Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

DURING THE RIDE to the car-title loan office in San Antonio, Hackberry did not speak again of Pam?s attack on the ICE agent Isaac Clawson. They were in his pickup truck, and the undulating countryside was speeding by rapidly, the chalklike hills layered with sedimentary rock where the highway cut through them, the sun a dust-veiled orange wafer by late afternoon.

Finally, she said, ?You don?t want to know why I hit Clawson??

You attacked him with a blackjack because you?re full of rage, he thought. But that was not what he said. ?As long as it doesn?t happen again, it?s not my concern.?

?My father started having psychotic episodes when I was about eight or nine and we were living up in the Panhandle,? she said. ?He?d look out on a field of green wheat and see men in black pajamas and conical straw hats coming through elephant grass. He went into a treatment program at the naval hospital in Houston, and my mother stayed there to visit him. She put me in the care of a family friend, a policeman everybody trusted.?

?Sure you want to talk about this?? he said, steering around a silver-plated gas tanker, his yellow-tinted aviator shades hiding the expression in his eyes.

?That bastard raped me. I told a teacher at school. I told a minister. They lectured me. They said the cop was a fine man and I shouldn?t make up stories about him. They said my father was mentally ill and I was imagining things because of my father?s illness.?

?Where?s this guy today??

?I?ve tried to find him, but I think he died.?

?I used to dream about a Chinese guard named Sergeant Kwo

ng. The day I informed on two fellow prisoners, I discovered I was the eighth man to do so. My fingernails were yellow talons, and my beard was matted with the fish heads I licked out of my food bowl. My clothes and boots were caked with my own feces. I used to think that Kwong and his commanding officer, a man by the name of Ding, had not only broken me physically but had stolen my soul. But I realized that in truth, they?d probably lost their own soul, if they ever had one, and at a certain point I had no control over what I did or what they did to me.?

?You don?t dream about it anymore??

He looked through the windshield at the dust and smoke from wildfires, and the way the hills went out of focus inside the heat waves bouncing off them, and for just a second he thought he heard bugles echoing out of a valley that had no name.

?No, I don?t dream very much anymore,? he said.

She looked out the side window and watched the countryside go by.

THE LOAN OFFICE was located on a corner where three streets that had once been cow trails intersected and formed a kind of financial center for people who possessed little of value to others, except perhaps their desperation.

Next to the loan office was a bail bonds office. Next to the bail bonds office was a pawnshop. Down the street was a saloon with a railed and mirrored bar, a kitchen that served food, and a clientele to whom the pawnshop, the bondsman, and the car-title loan office were as indispensable as the air they breathed. Few of them cared, or for that matter even knew, that John Wesley Hardin and Wild Bill Longley had been regulars at the saloon.

Hackberry parked in the alley behind the loan office and entered through the side door, removing his hat, waiting until the clerk was free before he went to the counter. Hispanic and Anglo working people were sitting at school desks filling out forms; a woman in glasses oversaw them as she might retarded people. Hackberry opened his badge holder on the counter and placed the photo of Liam Eriksson beside it. ?Know this fellow?? he said to the clerk.

?Yes, sir, the FBI was in here about him. I?m the one called up the cops on him,? the clerk said. ?He brought in a stolen check.?

?There was a woman with him??

?Yes, sir, but I wasn?t paying her that much mind. He?s the one had the check.?

?You don?t know who the woman was??

?No, sir,? the clerk replied. He had neat black hair and a mustache and a deep tan and wore gray slacks and a blue dress shirt and a striped tie.

?You work here long??

?Yes, sir, almost five years.?

?Get a lot of United States Treasury checks in here??

?Some.?

?But not many,? Hackberry said.

?No, sir, not a lot.?

?Never saw the woman before??

?Not that I recall. I mean, I?m pretty certain on that.?