Feast Day of Fools

by James Lee Burke

  “Who owns this?” Noie asked.

  “Me.”

  “You own property?”

  “A mess of it.”

  “You’re quite a kidder, Jack.”

  “That’s me.”

  Jack removed the door key from behind a wallboard, unlocked the cabin, and went inside. He stuffed newspaper and kindling and three chunks of firewood in the cookstove and set them ablaze, then went outside and started the gasoline motor that powered the water pump and the electric lights. He slid open the barn door and gazed at an unpainted Trans Am that had lines of rust around the fenders, though it was mounted with four Michelin tires that looked fresh from the dealership. Then he returned to the cabin and opened two cabinets lined with canned goods and boxes of cereal and jars of preserves. He filled a skillet with corned beef and hash and dumped a can of spinach into a pan and set them on the stove. He went back on the porch and helped Noie to his feet. “I think your ribs are fractured,” he said. “The pain will probably be with you six weeks at the inside. You take the bunk, and I’ll make a pallet on the floor.”

  “Jack, I have no idea what’s going on. Is this really your camp?”

  “You haven’t figured out who I am?”

  “No, sir, I’m pretty confused.”

  “I was a longtime exterminator for Orkin. I still have my license. That’s a fact.”

  “You’re a pest exterminator?”

  “That says it all,” Jack replied.

  “Why are you doing all this for me?”

  “I like your accent. I never met a Quaker from Alabama.”

  In the early morning, Jack rose from his pallet and slipped on his boots and retrieved a flashlight and a shovel from the barn. The sky was bursting with stars as he labored up a path to a cave entrance that was not much wider than his hips. He squeezed through the opening, then stood up slowly, in a crouch, and flicked on the flashlight. The interior of the cave was as orange and pale as the inside of a pumpkin, the roof jagged and blackened by the cook fires of hunters and gatherers who may have been there before the Indians. On one wall, petroglyphs and images cut with stone tools depicted the slayings of both animals and people. Jack sometimes wondered if the battle in the stone mural had been fought over food or if the animals had been slain to ensure that the survivors would starve. There was another artifact in the cave that seemed to answer the question for him. A hole used to grind corn had been augered into a slab of table rock that ran the length of one wall. Jack believed the grinding hole proved the battle was not over game. In Jack’s opinion, man killed because he had lost Eden. The bitterness was obviously so great that nothing short of mass fratricide could assuage it. Why else did people enjoy it so? Killing over food? Who was kidding whom? The throngs who attended blood sports weren’t worried about the quality of the hot dogs.

  The air inside the cave was cool and smelled of guano and damp clay and the field mice that nested on the ledges. Jack worked his way to the rear of the shaft, then set his light on the table rock and went to work, his dirty panama pulled down on his brow, his unshaved cheeks as lined as old parchment. The mixture of sand and clay and charcoal curdled up like old skin on the shovel’s blade as he pushed the handle toward the rear wall, peeling the ground away in layers, tossing each shovel load to one side. When he was down less than a foot, he glimpsed a piece of black vinyl in the dirt. He got to his knees and began scraping the dirt out of the hole with his fingers, brushing off the vinyl, pushing his hands sideways into the dirt to find purchase on the outer edges of the bag, feeling the hard, familiar contours inside it. He dug faster, his heart beating, his throat tingling with anticipation, his breath loud inside the confines of the cave. He sculpted the bag free of dirt from head to foot, then fitted both hands under it and lifted it from the ground. A damp odor that was as cool and pungent as bruised nightshade rose into his face.

  In his haste, he knocked the flashlight off the table rock, and the inside of the cave went black. He groped in the dirt until he felt the aluminum cylinder with his fingers, but when he pushed the switch on and off, nothing happened. The inside of the cave contained a level of darkness that only a blind man would understand. Jack felt as though his eyes had been scooped out of his head with a spoon. He stared up the shaft, hoping to see a glimmer of starlight through the opening, but there was both a bend and a drop in the floor, and the darkness was so absolute that it seemed to flow like liquid through his eyes into his skull.

