Feast Day of Fools hh-10 Page 7

  Sometimes Hackberry heard the wind in the trees or the clattering of rocks when deer came down the arroyo on their way to his horse tanks. Sometimes he thought he heard a messianic homeless man by the name of Preacher Jack Collins knocking through the underbrush and the deadfalls, a mass killer who had eluded capture by both Hackberry and the FBI.

  Hackberry tried to convince himself that Collins was dead, his body long ago eaten by coyotes or lost inside the bowels of the earth. Regardless, Hackberry told himself, Collins belonged in the past or the place in the collective unconscious where most demons had their origins. If evil was actually a separate and self-sustaining entity, he thought, its manifestation was in the nationalistic wars that not only produced the greatest suffering but always became lionized as patriotic events.

  At 2:41 Saturday morning, his head jerked up from his chest. Outside, he heard a heavy rock bounce down the arroyo, the breaking of a branch, a whisper of voices, then the sound of feet moving along the base of the hill. He unsnapped the strap on his revolver and got up from his desk and went to the back door.

  A dozen or more people were following his fence line toward his north pasture. One woman was carrying a suitcase and clutching an infant against her shoulder. The men were all short and wore baseball caps and multiple shirts and, in the moonlight, had the snubbed profiles of figures on Mayan sculptures. So these were the people who had been made into the new enemy, Hackberry thought. Campesinos who sometimes had to drink one another’s urine to survive the desert. They were hungry, frightened, in total thrall to the coyotes who led them across, their only immediate goal a place where they could light a fire and cook their food without being seen. But as John Steinbeck had said long ago, we had come to fear a man with a hole in his shoe.

  Hackberry stepped outside with his hat on his head and walked into the grass in his sock feet. In the quiet, he could hear the wind blowing through the trees on the hillside, scattering leaves that had been there since winter. “No tengan miedo. Hay enlatados en la granja,” he called out. “Llenen sus cantimploras de la llave de agua. No dejen la reja abierta. No quiero que me danen la cerca, por favor.”

  There was no response. The people he had seen with enough clarity to count individually now seemed as transitory and without dimension as the shadows in which they hid. “My Spanish is not very good,” he called. “Take the canned goods out of the barn and fill your containers with water from the faucet by the horse tank. Just don’t break my fences or leave the gates open.”

  There was still no response or movement at the base of the hill. But what did he expect? Gratitude, an expression of trust from people sometimes hunted like animals by nativist militia? He sat down on the steps and rested his back against a wood post and closed his eyes. Minutes later, he heard feet moving down the fence line, a squeak of wire against a fence clip, then a rush of water from the faucet by the horse tank. No one had opened a gate to access or exit the lot; otherwise, he would have heard a latch chain clank against the metal. He waited a few more minutes before he walked down to the barn. The boxed canned goods were still in the tack room. His two foxtrotters stood three feet from the tank, staring at him curiously. “How you doin’, boys? Make any new friends tonight?” he asked.

  No reply.

  Hackberry went back inside the house. He dropped his hat on the bedpost and laid his pistol on the nightstand. Still wearing his clothes, he lay down on top of the covers, one arm across his eyes, and fell asleep, his thoughts about war and the irreparable loss of his wife temporarily sealed inside a cave at the bottom of a wine-dark sea.

  Hackberry knew what he was going to do that morning even before he got up. Saturday had always been the day he and his wife attended afternoon Mass at a church where the homily was in Spanish, then later, ate fish sandwiches at Burger King and went to see a movie, no matter what was playing. After her death, he had an excuse to drink, but he didn’t. Instead, he lived inside his loneliness and his silent house from Friday night to Monday morning, his only companion a form of celibacy that he had come to think of as the iron maiden.

