House of the Rising Sun

by James Lee Burke

  “Encase it in concrete under one of my buildings and never tell anyone where it is.”

  She stared at him, blinking, unsure what she had heard.

  “I’ll know where it is. But no one else. Not ever,” he added. “Unless I feel like telling them.”

  He picked up a washcloth and wiped his armpits. She continued to stare at the curious combination of features that constituted his physiognomy—the slanted cheekbones and pointed cleft chin, the hooked nose, the analytical gleam in his eyes that dissected a person’s mouth and hair and the shape of his ears and delighted in discovering imperfection, the chain of scars that resembled hardened pustules dribbling down his neck, the shoulder-length silvery-blond hair indicating either his disdain for sexual normalcy or the presence of a cruel woman inside his skin.

  “The world hasn’t been good to either of us, Maggie. When we leave it, we’ll make sure no one forgets we were here. It’s not a bad way to be.”

  “I don’t think I ever really knew you,” she said.

  “Take off your clothes. I’ll draw fresh water for us.”

  “Do you ever think about what awaits us?”

  “The other side of the grave? The Great Judgment, that sort of thing?”

  “Thinking about it is not exactly a lark.”

  “You die. Then you stay dead for a long time,” he said. “Why do men love war? We become the givers of death, not its recipients. If we survive it, we have killed Death.”

  “You’re the most depressing person I’ve ever known.”

  “You’re depressed by the truth, Maggie. You look at me and recognize yourself. What you’ve never understood is that I don’t have to own people. They discover themselves inside me. They genuflect before me like small children. I don’t take power from people. They give it to me.”

  “You need to own the cup, though. What does that tell you about yourself?”

  “It tells me you should watch your mouth.”

  She looked through the window at the woman walking from the road to the building’s entrance. “Looks like you have a visitor.”

  “Send them away,” he said. He squeezed the washrag on his face. “I’m sorry for threatening you. You’re one of the few people in the world I respect. And it’s because of your superior intelligence, although sometimes you do a magnificent job of hiding it.”

  “Ah, she’s headed into the breezeway. I’ll get the door,” Maggie said. “You might put on your robe. I don’t think she’ll be able to handle your scars and your frontal nudity at the same time.”

  HACKBERRY THREW HIS saddlebags and a rolled blanket and a rolled slicker in the backseat of the REO and got in front with Andre, then watched him start the engine and step on the pedals and move the gear lever back and forth on the floor console. “So you got intermediate speed and high speed and reverse, all on that one stick?”

  “First you must release the brake and start the engine,” Andre said. “Otherwise, it does no good to work the gears.”

  “I gathered that. One floor pedal is to stop or slow down, and the other one lets you move the gears? That’s what they call the clutch?”

  “Yes, but all this must be coordinated. It is a complicated mechanical system that cannot be taken lightly.”

  “I appreciate your skill in these matters, Andre. Can I give it a try?”

  “Do you think that is wise?”

  “Probably not. I’ll observe for a while.”

  And that was what he did, although his mind was not on the REO and its plush leather seats and polished mahogany dashboard and brass-rimmed, glass-covered instruments, nor the comfortable surge of its engine and the way the hood seemed to devour the roadway in the blink of an eye. He knew these aspects of the new era were all fine things to contemplate, but they had little to do with the mysteries whose solution had eluded him for a lifetime. He could not explain why the good suffered and could not understand how Creation could have brought about its own inception. Nor could he reason his way through the nature of divinity, or whatever people wanted to call it. He was sure, however, that somewhere on the other side of the physical world, there was a spiritual reality not unlike stardust shaken from the heavens. It animated the natural world in a way that had nothing to do with the laws of physics, and the irony was that no one seemed to notice.

  In the span of one week, while prospecting in Chile, he had heard a throaty, sweeping sound on a wooded hillside that was exactly like a streambed roaring with water and mud and uprooted trees, all of it about to burst loose and turn the countryside into a floodplain. He told himself the sound came from the wind blowing at gale strength through the trees, except there was no wind and the trees were as still as the brushstrokes on a painting.

