“You’re not letting me in on where we’re going?” Noie said.
Jack chewed on his food, his expression thoughtful. “You give much thought to the papists?”
“The Catholics?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“Not particularly.”
“That Chinese woman, the one who dressed your wounds, is a puzzle to me.”
“She’s just a woman with a big heart.”
“Maybe she’s spread her big heart around a little more than she should have.”
“If you read Saint Paul, there’s no such thing as being too charitable.”
“She may have been acting as a friend to the FBI. If that’s true, she’s no friend to us.”
“You saying she’s a turncoat?”
“I’d like to talk to her about it. Here’s a question for you.” From the side, Jack’s eyes looked like glass marbles pushed into dough that had turned moldy and then hardened. The amber reflection in them was as sharp as broken beer glass but without complexity or meaning. In fact, the light in his eyes was neutral, if not benign. “You put a lot of work into whittling out that checker set. Each one of those little buttons was a hand-carved masterpiece. But two pieces were missing from your poke, and you didn’t seem to give that fact any thought.”
“I guess I dropped them somewhere.”
“When you counted the checkers out, you didn’t notice that two were gone?”
“Guess not.”
“Too bad to lose your pieces. You’re an artisan. For a fellow like you, your craft is an extension of your soul. That’s what an artisan is. His thoughts travel through his arm and his hand into the object he creates.”
“That’s an interesting way to look at it.”
“Think they might have fallen out in the trunk when we were moving?”
“I’ll look first chance.”
“You like your hamburger?”
“You’d better believe it.”
“Does it bother you that an animal has to give up its life so we can eat types of food we probably could do without?”
“You know how to hang crepe, Jack.”
“Think we’d be welcomed by the papist woman?”
“You know what I would really like, more than anything else in the world? I mean, if I could have one wish, a wish that would make my whole life complete? That would make me so happy I would never ask for anything else as long as I live?”
“I cain’t figure what that might be, Noie.”
“I’d like to make peace with the men who held me hostage and killed the Mexican man I was handcuffed to. I’d like to make peace with the Al Qaeda guys they were going to sell me to. I’d like to apologize to them for the i
nnocent people I helped kill with the drones I helped develop. Most of all, Jack, I’d like to repay you for everything you’ve done. When they made you, they busted the mold.”
Jack worked a piece of food out of his jaw with his tongue and swallowed, his gaze straight ahead. He sipped from his mug, grains of ice clinging to his bottom lip. An attractive waitress in a rayon uniform roller-skated past the front of the Trans Am on the walkway under the shed, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Who’s ‘they’?” he asked.
“Pardon?”