a black flag and, for whatever reason, wanted me on board. So far he has not tried to hurt me physically. Why, I don�t know. My guess is he doesn�t have many arrows in his quiver. I think he is probably an emblematic character, one if given flesh and blood again would wage war against the third world in search and control of natural resources.

I mentioned Ernest Hemingway. Many years ago in Miami I was friends with his brother Leicester and the crime writer Charles Willeford. Leicester was at the H�rtgen Forest during the Battle of the Bulge; Charles was at Arnhem and at night took his tank through German lines and piled twenty-three grunts on it and brought them home. Both Charles and Leicester were at the liberation of Dachau, as was my first cousin Weldon Holland, and not one of them would talk about the experience, except for one statement made by Weldon: �The inmates wanted to touch and hold us. They wouldn�t let go.�

I believe all three men represented what is best in us. Now, on a quiet evening when I hear a coyote howl behind my house or a whirring sound like a windup clock about to strike the hour, I wonder if my time has come and if I have done enough to justify my span on earth. I wonder, as Robert Frost once said, if my sacrifice is acceptable in the sight of the Creator. I wonder if I have made a difference.

Why do I brood in this fashion? I�ll tell you. Maybe we have already entered the time of Major Eugene Baker and those like him. Maybe we�re about to see the horses in the Book of John up close and personal, their chests heaving, their breaths hot, their mouths and necks lathered, thundering across a ruined world peopled with skeletons. But the darkest hour is not in the prophecy of a Hebrew evangelist who lived two thousand years ago; it�s in the soul. That�s why I sit here shaking in the dark, the way you shake when the malarial mosquito has its way, wondering if my legs will fail me, as the Yankee soldiers must have wondered at Marye�s Heights when they slipped on their own gore and asked that this bitter cup be taken from their lips. Is it now my turn?

Fannie Mae sits down across from me, wearing a short black wool coat that has brass buttons and green cactuses and red flowers sewn on it, and stovepipe Mexican boots and dark trousers with purple stripes in them. But she doesn�t speak.

�Did I do something wrong?� I ask.

I don�t think you understand what�s going on, Pops.

�Don�t start.�

Why do you think all these people keep drifting in and out of your life?

�You got me.�

They can�t fix their problems. They want to touch your hand or maybe even your bare foot and be set free. Somebody before your time had the same problem.

�That�s foolish.�

You�re stuck, Pops. Better get yourself some sandals.

�I was afraid you had gone away. Maybe for good.�

I�m here, aren�t I?

�I went to the cemetery.�

Stay out of that place. It�s a real drag. Remember that ghoul from the church who tried to sell us a plot in Wichita? You said you had made mistakes in your life, but nothing to warrant spending eternity in Kansas with the dust and tumbleweeds bouncing across your grave. You remember what the guy said?

�No.�

�I take it you�re not from this area.�

�What are we going to do?� I ask.

Like you used to tell me when I was little: �Ease up on the batter, little guy.�

�Why are you dressed like that?�

I was down on the border again. Jimmie the Digger has given a lot of money to refugee programs. You think he�s buying his own constituency?

�Probably.�

I found out something else: Sister Ginny used to sing and play keyboard and mandolin for him. You�re not going to like this, Pops. I think both of them want the same thing from you.

�I know what�s coming. Turn off the faucet.�

You remember all those segregationist assholes out of the fifties and sixties. Every one of those bastards grew up in the Baptist or Assemblies of God Church, and all of them were scared shitless at the prospect of going to hell. That�s why every one of them made public apologies.

�You�re wrong about people seeking me out, Fannie Mae.�

You know your biggest flaw, Pops? You don�t believe the people who say you were a good dad. Anyway, I�m awful tired right now. May I sleep on your couch?

�Are you sick?�

At heart I am. Sometimes we carry it across the Divide. It doesn�t seem fair, does it? I wish I hadn�t fucked up.

The next day I stop at the delicatessen inside Harvest Foods, Lolo�s only grocery store. Working people are eating an early lunch at the tables; the day is bright and last night�s snow is melting on the roof, and spring and a cheery note are in the air when Jeremiah McNally grabs my arm roughly from behind. �I got to talk to you,� he says. �Now.�

I pull his hand loose. �Don�t bend my threads, Fred,� I say, and try to smile.

He smells of nicotine and alcohol; there�s a razor nick inside the dimple on his chin. He�s obviously wired. �Don�t let me down, Aaron.�

I push my cart to an empty table in the corner and sit down. �What�s going on, partner?�

He sits down across from me, his eyes sweeping the other tables and the deli counter. �I�m going down for that situation in the Flathead River.�

�The murder of the waitress?�

�Yeah, Betty Wolcott. Guess who�s making the case on me? Joe Latour, the guy who wouldn�t let your injured daughter in his cruiser.�

�Lower your voice.�

�I�m going down for the whole bounce, Aaron. I could ride the needle.�

�Stop it. What�s their evidence?�

�My DNA is all over her apartment and her car and on her body or in her body and I don�t know where else.� His gaze slides off my face.

