Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

“Go swimming or chase golf balls if you like. Believe me, I’m up to my eyes with it.”

He stood up, his face slightly hurt and angry, and walked across the clipped grass to the clubhouse. I knew that in a half hour he would be back as though nothing had been said, and then later he would start to bore in again. Bailey was a good man, but he was simply unteachable.

The Senator moved about the court like a man twenty years younger than his age. I have to admit that he looked good out there. The matted gray hair on his chest and his thick, muscular shoulders glistened with sweat, and he whocked the ball in a white streak across the net. For a short man he had a fine driving serve, and his backhand was always accurate and strong. He had a good eye for court distance, and most of his shots just skimmed the top of the net and hit in a low bounce on the clay. Verisa was a good tennis player, but he took her in two easy sets. The Senator was a competitor, and his gentlemanly affectation ended when he entered the games.

They joined me at the table, and the waiter served us a cold lunch of peeled shrimp on cracked ice. For the next hour I listened to the Senator’s advice on my campaign, the upcoming year in Congress, and contributions from several oil companies (the checks, which already amounted to over sixty-five thousand dollars, had all been deposited by Bailey in a special account in Austin). Then I was told indirectly, with compassion, to avoid public statements on civil rights, at least while in Texas, and that I shouldn’t lean too far toward labor, since as a Democrat I could already count on their vote. I nodded my head and listened as intelligently as possible, but my hangover wouldn’t let go and few of his sentences seemed to have any relationship to one another. Actually, more than any instruction in Texas politics, he wanted to exact penance from me because of yesterday, and I was in the perfect condition for it—a mental cripple.

“Next week I plan to visit the wounded Vietnam veterans in Walter Reed,” he said. “I think it might be good for you to come along.”

“Why’s that?”

“You were wounded yourself in Korea. I think the boys like to know that they have congressmen who understand what they’ve been through.”

“I’m afraid I had enough of V.A. hospitals, Senator,” I said.

“We’ll be there an hour or so. Then you’ll be back home the same night.”

“I better pass.”

“Go on, Hack. Bailey will be at the office,” Verisa said.

“No, I don’t—”

“You need a trip. Enjoy it,” Bailey said. He had come back from the clubhouse fresh with resolve.

“I spent two months in the V.A. in ’53 and I really—” I was smiling in my best convivial way.

“This type of exposure is important to you, Hack,” the Senator said.

Fuck it, I thought. “All right, Senator. I’ll be glad to.”

We finished lunch and played a set of doubles. Verisa and I stood the Senator and Bailey, and the sweat rolled down my face and chest in rivulets. My timing was bad, my movements uncoordinated, and I drove most of my serves into the bottom of the net. My head was thundering from the heat and exertion. The air seemed so humid that it was like steam on my skin. If Bailey hadn’t been such a bad player we would have lost the set six games straight, but Verisa managed to keep us only one game behind. I was even proud of her. In her short white tennis skirt and cap with a green visor she was the loveliest thing on the courts. Her legs and shoulders were freckled with suntan, her auburn hair wet and shining on the back of her neck, and you could get a good look at her lovely bottom when she bent over with her serve.

We went into the final game five to four, and I wanted to beat the Senator very badly. He played confidently, controlling the back line with an easy sweep of his racket in either direction. His thick eyebrows were heavy with perspiration, and his blue eyes refracted a mean success every time he drove the ball into my shoelaces.

However, I soon learned that the Senator’s revenge for yesterday wasn’t complete yet. I moved up to the net for the final point, Verisa served, and Bailey returned the ball in an easy, high-arching lob. I whocked it with all the strength in my shoulder straight into the Senator. The game should have been over and the set tied, but the Senator caught my drive with one short, forearm chop of the racket, and smashed the ball murderously into my face. My sunglasses broke on the court, my eyes watered uncontrollably, and I felt the blood running from my nose. Through the tears I could see him walking quickly toward me, his face gathered in concern, but there was victory in his eyes.

Later, Verisa drove us back to the hotel while I held a blood-flecked towel filled with ice cubes to my nose. The bridge was already swollen, and there was a sickening taste in the back of my throat. I tilted my head back on the seat and looked with one eye out the window at the stream of angry traffic along South Main. At the court the Senator had apologized in his most empathic manner, the tennis pro arrived with a first-aid kit and tried to push cotton balls up my nose, a Negro waiter put another vodka and tomato juice on the table and left, and now Bailey sat in the backseat talking about going to the hospital for an X ray.

“Do you think it’s broken?” Verisa said.

“No, he just flattened it a little. A warning,” I said. My words were nasal and smothered under the towel.

“It was an accident,” Bailey said. “You cut the ball right into him.”

“Why don’t you get off the goodguymanship ethic? Leave the Boy Scouts for a while, at least till we get to the hotel,” I said. “He was out to tear my head off.”

“That’s hangover paranoia.”

“Oh, shit,” I said.

“How many U.S. Senators would spend their time trying to help a thirty-five-year-old lawyer’s political career?”

“Don’t you know a sonofabitch when you see one?”

“You’re constructing things to fit some strange frame of reference in your own mind.”

“You’re an amateur, Bailey. You better learn to recognize sophisticated viciousness.”