  It was not unlike the inside of a cargo trunk his mother had kept in the boxcar where they had lived. “You cost me the trick, Jack. That’s the only way Ma and you can get by,” she would say. “It hurts me to do this. Why are you such a headstrong little boy? Why do you force Ma to do this to her only begotten?”

  He dragged the bag behind him, feeling above with one hand to protect his head, the weight inside the bag slapping across the cave floor. Then he rounded the bend and saw the stars in the sky and felt a sense of release that was like an infusion of pure oxygen into his soul. He climbed through the cave opening into the breeze and the smell of creek water and wet grass and desert bloom, then pulled the bag through the hole after him. When he sat down on the incline, sweat was leaking out of his hat and drying on his face. He waited until he had caught his breath, then tore the garbage bag away from the hard outline. His hands were shaking when he unsnapped the series of latches on the top of the guitar case and pried the top up on its hinges. Set inside the velvet pink liner, just as he had left them one year ago, were his Thompson .45 submachine gun, a box magazine, two fifty-round ammunition pans, and six boxes of cartridges. He touched the cold blue oiled smoothness of the frame and saw the vaporous whorls of his fingertips clouding on the steel and evaporating, like the melting of dry ice or hailstones. Did the ancient gods give power with the touch of a finger? he asked himself. Or did they absorb it from the beings they touched? Didn’t Death depend on his victims in order to sustain his own existence? Jack wondered what Ma would think if she saw him now. He wondered if she would smile in awe when the electric arc leaped from the muzzle of his Thompson, when he cut down his enemies like a harvester ripping a scythe through wheat. Would she believe her son had become the left hand of God and be proud of him? Or would she run squeaking and skittering like a dormouse squeezing through its hidey-hole?

  He entered the back of the cabin and removed fresh underwear and socks from a dresser, and a white dress shirt and an unpressed clean brown suit from the closet. He stripped off his soiled clothes and let them drop to the floor and wrapped his body in a quilt. Then he carried the guitar case and his razor and a bar of soap and the change of clothes down to the creek. He laid out his suit and underwear on a rock and sat down in the center of the creek, the current frothing around his chest, a cluster of deer watching him from an arroyo. He washed his hair and face and body and lathered his throat and cheeks and shaved by touch. Even though he climbed dripping wet onto the bank and dressed without drying off, his skin was as warm as a heated lampshade. The light had started to go out of the sky, but the evening star still hung low in the west, just above the hills, twinkling like a harbinger of a fine day.

  He slipped on his boots and lay down on the quilt, the Thompson at his side, his head cushioned on his arm. The ground was patinaed with tiny wildflowers, and as he breathed their fragrance, he thought he could hear the wind whispering through the grass. The whispering grew in volume until it sounded like bees buzzing in a hive, or the whisperings of desperate girls and young women who had been trapped unfairly underground long before their time, all of them Asian girls whose sloe eyes pleaded for mercy and whose voices asked, Why did you do this to us?

  I freed you from a life of degradation, he replied.

  But his words were like the weighted tips of a flagrum whipped across his soul.

  EARLY THE NEXT morning, Maydeen Stoltz walked into Hackberry’s office. She had a pink memo slip in her hand. “That was Bedford at the firehouse. He said he had a call maybe we should kn
ow about.”

  “Concerning what?”

  Maydeen looked at the memo slip. “The caller gave his name as Garland Roark. He said he was an arson investigator with the Texas Department of Public Safety. He said he was compiling information about the incidence of arson along the border.”

  “Say that name again.”

  “Garland Roark.”

  Hackberry wrote it on a legal pad.

  “So Bedford told him about the shack burning down, the one maybe Collins was living in,” Maydeen said.

  “Go on.”

  “The caller wanted to know how Bedford knew it was arson. Bedford told him the whole place stunk of kerosene. Then the caller asked if Bedford had any suspects in mind. Bedford goes, ‘Not unless you count the FBI.’”

  “Wait a minute,” Hackberry said. “When did Bedford get this call?”

