Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

WHEN HACKBERRY GOT back home from the grocery store in town, the sun had melted into a brassy pool somewhere behind the hills far to the west of his property. The blades on his windmill were unchained and ginning rapidly in the evening breeze, and inside the shadows on his south pasture, he could see well water gushing from a pipe into the horse tank. Once again he thought he smelled an odor of chrysanthemums or leakage from a gas well on the wind, or perhaps it was lichen or toadstools, the kind that grew carpetlike inside perennial shade, often on graves.

For many years Saturday nights had not boded well for him. After sunset he became acutely aware of his wife?s absence, the lack of sound and light she had always created in the kitchen while she prepared a meal they would eat on the backyard picnic table. Their pleasures had always been simple ones: time with their children; the movies they saw every Saturday night in town, no matter what was playing, at a theater where Lash La Rue had once performed onstage with his coach whip; attending Mass at a rural church where the homily was always in Spanish; weeding their flower beds together and, in the spring, planting veg etables from seed packets, staking the empty packets, crisp and stiff, at the end of each seeded row.

When he thought too long on any of these things, he was filled with such an unrelieved sense of loss that he would call out in the silence, sharply and without shame, lest he commit an act that was more than foolish. Or he would telephone his son the boat skipper in Key West or the other twin, the oncologist, in Phoenix, and pretend he was checking up on them. Did they need help buying a new home? What about starting up a college fund for the grandchildren? Were the kingfish running? Would the grandkids like to go look for the Lost Dutchman?s mine in the Superstitions?

They were good sons and invited him to their homes and visited him whenever they could, but Saturday night alone was still Saturday night alone, and the silence in the house could be louder than echoes in a tomb.

Hackberry hefted the grocery sacks and two boxed hot pizzas from his truck and carried them through the back door of the house into the kitchen.

Pete Flores and Vikki Gaddis were waiting for him at the breakfast table, both of them obviously tense, their mouths and cheeks soft, as though they were rehearsing unspoken words on their tongues. In fact, inside the ambience of scrubbed Formica and plastic-topped and porcelain perfection that was Hackberry?s kitchen, they had the manner of people who had wandered in off the highway and had to explain their presence. If they had been smoker

s, an ashtray full of cigarette butts would have been smoldering close by; their hands would have been busy lighting fresh cigarettes, snapping lighters shut; they would have blown streams of smoke out the sides of their mouths and feigned indifference to the trouble they had gotten themselves into. Instead, their forearms were pressed flat on the yellow table, and there was a glitter in their eyes that made him think of children who were about to be ordered by a cruel parent to cut their own switch.

Whatever was bothering them, Hackberry did not appreciate being treated as a presumption or an authority figure with whom they had to reconcile their behavior. He set the groceries and the pizza boxes on the table. ?What did I miss out on??

?Somebody was trying to take a shot at us,? Pete said.

?Where??

?Up yonder from your north pasture. On the other side of a hill. There?s a church house by a stream.?

?You said ?trying.? You saw the shooter??

?We saw the laser sight,? Pete said.

?What were y?all doing at the church??

?Taking a walk,? Vikki said.

?Y?all just strolled on up the road??

?That about says it,? Pete replied.

?Even though I said stick close by the house??

?We were watching some people get baptized. We were sitting under a willow tree. Vikki saw the red dot on my face and on her hand, then I saw it on the ground,? Pete said.

?You?re sure??

?How do you mistake something like that?? Pete said.

?Why wouldn?t the shooter fire??

?Maybe he was afraid of hitting one of the black people,? Pete said.

?The bunch we?re dealing with doesn?t have those kinds of reservations,? Hackberry said.

?You think we made this up?? Vikki said. ?You think we want to be here??

Hackberry went to the sink and washed his hands, lathering his skin well up on his arms, rinsing them a long time, drying the water with two squares of thick paper towel, his back turned to his guests so they could not see his expression. When he turned around again, his neutral demeanor was back in place. His gaze dropped to Pete?s pants legs. ?You ran across the creek?? he said.

?Yes, sir. Then on inside the church house. You could say we were bagging ass.?

?You think it was Jack Collins??

?No,? Vikki said. ?He?s done with us.?

?How do you know what?s in the head of a lunatic?? Hackberry said.