  Today was going to be different, he told himself with a tug at his heart and perhaps a touch of self-deception. He fed his animals and drank one cup of coffee and shaved and showered and shined his boots and put on a new pair of western-cut gray trousers and a wide belt and a navy blue shirt. He strapped on his revolver and removed his dove-colored Stetson from the bedpost and went out to his pickup truck. The sun was below the hills, the north and south pastures damp and streaked with shadow, the stars and the moon just starting to fade back into the sky. You’re too old to act like this, a voice told him.

  “Who cares?” he said.

  Don’t use your legal office for your personal agenda or to make a fool of yourself.

  “I’m not,” he said.

  If there was any reply in his debate with himself, he refused to acknowledge it.

  When he cut his engine in front of the Asian woman’s house, he could hear metallic scraping sounds in back. He walked around the side of the house and saw her scrubbing out the corrugated tank by the windmill with a long-handled brush. She wore oversize jeans that were rolled up in big cuffs, and a long-sleeve denim shirt spotted with water. She pushed a strand of hair out of her eye with the back of her wrist and looked at him.

  “I need to ask you a question or two about the fellow who got loose from our man Krill,” Hackberry said.

  “I can’t help you,” she said.

  “You gave assistance to this fellow when he was hurt. I saw the bloody bandages and the mattress in the bunkhouse. You didn’t trust me enough to tell me that. Then you told Krill something to the effect that this fellow wouldn’t be at your house again. Not at your house, right? But he might be somewhere in the vicinity. I think you don’t want to tell a lie, Miss Anton, but for various reasons, you’re not telling the truth, either.”

  She held his gaze for a moment and seemed about to speak, but instead, she bent to her work again. He took the brush from her hand. “You’re doing it the hard way,” he said. He lifted the tank on its rim and dumped out all the water lying below the level of the drain plug. Then he righted the tank, released the chain that locked the windmill blades, and began filling the tank again while scrubbing a viscous red layer of sediment from the sides and bottom. “This stuff forms from a mixture of water and leaves or dust or both, I’ve never figured it out. It’s like most things around here. Little of what happens is reasonable. It’s the kind of place people move to after they’ve been eighty-sixed from Needles, California.”

  “What do you expect me to tell you?” she asked.

  “You don’t need to, Miss Anton. I think I know the truth.”

  With a spot of dirt on one cheek and the wind dividing her hair on her scalp, she waited for him to go on. When he didn’t speak, she placed her hands on her hips and stared at the horse tank. “Sheriff Holland, don’t play games with me.”

  “The federal employee who was taken hostage by Krill is probably a single man with no family; otherwise, they would be down here looking for him or making lots of noise in the media. The fact that he sought sanctuary with you indicates he’s either on his own or he thinks you can provide him with a network of pacifists like himself. It also means he’s probably somewhere close by, up in those hills or in a cave. From what little you’ve said, and from what the FBI hasn’t said, this fellow was probably working in a defense program of some kind, one that presented him with problems of conscience. Maybe I can sympathize with his beliefs and also with yours. But Krill tortured a man to death in my county. Your friend the federal employee probably has information that can help me find Krill. Also, I think your friend is in grave jeopardy. I need your cooperation, Miss Anton. You’ve seen war in the most personal way. Don’t let your silence contribute to this man’s death.”

  “You’ll turn him over to the FBI,” she said.

  “What would be the harm in that?”

  “He has information the govern
ment doesn’t want people to hear.”

  “The government doesn’t operate that way. Politicians might, but politicians and the government are separate entities,” Hackberry said.

  “I heard you were once an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. You hide your credentials well.”

  He didn’t reply and used his palm to deflect the water jetting from the well pipe in order to clean the scrub brush. He could feel her eyes peeling the skin off his face.

  “I make you smile? There’s something amusing about my speech?” she said.

  “Somebody else once told me the same thing. Sometimes she’d tell me that every day.”

  She looked at him for a long time. “Are you a widower?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Very long?”

  “Eleven years.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She was a great woman. She was never afraid, not of anything, not in her whole life. She never wanted people to feel sorry for her, either, no matter how much she suffered.”

