Feast Day of Fools

by James Lee Burke

  “You look tired,” Pam said.

  “You mean I look old.”

  “No, I don’t mean that at all.”

  “I’m fine. I’ve never been better.”

  “Pray that liars aren’t kept a long time in purgatory.”

  “Pam, you should have been a low-overhead dentist, someone who does fillings and extractions without the extra cost of Novocain.”

  She gazed out the window at the rain and at the drops of water beaded on the glass. Her eyelashes were reddish brown against the glow of the streetlamp; a wet strand of hair curved against her cheek. He couldn’t tell if she was thinking about the two of them or all the events of the past few days. She seemed to read his thoughts. “Why does a mass killer make himself vulnerable to arrest by buying stolen medicine from a junkie in order to take care of a stranger?” she said.

  “That’s what every one of them does.”

  “Every one of who does what?” she said.

  “All sociopaths. They do good deeds as a tribute to their own power and to convince others they’re like the rest of us.”

  “You don’t think Collins has any feelings about Noie Barnum?”

  “I think the only genuine emotion he’s capable of is self-pity.”

  “I don’t like to see you bitter.”

  He placed his fork on the side of his plate and poured cream from a small pitcher on top of his half-eaten wedge of blueberry pie. He picked up his fork and then hesitated and set it down again. “By the seventh-inning stretch, this is what you learn. Evil people are different from the rest of us. Redneck cops, Klansmen, predators who rape and murder children, ChiCom prison guards, and messianic head cases like Jack Collins, all of them want us to think they’re complex or they’re patriots or they’re ideologues. But the simple truth is, they do what they do because it makes them feel good.”

  “Would you have put that broken pool cue down that bartender’s throat?”

  “The bartender thought so. That’s all that counts.”

  “Don’t stop being who you are because of these guys. You’ve always said it yourself: Don’t give them that kind of power.”

  Hackberry stared out the window at the electricity trembling on the tree above the bronze figure of the doughboy. The statue’s head was turned slightly to one side, the mouth open, as though the doughboy were yelling an encouraging word over his shoulder to those following him across no-man’s-land. Did they know what awaited them? Did they know the Maxim machine guns that would turn them into chaff were the creation of a British inventor?

  Hackberry wondered who had erected the monument. He wanted to call them idiots or flag-wavers or members of the unteachable herd. But words such as those were as inaccurate as they were jaundiced and hateful, he thought. In our impotence to rescind all the decisions that led to war, we erected monuments to assuage the wandering spirits whose lives had been stolen, and to somehow compensate the family members whose loss they would carry to the grave. Who were the greater victims? Those who gave their lives or those who made the war?

  He said none of these things and instead watched a man in a wilted hat park his car in front of the café and come inside.

  “Ethan Riser is here,” Hackberry said. “There’s something I didn’t tell you about him. He found out recently he has terminal cancer. No matter what he says tonight, he gets a free pass.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t think he wants other people to know. He’s one of those guys who never shows his hole card, even when the game is over.”

  She pinched her eyes with her thumb and index finger, then widened them, the lines in her face flattening. “I’m not to be trusted?” she said.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “You treat me like I’m some kind of burden you have to put up with, someone you have to instruct regarding decent behavior.”

  “Come on, Pam, stop it.”

  “You have no sense at all of the pain your words cause, particularly to someone who cares about you. Goddammit, Hack.”

  He let out his breath and tried to keep his face empty when he waved at Ethan Riser.

  “Just go fuck yourself,” she said.

  “Did I walk in on anything?” Ethan said, not looking directly at either one of them, his smile awkward.

  “How you doin’?” Hackberry said.

  “Pretty good. Can I join you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hackberry said.

  “You sure?”

  “Sit down, Ethan,” Hackberry said, moving over, not looking at Pam.

  “Lorca is out of surgery,” Riser said. “It’s nice to see you, Chief Deputy.”

  “You, too,” Pam replied.

  “Lorca told me about the ambulance attendant and the possibility of Jack Collins and Noie Barnum being in the Glass Mountains. I have the feeling you might be headed up there, Sheriff.”

  “I can’t say I’ve given it any thought,” Hackberry replied.

  “I have trouble believing that,” Riser said. “This time out, you and Chief Deputy Tibbs need to stay in your own bailiwick. I can’t order you to do that, but I can ask you.”

  “Whatever we decide to do, we’ll coordinate with the Bureau,” Hackberry said.

  “Ever hear how Pretty Boy Floyd died?”

  “Shot down while running from some federal agents on a farm in Ohio?”

  “Something like that. Except there’s an unofficial account to the effect that he didn’t die right away. He was wounded and lying on his back when the agents got to him. One agent asked him if he was Pretty Boy Floyd. Floyd answered, ‘I’m Charles Arthur Floyd.’ Then somebody gave the order to finish him off, and that’s what they did.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Hackberry said.

  “It makes for a good story, that’s all.”

  “It’s not your style.”

  “Probably not,” Riser said. “I’d sure like some of that pie.”

  “Ethan, did you hear me? That’s not your style.”

