James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

Between Negrito’s booted feet, R.C. saw an image that made his heart sink. On a level spot at the edge of the wash were at least five depressions, each of them roughly six feet long and three feet wide, the top of the depressions composed of a mixture of soil and dirt and sand and charcoal from old wildfires, all of it obviously spaded up and shaped and packed down by the blade of a shovel.

“See, I got to leave you here for a while and make some contacts,” Negrito said. “You’re gonna be safe till I get back. I like you, Tejano boy, but I got to make money and take care of my family. There’s only one question I got to ask you. When I was a little boy working on this turista ranch in Jalisco, there was a gringo there who looked just like you. After he shot pigeons all day, he made me pick them up and clean them for his supper. While I did that, he screwed my sister. You think maybe that was your father?”

For a second, R.C. thought Negrito was going to pull the tape from his mouth so he could answer. Instead, Negrito’s head jerked around and he stared again into the darkness, his nostrils flaring as though he had caught a scent on the wind, the thumb of his right hand hooking over the butt of his holstered. 45. He walked up to the flat place and stood among the row of depressions, looking from one side of the hill to the other. “?Quien esta ahi? Somebody out there want to talk to me?” he said to the wind.

He waited in the silence, then returned to the rear of the car, glancing once behind him. He squatted down and ripped the tape from R.C.’s mouth. “I’m gonna ask you this question once, no second chances,” he said. “Be honest with me, I’m gonna be honest with you. You had somebody with you tonight? Or maybe you had somebody following you? ’Cause that’s the feeling I been having all night.”

R.C. tried to think. What was the right answer? “No,” he said.

“That’s the problem you gringos got. You’re always trying to figure out what kind of lie is gonna work, like right now you’re wondering how stupid is this Mexican man you got to deal with. I’m gonna be honest with you even if you ain’t been honest with me. You’re gonna have a bad night, man. You can cry, you can beg, you can pray, but only one thing is gonna happen to you, and there ain’t no way to change that. Don’t try to fight it. Tonight is gonna be a son of a bitch. Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe you’re gonna catch a break.”

“I’m not a narc,” R.C. said.

“Maybe, maybe not. But the people I sell you to are gonna find out.” Negrito stood up and opened one of the back doors of the car and returned with a shovel and a gas mask that had an extra-long breathing hose. “See this?” he said. “It’s your chance to live. You just got to have a lot of self-control and not let your thoughts take over your body.”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“It’s out of my hands, Tejano boy. I was just having a drink in the cantina. You came into the wrong place and put your nose in the wrong people’s business. Now you got to pay the price.”

“The other guy said to turn me loose.”

“You talking about Krill? He ain’t never gonna know what happened to you. Krill thinks he’s smart, but most of the time, his thoughts are in the next world, where he thinks his dead kids are.” Negrito brushed a piece of dirt off R.C.’s cheek with his thumb and smiled. “You’re a gringo cop who has a flat tire and ends up drinking in a whorehouse that has a bartender who works for La Familia? I hope in the morning you get a chance to tell these other guys that story. It’s a very good one, man. You got to tell them the joke about the golf course, too. They’re gonna really laugh.”

After Hackberry and Pam Tibbs left the bordello and got in the Cherokee, Pam remained silent for a long time. Then she started the engine and looked at him. “Where to?” she asked.

“Back to the cantina. That bartender was lying,” he said.

“I was a little worried in there.”

“About what?”

“When you cracked that guy in the mouth.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“I’ve never seen you like that.”

“I don’t like child molesters.”

“You told those two guys in the living room you’d blow their heads off. I could hear you breathing when you said it.”

“That’s because I meant it.”

“That’s what bothers me.”

“Let’s get on it, Pam,” he said.

On the way back to the cantina, Hackberry lowered the brim of his Stetson and shut his eyes, wanting to sleep for an eternity and forget the violence and cruelty and sordid behavior and human exploitation that seemed to become more and more visible in the world as he aged. According to the makers of myth and those who trafficked in cheap lies about human wisdom, the elderly saw goodness in the world that they had not been allowed to see in their youth. But Hackberry had found that the world was the world and it did not change because one happened to age. The same players were always there, regardless of the historical era, he thought, and the ones we heeded most were those who despoiled the earth and led us into wars and provided us with justification whenever we felt compelled to commit unconscionable acts against our fellow man. Maybe this wasn’t a good way to think, he told himself, but when you heard the clock ticking in your life, there was no worse disservice you could do to yourself than to entertain a lie. Death was bad only when you had to face it knowing that you had failed to live during the time allotted you, or that you had lied to yourself about the realities of the world or willingly listened to the lies of others.

He felt his body rock forward when Pam touched the brake in front of the cantina.

“Take it easy in there, okay?” she said.

“I wonder what kind of night R.C. is having,” Hackberry replied.

“You can really drive the nails.”

“If we mess up here, R.C. dies. Inside that stone building on the corner are men in uniform who would gladly work in an Iranian torture chamber for minimum wage. The meth being funneled through this town probably originates with a bunch down in the state of Michoacan. These are guys who make the cops in the stone building look like the College of Cardinals.”

She turned off the ignition and stared straight ahead, her hands resting on the wheel. “I wasn’t criticizing you back there. I just worry about you sometimes. You don’t handle regret very well.”

“The person who does is dead from the neck up.”

“One of these days I’ll learn to keep my counsel.”

“Watch my back. I don’t want those rurales coming through the front door and planting one in my ear.”

“R.C. is a tough kid. Give him some credit,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“Put it in neutral, Hack.”

“Cover my back and lose the bromides.”

“You got it.”

Hackberry had already gotten out of the Jeep and crossed the sidewalk and entered the cantina before Pam had reached the curb. The bartender with the enormous swastika was stacking chairs on a table by the small dance floor in back. He grinned when he saw Hackberry. “Hey, amigo, you decided to come back and have dinner with me! Welcome once again. You brought the lady, too.”

“Who wouldn’t love a place like this? Excuse me just a second,” Hackberry said.

“What are you doin’, senor?”

“Not much. When I played baseball, I was a switch-hitter. I sometimes wonder if I still have it,” Hackberry said. He pulled a pool cue off the wall rack and grasped the thinly tapered end with both hands and whipped the heavy end across the bartender’s face. The cue splintered with the same hand-stinging crack as a baseball bat when it catches a ninety-mile-an-hour pitch at the wrong angle. The weighted end of the cue rocketed into the wall, and the bartender crashed over the table into the plastic-cased jukebox, blood pouring from his nose.