  “I see,” she said, obviously trying to conceal her awkwardness.

  He flicked the drops off the end of the brush onto the ground. He glanced up at the salmon-colored tint in the sky and looked at the hills and could almost smell the greening of the countryside and the feral odor that hung in its pockets and cracked riverbeds. He wondered how a land so vast and stark and self-defining could be marked simultaneously by both dust storms and acreage that was probably as verdant as the fields in ancient Mesopotamia. He wondered if the writer in the Bible had been describing this very place when he said the sun was made to shine and the rain to fall upon both the wicked and the just. He wondered if the beginnings of creation lay just beyond the tips of his fingers. “Have breakfast with me,” Hackberry said.

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I don’t know if that would be appropriate.”

  “Who’s to say it’s not?”

  “You think I’m hiding a fugitive from the FBI. You virtually accused me of it.”

  “No, you’re not hiding him, but you’re probably feeding him and treating his wounds.”

  “And you want to take me to breakfast?”

  “Look at me, Miss Anton. You think I’d try to trick you in some way? Ferret out information from you under the guise of friendship? Look me in the eye and tell me that.”

  “No, you’re not that kind of man.”

  He let the water tank fill to the halfway mark, then notched the windmill chain and shut off the inflow valve. “I know this spot on the four-lane that serves huevos rancheros and frijoles that can break your heart,” he said.

  Cody Daniels felt he was not only the captain of a ship but the captain of his soul as he peered through the telescope mounted on the deck rail of his house. The valley was spread before him, the American flag painted on the cliff wall behind him, the wind blowing inside his shirt. As he watched the arrival of the sheriff at the Oriental woman’s compound, his loins tingled with a surge of power and a sense of control that was so intense it made him wet his bottom lip; it even made him forget, if only briefly, his humiliation at the hands of the Hispanics named Krill and Negrito. He was fascinated by the body language of the sheriff and the woman, she with her demure posturing, he pretending he was John Wayne, scrubbing red glop off the sides of the horse tank like nobody else knew how to do it. Maybe the sheriff was not only pumping his deputy, the woman who’d stuck a. 357 in Cody’s face, but also trying to scarf some egg roll on the side. Yeah, look at her, Cody told himself, she was eating it up. These were the people who’d treated him like butt crust, a guy who had founded the Cowboy Chapel? They were the elite, and he was a member of the herd? What a joke.

  With one eye squinted and the other glued to the telescope, Cody was so enamored with his ability to dissect fraudulence and self-serving behavior in others that he didn’t notice the two dark Town Cars coming up the dirt track on the hardpan. The cars rumbled across Cody’s cattle guard and parked by his church house, their dust floating up in a cinnamon-colored cloud that broke apart on his deck. Seven men wearing either suits or expensive casual clothes and shades and jewelry and shined shoes or boots got out and walked up the wood stairs. Their faces had no expression. When they neared the top step, they looked at him with the nonchalance of people entering a public restroom.

  One man in the middle of the group was obviously not cut out of the same cloth as the others. He removed his shades and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he extended his hand and smiled good-naturedly, with the authority of a man who was comfortable in any environment. “It’s Temple Dowling, Reverend. I’m pleased we could meet,” he said. “You have a fine place here. You’re not afraid to display the flag, either.”

  The other men walked past Cody as though he were not there. “Where are they going?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry. They’re professionals,” Temple Dowling said.

  “They’re going into my house.”

  “Concentrate on me, Reverend. We’re on the same side. This country is in danger. You agree with that, don’t you?”

  “What’s that got to do with those guys creeping my house?”

  “’Creeping’ your house?”

  “Yeah, breaking into it. That’s what it’s called. Like burglary.”

