Lay Down My Sword and Shield hh-1

by James Lee Burke

  The two-engine plane was parked at the end of the runway in three inches of water. The rain beat against the silver, riveted plates of the fuselage, and the wind out of the hills was still strong enough to push the plane’s weight against the anchor blocks around the wheels. In the distance the hills looked as brown and smooth as clay.

  The cabin had three metal seats in it, spot-welded to the bulkhead, with old military safety straps, and when the pilot turned the ignition, the electric starter on the port engine wouldn’t take hold. Then the propeller flipped over stiffly several times, black exhaust blew back across the wing, and the whole plane vibrated with the engines’ roar. The backwash from the propellers blew the concrete dry around the plane, and the pilot taxied out slowly on the runway with the nose into the wind. Bailey kept wiping the rainwater and perspiration back through his hair, and his other hand was clenched tightly on his thigh.

  “I’m going to jump it up fast,” the pilot said over his shoulder. “There’s bad downdrafts over those hills.”

  Bailey reached under his seat and took out a half-pint bottle of sloe gin in a paper sack. He didn’t look at me while he drank. The plane gained speed, the brown water blowing off the sides of the runway, and the wet fields and the few silver hangars flashed by the windows, then we lifted off abruptly into the gray light, the plane shaking against the wind and the strain of its own engines. The crest of the hills swept by below us, and in moments I could see the whole Rio Grande Valley flatten out through the window. The fields were divided into great brown squares of water, the orchards that hadn’t been destroyed by the storm were dark green against the land, and the river had almost covered the willow trees along its banks. There were dead cattle and horses in the fields, their stiff legs turned out of the water, and the barbed-wire fences had been bent down even with the road. Milking barns had been crushed over sideways, and some farmhouses had lost their roofs, and from the air I felt that I was looking down into something private, an arrangement of kitchens and bedrooms and family eating tables that I had been unfairly allowed to see.

  Bailey’s face was white, and he pulled on the bottle again and coughed. He hated for me to see him drink, but his terror of the plane was greater than any feeling he had about personal image or even his ulcerated stomach.

  “We’ll be there in an hour,” I said. “He’s above any bad currents now.”

  Bailey was rigid in the metal seat, the safety belt strapped across his stomach. His fingers were pressed tight across the flat side of the bottle, and the perspiration was still rolling down his face.

  “I don’t know what kind of agreement you’ll come to with Verisa and the Senator, but you and I are going to have one with our practice,” he said. His voice was dry, and his accent had deepened with his fear.

  “Why do I have to come to an agreement with anyone?” I knew all the answers he had, but he wanted to talk or do anything to forget the plane and the distance from the ground.

  “Because you’re holding a big I.O.U. to other people,” he said.

  “Did it ever strike you that the Senator is a bad man who never did anything for anyone unless his own ass was buttered first? That for thirty years he’s served every bad cause in this country? Or maybe that he needs me much more than I needed him?”

  He sipped out of the sloe gin, and the cap rattled on the bottle’s neck when he tried to screw it back on.

  “I’ve already told you, you say it to him,” he said. “I don’t give a goddamn where your paranoia takes you this time, because tomorrow I’m going to write a check for your half of the practice.”

  “Okay, Bailey,” I said, and watched him hold in all his anger and bent ideas about a correct world and the correct people who should live in it.

  I had thought we would land at one of the small airstrips in Yoakum or Cuero, but Bailey had told the pilot to put the plane down in the empty pasture behind my house. The land was flat and cleared of stones, and ten feet above the riverbed, but even from the air I could see the pools of water that had collected in the Bermuda grass. We circled over the ranch once, the wings tilting in the wind currents, and I tapped the pilot’s shoulder and leaned against the back of his seat.

  “There’s armadillo sinkholes and a lot of soft dirt in that field,” I shouted over the noise of the engines.

  He turned sideways briefly and nodded, then began his approach over the river. The fields of corn, tomatoes, and cotton rushed toward us, the stalks and green plants pressed into the earth by the wind, and I saw the natural gas wells pumping up and down and the windmill ginning like a flash of light in the thin rain, the gray roof of the stable and the weathered smokehouse leaning into the depression where we put the oak logs, and then the white house itself with the latticework verandah and the rosebushes and poplar trees along the front lane. We dipped suddenly over the post oaks by Cappie’s cabin and hit the pasture in a spray of mud and grass across the front windows. The wheels went deep into the wet ground, the tail lifted momentarily into the air, and the pilot gunned the engines to keep us in a straight line across the pasture, although he couldn’t see anything in front of him. Water and mud streaked across the side windows, then one wheel sunk in a soft spot and we spun in a sliding half circle, with one engine feathered, against the white fence that separated my side lawn and the pasture.

  The pilot feathered the other engine and wiped his face on his sleeve. Bailey had spilled the bottle of sloe gin over his slacks.

  “Do you have a hard drink inside?” the pilot said.

  “If you drink Jack Daniel’s,” I said.

