House of the Rising Sun (Hackberry Holland 4)

“The world hasn’t been good to either of us, Maggie. When we leave it, we’ll make sure no one forgets we were here. It’s not a bad way to be.”

“I don’t think I ever really knew you,” she said.

“Take off your clothes. I’ll draw fresh water for us.”

“Do you ever think about what awaits us?”

“The other side of the grave? The Great Judgment, that sort of thing?”

“Thinking about it is not exactly a lark.”

“You die. Then you stay dead for a long time,” he said. “Why do men love war? We become the givers of death, not its recipients. If we survive it, we have killed Death.”

“You’re the most depressing person I’ve ever known.”

“You’re depressed by the truth, Maggie. You look at me and recognize yourself. What you’ve never understood is that I don’t have to own people. They discover themselves inside me. They genuflect before me like small children. I don’t take power from people. They give it to me.”

“You need to own the cup, though. What does that tell you about yourself?”

“It tells me you should watch your mouth.”

She looked through the window at the woman walking from the road to the building’s entrance. “Looks like you have a visitor.”

“Send them away,” he said. He squeezed the washrag on his face. “I’m sorry for threatening you. You’re one of the few people in the world I respect. And it’s because of your superior intelligence, although sometimes you do a magnificent job of hiding it.”

“Ah, she’s headed into the breezeway. I’ll get the door,” Maggie said. “You might put on your robe. I don’t think she’ll be able to handle your scars and your frontal nudity at the same time.”

HACKBERRY THREW HIS saddlebags and a rolled blanket and a rolled slicker in the backseat of the REO and got in front with Andre, then watched him start the engine and step on the pedals and move the gear lever back and forth on the floor console. “So you got intermediate speed and high speed and reverse, all on that one stick?”

“First you must release the brake and start the engine,” Andre said. “Otherwise, it does no good to work the gears.”

“I gathered that. One floor pedal is to stop or slow down, and the other one lets you move the gears? That’s what they call the clutch?”

“Yes, but all this must be coordinated. It is a complicated mechanical system that cannot be taken lightly.”

“I appreciate your skill in these matters, Andre. Can I give it a try?”

“Do you think that is wise?”

“Probably not. I’ll observe for a while.”

And that was what he did, although his mind was not on the REO and its plush leather seats and polished mahogany dashboard and brass-rimmed, glass-covered instruments, nor the comfortable surge of its engine and the way the hood seemed to devour the roadway in the blink of an eye. He knew these aspects of the new era were all fine things to contemplate, but they had little to do with the mysteries whose solution had eluded him for a lifetime. He could not explain why the good suffered and could not understand how Creation could have brought about its own inception. Nor could he reason his way through the nature of divinity, or whatever people wanted to call it. He was sure, however, that somewhere on the other side of the physical world, there was a spiritual reality not unlike stardust shaken from the heavens. It animated the natural world in a way that had nothing to do with the laws of physics, and the irony was that no one seemed to notice.

In the span of one week, while prospecting in Chile, he had heard a throaty, sweeping sound on a wooded hillside that was exactly like a streambed roaring with water and mud and uprooted trees, all of it about to burst loose and turn the countryside into a floodplain. He told himself the sound came from the wind blowing at gale strength through the trees, except there was no wind and the trees were as still as the brushstrokes on a painting.

He heard rocks creaking and murmuring under the riffle in the river, sometimes with an actual clacking sound, like seals barking at one another.

He saw pools of quicksilver on the floor of a forest whose canopy was so thick, the moon wasn’t visible when he looked up at the sky. The radiance from the forest floor cast no shadows, only light.

On a cold evening, when the sun had turned the hills into purple velvet, he heard a boom like buried dynamite or dry thunder in a box canyon where there was no footprint other than his own. The sky was the dark blue of newly forged steel, streaked with meteors as fragile as hailstones; the air was sweet and cold in his mouth and lungs and tasted like hand-cranked ice cream. There were no clouds overhead; there was no electricity flickering on the horizon. The total absence of sound following the boom made him wonder if he had gone deaf. “Where are you?” he shouted into the vastness of the canyon. “Show me where you are!” There was no acknowledgment of his inquiry, nor even an echo.

The REO hit a bump, and he realized he had nodded off.

“We’ll be in San Antonio soon, Mr. Holland,” Andre said. “Go back to sleep.”

“I’m fine. I’d sure like to have a try at this.”

Andre pulled to the side of the road and left the motor running. “Miss Beatrice has told me to do whatever you say. But I am also charged with protecting her motorcar.”