Feast Day of Fools

by James Lee Burke

  “Who were those guys?” Hackberry said.

  “It wasn’t Dowling or his people.”

  “If they wore masks, how can you be sure?”

  “Dowling and his thugs invaded my house and threatened me on my deck. They would have recognized me. These guys didn’t know who I was. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

  “Did Dowling offer you money?”

  “He mentioned it.”

  “What else did he mention?”

  “Sir?”

  “I know the Dowling family. I know how they work. Is Temple Dowling blackmailing you?”

  Cody Daniels’s hand was resting on the kitchen drainboard. His fingers twitched slightly, then became motionless. “I guess you could call it that. No, it’s not up for debate, that’s exactly what he was doing.” His gaze drifted from the side window to the yard. “There’re your deputies and the ambulance coming. Can I talk to your chief deputy a minute?”

  “No, you can’t. Did you have a gun or a weapon of any kind when you came back to help Ms. Ling?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You just did it?”

  “Not exactly. My teeth were rattling like Chiclets.”

  “What does Dowling have on you, partner?”

  “You’ve pulled my sheet. Take your choice.”

  “You went down for forgery, but that’s not it, is it?”

  “I got no more to say on the subject.”

  “It’s the bombing at the abortion clinic, isn’t it?”

  “I need to talk to your deputy. It’s important. At least it is to me.”

  “Go sit on the gallery and let your mind think cool thoughts. You know who said that? Satchel Paige. He said the key to longevity was to have cool thoughts and not to eat fried food. Why don’t you try that?”

  “Why you got it in for me, Sheriff?”

  “Because I think you helped blind and mutilate a defenseless woman. Because I think anyone who plants a bomb among unsuspecting people should be stuffed feetfirst into a tree shredder.”

  The skin of Cody Daniels’s throat prickled, as though it had just been windburned. “You really mean that?” he said quietly.

  “Probably not,” Hackberry said. “But I mean something right close to it.”

  “You’re not one given to mercy, Sheriff. I don’t think it’s right to talk to people like that, even the likes of me,” Cody Daniels said. He went outside and sat by himself on the front steps, his face wan, his gaze fixed on the apron of bare earth at his feet.

  Hackberry helped the paramedics place Anton Ling on the gurney and take her out to the ambulance. Before they put her inside, she touched his wrist. “I could hear you in the kitchen,” she said. “Don’t be too hard on Reverend Daniels.”

  “He has no explanation for being at your house.”

  “It was his pride. I shamed and demeaned him in the parking lot at the grocery store. I treated him like human refuse.”

  “To my mind, that’s not an unfair description of a clinic bomber.”

  “You’re wrong about him,” she said.

  “We’ll straighten up your house and lock the doors. I’ll be up to see you at the hospital. In the meantime, I don’t want you to worry about anything. We’ll get the guys who did this.”

  “Maybe,” she replied.

  “What were they after, Miss Anton?”

  “Noie Barnum.”

  “No, in the house. What were they looking for?”

  “My guess is they’re looking for technical material about the Predator drone.”

  “Is it there?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did Barnum have it on him?”

  “To my knowledge, all he brought to this house were his wounds. He stayed in the cottage. I forgot to tell you something. I hurt one of the men who was holding me at the sink. I stabbed him just below the eye with a screwdriver. He’ll have to go to a hospital or see a doctor.”

  “You’re a tough lady, Miss Anton.”

  “You won’t catch them.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The men who did this to me have been with us a long time. They’re in our midst every day. We just don’t acknowledge their presence,” she said.

  A paramedic closed the back door of the ambulance. Hackberry watched the ambulance drive away, then walked back to the windmill and watched Pam Tibbs and R.C. stringing crime-scene tape from the barn to the front of the house. R.C. was over six feet and had a skeletal frame that looked tacked together from the staves in an apple box, his stomach and buttocks flat, his waist twenty-eight inches, his face perpetually young, his mouth small like a girl’s, his eyes always bright with surprise. He was chewing gum, snapping it in his jaw, his coned-up white straw deputy’s hat slanted down over his brow. “Found a bloody screwdriver that somebody kicked under the counter in the kitchen, Sheriff,” he said.

