"I had Charlie Dodds in my house this morning."

"Dodds? I thought he went back to Vegas last night. What was he doing here?"

"You don't know?"

"You mean he's a mechanic? I didn't know. I swear in front of God I didn't. I thought he was one of Sal's mules. Is that how you got that purple knot on your head?"

"Something like that."

"Man, I'm sorry. I didn't have any idea. The guy didn't say three words when he was around me. I thought he was retarded. All those mules got that meltdown look in their eyes. They swallow balloons full of skag, fly in and out of canyons, land on dirt roads at night. We're talking about the dumbest white people you ever met."

"I think he might have a backup man still after me. Is there some other new guy hanging around Sal's place?"

"No."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah."

"Anyway, I can't help you, Dixie."

He looked at me blankly through the screen. He swallowed, glanced up the street as though something of significance were waiting for him there, then started to speak again.

"I've got too many problems of my own. That's about it, partner," I said.

"No way, huh?"

"I'm afraid not."

He blew his breath up into his face.

"I can't blame you," he said.

"I just ain't got many selections right now."

"Start over."

"Yeah, why not? It ain't my first time washing dishes or living in a hallelujah mission. Hey, I want you to remember one thing, though, Dave. I ain't all bad. I never set out to harm anybody. It just worked out that way."

"Whatever you do, good luck with it, Dixie," I said, and closed the inside door on him and went back to the kitchen table, where Alafair had already started in on her dessert.

I looked at my watch it was a quarter to six now and tried to finish supper. The food seemed tasteless, and I couldn't concentrate on something Alafair was telling me about the neighbor's cat chasing grasshoppers in the flower bed.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"Nothing. It's just a little headache. It'll pass."

"That man made you mad or something?"

"No, he's just one of those guys who'll always have his elevator stuck between floors."

"What?"

"Nothing, little guy. Don't worry about it."

I chewed my food and looked silently out the window at the shadows and the cool gold light on the backyard. I heard Alafair wash her dishes in the sink, then walk toward the front of the house. A moment later she was back in the kitchen.

"That man's still out there. Just sitting in his car. What's he doing, Dave?" she said.

"Probably figuring out ways to sell the Rocky Mountains to Arab strip miners."

"What?"

"Just ignore him."

But I couldn't. Or at least I couldn't ignore the twelfth-step AA principle that requires us to help those who are afflicted in the same way we are. Or maybe I knew that I had asked for all my own troubles, and it wasn't right any longer to blame it on Dixie Lee. I set my knife and fork down on my plate and walked outside to his car. He was deep in thought, a cigarette burned almost down to his fingers, which rested on top of the steering wheel. His face jerked around with surprise when he heard me behind him.

"Lord God, you liked to give me a heart attack," he said.

"You can't drink while you stay with us," I said.

"If you do or if you come home with it on your breath, you're eighty-sixed. No discussion, no second chance. I don't want any profanity in front of my daughter, and you go outside if you want to smoke. You share the' cooking and the cleaning, you go to bed when we do. The AA group down the street has a job service. If they find you some work, you take it, whatever it is, and you pay one third of the groceries and the rent. That's the deal, Dixie. If there are any rules here you can't live with, now's the time to tell me."

"Son, you say 'Frog' and I'll say 'How high?' "

He began unloading the backseat of his car. His face wore the expression of a man who might have been plucked unexpectedly from the roof of a burning building. As he piled his boxes and suitcases and clothes on the sidewalk, he talked without stop about the 1950s, Tommy Sands, Ruth Brown, the Big Bopper, the mob, cons in Huntsville, the actress wife who paid goons to beat him up behind Co amp;k's Hoe Down in Houston. I looked at my watch. It was five minutes to six.

He was still talking while I looked up the number of the Eastgate Lounge.

"-called him 'the hippy-dippy from Mississippi, yes indeed, Mister Jimmy Reed,' " he said.

"When that cat went into 'Big Boss Man,' you knew he'd been on Parchman Farm, son. You don't fake them kind of feelings. You don't grow it in New York City, either. You don't put no mojo in your sounds unless you picked cotton four cents a pound and ate a mess of them good ole butter beans. My daddy said he give up on me, that somebody snuck me into the crib, that I must have been a nigra turned inside out."

Alafair sat delighted and amazed as she listened to Dixie Lee's marathon storytelling. I dialed the Eastgate Lounge, then listened to the hum and clatter of noise in the background while a woman called Clete to the phone. I heard him scrape the receiver off a hard surface and place it to his ear.

"Streak?"

"Yep."

"Did I surprise you? Did you think maybe your old partner had headed for Taco Greaso Land again?"

"I wasn't sure."

"I don't rattle, mon. At least not over the shit bags."

"Maybe you should be careful what you tell me."

"Do I sound like I'm sweating it? When are you going to stop pretending you still got your cherry?"

"You're starting to get to me, Clete."

"What else is new? All I did was save your life today."

"Is there something you want to say?"

"Yeah. Get your butt over here. You know where the East-gate is?"

"Yeah, but I'm bringing Alafair with me. I'll meet you in the park across the river from the shopping center. You walk across an old railway trestle that's been made into a footbridge."

"And you'll be eating ice cream cones at a picnic table. Man, how do I get in on the good life?" he said, and hung up.

I told Dixie Lee there was a cold roast, bread, and mayonnaise in the icebox, and he could fix himself sandwiches if he hadn't eaten yet. Then Alafair and I drove across town to the ice cream place on the north bank of the Clark Fork, bought cones, and walked across the river on the footbridge to the park on the opposite side. In the past, there had been a bad fire up the sides of Hellgate Canyon, and the pines that grew down from the crest had been scorched black and then the ash and the burnt needles had been washed away by rain and the spring snowmelt so that the steep gray-pink cliffs of the canyon were exposed high above the river. The wind was up, and the leaves of the cottonwoods along the river's edge clicked and flickered in the soft light; because the spring runoff had ended and the water was dropping each day, more and more white, moss-scaled stones were exposed in the riverbed and the main channel was turning from copper-colored to a dark green. The white water had formed into long, narrow trout riffles that fanned out behind big rocks into deep pools.

The park was full of blue spruce and Russian olive trees, and kids from the university, which was only a block away, sailed Fris-bees overhead and played rag football. We sat on the mowed grass, high up on the riverbank, so we could look out over the tops of the willows and watch two men who were fishing with worms and spinning rods, throwing lead weights far out into the channel. I saw Clete walk across the bridge with a paper sack hefted in one arm. I got'Alafair started on one of the swing sets and then sat back down on the bank. His knees cracked, his stomach hung over his Budweiser shorts, and he grunted hard in his chest when he sat down beside me.