Light of the World

by James Lee Burke

  Was it the wolf Albert had seen? If it was, it had shown no interest in her. She put away her flashlight and turned in a circle, pointing the Airweight in front of her. The voice had gone from inside her head, if that was where it had come from. The only sounds she heard now were the wind coursing through the canopy and a pinecone or two toppling down the hillside.

  Had she become delusional? Weren’t voices among the first indicators of schizophrenia? Or was her conscience taunting her? Was the Gretchen whom Albert spoke of nothing more than an invention, a cosmetic alter ego that allowed her to remain functional while she continued to shed the blood of others and take secret delight in it?

  She turned and began to descend the hill. A pebble or tiny pinecone struck the brim of her hat. She looked back up the slope just as a second object, no larger than the first, struck her cheek.

  Thirty yards up the hill, she saw the shape of a man on a deer trail. He was standing stock-still, like a jogger who had paused to rest in his ascent. She could not make out his face in the dark. She pulled her hat down on her brow and lowered her face so it would not reflect light, then began walking slowly up the road, to a place where a deer trail intersected it and she could climb to the crest without taking her eyes off the man, who had not moved.

  She walked ten yards up the slope, breathing through her nose, trying to ignore the hammering of her heart. Then she heard rather than saw the figure break for higher ground, running hard, tree branches slashing against his body, a body that was flesh and blood and not that of a lamia or a specter.

  She began running up the trail after him. He went around a corner and zigzagged through the trees, heading north, toward the far end of the valley, at the same time gaining elevation until he was almost to the crest of the ridge.

  If he reached the top of the ridge, he would silhouette against the sky and she would have a clear shot at him. But what if the voice she had heard was imaginary? What if the running man was one of the homeless who sometimes wandered in from the two-lane?

  The air was thinner and colder and suffused with smoke that hung in the trees and burned her lungs. The deer trail became serpentine, dropping through a gully and winding through brush as coarse as wire. He was standing at the head of the trail, looking back. Then she saw him break for the crest and stop again and turn and spread his arms against the sky, as though creating a mockery of a crucified man.

  She ran faster, heedless of the sharp rocks and broken branches on the trail, her eyes locked on the man.

  A snowshoe rabbit burst from the undergrowth and darted in front of her, triggering a spring-loaded saw-toothed steel bear trap that had been staked down with a chain and pin in the middle of the trail. The jaws of the trap sprang with such tension that the trap seemed to rise from the ground, virtually severing the rabbit’s hind legs. Gretchen was crying when she reached down and tried to free it from the trap.

  The man on the ridge cupped his hands around his mouth. “You’re lucky, little girl,” he said. “I had a delightful experience planned for you and me.”

  She stood erect and raised the Airweight with both hands, sighting on the silhouette, her chest heaving with exertion and the inhalation of smoke, her cheeks hot with tears. “Suck on this, you miserable fuck,” she said.

  Even as she heard the solitary pop of the report and felt the recoil against her palms, she knew the angle was bad and the shot had gone wide and high. When she lowered the revolver, the figure was gone, probably down the other side of the ridge. She knelt next to the rabbit and stroked its head and ears. “I’m sorry, little guy,” she said. “You saved my life. If there’s a heaven, that’s where you’re going.”

  She stayed with the rabbit until it died, then buried it and walked down the hill in the dark, a taste like ashes in her mouth.

  AFTER HAVING HIS boot twisted off his foot in front of half of Montana, Kyle Schumacher decided he would ease out of the scut work for the Younger family for a few days and spend a little vacation time up on Flathead Lake, among the cherry orchards and sailboat slips and waterside saloons.

  He wasn’t running away from anything. Kyle Schumacher had done hard time with badasses from East Los and blacks who were half cannibal. Kyle had never run from anybody. He just needed a little R & R to get his head together. What was wrong with that?