�Is there something you�re leaving out?�

�No.�

�How about the waitress who was found under the bridge at St. Ignatius? They got you for that, too?�

�Yeah, they might try. You think that�s funny?�

�I�m trying to help you, partner.�

�Well, you�re not,� he says. He gets up and goes to the beer cooler and returns with a six-pack, one can torn loose and already open in his hand. He chugs from it and sets it down on the table.

�You�re testing the envelope, Jeremiah.�

He pulls out his badge holder and opens it on the table. �They can live with it.�

�What can I do for you?�

�You can be my friend. Tell those assholes what�s going on.�

�I�m not sure what you mean.�

�Tell them about the spirits locked up in Ruby Spotted Horse�s cellar. The Indians you saw that guy Baker kill behind your house.�

�You�ve become a believer in the preternatural, and you want me to proselytize Latour for you?�

�I can�t follow what you�re saying.�

There�s no point in speaking to him. He�s obviously gone over a line and won�t be coming back for a while. He burps under his breath and takes another hit from the beer. The manager is headed for our table. I ease the beer can out of Jeremiah�s hand and place it on the floor.

�You don�t believe me, do you?� he says.

�DNA on the body of the victim doesn�t add up to a homicide charge.�

�It�s all political. BLM are running cops through the wringer. So cops hang one of their own out to dry. That�s me, a jockstrap on the wash line.�

�I�m sorry this is happening to you, Jeremiah.�

Many years ago I learned that we discover the best and worst in people when they�re under duress. I think that principle has certainly borne out with my pitiful friend. I wish I had not been witness to it. I take his car keys and drive him to my home and keep him there until he�s sober. He weeps in shame before he drives himself home.

Good riddance, I tell myself the following day. But I should have known better.

It�s noon now, the sky like an inverted blue ceramic bowl. I hear the sputtering engine of an airplane above the house, then see a shadow rippling across the backyard and the barn and the pasture. Out on the back steps, I see a red-white-and-blue two-seater biplane that banks violently and almost collides with the mountain. The pilot straightens out and comes back toward the pasture but is losing altitude, gunning the engine, the wings tilting. He and the figure in the rear seat are wearing goggles and leather aviator helmets and white scarfs trailing from their necks. The horses are panicked and running from one end of the pasture to the other. The plane scrapes the top of a ponderosa, dips suddenly, and bounces off the ground once, then twice, ripping off one side of the wings on a tree and crashing through a wire fence before coming to a stop, the propeller stubbed into the dirt, the tail painted with the Stars and Stripes, sticking up in the air.

The pilot unstraps himself and drops to the ground and pulls off his goggles.

Guess who? �You got to let me borrow your shitter this time,� he says, unbuttoning his overalls and shoving them down his hips. �I dumped a whole load in my jockeys.� He steps out of his overalls one leg at a time. �Come look if you don�t believe me.�

�I accept your word, Mr. Kale,� I reply.

Jack Wetzel gets out of his seat and walks toward me, pulling off his goggles. �Sorry we busted your back fence, Mr. B. I�ll round up the horses.�

�No, you won�t,� I said.

�Sir?�

�You have some explaining to do, Jack.�

�Don�t be fussing at him, Mr. Broussard,� Kale says. �The boy�s been doing the best he can.�

�You keep your own counsel, Kale,� I say. �I�ve had it with y�all. There�s a hose in the backyard. But that�s as far on my property as you�re going to get.�

Kale picks up his overalls, his legs bare, his jockey underwear, as he said, soiled. �You�re a Holland, all right,� he says. �Cain�t wait to clear the holster.�

�What are you after, Kale? Why do you keep coming around?�

�Business. Goodwill. Montana is like Colorado was seventy-five years ago. There�s a fortune to be made.�

�I wouldn�t do business with you if you had a retroactive patent on the wheel. That said, get on your cell phone and bring a flatbed and a crew out here and get this junk out of my pasture. I�ll fix the fence myself.�

�I was gonna ask you to have dinner with me and Sister Ginny.�

�Are you serious?�

�You he�ped her boy. She feels obliged.�

�Her boy?�

�That�s right. Jack is her son. You brought a family back together.�

�Jack and his brother told me they didn�t know her.�

�Well, now you know,� he says.

�Is that true, Jack?�

�Yes, sir.�

�I don�t care if y�all are lying or not,� I reply. �I wish you the best of everything, Jack. One last note: Get away from Kale. He�s evil from his hairline to the balls of his feet.�

I start to walk away.

�That�s all you gonna say, Mr. Broussard?� Jack asks.

�You remember what Shane said to Joey in the movie last night? �You have to be strong and straight.� �

�We left before the ending,� he says.

�Why?� I ask.

Jack looks silently at Kale.

�We left because that movie stinks,� Kale says. �With his shirt off, Alan Ladd looks like a Hollywood faggot.�

I walk down the pasture and step through a rail fence and go inside the tack room and put together a half-dozen leads and halters and begin rounding up my horses. I guess my attitude toward Jack seems unforgiving. Secretly, I want him to follow me to the tack room, to denounce Kale, to apologize for the lies he has told me, or maybe to ask questions about George Stevens�s great film. But there are times when the lights of pity and charity have no influence upon evil, and we have to let it go for what it is.

