Feast Day of Fools (Hackberry Holland 3)

“That’s why there are whores and tequila in Durango. A trip there will ease your problems, jefe.”

“I have to talk to La Magdalena.”

“You want to sleep with her? That’s what’s going on? You think there’s something special about a Chinese woman in bed? They ain’t no different from our women. You love them at night, and in the morning they make your life awful.”

“Poor Negrito. Why do you always think with the head of your penis?”

“’Cause it ain’t never let me down, man,” said Negrito, and cupped his hand on Krill’s shoulder. “Come on, tell me the truth. Why you got to talk to this woman if you ain’t looking to poke her?”

“To confess my sins, hombre. To rid myself of the faces I see in my sleep.”

“It ain’t a sin to kill people in a war. We were farmers and cattle workers until the war came. The people we killed had it coming. What is the big loss when a Communist is killed?”

“My children died because of me.”

“That don’t make no sense, Krill.”

“I used to blame the army and the Americans and those from Argentina who first gave us our guns. But I took the pay of corrupt political men and did what they told me. I killed the Jesuit and the leftists. You know these things are true, Negrito, because you were there. The helicopter machine-gunned the clinic, but I was their brother in arms. I helped bring a curse on our land.”

“No, your head is screwed up, Krill. That woman ain’t no priest. Whatever you confess to her, she’s gonna tell the cops. Then they’re gonna hunt us down. They don’t want nobody to know what we done down there.”

“There’s something strange going on in that house,” Krill said.

“What’s strange is your head. It glows in the dark. I think you got too many chemicals in it. Remember those nights in Juárez?”

“The woman’s truck is by the barn, but there is no one moving in the house, and no electric light is turned on. But look through the window of the chapel. The candles are burning in front of the Virgin’s statue.”

“Of course. She burns candles all the time. That’s what people like her do. They burn candles. The rest of us work and sweat and sometimes take bullets, but they burn candles.”

“No, this one has been to war, Negrito. She is not one to go off somewhere or take a nap while an open flame burns in her house.”

“You make a complexity of everything,” Negrito said. “You are a man who cannot bear to have a quiet and simple thought. You constantly construct spiderwebs so you can walk through them.”

“Look on the far side of the fence, beyond the barn, where the grass is tall.”

“It’s grass. So what is the great mystery about grass?”

“There is a channel through it. The wind is not making the channel. Somebody walked through there.”

“Animals did. Deer or horses. They cross the field by walking on it. It took you a long time to figure that out?”

“No horses are in that field. And deer do not make paths on flat land, only on hillsides, where their feet have to find the same spot every day.”

“See what I mean? A simple visit to the home of this pretender sacerdote becomes a torture of the brain.”

“The back door is ajar, Negrito. There is something wrong in that house. You stay here and guard my back. You keep the rifle, but do not use it unless absolutely necessary. If everything is normal, I will come to the door and wave to you with my right hand, not my left.”

“Claro, man. My head is starting to hurt again with all your cautions. I cannot stand this. We were never afraid before. I told you from the beginning, this woman who wears men’s trousers was bad luck. But your obsession has no bounds.”

“Then leave. Go to Durango. Bathe in the diseased fluids of your whores,” Krill said.

Negrito was breathing heavily, the whiskers around his mouth as thick as a badger’s. His pupils were no bigger than pinheads, the skin around his eyes wrinkled and flecked with scales. “You make me want to do something that’s very bad.”

“You want to be me, Negrito, to leave your own body and live inside mine. And because you are a killer by nature, you believe a bullet can give you my heart and brain.”

“I am a loyal servant and follower and brother, not an assassin. I want you to be you and the leader you used to be, Krill, not a self-hating fool ruminating on his sins.”

“If I wave with my left hand from the door, rather than my right, what message will I be sending you?”