  He had acquired a taste for tequila and Dos Equis when he was a heavy-equipment operator down in Calexico. That was just after he had finished a three-bit as a nonpaying guest of the California Graybar hotel chain. Unfortunately, he had acquired a taste for other things as well, coke and Afghan skunk and an occasional injection of China white between the toes, to be exact. The real high in Kyle’s life was geographic. Reno and Vegas were the playgrounds where the party never ended and lucre and sensuality were virtues, not vices. For Kyle, the light radiating upward from the casinos into a summer sky took on a peculiar theological overtone, a testimony to the possibility that modernity and self-indulgence might be a stay against the hand of death.

  The only downside in his life was the conviction that followed him wherever he went. Registering in a new city as a sex offender was like undressing in the middle of a county courthouse. The alternative, not registering, was a ticket back to the slams. What was the old saw? You do the crime, you stack the time? What a laugh. When you went down on a sex beef, you did life, with a two-by-four kicked up your chubbies. So he’d signed on with the Youngers. It was a safe berth. What was wrong with that?

  His favorite saloon and casino in the vicinity was on the north end of Flathead Lake, up in the high country, on the road to Whitefish, where the movie stars and the Eurotrash hung out. It wasn’t Vegas or Reno, but it had its moments, particularly when a sweet thing was still at the bar at closing time. He knocked back a shot of tequila and sucked on a salted lime and gazed through the saloon window at the immensity of the lake. It was twenty-four miles long, the biggest body of water west of the Mississippi, rimmed by mountains that were part of a glacial chain. This was the place he needed to be, a place where he could stop thinking about all the events that had happened in Missoula, events that were not of his manufacture and that he had been unfairly pulled into. Like the business with the boot. Did the PI take it to Wyatt Dixon? Kyle did not like to think about the prospect of dealing with Wyatt Dixon.

  The clock on the wall said 1:46 A.M. The last time he looked, the clock said 11:14. What happened to the interlude? Maybe the clock was broken or the bartender had messed with it. “Hit me again,” he said.

  “Yeah, but this is last call, Kyle,” the bartender said.

  “So line ’em up. We can shoot the breeze while you shut down.”

  “Can’t do it,” the bartender said. He tipped the spout on the tequila bottle into Kyle’s shot glass. “How about one on the house?”

  “I look like I can’t buy my own drinks?” Kyle replied.

  A couple went out the front door and started their automobile. The bartender began rinsing glasses in an aluminum sink. The interior of the saloon was paneled with lacquered yellow pine and seemed to exude a honeyed glow from the green-shaded lamps hung on the walls. The ambience created a sense of warmth and belonging that Kyle did not want to let go of.

  “Give me a couple of Dos Equis to go,” Kyle said.

  “You drank the last one.”

  “Then give me any import you got.”

  “You staying up here with that Mexican gal?”

  “Who says I’m staying with anybody?”

  “I thought you had a girlfriend up here.”

  “I don’t remember saying that. Did somebody tell you that? Is this some kind of information center?”

  “What do I know?” the bartender replied.

  “That’s a good attitude.”

  The bartender propped his arms on the bar and looked toward the front door and seemed to concentrate on what he should say next. His head resembled a white bowling ball with dents in it. A nest of blue veins was pulsing in one temple. He glanced at
his wristwatch. “I forgot. That clock is slow. Happy motoring.”

  Kyle walked outside and got in his truck. The sky was as black as India ink and blanketed with stars, the cherry orchards on the shore and up the hillsides in full leaf, swelling with wind. Why should he be worried? No one knew where he was. He had told Caspian he might head down to Elko and shoot some craps and chill out. Caspian didn’t like it? Too bad. Kyle hadn’t signed on for that boot gig in front of all those people. Neither had he signed on for getting into a shit storm with a psychotic cowboy who had a body that looked like skin stretched on spring steel.

  As he drove down the narrow two-lane toward the cottage on the hillside where the Mexican woman lived, he could not rid himself of the fear eating a hole in his stomach. He wanted to roll a fatty and get stoned and get laid and disappear inside a safe place where he didn’t have to think about Wyatt Dixon and all the other issues that came with working for the Youngers. Then it would be daylight and he could score some coke or hang out in a bar and sip drinks on the deck through the day and figure out an answer to his situation. He fished his stash out of the glove box and held it up to the light. There was only a thin band of seeds and stems at the bottom of the Ziploc. Great. He held the bag out the window and felt the wind rip it from his hand.

