Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

Hershel walked past the soda cooler and the ice chute into the darkness. There seemed to be bottle caps everywhere, crunching like glass under his feet. The sensation reminded him of walking barefoot as a boy on a gravel road in rural Louisiana, when his father worked all day for a dollar-and-a-half WPA grocery order.

The wind was colder, blowing through the trees on the unlit street where his truck was parked in the shadows. Behind him, he heard Lawrence stacking crates and pushing the broom along the concrete walkway by the side of the icehouse. An unmarked prewar Ford was parked by a fire hydrant, its hood pointed toward West Alabama, giving the occupants a clear view of the icehouse, the plank tables under the canopy, and Hershel’s truck. When Hershel stepped off the curb, he felt as though he had set his foot down on the deck of a ship just after it had pitched into a trough. He heard both doors of the Ford squeak open and two men get out on the asphalt. He removed his truck keys from the pocket of his leather jacket and opened the truck and dropped the keys on the back floor. When he turned around, he was facing the two men, who wore suits and hats with wilted felt brims.

“I was fixing to take a nap, not drive,” he said.

One man was duck-footed and had short, thick legs and a chest like an upended beer keg. The other man was tall and lean all over, his posture as stiff as a coat hanger. “I’m Detective Hubert Slakely, Houston PD,” he said. “Are you carrying a firearm?”

“I own one. It’s at my house. So I cain’t say as I’m carrying it.”

“Your name is Hershel Pine?”

“Yes, sir, it is. I’m not aiming to drive this truck anywhere, if that’s the issue.”

“There’s a report you’re suicidal.”

“I don’t figure I’m worth shooting. So why would I want to waste money buying a bullet to shoot a person I consider worthless?”

The detective took off his hat and drew a comb through his hair. The moon was shining through the live oak over the street. Hershel could see a peculiar luminosity in the detective’s eyes, one he had seen in the eyes of Klansmen and redneck sheriff’s deputies and gunbulls who worked in Angola and cashed their checks at Margaret’s whorehouse in Opelousas. All of them sought a badge, a flag, a banner; it didn’t matter what kind. Their enemy was the human race.

The detective clipped his comb inside his shirt pocket and replaced his hat on his head. “Would you mind putting your hands on the side of the vehicle?”

“I’m too tired. I think I need my nap now.”

“It beats a night in jail.”

“I cain’t say. I’ve never been in a jail. I know you, don’t I? Or at least your name.”

“Lean against the truck and spread your feet.”

“I not only know who you are, I know why you’re here and who you work for,” Hershel said. He could feel a fish bone in his throat. He coughed and started over. “Your name gets around. You’re the one who arrested Rosita Holland.”

“Now I’m arresting you.” Slakely removed a pair of handcuffs from a leather pouch on his belt. “Turn around, please.”

“If my father was here, he’d tell y’all to kiss his butt. Or he might give you a whipping. I ain’t going to no damn jail. The man who thinks he can put me there had better—”

That was as far as he got. The blackjack had been handmade by a convict and was tapered like a darning sock, the lead ball on the heavy end wrapped in rawhide, the lower end mounted on a spring and wood handle that doubled the velocity of the blow. Hershel bounced off the side of the truck and struck the concrete on his face. Slakely leaned over and beat him in the back and shoulders as though breaking up ice in a washtub. Then he began kicking Hershel with the point of his shoe, holding on to the truck for purchase, kicking every exposed place on his body he could target.

“Captains,” said the black man named Lawrence. “He’s just drunk. He didn’t mean no harm.”

Slakely turned around. “You better get out of here, Sambo.”

“Yes, suh.”

“You tell anybody about what you saw here, we’ll be back.”

“Yes, suh, I know that.”

“Glad we agree.”

For seconds or perhaps minutes, the only sound Hershel could hear was the wind in the oak limbs and the easy drift and sweep of leaves across the asphalt. The voices of the two police officers sounded as though they were resonating off the walls of a well that had no bottom.

“Is he—?”

“No, he’s all right. When you cain’t see the blood is when you got a problem.”

“You kind of lost control, Hubert. Jesus Christ.”

“He was resisting. He had it coming. There’s no problem here.”