local John Deere dealer, who had a cosmetic job working for his father. They had plenty of money and they lived well. But he was a small-town playboy, content to collect his easy checks and spend them on golf, skiing, and other women. Sarah Lynn put up with all that for a long time and probably would have kept on, except that she'd wanted children and they didn't come. Her doctors assured her that she was fine, biologically. She'd pushed her ex to get tested, but after a lot of hedging, he finally flat refused, unwilling to allow the possibility that there might be any trouble with his manhood.
'There were half a dozen problems all the time-like cats in a sack, fighting to get out,' she'd told me once. 'It took all I had to handle them, but I could. Then that one more came along, and everything blew up.'
Now she'd been single for several years-had gone through the shock of divorce, the first acute loneliness, the period of getting used to it, and then the realization that this was how things were likely to stay. There weren't many eligible men around, and she was choosy.
The front picture window was dimly lit. Behind the curtains I could see the flicker of a TV screen. I rang the bell. A few seconds later, she turned on the porch light and opened the door cautiously, just the few inches that the chain allowed.
'Candygram,' I said, and held up the sheaf of bills.
She smiled and closed the door to release the chain.
When she opened it again, I could see that she hadn't been kidding about her plans for a big Saturday night. She was wearing a white terry-cloth robe. The TV was showing an old movie, the couch was a nest of pillows and comforters, and a half-full glass of wine was sitting on the coffee table.
'It's a little short of two thousand,' I said, handing her the money. 'I'll get you the rest Monday.'
'I told you not to worry about it.'
'I want to keep my credit good, in case I have to hit you up again.'
Her gaze sharpened. 'I hope that's a joke.'
'Me, too.'
'You still owe me that story.'
'Any time,' I said.
There was an awkward little pause.
'I'd ask you in, Huey, but it wouldn't be a good idea,' she said.
'I know.'
She smiled again, a trace sadly this time, and touched a fingertip to the scar under my eye.
'You ever going to forgive me for this?' she said.
'I never blamed you.'
'You did in a way-you just wouldn't admit it. And in a way, it was my fault.'
'You didn't have anything to do with it, Slo. I dodged left when I should have dodged right. That's all there is to it.'
'I was being a selfish little girl.'
'That's the best kind of selfish I've ever run across,' I said.
For a second, I thought she might change her mind and invite me to stay. Instead, her smile turned wry.
'You've still got the blarney, Davoren,' she said, and closed the door, politely but definitely.
The reason I'd come here was to give her the money, and that was the truth. But I admitted that there'd been a fantasy in the depths of my mind that we'd end up in bed. I'd been subsisting for the past years on occasional one-nighters and even rarer connections that lasted a while longer, but never held. That had worn thin to the point where it was almost more trouble than it was worth. Something in me understood that no longer caring about getting laid was a bad sign.
Tonight, with her, it would have been natural and easy-and I knew that was why she hadn't gone for it. It wasn't just that I looked like a goat and smelled worse. She was in the same situation as me, only more vulnerable, and this would have been a dangerous step toward another heartache.
I walked back to my truck, filled with morose admiration for her good sense.
19
As I started the pickup's engine, I couldn't help glancing across the seat at a dent in the passenger door panel. It had come into being the same night as my scar, and Sarah Lynn was right-irrational though it was, I couldn't help connecting the two things.
Toward the end of Christmas break my junior year in college, she and I had driven this truck to the town of Rocky Boy, on the Chippewa-Cree reservation up near the Canadian border. They were hosting an AAU boxing tournament and I was on my way to face another light heavyweight, Harold Good Gun.
It was a Saturday afternoon in early January. A chinook had sprung up two days earlier, a freak warm wind that stripped snow from the fields, leaving streaks of dark earth through the cover of winter. The sky was the color of frost, with no visible horizon. From Wolf Creek to Fort Benton, the highway followed the Missouri northeast. We could see it most of the way, winding through the bleak landscape, thawing in stretches that shone metallic gray in the flat afternoon light. Small white crosses marked the roadsides where people had died in car wrecks. Sometimes there'd be several of them in a cluster.
Sarah Lynn was quiet for most of the drive. She'd come along only because we had such a short time together before I went back to Palo Alto, and we wouldn't see each other again until June. This wasn't a part of my life she liked. On the surface, that was because of the brutality, but there was a deeper aspect.
After Pete Pettyjohn had thumped me, I'd stuck with my vow to learn to take care of myself. I took tae kwon do lessons for a while, then segued into boxing because of my admiration for a coach named Jimmy Egan-a tough, salt-of-the-earth mick from the smelter town of Anaconda who taught English at the local Catholic college and shepherded young men into becoming respected and respectful fighters. His view of the sport was parallel to his steadfast religious faith. Dedicated training and clean ring work were along the paths of righteousness. Any kind of moral transgression was punching below the belt.
I trained with Jimmy my last three years in high school, then went on to Stanford. It had long since disbanded its politically incorrect boxing club, but I hooked up with an informal group who worked out and sparred together and sometimes got bouts at a gym in San Jose. I kept on with Jimmy during the summers and took every local bout I could get.
I had no illusions about achieving any major status. There were plenty of amateur light heavies out there who were faster, more experienced, and a lot hungrier. What kept me at it was a passion that had developed over the years. I was still always jumpy when I got into a ring, but fear had become outweighed by the electric charge of the experience. At its best, it thrilled me with a sense of power that nothing else I'd ever done could touch. I had also gotten plenty familiar with the downside-a soundless explosion in my head, then opening my eyes to the sight of another man's ankles, with my face on the canvas and the ref yelling numbers in my ear. But even that had a raw, real edge.
That passion was what troubled Sarah Lynn. She saw it as a threat, almost like another woman. It stood for a side of me that wasn't at all in line with what she wanted, which was to get married and start a family. She'd gone to college the previous year at Montana State, but left after two semesters to work for her father. Now she was just waiting for me to graduate.
I was having my own troubles, but I couldn't grasp why. I only knew that I was more and more restless. That must have been clear to her, and it didn't help any.
We'd brought along a six-pack of beer for the drive home. But as we got close to Rocky Boy, Sarah Lynn surprised me by opening one. She surprised me again by finishing it fast and starting a second. She wasn't much of a drinker. She pulled off her boots and leaned against the far door with her knees drawn up and her feet tucked under my thigh, sipping and watching me. It made me slightly uneasy.
The town of Rocky Boy was several miles east of the highway, a pretty drive along Box Elder Creek. The site was steeply hilly, with a small settlement of houses and a number of reservation agency buildings. The bouts were being held in the school gym, and the parking lot was crowded with pickup trucks and station wagons.
I felt the first real tingle of what was coming, and opened the pickup's door.
