Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

“No, stay. I want to hear about this feeling of obligation. What is it exactly, brother?”

His eyes looked quickly at Rie, and he drank out of the beer.

“Don’t worry about decorum or people’s feelings,” I said. “Dump it out on the porch and let’s look at it. You’re doing a swell job so far.”

“I’ll be inside, Hack,” Rie said.

“No, goddamn. Let Bailey finish. He’s saved this up in his head through every air pocket between here and Austin.”

“All right,” he said. “For the seven years of disappointment you’ve given her and the alcoholism and the apologies she’s had to make to people all over the state. A lesser woman would have taken you into court years ago and pulled out your fingernails. Right now she’s under sedation, but that will probably slide past you like everything else in your life does.”

“What do you mean, sedation?” I said.

“She called me up drunk an hour after the television broadcast, and I had to go over to the house with a doctor from Yoakum.”

Rie lit a cigarette and looked out into the rain. Her suntanned cheeks were pale and her eyes bright. I didn’t know why I had forced her to sit through it, and it was too late to change anything now. The wind blew the rain against the bottom of Bailey’s chair.

“How is she now?” I said.

“What do you think? She drank a half bottle of your whiskey, and the doctor had to give her an injection to get her in bed.”

The bottle of beer felt thick in my hand. I wondered what doctor would give anyone an intravenous sedative on top of alcohol.

“She threw away her pills this morning and tried to fix breakfast for the Senator and Williams,” Bailey said. “She almost fell down in the kitchen and I put her to bed again and refilled her prescription.”

“Don’t you know better than to give drugs to people with alcohol in their system?” I said. But he didn’t. His face was a confession of moral earnestness with no awareness of its consequence.

“Go back with him, Hack,” Rie said.

“Bailey, why in the bloody hell do you bring on things like this?” I said.

“Don’t you have it confused?” he said.

“No. You have this talent for turning the simple into a derelict’s hangover.”

“I think you’re shouting at the wrong person.”

“You’ve always got all kinds of cool when you do it, too. Think about it. Isn’t it in moments like these that you’re happiest?”

“I don’t need to listen to this.”

“Hell, no, you don’t. You just dump the hand grenades out on the porch and let other people kick them around.”

“I told you I’m through with this crap, Hack.”

“You’ve been peddling my ass by the chunk to all buyers and bitching about it at the same time, and now you’re through. Is that right, buddy? Frankly, you make me so goddamn mad I could knock you flat out into the yard.”

“Stop it, Hack. Go on back with him,” Rie said. Her face was flushed, and her fingers were trembling on the arm of the wicker chair.

“Should I run a footrace with him down to the airport? Or maybe Bailey can import the whole bunch down here and we can sit on the porch and find out what a sonofabitch I am.”

Rie put her fingers on her brow and dropped her eyes, but I could see the wetness on her eyelashes. None of us spoke. The rain drummed flatly on the shingled roof and ran off the eaves, swinging into the wind. My face was perspiring, and I wiped my forehead on my sleeve and drank the foam out of the bottle. I looked at her again and I felt miserable.

“I’m sorry, babe,” I said.

She turned her head away from Bailey and put an unlit cigarette in her mouth.

“Call me tonight at the beer joint. Somebody will come down for me,” she said.