  He felt under the seat for his .357 Mag and inadvertently touched the baton he always carried to iron out differences in traffic situations. He had forgotten about the baton. How dumb could he be? He shuddered at the thought of Dixon finding it under the seat and stuffing it down his throat as payback for the lick Kyle had laid on him. He rolled down the window and flung the baton into the darkness and heard a sound like glass breaking. This couldn’t be happening. Nobody’s luck was this bad.

  He turned up the dirt road that led through five acres of cherry trees to a cottage where an overweight Mexican woman with two children waited for him, convinced he would keep his promise and marry her that summer and get her a green card.

  The light was on in the kitchen. The wind was blowing hard off the lake, bending the cherry trees that grew in tiers from the top of the slope down to the road. The mountain peaks looked as sharp-edged as sheared tin against an electric storm building in the west. Kyle saw someone get up from the kitchen table and look through the blinds and then go away from the window. Was that Rosa? If so, why didn’t she come to the door? What if Dixon was inside?

  Kyle turned off the interior light before he got out of the truck. He removed the .357 from under the seat and snugged it inside the back of his jeans. Get a grip, he told himself. So what if Dixon was inside? Kyle had been in Tracey before he took a fall on the statutory beef, which involved getting it on with a sixteen-year-old runaway who turned out to be a cop’s daughter. Three years hard time for doing a good deed. How bad does it get? He did the three-bit straight up and went out max time and survived the black and Hispanic gangs in Quentin without joining the AB. He pumped iron and stacked his own time and didn’t get in anybody’s face. He even earned a degree of respect out on the yard. Could Dixon say the same? From what Kyle had heard, the state had melted Dixon’s brain with chemicals and electroshock treatments, and he thought he was a player in that end-of-times bullshit you hear about on late-night radio in the San Joaquin Valley. How nuts does it get?

  By the time he reached the back steps of the cottage, he felt a sense of indignation and self-righteousness that almost relieved him of his fear. Time to concentrate on getting his ashes hauled. Rosa wasn’t half bad in the sack. Through the pane in the kitchen door, he saw a shadow on the wall, not far from the stove. He put his right hand behind him and gripped the checkered handles of the .357 and opened the door.

  “Where you been?” the Mexican woman said. She wore an apron splattered with tomato sauce and held a wooden spoon. There was a half-eaten birthday cake on the table. “You said you was gonna be back at seven.”

  “I had engine trouble. Was anybody here?”

  “Yeah, me and the kids, waiting on you, you piece of shit. I tole the minister I’m tired of it. He said we was living in sin. I tole him he was right.”

  “What minister?”

  “What do you care? It’s Miguel’s birthday. He waited up.”

  “I forgot.”

  “Get out,” she said.

  “Say that about the minister again. Did he have red hair and a Texas accent?”

  She studied his face. “Somebody after you? I hope they are. You’re a cobard. That means ‘coward.’ A gusano, a yellow worm.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Kyle replied.

  She picked up a pan of tomato sauce from the stove and threw it in his face, almost blinding him. He stumbled down the steps into the driveway, his eyes staring out of a red mask. She slammed the door and shot the bolt.

  He couldn’t believe how his life had changed in under two minutes. His hair and face and clothes were dripping with tomato sauce, his suitcase was locked in the house, and he was shivering in a cold wind blowing off a lake that offered no safe harbor for the likes of Kyle Schumacher. And he was absolutely convinced that the most frightening man he had ever encountered, a man whose face was as mindless as a Halloween pumpkin’s, had just missed catching him at Rosa’s cottage.

  He thought about heading for British Columbia, except his passport was in his suitcase and his suitcase was locked in the house. This was a plot. It had to be. He picked up a brick and flung it through the kitchen window. “What did this minister look like?” he yelled.

