Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

She looked up at me with her bright, happy eyes, and I wondered when I would stop discovering things about her.

I bought a bottle of cold duck in town, and we drove down the corrugated road through the Mexican district to the union headquarters. The beer tavern was roaring with noise, and fat women sat on the front porches of their paint-blistered houses, fanning themselves in the heat. Rie walked up the path in front of me, lifting her shirt off her breasts with her fingertips. The rusted Dr Pepper thermometer nailed to the porch post read 106 degrees, and the sky was so hot and blue that a cloud would have looked like an ugly scratch on it. Rie opened the screen door and a yellow envelope fell down from the jamb at her feet.

“Hey, buddy, somebody found you,” she said.

I set the heavy bottle of cold duck on the porch railing and tore open the telegram with my finger. Flies hummed in the shade of the building.

Where the hell are you anyway. Had to cancel speech last nite in San Antonio. Senator has called three times. Verisa quite worried. Hack do you want in or out.

Bailey.

Rie looked at me quietly with her back against the screen.

“It’s just my goddamn brother with his peptic ulcer,” I said.

“What is it?”

“I was supposed to make a speech to the Lions or Rotary last night.”

“Is that all of it?” Her quiet eyes watched my face.

“Bailey thinks an offense against the business community has the historical importance of World War III.” I folded the telegram and put it in my shirt pocket. “He’s probably swallowing pills by the bottle right now. Do you have a telephone?”

“There’s one down in the beer joint.”

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Put the wine in the icebox.”

“All right, Hack.”

“I mean, I don’t want the poor bastard to rupture his ulcer on a Sunday.”

“Go on. I’ll be here.”

I walked down the road in the hot light to the tavern. Inside, the bar was crowded with Mexican field hands and cedar-cutters, dancers bumped against the plastic jukebox, and billiard balls clattered across the torn green covering of an old pool table. Cigarette smoke drifted in clouds against the ceiling. I called the house collect from the pay phone on the wall, bending into the receiver away from the noise, then heard Bailey’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Where are you?” he said.

“In a bowling alley. What’s it sound like?”

“I mean where?”

“In Pueblo Verde, where you sent your telegram. What the hell are you doing at the house, anyway?”

“Verisa’s pretty upset. You’d better get back home.”

“What is this shit, Bailey? You knew why I had to leave Friday.”

“The Senator wasn’t very pleasant with her when he called here, and maybe all of us are just a little t

ired of you not showing up when you’re supposed to. They waited the banquet an hour for you before they called our answering service, and I had to drive to San Antonio at ten o’clock and offer an apology for you.”

“Look, you arranged that crap without asking me first, and you knew when I left Austin that I wouldn’t be back this weekend. So you hang that bag of shit on the right pair of horns, buddy. And if the Senator wants to be unpleasant with someone, I’ll give you this number or the one at the motel.”

“Why do you want to behave like this, Hack? You’ve got all the easy things right in your hand.”

A pair of drunk dancers knocked against me, and then waved their hands at me, smiling, as they danced back onto the floor in the roar of noise.

“I just want a goddamn weekend free of migraine headaches and Kiwanians and telegrams,” I said. “I’ll be back at the office in a couple of days. In the meantime you can schedule yourself for the next round of speeches with the civic club account.”