Rain Gods

by James Lee Burke

  Preacher had told Bobby Lee he would be part of the new place. If his name was not on the deed, he would nonetheless be bonded to the property and the house by Preacher’s word. Was it possible for Preacher and Bobby Lee to get the mow-down behind them and resolve their problems with Hugo Cistranos and Artie Rooney and this Russian Sholokoff? It happened. He knew retired button men in Miami and Hallandale who had done thirty or forty hits in New York and Boston and Jersey and never gone down on a serious beef and today had no one looking at them. The guys who had killed Jimmy Hoffa and Johnny Roselli had never been in custody, guys who might have even been involved with the murder of John Kennedy. If those guys could skate, anybody could.

  When the coffee boiled, he used a dish towel to pour a tin cup full from the pot, then lifted the cup to his mouth. The coffee, grounds and all, scalding hot, landed on his stomach lining like a cupful of acid.

  He went back inside the tent. Preacher was up, pulling on his pants. “You look like you’re having some kind of discomfort there, Bobby Lee,” he said.

  “I think I got an ulcer.”

  “You got coffee out there?”

  “I’ll get you some.” Thanks for the concern, Bobby Lee said to himself. He went back outside and filled a second tin cup. He opened the wooden icebox and took out a perforated can of condensed milk and a box of sugar cubes. “You take sugar or you don’t?” he called out.

  “You don’t remember?” Preacher said through the flap.

  “I get it mixed up.”

  “Two cubes and a half teaspoon of canned milk.”

  Bobby Lee brought the cup back inside the tent and placed it in Preacher’s hand. “You’re not diabetic?”

  “No, I told you that.”

  “So you avoid alcohol out of principle rather than for health reasons?”

  “Why should you care, Bobby Lee?”

  “Just one of those things. Liam and me were talking once about how you got medical issues of some kind.”

  Preacher was standing up over his writing table, unshaved, wearing an unironed white shirt. He drank from his cup, touching his lips gingerly against the rim. “Why would you and Liam be talking about my health?”

  “I don’t remember the circumstances.”

  “You think I have a health problem that people need to know about?”

  “No, Jack, I know you’re good about taking care of yourself, is all. Liam and me were just making conversation.”

  “But a man like Liam Eriksson was intensely concerned about my well-being?”

  “Wish I hadn’t brought it up.”

  “Did Liam bring it up?”

  “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  Preacher sat down on his unmade cot and set his coffee on the writing table. Before going to bed, he had been playing blackjack against himself. The deck was splayed facedown on the table. Two cards had been dealt faceup to the imaginary player. The dealer’s hole card was facedown. The second dealer’s card had not been dealt. “What do you reckon has given you that ulcer?”

  “Everything went south because of the Asian women. It was a mistake that just happened. You and me shouldn’t have to pay the price. It’s not fair.”

  “You’re still a fish.”

  “About what?”

  “We weren’t hijacking the women. We were hijacking the heroin in their stomachs. They started going nuts on us, and Hugo decided to waste the whole bunch and use the lot behind the church as a storage area. He was going to dig them up later.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “But this Holland fellow came along and changed all that. What I’m saying to you is there are no accidents.”

  Bobby Lee wasn’t about to enter into Preacher’s psychotic frame of reference. “What if we get out of the country for a while? Let everything cool off?”

  “You disappoint me.”

  “Come on, don’t talk to me like that, man.”

  “We’ve got Arthur Rooney and Hugo to deal with. Sholokoff is going to send another hit team after us. I’ve got all that federal heat coming down on me because of that fellow from ICE. I don’t think I’m quite finished with Sheriff Holland, either. He spat on me. The girl did, too.”

  “Jesus, Jack.”

  “Also, I’ve still got my commitments with the Jewish family.”

  “That last bit just won’t go down the pipe. I can’t fathom that, man. It’s absolutely beyond me.”

  “That I’m not bothered because Mrs. Dolan got upset and attacked me?”

  “In a word, yeah.”

  “Mrs. Dolan is Jewish royalty. For some, a woman is a pair of thighs and breasts, something you can put your seed in so she can wash it out. But I don’t think you’re that kind, Bobby Lee.”

  Bobby Lee let the image slide off his face. “I got to ask you something.”

  “Is my mother really buried under this tent?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “What’s the rest?”

  “Like what happened to her?”

  “How did she end her days?”

  “Yeah, I mean like she got sick or she was old or she got hurt in an accident?”

