Black Cherry Blues

by James Lee Burke

  His face came closer to mine and he poked me in the chest again. The looped scar under his right eye looked like a flattened piece of string on his skin. I slipped my hands into the back pockets of my khakis, as a third-base coach might, and looked off at the sunlight winking through the pine trees.

  “Let me run something by you, Sal,” I said. “Did you ever ask yourself why you have a certain kind of people hanging around you? Hired help, rummy musicians, beachboys with rut for brains. Do you think it’s just an accident that everybody around you is a gumball? When’s the last time somebody told you you were full of shit?”

  I could hear his breathing.

  “You got a death wish, man. You got something wrong with you,” he said.

  “Let’s face it, Sal. I’m not the guy with the electronic gate on my driveway. You think the Fuller Brush man is going to whack you out?”

  He wet his lips to speak again, then suddenly one side of his face tightened and he swung at my head. I ducked sideways and felt a ring graze across my ear and scalp. Then I hooked him, hard, between the mouth and the nose. His head snapped back, and his long hair collapsed over his ears. Then he came at me, swinging wildly with both fists, the way an enraged child would. Before I could hit him squarely again, he locked both arms around me, grunting, wheezing in my ear; I could smell his hair tonic and deodorant and the reefer smoke in his clothes. Then he released one of his arms, bent his knees, and swung at my phallus.

  But his aim was not as good as his design. He hit me inside the thigh, and I brought my elbow into his nose, felt it break like a chicken bone, saw the shock and pain in his eyes just before I hit him again, this time in the mouth. He bounced off the van’s side panel, and I hit him hard in the face again. He was trying to raise his hands in front of him, but it did him no good. I heard the back of his head bounce off the metal again, saw the genuine terror in his eyes, saw his blood whipped across the glass bubble in the panel, felt my fists hit him so hard that his face went out of round.

  Then Clete was between us, his revolver drawn, one arm held out stiffly toward me, his eyes big and glaring.

  “Back away, Dave! I’ll shoot you in the foot! I swear to God I will!” he said.

  On the edge of my vision I could see cars stopped on the road in each direction. Clete was breathing through his mouth, his eyes riveted on mine. Sally Dio had both of his hands pressed to his face. His fingers were red in the sunlight through the trees. In the distance I heard a police siren. I felt the heat go out of my chest the way a hot-eyed, hook-beaked raven would fly out of a cage.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I mean it, all the way across the road,” he said.

  I held up my palms.

  “No problem,” I said. “Don’t you want me to move my truck, though? We’re blocking a lot of traffic.”

  I saw the sun-bleached boy and the girl walk Sally Dio around to the other side of the van. A sheriff’s car was driving around the traffic jam on the edge of the road. Cletus put his revolver back in his nylon shoulder holster.

  “You crazy sonofabitch,” he said.

  The holding cell in the county jail was white and small, and the barred door gave onto a small office area where two khaki-uniformed deputies did their paperwork. The cell contained nothing to sit or sleep on but a narrow wood bench that was bolted into the back wall, and no plumbing except a yellow-streaked drain in the center of the cement floor. I had already used the phone to call the babysitter in Missoula to tell her that I would probably not be home that night.

  One of the deputies was a big Indian with a plug of chewing tobacco buttoned down tightly in his shirt pocket. He bent over a cuspidor by the side of his desk and spit in it. He had come into the office only a few minutes earlier.

  “They already told you Dio’s not pressing charges?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s just a disorderly conduct charge. Your bond’s a hundred bucks.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Write a check.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “You want to use the phone again?”

  “I don’t know anyone I can call.”

  “Look, guilty court’s not for two days.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it, podna.”

  “The judge’s already gone home or the sheriff could ask him to let you out on your own recognizance. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “You came all the way up here from Louisiana to stomp Sally Dio’s ass?”

  “It sort of worked out that way.”

  “You sure picked on one bad motherfucker. I think you’d be better off if you’d blown out his light altogether.”

  For supper I ate a plate of watery lima beans and a cold Spam sandwich and drank a can of Coca-Cola. It was dark outside the window now, and the other deputy went home. I sat in the gloom on the wood bench and opened and closed my hands. They felt thick and stiff and sore on the knuckles. Finally the Indian looked at his watch.

  “I left a message for the judge at his house. He didn’t call back,” he said. “I got to take you upstairs.”

  “It’s all right.”

  As he took the keys to the cell out of his desk drawer his phone rang. He nodded while he listened, then hung up.

  “You got the right kind of lady friend,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’re cut loose. Your bail’s your fine, too. You ain’t got to come back unless you want to plead not guilty.”

  He turned the key in the iron lock, and I walked down the wood-floored corridor toward the lighted entrance that gave onto the parking lot. She stood under the light outside, dressed in blue jeans and a maroon shirt with silver flowers stitched on it. Her black hair was shiny in the light, and she wore a deerskin bag on a string over her shoulder.

  “I’ll drive you back to your truck,” she said.

  “Where’s Clete?”

  “Up at Sal’s.”

  “Does he know where you are?”

  “I guess he does. I don’t hide anything from him.”

  “Nothing?” I said.