After I catch up the horses and do a temporary repair on the fence with a battery-powered corral kit, I call Ruby and ask her to meet me for a Mexican dinner at Fiesta en Jalisco on Brooks. But the last words of Shane and Joey still echo in my head. I wish I had been kinder to Jack. I look out the back door at the place on the grass where Kale washed himself. The hose is neatly coiled and detached from the faucet so it won�t freeze up at night and break a pipe inside the wall. Jimmie Kale would not have those kinds of concerns.

I walk out on the veranda. The air is unseasonally warm, the early leaves of the cottonwoods barely puffing, the barometer dropping, a few rain rings dimpling the fast-running smoothness of the river. The sun is setting beyond Lolo Peak, but that is not why the light is fading. Montana and Louisiana share many similarities. The light doesn�t die in the evening or before a storm. It�s sucked into the earth, and almost immediately the trees become still and the leaves turn a darker green and the fish begin softly rolling under the surface of the lakes and waterways, disappearing with no sound, leaving not so much as a wrinkle. It happens in minutes. The air is clean and the blackness of the clouds and the trees of lightning pulsing inside them pose no threat, offer no warning, and instead are a testimony to the continuity of creation.

And it�s all free.

I go back inside and hope that Fannie Mae will join me. She always loved thunderstorms, even as a little girl, when we lived in the Florida Keys. She loved the waterspouts even more when, on a blazing-hot day, one would drop from a single roiling black cloud into the ocean and turn into a wobbling tube of spun glass. You never forget those moments, do you? Why did you have to die, Fannie Mae? Why? Why? Why? Those words beat in my head like the drumming of a taskmaster on an ancient prison ship filled with convicts at the oars. To my mind, the greatest suffering depicted in the entire Bible is that of Jesus� mother at his crucifixion. I don�t know how anyone could bear it.

These thoughts give me no rest and tempt me into a dark place where the sword seems a far more appropriate symbol of justice than prayer beads or beneficence purchased at the expense of those who are gone and have no one to speak for them.

I open windows all over the house and fix a fried-egg sandwich and put it and a scoop each of potato salad and dirty rice and a slice of pecan pie on a tray with a glass of iced tea and sit down on the back steps and try to look at all the great gifts of the world.

The wind is up, blowing pine needles from the roof and feathers from the door of the chicken house. It�s a grand storm-tormented evening, the kind that somehow restores your faith and allows you to prove that insularity and freedom from fear are one and the same and that God is a friend and not a bearer of wrath and destruction.

I pick up my dishes and turn around so I can open the door. Then I hear an object whip past me, like someone trying to spit something off his tongue. But it does more than pass by my ear. It slices the skin, the kind of cut that stings right away. I drop the dishes and press my hand to my ear and then look at it. There is a star of blood in the center of my palm, as though it fell from an eyedropper. An arrow with a steel head, one as thin and sharp as a razor, is embedded in the wall of the washhouse attached to the house, the feathered shaft still quivering.

The yard and the pasture are empty. Whoever shot at me was far away. I can hear thunder beginning to crackle in the clouds and the horses nickering in the pasture, probably wondering if I will put them away for the night, which I always do in violent weather lest they be hit by falling trees. I go back in the house, dress my ear with some iodine, put on a slicker and my beat-up Stetson, drop the Peacemaker in my right-hand pocket, and walk down to the tack room. Why do I not dial 911 with my newly purchased smartphone? The adherents of Eugene Baker threw down the glove, not I.

Ruby is headed up Lolo Pass, where a fire has burned down a church and jumped the highway and is climbing up the side of Lolo Peak. The rain that should have impeded the flames has been undone by the velocity of the wind. Crown fires, the kind that leap across the canopy of the forest, cannot be outrun by people on foot. The years 2020 and early 2021 have produced record droughts. I think we�re in for it.

I get a sleeping bag from the closet and open it up like a blanket, lie down on the couch with a pillow under my head and Grandfather�s Peacemaker under the pillow, and pull the sleeping bag up to my chin. Why choose the heavy single-action revolver for self-protection rather than weapons in my possession that are far more sophisticated? The Peacemaker is part of the man and the times in which he carried it as a Texas Ranger and town marshal. From Reconstruction to the Dust Bowl, Grandfather went up against some of the most dangerous gunfighters in Texas, including Harvey Logan, a member of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang.

In early 1934 Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow and Raymond Hamilton and his girlfriend camped on Grandfather�s ranch during a dust storm so thick the dust piled to the bottom of the windmill blades; Grandfather had to nail wet burlap over the windows. My cousin Weldon Holland fell in love with Bonnie and said she was nothing like the woman smoking a cigar with her foot on the bumper of a stolen car. I loved the stories that Weldon and Grandfather told me, and I ached to have been born in that era.

Grandfather did not abide complexity. When asked the secret of his survival in over a dozen gun duels, he said, �Take your time and don�t miss.� He had no formal education but owned a set of encyclopedias he read from cover to cover over the course of his life. He and Weldon put a wreath on Bonnie�s grave. Grandfather�s axiom was �Love the Lord and love the world and don�t let anybody tell you one is exclusive of the other.�

So that�s why I pick up Grandfather�s Peacemaker. I feel its weight and heft and coldness and know that I�m carrying a tradition that has few equals. It�s a pretty good way to feel. Or at least that�s what I tell myself.

