Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

Rev. Cody Daniels

From outside, he heard the hiss of air brakes and the sound of a tractor-trailer shifting down. He looked through the window and, in the rain-streaked fading of the twilight, saw an eighteen-wheeler parked by the Cowboy Chapel, its high beams on, the engine still hammering, and what appeared to be a lead car parked in front of it. Cody had seen the lead car before, without the clamped-on brace of yellow lights on the roof; it belonged to a musician, a man who stopped by on occasion at the Cowboy Chapel and drank coffee and ate doughnuts in the hospitality room Cody left open for truckers or travelers on their way to the Big Bend country.

Cody draped a slicker over his head and went down the wood steps to the coffee room in the back of the chapel. “Getting out of the storm?” he said to a small tight-bodied man sitting at the long table in the middle of the room, a chrome-plated guitar across his thighs.

“Hey, Reverend, I didn’t see you, so I just come inside,” the man said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“That’s what it’s for. The name is Rector, isn’t it?”

“Dennis Rector, that’s me,” the man replied. “I saw your nail gun there. You’ve been doing some carpentering.”

“You play a Dobro?”

“You know your instruments. That’s what it is, resonator and all.” The small man had the dark skin of a field hand and hair that looked like it had been cut with fingernail clippers. He wore lace-up boots and a tie-dyed T-shirt and denim work pants. His upper torso was bent like a question mark. “It’s a Fender, built on the old National model. It feels like a Coca-Cola box packed with ice hanging from your neck.”

Dennis Rector ran a steel bar up and down the neck of the Dobro and began playing a tune with the steel picks on the thumb and index and middle fingers of his right hand. “Recognize that piece? That’s ‘The Great Speckled Bird.’ Same tune as ‘The Wild Side of Life.’ Same tune as ‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.’”

Through the window, Cody could see two men sitting in the cab of the eighteen-wheeler. “What are y’all carrying?” he asked.

“Exotic animals. Want one?”

“You work for a zoo?

”

“I guess you could call it that.” Dennis Rector was smiling as though he possessed private knowledge that he might or might not share. “We supply a wild-game ranch up in Pecos County.”

Cody nodded and didn’t reply.

“You’re not keen on them kind of places?”

“Live and let live.”

“That’s the way I figure it. Their misfortune and none of my own. You know you got some beaners parked down yonder on your road?”

“Pardon?”

“Some pepper-bellies in a beat-up old car with a busted headlight.”

“Who are they?”

“Maybe a couple of people fucking. How should I know? I couldn’t see them that good.” The small man was still smiling.

“This is a church house, even if it’s just the coffee room,” Cody said.

“Sorry.”

“Did you catch the tag?”

“I wasn’t paying them much mind. They looked away from our lights when we passed. That’s why I figure they were people making out. Mexicans tend to breed in the spring and domino in the winter.”

Cody studied Dennis Rector from behind his eyelashes. “You from here’bouts?”

“Wherever I hang my hat. Jobs are kind of thin these days. Seems like there’s less and less work for a white man. What’s your feeling about that?”

“I never lost a job ’cause of my skin color.”

“That sounds different from a couple of your sermons.”