House of the Rising Sun

by James Lee Burke

  He reached the top of the stairs. The hallway was long, with a series of doors on either side, a single low-wattage unshaded bulb at the end. He slid the Peacemaker from his holster and lifted it free of his coat, his arm cocked at a right angle, the barrel pointed up. He opened the first door and pushed it back on its hinges. The room was empty, the bed made. He opened a second door. A light-skinned, flat-chested girl in a shift was sitting by herself on the side of a mattress, her bare feet hardly touching the floor. Her eyes looked as small as seeds. “The blackberry got the sweet juice,” she said.

  “Where’s the burned man, missy?”

  “Trick, trade, or travel, Daddy. What you doin’ wit’ that big gun? Bring it over here. I’ll take care of it for you.”

  He smelled an odor like brown sugar spilled on a woodstove. “You been smoking opium, girl?”

  “I ain’t no girl. Ain’t been one since I was twelve. That’s how old I was when I got turned out. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “The burned-up man? Wit’ Corrine. He used to like me. Now he say I’m too young. That show how much he know.”

  “Where’s Corrine’s room?”

  “Last one on the hall. You missing out on a good t’ing.”

  He stepped back into the hallway and closed the door to the girl’s room. The carpet on the floor was so thin, it felt like straw under his boots. A white man in a strap undershirt, his suspenders hanging at his sides, stepped out of a doorway, stared starkly at Hackberry and the gun in his hand, and retreated into the room, closing the door softly. Hackberry unscrewed the bulb by the window at the end of the hall, then stood next to the last door, his back pressed against the wall. He turned the knob and let the door swing back on its hinges.

  There was no sound from the room. He stepped inside, his arm still cocked at a right angle, the barrel of the Peacemaker still pointed upward. A fat black woman was pouring a pan of dirty water into a bucket, her breasts hanging like watermelons out of her robe, a razor scar down one cheek that puckered her eye. “What you want?” she said.

  But his attention was not focused on her. The man in the bed was sitting upright without a shirt, a coverlet pulled to his waist, his chest and shoulders wrinkled like pink rubber curdled by flame, his face a bowl of porridge with eyes, nostrils, and a mouth that had no lips.

  “Step out of the bed and get your britches on,” Hackberry said. “Keep your hands on top of the covers.”

  The man took a long time to speak. An object like a woman’s brooch hung from a leather cord around his neck. “I really don’t feel like it.”

  “I’m interested in the man you work for. Not you. We can talk in the alley. What’s that around your neck?”

  “My Purple Heart. I stubbed my toe on a dead Flip.”

  “You shouldn’t have taken out your problems on Beatrice DeMolay.”

  “Who?”

  “Get your pants on.”

  “I lost them,” the man in the bed said. He looked at the woman. “You ever see this guy?”

  “Maybe. Do what he say,” the woman said. “Miss Dora gonna take care of this.”

  “Tell me what you want, chief,” the man said. “I’m late for work. I’m the greeter at Delmonico’s. Kids love me. I’m a real howl.”

  “Feel sorry for yourself on your own time,” Hackberry said. He approached the bed and slowly pulled the coverlet off the mattress, letting it drop to the floor. The burned man was wearing undershorts and socks. The lower half of his body was white and completely unscarred.

  “Get up,” Hackberry said.

  “No.”

  “Why make it hard on yourself? Why make it hard on the colored lady?”

  “I ain’t no lady,” the woman said. “Get yo’ ass out of my bedroom. I’m fixing to throw this bucket on you.”

  “You will not do that. Don’t even pretend you plan to do that. I don’t want to shoot a woman.”

  “You think I care about yo’ gun? I seen you before. Where’s your badge at? They take it away from you?”

  “He’s a lawman?” the burned man said.

  “Off the bed,” Hackberry said.

  “I done warned you,” the woman said. She flung the contents of the bucket on him, in his face and eyes and hair, sloshing his skin and hat and coat and shirt with a ubiquitous stench that was like effluent from a sewage line or shrimp that had soured in a bait well. He gagged and tried to wipe it out of his eyes and mouth and ears, then saw the man reach under his pillow and get to his feet.

