Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

“A pox on you,” Jack replied.

Noie stood up and smiled as Anton Ling headed for their table, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She had parked her truck by the barn and was coming hard across the horse lot, past the windmill and the water tank, amid the tables and the seated diners and the children who were still hunting for the pieces of candy they had scattered on the ground. She paused only long enough to pick up the broom handle the children had used to burst the piñata.

“What are you doing here?” she said to Jack.

The women and the girls at the table scattered.

“To determine if you betrayed me to an FBI agent by the name of Ethan Riser,” Jack said.

“Betrayed you? Are you insane?”

“Agent Riser tried to kill me. With no provocation.”

“You murdered him. You also shot a man from Parks and Wildlife.”

“I defended myself against them.”

“Listen to me, Mr. Barnum,” Anton said. “I don’t know why you’re with this man, but he’s a mass murderer. He killed nine Thai girls with a submachine gun. He’s a coward and a bully and mean to the bone. Stand up, Mr. Collins.”

“I tried to be your friend, woman. I came to your house when Josef Sholokoff’s men attacked you.”

“Don’t you ever address me as ‘woman.’”

“How dare you sass me?”

“How dare you be on the planet?” she said, and swung the broom handle down on the crown of his head just as he was rising from the bench. Then she attacked in serious mode, gripping the bottom of the handle to get maximum torque in her swings, slashing the blows on his ears and shoulders and forearms and forehead, any place that was exposed, cracking him once so hard on the temple that Noie thought the blow might be fatal.

“Miss Anton!” he said. “Miss Anton! Ease up! Please! You’re fixing to kill him!”

Jack stumbled away from the table, blood leaking out of his hair, one arm crooked to protect his face. She followed after him, hitting him in the spine and ribs, finally breaking the broom handle with a murderous swing across the back of his neck. “Go into the darkness that spawned you, you vile man,” she said. “Find the poor woman who bore you and apologize for the fact of your birth.”

Jack fell to one knee. He had left his hat behind him, on the table, crown down. He seemed to look at it with longing, as though he had left behind the better part of him. Noie picked him up and helped him to the Trans Am, staring back over his shoulder at Miss Anton and the Mexicans standing in the backyard, their faces lit by the porch light and the candles flickering on the tables. Noie pushed Jack into the passenger seat. “I’ll drive,” he said.

“You’re going with me?”

“What’s it look like?”

Jack was smiling, his face threaded with blood running from his forehead. “You’re a good kid.”

“The hell I am.” Noie started the engine and headed south down the dirt road, the headlights bouncing off mesquite that grew on the hillsides.

“I know a stand-up young guy when I see one,” Jack said.

Noie accelerated, aiming over his knuckles at the road in front of him.

“Did you hear me?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, I heard you. Everything you’ve said. Night and day. I hear you. Boy, do I hear you. You killed an FBI agent and shot somebody from Parks and Wildlife?”

“They dealt the play. I didn’t go looking for them.”

Noie’s jawbone tensed against his cheek in the dash light, but he said nothing in reply.

“You picked me up out of the dirt back there even though your ribs haven’t mended. I know how much broken ribs hurt. There’re not many kinds of pain I haven’t experienced. But pain can be a blessing. It gives you fire in the belly you can draw on when need be, and it allows you to understand others, for good or bad. You hearing me on this, son?”

“I’m not your damn son.”

“Have