Feast Day of Fools

by James Lee Burke

  Cody walked back up the stairs and across his deck into the house, forcing himself not to look back over his shoulder. He felt a sense of ill ease that he couldn’t define. Was it the rawness of Dennis Rector’s language? Or the fact that Cody had helped encourage the role of victim in many of his congregants? Or did he see a reflection of his former self in the lewdness of mind that characterized men like Rector? Why was a man like that playing “The Great Speckled Bird,” a spiritual that was as deep-seated in southern religion as “The Old Rugged Cross”? Something wasn’t a right fit.

  There was also the business about the Hispanics parked on the road. He should have pumped Rector about them. Could the car have contained Krill and Negrito? It couldn’t be them, could it? They were professional criminals, hunted by the local sheriff and the FBI and probably the Texas Rangers. Why would Krill and Negrito invest their lives in persecuting Cody Daniels, a mail-order minister who was awakened at two each morning by a blind woman with a disfigured face rattling his bedroom windows?

  Just as the power went back on, Cody saw the eighteen-wheeler turn in a wide circle, led by Dennis Rector’s car, and head south down the road, the edges of the trailer etched with chains of gold running lights. He folded the confessional letter he had written to the FBI and placed it in the envelope and licked the seal, his stomach churning, his head as light as a helium balloon. Then he sat at his desk, his head in his hands, and wondered how he had made such a catastrophe out of his life.

  The wind was swirling out of the desert, the rain driving hard on the roof, dancing on the handrails of his deck, blowing in the blue-white radiance of the neon cross he had mounted above the entrance to the Cowboy Chapel. Maybe it was time to pile a few belongings into the cab of his truck, drop his letter to the FBI in a mailbox, and disappear inside the vast anonymity of the American West.

  He could sell his truck in California and pick fruit in the San Joaquin, harvest beets up in Oregon and Washington, maybe lumberjack in Montana or get on a fishing boat in Alaska. If the law caught up with him, fine. If it didn’t, that would be fine, too. Why not just roll the dice and stay out of the consequences? In the United States a person could get a new identity and start a new life as easily as acquiring a library card. He had to wonder at the irony of it all. In his fantasy, he was joining the ranks of the migrant workers he had railed against.

  He went into his bedroom and began stuffing the clothes from his dresser and closet into a duffel bag. That was when he felt the air decompress around him and the cold smell of rain surge through the house, the joists and wood floors creaking as the temperature dropped inside. He turned around and stared into the faces of two men whose hats were wilted on their heads, their brown skin shiny with water, their clothes smelling like horses and wood smoke and sweat that had dried inside flannel.

  “Why won’t y’all leave me alone?” Cody said.

  “You know,” Krill said.

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Yes, you know. Do not pretend you don’t know. Do not make an insignificance of my children.”

  “I’m worthless as a minister. I’m no different from you. I he’ped put together a bomb that was used on an abortion clinic. I ruined a woman’s life. I’m not worth shooting.”

  Krill was already shaking his head, indicating Cody’s wishes had little to do with what was about to occur. Negrito was smiling broadly. “We told you we’d be back, man. But you don’t listen,” he said. “You got anything to eat? I’m really hungry. What was that about a bombing?”

  “You got a hearing defect?” Cody said.

  “End this silly talk and come with me,” Krill said.

  “Where?”

  “Out into the rain, hombre.”

  “I’m no count as a pastor, no count as a man. That’s not humility talking, either. It’s the truth.”

  “Venga conmigo. Now. No more talking.”

  “You don’t have to point a gun at me. I’m plumb worn out with people pointing guns at me.”

  “It’s necessary, hombre. Your ears are wood, your thinking processes like cane syrup. It is clear you’re of low intelligence.”

  “You want to hold a gun on me? Here, I’ll he’p you.”

  “Let go of my wrist.”

  “Put one through my heart. I’m tired of y’all pestering me.”

  “Show him,” Negrito said.

