Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

But he wasn’t looking at us any longer. His red eyes stared over my shoulder in the direction of the county road, and I turned around and saw the two black and white sheriff’s cars, followed by three carloads of townspeople, rolling toward us in the dust. The whip aerials sprang back and forth on their springs, and muscular, shirt-sleeved arms hung out the windows of the other cars, beating against the door sides. The wind flattened the clouds of dust across the road, and a moment later two Texas Ranger cars closed the distance with the rest of the caravan.

“It ain’t cool no more, whiskey brother,” the Negro said.

The line of cars pulled into the gravel bedding along the railway track, and the Rangers and deputy sheriffs walked casually toward the two Rangers in sunglasses who were leaning against their automobile and looking at the priest. The other men stayed behind and formed in a group by a boxcar, their hands in their back pockets, their faces tight, spitting tobacco juice into the rocks, and glaring at the Mexicans and the Negroes. They had crew cuts and faces put together out of shingles, and they wore T-shirts or blue jean jackets with the sleeves cut off at the armpits. There were tattoos of Confederate flags and Easter crosses, Mother and the United States Marine Corps, inscriptions to Billy Sue and Norma Jean, and even the young ones had pot stomachs. They looked like everyone who was ever kicked out of a rural Texas high school.

Then I saw my friend from the sheriff’s office. He walked from behind the freight car with a filter-tipped cigar between his teeth, his khaki trousers tucked inside his half-top boots, and his wide leather cartridge belt pulled tight across his flat stomach. He spoke quietly to the men in T-shirts and denim jackets, smiling, his hands on his hips, and then he and the others turned their faces toward me at one time. His green, yellow-flecked eyes were filled with an intense delight, and his lips pressed down softly on the cigar tip.

“Let’s get into the picket before it starts,” Rie said.

I walked with her to the back of the stake truck, where the priest was still handing down signs. The wind whipped the dust in our faces, and swollen rain clouds were rolling over the horizon. The air was becoming cooler, and I heard the first dull rip of thunder in the distance. The priest wiped his face on his shirt sleeve and grinned at us.

“How are you, Mr. Holland? We can use a good man from the establishment,” he said.

“I know a two-word reply to that, Father,” I said.

“I believe I’ve heard it.”

“Mojo’s drunk. Try to get him into the truck,” Rie said.

“He’s not fond of listening to church people,” the priest said.

“There’s some badass types back by the freight car, and he’s been in a winehead mood since some kids tried to get it on with him the other night,” she said.

“I’ll watch him,” he said.

“Watch that bunch of assholes, too. One of the dicks was winding them up.”

The priest looked over at one of the Rangers who was talking into the microphone of his mobile radio.

“Get into the line. They’re going to start moving in a few minutes,” he said.

Rie picked up two cardboard signs tacked on laths and handed me one of them. A single, large drop of rain splattered on the black eagle over the word HUELGA.

“Come on,” she said.

“Can I get a cigar lit first, for God’s sake?” I said.

“We don’t want anybody arrested outside the picket, Hack.”

“All right, goddamn. Just a minute.”

For some reason I hadn’t yet accepted the fact that I would be walking on a picket line that Monday morning, or any morning, for that matter. The sign bent backward in my hands against the wind, flopping loudly, and my knees felt disjointed as I followed her into the slow line of Mexicans and Negroes in their faded work clothes, battered straw hats, and dresses splitting at the hips. Drops of rain made

puckered dimples in the dust, and the wind blew cool inside my shirt, but I was perspiring under my arms, and my face was burning as though I had just done something obscene in public. I saw the eyes of the sheriff’s deputies, the Rangers, and the poolroom account watching me, and my head became light and my cigar tasted bitter and dry in my mouth. I felt as though I had walked naked in front of a comic audience. A fat Negro woman behind me held her child, in cutoff overalls, with one hand and her picket sign in the other. She wore a pair of rippled stockings over the varicose veins in her legs.

“You don’t worry about these children. They ain’t going to bother them,” she said.

I looked away from her brown eyes at the man in slacks and tie on the platform. He was still taking pictures, and his face was quivering at the outrage he had seen that day against the principle of private property. Storm clouds covered the sun, and the fields were suddenly darkened and the shadows leaped across the cannery, the freight cars, and the county road. The men in T-shirts and denim jackets were now pulling the caps on hot cans of beer and spilling the foam down their necks and chests.

“How you doing?” Rie said.

“I think my respect for the demonstrator just went up a couple of points.”

“Look, if those bastards move in on us, you have to take it. Okay?”

“That doesn’t sound cool.”

“No shit, Hack. They’re waiting for reasons to split heads.”