Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

?What time is the vet going to be here?? Preacher asked.

?No is vet. Es médico, boss. He gonna be here soon.?

?Answer the question: When will he be here??

?Maybe fifteen minutes. You like the food okay??

?Hand me my crutches.?

?You getting up??

Preacher?s upturned face looked like the edge of a hatchet.

?I?ll get them, boss,? Jesus said.

Jesus?s wife had hand-washed Preacher?s trousers and shirt and socks and underwear, replaced his coins and keys and pocketknife in the pockets, and hung them neatly on the wood chair by the wall. Preacher worked his way to the chair, gathered up his clothes, and sat back down on his mattress. Then he slowly dressed himself, keeping his mind empty of the events that would take place in the house within the next few minutes.

He had not tucked in his shirt, allowing it to hang outside his trousers. Through the front window, he saw the veterinarian?s paint-skinned truck clattering over the ruts in the road, churning a cloud of fine white dust in the air. Preacher slid the .45 from under his mattress and pushed it inside the back of his belt, then pulled his shirt over the grips. The veterinarian parked in back and cut the engine, just as the rooster tail of dust from his truck broke across the front of the house and drifted through the screens. Preacher lifted himself onto his crutches and began working his way toward the kitchen, where Jesus and his wife and little girl sat at the table, waiting for the veterinarian, who clutched a sweating six-pack of Coca-Cola.

The veterinarian was unshaved and wore a frayed suit coat that was too tight on him and a tie with stains on it and a white shirt missing a button at the navel. He suffered from myopia, which caused him to squint and to furrow his brow, and as a consequence the villagers looked upon him as a studious and educated man worthy of respect.

?You look very good in your clean clothes, senor. Do you not want me to change your bandages? I brought you more sedatives to help you sleep,? the veterinarian said to Preacher.

The veterinarian was framed against the screen door, the late red sun creating a nimbus around his uncut hair and the stubble on his jowls.

Preacher steadied his weight and eased his right hand from the grip on the crutch. He moved his hand behind him slowly, so as not to lose his balance, his knuckles touching the heaviness of the .45 stuck down in his belt. ?I don?t think I?ll need anything tonight,? he said.

They all stared at him in the silence, the bare lightbulb overhead splintering into yellow needles, reducing the differences in their lives to pools of shadow at their feet. Now, now, now, Preacher heard a voice in his head saying.

?Rosa made you some peanut-butter cookies,? Jesus said.

Was that the little girl?s name or the name of the wife? ?Say again??

?My little girl made you a present, boss.?

?I?m diabetic. I cain?t eat sugar.?

?You want to sit down? You look like you?re hurting, boss.?

Preacher?s right hand opened and closed behind his back. He sucked in slightly on his bottom lip. ?How far up the dirt road to the highway??

?Ten minutes, no more.?

Preacher swallowed drily and slid his palm over the grips of the .45. Then his stare broke, and he felt a line of tension like a fissure divide the skin of his face in half. He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and labored on the crutches to the kitchen table. He splayed open the wallet and began counting a series of bills onto the table. ?There?s eleven hundred dollars here,? he said. ?You educate that little girl with it, you buy her decent clothes, you get her teeth fixed, you send her to a doctor and not to some damn quack, you buy her good food, and you burn a candle at your church in thanks you got a little girl like this. You understand me??

?You don?t got to tell me those things, boss.?

?And you get her a grammar book, too, plus one for yourself.?

Preacher worked his wallet into his pocket and thumped across the floor on his crutches and out the screen into the yard, under a purple and bloodred sky that seemed filled with the cawing of carrion birds.

He fell behind the wheel of the Honda and started the engine. Jesus came out the back screen of his house, a can of Coca-Cola in his hand.

?Some guys just don?t know how to leave it alone,? Preacher said under his breath.

?Boss, can you talk to Rosa? She?s crying.?

?About what??