  “That’s a complex question. See, I’m not sure if she’s under this tent, or if only part of her is. I buried her after a hard freeze. I had to build a fire on the ground and use a pickax to chop the grave. So I didn’t go very deep with it. Not knowing a lot back then about predators and such, I didn’t cover the mound with stones. When I came back a year later, critters had dug her up and strung her around about forty or fifty yards. I put what I could back in the hole and packed the dirt down tight, but to tell the truth, I’m not sure how much of her is down there. There were a lot of other bones around.”

  “Jack, did you—”

  “What?”

  “Shit happens. Like did you have to do something to your mother?”

  “Yeah, it does. Get me a refill, will you? My leg is hurting.”

  Bobby Lee went outside with Preacher’s cup just as the Mexican carpenters arrived to resume the framing on Preacher’s house. Bobby Lee went back inside the tent, forgetting to add either sugar or condensed milk to the cup. Preacher was staring into space, his expression like a blunted ax blade. He took the cup from Bobby Lee’s hand. The coffee was even hotter now than when Bobby Lee had first made it.

  “Answer the question, Jack.”

  “Did I kill my own mother? Good God, son, what kind of person do you think I am? Let me show you something.” Preacher picked up the splayed deck from the writing table and squared the cards between his palms. He turned up the dealer’s hole card and looked at it blankly. It was the ace of spades. The imaginary player’s two cards were a ten and an ace of hearts. Preacher squeezed the top card off the deck with his thumb and flopped it faceup on top of the dealer’s ace. “Queen of spades,” he said. “Blackjack. See, the story is already written, Bobby Lee. A fellow just has to be patient, and his queen comes along.”

  “You actually let the Gaddis girl spit on you?”

  Preacher placed his tin cup to his mouth and drank it to the bottom without ever flinching, his lips discoloring from the intense heat. He thought for a long time and pulled at the corner of his eye. “She did it because she was scared. I don’t fault her for it. Besides, she’s not the woman I want or I’m supposed to have.”

  “I never can figure you out.”

  “Life is a flat-out puzzle, isn’t it?” Preacher said.

  “CAN YOU CLIP a horse’s feet?” Hackberry said.

  Pete was mucking out a stall in the back of the barn with a broad-billed coal shovel. He straightened from his work, his skin and hair damp in the gloom. “Sir?”

  Hackberry repeated the question.

  “I’ve done it once or twice,” Pete said.

  “Good, you can help me now. You ever give a horse his penile procedure?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You’d remember.”

  They put headstalls on both colts and tethered one to the hitching post in front of the barn and walked the palomino named Love That Santa Fe around the side into the shade.

  “Santa Fe doesn’t like people messing w
ith his back feet, so he tends to spook,” Hackberry said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hold the lead.”

  “Yes, sir, got it.”

  “You say you’ve done this before?”

  “Sure.”

  “When you hold the lead and the farrier is working in back, don’t stand catty-corner to him. If the horse spooks, he’ll pull away from you and fall backward on the farrier.”

  “I can see that might be a problem.”

  “Thank you.” Hackberry bent over and cradled the hind left foot of the horse against his thighs and began trimming the edges of the hoof, the half-moon strips of horn dropping into the dust. He felt Santa Fe surge and try to straighten his leg and pull against the lead. “Hold him,” Hackberry said.

  “I’m not exactly playing with myself up here,” Pete said.

  Hackberry smoothed the edges and bottom of the hoof with his rasp, still fighting the resistance of a three-year-old horse weighing eleven hundred pounds. “Dammit, boy, hold him,” he said.

  “I’d sure like to get a job in your department. I bet it’s fun,” Pete said.

  Hackberry dropped Santa Fe’s foot to the ground and straightened up, closing his eyes, waiting for the pain in his lower back to go to the place that pain eventually went to.

  “You got sciatica?”

  “Get the chairs back out of the tack room, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hackberry pressed his hands against the barn wall and stretched one leg at a time behind him, like a man trying to push down a building. He heard Pete unfold the chairs and set them on the ground. Hackberry sat down and removed his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. It was comfortable in the shade, the heat of the day trapped inside the sunshine, the wind puffing the mulberry tree in the backyard.

  “Who was the shooter at the church?” Hackberry said.

  “The one actually did it?”

  “Who was he?”

  “This guy Preacher, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I didn’t see it. I got out of the truck to take a leak and took off when the shooting started.”

  “Who had the Thompson?”

  “The guy named Hugo. It was in a canvas bag with the ammo pan. He said it belonged to the most dangerous man in Texas.”

  “Did you ever see Preacher?”