  “Did you bag it?” Hackberry said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. That must be the one Ms. Ling put in a guy’s face.”

  “You want to make casts of those tire tracks?”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “See the tracks on top of the truck tires? Those are Michelins.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell by the width and the tread. They’re brand-new, too. Want to start checking the dealerships?”

  “You can identify a Michelin tire just by looking at the tread marks?”

  “I only mounted about five hunnerd of them.”

  Hackberry glanced at Pam. She brushed at her nose with her wrist, her eyes smiling.

  “What are y’all laughing at?” R.C. asked.

  “Nothing,” Hackberry said.

  “I say something wrong?” R.C. asked.

  “No, not at all,” Hackberry said.

  “I was just making an observation,” R.C. said, his cheeks reddening.

  “We were laughing because you were two jumps ahead of us, R.C.,” Hackberry said. “Don’t tell the voters I said that, or they might take my star away.”

  “No, sir, they’re not going to do that,” R.C. said. “They think you’re one of them bleeding-heart liberals, but they trust you to do the right thing more than they trust themselves. How’s that for smarts?”

  “On the subject of smarts, what’s with shit-for-brains over there on the steps?” Pam asked, glancing in Cody Daniels’s direction. The sun had broken through the clouds, and her bare arms looked brown and big in the sunlight as she unrolled and tightened the crime-scene tape, her dark mahogany hair that was either sunburned or white on the tips curled against her cheeks, her breasts as firm-looking as softballs against her khaki shirt.

  “He says he wants to talk with you about something,” Hackberry replied.

  “I think I can forgo the pleasure,” Pam replied.

  “Anton Ling says he saved her life.”

  “If he did, it was by accident.”

  Pam went back to work, stringing the tape behind the barn and around the back of the stucco cottage and the bunkhouse. She secured it to a fence post on the far side of the main house and returned to the windmill, her hair moving in the wind, strands touching her mouth. In moments like these, when she was totally unguarded and unmindful of herself, Hackberry knew in a private place in the back of his mind that Pam Tibbs belonged in that category of exceptional women whose beauty radiated outward through their skin and had little to do with the physical attributes of their birth. In these moments he felt an undefined longing in his heart that he refused to recognize.

  “Mind if I see what he wants?” Pam asked.

  “Suit yourself,” Hackberry replied.

  “Come with me.”

  “What for?”

  “This is the same guy who claimed I assaulted him. I don’t want him telling lies about anything I say to him now.”

  “Then I’d leave him alone.”

  “Jesus Christ, Hack, first you tell me the guy wants to talk to me, then you tell me not to talk with
him. In between, you tell me he saved someone’s life.”

  “What are you laughing at, R.C.?” Hackberry said.

  “Not a thing, Sheriff. I was just enjoying the breeze and the freshness of the morning. This cool wind is special. Lordy, what a fine day,” R.C. said, folding his arms over his chest, gazing at the sunlit greenness and clarity of the hills, puffing out his cheeks, sucking his teeth.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” Hackberry said.

  “Yes, sir,” R.C. said.

  Hackberry walked with Pam to the gallery, where Cody Daniels was sitting on the steps in the shadow of the house, staring into space, a bandage taped to his forehead. “You wanted to say something to Chief Deputy Tibbs, Reverend?” Hackberry said.

  “I’d like to do it in private, if you don’t object,” Cody Daniels replied.

  “Say what’s on your mind. We have work to do,” Pam said.

  Cody Daniels looked back and forth, his mouth a tight seam. He fiddled with his shirt buttons and made lines in the dirt with the heel of his shoe. Strands of his hair were stuck inside the tape on his bandage, which gave him the appearance of a disorganized and hapless child. “I apologize for the way I acted when you arrested me. I deliberately provoked you,” he said to Pam.