  He heard rocks creaking and murmuring under the riffle in the river, sometimes with an actual clacking sound, like seals barking at one another.

  He saw pools of quicksilver on the floor of a forest whose canopy was so thick, the moon wasn’t visible when he looked up at the sky. The radiance from the forest floor cast no shadows, only light.

  On a cold evening, when the sun had turned the hills into purple velvet, he heard a boom like buried dynamite or dry thunder in a box canyon where there was no footprint other than his own. The sky was the dark blue of newly forged steel, streaked with meteors as fragile as hailstones; the air was sweet and cold in his mouth and lungs and tasted like hand-cranked ice cream. There were no clouds overhead; there was no electricity flickering on the horizon. The total absence of sound following the boom made him wonder if he had gone deaf. “Where are you?” he shouted into the vastness of the canyon. “Show me where you are!” There was no acknowledgment of his inquiry, nor even an echo.

  The REO hit a bump, and he realized he had nodded off.

  “We’ll be in San Antonio soon, Mr. Holland,” Andre said. “Go back to sleep.”

  “I’m fine. I’d sure like to have a try at this.”

  Andre pulled to the side of the road and left the motor running. “Miss Beatrice has told me to do whatever you say. But I am also charged with protecting her motorcar.”

  “I don’t plan on driving it into the side of a cow. What could go wrong?”

  “Miss Beatrice says you are willful and get in trouble at almost every opportunity.”

  “I’ll have to remember that.”

  “I will guide you through the process. Do not press too hard on the accelerator. If in doubt, take your feet off the pedals and let the car slow to a stop. That way, nothing bad can happen. Remember to guide the car in a straight line.”

  “I’m at your disposal.”

  They exchanged places. Hackberry gripped the steering wheel on each side and twisted it back and forth. “This has a right nice feel to it.”

  “Now put your left foot on the left pedal—” Andre began.

  “Hang on!” Hackberry said. He let the clutch snap loose from under his foot and pressed the accelerator to the floor, straightening his legs, pushing himself deeper into the leather seat, the tires on the REO’s right side skidding dirt and gravel along the edge of the rain ditch. He flew through a crossroads past a general store, swerving to miss a wheelbarrow a man had dropped as he ran for his life.

  “You must take your foot off the accelerator! You must do it now, Mr. Holland!” Andre said. “Please, sir! Lift up your foot!”

  “I already did! The pedal broke off!”

  “Sir, look at the road, not your feet! Sir, please do not look at me! Look through the windshield at the road! What are you doing?”

  “Cutting through the field. Nothing can happen out here in the field. I got it under control, Andre. Settle down.”

  “Sir, please do not be offended, but you are a crazy person!”

  “A little bump coming up. Prepare yourself. Oops!”

  Andre twisted his head and looked through the rear window. “Sir, you have ruined a man’s fence! He’s chasing us! I think he has a gun!”

  “I’ll talk to him later. I’m tryi
ng to concentrate. Control your emotions.”

  “Sir, there’s a wash line ahead! Sir, these people will kill us!”

  Hackberry ripped through a succession of three clotheslines, then swerved the REO and aimed it at a cornfield, clothes and bedsheets streaming from the car’s windshield and fenders. The dry cornstalks flattened under the bumper and tangled in the wheels and undercarriage, the frame bouncing with such violence over the hard-packed rows that pieces of the motorcar’s interior were flying through the air.

  “I cannot believe this is happening to us,” Andre said.

  “It’s not a problem. Now be quiet!”

  “Look out! There’s a haystack!”

  “That’s what I’ve been looking for. Now get ahold of yourself and stop all this histrionic behavior.”

  “This what?”

  “I’ll explain later. Put your hands on the dashboard. Here she comes!”

  The REO piled into the haystack and came to a stop, hay collapsing around the windows, steam and the smell of burned rubber rising through the floor.

  “How do you turn off the ignition?” Hackberry said.

  “You ask me this now? Look behind us. There are people coming on horseback.”