  I opened the cabin door, and the rain blew into our faces. We climbed over the white fence and ran across the lawn through the oak trees to the front porch. The Senator’s limousine with the tinted windows was parked on the gravel lane. The poplar trees were arched in the wind, and magnolia leaves and rose petals were scattered across the grass. One of Verisa’s large earthen flowerpots had fallen from the upstairs verandah, and the soft dirt and cracked pottery lay in a pile on the front steps. It seemed a long time since I had been home; maybe the house looked strange to me because the Senator’s car was parked in front, but even the worn vertical line of bullet holes in the porch column seemed new, as though Was Hardin had drilled them there only yesterday.

  I took the pilot through the front hall into my library and opened a bottle of whiskey for him and filled a silver bucket with ice cubes. He sat in my leather chair, his wet cigarette still in his mouth, and poured the glass half full without water.

  “I usually stay on a formal basis with my passengers,” he said, his face fatigued over the raised glass, “but are you guys on a kamikaze mission or something?”

  I closed the door behind me without answering, and walked into the living room. The Senator was sitting in the deer-hide chair by the bar, dressed in blue slacks and a gray golf shirt with a highball balanced on his crossed knee (the whiskey was just enough to color the water). His tan was darker than when I had seen him last, and his mowed white hair moved slightly in the soft current from the air conditioner. John Williams leaned against the bar with his sunglasses on, tall, the face pale and as unnatural-looking as smooth rubber, and his tan suit hung on him without a line or crease in it. Verisa sat on the couch in a sundress she had bought three weeks ago at Neiman Marcus, and if she had a hangover from the alcohol or the sedation she had done a wonderful job of burying it inside her. Her auburn hair was brushed back against her shoulders, the makeup on her face made her look fresh and cool, and she lay back comfortably against the cushions with the stem of her wineglass between her fingers as though she were at a D.A.R. cocktail party. But there was also a quick glint in her eyes when I walked into the room, and I knew she was looking forward to a painful retribution on my part.

  The Senator rose from his chair and shook hands with me. His blue eyes wrinkled at the corners when he smiled, and his hand was as square and hard as a bricklayer’s.

  “You’ve had an eventful weekend,” he
said.

  “It was probably exaggerated by the television boys,” I said.

  “I don’t believe there was any camera distortion there. Do you?” The acetylene-blue eyes wrinkled again so that it was impossible to read them. “But, anyway, you know John Williams.”

  “Mr. Holland,” Williams said, and raised his glass.

  “Hi.”

  “I’m enjoying your taste in whiskey.”

  “Help yourself to a bucket of it,” I said.

  “Thank you. I think I will,” he said, and smiled somewhere behind his sunglasses.

  “In fact, take a case with you. I have a crate of limes on the back porch to go with it.”

  The room was silent a moment. Bailey looked at the floor, his brown windbreaker dark with rain, then went behind the bar and raked a mint julep glass through the ice bin.

  “You want water in it, Hack?” he said.

  “Give it to Mr. Williams. I’m changing my taste in whiskey.”

  “Maybe I had better wait on the porch,” Williams said.

  “There’s no need for that,” the Senator said, and his blue eyes moved onto my face again.

  “Hell, no,” I said. “That’s a real storm out there, Mr. Williams. Enough to short out all the electric circuits on an ICBM.”

  I despised him and what he represented, and I let him have a good look at the anger I felt toward his presence in my home. He finished his drink and clicked his glass on the bar.

  “I think it’s better, Allen,” he said.

  “Fix John another drink,” the Senator said to Bailey.

  “Get some limes, too, Bailey,” I said.

  “For one afternoon would you talk without your histrionics?” Verisa said.

  “I haven’t had much of a chance to talk today. Bailey has spent the last two hours giving me the south Texas sonofabitch award.”

  “This doesn’t have to be unpleasant, Hack,” the Senator said.

  “Talking reasonably is beyond him,” Verisa said. “It violates some confirmed principle he has about offending other people.”

  “Give Mr. Williams a drink, Bailey,” I said. “See about the pilot, too. I think he’s getting plowed.”

  “Well, we won’t drag it out then, Hack,” the Senator said. “The state committee called last night and asked me if we should drop you and run a boy from Gonzales. I told them that we would still carry the district no matter who runs, and I want you in the House in January.”

  “That’s good of you, Senator, but I wonder why we all have this intense commitment to my career,” and I looked right through the wrinkled light in his eyes.

  “Because I feel an obligation to your father, who was a good friend to me. I think what you’ve done is irresponsible, but with time you’ll probably make a fine congressman.”

  “I’m afraid that I’m through with political fortunes.”

  “That’s a lovely attitude at this point,” Verisa said.

  “I believe Hack is still a little angry with Rio Grande policemen,” the Senator said. “Actually, we may have picked up more of the union vote, and your arrest won’t hurt you with the Negroes and the Mexicans. The important factor is that we make use of it before the Republican gentleman does.”

  “Sorry. I think that boy from Gonzales would be a better bet.”

  “You’re everything I expected today,” Verisa said.

  “How about the car planted against the fence?”

  “You’re lovely just as you are. It couldn’t have been more anticipated,” she said.

  “I want to finish this, Hack,” the Senator said. “I plan to talk to the committee this afternoon and give them your assurance about the rest of the campaign.”