  “A week ago, right after the fire.”

  “Bedford suspected the feds did it but didn’t tell us?”

  “Hold your water two seconds and I’ll try to finish,” Maydeen said.

  “Excuse me.”

  “I asked Bedford the same question. He said a trucker saw a car with a government tag parked by the shack just before the flames went up. Bedford figured if the feds set fire to it, there was a reason. He thought maybe it was a stopover place for illegals.”

  “So why is Bedford calling us now?”

  “He started wondering why this guy Roark didn’t ask about the arson incidents involving wildfires. Like what was the big deal with a shack? This morning he called Austin and was told nobody by the name of Garland Roark worked at the Department of Public Safety.”

  “That’s because he’s dead,” Hackberry said.

  “You knew him?”

  “Garland Roark was the author of Wake of the Red Witch. Jack Collins likes to appropriate the names of famous writers. He used the name of B. Traven, the author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, on several legal documents. Jack is quite the jokester when he’s not murdering people.”

  “You want me to get Bedford on the phone?”

  “Forget Bedford. Call Ethan Riser and fill him in. If he’s not in, leave the information on his voice mail.”

  “Shouldn’t you do that?”

  “I’m done pulling Ethan’s biscuits out of the fire,” Hackberry replied. “Ask Pam to come in here, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A moment later, Pam Tibbs tapped on the doorjamb.

  “Jack Collins knows the feds burned him out,” Hackberry said.

  “Is Riser aware of this?”

  “He will be. You have any suggestions?”

  She shrugged. “Not really. Collins is going to square it.”

  “You and I know that. But we’re the only law enforcement personnel around here who have dealt with him head-on.”

  “So maybe Riser will learn a lesson and not be such a smart-ass.”

  “We’re not going to let Collins make this county his personal killing ground.”

  She took a box of Altoids out of her shirt pocket and put one on her tongue. “Why did you want to talk to me, Hack?”

  “You know how Collins thinks.”

  “You’re asking me what his next move will be?” she said.

  “I thought you might have an opinion, since he tried to machine-gun you.”

  “That’s not a subject I’m flippant about.”

  “Neither am I,” he said.

  “Collins hunts like a cougar,” she said. “He’ll go to the water hole and wait for his prey.”

  “Where’s the water hole?”

  “Wherever he thinks the feds will show up,” Pam replied.

  “Where would that be?”

  “You already know where.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The Asian woman gave refuge to Noie Barnum. The feds are probably watching her. One way or another, Collins will find that out.”

  “Want to take a ride?” Hackberry said.

  She looked out the window at the flag popping on the silver pole in front of the building. In the north a line of rain mixed with dust was moving across the hills, but to the south the sky was blue, the early sun already hot and as yellow as egg yolk. “Why ask me? You’re the boss man, aren’t you?” she replied.

  TWO MEN DRIVING a black SUV had parked their vehicle behind a knoll and set up a high-powered telescope with a camera attached to it on a flat spot that overlooked the valley where the Asian woman lived. They were both dressed in stonewashed jeans and alpine shoes with lug soles and short-sleeve shirts with many pockets. They were both tan and wore shades and had the body tone of men who swam or ran long distances or trained at martial arts or followed a military discipline in their personal lives. One of them opened a lunch box on a rock and removed a thermos of hot coffee and two ham sandwiches. Both men carried Glocks in black nylon holsters on their belts.

  Ten minutes later, a rock bounced down from the knoll. The men turned around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. After they finished their sandwiches and poured themselves a second cup of coffee, they heard the pinging of a guitar string. They turned around and saw a solitary figure sitting on the bleached trunk of an uprooted tree, thirty yards up a wash, his face darkened by the brim of a panama hat stained with soot or grime, a guitar propped on one thigh. He picked at a treble string with his thumbnail while he twisted a tuning peg on the guitar’s head. “Howdy,” he said without looking up.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” one of the men in shades said.

  “Up yonder, past those boulders,” the seated man replied.

  “Mind telling us who you are?”

