Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

“You ain’t going to tip me later, are you?” he said.

“I left my planter’s hat in the car.”

He laughed and his round black face and brown eyes glistened with good humor. “You’re all right,” he said, and went out the screen door with the college boy.

“You always do this on a case?” the girl said.

“No. I usually don’t drink with the people I know. Most of them belong to the ethic of R. C. Richardson and the Dallas Petroleum Club. They like to throw glasses and urinate off hotel balconies. They also like to feel waitresses under the table. R. C. Richardson is a very unique guy. In the last fifteen years he’s taken the state and the federal government for a little less than one million dollars. He wears yellow cowboy boots, striped western pants, and a string tie, and he has a one-hundred-pound stomach that completely covers his hand-tooled belt. Three days a week he sits in the Kiwanis and Rotary and Chamber of Commerce luncheons and belches on his boiled weenies and sauerkraut, and then rises like a soldier and says the pledge of allegiance with his hand over his heart. But actually, the guy has class. The others around him are clandestine in their midnight dealings and worm’s-eye view of the world. They don’t have his sincere feeling for vulgarity.”

“He must be an interesting man to work for,” she said.

“Do you have another beer in the icebox?”

“This is the last one. Take it.”

“I never take a girl’s last drink. It shows a lack of gentility.”

“You are from outer space.”

I could feel the blood tingling in my hands and face. My scalp started to sweat from the whiskey.

“What’s your name, anyway?” I bit the end off a cigar.

“Rie Velasquez.”

“You’re not Mexican.”

“No.”

“So what are you?” I reached over and took the beer bottle out of her hand.

“My father was Spanish. He came from Spain during the Civil War.”

I let the beer and foam roll down my throat over the dry taste of the whiskey and cigar smoke.

“Hence, you joined the Third World Liberation Front. The gasoline and dynamite gang.”

“You ought to change your brand of whiskey.”

“Right or wrong? Didn’t they incinerate a few college buildings in the last year?”

“Don’t you think that sounds a bit dumb?”

“Bullshit. Ten of those people could have a whole city in flames within twenty-four hours.”

She took a cigarette from the pack in her blue jeans and lit it. She pinched the end between her lips as she drew in on the smoke.

“What type of bag do you think we operate out of, man?” she said. “Did you see any kerosene rags and coal oil hidden under the porch? You believe we all came down here because of your tourist brochures about the scenic loveliness of the Texas desert?”

“I just don’t buy that revolution shit.”

“Why don’t you read something about the United Farm Workers? They don’t have anything to do with revolution. They’re tired of being niggers in somebody’s watermelon patch.”

“Yow!” the Negro yelled, as he kicked open the screen door with a case of beer on one shoulder and a block of ice wrapped in newspaper on the other. “Man, we got it. Spodiodi and brew. We’re in tall cotton tonight, brothers.”

The college boy carried the second case of beer, and the boy with the guitar had already cut the seal on the bottle of Jack Daniel’s. They put the two cases on the old grocery counter, and the Negro chopped up the ice with a butcher knife and spread it over the bottles. He opened the first bottle by putting the cap against the edge of the counter and striking downward quickly with the flat of his hand. The white foam showered up over his head and splattered on the floor. He covered the lip of the bottle with his mouth and drank until it was almost empty. The beer streamed down his chin into the matted black hair on his chest.

“Lord, you can’t beat that,” he said.