House of the Rising Sun

by James Lee Burke

  “I’m not quite following you.”

  “Where the darkies used to live. There was a fire years ago, and they moved away. I’m rebuilding their houses.” Bishop’s white shirt was streaked with charcoal, the armpits ringed with sweat, a manic shine in his eyes. “I aim to find them and bring them back. What with modern communications, you can always find people.”

  Hackberry nodded. “Why don’t you come in?”

  Bishop looked over his shoulder. “I should be getting back. I need to order lumber and nails and shingling. Where do you think the elderly woman went to? I can’t remember her name.”

  “That was probably Aint Ginny.”

  “Know where she might be?”

  “She’d be pretty old.”

  “Yes, I guess we’re all getting along in our years. You must take care, Mr. Holland. There’s evil abroad in the world. All of us must be on the lookout.”

  “I’ll make some tea. Come inside and rest a bit.”

  “That’s very kind of you. I was speaking to the minister at the church. I told him how neighborly you’ve been.”

  Hackberry opened the screen door and waited for Bishop to walk ahead of him. Instead, Bishop stared across the river at the bluffs, as though trying to remember something that lay just beyond the edges of his memory.

  “Is something troubling you?” Hackberry said.

  “Why, no, not at all. As Little Pippa says, ‘God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.’ See the bluffs? In its way, they’re our tombstone. We go into their shade and then rise again. It’s all part of a plan.”

  “I never thought of it that way.” Hackberry slipped his hand under Bishop’s arm and helped him up the steps and into the kitchen. “I’m going to fix us a sandwich and some warm milk instead of tea. Then I’ll drive you home in my carriage. I think you might have caught a chill.”

  Bishop sat down at the breakfast table and continued to stare across the river. He pinched his temples, his brow furrowing, as though someone had tapped a nail between his eyes. “I think I’ve done something terribly wrong, Mr. Holland. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “Does it have to do with me or my son?”

  “No, I gave up a secret, I think. I’m trying to remember what it is. I feel very bad about it. I can’t bring it to mind. You think it’s about the darkies?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t fret on it right now.”

  “I look around me and all I see is darkness.”

  Hackberry looked into Bishop’s eyes. They were as mindless as water in an empty fish bowl. “We’ll have our snack, and then we’ll give Dr. Benbow a call.”

  “The secret is about that cave, isn’t it?”

  “It could be.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Holland. It’ll be good to have Aint Ginny and the other colored people back. It’s funny how they get to be family. Then one day they’re gone.”

  RUBY DANSEN HAD not slept more than two hours since Ishmael had disappeared from the clinic. She bought bread and a wedge of cheese and an apple from a grocery by the hotel and ate them in her room, then drank as much water as she could to kill the hunger pains in her stomach. She had money for perhaps three more days in the hotel, but not if she ate in the café down the street or hired a jitney to Maggie Bassett’s house. So she put on the best dress she had, one made of maroon velvet; a gray hat that had a tall black feather in the band; and walked four miles in the wind to Maggie’s home, her energy gone, her vision speckled with tiny dots.

  This time she didn’t twist the doorbell, she banged on the door with her fist. She saw Maggie’s face appear behind a curtain, then the door opened and Maggie was glaring at her, her nostrils white around the rims. “Why are you hammering on my house?” she said.

  “Where are you hiding my son?”

  “I’m not hiding him anywhere. What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you go back to Denver? Why do you look at me as the source of all your problems? Why would I hide Ishmael? I think you’re a lunatic.”

  “You’re a liar,” Ruby said. “Your friends kidnapped him from the clinic. Don’t tell me they didn’t. I was there.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “But you know where he was taken. You know they kidnapped him. You’re disingenuous at best.”

  “Oh, there it is with the vocabulary again.”

  “You never answer the question. Everything that comes out of your mouth is to protect yourself at someone else’s expense,” Ruby said.

  Maggie leaned out the door. “Who’s with you? How did you get here?”

  “I walked. I’m by myself.”