  “No, sir, I never saw him. The only guy I saw up close was Hugo. It was in the dash light of the truck. There were other guys out there in the dark, but I don’t know who they were. One guy had a beard, I think. I just saw him in the headlights for a second. Maybe the beard was red or orange.”

  “Was his name Liam or Eriksson?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Who hired you for the job?”

  “An ole boy I was drinking with. But he didn’t show up at the convoy.”

  “Convoy?”

  “There was one truck and an SUV and a couple of cars.”

  “Where were you drinking when you met the guy who hired you?”

  “At Ouzel’s place. Or at least I think I was.”

  “What was this ole boy’s name?”

  “I don’t know. I was drunk.”

  “So as far as you know, the shooter could have been Hugo, not Preacher?”

  “It could have been anybody. I told you, sir, I took off.”

  “Did you see the women?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Pete was sitting in one of the two folding chairs he had set up, his eyes averted, his shoulders rounded like the top of a question mark. He folded his arms across his chest and lowered his chin.

  “Did you talk to the women?”

  “A girl fell down getting into the truck, and I he’ped her up.”

  Hackberry could hear the wind gusting through the grass and the screens on the far side of the barn. “By that time you knew you weren’t bringing in wets?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who did you think these women were?”

  “I didn’t want to know.”

  “Housemaids?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Fieldworkers?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you think they were going to start up a laundry?”

  “I figured they were prostitutes. And I figured if they weren’t prostitutes already, somebody was fixing to turn them into prostitutes.” Pete’s eyes were shiny when he glanced sideways at Hackberry.

  “You think I’m being too hard on you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s good, because the feds are going to be a lot harder.”

  “I don’t care. I got to live with what I did. Fuck them.”

  “They’re just doing their job, Pete. But that doesn’t mean we won’t do ours.”

  “I cain’t translate that.”

  “What that means is I don’t think your legal value is worth horse piss on a hot rock.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “I suspect both of us will find out directly.”

  Pete stared in confusion at the sky and at the wind in the trees and at the shimmer of sunlight on the water brimming over the edge of the horse tank. “I wish I’d ate an AK round in Baghdad.”

  HACKBERRY HAD TOLD Pete and Vikki to stay close to the house, then had gone to town in his truck to buy groceries. Pete and Vikki sat on the gallery in the late-Saturday-afternoon haze and drank limeade from a pitcher that was beaded with moisture from the icebox. In the west, great orange and mauve-tinted clouds rose out of the hills, as though a brush fire were racing up the arroyos on their opposite slopes. Vikki tuned her sunburst Gibson and formed an E chord and ticked the plectrum across the strings, the notes rolling out of the sound hole.

  Pete wore his straw hat, even though they were sitting in shade. “You know those big herds the drovers used to move from Mexico up the Chisholm and the Goodnight-Loving? Some of them came right through here. Lot of those cows went plumb to Montana.”

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “Montana.”

  “Maybe Montana is not all you think it is.”

  “I suspect it’s that and more. People say British Columbia is even better. They say Lake Louise is green like the Caribbean and has a big white glacier at the head of it and yellow poppies all around the banks. Can you imagine having a ranch in a place like that?”

  “You’re the dreamer, Pete.”

  “A song-catcher is calling me a dreamer?”

  “I said ‘the’ dreamer. Of the two of us, it’s you who has the real vision.”

  “You sing spirituals in beer joints.”

  “They’re not really beer joints. So there’s nothing special about what I’ve done. You’re the poet. You have faith in things there’s no reason to believe in.”

  “Want to take a walk?”

  “Sheriff Holland wants us to stay close by.”

  “It’s Saturday evening, and we’re sitting on the front porch like old people,” he said. “What’s the harm?”

  She put away her Gibson, snapped the latches on the case, and set the case inside the door. In the south pasture, the quarter horses had moved into the shadows created by the poplar trees. The sky was golden, the tannic smell of dead leaves on the wind. Up on a hillside, Vikki thought she saw a reflection, an ephemeral glitter, like sunlight striking on a piece of foil that had gotten caught in the branch of a cedar tree. Then it was gone. “I’ll leave a note,” she said.

  They walked up the road into shade that was lengthening from a hill, the breeze at their backs, the two foxtrotters walking along the railed fence with them. They rounded a curve and saw a deer trail that switch-backed up a hillside. Vikki shaded her eyes with one hand and stared at the place where the trail disappeared into an arroyo strewn with rocks that looked like yellow chert. She stared at the hillside until her eyes watered.