  “I could tell you I’m CIA. I could tell you I’m NSA. I could tell you I’m with the FBI.” Temple Dowling’s hair was silver and black, thick and freshly clipped, the part as straight as a taut piece of twine. His face wore the fixed expression of a happy cartoon, the skin pink and creamy, his lips too large for his mouth. He reached out and took Cody’s hand again, except this time he squeezed hard, his gaze locked on Cody’s. Cody felt a ribbon of pain slide up his wrist to his armpit. “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Congratulating you. I love to fly the flag. I love the people who fly it, too.”

  “But you’re with the government, aren’t-” Cody began, opening and closing his bruised hand, his words catching in his throat.

  “No, I’m like you, a citizen soldier. We’re looking for a man by the name of Noie Barnum. He’s a misguided idealist who can do great harm to our country. A man such as yourself has many eyes and ears working for him. You can be of great assistance to us, Reverend.”

  “I don’t have anybody working for me. What are you talking about?”

  “You have a church house full of them.”

  “People in my congregation got their own mind and go their own way.”

  “We both know better than that. You put the right kind of fear in them, they’ll do whatever you say.”

  “I don’t want any part in this. You get those guys out of my house,” Cody said.

  “Reverend, let’s be frank. You’ve stumbled into a world of hurt. Would you rather deal with people of your own race and background or Mr. Krill?”

  “How do you know about him?”

  “We watched you talk with him. Mr. Krill is the man who wants to sell Noie Barnum to Al Qaeda. Would you like that to happen?”

  “You were spying on me?”

  “What does it matter? You’re working for us now.”

  “No, sir, I work for the Lord.”

  “You’re saying I don’t?”

  The other men reemerged from Cody’s house. “It’s clean,” one of them said.

  “Answer my question,” Temple Dowling said to Cody. “You’re telling me to my face I’m not on the side of our Lord?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t say that. What’s he mean, it’s clean?”

  “It means you’re not hiding the man we’re looking for. It means your computer doesn’t indicate you’re in touch with the wrong people. It means you just passed a big test. I’m going to give you a business card, Reverend, and I want you to call me when you find out where Mr. Barnum is. I also want you to keep me updated on what that Chinese woman is doing. That means I want to know about everything that happens down there on her property. You’re goi
ng to be my pipeline into Mr. Krill’s little group. Whatever he does, whatever he tells you, you’ll report it directly to me.”

  “You’re going too fast,” Cody said.

  “You’re doing all this out of your own volition. That’s because you’re a patriot. I know about that clinic bombing. You’re a man willing to take risks. That’s why I’m making you part of our team.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with that clinic business. No, sir.”

  Temple Dowling set his hand on Cody’s shoulder. “We’re going to take care of you. There’ll be a chunk of cash in it for you, too. You’ve got my word. Give me a big hug.”

  “What?”

  “Just kidding. I had you going, didn’t I?”

  Cody’s head was swimming, a smell like soiled cat litter rising from his armpits. “No, sir,” he said.

  “No, sir, what?” Temple Dowling said.

  “I’m not working for y’all. I’m not having any part of this.”

  “I have two affidavits that say you bought the oven timer that detonated the bomb at the clinic. It blinded and disfigured a nurse. I have pictures of her if you’d like to see them. I have a videotape of you in the crowd across the street. You couldn’t stay away from your own handiwork, could you, sir? That’s what I mean when I say you’re a man who lives on the edge. You’re not a suck-up, kick-down kind of guy. You know how to rip ass, Reverend. That woman won’t be in the baby-killing business anymore, that’s for sure.” He glanced at his men and was no longer able to contain his laughter. All of the men had a merry expression in their eyes and were clearly enjoying themselves. “Reverend Daniels, you’re a special kind of shepherd,” Dowling said.

  When his visitors had driven away, Cody could hear kettle drums pounding inside his head. He sat down on a wood bench, his spine bowed, his eyelids fluttering, his muscles as flaccid as if his bones had been surgically removed from his body. The only other time he had felt this level of despair was when two county-prison gunbulls had finished with him and lifted him off a sawhorse and dropped him on a workroom floor like a slab of sweaty beef. He wondered why people thought they had to die in order to go to hell.