  She touched a nostril with one knuckle and huffed air out her nose. “Is that it?” she said.

  “I also made some smart-ass remarks when I was in the holding cell. I’m sorry I did that.”

  “What smart-ass remarks?” Pam said.

  “I said something to the sheriff. I don’t remember it real clear. I should have kept my mouth shut, that’s all.”

  “What remarks?” Pam said.

  Cody Daniels wiped a piece of dirt off his face and looked at it. “Just idle, disrespectful stuff that doesn’t mean anything. The kind of things an uneducated and angry man might say. No, ‘angry man’ doesn’t cut it. The kind of thing a half-baked mean-spirited pissant might say. That’s me I’m talking about.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Sheriff?” Cody Daniels said, raising his eyes to Hackberry’s.

  “The man said he was sorry. Why not let it slide?” Hackberry said to Pam.

  “Reverend, you’ve got about five seconds to get your head on right,” Pam said.

  “Cain’t recall.”

  She pulled a braided slapjack from her side pocket and let it hang from her right hand.

  “I said I’d rather belly up to a spool of barbed wire,” Cody Daniels said. He knitted his fingers together and twisted them in and out of one another, his teeth clenched, breathing through the side of his mouth as though he had just eaten scalding food, patting the soles of his shoes up and down in the dirt. Hackberry could hear the blades of the windmill rattle to life as R.C. unchained the crankshaft and cupped a drink of water from the pipe.

  “What did Sheriff Holland have to say about your remark?” Pam asked.

  “He said something about kicking a two-by-four with nails in it up my ass till I’d be spitting splinters. Or something to that effect.”

  Pam brushed at her nose again, pushing the slapjack back into her pocket. “What do you think we ought to do with you?”

  “You got me,” he replied, shaking his head, his eyes lowered.

  “Look at me and answer my question.”

  “Shoot me?”

  “It’s a possibility,” she said.

  “She’s not serious, is she?” Cody Daniels said to Hackberry.

  “You’d better believe it, bud,” Hackberry said.

  Pam and Hackberry went inside the house and, with two other deputies, began picking up the furniture and sweeping up the glass in the kitchen and the chapel. “Are we doing this because you’re a Catholic?” Pam asked.

  Hackberry reset the altar at the front of the chapel and picked up the broken pieces of the statue of the Virgin Mary and laid them on top of the altar. “We’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

  “Just thought I’d ask,” she said.

  “We protect and serve. We treat everybody the same. If others don’t like the way we do things, they can run us off. End of discussion.”

  “Who spat in your Cheerios this morning?”

  “Stop and consider the image that conjures up. Why don’t you and Maydeen develop a small degree of sensitivity about the language you use? Just once, try a little professionalism.” He propped his broom against the wall, knocking it into the wood.

  “My uncle said I put him in mind of a cow with the red scours downloading into a window fan,” she said.

  Hackberry gave up. Through the window, he saw Cody Daniels rise from the steps and begin walking down the road toward the highway. Pam saw him, too, and seemed to lose her concentration. She stopped sweeping and blew out her breath. “Is there a shortcut to his place?” she asked.

  “No, on foot it’s four miles, most of it uphill,” Hackberry replied.

  “The sheriff in Jim Hogg told you Daniels was dirty on a clinic bombing back east?”

  “He said Daniels was at least a cheerleader in the group. Maybe worse, who knows? He acts like he’s dirty, though. If I had to bet, I’d say he was a player.”

  She propped her broom against the scrolled-iron candle rack and bit a piece of skin on her thumb. “Like you say, we treat everyone the same, right?”

  “That’s the rule.”

  “The guy stood up. It’s not right to pretend he didn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t say he stood up completely, but he made an effort.”

  “You mind? I’ll make him sit behind the grille.”

  “No, I don’t mind at all,” Hackberry replied.

  He watched Pam go out the front door and get in her cruiser and drive down the dirt road. She braked to a stop by Cody Daniels, rolling down her window and speaking to him over the sound of the engine. Daniels got in the backseat, ducking his head, like a man coming out of a storm into an unexpected safe harbor.

