Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

“Just ease up on the batter a little bit.”

“Don’t walk away, Hack. If you blow this for us, I’ll divorce you and sue for the home. Then I’ll repay you in the most fitting way I can think of. I’ll cover that historical cemetery of yours with concrete.”

I took the bottle of whiskey and my glass from the bar and slammed the bedroom door behind me. I could feel the anger beating in my head and the veins swelling in my throat. I seldom became angry about anything, but this time she had reached inside me hard and had gotten a good piece between her nails. I drank out of the bottle twice and started to change clothes. My face was flushed with heat in the mirror. I kicked my trousers against the wall and pulled off my shirt, stripping the buttons. I stood in my underwear and had another drink, this time with measured sips. The whiskey began to flatten out inside me, and I felt a single drop of perspiration run down off an eyebrow. Hold it in, sonofabitch, I thought. The Lone Ranger never blows his Kool-Aid. You just give the sheriff a silver bullet and let Tonto pour you a drink. But Verisa had really been off her style this time. She had collected a valise of surgical tools during the day for an entry into all my vital organs. In fact, I didn’t know whether to mark this to her debit or credit. As I said, in the past she could always load all of her outrage into a quiet hypodermic needle, thrust subtly into the right place (her best probe, the one she used after I had done something especially painful to that private part of her soul, was to go limp and indifferent under me, her arms spread back on the pillows, during my disabling moment of climax).

I had one more drink, just enough to go over the back of the tongue, then brushed my teeth, took three aspirins and two vitamin pills, and rinsed out my whiskey breath with Listerine. I dressed in an Italian silk shirt, a dark tie, and a pressed white suit, and rubbed the polish smooth on my boots with a damp towel. I lit a cigar and breathed out the smoke in the mirror. You’re all right, Masked Man, I thought.

I heard Verisa open the front door, then the voices of Bailey and Senator Dowling.

“Hack,” Verisa said, tapping her fingernails lightly on my door. I knew she had already gone into her transformation as the pleasant wife of a congressional candidate. It was amazing how fast it could take place.

I stepped out of the bedroom and shook hands with the Senator.

“How are you, Hack?” he said, his face healthy and cheerful. He was fifty-five years old, but his handshake was still hard and his wrist strong. He was six inches shorter than I, solidly built, his shoulders pulled straight back, and his white hair trimmed close to the scalp. His acetylene-blue eyes were bright and quick, impossible to penetrate, and you knew after he glanced confidently into your face that his lack of height was no disadvantage to him. He had the small, hard chest of a professional soldier, and his tailored suit didn’t have a fold or a bulge in it. He wore dentures, and they caused him to lisp slightly with his Texas accent, but otherwise he was solid. Also, Senator Dowling had managed to remain a strong southern figure through five administrations. He had been on many sides over the years, and he always walked out of the ballpark with the winning team (and therein lay his gift, the ability to sense change before anyone else got a whiff of it). He was put into Congress by a one-million-acre southwest Texas corporation ranch in 1940, and in the next two years he paid off his obligations by sponsoring large subsidies for growing nothing on arid land. Then he represented the oil interests, the franchised utility companies, and the Houston and Dallas industries up on antitrust suits. He assured his constituents that he was a segregationist until the Kennedy administration, then he backed one of the first civil rights bills. In the meantime he acquired a three-thousand-acre ranch in the Hill Country north of Austin, and stock in almost every major corporation in Texas with a defense contract.

“Fine, Senator. How

have you been?” I said.

“Good. Relaxing at the ranch. Fishing and playing tennis a little bit before the campaign.”

“Hack, fix the Senator a drink,” Verisa said.

“Thank you. A half jigger and some soda will be fine,” he said.

“You should try the bass in Hack’s ponds,” Bailey said. He sat in one of the tall bar chairs with his arm over the back. Good old Bailey, I thought. He could always come through with an inane remark at the right time. He looked like my twin, except five years older and fifteen pounds heavier, with wrinkles in his forehead and neck. Bailey was a practical man who worried about all the wrong things.

“I’d hoped to talk with you earlier today,” the Senator said, and looked straight into my face with those acetylene-blue eyes.

“I had to stop over in Austin with a client. Maybe we can talk after my speech,” I said.

“Verisa says you’re having people up for drinks later. I’d rather we have some time between ourselves.”

“Hack, we’re invited for breakfast at the River Oaks Country Club in the morning,” Bailey said. “Maybe the Senator can join us. You all can talk, and then we’ll play some doubles.”

“That sounds fine,” the Senator said. “I could use a couple of sets against an ex–Baylor pitcher.”

The sonofabitch, I thought.

“My opponent hasn’t somehow organized his ragtail legions, has he?”

“Oh no, no. I don’t think we need to spend too much time on this gentleman.” He laughed with his healthy smile. “I wanted to talk with you about several things that will come later in Washington. Your father helped me a great deal when I was first elected to Congress, and I learned then that it’s invaluable to have an experienced friend.”

I handed him his highball glass with the half jigger and soda. He had learned to be a cautious person with liquor, and I knew he wouldn’t finish the glass I had given him.

“Well, I appreciate it, Senator. But I don’t know how good my Baylor arm will be on the court,” I said, biting down inside myself.

“Hack is defensive tonight,” Verisa said.

“He should be,” the Senator said. His eyes took on a deeper blue with his smile.

“I have a weak serve, but I’m hell on defending the net,” I said. “One flash of the wrist and I drive tennis balls into concrete.”

“We had better go downstairs pretty soon,” Bailey said. His face was flat, but his discomfort showed in the nervous tic of his fingers on his trouser leg.

“I don’t expect that our audience will disappear,” the Senator said. “They usually have their way of waiting, as a U.S. Senator sometimes does.”

Sorry, you bastard. I’m all out of sackcloth and ashes tonight, I thought. I set my cigar in the ashtray and poured an inch of Jack Daniel’s into a glass. Bailey’s face began to tighten in the silence. Verisa’s eyes waited on me, her lips pinched slightly, but I held out. I sipped the whiskey and drew in on the cigar as though the conversation were far removed from me.