  “They probably want to he’p. People are pretty neighborly here’bouts. Andre, if you’re going to be taking me around San Antonio, you have to stop carrying on over a hill of beans. I’m just glad it was us driving and not Miss Beatrice. Anyway, let’s fix it and be on our way. You can drive if you want.”

  “You are allowing me to drive now?”

  “Yep, I’m plumb wore out. You didn’t happen to bring any sandwiches or coffee, did you?”

  Andre stared at Hackberry in disbelief.

  “You’re a mighty nice fellow,” Hackberry said. “But let’s face it, you definitely have a strange side to you. You were a voodoo priest?”

  “Why do you bring up the subject of voodoo at this particular time?”

  “I have to read up on it. From time to time I develop an abnormal bent myself. We might make a good team.”

  RUBY DANSEN COULD not untangle her thoughts as she walked up the road in the shade of the poplar trees to the building owned by Arnold Beckman. She was too tired, too hungry, and too forlorn to think in a rational way. Besides, what good did it do? She had learned long ago that orderly procedure and the world of courts and legality and collective reasoning, if there was ever such a thing, had little meaning when it came to the application of justice. The courts were the sanctuary of the rich and the bane of the poor. The radicals sometimes won in the streets but never in the courts. Patience was an illusion, faith in the process the equivalent of a Chinese opium pipe.

  She had been to the sheriff’s office and the city police department. At best, they were no help. At worst, they were in the employ of Arnold Beckman. Her son had been abducted from a public clinic, in front of witnesses, and had disappeared into a black hole. No one knew where he was, and no one cared. She stepped out of the shade into the sunlight, her eyes red, her skin chafed by the wind and dry as paper, her chest constricted as though her breath had been vacuumed from her lungs. She was glad she didn’t have a pistol in her purse, because there was a very good chance she would use it.

  She entered the breezeway. The doors to all the offices were locked. At the head of the stairway was a heavy door with a brass knocker. She mounted the steps and lifted the knocker and beat it as hard as she could against the steel plate. Maggie Bassett opened the door, her mouth swollen, dried blood on one nostril. “Here to attack me again?” she said.

  “Where is he?”

  Maggie turned her head, her hand still on the door. “Arnold, I think Miss Dansen wants to speak with you.”

  Ruby brushed past her. Then something happened that Ruby wasn’t expecting: Maggie’s fingers fumbled at her wrist. “Be careful, girl,” Maggie whispered.

  “Say that again?”

  “Nothing,” Maggie said, her face pointed down.

  Ruby walked into the living room, the rug deep under her shoes. Through a half-opened door, she saw a man rising from a floor-level bathtub, working a robe over his shoulders. His body was almost hairless and striped with scars that could have been inflicted with a lash or a knife or both; his thighs were thick and shaped like a satyr’s. He closed his robe and tied a laminated golden cord snugly around his hips. “You’re who?” he said.

  “Ishmael Holland’s mother. What have you done with him?”

  “Nothing. I offered him a job.”

  “You’re well known to us. You’re a liar and a union buster and a tool of the warmongers.”

  “Really, now? Who is ‘us’?”

  “The Western Federation of Miners and the United Mine Workers of America and the Industrial Workers of the World.”

  “Are the Molly Maguires in there?”

  “You’d better wipe that smirk off your face.”

  “You would rather Captain Holland not work for me because I’m a capitalistic warmonger? I fought against the forces of Kaiser Bill, just like your son, even though I’m Austrian by birth. How many profiteers went up the slopes at Gallipoli, madam? How many were with Lawrence in the Arabian Desert?”

  “You tell me where my son is, or I’m going to do something extreme.”

  “No, what you will do is turn your twat around and take it out of here.”

  “I’ve checked you out, Buster Brown. You’re a fraud. You got your scars in a Malaysian prison. You were a pimp.”

  Maggie looked at Beckman. “What’s she saying?”

  “I have no idea. Ask her,” he replied.

  “Where did you get your information, Ruby?” Maggie said. “Arnold has been in several wars.”