  Go figure, Hackberry thought.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HACKBERRY HAD NEVER considered himself prescient, but he had little doubt about who would be calling him that evening. As the sun set behind his house, he sat down in a spacious cushioned sway-backed straw chair on his back porch, his Stetson tilted down over his brow, his cordless phone and a glass of iced tea and his holstered .45 on the table beside him. He propped his feet up on another chair and sipped from his tea and crunched ice and mint leaves between his teeth and then dozed while waiting for the call that he knew he would receive, in the same way you know that a dishonorable man to whom you were unwisely courteous will eventually appear uninvited at your front door.

  He could hear animals walking through the thickness of the scrub brush on the hillside and, in his half-waking state, see a palm tree on the crest framed against a thin red wafer of sun imprinted on the blue sky. For just a moment he felt himself slip into a dream about his father, the University of Texas history professor who had been a congressman and a friend of Franklin Roosevelt. In the dream there was nothing about President Roosevelt or his father’s political or teaching career or his father’s death, only the time when Hackberry and his father rode horses into the badlands down by the border to hunt for Indian arrowheads. It was 1943, and they had tied their horses outside a beer joint and café built of gray fieldstones that resembled bread loaves. The land dipped away into the distance as though all the sedimentary rock under the earth’s crust had collapsed and created a giant sandy bowl rimmed by mesas that were as red in the sunset as freshly excised molars.

  The sun was finally subsumed by clouds that were low and thick and churning and the color of burnt pewter. In the cooling of the day and the pulsation of electricity in the clouds, dust devils began to swirl and wobble and break apart on top of the hardpan. For reasons he was too young to understand, Hackberry was frightened by the drop in barometric pressure and the great shadow that seemed to darken the land, as though a shade were being drawn across it by an invisible hand.<
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  His father had gone inside the café to buy two bottles of cream soda. When he came back out and handed Hack one, the ice sliding down the neck, he saw the expression on his son’s face and said, still hanging on to the bottle, “Something happen out here, son?”

  “The land, it looks strange. It makes me feel strange,” Hackberry said.

  “In what way?”

  “Like everything has died. Like the sun has gone away forever, like we’re the only two people left on earth.”

  “Psychiatrists call that a world-destruction fantasy. But the earth will always be here. Hundreds of millions of years ago, out in that great vastness, there was an ocean where fish as big as boxcars swam. Now it’s a desert, but maybe one day it will be an ocean again. Did you know there were probably whales that swam out there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It’s true. Mythic creatures, too. See those pale horizontal lines in the mesas? That’s where the edge of the sea was. You see those flat rocks up a little bit higher? That’s where the mermaids used to sun themselves.”

  “Mermaids in Texas?”

  “One hundred million years ago, you bet.”

  “How do you know that, Daddy?”

  “I was there. Your dad is a pretty old fellow.” Then he rubbed his hand on top of Hackberry’s head. “Nothing is worth worrying about, Hack,” he said. “Just remember how long this place has been here and all the people who’ve lived on it and maybe are still out there, in one form or another, maybe as spirits watching over us. That’s what the Indians believe. Our job is to enjoy the earth and to take care of it. Worry robs us of our faith and our joy and gives us nothing in return. How about you and I go inside and play the pinball machine and order up a couple of those barbecue-chicken dinners? When we come back outside, one of those mermaids might be up there in the rocks winking at you.”

  That was the way Hackberry always wanted to remember his father—good-natured and protective and knowledgeable about every situation in the world that a man might face. And that was the way he had thought of him without exception every day of his young life, up until the morning his father had taken a revolver from his desk drawer and oiled and cleaned it and loaded each chamber with a copper-jacketed hollow-point round, then placed a pillow behind his head and cocked the hammer and fitted the barrel into his mouth, easing the sight behind his teeth, just before he blew the top of his skull onto the ceiling.