House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

Nothing he said seemed to register in her eyes.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I don’t know what I feel right now. I resolved in New York I would never cause harm to anyone again. I feel selfish. I don’t trust my instincts or my thoughts.”

“Water runs downhill whether you think about it or not.”

“Where did you get that?”

“Probably from somebody who cain’t tell bean dip from pig flop.”

He and Ruby crossed the street, each holding one of Ishmael’s hands, a trolley grinding past them. They sat by a window in the hotel restaurant where they could see the train pulling out of the station on its way to Walsenburg and the snowcapped roll of the Rocky Mountains.

“What can I order, Big Bud?” Ishmael asked.

“You can order whatever you want, little pal,” Hackberry said.

“A waffle?” he said.

“I think you need a stack of them. That’s a mighty nice suit you’re wearing.”

“It’s from the dry goods store where Momma works. We have to take it back later. She has to take her dress back, too.”

Ruby’s face turned red.

“I thought you worked for a miners’ organization,” Hackberry said.

“During the day I’m a secretary at the Western Federation of Miners. Sometimes I work at night or on the weekends at a milliner’s.”

“Who takes care of the boy?”

“We have a children’s room at the union hall.”

“You’re working two jobs? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I felt guilty for leaving you. I wasn’t fair to you. Are you happy with Mrs. Holland?”

“What?” he said, unable to follow the change in subject.

“With Maggie.”

“I’m in her debt, as I am to you. In my earlier life, whiskey made most of my choices. Now I have to live with them.”

He signaled the waiter so he would not have to continue talking about Maggie. After they ordered, he went to the men’s room and washed his hands and cupped water on his face. Then he looked in the mirror. Who was he? The sum total of his deeds? He would have liked to scrub most of them out of his life. When he went to bed at night or took a nap in a shady hammock, the same images waited behind his eyelids: flashes of gunfire in a darkened alleyway lined with the cribs of working girls, a cowboy buckling over from a shotgun blast inside a pen filled with squealing hogs, a runaway horse stirrup-dragging a dead man past a bank he had just tried to rob.

Unfortunately, part of the problem was that those images were not altogether unpleasant, particularly when he had to deal with the restraints of what was already being called “the modern era.”

As Hackberry reentered the dining area, he looked at the tables and at the men in narrow-cut tailored suits and the ladies in hats holding their silverware the way easterners did, taking small bites of their food, chewing slowly before they swallowed. In their world he would never be more than a sojourner, a man for whom an incremental redemption could not take place.

He sat back down at the table and placed his hand on the back of Ishmael’s neck. The coolness of the boy’s skin and the flutter of his pulse made something inside Hackberry melt. “You’re a mighty fine little fellow, did you know that?” he said.

“I can already read. Without ever going to school. Momma taught me.”

“That’s because she’s a good mother. And she’s a good mother because she’s got a good son.”

“Are you gonna come live with us?”

“I’m probably just visiting right now.”