  “Chinga tu madre, maricón!” she shouted back.

  He got in his truck and roared down the dirt road and fishtailed onto the Eastside Highway. Immediately, his engine began lurching and backfiring. He hit the brake and shifted into neutral and pumped the accelerator until the engine caught and started firing on all eight cylinders again, then sped down the two-lane in the dark, toward Polson, the storm clouds on the far side of the lake flickering as though strings of damp firecrackers were popping silently inside them.

  There was not a soul on the highway. The stars had dimmed, and the lake was as black as an enormous pool of prehistoric oil. His engine was running hot and making a sound like the cylinders were firing out of sync. What was wrong? He’d had a tune-up only last week. Polson was at least fifteen miles down the road. He had to take control of his emotions and think. He had his .357. He had two hundred dollars and the credit cards in his wallet. He could check into a motel and come back to the cottage in the morning and reason with Rosa. She wanted a green card, didn’t she? He had always been nice to her kids, hadn’t he? So he forgot the boy’s birthday, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a couple of problems on his mind. Why didn’t she try a little empathy for a change?

  Before he could continue his litany of grief, his engine backfired with enough force to blow out the muffler. Then the engine died, and all the warning icons lit up on his dashboard. When he pulled to the side of the road, he was surrounded by trees that had been planted to shield the house below from view. Polson was ten miles away, and the wind was cold and blowing at over twenty knots.

  He looked in the rearview mirror and saw a truck approaching from the north, its high beams on. Was it a pickup with a camper shell inserted in the bed? An orange pickup, like Wyatt Dixon’s? No, it was a wrecker. He could see the boom and winch mounted on the rear. What a break, he told himself.

  He got out on the asphalt and began waving his arms. The driver of the wrecker slowed and hit his emergency flashers and eased onto the shoulder. Kyle heard him open his door and step out of the cab, forgetting to click off his high beams. “Hey, I’m about to go blind here,” Kyle said.

  “Sorry,” the driver said. He dimmed the lights. “I have to back around to hook you up. You want to go to the dealership in Polson?”

  Kyle closed his eyes and saw red circles that seemed to have been burned onto the backs of the lids. “Yeah, that would be great,” he said. “You just cruising by?”

  The driver of the wrecker had wide
shoulders and wore a rumpled suit and a baseball cap and tennis shoes. He seemed to be smiling. “I work irregular hours,” he said.

  “I’d like to get to a motel and get some sleep. Can we get on the road?”

  “You got to sign a form. Step back here, if you would.”

  “Can we do that in town? It’s cold out there. I don’t have a coat. I also have tomato sauce all over me. I’m not having the best day of my life.”

  “You have to sign a release before I hook you up. It’s for the insurance company.” The driver took a clipboard off the seat of the wrecker and handed it to Kyle, along with a pen from his shirt pocket. “Right there on the bottom line,” he said.

  Kyle coughed, deep down in his throat. “What’s that smell?”

  “I ran over a hog north of Big Fork.”

  “It must have been rolling in shit before you hit it. You wear a suit when you work?”

  “I went from vespers straight to the job and didn’t have time to change. I’m a minister, too.”

  Was this the mystery man? “You didn’t happen to visit Rosa Segovia earlier, did you?”

  “Don’t know the lady. Please sign.”

  Kyle scribbled his name on the form and handed back the clipboard.

  “Thanks,” the driver said. “Take your keys out of the ignition. Company rules again. People leave the ignition on and sometimes start electrical fires.”

  Kyle began walking back to his truck. In the headlights of the wrecker, he noticed a bib of white granules at the bottom of the flap that covered the cap on his gas tank. As he rubbed his fingers on the granules, he heard a brief rattling sound behind him, like a hard wooden object scraping against a steel surface. He turned around just as the driver swung a sawed-off pool cue into the side of his head, knocking him to one knee in the middle of the road. The driver hit him again, this time across the back of the head. He was on all fours like a dog, unable to speak, blood leaking down the side of his face.