  “Don’t underestimate me,” Krill said to Cody. “I have taken many lives. I have machine-gunned a priest.”

  “Then pull the trigger,” Cody said.

  Cody’s hand remained clenched tightly on Krill’s wrist. He could feel Krill’s pulse beating against his palm. Krill’s eyes were inches from his, the onions and wine and fried meat on Krill’s breath as damp as a moist cloth on Cody’s face. “Are you going to help me?” Krill asked.

  “Maybe, if you put the gun away,” Cody said.

  Krill’s eyes were black and as flat as paint on a piece of cardboard. “It is as you request,” he said, lowering his pistol. A curtain of rain slapped against the window and across the top of the church. “My car is parked behind your church.”

  “Let me put on my coat,” Cody said.

  “You will not try to deceive us?” Krill said.

  “Why should I deceive you?”

  “We know of your message to your flock. You have not been our friend. You make them feel comfortable with their hatred of us.”

  “I think maybe you aim to kill me when this is over.”

  “Would that be a great loss to the world?”

  “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean I’d necessarily enjoy it.”

  “You are a very funny man,” Krill said.

  They went out the door and into the rain and down the stairs to the back of the Cowboy Chapel, where Krill’s gas-guzzler was parked in the lee of the building. Krill opened the trunk and lifted out a large wood box tied with rope. Cody stared at the box and wiped his mouth. “They’re in there?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve always baptized by immersion,” Cody said, the rain beating on his bare head.

  “What does ‘immersion’ mean?”

  “I take people down by the creek and put them under. If the water is low, I have to dam up the creek. If everything is completely dried out, we go to the river. The creek is probably running pretty good now.”

  “No, we aren’t going to a creek.”

  “Then come inside,” Cody said.

  They walked through the lighted coffee room and into the chapel, both of Krill’s hands cupped under the rope that bound the box, the weight hitting against his knees and sides. Cody removed his coat and wiped his face on his sleeve. He noticed that Negrito never touched the box, even though it was apparent that Krill was struggling with it. Krill set the box down heavily by the altar and untied the rope and let it snake to the floor.

  The only light in the room came from a small stage hung with a blue velvet curtain. The interior of the chapel was immaculate, the pews gleaming, the floors polished. For some reason, as though for the first time, Cody realized what good care he had taken of the building. He had just installed new support beams under the peaked roof, heightening the effect of a cathedral ceiling, and had reframed the windows and painted birds and flowers on the panes. He had built a stage out of freshly planed pine in hopes that next year he could put on an Easter pageant and attract more children to his Bible-study classes. The air around the stage was as sweet-smelling as a green woods in spring, not unlike a deferred promise of better things to come.

  “You have a very nice church here,” Krill said.

  “I’m going to get a pitcher of water out of the coffee room. I’m not gonna call anybody or give y’all any trouble. What I’m doing here might not be right, but I’m gonna do it just the same.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not right’?”

  “The papists anoint at death. We baptize at birth.”

  “These are considerations that are of no importance to me. Go
get the water. Do not let me hear you talking on a telephone.”

  “Don’t trust him, jefe. He’s a capon, the friend of whoever he needs to please at the moment,” Negrito said.

  “No, our friend here has no fear. He has no reason to lie. Look at his eyes. I think he doesn’t want to live. He’s a sadder man than even you, Negrito.”

  “Don’t talk of me that way, jefe.”

  “Then don’t call others a capon, you who are afraid to touch the box in which my children sleep.”

  Cody went into the coffee room and filled a small pitcher with tap water. His head was pounding, his breath short, but he didn’t know why. Was it just fear? Krill may have been a killer, but he was no threat to him. Krill was totally absorbed with the status of his children in the afterlife. What about Negrito? No, Negrito was not a threat, either, not as long as he was under Krill’s control. So what was it that caused Cody’s heart to race and the scalp to shrink on his head?

  This was the first time he had ever done anything of a serious nature as a minister. And he was doing it at a time when he was about to flee his church and home and become a fugitive, just like the road kid who had forged checks and ended up on a county prison farm. He walked back into the chapel, knocking against a worktable he had fashioned from two planks and sawhorses, spilling a nail gun and a claw hammer to the floor.

  Krill had opened the top of the wood box and was standing expectantly beside it, his gaze fixed on Cody. “How do you want to do it?” he asked.

  Cody hadn’t thought about it. The images that went through his mind were too bizarre to keep straight in his head. He looked into the box and swallowed. “Put them on the edge of the stage,” he said.

  “They’re watching,” Krill said.

  “They’re watching?”

  “From limbo. They want to be turned loose. That’s what you’re going to do.”

  “Listen, I don’t know about those kinds of things,” Cody said. “Don’t make me out something I’m not.”

  “You have cojones, hombre. I misjudged you.” Krill placed his children, one after another, on the apron of the stage. The oldest child could not have been over four when he died. The younger ones might have been three or two. All three were wrapped tightly in cloth and duct tape. Only their faces were exposed. Their eyes were little more than slits, their skin gray, their tiny cheekbones as pronounced as wire. There was no odor of decomposition. Instead, they smelled like freshly turned dirt in a garden, or like damp shade in woods carpeted with mushrooms.

  “What are you waiting for?” Krill said.

  “I feel like I’m doing something that’s dishonest,” Cody said.

  “Your words make no sense. They are the words of a man with thorns in his head instead of thoughts.”

  “Your children are innocent. They never hurt anybody.”

  “Do not make me lose my patience, hombre. Do what you need to do.”

  Cody poured water from the pitcher on the thumb and the tips of his fingers and made the sign of the cross on each child’s forehead. “I baptize these children in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

  “That’s good. I’m proud of you, man,” Krill said.

  “But it’s me and these two men who need absolution, Lord. These children didn’t commit any sin,” Cody said. “I left a woman blinded and maimed for the rest of her life, and the two men standing beside me are covered with blood splatter. We’re not worthy to touch the hem of Your garment. We’re not worthy to baptize these children, either, particularly the likes of me. But You’re probably used to hypocrites offering up their prayers, so I doubt if two or three more liars in Your midst is gonna make a lot of difference in the outcome of things.”

  “You better shut your mouth, gringo,” Negrito said.

  “I’m done. I’m sorry for what happened to your children, Krill. If y’all are fixing to kill me, I reckon now is the time.”

  He walked into the coffee room, his back twitching. Out the window, he could see the deck of his house glimmer in a bolt of lightning, like the bow of an ark sliding out of a black wave. He sat down in a folding chair, his back to the doorway that gave onto the chapel. A phone was on the counter by the sink, and for a moment he thought about picking it up and dialing 911. But what for? If Krill planned to kill him, he would do it before a sheriff’s cruiser could arrive. Also, Cody would eventually have to tell the sheriff or one of his deputies about the clinic bombing, and Cody had no intention of going back to jail, or at least no intention to actively aid and abet his own imprisonment.

  One minute clicked on the clock mounted on the wall, then two, then three. He heard Krill’s and Negrito’s boots walking across the chapel floor. He closed his eyes and clasped his hands between his thighs. He could hear his breath rasping in his throat. His fingers were trembling, his sphincter constricting. Then he heard the front door of the chapel swing open and felt a rush of air sweep through the pews. A moment later, he heard the gas-guzzler start up and drive away.

  Cody opened his eyes and got up from the chair and began stacking dirty cups and saucers and plates in the sink and wiping down the long table in the center of the room. He had never thought the act of cleaning up a coffee room could be so pleasurable. Why had he spent so much of his life concentrating on every problem in the world rather than simply enjoying the small pleasures that an orderly life provided? Why did wisdom come only when it was too late to make use of it?

  He poured a cup of coffee and put a small teaspoon of sugar in it and gazed out the window at the rain blowing off the hills and mesas in the west. Tumbleweed was bouncing as high as a barn, smacking his church, skipping through the yard, embedding under the stairs that led to his deck. A storm was a fine and cleansing thing, he thought, not to be feared or avoided but welcomed as one would a cool finger touching one’s brow.

  He heard the front door open a second time, and the wind cut through the chapel and blew a stack of hymnal sheets fluttering in the air. He set down his coffee cup but remained seated at the table. “I told y’all we were done,” he called into the chapel.

  A small, muscular man appeared in the doorway. “Brought some friends with me,” Dennis Rector said. “You met them before, but they had masks on. Look, I’m just making a buck. Don’t take this as personal.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ANTON LING OPENED the back door of her house to let in her cat and smelled the smoke inside the rain. She looked up into the bluffs and, in the blackness of the storm, saw a fire burning as bright and clean as the red point of flame on an acetylene torch. She dialed 911 and reported the fire, then got into her truck and headed down the dirt road for Cody Daniels’s house, a fire extinguisher bouncing on the passenger seat.

  CODY DANIELS KNEW his fate was not up for discussion when he saw that the men who had followed Dennis Rector into the chapel had not bothered to mask their faces. What he had not anticipated was the severity of design they were about to impose on his person. They pulled back the velvet curtain on the stage in the chapel and lifted him above their heads, as college kids might at a fraternity celebration, trundling him on their extended arms and hands to the wood cross he had constructed for a passion play that had never become a reality. They were smiling as though Cody were in on the joke, as though it were a harmless affair after which they would all have a drink.

  The man actually in charge was not Rector but a diminutive man who spoke in an accent that sounded like Russian. His chin was V-shaped, his teeth the color of fish scale, his nose beaked, his cheeks and neck unshaved, his maroon silk shirt unbuttoned on a chest that looked almost skeletal. He wore three gold chains on his neck and a felt hat cocked jauntily on his head. He had the face of either a goat or a pixie, although the purple feather in his hatband suggested a bit of the satyr as well.

  “Have you seen my good friend the Preacher lately?” he asked.

  The men had set down Cody on the stage so he could face the man in the cocked hat. “The killer? I saw him once
at Miss Ling’s house. But I don’t know him,” Cody said.

  “I need to find my friend the Preacher and his companion Noie Barnum. I think Ms. Ling has probably told you where they are.”

  “No, sir, she didn’t do that.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Why shouldn’t you? I don’t know anything about Barnum. I wish I had never heard of him.”

  “But you do know Temple Dowling.”

  “I wish I’d never heard of him, either.”

  “Did you know he was a pedophile?”

  “No.”

  “When you went to work for him, he didn’t ask you to find young girls for him?”

  “I’m not gonna even talk about stuff like that.”

  “Before this is over, you’ll talk about many things. We have all night.”

  Cody felt himself swallow. The man with the Russian accent sat down in the front pew and smiled and made a gesture to his men with his right hand. His men picked up the cross that had been propped against the back wall and laid it down on the stage, then spread Cody Daniels on top of it and removed his shoes. Cody had constructed the cross out of railroad ties, and he could smell the musky odor of the creosote and oil and cinders in the grain and feel the great hardness of the wood against his head and back and buttocks and thighs.

  They’re only going to scare me. They won’t do this, a voice inside him said.

  Then he heard the pop of the nail gun and felt a pain explode through the top and bottom of his foot. He tried to pull himself erect, but a man on either side of him held his arms fast against the cross’s horizontal beam. He closed his eyes and then opened them and stared upward into the cathedral ceiling. For the first time in his life, Cody Daniels had a sense of finality from which he knew there was no escape. “I shot over the heads of poor Mexicans coming into the country,” he said. “When I was a boy, I made a fifteen-year-old colored girl go to bed with me. I wrote a bad check to some old people who let me charge groceries at their store. I stole a woman’s purse in the bus depot in Denver. I took a watch off a drunk man in an alley behind the Midnight Mission in Los Angeles. I almost killed a woman outside Baltimore.”