  “I’m all talk. You know that. Miss, could I have a piece of that blueberry pie with some ice cream on it and a cup of coffee?”

  “It’s on us,” Pam said.

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Listen to Hack, Agent Riser.”

  “Of course.”

  The waitress brought the pie and ice cream and coffee, and Pam and Hackberry watched Ethan Riser eat. They also watched the way his eyes crinkled and the way his gaze seemed to probe the darkness outside the window, and each sensed in the other the embarrassment they felt while they watched a brave man try to mask the fact that he was under a death sentence.

  “This area has never been quite real to me,” Riser said. “It’s a place where nothing is what it seems. A piece of moonscape where improbable people live and lunatics can hide in plain sight.”

  “All empires have their dustbins,” Hackberry said. “It’s the place we bury our sins.”

  “That’s too deep for me.”

  “What do I know?” Hackberry said.

  “A lot more than the Bureau wants to concede,” Riser said. “They consider you a pain in the ass. Stay out of the Glass Mountains, my friend.”

  PAM DROVE HACKBERRY home in the rain. The fields were sodden on either side of the road, the sky black, the long lines of cedar fence posts and barbed wire glistening in the cruiser’s headlights. “He’s going to cool out Collins?” she said.

  “I think that was all rhetoric. He’s angry because he has to die. Ethan’s a straight arrow. People like him make a pact with themselves and never violate it.”

  “I told you to go fuck yourself earlier.”

  “Forget it.”

  “No, I meant it. I just shouldn’t have put it that way.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m old, Pam. You think it’s honorable for an old man to take advantage of a young woman’s affections? You want to become romantically involved with a man who would use a young and att
ractive woman, knowing eventually he would be a burden to her?”

  “I think age doesn’t have crap to do with any of it. With you, it’s all about pride. You’ve never forgiven yourself for the mistakes of your youth, so you have to create a standard that’s superior to everyone else’s. It’s not a lot different from the bad guys who are always trying to convince themselves of their own humanity.”

  “That’s a rotten thing to say.”

  “Too bad.”

  He could feel his left temple throbbing again, and he knew that in the next few seconds, a sliver of pain as cold and hard as a stalactite would slide through his eye and the muscles of his left cheek. Up ahead, he saw his house suddenly illuminated by a bolt of lightning that struck in the trees behind his office, the same trees where Jack Collins had hidden and trained a laser sight on him. “You don’t have to pull into the drive. Just drop me on the road,” he said.

  “You like walking in an electric storm?”

  “In this case, I do.”

  “Too bad again,” she said.

  She drove across a wood bridge that spanned a creek running high with rainwater, the wild roses along the bank trailing in the current; then she turned in to his driveway and stopped at the picket fence that enclosed the front yard. “You think I’m unfair?” she said.

  “I don’t think anything,” he said, getting out of the cruiser.

  “There’s an umbrella in the backseat.”

  “I’ve got my hat,” he said, closing the passenger door.

  She reached into the backseat and gathered up the umbrella and stepped out into the rain. She tried to pop it open, but the catch was jammed.

  “Get back in the cruiser,” he said.

  But she didn’t. She followed him up the flagstones to the gallery. She was wearing a department-issue campaign hat, and the rain was beating on the crown and the brim, rolling in rivulets down her shoulders and shirtfront. “I think I should resign, Hack. I think I should go back to Houston,” she said.

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Who the hell are you to tell me anything?”

  “I’m your boss, that’s who.”

  “I can’t tell you how bad you piss me off.”

  He walked back down the flagstones and took the umbrella from her hand and popped it open above both their heads. He could hear the rain thudding as hard as marbles on the nylon. “You’re the most stubborn woman I have ever met. Why do you act like this?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Come in.”

  “For what?”

  “Just come in.”

  He put his arm over her shoulders and walked her up the steps and unlocked the door and held it open for her. The living room was unlit and smelled of the couch and the carpet and the drapes and the wallpaper and the polished hardwood floors; it smelled like a home; it smelled like a fine place to be while lightning flashed on the hillsides and the wind and rain blew against the windowpanes and whipped an unfastened door on the barn and bent the trees and scattered the lawn with leaves and broken flowers. He dropped the umbrella on the rug and touched her face with his fingers, and in seconds felt her against him, her feet standing on top of his boots, her loins and breasts tight against his body, her hair wet against his cheek, her arms clenched around his back, all his personal resolve and his concerns about age and mortality and honor draining like water through the bottom of a paper bag.

  “Oh, Hack,” she said. “Oh, Hack, Hack, Hack.”

  FROM HIS DECK Cody Daniels watched the storm move out of the south and seal the sky, trapping the light between a blue-black layer of clouds and the desert floor and mesas that were pink and talc-colored and that made him think of pictures of ancient Phoenician ships he had seen. When the power outage spread across the county, he saw the reflected glow of the town flatten against the clouds and die, a surge of cool air rising from the valley floor into his face. Hailstones clattered on the hardpan and on the deck, dancing in a white haze, and in the smell of ozone and the drop of temperature, he felt as though the world were fresh and clean, as though every bad memory of his life were being washed away, every failure and personal affliction slipping over the edges of the earth.