  “I don’t think you should do that, Senator.”

  “The assault charge can be taken care of,” he said. “It will probably involve a small appointment in Austin, but it’s a simple matter.”

  He had still chosen not to hear me, and I felt the anger rising inside me.

  “Don’t you realize what’s being done for you?” Bailey said from behind the bar. “Try to think about it a minute. You committed a felony yesterday that could get you disbarred or even sent to jail.”

  “No, I don’t realize a damn thing, because I have an idea that all this investment in me isn’t out of goodwill and old friendships. What do you think, Mr. Williams?”

  He sipped from his fresh drink with a sprig of mint leaves in it, rested his arm on the bar, and looked at me from behind his sunglasses. The texture of his skin was the most unnatural I had ever seen on a human being.

  “I think it would save time if the case was explained to you a little more candidly,” he said.

  The Senator looked at Williams, and momentarily I saw the same uncomfortable flicker in his eyes that I had seen on the trip to Washington when I had realized that predators came in various sizes. He paused a moment, then turned back to me before Williams could speak again, his fingers pressed on the highball glass.

  “Possibly your alternatives aren’t as clear or easy as you might believe, Hack,” he said. “I’ve made some commitments in this election that I intend to see honored.”

  “It’s a matter of votes on a House bill to rescind the oil-depletion allowance, Mr. Holland. Although Allen doesn’t run again for two years, it’s been necessary to promise several oil companies that the right people will be on a committee to prevent anyone from lowering the twenty-seven-and-a-half-percent allowance that we now have. As you know, it involves a great deal, and so a few people have pressed Allen rather hard on winning support.”

  Williams was enjoying the Senator’s discomfort, but I didn’t care about either of them then. I felt light inside, like a high school athlete who had been told he was needed to pick up the towels in the locker room.

  “Did you know about this shit, Bailey?” I said.

  “No.”

  “You sold my ass all over the state and you never guessed what it was about.”

  “I didn’t know, Hack.”

  “Well, you saw me coming, Senator,” I said.

  “Are we going to enjoy a melodrama about it now?” Verisa said.

  “No, I think I just finished the ninth inning, and you can have the whole goddamn ballpark.”

  “I believe you’re being overly serious about this. The oil-depletion allowance is in the interest of the state,” the Senator said. “Also, every holder of office pays some kind of personal price to represent his constituency.”

  “I’d call that boy in Gonzales. Let me have a beer, Bailey.”

  “Maybe you should tell Mr. Holland about the rest of his alternative now,” Williams said. He raised his drink slowly to his mouth.

  “I thought you’d been saving something special out,” I said. Bailey handed me the beer in a glass, and I took a cigar from the oakwood box on the coffee table. The Senator sat down in the deer-hide chair and crossed his legs with his highball in his hand, but his eyes didn’t look at me.

  “I don’t like to do this, but there’s a man named Lester Dixon in Kansas City and he’s made a deposition about the time he spent with you in a North Korean prison camp,” he said. His eyes looked at the end of his shoe, thoughtful, as though he were considering a delicate premise before he spoke again.

  Verisa took a cigarette from her pack and put it in her mouth. Her arm lay back against the couch, and her breasts swelled against her sundress when she breathed.

  I lit my cigar and stared into the Senator’s face.

  “What did Airman First Class Dixon have to say?” I said.

  “I don’t believe we have to talk about all of it here,” he said.

  “I think you should, Senator. I imagine that Lester’s deposition was very expensive.”

  “Two men from your shack were executed after they were informed upon.” He raised his eyes into my face and tried to hold them there, but I stared back hard at him and he took a drink from his glass.

  “Did he tell you how it was done?” I said. />
  “I never met him.”

  “He’s an interesting person. I helped send him to prison for five years.”

  “The statement is twenty pages long, and it’s witnessed by two attorneys,” he said. “It’s been compared for accuracy with the transcript from his court-martial, and I don’t think you’ll be able to contest what he says about your complicity in the deaths of two defenseless men.”

  “The telephone is in the hall, Senator. Next to it is a list of numbers, one of which is The Austin American. No, instead finish your drink and let Verisa get the city desk for you.”

  “It will be done more subtly than that. Possibly a leak from someone on the state committee, a small rumor at first, and then a reporter will be given the whole thing.”

  “You probably have ways I’ve never dreamed about.”

  “That’s true, but the outcome will be the same in this case.”

  “Then I guess we can all say good day to each other.”

  “No, there’s one more thing,” he said, and his eyes took on the same expression they had before he drove the tennis ball into my nose. “Right now you’re enjoying your virtue. With an impetuous decision you’ve become a Spartan lying on his shield, and I’m sure you’ll need this image for yourself during the next few weeks. But I want to correct a couple of your ideas about integrity in political office. Negotiation and compromise are part of any politician’s career, and your father learned that lesson his first term in Congress.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He accepted a fifteen-thousand-dollar contribution to sponsor the sale of public land to a wildcat company in Dallas. The land sold for fifty dollars an acre.”

  “Bailey, do you want to tell these men to get out, or you want to wait on me?”

  He looked down at the bar, his forehead white.

  “Bailey,” I said.