Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

The Mexican killers had also come out of their tent. The smoke from the cook fire contained a dense sweet smell, like burning sage or unopened flowers that had been consumed by the flames. Preacher leaned over the fire and, with his bare hand, picked up the metal pot boiling on the refrigerator grille and poured coffee into a tin cup, never setting down the Thompson. He drank from the coffee, blowing on the cup. He gazed at the frost on the hills. ?It?s going to be a fine day,? he said.

?zDonde está Bobby Lee?? Angel said.

?The boy made his peace. Don?t be worried about him.?

?zEstá muerto??

?If he?s not, I?d better get a refund on this gun.?

?Chingado, hombre.?

?Molo, can you fix up some huevos rancheros? I could eat a washtub load of those. Just cook it on the coals. I didn?t fire the woodstove this morning. A man shouldn?t do more work than is required of him. It?s a form of greed. For some reason, I could never get those concepts across to Bobby Lee.?

While Preacher spoke, he had not looked directly at Esther. His back was turned toward her, his bone structure as stiff as a scarecrow?s inside his coat, the Thompson hanging straight down from his arm. His face lifted toward the sky, his nostrils swelling. Now he turned slowly toward her, taking the measure of her mood, his gaze seeming to reach inside her head. ?I?ve scared you?? he said.

?He was your friend.?

?Who??

?The man in the mine.?

?It?s not a mine. It?s a cave. You know the story of Elijah sleeping outside the cave, waiting to hear the voice of Yahweh? The voice wasn?t to be found in the wind or a fire or an earthquake. It was to be found at the entrance to a cave.?

As she looked into his face and listened to his words, she believed she had finally come to understand the moral vacuity that lived behind his eyes. ?You?re going to kill us all, aren?t you??

?No.?

?You weren?t listening. I said you?re going to kill us all.?

?What does that mean??

?You?re going to kill yourself, too. That?s what this is all about. You have to die. You just haven?t found somebody to do it for you yet.?

?Suicide is the mark of a coward, madam. I think you should treat me with more respect.?

?Don?t call me madam. Did the man in the cave have a gun??

?I didn?t ask him. When Molo is done cooking, fix me a plate and one for yourself. The plane will be here by ten.?

?Prepare you a plate? Who do you think you are??

?Your spouse, and that means you?ll damn well do what I say. Get in the tent and wait for me.?

?Senora, better do what he say,? Angel said, wagging an admonishing finger. ?Molo already gave him food that makes him real sick. Senor Jack ain?t in a very good mood.?

She went back inside the tent, her temples pounding. She sat down on the cot and picked up the box of uneaten brownies she had prepared for Mrs. Bernstein. She placed her hand on her chest and waited until her heart had stopped racing. She hadn?t eaten since the previous evening, and her head was spinning and gray spots were swimming before her eyes.

She slipped the string off the box and took out one brownie and bit off a corner. She could not be sure, but she believed she might be holding a formidable weapon in her hand, at least if her intuitions about Preacher?s refusal to eat the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches were correct. She had learned the recipe from her grandmother, a woman whose life of privation had taught her how to create culinary miracles from the simplest of ingredients. One of the grandmother?s great successes had been brownies that were loaded with government-staple peanut butter but were baked with enough chocolate and cocoa powder to disguise th

eir mundane core.

Esther closed her eyes and saw Nick and her son and her twin daugh ters as clearly as if she were looking out the front window of their home on the Comal River. Nick was cooking a chicken on the barbecue grill, standing downwind, his eyes running, his glossy Hawaiian shirt soaked with smoke, forking the meat as though that would improve the burned mess he was making. In the background, Jesse and Ruth and Kate were turning somersaults on the grass, their tanned bodies netted with the sunlight shining through a tree, the river cold and rock-bottomed and swift-running behind them.

For just a moment she thought she was going to lose it. But this was not a time either to surrender or to accept the terms of one?s enemies. How did her grandmother put it? We didn?t give our lives. The Cossacks stole them. A Cossack feeds on weakness, and his bloodlust is energized by his victim?s fear.

That was what her grandmother had taught her. If Esther Dolan had her way, the man they called Preacher was about to learn a lesson from the southern Siberian plain.

When Preacher opened the tent flap, she caught a glimpse of mesas in the distance, an orange sunrise staining a bank of low-lying rain clouds. He closed the flap behind him and started to fasten the ties to the aluminum tent pole, then became frustrated and flung them from his fingers. He was not carrying his weapon. He sat down on the cot opposite her, his knees splayed, the needle tips of his boots pointed outward like a duck?s feet.