  If only things were that easy.

  Cody started up his gas-powered generator and went back in the house to resume the most difficult task in his life—writing a letter to the FBI. He had attempted a half-dozen versions on his computer and had been unhappy with all of them. His language was either stilted and sounded self-serving, or it became so confused it was almost unintelligible. The last attempt was two double-spaced pages long and gave details about his recruitment into a small group of anti-abortion activists in northern Virginia. It wasn’t a bad statement, except it indiscriminately included the names of his fellow travelers, some of whom may have been unaware of the group’s ultimate goal.

  He had gone out on the deck without saving the letter on his hard drive, and the power outage had wiped his screen clean. When he reentered the house, the lights burning dimly on the low wattage produced by his generator, he sat down at his desk and picked up a felt-tip pen and addressed an envelope to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C., no zip code. He put his return address in the upper-left-hand corner of the envelope. Then he wrote the following letter on a yellow legal pad:

  Dear Sirs,

  I am the pitiful son of a bitch who bought the oven timer for the bomb that blew up the abortion clinic outside Baltimore three years back. I thought the bomb would go off in the middle of the night. But that doesn’t help the woman who got her face blown off. I can’t give you the names of any of the other people involved. This letter is about the evil deed done by one son of a bitch and one son of a bitch only, and as I have stated, that son of a bitch is yours truly,

  Sincerely,

  Rev. Cody Daniels

  From outside, he heard the hiss of air brakes and the sound of a tractor-trailer shifting down. He looked through the window and, in the rain-streaked fading of the twilight, saw an eighteen-wheeler parked by the Cowboy Chapel, its high beams on, the engine still hammering, and what appeared to be a lead car parked in front of it. Cody had seen the lead car before, without the clamped-on brace of yellow lights on the roof; it belonged to a musician, a man who stopped by on occasion at the Cowboy Chapel and drank coffee and ate doughnuts in the hospitality room Cody left open for truckers or travelers on their way to the Big Bend country.

  Cody draped a slicker over his head and went down the wood steps to the coffee room in the back of the chapel. “Getting out of the storm?” he said to a small tight-bodied man sitting at the long table in the middle of the room, a chrome-plated guitar across his thighs.

  “Hey, Reverend, I didn’t see you, so I just come inside,” the man said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “That’s what it’s for. The name is Rector, isn’t it?”

  “Dennis Rector, that’s me,” the man replied. “I saw your nail gun there. You’ve been doing some carpentering.”

  “You play a Dobro?”

  “You know your instruments. That’s what it is, resonator and all.” The small man had the dark skin of a field hand and hair that looked like it had been cut with fingernail clippers. He wore lace-up boots and a tie-dyed T-shirt and denim work pants. His upper torso was bent like a question mark. “It’s a Fender, built on the old National model. It feels like a Coca-Cola box packed with ice hanging from your neck.”

  Dennis Rector ran a steel bar up and down the neck of the Dobro and began playing a tune with the steel picks on the thumb and index and middle fingers of his right hand. “Recognize that piece? That’s ‘The Great Speckled Bird.’ Same tune as ‘The Wild Side of Life.’ Same tune as ‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.’”

  Through the window, Cody could see two men sitting in the cab of the eighteen-wheeler. “What are y’all carrying?” he asked.

  “Exotic animals. Want one?”

  “You work for a zoo?
”

  “I guess you could call it that.” Dennis Rector was smiling as though he possessed private knowledge that he might or might not share. “We supply a wild-game ranch up in Pecos County.”

  Cody nodded and didn’t reply.

  “You’re not keen on them kind of places?”

  “Live and let live.”

  “That’s the way I figure it. Their misfortune and none of my own. You know you got some beaners parked down yonder on your road?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Some pepper-bellies in a beat-up old car with a busted headlight.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Maybe a couple of people fucking. How should I know? I couldn’t see them that good.” The small man was still smiling.

  “This is a church house, even if it’s just the coffee room,” Cody said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Did you catch the tag?”

  “I wasn’t paying them much mind. They looked away from our lights when we passed. That’s why I figure they were people making out. Mexicans tend to breed in the spring and domino in the winter.”

  Cody studied Dennis Rector from behind his eyelashes. “You from here’bouts?”

  “Wherever I hang my hat. Jobs are kind of thin these days. Seems like there’s less and less work for a white man. What’s your feeling about that?”

  “I never lost a job ’cause of my skin color.”

  “That sounds different from a couple of your sermons.”

  “Could I he’p y’all with something?”

  “No, I just wanted to show my friends your church and get out of the storm.”

  Cody nodded again, looking out the door at the truck and the animals he could see behind the ventilation slots in the sides. “You mind locking up when you leave? I’ve got some work to do in the house.”

  The small man filled his mouth with a jelly doughnut, pushing the overflow back into his mouth with his wrist. His chrome-plated instrument swam with an oily blue light. “No problem, Reverend,” he said.