The rain is coming down steadily, snow sliding down the windows, electricity veining in the clouds. I do not want to think about the apparition of Major Baker and his men and their captive in the trees. In fact, I tell myself the sun will rise in the morning, the fires will die in the mountains, the fish will leap in the streams, and the earth will in some way be mended.

It�s after midnight now. I know that somehow I missed something about the logic of Ginny Stokes�s statement regarding Jack Wetzel�s theft of the bow and quiver and her directive for its return. Yes, under reasonable circumstances Jack should have gone to the Culpepper home and apologized. But Leigh is not at the home. He is probably somewhere up one of the creeks in the Bitterroot Mountains. Jack Wetzel, a drug mule who hates and fears authority, will have to deal on his own with John Culpepper, a former Klansman who for thirty years has probably sought out a scapegoat or a villain he could punish for the Black child he murdered in Alabama.

I sit on the side of my couch and rub my face. The sky is still black and the rain still falling, like a curtain protecting me from the world. I want to fix a sandwich and a glass of milk and go back to sleep. I despise the idea of what I have to do.

I go in the kitchen and turn on the light and call John Culpepper. Perhaps fifteen rings go by. My conscience is almost home free and I start to hang up. Then I hear him clearing his throat. �Who the hell is this?�

�I�m sorry to call so late, Mr. Culpepper. It�s about your boy and Jack Wetzel.�

�Time for you to mind your own business, Mr. Broussard.�

�Sir, this is very important. If you�ll give me a minute or two��

�What I�ll give you is hell. Don�t ring my phone and don�t darken my door. I cain�t tell you how I strongly I feel about this.�

�Yes, sir,� I say. �I shouldn�t have called. I won�t do it again.�

He hangs up.

I know I�m about to buy it. I think of the teardrop lake high up in the Missions where Ruby and I made our troth. I know it waits for me and eventually for her and maybe for Fannie Mae as well. I believe the world to be a cathedral shaped by a divine hand, and if this is true, I should fear death no more than I should fear returning to the home of my birth. As William Shakespeare said in Henry IV, �we owe God a death and let it go which way it will he that dies this year is quit for the next.�

I wait for the blow that will shatter my skull and brain like a flowerpot. But it doesn�t happen. Kale is still clenching the bat, except in a defensive position, staring at the fog puffing off the Jocko. �What�s goin� on here?� he says.

The fog thickens and rolls closer to the cottage. It�s steel gray, like curds of smoke from an industrial incinerator. Then a huge reddish-orange glow blooms inside it, and I see the major and his troopers and Fannie Mae gathered together, firelight flickering on their faces. All of the soldiers are in dress blues. The major has pulled his sword from its scabbard and is resting the blade on his shoulder.

Got yourself in a fix, Mr. Broussard?

�What are you doing with my daughter?�

Spoils of war?

�My ass,� I say.

How about a trade? I give you back your daughter and take this lovely bag of garbage off your hands.

�That�s it?�

Then you come along, too. We�ll make a frolic.

Jimmie Kale�s expression is like a bowl of porridge. �Deal me out,� he says.

I can see Fannie Mae clearly now. She mouths her words slowly. It�s a scam, Pops. Tell him to eat shit.

�Your record is a bit disturbing, Major,� I say. �I don�t think negotiations with you are a good idea.�

Have I ever lied to you?

�Not to my knowledge. But your pretense as a soldier simply carrying out orders doesn�t wash.�

You don�t think the Rebs were cruel? Sending the slaves to the auction block after Lee took Chambersburg, Jeb Stuart rounding them up outside Washington?

�Those were despicable acts,� I reply.

Let�s put things a little closer to home. You didn�t see your F-86s mow down Korean peasants trying to flee the bombing of their cities?

�Yes, I did.�

You liked that, did you?

�You make your case, Major, but you�re still the bloody instrument of an iniquitous cause.�

He thrusts his sword angrily back into the scabbard. What should I do with you, sir?

�Whatever you wish. My guess is you don�t have any power over me. Nor do you have power over my daughter.�

Fannie Mae smiles.

I�m vexed, Mr. Broussard. I�ve treated you with dignity and respect.

�You�re no different from Kale, Major. You have spread misery and death among innocent people. You forced them into freezing water and burned their tepees and blankets and clothes and food. Few, if any, ever visited more pain on the Blackfeet.�

His jaw is clenched, his face twitching as though each of my words is pricking his skin. I�ll be back. I promise a resolution of this. In the meantime I�ll put into abeyance your troubles with this pitiful peckerwood. I will also ensure your daughter�s safety.

�No,� I say. �You must release her, Major. She doesn�t belong with you.�

Mr. Broussard, it�s you who�s the problem. Your daughter extended her stay far beyond the time usually allotted for those in her situation. Pardon me for saying this, but you�re not the good father you think you are.

With the flick of a salute, the fog closes around him and his men and Fannie Mae, then recedes into a horizontal vortex two hundred yards up the Jocko. The baseball bat held by Kale is ripped from his hands by an invisible force and sails like a helicopter blade over the roofs of the cottages down below.