  “Just another pilgrim.”

  “Where’s your car, pilgrim?”

  “Who says I have one?”

  The men in shades looked at each other. “He teleported,” one said.

  “You cain’t ever tell. I get around. You ever hear that song by the Beach Boys? It’s called ‘I Get Around,’” the seated man replied.

  “I get it. You’ve been shooting the curl off Malibu.”

  “There aren’t many places I haven’t been.”

  “I dig your threads.”

  “This?” the seated man said, pinching his suit coat with two fingers.

  “Yeah, I thought it might be an Armani.”

  “Could be. You fellows are FBI, aren’t you? Or maybe DEA?” The two men in shades and stonewashed jeans glanced at each other. “Looks like we’ve been made,” one said.

  “I can tell because you’re wearing Glocks.”

  “What’s your name, asshole?”

  The seated man laid his guitar flatly across both thighs, his gaze focused on neutral space, the bumps and knots in his complexion like tan-colored papier-mâché. A closed tortoiseshell guitar case lay on the ground by his foot. It was of expensive manufacture, the kind of case that might contain a Martin or vintage Gibson. “I disturb y’all?” the seated man said.

  “That guitar looks like a piece of junk.”

  “It is,” the seated man replied. “It’s got rust on the strings. They sound like baling wire.”

  “So how about playing it somewhere else?”

  “Y’all think the government has the right of eminent domain?”

  “Of what?”

  “The right to burn down someone’s house just because the government takes a mind to.”

  “I’ve got an extra sandwich here. You can have it. But you need to eat it downwind.”

  “You haven’t answered my question. Somebody gave y’all the right to burn a man’s house and his books and clothes and even his Bible?”

  “What’s it take, pal? You want me to bust your guitar over a rock? Do we have to walk you over the hill and put you in your car?”

  The seated man set down his guitar, the bottom of the sound box grating in the sand. He rubbed his palms up and down on his thighs, the focus gone from his eyes, his lips compressed, downturned at the corners. The knees of his trousers were shiny from wear. “
You boys aren’t much of a challenge.”

  “Repeat that?”

  The seated man lifted his face, the sunlight shining clearly on it. “You don’t recognize me?”

  “Why should we? Who are you supposed to be? Somebody from America’s Most Wanted?”

  “How’d you know?”

  The two men stared silently at the seated man and the somber expression on his face and the uncut hair on the back of his neck lifting in the wind. Their irritability was obviously growing, but the seated man seemed to pay no attention to it. He grinned, his teeth as tiny as pearls. “Got you, didn’t I? They say that Chinese woman down yonder works miracles. Y’all believe that?”

  “Buddy, you just don’t listen, do you?”

  “You reckon she can mix her spit with dirt and touch the eyelids of a blind man and give him back his sight? Because that’s the kind of he’p both of y’all need. Like all benighted men, you’re arrogant. You walk upon the precipice and never glance at your feet.”

  “In about ten seconds, I’ll be forced to hurt you.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first.”

  One of the men removed his shades and slipped them in a leather case, then began picking up rocks from the ground.

  “If you’d read the Bible you burned, you would have learned how Joshua took Canaan for the Hebrews,” the seated man said. “He always attacked at daybreak, with the sun rising on his back. His enemies had to look into the glare while he was killing them.”

  The man who had taken off his shades flung a rock at the seated man and struck the side of his face. The rock was sharp-edged and triangle-shaped and left a one-inch cut as thin as thread just below the seated man’s eye, one that seeped blood like tears on ceramic.

  “You get the message?” the rock thrower said. “Do I have to do it again?”

  “Well, it’s been nice talking to you,” the seated man said. He stood up, silhouetted against the sun, the brim of his panama hat riffling in the wind. He lifted his guitar case from the ground and set it on the hard, barkless worm-scrolled apex of the tree trunk and began unsnapping the latches. When he turned around again, the two men he had mistakenly identified as federal agents stared at him openmouthed, their hands wooden at their sides, their expressions frozen like those of statues.