Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Very long?”

“Eleven years.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She was a great woman. She was never afraid, not of anything, not in her whole life. She never wanted people to feel sorry for her, either, no matter how much she suffered.”

“I see,” she said, obviously trying to conceal her awkwardness.

He flicked the drops off the end of the brush onto the ground. He glanced up at the salmon-colored tint in the sky and looked at the hills and could almost smell the greening of the countryside and the feral odor that hung in its pockets and cracked riverbeds. He wondered how a land so vast and stark and self-defining could be marked simultaneously by both dust storms and acreage that was probably as verdant as the fields in ancient Mesopotamia. He wondered if the writer in the Bible had been describing this very place when he said the sun was made to shine and the rain to fall upon both the wicked and the just. He wondered if the beginnings of creation lay just beyond the tips of his fingers. “Have breakfast with me,” Hackberry said.

“Sir?”

“You heard me.”

“I don’t know if that would be appropriate.”

“Who’s to say it’s not?”

“You think I’m hiding a fugitive from the FBI. You virtually accused me of it.”

“No, you’re not hiding him, but you’re probably feeding him and treating his wounds.”

“And you want to take me to breakfast?”

“Look at me, Miss Anton. You think I’d try to trick you in some way? Ferret out information from you under the guise of friendship? Look me in the eye and tell me that.”

“No, you’re not that kind of man.”

He let the water tank fill to the halfway mark, then notched the windmill chain and shut off the inflow valve. “I know this spot on the four-lane that serves huevos rancheros and frijoles that can break your heart,” he said.

CODY DANIELS FELT he was not only the captain of a ship but the captain of his soul as he peered through the telescope mounted on the deck rail of his house. The valley was spread before him, the American flag painted on the cliff wall behind him, the wind blowing inside his shirt. As he watched the arrival of the sheriff at the Oriental woman’s compound, his loins tingled with a surge of power and a sense of control that was so intense it made him wet his bottom lip; it even made him forget, if only briefly, his humiliation at the hands of the Hispanics named Krill and Negrito. He was fascinated by the body language of the sheriff and the woman, she with her demure posturing, he pretending he was John Wayne, scrubbing red glop off the sides of the horse tank like nobody else knew how to do it. Maybe the sheriff was not only pumping his deputy, the woman who’d stuck a .357 in Cody’s face, but also trying to scarf some egg roll on the side. Yeah, look at her, Cody told himself, she was eating it up. These were the people who’d treated him like butt crust, a guy who had founded the Cowboy Chapel? They were the elite, and he was a member of the herd? What a joke.

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With one eye squinted and the other glued to the telescope, Cody was so enamored with his ability to dissect fraudulence and self-serving behavior in others that he didn’t notice the two dark Town Cars coming up the dirt track on the hardpan. The cars rumbled across Cody’s cattle guard and parked by his church house, their dust floating up in a cinnamon-colored cloud that broke apart on his deck. Seven men wearing either suits or expensive casual clothes and shades and jewelry and shined shoes or boots got out and walked up the wood stairs. Their faces had no expression. When they neared the top step, they looked at him with the nonchalance of people entering a public restroom.

One man in the middle of the group was obviously not cut out of the same cloth as the others. He removed his shades and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he extended his hand and smiled good-naturedly, with the authority of a man who was comfortable in any environment. “It’s Temple Dowling, Reverend. I’m pleased we could meet,” he said. “You have a fine place here. You’re not afraid to display the flag, either.”

The other men walked past Cody as though he were not there. “Where are they going?” he asked.

“Don’t worry. They’re professionals,” Temple Dowling said.

“They’re going into my house.”

“Concentrate on me, Reverend. We’re on the same side. This country is in danger. You agree with that, don’t you?”

“What’s that got to do with those guys creeping my house?”

“’Creeping’ your house?”

“Yeah, breaking into it. That’s what it’s called. Like burglary.”

“I could tell you I’m CIA. I could tell you I’m NSA. I could tell you I’m with the FBI.” Temple Dowling’s hair was silver and black, thick and freshly clipped, the part as straight as a taut piece of twine. His face wore the fixed expression of a happy cartoon, the skin pink and creamy, his lips too large for his mouth. He reached out and took Cody’s hand again, except this time he squeezed hard, his gaze locked on Cody’s. Cody felt a ribbon of pain slide up his wrist to his armpit. “What are you doing?” he said.

“Congratulating you. I love to fly the flag. I love the people who fly it, too.”