  “You walked from town?”

  “What did I just say?”

  Maggie looked at nothing, then back at Ruby. “I think of Ishmael as my son. I wouldn’t see him hurt for the world.”

  “You whore.”

  There was a wrinkle of triumph at the corner of Maggie’s mouth. “Let me remind you of your own rhetoric, Ruby. You said you forgave me. Now you walk miles to my home and beat on my door to insult me. Does that seem like rational behavior to you?”

  “You take orders from company swells, Maggie. I talked with the IWW. Arnold Beckman is a union buster. He kidnapped my boy, and I think you know why.”

  Ruby waited, hoping Maggie would conclude that she possessed information which in reality she did not. But the eyes of Maggie Bassett never gave up secrets, never showed defeat or guilt or acceptance of responsibility and, more important, never lingered on the injury of others.

  “Who says Arnold told me anything?” Maggie asked. “I don’t take orders from anyone. Do you know what your hat reminds me of?”

  “My hat?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. It’s certainly cute. Do you go to the flickers? Actually, people call them ‘the movies’ now. Arnold took me to his studio in the Palisades. You must come out there sometime. I think people would be dying to meet you.”

  “Have they hurt him?”

  “Who?”

  “My son.”

  “I have to run some errands. Do you want a ride back to town? I love your hat. It puts me in mind of Robin Hood’s followers, medieval trolls on bandy legs toddling around the set, pretending they’re part of a grand cause.”

  “I guess my trip has been a waste. Would you forgive me for what I’m about to do?”

  “No more shopgirl silliness, Ruby. Bye-bye, now.”

  “Please give Arnold Beckman this message: If he doesn’t return my son, I’m going to kill him.”

  “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  “Thank you. I will. In the meantime, I really need to do something else, for your sake and mine.”

  Ruby punched Maggie Bassett squarely in the face, knocking her on her bottom in the middle of the hallway.

  WHO ARE YOUR friends? Hackberry wondered. The ones who will lend you money in times of need? Pull you from a raging creek or a burning house? No, the real ones were the people who granted a favor simply because you asked it of them. There was no interrogation, no weighing of the scales, no equivocation. They backed your play. They were the kinds of friends you never let go of.

  He called Beatrice DeMolay’s house in San Antonio and waited while the operator got her on the phone. “Miss B.?” he said.

  “Mr. Holland?” she replied.

  “I need some he’p.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I never learned how to drive, and I need to get to San Antonio. The sheriff, in spite of the good soul he is, has pulled my badge. My boy has been kidnapped, most likely by Arnold Beckman’s employees. Can I hire your man, what’s-his-name, the zombie, to drive me around?”

  “His name is Andre, Mr. Holland.”

  “Whatever. He looks like he could scare a corpse out of a graveyard. Can he come get me?”

  “Yes, he can. I’m sorry to hear about your son. What does the sheriff’s office say?”

  “Take a guess.”

  “They’re not interested?
”

  “They may have had a hand in it. The motorcar that took him away may have had a bell on it. Anyway, I don’t have any credibility in San Antonio. I shot and killed a Medal of Honor recipient, and last night I worked over three thugs who had Beckman’s business card in their wallets.”

  “I didn’t get that last part.”

  Through the window, he saw two motorcars come down the dirt road and turn under the archway onto Cod Bishop’s lane. One was the departmental car usually driven by Darl Pickins, and the other was the motorcar of Dr. Benbow, the part-time county coroner.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I know what Beckman wants. I’m not going to give it to him. There are many reasons why not, but the chief one is he will kill Ishmael as soon as he gets what he wants. Am I wrong?”

  “That’s exactly what he’ll do.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Andre will be on his way in a few minutes.”

  HACKBERRY CUT THROUGH pasture to the back of Cod Bishop’s property, walking through the scarred area where Bishop had been recovering scorched bricks from the soil and scraping them clean with a trowel and stacking them as though reconstructing the past and undoing the harm he had visited upon the black people who were his charges. As Hackberry neared the main house, he saw the two motorcars parked by the barn. The red gelding Bishop had ridden that morning was in the lot, favoring one foot, half of the loose iron shoe visible beneath the horn.

