Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

“I feel like I shouldn’t be here, Hack.”

“Who the hell lives here, anyway? He doesn’t, and I sure didn’t ask him down.”

I squeezed her hand, but I saw it made her uncomfortable. The waves from the taxi washed up through the yard and hit against the porch steps. Bailey paid the driver and stepped out the back door into the water. His brown windbreaker was spotted with rain, and the lines in his brow and around his eyes had deepened with lack of sleep. The rims of his eyes were red. In fact, his whole face looked middle-aged, as though he had worked hard to make it that way. He walked up through the water with his head lowered slightly and his mouth in a tight line.

“How you doing, brother?” I said, and took a sip out of the beer.

“I have a plane at the county airport,” he said. He looked straight at me and never turned his head toward Rie.

“Get out of the rain and meet someone and have a beer.”

“We’ll leave your car there. You can fly back and get it later,” he said. His voice had a quiet and determined righteousness to it, the kind of tone that he reserved for particularly tragic occasions, and it had always infuriated me. But I was resolved this time.

“It’s bad weather for a flight, Bailey. You should have waited a day or so,” I said. I was surprised that he had flown at all, because he was terrified of airplanes.

“Do you have anything inside?” he said.

“Not a thing.”

“Then we can be going.”

He was making it hard.

“Would you sit down a minute, for God’s sake?” I said. “Or at least not stand under the eave with rain dripping on your head.”

He stepped up on the porch and wiped his forehead with his palm. He still refused to recognize Rie. I carried a chair over from the other side of the porch and pulled another beer from the ice bucket.

“There. Sit,” I said. “This is Rie Velasquez. She’s the coordinator for the union.”

“How do you do, ma’am?” He looked at her for the first time, and his eyes lingered longer on her face than he had probably wanted them to. She smiled at him, and momentarily he forgot that he was supposed to be a somber man with a purpose.

I opened the bottle of beer and handed it to him. The chips of ice slid down the neck. He started to put the bottle on the porch railing.

“Drink the beer, Bailey. If you had some more of that stuff, you wouldn’t have ulcers

.”

“The Senator and John Williams are at the house.”

“John Williams. What’s that bastard doing in my home?”

“He was spending the weekend with the Senator, and he drove down with him this morning.”

“You know the old man wouldn’t let an asshole like that in our back door.”

“He told me he would still like to contribute money to the campaign.”

“You’d better get him out of my house.”

“Why don’t you take care of it yourself? This is my last errand.”

“Do you think we could get that in writing?” I said.

“You don’t know the lengths other people go to for your benefit. The Senator is going to stay with you, and so is Verisa, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t feel an obligation to her.”

“What obligation is that, Bailey?” I said.

“I’m going to fix lunch,” Rie said.