I pick up Grandfather�s pistol and wipe off the mud. Kale is in a stupor, hardly able to walk. �Check yourself into counseling and tell the therapist what happened today,� I say. �I bet he�ll get a laugh out of it.�

Then I get in my car and drive home, wondering if I will ever see my little girl again.

The power is still out in Lolo, the night jet black. I open the barn doors so the chickens will have a shelter, then throw open the chicken house door and scatter them outside. I place the flashlight on the floor in the corner so its beam will flood the room. Then I save out one of the flares and pop the remaining three alight and spike them hissing and burning like a welder�s torch in the middle of the yard, so no one can jump me out of the dark. I sink the mattock into a plank on the floor and rip out a strip of wood that looks like it was torn from the heart of the tree.

I no longer care that my time on earth is coming to an end. What better way than in hot blood? Would you rather meet the grim reaper at Roncevaux or between bedsheets stiff with your own fluids?

The chickens have run for the inside of the barn, and the horses are in my secondary barn down by the river. A crooked bolt of lightning splinters a tree on the far bank, turning my house into a silhouette. Inside those two seconds of electric glimmer, I see the telephone wire flapping from the second-story eave. There are no trees around it. It was obviously cut. I pry and tear the planks loose from the two-by-eight joists that support the floor, and can smell the dirt and manure and rotted feed below. I hope Ruby gets my messages; I hope to see her before I die. I ask no help from the authorities because they will not believe the preternatural events I have witnessed in the last few months. The issue is not that the events challenge credulity; people believe what they wish to believe and often close their eyes and open their hearts to the worst people in the human race. The shame is theirs. Let them drown in their complacency.

I brought no gloves and my hands are starting to blister. I put down the mattock and wrap my right hand in a bandana, then work the mattock under another plank and prize it off of three nails that are newer than the others and hammered unevenly or hooked over.

Something is happening that I didn�t anticipate. The temperature is dropping, the rain turning to snow, although the forecast was for drier and warmer conditions later tonight. I hear noises up on the hill that make no sense: rocks rolling down the slope, clattering sticks, feet running through undergrowth.

I tear the plank loose from the three nails and fling it aside, then wedge up two more with the mattock and tear them loose with my hands and stick the flashlight down in the hole. Four feet away I see a suitcase on its side; I also see two metal army-surplus ammunition cans. I hook the mattock on the handle of one can and pull it toward me. The weight seems greater than anything the can could hold. The wind is stronger, shaking the walls. I hear vehicles turning off the dirt lane and into my drive. My heart is racing, my head pounding. I get to my feet and stare through the doorway at the sky and do not believe what I see. The clouds are smoke-colored and forked with electricity and have formed into a dome. The rain has turned entirely into snow, stippling the ground, stiffening the grass, sliding off flowers that have just started to bloom.

I hear the dirty roar of motorcycles, the doors of cars or pickup trucks slamming, and the cacophony of voices I have heard all my life. To my shame, I sold tickets in 1948 to a barbecue and election rally for United States senator Strom Thurmond, who, as a South Carolina judge, sentenced to death a seventeen-year-old Black boy who may have acted in self-defense when he killed a white man. I was in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1965, when Confederate flags flew all over the city and Klansmen fired guns into Black homes and churches; I was in Little Rock in 1957, when Black children had to be protected by National Guardsmen. I can go on and on with it. The degeneracy of a mob has no equal. It combines the mentality of the bigot, the coward, the sadist and the molester and the rapist. If there is an exception, I�ve yet to see it. I would love to line up a few of the participants in my sights.

Now they are surrounding my home, both the living and the dead. I know Grandfather�s Peacemaker will not get me out of my troubles. However, the other weapons in my gun cabinet would not avail me, either. I suspect the peak of Roland�s life was the morning in the year 778 when he rode up Roncevaux Pass with Charlemagne in the thin air of the Pyrenees and realized he had unknowingly gone through the metaphysical eye of the needle. He had entered immortality, and from that moment on, death could lay no claim on him.

That is why I have always tried to emulate my father, who went over the top five times. He was in the same zone as the Brits, who took sixty thousand casualties in a day. He said the wind carried the stench for three miles. I loved my father just as I did my grandfather. They came from different bloodlines and backgrounds, but their ethos was the same, and it made them members of the same private club. They were brave but they were kind. They were heroic but humble; they gave voice to those who had none. Is there a better ethos to wear on your shield, particularly when it�s your time to sign off?

I pull one of the ammunition cans from under the boards I�ve splintered and almost tear my arm loose from the socket. Then I pull out the second one and release the clamp that holds down the top and push it on its side and let its contents fall heavily on the floor. I have never seen a gold bar. There are three in the can. I do not know a great deal about the international price of gold. My understanding is that the price of a single bar of twenty-eight pounds hovers in the range of half a million dollars.

I try to get the suitcase out by pulling the handle with the mattock, but the fabric catches on a nail and wedges the suitcase between the floor and a post and the concrete foundation of the barn. I tear another board loose and open the four-inch blade on my Swiss Army knife and slice the nylon side of the suitcase, then work my hand inside the hole and touch a lumpy, tightly taped package that�s bleeding white powder on the packages around it. I take one taste and have no doubt of the suitcase�s contents. Jack and Clayton have stung me good.