  Both barn doors were open wide. The dirt floor was broom-sweep-clean, the stalls free of manure, the baled hay still green and stacked both in the loft and high against the back wall, enclosed by a chain-latched chest-high slatted partition. Cod Bishop had always run a tight ship.

  Darl was standing in front of an unlatched stall. Dr. Benbow, the part-time county coroner, was squatting next to Bishop’s body, touching the neck, the ribs, and the throat. He stood up and put a notebook in his shirt pocket and inserted a pencil next to it. He was a gangly man with iron-colored hair that grew over his collar, and he was dressed in a black suit. He had hung his coat on the side of the stall and rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. Even though the air was cool and a breeze was blowing through the shade, he had broken a sweat. He seemed to stare at Hackberry without seeing him. “What’s your opinion?”

  “What’s my opinion?” Hackberry said.

  “You knew him pretty well. Or at least you lived next door to him for a couple of decades. How he’d end up in this predicament?”

  “The crack on his head would probably be enough to do him in,” Hackberry replied. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Any one of the blows would be enough. I think one of his ribs punctured his heart. His thorax is probably broken, too. Would you answer my question?”

  “Cod wasn’t a careless man around horses. Also, he left them out most of the time. Sometimes in winter he’d put up the mares. I don’t know why he’d have the gelding in the stall.”

  “Know anything about his state of mind? Has he been acting strange, behaving irrationally?”

  “He was at my house this morning. I was fixing to call you, but he didn’t want me to.”

  “Call me for what purpose?”

  “I think he was having a mental breakdown. I believe his conscience was weighing heavily upon him.”

  “Would he walk his horse into a stall to abuse him? Because his quirt is over there by the broom.”

  “No, his livestock was his property. Cod did nothing that would devalue his property.”

  “What do you think, Darl?” Dr. Benbow said.

  “I think somebody flat put it to him,” the deputy said.

  Hackberry and Dr. Benbow looked at him. “What do you base that on?” Dr. Benbow said.

  “It’s not for me to say.”

  “Yes, it is,” Hackberry said.

  “He was a widower,” the deputy said.

  “People have it in for widowers?” the coroner said.

  “Mr. Bishop had an eye for the ladies. All kinds. Some with a wedding band on their finger.”

  “So he was fooling around with the wrong man’s wife and got himself beaten to death?” Dr. Benbow said.

  “I ain’t sure who stomped him. But that horse didn’t,” Darl said.

  “Talking to you is like the Chinese water torture, son. Would you get to it?” Dr. Benbow said.

  “The loose shoe on the gelding out yonder is on the back foot,” Darl said. “It looks like Mr. Bishop was hit several times. A horse pawing in the air might be able to do that. But most times a horse only gets you once when he kicks with his back feet, unless you’re boxed in the stall with him. That didn’t happen.”

  “Tell your boss to give you a pay raise,” Dr. Benbow said.

  “What for?” Darl said.

  “You see beyond appearances. It’s a valuable asset,” the doctor said. “Wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Holland?”

  Hackberry gazed across the river at the bushes that shielded the opening of the cave in the bluffs. He wondered how soon Beckman’s men would be there.

  ONE HOUR LATER, Andre pulled up in the bright blue REO owned by Beatrice DeMolay, and got out and knocked on Hackberry’s front door. He removed his hat when Hackberry unlatched the screen.

  “Come in,” Hackberry said.

  “Miss Beatrice said I’m to bring you directly to her apartment, if you have no objection.”

  “I want to talk to you first. Come in and sit down.”

  “Where?”

  “On a chair, where do you think?”

  “I prefer to stand.”