  She looked at me and didn’t answer. We walked toward her jeep in the parking lot. The sheen on her hair was like the purple and black colors in a crow’s wing. We got in and she started the engine.

  “What’s China pearl?” she asked.

  “High-grade Oriental skag. Why?”

  “You knocked out one of Sal’s teeth. They gave him a shot of China pearl for the pain. You must have been trying to kill him.”

  “No.”

  “Oh? I saw his face. There’re bloody towels all over his living room rug.”

  “He dealt it, Darlene. He’s a violent man and one day somebody’s going to take him out.”

  “He’s a violent man? That’s too much.”

  “Listen, you’re into some kind of strange balancing act with these people. I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s crazy. Clete said he met you when you drove Dixie Lee all the way back to Flathead from a reservation beer joint. Why would you do that for Dixie Lee?”

  “He’s a human being, isn’t he?”

  “He’s also barroom furniture that usually doesn’t get hauled across the mountains by pretty Indian girls.”

  She drove up the east shore of the lake without answering. The trunks of the aspens and birch trees were silver in the moonlight, the rim of mountains around the lake black against the sky. I tried one more time.

  “What does it take to make you understand you don’t belong there?” I said.

  “Where do I belong?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe with another guy.” I swallowed when I said it.

  The scars on the backs of her hands were thin and white in the glow of moon-and starlight through the window.

  “Do you want to take a chance on living with me and my little girl?” I said.

  She was silent a moment. Her mouth looked purple and soft when she tur
ned her face toward me.

  “I won’t always be in this trouble. I’ve had worse times. They always passed,” I said.

  “How long will you want me to stay?”

  “Until you want to leave.”

  Her hands opened and then tightened on the steering wheel.

  “You’re lonely now,” she said. “After we were together, maybe you’d feel different.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know the way people are when they’re lonely. It’s like the way you feel at night about somebody. Then in the daylight it’s not the same.”

  “What would you lose by trying?”

  She slowed the jeep on the gravel shoulder a few feet behind my parked pickup truck and cut the engine. It was dark in the heavy shadow of the pines. Out over the lake the sky was bursting with constellations.

  “You’re a nice man. One day you’ll find the right woman,” she said.

  “That’s not the way you felt this morning. Don’t put me off, Darlene.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders and turned her face with my hand. Her eyes looked up quietly at me in the dark. I kissed her on the mouth. Her eyes were still open when I took my mouth away from hers. Then I kissed her again, and this time her mouth parted and I felt her lips become wet against mine and her fingers go into my hair. I kissed her eyes and the moles at the corner of her mouth, then I placed my hand on her breast and kissed her throat and tried to pull aside her shirt with my clumsy hand and kiss the tops of her breasts.

  Then I felt her catch her breath, tear it out of the air, stiffen, push against me and turn her face out into the dark.

  “No more,” she said.

  “What—”

  “It was a mistake. It ends here, Dave.”

  “People’s feelings don’t work like that.”

  “We’re from different worlds. You knew that this morning. I led you into it. It’s my fault. But it’s over.”

  “Are you going to tell me Clete’s from your world?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s not going anywhere. Maybe at another time—”

  “I’m just not going to listen to that stuff, Darlene.”

  “You have to accept what I tell you. I’m sorry about all of it. I’m sorry I’m hurting you. I’m sorry about Clete. But you go back home or you’re going to be killed.”

  “Not by the likes of Sally Dee, I’m not.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders again and tried to brush back her hair with my hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but this time calmly, with her eyes straight ahead. Then she got out of the jeep and stood in the dark with her arms folded and her face turned toward the lake. The water’s surface was black and flecked with foam in the wind. I walked up next to her and put my fingers lightly on her neck.

  “It’s no good,” she said softly.

  I could not see her face in the shadows. I walked away from her toward my truck. The gravel crunched loudly under my feet, and the wind was cold through the pines.

  The next morning was Friday. I was headed back to the other side of the Divide when my water pump went out at Bonner, on the Blackfoot River, ten miles east of Missoula. I had my truck towed to a garage in town and was told by the mechanic that he would not have the repairs done until Monday at noon. So I had to mark off two days that I could sorely afford to lose.

  The air was cool and smelled of woodsmoke when I woke Monday morning, and the sun was bright on the lip of Hellgate Canyon and the valley was filled with blue shadows. I made cush-cush for Alafair and me, walked her to school in the spreading sunlight, then sat on the front porch in a long-sleeved flannel shirt and drank another cup of coffee and read the paper. A few minutes later a Landrover with a fly rod case in the gun rack pulled to a stop in front. Dan Nygurski got out, dressed in a pair of beltless jeans, an army sweater, and a floppy hat covered with trout flies.

  “I’ve got a day off. Take a drive with me up the Blackfoot,” he said.

  “I have to pick up my truck in the shop later.”

  “I’ll take you there. Come on. You got a fishing rod?”

  His seamed, coarse face smiled at me. He looked like he could bench three hundred pounds or break a baseball bat across his knee. I invited him in and gave him a cup of coffee in the kitchen while I got my Fenwick rod out of the closet and tied on my tennis shoes.

