“This is Temple Carrol Holland, down by the depot on North Higgins,” she said into the receiver. “A psychopathic bucket of shit by the name of Wyatt Dixon and some of his friends have illegally parked a horse trailer by the restaurant. Please send a cruiser down here so we don’t have to breathe horse sweat while we eat. Thank you.”

The level of sound in the restaurant dropped precipitously as she hung up the phone and walked back to our table. Wyatt’s jaw was hooked forward, exposing his teeth, a smile denting the corner of his mouth, like a thumbnail’s incision in tan clay. He told one of the wranglers to go outside and move the truck, then came to our table.

“Howdy doodie, Miss Temple?” he said, standing above us. “ ’Member me? Bet you still think I was one of them men dug a hole and stuck you in it.”

“Go back to your table, Wyatt,” I said.

“Let him talk,” Temple said.

“Truth is, I don’t know what I done before I got filled up on chemical cocktails and had my brains electrified at Warm Springs. But in this time of national trial, there is no excuse for one American doing mean things to another. Here’s two tickets to an ass-buster down in Stevensville. There you will find this humble rodeo clown entertaining the throngs of people that follows our greatest national sport.”

I brushed the tickets off the tablecloth onto the floor. “You’re about to have the worst day in your life,” I said.

He looked down at the tickets, then back at me in mock disbelief. A waitress stepped around him, a loaded tray balanced on her shoulder. He admired her rump a moment, then squatted down, eye-level with me. He was clean-shaved, his skin without tattoos or scars. I could smell horses and an odor like hay and buttermilk in his clothes. He looked at the steak knife that rested in my right hand. “I had a lot of bad nights up at the Zoo. A lot of time to study on things, Brother Holland. Glad I found Jesus. ’Cause I wouldn’t want to act on the kind of thoughts that was tangled up in my head,” he said.