  Hackberry pointed the Peacemaker straight out in front of him, cocking the hammer, believing that it was already too late, that a fat, half-dressed, enraged black woman against whom he had no grievance had just ripped the hands off his clock.

  He pulled the trigger without aiming. The roar of the .45 inside the closed room was deafening. The bullet blew through the burned man’s shoulder and embedded in the wall and patterned the wallpaper with blood. But neither the burned man nor the enraged woman was through. The woman swung the bucket at Hackberry’s head just as the burned man aimed and pulled the trigger on a small semiautomatic. The firing pin snapped dryly on a bad cartridge; the man jerked the slide to clear the chamber and load a second round.

  The bucket cut Hackberry above the eye. He fired again without aiming, the Peacemaker bucking in his palm, flame leaping from the muzzle. The burned man crashed backward as though trying to sit on the sill and unable to find purchase, taking the broken glass and the shade down with him, his mouth open like a starving bird’s.

  Hackberry lowered the gun and stared at the destroyed window, his right hand shaking uncontrollably. Down below someone had turned on a light and was yelling for help. Hackberry hardly felt the blows when the black woman attacked him, trying to claw his eyes.

  He shoved her away and leaned out the window, staring down into the circle of light where the dead man lay. A Mexican woman had rolled him over on his back and was holding his head in her lap. She looked up at Hackberry, blinking against the rain. He could see the hole in the burned man’s stomach and the blood welling out of it.

  “You the man did this?” the woman said. “Why you hurt Eddy? Why you come down to do this? Help! Somebody help!”

  THE SHERIFF’S SUBSTATION was located inside an ancient one-story brick building that smelled like stagnant water. It once served as the county jail and now contained two cells, neither of which had plumbing; they were used only to lock up drunks overnight.

  Hackberry sat in a chair by a chain-locked gun rack lined with shotguns and Winchester lever-action rifles. The door to one cell was open, the other empty. The sheriff stood inside the open cell, looking down at a man in a plain oblong wood box; the dead man’s body had been sprinkled with chunks of blue ice that a deputy had carried in a bucket from the saloon next door. “His name was Eddy Diamond,” the sheriff said. “He did two years in Yuma for syndicalism.”

  “‘Syndicalism’? Meaning what?”

  “Stirring up union trouble in Arizona Territory. You all right?”

  “I heard inmates go crazy in the cells at Yuma.”

  “Most people do when you lock them in an iron box in hunnerd-and-twenty-degree heat.”

  “How’d he get burned?”

  “Some shit in the Philippines. Or Nicaragua. I forget which.” The sheriff came out of the cell and closed the door behind him, shaking it to make sure it had clicked shut.

  “You’re sure his name was Diamond?”

  “It was the only one he used.”

  “Did he have an alias? Like Jimmy Belloc or Jimmy No Lines?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” The sheriff had a drooping mustache and a lined face and a purple bump on the ridge of his nose. He had gotten out of bed to take care of the shooting and kept looking at the clock on the desk. “Don’t study on this, Hack. You didn’t have no choice.”

  “I got his name from Mealy Lonetree. I think he was the one who threw acid at Beatrice DeMolay.”

&nb
sp; “That’s one woman I wish would move to Mars.”

  “That man in yonder is the one who attacked her. It had to be him.”

  “Diamond was in jail for disturbing the peace the night she says somebody threw acid at her.”

  “She says?”

  “You in the habit of believing ex-whores?”

  “She’s a friend of mine.”

  The sheriff pulled on his ear. “Mealy gave you the name of this Belloc fellow?”

  “Yes, he did. He also acted like he was standing on the edge of his grave.”

  “When was this?”

  “About seven hours ago.”

  “He was,” the sheriff said.

  “Was what?”

  “Standing on the edge of his grave. He hanged himself in his closet.”

