House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“You know the man you killed was a recipient of the Purple Heart?”

“That’s right, he was.”

“He was also awarded the Medal of Honor. The newspapers will have the full story within a day or so.”

Hackberry felt one eyelid stick shut, as if the eye had dried up and turned to sandpaper.

“No philosophic observations?”

“You cain’t buy me, you cain’t scare me.”

“Then why are you telling me that? You’re a delight.”

Arnold Beckman began laughing and continued laughing even as he was hanging up, as though his merriment were so genuine, he didn’t care if others were privy to it or not.

THAT NIGHT HACKBERRY put on his canvas coat and a flop hat and went down to the riverside with a wicker chair and a bait bucket and a cane pole strung with a fishing line and a wood bobber and a treble hook and a weight made from a minié ball, and set up shop on the edge of the water. He baited the treble hook with a piece of liver and cast it close to an eddy behind a downed cottonwood tree where yellow catfish as thick as his upper arm hung in schools. But the real purpose of his visit to the riverside was not to catch fish. A few feet away, under a tangle of cable left over from a logging operation, was the hiding spot he had chosen for the artifact he now thought of as the cup. He had wrapped it and its wood case inside a rubber slicker, and then a tarp, and tied it with rope, and at night had buried it up the slope in a dry spot that never collected water.

He was not sure why he was drawn to this particular spot by the river on this particular night, but he knew his purpose did not have to do with fish. The truth was, he could not deal with the image of the burned man lying in the alley, his head resting in the Mexican woman’s lap, blood pumping from the hole in his stomach.

Hackberry shut his eyes and opened them again, trying to restart his thought processes before they led him into the dark places that were a trap, never a solution. He looked over his shoulder at the tangle of cable and the burial spot he had planted divots of grass on. I don’t know if you actually used that cup or not, but I need some he’p.

He was surprised at his request. He had never been keen on prayer and in fact was not exactly sure what it consisted of. In his experience, religious moments tended to occur when people were about to fall off a cliff or get rope-dragged through a cactus patch.

I was set up, but I doubt if anybody will believe that. Were it not for the sheriff in Bexar County, I’d probably be charged with manslaughter. The sheriff in Bexar County is not the type of man I want to be indebted to. I’m open to any suggestions you have, sir.

There was no reply. The moon was full above the hills, its mountains and craters and ridges like an enormous bruise on its surface. Hackberry looked again at the burial spot. Tell me what to do, sir. Tell that boy in the brothel I’m sorry. Maybe he was a friend of my son. The prewar army was a small group. Sir, what am I going to do? I feel absolutely lost.

He felt his cane pole throb in his hand. His bobber had been pulled straight down in the eddy, the moisture squeezing from the tension in the line, the weight of the fish arching the pole to the point of breaking. He slipped his hands down the pole and grabbed the line and twisted it around his wrists and pulled the catfish clear of the eddy and the rotted cottonwood, through the reeds and onto the bank, its long, sleek, grayish-yellow sides and whiskers and spiked fins coating with sand.

He put his foot across the fish’s stomach and worked the treble hook free of its mouth, then picked it up by the tail, avoiding its spikes, and swung its head against a rock, slinging blood on the grass. He put the catfish in the bait bucket and squatted by the water’s edge and began washing the blood and fish slime from his hands. The water clouded and the blood disappeared inside it, but he could not get the smell of the fish and what it reminded him of off his hands.

He got on his knees and scrubbed his hands with sand, accidentally knocking over the bucket, spilling on his pants the blood from the piece of liver he had brought for bait. He walked up the incline and sat down next to the burial spot, his arms limp, his head on his chest.

Me again. Everything I touch comes to the same end. I got nowhere to go. I got nobody to cover my back. He’p my boy, please, wherever he is. And if you can, he’p me keep my aim true and my eye clear. This isn’t much of a praye

r, but it’s all I got right now. Amen.

Later, he looked from his upstairs bedroom window at the spot where the rusted cable lay and thought he saw a white light, like moon glow, radiating from the ground rather than from the heavens. Then a cloud passed in front of the moon, and the light disappeared from the embankment, and he realized it had been an illusion.

HE WOKE EARLY to the smell of coffee boiling and bread baking. He put on his trousers and boots and hooked his suspenders over his undershirt and went downstairs into the unheated house and saw a man’s head go past the kitchen window. He opened the back door and saw a cook fire blazing by the edge of his flower garden, a piece of corrugated tin stretched across two rocks, the wind flattening the smoke on the lawn. Willard Posey was pouring water from a tin can into the coffeepot.

“I hate to ask,” Hackberry said.

“Ask what?”

“You cook biscuits in everybody’s yard?”

“Just yours,” Willard said. “I made the coffee a little too strong and added some more water. You have any butter?”

“What’s the problem of the day, Willard?”

“I figured you needed a friend.”

“About the trouble in San Antonio?”

“Get us some plates. You have such a fine place here. It’s one of the most peaceful spots I’ve ever seen. The envy of any normal man.”

“Is this going to take long?”