Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

“I wish you’d been with me when we had bin Laden’s family on the tarmac. But this one is all mine,” Riser said.

“That’s a dumb way to think.”

“Did you ever hear of this black boxer who went up against an Australian who was called ‘the thinking man’s fighter’? The black guy scrambled his eggs. When a newsman asked how he did it, the black guy said, ‘While he was thinking, I was hitting him.’”

“Don’t hang up.”

“See you around, Hack. I’ve been wrong about almost everything in my life. Don’t make my mistakes.”

EARLY THE NEXT morning, as Jack Collins listened to Noie Barnum talk at the breakfast table in the back of the cabin, he wondered if Noie suffered from a thinking disorder.

“So repeat that for me, will you? You met the hikers on the trail and you did what?” Jack said.

“I wanted to try out that walking cane you gave me, and I made it down the hill just fine and along the edge of the creek out to the cottonwoods on the flat. That’s when my breath gave out and I had to sit down on a big rock and I saw the hikers. They were a very nice couple.”

“I expect they were. But what was that about the Instamatic?”

“At least I think it was an Instamatic. It was one of those cheap cameras tourists buy. They said they belonged to a bird-watching club and were taking pictures of birds along the hiking trail. They asked me to take a snapshot of them in front of the cottonwoods. It was right at sunset, and the wind was blowing and the leaves were flying in the air, and the sky was red all the way across the horizon. So I snapped a shot, and then they asked if they could take my picture, too.”

“But you’ve left something out of the repeat, Noie.”

“What’s that?”

“The first time around, you mentioned this fellow’s line of work.”

“He said he was a Parks and Wildlife man. He didn’t look to be over twenty-five, though. He said he and his wife were on their honeymoon. She had this warm glow in her face. They put me in mind of some folks I know back home.”

“And where do they live?”

“He said Austin. I think. Yeah, that was it. Austin.”

“Austin. That’s interesting.”

Jack got up from the table and lifted a coffeepot off the woodstove with a dishrag and poured into his cup. The coffee was scalding, but he drank it without noticing the heat, his eyes fastened on Noie. “You like those eggs and sausage?”

“You know how to cook them,” Noie replied. “What my grandmother would call ‘gooder than grits.’”

“You’re a card, Noie. So this fellow was from a law enforcement agency?”

“I don’t know if I’d call Parks and Wildlife that.”

“And he lives in the state capital?”

“Yep, that’s what he said.”

“And you let him take your photograph? Does that come right close to it?”

Noie seemed to reflect upon Jack’s question. “Yeah, I’d say that was pretty much it.”

In the early-morning shadows, Noie’s nose made Jack think of a banana lying in an empty gravy bowl. His long-sleeve plaid shirt was buttoned at the collar, even though it was too tight for him, and his suspenders were notched into the knobs of his shoulders like a farmer of years ago might have worn them. He was freshly shaved, his sideburns etched, his face happy, but his jug-shaped head and big ears would probably drive the bride of Frankenstein from his bed, Jack thought. Noie preoccupied himself with whittling checker pieces he kept in a shoe box, and he had the conversational talents of a tree stump. Plus, Noie had another problem, one for which there seemed to be no remedy. Even though he bathed every night in an iron tub by the barn, his body constantly gave off an odor similar to sour milk. Jack decided that Noie Barnum was probably the homeliest and most single man he had ever met.

“Did it strike you as unusual that this couple would want to photograph a man they’d known for only a few minutes?”

“My grandmother used to say people who are rank strangers one minute can turn out the next minute to be your best

friends.”

“Except we’re not rank strangers to the law, Noie.”