“The crust is brittle,” he said. “If you walked over the top of it or took your horse over there you’d break right through. The water underneath would scald the hell out of you or your horse. Might even kill you if you got bucked off in it.”

“Really?”

“Really. It’s the reason we have to stay together on the trail and not ride off. Those things are everywhere, and some are much worse,” he said. “There’s a little canyon in the park where so much methane gas is produced naturally out of the ground that any living thing that wanders into it will die within minutes. The floor of the canyon is covered in elk and bison bones, and maybe even some old Indian bones.”

He’d softened his voice and she found it oddly rhythmic. She felt a chill ripple through her.

“But when you look at that white patch,” he said, “I want you to imagine something else. Imagine most of Yellowstone Park itself is that white patch. There’s a real thin crust covering hell itself, which is trying to boil over. That wants to boil over. And someday, it will. It’s known as the Yellowstone Caldera. In fact, darlin’, when it blows it’ll take two million people with it. It’s blown a few times through history, and we’re sixty thousand years overdue.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“To heighten your awareness,” he said. “I want every one of my clients to be awake.”

“I’m awake,” she said.

13

Although it once seemed like he lived in one, Cody Hoyt had not been in a public library for years. And as soon as he entered the Bozeman Public Library on East Main Street, he felt like he was being hurled back in time to when he rode his bike to the Helena library after telling his buddies he was going home. He loved the library, although he kept it in absolute confidence. Only the librarians knew, and they gave him his space and not-so-secretly delighted in the fact that a Hoyt of the violent and rough-hewn Hoyts was actually in their sanctuary of civilization. Often, a librarian would give him a sandwich because he was obviously missing dinner and he’d eat it at his own private table in the back.

He read everything; newspapers, magazines, hunting and fishing books, crime novels, biographies of American presidents, anything he could find on World War Two. He read reference books and Ripley’s Believe It or Not and sex manuals that got him all worked up. Not once did he check out a book and take it with him, because he didn’t dare take a chance that his dad would see it and tease him. And as far as his father knew, he wasn’t home because he was at football or wrestling practice. Since his dad never went to any games anyway, he never found out Cody didn’t participate in the sports he claimed he did.

Lying to his friends about going home and lying to his dad about staying at school started a prominent pattern in his life, he realized later. Leading parallel lives and telling serial lies helped prepare him for the trials and rigors of full-blown alcoholism, which, in itself, was like a second full-time-although secret-career. He’d learned early how to multitask.

Cody learned nothing in school and everything he knew in the library. He still read widely and constantly, and was never without a book in his glove compartment (along with a pint of bourbon). For the past year, he’d been alternating among Jim Harrison’s novels, John McPhee’s nonfiction, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, and the crime novels of John Sandford, Ken Bruen, and T. Jefferson Parker. His books were stacked like Greek columns in his living room and basement. Once he finally built those bookshelves, he could showcase an impressive collection. But he never got around to it.

He was mildly surprised by the banks of computers and the teens and twenty-somethings at each terminal. As he walked past, he noted a familiarity in what they were doing-updating their Facebook pages. He thought, Some people used to go to libraries to gather information. Now they come to write about themselves.

He approached the information counter and a slim girl with bangs and a nose ring swiveled his direction and arched her eyebrows as if to say Yes?

“Someone told me Bull Mitchell would be here,” he said. “Do you have any idea where to find him?”

She pointed across her body past the reference book aisle. There was an archway painted with Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss characters and a sign that read children’s room.

“No,” Cody said, “I’m looking for an old guy named Bull Mitchell.”

She said, “Yes, and I’m telling you where to find him.”

* * *

Cody checked his wristwatch as he entered the children’s section, wondering how much time he was wasting when he should be coursing down the highway toward Yellowstone. But since he was here, he entered the room and walked toward the back where he could hear a gruff deep voice.

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog.