Feast Day of Fools

by James Lee Burke

  When anybody got up the nerve to ask Jack how his mother had died, he always gave the same reply: “As she had lived. On her back. All the way down.”

  Jack loved crime novels and film noir but could never understand the film critics’ laudatory attitude toward James Cagney’s portrayal of Cody Jarrett in White Heat. Would a mainline con like Jarrett crawl into his mother’s lap? Yuck, Jack thought. The image made his phallus shrivel up and want to hide. And how about that last scene, when Jarrett stands on the huge propane tank outside a refinery, shouting at the sky? Here’s a guy about to be burned to a crisp, and what does he say? “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”

  What a douchebag. Didn’t Cagney know better? The real Jarrett would have had his mother stuffed and used as a hat rack or doorstop.

  Jack stood in the middle of the kitchen and gazed at the house’s interior and the level of destruction he had visited upon it. No one could accuse him of leaving the wounded on the field. Everyone he had shot was not only dead but dead several times over. He turned in a circle, the Thompson cradled across his chest, a tongue of smoke curling out of the barrel. The rain and wind were cool blowing on his skin through the shattered windows. On the lawn, he could see the slop bucket the maid had dropped when she was highballing for the cornfield. Where oh where was little Josef?

  “Can you hear me, little fellow?” Jack called out. “Let’s fix a cup of tea and have a chat. Did you ever read And Quiet Flows the Don? It was written by a guy named Sholokoff. Are y’all related?”

  There was no reply from the devastated interior of the house. Jack felt a terrible thirst but did not want to set down the Thompson to pour himself a glass of water. “It’s pretty quiet downstairs, Josef. I have a feeling Frank lost out to Sheriff Holland and his deputy. What do you think?”

  In the silence, he walked across the linoleum, bits of glass and china crackling under the soles of his cowboy boots. “I checked the upstairs and the attic, but you weren’t there. That means you’ve got yourself scrunched under the floor or up a chimney. I cain’t think of any other possibility. Unless you’ve already hauled ass. No, I would have seen you. Tell me, do y’all have a volunteer fire department in these parts?”

  Jack lifted the Thompson to a vertical position and gazed at the ceiling and then out the window. He went through a mudroom onto the back porch and opened the screen door and looked up at the window in the attic area and at a roof below the window. The roof was peaked, and Jack could not see on the far side of it. However, if anyone ran from the house, he would not find cover except in the barn, the cornfield, or the pecan orchard, where the flatbed truck and Jack’s Ford Explorer were parked.

  “Josef, I think you might have outsmarted me,” Jack said to the wind. He walked to the hallway door that opened onto the cellar stairs. “You down there, Mr. Holland?”

  “What do you want, Collins?” the sheriff’s voice replied.

  “You sound like you might have sprung a leak.”

  “We’ve got several dead people down here. You can join them in case you’re having any bright ideas,” the sheriff said.

  “You never give me any credit, Sheriff. What have I done to you that’s so bad?”

  “Tried to kill me and my chief deputy?” the sheriff said.

  “Y’all dealt the play on that one. Regardless, I think I squared the deal when I dug up that young fellow Bevins from his grave out in the desert.”

  “You’re talking too much, Collins. That’s the sign of either a guilty or a frightened man.”

  “It’s Mr. Collins. What does it take for you to use formal address? In the civilized world, men do not refer to one another by their last names. Is that totally lost on you, Sheriff? If it is, I’ve sorely misjudged you. I’m coming down.”

  “We need medical help, Mr. Collins.”

  “Every one of the locals is on a pad for Sholokoff. They’d have you and your friends in a wood chipper by sunset.”

  Jack stepped into the doorway, silhouetting against the hallway light, then began walking down the stairs, his eyes trying to adjust to the gloom. His left hand was on the stair rail, his right holding the Thompson at an upward angle. Then he saw the Asian woman and the man named Krill and the sheriff and his chief deputy. “Looks like y’all got shot up proper,” he said.

  The sheriff had stood up but was bracing himself against a wood post, the heel of his hand pressed into his side. “Where’s Sholokoff?” he asked.

  Jack didn’t answer. He crossed the cellar and scraped back the metal door to the outside stairwell and walked up the concrete steps into the rain and gazed at the yard and the barn and the pecan orchard and the cornfield, then at the roof that traversed the area under the attic window. He stepped back into the cellar, rainwater running off the brim of his hat.

  “You planning on taking me out, Mr. Holland?” he said.

  “Could be.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  “You won’t gun me unless I give you cause.”

  “What brought you to that conclusion?” the sheriff said.

  “Your father was a history professor and a congressman. You were born with the burden of gentility, Sheriff: You either obey the restraints that are imposed on a gentleman or you accept the role of a hypocrite. The great gift of being born white trash is that no matter what you do, it’s always a step up.”

  “You’re referring to yourself, Mr. Collins?”

  “I’d wager I have more education than anybody in this room, but I never spent a complete year in a schoolhouse. What do you think about that?”

  “I don’t,” the sheriff replied.

  Jack ignored the slight and glanced out the cellar window at the yard and the barn and the pecan orchard. Then he took a bottle of burgundy from a shattered crate and broke the neck off against the wall. The glass was black and thick and had a red wax seal on the label. He poured from the bottom of the broken bottle into his mouth, as though using a cup, not touching the sharp edges. “You want one?” he asked.

  “I don’t drink,” the sheriff said.

  “You ought to start. In my opinion, it’d be an improvement. Who popped the two guys by the stairs?”

  “I did,” the Asian woman said. She was sitting on a wood chair, the Airweight .38 in her lap, strands of her hair hanging straight down in her face. “You have something to say about it?”

  “You decide you’re not a pacifist anymore?”

  “You murdered nine innocent girls, Mr. Collins,” she replied. “I don’t think you have the right to look down your nose at me or anybody else.”

  “If you ask me, your true colors are out, Ms. Ling. You’re a self-hating feminist who tries to infect others with her poison. I’ve been entirely too generous in my estimation and treatment of your gender. The serpent didn’t make Adam eat the apple. Your progenitor did. You’re the seed of our undoing, and I won’t put up with any more of your insolence.”

  “I warned you once before about addressing me in that fashion,” she said.

  “Mr. Collins?” the sheriff said softly.

  “Enough of you, Sheriff,” Jack said, his eyes burning into the woman’s face, his hand flexing on the pistol grip of the Thompson.

  “Ease up on the batter,” the sheriff said.

  “I said you stay out of this.”

  “We all fought the good fight, didn’t we?” the sheriff said. “I appreciate the help you gave us. I appreciate your saving the life of my deputy R. C. Bevins. No one here should judge you, sir.”

  “You should have stayed in politics.”

  “I am in politics. I hold an elective office. How about it, partner?” the sheriff said. “A time comes when you have to lay down your sword and shield.”

  Jack could feel the fingers of his right hand tightening on the pistol grip and the Thompson’s trigger. The rain was sliding down the cellar window and swirling through the door that opened onto the outside stairwell. Inside the steady
drumming of the rain and the coldness seeping into his back, he realized the mistake he had just made and the price he would pay for his anger and pride.

  He had forgotten about the chief deputy, the one called Pam Tibbs. In spite of her wounds, she had eased her .357 Magnum from her holster and stepped behind him and pointed the muzzle into a spot one inch above his hairline. He heard her cock the hammer into place.

  “Put your weapon on the floor,” she said.

  “What if I don’t?” he said.

  “I’ll cut all your motors,” she replied.

  “Do as she asks, Jack,” the sheriff said.

  “He already has,” Pam said, ripping the Thompson from Jack’s grasp with her bad arm. A surge of pain twisted her mouth out of shape, and she let the Thompson clatter to the floor.

  “Y’all don’t know who your friends are,” Jack said. “I’m fixing to torch the place and fry Josef’s bacon. He’s hiding up there on the roof someplace. If it hadn’t been for me, your heads would be on a pike.”

  “You’re done. Get out,” Pam said.

  Jack turned and looked at her numbly. “Do what?” he said.

  “Be gone. Into the darkness, where you belong,” she said.

  He continued to stare at her and at the smear of blood on her cheek and at the wounds in her arm that had painted her shirtsleeve red and at the steady rise and fall of her breasts and at the loathing in her eyes.

  “I he’ped y’all,” he said. “I made up for—”

  “For what?” Pam said.

  “The past. All of it. I ate out of Dumpsters and bathed with ash and sand. I wore the rags I pulled off a scarecrow.”

  “Lose your revolver and turn out all your pockets,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I collect car keys,” she replied.

  “That’s all you have to say, you fat bitch?” he said.

  She pulled his revolver from its holster and slung it into the pile of empty cartons. “Don’t go near any uncapped tubes of roach paste,” she said.

  HACKBERRY AND PAM watched Jack Collins walk into the rain, glancing back at them like an errant child being driven from the school yard. “Where to now, boss?” Pam said.

  “We blow Dodge and head for the plane,” he replied. “I have a first-aid kit in my duffel. How are you doing?”

  “I think the bullet that exited my shoulder didn’t hit any bone. Anyway, it’s numb now. Hack, you don’t look good.”

  “I never do.”

  “Is the round still in you?”

  “No.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can’t. But it’s time to go home.”

  “I think you’re bleeding inside. Maybe we ought to wait it out. R.C. must have a fix on us. He and Felix and the others might be coming any minute.”

  “I think the Mexicans found the GPS,” Hackberry said.

  “Why?”

  “Because Collins has contempt for the Mexicans. He never would have relied solely on them. Had they not found a GPS, he would have searched us and our gear himself.”

  “Look,” she said, pointing into the rain.

  Hackberry realized he was about to witness one of those moments when evil reveals itself for what it is—insane in its fury and self-hatred and its animus at whatever reminds it of itself. In this instance, the medieval morality play had a cast of only two characters: Josef Sholokoff running through the rain for the safety of the barn or the cornfield or the pecan orchard, and Preacher Jack Collins in pursuit, driven from the light by his fellow man.

  The two of them came together in the yard, sheets of rain sweeping across them at they struck and clawed at each other. Then Jack Collins picked up a stone and swung it hard into Sholokoff’s head. When Sholokoff fell backward and got up and tried to run toward the cornfield, Collins hit him twice more in the back of the head, then dragged him, fighting, past the slop bucket that still lay on the grass. In the roll of thunder that sounded like cannons firing in diminishing sequence, Hackberry watched Collins strike Sholokoff again and again with the stone, then lift him up and throw him over the top slat of the hogpen.

  The squealing and snuffing sounds of the hogs in the pen were instantaneous.

  “Holy God,” Pam said.

  “They may not have been fed in days,” Hackberry said. “Let’s get everybody together. I’m going to carry the Thompson. It’s not a good idea for Krill to have access to any weapons. He still has a capital charge hanging over him in Texas.”

  “What do you want to do with him?”

  “That’s up to him. If he wants to take off, let him go.”

  “You don’t want to hook him up?”

  “We’ll probably never see Noie Barnum again—the guy who started all this. Why lay all our grief on this poor bastard?”

  “Look at me.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Your eyes are out of focus.”

  “No, I see fine.”

  “Your face is white, Hack. You can hardly stand up. Grab hold of my arm.”

  “I’m right as rain,” he replied, the horizon shifting sideways.

  The four of them walked out into the storm, the soaked countryside trembling whitely each time a tree of lightning printed itself against the clouds. The hogs had all moved into a corner of the lot in a half circle and were snuffing loudly, their heads down, their hooves churning in the liquescence around them, the bristles of their snouts coated with their work. Hackberry held his forearm tightly against the hole in his side and tried to keep his eyes on the horizon and put one foot after another, because the gyroscope inside him was starting to sway from side to side and was about to topple over.

  He had learned to march in the infantry and sometimes even to sleep while he did. It was easy. You kept your eyes half-lidded and swung your legs from the hip and never struggled against the weight of your pack or your weapons. You just got in step and dozed and let the momentum of the column carry you forward, and somehow you knew, out there on the edge of your vision, there was always one to count cadence. You had a good home when you left, you’re right. Jody was there when you left, you’re right. Sound off, one, two, three-four! You’re right, you’re right, you’re right! Reep! Reep! Reep! Sound off! One, two, three-four!

  It was a breeze.

  “Hack, hold on to me. Please,” Pam said.

  “Miss Anton is walking barefoot. You don’t think I can cut it?” he replied.

  “I should have popped him,” she said.

  He didn’t know what she meant. They had entered the barn and should have been grateful for the warmth and dryness it offered them. Then he saw the firelight flickering in the midst of the pecan orchard. He set down the Thompson and the shotgun and walked to the open doors and stared at the flames swirling up from the interior of the Ford Explorer and the cab of the flatbed truck.

  So this was both the reality and the legacy of Jack Collins, Hackberry thought. He wasn’t the light bearer who fell like a shooting star from the heavens. He was the canker in the rose, the worm that flies through the howling storm, a vain and petty and mean-spirited man who left a dirty smudge on all that he touched. He had no power of his own; he was assigned it by others whose personal fears were so great, they would abandon all they believed in and surrender themselves to a self-manufactured caricature who had hijacked their religion.

  But Hackberry knew that if there was any lesson or wisdom in his thoughts, he would not be able to pass it on. The only wisdom an old man learns in this world is that his life experience is ultimately his sole possession. It is also the measure of his worth as a human being, the sum of his offering to whatever hand created him, and the ticket he carries with him into eternity. But if a man tries to put all the lessons he has learned on a road map for others, he might as well dip his pen into invisible ink.

  They walked miles in the rain, into the hills and through ravines and across flooded creek beds, the sky growing blacker and blacker. Pam stumbled and dropped the AR15. Krill picked
it up and then pulled the shotgun from Hackberry’s hand and placed both weapons across his shoulders, draping one hand on the barrels and the other on the stocks, his head hanging forward.

  “Give them back,” Hackberry said.

  “I am all right, señor,” Krill said. “I would not harm you. You are very good people. I like you very much.”

  “You’re wanted for a capital crime,” Hackberry said.

  “I know. But that has nothing to do with us. This is Mexico,” Krill said. “It is a place where everything is crazy. I told that to La Magdalena when I cut her down from the beam in the cellar. I told her she smelled like seawater. I told her she was probably a Chinese mermaid and didn’t know it. She thought that was very funny.”

  “Say that again?” Hackberry asked.

  “I’m very tired. We must go on,” Krill said.

  That was what they did. On and on, through rocks and brambles and thorns and deadfalls and cactus and dry washes and tree branches that lashed back into their faces and cut their skin like whips. The sky was as black as oil smoke, the explosions of lightning deafening inside the canyons. But when the four of them ascended a trail that led to a bare knoll, a peculiar event happened. They found themselves in front of two telegraph poles that had no wires attached to the crosspieces; to the west of the knoll was an infinite plain that seemed to extend beyond the edge of the storm into a band of blue sky on the earth’s rim. The wind was bitter and filled with grit, the telegraph poles trembling in the holes where they were sunk, a twisted piece of metal roof bouncing and clanging across the knoll’s surface. Krill stood at the top of the knoll, his arms hanging over the rifle and shotgun stretched across his shoulders.

  “It’s stopped raining,” he said. “Look, you can see it blowing like crystal behind us and out on the plain and down in the canyon, but here there is no rain. Qué bueno. I think I will stay right here.”