  “What have you got in the way of flies?” he asked.

  “Nothing really, popping bugs.”

  “I’ve got what you need, brother. A number-fourteen renegade. It drives them crazy.”

  “What’s this about?”

  His mouth twitched, and the muscles in the side of his face and throat jumped.

  “I thought I’d pick up some tips from you on how to handle Sally Dee,” he said. “I think you’ve got a first there. I don’t believe anybody’s ever cleaned Sal’s clock before.”

  “How’d you hear about it?”

  “The sheriff’s office reports to us whenever Sal comes to their attention. A deputy told me you tried to use Sal’s face to repaint the side of his van. I always knew he had some worthwhile potential.”

  “He’s got skag and coke in that house.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A friend told me.”

  “Purcel?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, the Indian girl.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “Nothing. She’s just some gal Purcel picked up. They come and go at Sally Dee’s. What’s your point about the coke and the skag?”

  “Get a warrant and bust the place.”

  “When I put Sal away, it’s going to be for the rest of his worthless life, not on a chickenshit possessions charge. He’d have one of those lamebrain beachboys doing his time, anyway.”

  “I spent some time up at the Flathead courthouse. Why’s he buying and leasing up property around the lake?”

  Nygurski set his cup in the saucer and looked out the window at the backyard. The grass was wet and green in the shade, and the sunlight was bright on the tops of the trees across the alley.

  “He thinks casino gambling’s going through the legislature,” he said. “The time’s right for it. People are out of work, they’ve used up all their compo, agriculture’s in the toilet. Casino gambling could turn Flathead Lake into another Tahoe. Sal would be in on the ground floor.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  “Yeah, more or less. I don’t think it’s going to happen, though. People here don’t like outsiders, anyway. Particularly greasers and Californians.”

  “What did you come over here to tell me?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Come on, I’ve got an appointment with an eighteen-inch rainbow.”

  We drove up through the Blackfoot River canyon, which was still dark and cool with shadows and smelled of woodsmoke blowing up from the mill at Bonner. Then we broke out into meadowland and ranch country and sunshine again, turned off the highway and crossed the river on a planked log bridge, and began climbing on a dirt road through hills and lodgepole pine and scrub brush, where white-tailed deer sprang in a flick of the eye back into the dense cover of the woods. Then we came back into the canyon again, into the most beautiful stretch of river that I had ever seen. The rock cliffs were red and sheer and rose straight up three hundred feet. The crests were thick with ponderosa, and the water, blue and green, turned in deep pools where the current had eaten under the cliffs. The rocks along the shore were bone white and etched with dried insects, and out beyond the canyon’s shadows, the great boulders in the middle of the river were steaming in the sun and flies were hatching out in a gray mist above the riffle.

  I tied a renegade fly on the tippet of my nylon leader and followed Nygurski into the shallows. The water was so cold inside my tennis shoes and khakis that my bones felt as though they had been beaten with an ice mallet. I false-cast in a figure eight above my head, laid out the line upstream on the riffle, and watched the fly swirl through the e
ddies and around the boulders toward me. I picked it up, false-cast again, drying it in the air with a whistling sound inches from my ear, and dropped it just beyond a barkless, sun-bleached cottonwood that beavers had toppled into the stream. The riffle made a lip of dirty foam around the end of the log, and just as my leader swung around it and coursed across the top of a deep pool, I saw a rainbow rise from the bottom like an iridescent bubble released from the pebble-and-silt bed and snap my renegade down in a spray of silvery light.

  I raised my rod high and stripped off-line with my left hand and let him run. He headed out into the current, into deep water, and my Fenwick arched and vibrated in my palm, drops of water glistening and trembling on the line. Then he broke the surface, and the sun struck the red and pink and green band on his side. I had to go deeper into the current with him, up to my chest now, and strip off my line to keep from breaking the tippet. I kept walking with him downstream while he pumped against the rod and tried to wrap the line around a submerged boulder, until I was back in the deep shade of the canyon, with the wind cold on my neck and the air heavy with the smell of ferns and wet stone.

  Then I was around a bend, up into shallow water again, the gravel firm under my tennis shoes. It was all over for him. I worked him up into a small lagoon, watched him gin impotently over the clouded bottom with his dorsal fin out of the water; then I wet my hand and knelt in the shallows and picked him up under the stomach. He felt cold and thick in my hand, and his mouth and gills pumped hard for oxygen. I slipped the fly loose from the corner of his mouth and placed him back in the water. He hovered momentarily over the gravel, his tail moving for balance in the light current, before he dropped away over a ledge and was gone in the current.

  While Nygurski fished farther upstream, I kicked together a pile of driftwood out in the sunlight, started a fire on the stones, and fixed a pot of cowboy coffee from his rucksack. It was warm in the sun. I sat on a dead cottonwood and drank the coffee black from one of his tin cups and watched him fish. There was a ranch farther upstream, and curious Angus wandered out of the unfenced pasture and nosed through the willows and clattered across the stones on the beach into the shallows. I saw Nygurski break his leader on a snag, then look back at me in frustration. I pointed to my watch.