House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“It’s a consortium. We have an office in San Antonio. Our warehouses are in Houston and New Orleans.” Her gaze went away from his, out the window. “See how the trees flutter in the wind? This is such a fine time of year. You lived here when you were a child?”

“We lived in a sump outside of Trinidad. My mother worked two or three jobs to feed us.”

“Where is she now?”

“Wherever the union sends her. She went to see Joe Hill before he was executed by firing squad in Utah.”

“Who?”

“The songwriter. He was framed by the mine owners.”

“I see,” she said. “But she’s not an anarchist or a Communist?”

“I never asked her.”

Maggie approached the bed. Her eyes moved over his face. “I rode two days on the train to be here.”

“That’s very nice of you.”

“I was a prostitute and helped rob a bank. But I never hurt a child. Except you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

She placed her hand on his forehead. “You’re hot.”

“It’s the radiator. It’s got its own way. It turns itself on and off at the wrong times.” He tried to smile.

“The radiator is cold. You have a fever.”

“That’s why sick people go to hospitals. They have fevers and such.”

“You talk like your father.”

“I talk like the people in the mining and log camps where I grew up.”

She unbuttoned the top of his pajamas and placed her hand on his breast. “Your heart is like a drum.”

“You could fool me.”

“I came here as a friend, not to embarrass you.”

“I heard you were a schoolteacher. I don’t understand why an educated woman would marry my father.”

“He’s far more intelligent than he pretends. That’s what his enemies never understand about him. Until it’s too late.”

“I don’t like to talk about him,” Ishmael said.

“Do you want anything? I brought you some fruit. I don’t know if you’re supposed to have it.”

“That’s kind of you. Thank you.”

“You’d better get used to me. We’re going to be seeing lots of each other.”

She removed the sheet from his legs. His pajama bottoms were cut off at the tops of his thighs. His wounds were wrapped with medicated bandages all the way to the ankles. In places he had bled through. She put her hand on his lower abdomen and then on his thigh. “I can feel the heat through your skin. How many places were you hit?”

“There are men in the ward you don’t want to look at. Their families cry when they see them.”

“I want to do something for you,” she said.