Rain Gods (50 page)

“Some of the Asian women had eight-ball hemorrhages. I see their eyes staring at me in my sleep. I want Collins dead. I want this guy Arthur Rooney dead and this guy Hugo Cistranos dead. The feds are after a Russian out in Phoenix. Their workload is greater than ours, and their priorities are different from ours. It’s that simple.”

“I doubt they’ll be that tolerant.”

“That’s their problem.”

“Flores seems like a nice kid, but he’s a five-star fuckup.”

“Y’all talking about me?” Pete said from the doorway.

Pam Tibbs’s face turned as red as a sunburn. Pete was smiling, silhouetted against the sunrise, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of fresh jeans he had tucked into his boots.

“We were wondering if you and Vikki would like to have breakfast with us,” Hackberry said.

“There’s something I didn’t pass on yesterday,” Pete said. “I don’t think it’s a big deal, but Vikki did. When Danny Boy picked us up, he had to stop for gas at that filling station run by Ouzel Flagler’s brother. I just thought I’d mention it.”

Pam Tibbs looked at Hackberry, her lips pursed, her eyes lidless.

“Some people say Ouzel is mixed up with Mexican dope mules and such, but I don’t set a lot of store in that. He seems pretty much a harmless guy to me. What do y’all think?” Pete said.

THE FIRST MORNING that he woke in Preacher’s tent, Bobby Lee could feel the difference in the temperature. He pushed open the flap and felt a great cushion of cool air rising off the earth, glazing the mesas and monument rocks and creosote brush and spavined trees with dew, even staining the soil with dark areas of moisture, as though an erratic rain shower had blown across the land during the night.

Preacher was still asleep on his cot, his head deep in a striped pillow that had no pillowcase and had been stained by the grease from his hair. Bobby Lee went outside and used the chemical toilet and started a fire in the woodstove. He filled a spouted metal pot with water from the hundred-gallon drum Preacher had paid four Mexicans to mount on eight-foot stanchions; he poured coffee grounds into the pot and set it on the stove. When the sun broke above the horizon, the wood framing of Preacher’s new house, constructed by the same Mexicans—all illegals who spoke no English—stood out in skeletal relief against the vastness of the landscape, as though it did not belong there or, if it did, it marked the beginning of a great societal and environmental change about to take place. The wind came up, and Bobby Lee watched the burned books from Preacher’s house that had been bulldozed into a pile of debris blow away in gray and blackened scraps of paper. Was a change of some kind taking place before Bobby Lee’s eyes? Was he witness to events that, as Preacher constantly suggested, were prophesied thousands of years ago?

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 with 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.”