  “That’s fine. The last time you were here, I told you to go in the kitchen and he’p yourself to the icebox. I also told you where your supper ware was at. You and Miss Beatrice thought I was telling you to use only the dishes and forks and knives and such reserved for the he’p, namely Mexicans and people of color. That was not the case. My mother died in childbirth when I was a little boy, and her china has remained unused in the cabinet ever since. I don’t eat off it, and I don’t let anybody else eat off it, either.”

  Andre’s face was impassive, his cobalt-blue eyes never leaving Hackberry’s, his skin so black it glowed with the clean radiance of freshly mined coal.

  “Here’s the other thing I wanted to say,” Hackberry continued. “If you choose to he’p me, you’ll be at risk. That means dangerous men might be a stone’s throw from us right now. Are you troubled by any of this?”

  “No, I am not.”

  “You don’t address other men as ‘sir’?”

  “If they request that I do.”

  “You’re a regular blabbermouth, all right. Okay, here’s what has occurred. My neighbor, Cod Bishop, was in the employ of Arnold Beckman. I believe Mr. Bishop saw me up in the cave in those bluffs across the river and told Arnold Beckman I had probably hid something there. Mr. Bishop was found dead in his barn this morning. This was after he tried to quit Beckman.”

  “Miss Beatrice has said I should do whatever you tell me.”

  “What I’m telling you right now, Andre, is to listen. I don’t want you hurt. This is Texas. While you’re working with me, you do not lay your hand on a white man.”

  “Why do white people always think black people want to put their hands on them?”

  “I didn’t say ‘put.’ I said— Never mind. If we have trouble with somebody and he needs shooting, I’ll do it. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A breakthrough,” Hackberry said.

  “Arnold Beckman sent someone to throw acid in Miss Beatrice’s face. If I meet him, it will not matter if he is white or black.”

  “I spoke too soon. So be it. Better a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We need to cross the river and go to the cave.”

  “If Beckman’s men are watching, they will see us.”

  “That’s the point, partner.”

  HACK
BERRY AND THE Haitian chauffeur crossed the river and climbed the trail to the cave’s opening. Down below, the long knifelike yellow leaves from the willow trees drifted in the riffle, steam rising off the boulders inside the shade. Hackberry was carrying a two-gallon fuel can, a hand-notched wood plug in the spout, the coal oil sloshing inside.

  “I’d like for you to stay out here, Andre, and have a smoke,” he said. “Pay no mind to what I do in the cave. We’re going to take our friends on a snipe hunt.”

  “What is a snipe hunt?”

  “It means you convince a fellow he can catch all the snipe he wants if he holds a flashlight in front of an open gunnysack by a barbed-wire fence between the hours of eleven and midnight.”

  “Who would be so stupid?”

  “It’s a metaphor. It means you confuse and mislead and mystify your enemy. Stonewall Jackson said that.”

  “The general who fought for the preservation of slavery?”

  “Not everyone is perfect. Anyway, if you glance to the north, you’ll see the sunlight reflecting off a glassy or metallic surface. I have a feeling that’s Mr. Beckman’s people.”

  “Do you believe in the unseen world?” Andre said.

  “I never had a choice.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If I didn’t believe somebody was up there, I’d be forced to believe in myself. For me, that’s a horrible thought.”

  “You have tiny filings in the handles of your pistol.”

  “This is an 1860 Army Colt, converted for modern cartridges. Changing the grips won’t bring back the men I killed. Plus, every one of them had it coming, and the world is better off without them.”

  “Do they visit you in your sleep?”

  “You know the answer to that one.”

  Andre gazed at the willow leaves floating between the boulders, dipping in the chuck, disappearing in the sunlight.

  Hackberry set the coal oil can on the floor of the cave and worked his way deeper inside, where the walls narrowed and the crevice in the roof allowed a glimmer of sky when the trees were not in leaf. He felt along a shelf until he touched a rock he had wedged in a hole and then covered with a huge rat’s nest. He pulled the box, still wrapped in a rain slicker, from inside the wall. He knelt on one knee and unwrapped and opened the rosewood top and touched the smooth onyx of the cup with his fingertips.