House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“You’re a liar.”

“He shouldn’t have got drunk. If you want to take him home, be our guest,” the same man said.

“What are your names?”

“Eeny, Meany, Miny, Moe. As in catch a nigger by his toe,” the short man said. “Moe ain’t here.” The other two men tilted down their hat brims to hide their grins.

“My son was at the Marne. Where were you?” she said. “I promise you’ll be held accountable for this.”

“My name is Fred,” the short man said. “That man in yonder assaulted me. To make sure everything is on the table, I bought him a bottle of moonshine. I could’ve had him locked up for six months. If I was you, I’d tuck my lower lip back in my mouth.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Beemer. Fred J. Beemer.” He opened a pouch of string chewing tobacco and filled his jaw. He chewed it slowly and spat a long stream in the grass. “Nothing like a little Red Man.”

“My name is Ruby Dansen. I want you to remember it.”

“I’ll carve it on my heart,” Fred Beemer replied.

She pulled open the back door of the cage and stepped inside. The spotlights on the midway were iridescent, eye-watering, rimmed with humidity. Someone had cut Ishmael’s belt in half and his trousers and undershorts had slipped down on his buttocks. His palms were printed with peanut shells and wet cigarette butts. His skull seemed translucent and red against the brilliance of the light. The people watching him through the wire mesh had the faces an artist would paint on a medieval mob—lantern-jawed, beetle-browed, unshaved, hair growing from their ears and noses, teeth the color of urine. They were the kind of people who attended public executions and delighted in blood sports. Were these the people to whom she had devoted her life?

She got to her knees and pulled Ishmael partially erect. Then she worked herself onto a chair and got his weight across her thighs, so he lay spread across her lap, his arms hanging loose behind him, the bones in his chest as pronounced as barrel staves, his face puffed, his eyes half-lidded.

The crowd stared at her, leering, fascinated.

“What have you done to my son?” she asked. “What have you done to my darling son?”

THE CLOCK ON the kitchen windowsill said 9:03 when Hackberry answered the telephone. Outside, the sky was black, grit blowing against the pane. “Will you accept a long-distance call from Ruby Dansen?” the operator asked.

“Yes,” he said, a stone dropping inside him.

“Go ahead,” the operator said to the caller, then went off the line.

“Ruby?” Hackberry said.

“Who else?”

“Where are you?” he said.

“San Antonio. Ishmael is hurt. In a cage at a carnival. It’s too much to explain. Can you come?”

“Ishmael is in San Antonio?”

“He’s been living with Maggie. He left her house on foot and ended up at a fairgrounds. Some ginks with badges got their hands on him. He has bruises all over him.”

“Why would they want to hurt Ishmael?”

“Their kind don’t need an excuse. They treated him like an animal. They put him on exhibit.”

“They did what?”

“I have to go. Can you come or not?”

“I don’t have a car, and I don’t know how to drive. I’ll have to call somebody. Where are you now?”

“At the café by the fairgrounds, waiting on an ambulance. I have little money.”

She told him the name of the hotel where she was staying. He remembered it vaguely, a place for transients, single men at the end of the track.