I rip up two more planks and pull the suitcase free and drag it up on the floor, then slosh it with gasoline and throw it out the door onto the ground.

All the players are there and many others I don�t know. The temperature has continued to drop. I see no headlights on the highway. The clouds are swirling in a circular fashion and have changed in color from black to purple and red and streaks of orange. The snow continues to fall, thick and streaming and wet. Fog puffs from the mouths of Ginny Stokes and John Culpepper and Jimmie Kale, but none from the mouths of Jeremiah McNally and Major Baker and his men and others whom I don�t recognize. The bikers are booted and covered with tats and wear greasy blue jeans and leather vests and have beards and hair like Visigoths; the chains in their hands tinkle in the wind.

The bridge across the river is gone, including the pilings. I look to the north and the south of my property. I see no structure of any kind. The woods are thicker, the sandy stretches along the riverbanks free of any concrete boat ramps or rest stations or telephone or light poles or warning signs about buried power lines. The year could be 1870.

I must make a confession here. It is not easy to die alone. I hoped Ruby would be with me. Dying is like moving to another country, except we have no passport and no preparation for the experience we are about to have. The last word of many a dying soldier in a battalion aid station is �Mother.�

However, I have to free my mind of these concerns. I accept that I have to die this evening. But the manner in which that death comes is of enormous importance. Maybe those who die between fouled bedsheets are braver than the warrior who charges into the face of death. A feverish and degrading and debilitating death burns up the energy that physical courage and spiritual courage require. And dying by torture, as Saint Joan did at the stake, can be much worse. My stomach curdles when I look at the men with chains dripping from their hands.

Oddly enough, I address the major first, probably because his vanity requires him to practice a semblance of military discipline. �It�s awfully cold for you fellows to be out, isn�t it?� I say.

The brim of his hat is coated with snow. Not really, he replies. We�ve had a go at this quite a few times.

�Tell me, Major, do you feel comfortable with an entourage of moral imbeciles?�

I don�t think it wise to speak of these lads in that way.

�What do you think I should do with this suitcase full of drugs?�

Give unto Caesar what is Caesar�s.

A man pushes his way through the group. He�s hunched inside a heavy coat with fur around the collar, hands stuffed in the pockets. His teeth are chattering, from either the cold or fear. It�s Ray Bronson, Ruby�s ex, probably wired to the eyes.

�You�re not walking out of here, Broussard,� he says. �That flare in your pocket won�t save you. Do the smart thing.�

�What is the smart thing?� I ask.

�To give up all hope.�

�Unlike some of these others, you�re alive, Bronson. Before I check out, I�d like to plant one in your forehead.�

�You think Ruby is gonna show up?� he says.

�Why shouldn�t she?� I reply.

�I killed her this morning.�

I feel a cold hand squeeze my heart, and I have to swallow before I can speak. �What about that, Major? Is this man lying?�

The major lowers his eyes.

�Don�t be coy with me, Major Baker,� I say. �This man does your dirty work.�

I did not order him to do that. He did it on his own. I�m sorry.

I feel my eyes watering. Ginny Stokes and Jimmie Kale and Jack Wetzel are standing side by side. Kale picks up a rock and throws it at me. It hits my forehead, right above the eye. Blood trickles through my eyebrow and down my cheek. Sister Ginny�s arms are folded on her chest, her brow creased. Jack has his hands clamped under his armpits, staring at nothing, as though his face is composed of mismatched parts.

�Where is my daughter, Major?� I ask.

He nods toward the hills at the top of the slope. Up there. She slipped away.

�Why there?�

I have a feeling you�ll find out soon enough.

�You own all these people?� I say.

They gave up their souls. It�s their misfortune and none of my own.

�Look me straight in the eye and tell me that Ruby Spotted Horse is dead.�

She is, sir.

�How did she die?�

Bronson went into her house with a knife. I think he set fires, too. Listen, Mr. Broussard, release the contents of the suitcase to Mr. Kale, and I�ll try to do what I can for your daughter.

�You can do nothing for yourself � how can you help my daughter?�

He doesn�t answer and even looks hurt. I feel numb all over, perhaps because I�m traumatized, perhaps because of the cold. The grass is completely white now, the river running dark and rippling in the center, the backwater on the far bank forming into sheets of ice.

�What�s your stake in all this, Mr. Culpepper?� I say. His AR-15 hangs upside down from his shoulder.

�You meddled in our business and cost my boy his life,� Culpepper replies. �Blood is blood. You spilled mine. I�m fixing to spill yours.�

�I see.�

I pull the cap off the flare and strike the rough surface of the cap on the end of the flare, not unlike scratching a kitchen match. I drop the flare on the suitcase. The gasoline-soaked contents burst into flame, the sparks spinning into the sky. I hear a moan from the crowd.

