Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

Cody’s hand remained clenched tightly on Krill’s wrist. He could feel Krill’s pulse beating against his palm. Krill’s eyes were inches from his, the onions and wine and fried meat on Krill’s breath as damp as a moist cloth on Cody’s face. “Are you going to help me?” Krill asked.

“Maybe, if you put the gun away,” Cody said.

Krill’s eyes were black and as flat as paint on a piece of cardboard. “It is as you request,” he said, lowering his pistol. A curtain of rain slapped against the window and across the top of the church. “My car is parked behind your church.”

“Let me put on my coat,” Cody said.

“You will not try to deceive us?” Krill said.

“Why should I deceive you?”

“We know of your message to your flock. You have not been our friend. You make them feel comfortable with their hatred of us.”

“I think maybe you aim to kill me when this is over.”

“Would that be a great loss to the world?”

“Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean I’d necessarily enjoy it.”

“You are a very funny man,” Krill said.

They went out the door and into the rain and down the stairs to the back of the Cowboy Chapel, where Krill’s gas-guzzler was parked in the lee of the building. Krill opened the trunk and lifted out a large wood box tied with rope. Cody stared at the box and wiped his mouth. “They’re in there?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve always baptized by immersion,” Cody said, the rain beating on his bare head.

“What does ‘immersion’ mean?”

“I take people down by the creek and put them under. If the water is low, I have to dam up the creek. If everything is completely dried out, we go to the river. The creek is probably running pretty good now.”

“No, we aren’t going to a creek.”

“Then come inside,” Cody said.

They walked through the lighted coffee room and into the chapel, both of Krill’s hands cupped under the rope that bound the box, the weight hitting against his knees and sides. Cody removed his coat and wiped his face on his sleeve. He noticed that Negrito never touched the box, even though it was apparent that Krill was struggling with it. Krill set the box down heavily by the altar and untied the rope and let it snake to the floor.

The only light in the room came from a small stage hung with a blue velvet curtain. The interior of the chapel was immaculate, the pews gleaming, the floors polished. For some reason, as though for the first time, Cody realized what good care he had taken of the building. He had just installed new support beams under the peaked roof, heightening the effect of a cathedral ceiling, and had reframed the windows and painted birds and flowers on the panes. He had built a stage out of freshly planed pine in hopes that next year he could put on an Easter pageant and attract more children to his Bible-study classes. The air around the stage was as sweet-smelling as a green woods in spring, not unlike a deferred promise of better things to come.

“You have a very nice church here,” Krill said.

“I’m going to get a pitcher of water out of the coffee room. I’m not gonna call anybody or give y’all any trouble. What I’m doing here might not be right, but I’m gonna do it just the same.”

“What do you mean, ‘not right’?”

“The papists anoint at death. We baptize at birth.”

“These are considerations that are of no importance to me. Go

get the water. Do not let me hear you talking on a telephone.”

“Don’t trust him, jefe. He’s a capon, the friend of whoever he needs to please at the moment,” Negrito said.

“No, our friend here has no fear. He has no reason to lie. Look at his eyes. I think he doesn’t want to live. He’s a sadder man than even you, Negrito.”

“Don’t talk of me that way, jefe.”

“Then don’t call others a capon, you who are afraid to touch the box in which my children sleep.”