  “So have carrion birds,” Ruby said.

  “Arnold, you were at Flanders fields. Tell her.”

  “Get her out of here,” Beckman said.

  “Maybe you should leave, Ruby,” Maggie said.

  “Why do you let a man like this give you orders?” Ruby said.

  “He’s my employer.”

  “Did you sleep with my son? Is that how you got him down here?” Ruby said. Her cheeks pooled with color in the silence. A bird flew into the window glass. “You scheming bitch,” she said.

  “Let’s be done with this. Call the police, Maggie,” Beckman said.

  “Be done with this?” Ruby said. “You kidnap my wounded son and say ‘be done with this’?”

  “Madam, you have invaded my apartment, and you refuse to leave. I think you may be impaired.”

  “Something is burning,” Ruby said.

  “No, nothing is burning. Nothing here needs your attention,” he said. “There is only one duty you have to perform here, and that is to leave. Can you understand that? I look upon your son as a brother-in-arms. I can make him rich. Instead of thanking me, you come to my home and call me a pimp. Do normal people do that sort of thing? Would you please leave before you shame yourself and Captain Holland any worse than you have already?”

  Ruby sniffed at the air again. “You could burn your building down. Is that the door to the kitchen?”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Beckman said. “Did you hear me? Where are you going?”

  “Checking out your digs. What a grand place,” she said. “The building looks like a constipated circus elephant, but your apartment is elegant. You have all the new appliances and cookware? I was right, it’s a bit smoky in here. Maggie should take better care of you. What a lovely stove.”

  “Get on the phone,” Beckman said to Maggie.

  Maggie didn’t move.

  Ruby dragged the heavy skillet off the stove. She dumped the sandwich on the floor and went back into the living room. “This is for the miners at Ludlow and Cripple Creek and the boys who didn’t come back from the Marne.”

  She swung the skillet at Beckman’s head just as he raised his forearm to protect himself. The blow caught him on the cusp of his forehead, cutting a red star in the skin, scraping a la
yer off his nose, knocking him into the wall. His face went white with shock. The next blow caught him on the elbow, the next squarely across the face, slamming him into the wall again.

  He cupped his hand to his nose, strings of blood hanging from his fingers. She kicked his shins, forcing him to drop his hands and bend forward, then swung the skillet sideways against his ear, flattening it into his scalp. “Tell me where he is or your brains will be on the carpet,” she said.

  Beckman was half-collapsed against the wall, holding one hand to his nose, lifting the other for her to stop. He removed his hand from his nose so he could speak. “You could break a man on the wheel, woman, I’ll grant you that. But you’re stupid and ignorant. I am not the source of your problem. Your former common-law husband is.”

  Ruby raised the skillet again.

  “Don’t do it,” Maggie said. “Please. This will not get your son back. You’ve seen Arnold’s scars. He’s not afraid of pain. Talk to Hackberry. He’ll not listen to me, but he will to you.”

  Beckman picked up a candlestick phone from a table by the bathroom door and dialed the operator.

  “Ruby, please,” Maggie said. “We can work this out.”

  “With a man like this?”

  “Hackberry’s stubbornness brought all this about,” Maggie said.

  “I should have hit you with this skillet instead of him.”

  Beckman had the police on the line.

  Ruby dropped the skillet on the rug and wiped her hands on her sides. She looked at Maggie. “You betrayed Ishmael and handed him over to this piece of scum,” she said. “I think you’re the most treacherous person I’ve ever known.”

  “Say what you want. What you’re doing is stupid.”

  “Unless you give back my son, I’ll follow you and this man to the grave.”

  The whites of Maggie’s eyes were threaded with tiny broken blood vessels, as though she were on the verge of crying. Ruby walked out the door onto the landing. She thought it was over. Then she heard Maggie behind her.

  “You don’t know what you’ve done,” Maggie said.

  “Then tell me.”

  “He has Ishmael. With a snap of his fingers, he can turn your son’s life into the death of a thousand cuts.”