�Come here, Officer Bronson,� I say, pulling Grandfather�s revolver from my coat. �I�m going to tell you a story about Bonnie and Clyde. When it�s over, you�ll be as dead as they are.�

But words are cheap, and threatening an unarmed man is even cheaper. Besides, the hill above my main pasture just lit up.

The hillside is strung with deer trails that zigzag through the trees in long angles up to the crest and have been compacted and smoothed by the hooves of wild animals for centuries, and now stick figures are building bonfires on them and dancing around the flames, while at least a dozen drums are pounding in the background. At the bottom of the hill, another bonfire leaps into the air, crisping the needles in the fir trees. I can see the dancers clearly now, impervious to the cold, bodies slick with greasepaint, feathers in their hair, and round deer-hide shields on their arms, the shields hung with scalps.

They whirl in individual circles as they collectively rotate around the bonfires, raising their knees, rattling gourds and animal skulls filled with loose bones. Some hold stone clubs; some trade axes sold to them by the white man, others brown bottles of whiskey that glitter in the firelight. Some carry Spencer or Henry rifles or spears mounted with a steel point. The song or prayer they chant is repetitive and hypnotic. The fires grow bigger and more intense, and the tree trunks are filled with dancing shadows as well as people. Then the drumming stops, and the dancers raise their arms and weapons toward the heavens. The effect upon my visitors is harrowing.

�What�s happening, Mr. Broussard?� Sister Ginny says.

�We�re on the other side of the veil,� I reply.

�What?� she says.

�Look around us. Except for my house, the twentieth century isn�t there.�

�I don�t understand.�

�It�s been airbrushed off the painting, Miss Ginny. We�re in the past. We�re among the unborn.�

Her eyes are full of confusion. �I just wanted to help Jack.�

Save your sympathies for yourself, madam, the major says. That misplaced piece of semen is the cause of all this. He and his brother stole the drugs and gold from Kale after they helped Kale kill his own employees. Then they hid it under the scribbler�s chicken house. I thought you knew all this.

�Jimmie told me. He wanted to make up with my boy.�

Jimmie Kale is a fucking liar, madam. What were you doing with a cretin like that?

�I was in his band. I was gonna have a career in the movies.�

I think you�ve fucked yourself with a garden rake.

�I�m going back home now,� she says.

You�re not going anywhere, madam. Those are savages out there, not actors in a play. They�ll stake you out. A three-day experience if you�re fortunate.

�That�s not true, Major,� I say. �Those are Heavy Runner�s people. They harmed no one.�

Don�t give me your shite, Mr. Broussard. I�m bloody sick of it. I�d like to round up all you bleeding hearts and flay you alive.

�Don�t speak to me like that, sir,� I reply.

He pulls his revolver. I�ll strike you across the face.

I step closer to him. His body seems to tremble, as though it�s an image projected on mist. �Why do you fear me?� I ask.

He�s breathing heavily, his eyes as black as coals. Then I realize he�s not looking at me. I turn around and see hundreds of Indians working their way down the hill, the women walking with the men, many of them carrying babies. They flow through the tree trunks and around giant boulders and off the trails and back on them and through the gullies and sinkholes, breaking down underbrush and saplings and fallen cottonwoods that crack apart like rotten cork, finally stamping flat the smooth-wire back fence on the pasture. They are led by an Indian who I believe is Heavy Runner. At his sides are Ruby Spotted Horse and Fannie Mae.

Ruby is dressed in a white beaded deerskin robe. The area around her left breast is soaked in blood. She has a trade ax in her hand. Fannie Mae carries no weapon and is wearing jeans and a train engineer�s cap and a bomber jacket with Bugs Bunny on the front. I�m happy she has no weapon. Perhaps I should feel otherwise. But to my knowledge she has never deliberately harmed a person or an animal in her entire life. Her pacifist attitude was not even a virtue; she was simply incapable of hurting anyone or anything.

The others do not share her view. The first I see die is Culpepper. His AR-15 has jammed and he�s beating on it with the flat of his fist, yelling, his mouth open wide. An arrow sails out of the dark over the heads of the mob and into his mouth and embeds in the back of his throat, the shaft shaking between his teeth, the steel point protruding from the back of his neck.

The Indians are in the corral and all over the back and side yards now. They show no mercy. They slash and gouge and fire point-blank into the faces of people on their knees. Ruby�s legs and moccasins are drenched with blood from walking through the dead. Her hair is streaked with it, her face aglow.

I wade into the midst, Grandfather�s Peacemaker back in my pocket, my arms in the air, trying to pacify mothers whose infants were murdered and pregnant women who were shot through the stomach and old people who were left to freeze in the snow and whole families who drowned in the ice floe on the Marias. Then Fannie Mae is at my side, pulling my arms down, yelling in my face. Not ours to change, Pops. They signed up with Baker. They�re stuck with the bastard forever.

�Where are we going?�

Chief Joseph already said it. �The place where I go is the place where I will be.�

�What about Jack Wetzel or Sister Ginny?�

What about them?

�They�re not all bad.�

Don�t count on that.

I wake in the morning on the couch. The sun is shining through the windows. I walk into the kitchen, perhaps expecting to see Fannie Mae. But the house is empty. I open the back door and walk into the yard. The grass is green, the breeze warm, the horses playing in the pasture. The suitcase of meth is a circle of ash. The chickens have reestablished themselves inside the chicken house, the destroyed floor is as I left it, and the gold bars still reside in the ammunition cans.