  Hackberry stared straight ahead, his hands propped on his knees, his ears ringing. Then he gazed at the floor and at the dirt grimed into the grain of the wood, the cigar burns, the chewing-tobacco stains, the wisps of dried manure and horse hair that had fallen from someone’s boots or spurs. “That doesn’t make sense. Mealy was fixing to leave town.”

  “The coroner is putting it down as a suicide. Let it go at that. Stay away from this woman. These people are gutter rats. That includes the man you shot. At the inside, he was a whoremonger.”

  “I don’t believe Mealy killed himself. I think Arnold Beckman is behind all of this.”

  “Could be. But bad-mouthing others isn’t going to he’p you.”

  Hackberry looked at the floor and the way the leather was worn around the points and sides of his boots from sticking them into stirrups. When he closed his eyes, he saw the verdant land along the Guadalupe and bluebonnets blooming in the spring, bending and riffling in the wind, electric blue as far as the eye could see.

  “Did you hear me?” the sheriff said.

  “I’m not feeling too good right now.”

  “What’s that stink on you?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like to go now. Do you mind?”

  “Hell, no, I don’t mind. Take your weapon with you. Get out of the goddamn country. I’ll take care of the paperwork.”

  “You don’t have to get your quills up.”

  “I’m doing this only because I remember the old days.”

  “That’s good, because I wouldn’t want you to do anything on my account. Don’t let that dead man out of his cell, either.”

  “Say again?”

  Hackberry went out the door, his face tight and numb with hangover, his gun belt and holstered revolver looped over his shoulder. The dirt street was empty, the stores and bordellos and saloons and gambling houses closed. His right ear was still partially deaf from firing the Peacemaker in the closed room, and the ground seemed to shift from side to side, as though he were on board a pitching ship. The rain had stopped, and the air was cold and smelled of wood smoke and somebody baking bread. Was a bakery about to open its doors? If so, would he be allowed inside? He had just killed an innocent man, a labor organizer, a decorated soldier, not unlike his son. If an unkind voice had told Hackberry he was the worst of men, absolutely alone and friendless, he would not have argued.

  When he returned home later in the day, dehydrated and sick, trembling with fatigue, the boxlike phone on his living room wall was ringing. He picked up the listening piece from the hook and put it to his ear. “Hello?”

  “How does it feel?” a merry voice said.

  “Beckman?”

  “Did you have an enjoyable evening in San Antonio?”

  “I’ll never give you what you want.”

  “This is just for openers.”

  “Have at it.”

  “You know the man you killed was a recipient of the Purple Heart?”

  “That’s right, he was.”

  “He was also awarded the Medal of Honor. The newspapers will have the full story within a day or so.”

  Hackberry felt one eyelid stick shut, as if the eye had dried up and turned to sandpaper.

  “No philosophic observations?”

  “You cain’t buy me, you cain’t scare me.”

  “Then why are you telling me that? You’re a delight.”

  Arnold Beckman began laughing and continued laughing even as he was hanging up, as though his merriment were so genuine, he didn’t care if others were privy to it or not.

  THAT NIGHT HACKBERRY put on his canvas coat and a flop hat and went down to the riverside with a wicker chair and a bait bucket and a cane pole strung with a fishing line and a wood bobber and a treble hook and a weight made from a minié ball, and set up shop on the edge of the water. He baited the treble hook with a piece of liver and cast it close to an eddy behind a downed cottonwood tree where yellow catfish as thick as his upper arm hung in schools. But the real purpose of his visit to the riverside was not to catch fish. A few feet away, under a tangle of cable left over from a logging operation, was the hiding spot he had chosen for the artifact he now thought of as the cup. He had wrapped it and its wood case inside a rubber slicker, and then a tarp, and tied it with rope, and at night had buried it up the slope in a dry spot that never collected water.

  He was not sure why he was drawn to this particular spot by the river on this particular night, but he knew his purpose did not have to do with fish. The truth was, he could not deal with the image of the burned man lying in the alley, his head resting in the Mexican woman’s lap, blood pumping from the hole in his stomach.

