Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“Nothing,” said the figure in the shadows, raising his arm against the glare of the flashlight.

“You were looking through my windows.”

“I was not. I just wanted to talk. I didn’t understand what you said there at the grocery store.”

“About what?”

“You said I shouldn’t presume. You said I didn’t know who I was messing with. You thought I was threatening you? I wouldn’t do that. You made me feel bad, like I was a bully or a freak or something. Ma’am, is that a pistol in your hand?”

“What does it look like?”

“We’re kindred spirits.”

“No, we’re not. How long have you been out here?”

“Just a few minutes. Maybe I was gonna knock on your door. I know you stay up. I’ve seen those candles glowing in your chapel late at night.”

“How did you see them?”

“I got a telescope on my deck. I do stargazing sometimes. It’s a hobby I got.”

“Where’s your vehicle?”

“Down the road a mite.”

“You’re a voyeur, Reverend Cody. Get off my property. If you ever come on it again, I’ll shoot you.”

“Don’t talk like that. You got me all wrong, ma’am.”

“No, I don’t. I think you’re haunted by a terrible deed you did to a woman or a group of women. It’s something so bad you can’t talk about it to anyone. But that’s your problem, not mine. Get out of here and never come back. You understand?”

“Yes, ma’am, if that’s what you say.”

She lowered the pistol and stepped aside. When he ran past her, his face was disjointed with fear and humiliation, like that of a child caught in a shameful act. She went back inside the house and locked the door behind her and replaced the small-caliber pistol in the bottom drawer of her dresser. She took off her damp clothes and dried herself with a towel and put on a pair of pajamas and lay down on the bed, a pillow over her face. She was surprised at how quickly and easily she fell asleep. Outside, a bolt of lightning struck the top of a hill and turned a pine tree into a crisp red fingerprint against the unrelieved blackness of the sky.

CODY DANIELS’S WAXED canary-yellow pickup was parked off the side of the dirt road, down by a creek bed whose banks were bordered by gravelly soil and cottonwood and willow trees. The rain had beaded on the wax, and when electricity leaped between the clouds, his truck looked like a bejeweled artwork, a thing of beauty and power and comfort that had always given him an enormous sense of pleasure and pride and control. But now Cody Daniels took no joy in anything—not his truck, nor his Cowboy Chapel, nor his title of Reverend, nor the house he had built up in the cliffs, where he had strode the deck like the captain of a sailing vessel.

He had not only been caught hiding in the Chinese woman’s barn, he had been accused of voyeurism and driven from her property as a degenerate might. Worse, he could not explain to himself, much less to Anton Ling, why he had gone there. To tell her he was sorry for approaching her in the grocery store while he was drunk? Maybe. To tell her that no matter what he might have done in the past, he would not try to harm her? Maybe. To look through her windows?

He wanted to say no to his last question but found himself hesitating. Of course he wouldn’t do something like that, he told himself. Never in his life had he ever entertained thoughts like that. Why would she think that of him? Why would he doubt himself now?

Because there was no question he had become obsessed with her. While he set out his prayer books in the Cowboy Chapel or tried to prepare a sermon, he wondered what kind of services she conducted inside that little room where racks of candles burned in rows of blue and red vessels. He wondered why none of the Hispanics, at least the legal ones, ever came to his church. What did he ever do to them? He wondered if Anton Ling possessed powers that would never be given to him. What was the line in Scripture? Many are called but few are chosen? That seemed like saying there was a collection of real losers out there and Cody Daniels was probably one of them.

Was that his lot? To have the calling but never feel the hot finger of destiny on his forehead? Was he cursed with the worst state of mind that could befall a man, envy of a woman, in this case an Oriental whose features and figure and grace turned his loins to water?

He turned his face toward the sky. Why have you done this to me? he asked.

If there was any reply, he didn’t hear it. The only sound he heard was that of a heavy vehicle, one with a diesel-powered engine, grinding its way down a dirt track between two hills on the north side of the Chinese woman’s property. He could see the headlights in the rain and the outline of the extended cab and the large bed in back. It was an expensive vehicle that could seat a driver and five passengers easily. What was it doing in these hills at this time of night? It was now dipping off the road, proceeding down a long incline that fed into flatland and a string of cedar fence posts with no wire.

Cody got into his pickup and rolled down the passenger window so he could watch the diesel-powered truck as it approached the back of Anton Ling’s house, its headlights turned off.

Maybe they’re part of her Underground Railroad or whatever the hell they call it, he told himself.

But he knew better. He opened his cell phone and looked at the screen. No service. Well, that’s the breaks, he thought. What had she told him? To get out, to never come back? Something like that. So, sayonara, see you tomorrow, or whatever they said over there. Maybe next time you’ll appreciate it when a good man comes around. Voyeur, my dadburned foot, he thought.

He clicked on his headlights, dropped his transmission into gear, and drove south into the rain, away from Anton Ling’s property, the clouds crackling like cellophane behind him.