In the Moon of Red Ponies: A Novel by James Lee Burke

I don’t choose the individuals I prosecute.”
    “Yeah, you do.”
    “I’ll say good-bye now. But you have a serious problem, Billy Bob.”
    “What might that be?”
    “An absence of charity,” she replied before hanging up.
    I put on my hat and coat and walked over to the jail in a sunshower. The trees and sidewalks were steaming in the rain and the grass on the courthouse lawn was a bright green. Upstairs a deputy walked me down to an isolation cell, where Johnny sat on the cement floor in his boxer undershorts. His knees were pulled up in front of him, his vertebrae and ribs etched against his skin.
    “It’s his business if he don’t want to eat. But he stuffed his jumpsuit in a commode. We probably mopped up fifty gallons of water,” the deputy said.
    “It’s pretty cold in here. How about a blanket?” I said.
    “I’ll bring it up with his melba toast,” the deputy said, and walked off.
    “Why provoke them, Johnny?” I said.
    “I wouldn’t wear the jumpsuit. But it was another guy who plugged up the toilet with it.”
    “Why not just tell that to somebody?”
    “Because they know I’m going down for the big bounce and they couldn’t care less what I say.”
    He combed his hair back with his fingers. His hair was black and had brown streaks in it and in places was white on the ends. He looked up at me and grinned. “Dreamed about red ponies last night. Thousands of them, covering the plains, all the way to the horizon,” he said.
    “You’re going to be arraigned in the morning. You have to wear jailhouse issue,” I said.
    He shrugged his shoulders. “They’re going to ask for the needle?” he said.
    “Maybe.”
    “Ain’t no maybe to it, partner,” he said. His eyes seemed to glaze over with his inner thoughts.
     
    AT 9 A.M. FRIDAY, Johnny stood in handcuffs before the bench and was charged with capital murder. His bond was set at two hundred thousand dollars. That afternoon I called Temple at her P.I. office.
    “Johnny doesn’t have the bondsman’s fee and his place has two mortgages on it,” I said.
    “And?” she said.
    “I’d like to put up a property bond.”
    “You’re going to risk Heartwood on Johnny American Horse?”
    “They’re taking the guy apart with a chain saw, Temple.”
    The line was so quiet I thought the connection had been broken. “Temple?” I said.
    “Do it,” she said.
    “You’re not upset?”
    “If you weren’t the man you are, I wouldn’t have married you.”
    How do you beat that?

Chapter 7
    SATURDAY MORNING I went fishing by myself on the Bitterroot River. It was a grand day, cool and full of sunshine and blue skies. The rain had turned the slopes on the mountains a velvet green and fresh snow blazed on the peaks, and the river had risen along the banks into cottonwoods that were just coming into leaf. I was on a sandspit that jutted into a long riffle eddying around a beaver dam when I saw a man in hip waders working his way across the channel toward me.
    He had the cherry-cheeked face of the professional optimist, his upper half like an upended hogshead, his hand lifted in greeting, although I had no idea who he was or why he was wading into the riffle and ruining any chance of my catching a trout there.
    “Your wife told me where you was at, Mr. Holland. Name is Reverend Elton T. Sneed. I think we got us a mutual friend,” he said, laboring out of the water onto the sandspit.
    Where had I heard or seen the name?
    In the letter written to the President of the United States by Wyatt Dixon.
    “I hope you’re not talking about who I think you are,” I said.
    “Wyatt’s a member of my congregation, but I’m troubled about him. The boy needs direction.”
    “The man you call ‘boy’ is the residue people clean out of colostomy bags. Except that’s offensive to colostomy bags,” I replied.
    Suddenly his eyes became like BBs and the corners of his mouth hooked back as though wires were attached to his skin, turning his smile into