  Hackberry shut his eyes and opened them again, trying to restart his thought processes before they led him into the dark places that were a trap, never a solution. He looked over his shoulder at the tangle of cable and the burial spot he had planted divots of grass on. I don’t know if you actually used that cup or not, but I need some he’p.

  He was surprised at his request. He had never been keen on prayer and in fact was not exactly sure what it consisted of. In his experience, religious moments tended to occur when people were about to fall off a cliff or get rope-dragged through a cactus patch.

  I was set up, but I doubt if anybody will believe that. Were it not for the sheriff in Bexar County, I’d probably be charged with manslaughter. The sheriff in Bexar County is not the type of man I want to be indebted to. I’m open to any suggestions you have, sir.

  There was no reply. The moon was full above the hills, its mountains and craters and ridges like an enormous bruise on its surface. Hackberry looked again at the burial spot. Tell me what to do, sir. Tell that boy in the brothel I’m sorry. Maybe he was a friend of my son. The prewar army was a small group. Sir, what am I going to do? I feel absolutely lost.

  He felt his cane pole throb in his hand. His bobber had been pulled straight down in the eddy, the moisture squeezing from the tension in the line, the weight of the fish arching the pole to the point of breaking. He slipped his hands down the pole and grabbed the line and twisted it around his wrists and pulled the catfish clear of the eddy and the rotted cottonwood, through the reeds and onto the bank, its long, sleek, grayish-yellow sides and whiskers and spiked fins coating with sand.

  He put his foot across the fish’s stomach and worked the treble hook free of its mouth, then picked it up by the tail, avoiding its spikes, and swung its head against a rock, slinging blood on the grass. He put the catfish in the bait bucket and squatted by the water’s edge and began washing the blood and fish slime from his hands. The water clouded and the blood disappeared inside it, but he could not get the smell of the fish and what it reminded him of off his hands.

  He got on his knees and scrubbed his hands with sand, accidentally knocking over the bucket, spilling on his pants the blood from the piece of liver he had brought for bait. He walked up the incline and sat down next to the burial spot, his arms limp, his head on his chest.

  Me again. Everything I touch comes to the same end. I got nowhere to go. I got nobody to cover my back. He’p my boy, please, wherever he is. And if you can, he’p me keep my aim true and my eye clear. This isn’t much of a praye
r, but it’s all I got right now. Amen.

  Later, he looked from his upstairs bedroom window at the spot where the rusted cable lay and thought he saw a white light, like moon glow, radiating from the ground rather than from the heavens. Then a cloud passed in front of the moon, and the light disappeared from the embankment, and he realized it had been an illusion.

  HE WOKE EARLY to the smell of coffee boiling and bread baking. He put on his trousers and boots and hooked his suspenders over his undershirt and went downstairs into the unheated house and saw a man’s head go past the kitchen window. He opened the back door and saw a cook fire blazing by the edge of his flower garden, a piece of corrugated tin stretched across two rocks, the wind flattening the smoke on the lawn. Willard Posey was pouring water from a tin can into the coffeepot.

  “I hate to ask,” Hackberry said.

  “Ask what?”

  “You cook biscuits in everybody’s yard?”

  “Just yours,” Willard said. “I made the coffee a little too strong and added some more water. You have any butter?”

  “What’s the problem of the day, Willard?”

  “I figured you needed a friend.”

  “About the trouble in San Antonio?”

  “Get us some plates. You have such a fine place here. It’s one of the most peaceful spots I’ve ever seen. The envy of any normal man.”

  “Is this going to take long?”

  “I’ll try to keep it short,” Willard replied.

  They sat in straight-back chairs and ate off tin plates on the back porch, the sunlight spreading across the hills, the willows on the riverbank the color of old brass.

  “Why’d you do it?” Willard said.

  “Shoot the man in the cathouse?”

  “Go to San Antonio.”

  “I owed Miz DeMolay.”

  Willard nodded. “That’s not really why I’m here. I got a call from your former common-law wife. She didn’t ring you?”

  Hackberry stopped eating. “You’re talking about Ruby?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s the name she gave me. Miss Ruby Dansen.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She didn’t say. She wanted to know where her son has gone to.”