I walk to the hillside and back again. None of my fences are broken. I continue to the front of the house and the secondary barn and the dirt lane where I first met Ginny Stokes, Leigh and John Culpepper, and Ruby Spotted Horse. Downstream, I can see the concrete bridge over the Bitterroot and traffic going back and forth. The surface of the sandbar where Major Baker swore at the world is smooth and damp and clean and unmarked by any impressions except the feet of birds. My front lawn is immaculate, and there is no sign or tire print of Ginny�s Ford F-150.

I search through the house a second time and open up all the windows, calling Fannie Mae�s name, then Ruby�s. The only sound I hear is the wind. I know the present date and the present year and the name of the new president. I know where I�m standing and who I am and what I am and what I am not. I open the cap on my prescription bottle and pour its contents down the drain. I swear to myself I will not let the events of last night drive me mad.

Then I hear a scraping sound under the house. I go out the front door, to the end of the veranda, and lean over the rail and peer down the side of the house just as Jack Wetzel crawls out from under it.

�What are you doin� there, partner? You look like a chimney sweep.�

�Where is everybody?� he asks, blinking in the sunlight.

I determine not to participate anymore in the grief of others. �Don�t know what you�re talking about, bub.�

�Everybody�s gone. Miss Ginny, too.�

�You want something to eat?�

He looks at the empty yard and the river and the sandy bank and the stretch of water where dozens were drowned or shot. �I guess,� he says.

I hold the door open until he comes inside. He smells like grave dirt and gunpowder. �Was that hell we were in?� he asks.

�I suspect that depends on how you look at it.� I start coffee in the kitchen.

�I changed my mind,� he says. �Forget the food. I�m gonna do like she says.�

�Like who says?�

�Fannie Mae. She told me I got lucky and I�d better not blow it.�

�When did you talk to her?�

�A couple of hours ago. I was too scared to come out.�

�That�s all she said?�

�No, she said to tell you goodbye. She didn�t want to wake you up.�

My legs are so weak I have to sit down in a chair.

�You okay?� he asks.

�That�s what she said? She didn�t want to wake me up?�

�She said it wasn�t her choice or something like that.�

�Think.�

�I am, Mr. B. It�s not my fault.�

No, it is not his fault, and shame on me for indicating that it is. �Give me a few minutes, Jack, then we�ll take a walk.�

I go into the bathroom and sit on the side of the tub with my head in my hands, then finally get up and shave and brush my teeth and rejoin him in the kitchen.

�You look okay, Mr. B.,� he says. �I didn�t mean to sass you.�

�You didn�t. You�re a good kid.�

�No, not really.�

�If I say you�re a good kid, you�re a good kid.�

We go out in the backyard. The sun is high in the sky now, and our shadows are short and seem somehow diminished and unimportant on the grass. I retrieve a gold bar from one of the ammunition cans and wrap it in a paper bag and hand it to Jack. �This is worth around sixty thousand dollars. You do with it whatever you wish. Just don�t let anyone take it away from you, and don�t buy dope with it. I�m also giving you this set of keys. They belong to that old Toyota pickup down by the barn. I�ll take care of the paperwork. Call me and I can mail you the title or you can come by the house.�

�You�re giving me all this?�

�Like Fannie Mae said, don�t blow it.�

�The fuck,� he says. �I don�t believe this.�

�Don�t use profanity on my property, if you don�t mind.�

Special thanks to my editor, Sean Manning, and his assistant, Tzipora Baitch, and the rest of the staff at Simon & Schuster. They have helped me in every way they could with what I consider my best and certainly my most personal novel, Every Cloak Rolled in Blood. I am also indebted to my copyeditors, E. Beth Thomas and Jonathan Evans, whose dedication and literary knowledge and talent I can always depend upon. And also special thanks to Erin Mitchell, my sidekick and publicist and movie representative and daily helper, who can fix almost any problem in the world.

I also wish to thank the Spitzer Agency, which has represented me for more than forty-three years and includes Anne-Lise Spitzer, Kim Lombardini, Lukas Ortiz, Mary Spitzer, and Philip Spitzer, who passed two days ago. When Philip and I met, he was driving a cab and running a one-man agency in Hell�s Kitchen. At the time I was out of print and couldn�t sell ice water in the Sahara. Philip kept my novel The Lost Get-Back Boogie under submission for nine years. It received 111 rejections before it was accepted by LSU Press, which nominated it for the Pulitzer Prize. No agent in the history of the publishing industry has a comparable record. Philip will be dearly missed.

I also wish to thank my wife, Pearl, and my children Jim, Andree, and Alafair for sticking with me. And I want to thank my daughter Pamala, who died one year ago. I think she is still with us and will always be. I also believe she helped me write the last few pages of this book. I mean that literally.

Lastly, thank you for reading my work. I think the readers of my books are the best people in the world. You�re intelligent and kind and decent and patriotic, and it�s always an honor to be in your presence.

That�s it. We don�t care what people say, rock and roll is here to stay.