James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

“Hey, Reverend, I didn’t see you, so I just come inside,” the man said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“That’s what it’s for. The name is Rector, isn’t it?”

“Dennis Rector, that’s me,” the man replied. “I saw your nail gun there. You’ve been doing some carpentering.”

“You play a Dobro?”

“You know your instruments. That’s what it is, resonator and all.” The small man had the dark skin of a field hand and hair that looked like it had been cut with fingernail clippers. He wore lace-up boots and a tie-dyed T-shirt and denim work pants. His upper torso was bent like a question mark. “It’s a Fender, built on the old National model. It feels like a Coca-Cola box packed with ice hanging from your neck.”

Dennis Rector ran a steel bar up and down the neck of the Dobro and began playing a tune with the steel picks on the thumb and index and middle fingers of his right hand. “Recognize that piece? That’s ‘The Great Speckled Bird.’ Same tune as ‘The Wild Side of Life.’ Same tune as ‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.’”

Through the window, Cody could see two men sitting in the cab of the eighteen-wheeler. “What are y’all carrying?” he asked.

“Exotic animals. Want one?”

“You work for a zoo?”

“I guess you could call it that.” Dennis Rector was smiling as though he possessed private knowledge that he might or might not share. “We supply a wild-game ranch up in Pecos County.”

Cody nodded and didn’t reply.

“You’re not keen on them kind of places?”

“Live and let live.”

“That’s the way I figure it. Their misfortune and none of my own. You know you got some beaners parked down yonder on your road?”

“Pardon?”

“Some pepper-bellies in a beat-up old car with a busted headlight.”

“Who are they?”

“Maybe a couple of people fucking. How should I know? I couldn’t see them that good.” The small man was still smiling.

“This is a church house, even if it’s just the coffee room,” Cody said.

“Sorry.”

“Did you catch the tag?”

“I wasn’t paying them much mind. They looked away from our lights when we passed. That’s why I figure they were people making out. Mexicans tend to breed in the spring and domino in the winter.”

Cody studied Dennis Rector from behind his eyelashes. “You from here’bouts?”

“Wherever I hang my hat. Jobs are kind of thin these days. Seems like there’s less and less work for a white man. What’s your feeling about that?”

“I never lost a job ’cause of my skin color.”

“That sounds different from a couple of your sermons.”

“Could I he’p y’all with something?”

“No, I just wanted to show my friends your church and get out of the storm.”

Cody nodded again, looking out the door at the truck and the animals he could see behind the ventilation slots in the sides. “You mind locking up when you leave? I’ve got some work to do in the house.”

The small man filled his mouth with a jelly doughnut, pushing the overflow back into his mouth with his wrist. His chrome-plated instrument swam with an oily blue light. “No problem, Reverend,” he said.

Cody walked back up the stairs and across his deck into the house, forcing himself not to look back over his shoulder. He felt a sense of ill ease that he couldn’t define. Was it the rawness of Dennis Rector’s language? Or the fact that Cody had helped encourage the role of victim in many of his congregants? Or did he see a reflection of his former self in the lewdness of mind that characterized men like Rector? Why was a man like that playing “The Great Speckled Bird,” a spiritual that was as deep-seated in southern religion as “The Old Rugged Cross”? Something wasn’t a right fit.

There was also the business about the Hispanics parked on the road. He should have pumped Rector about them. Could the car have contained Krill and Negrito? It couldn’t be them, could it? They were professional criminals, hunted by the local sheriff and the FBI and probably the Texas Rangers. Why would Krill and Negrito invest their lives in persecuting Cody Daniels, a mail-order minister who was awakened at two each morning by a blind woman with a disfigured face rattling his bedroom windows?

Just as the power went back on, Cody saw the eighteen-wheeler turn in a wide circle, led by Dennis Rector’s car, and head south down the road, the edges of the trailer etched with chains of gold running lights. He folded the confessional letter he had written to the FBI and placed it in the envelope and licked the seal, his stomach churning, his head as light as a helium balloon. Then he sat at his desk, his head in his hands, and wondered how he had made such a catastrophe out of his life.

The wind was swirling out of the desert, the rain driving hard on the roof, dancing on the handrails of his deck, blowing in the blue-white radiance of the neon cross he had mounted above the entrance to the Cowboy Chapel. Maybe it was time to pile a few belongings into the cab of his truck, drop his letter to the FBI in a mailbox, and disappear inside the vast anonymity of the American West.

He could sell his truck in California and pick fruit in the San Joaquin, harvest beets up in Oregon and Washington, maybe lumberjack in Montana or get on a fishing boat in Alaska. If the law caught up with him, fine. If it didn’t, that would be fine, too. Why not just roll the dice and stay out of the consequences? In the United States a person could get a new identity and start a new life as easily as acquiring a library card. He had to wonder at the irony of it all. In his fantasy, he was joining the ranks of the migrant workers he had railed against.

He went into his bedroom and began stuffing the clothes from his dresser and closet into a duffel bag. That was when he felt the air decompress around him and the cold smell of rain surge through the house, the joists and wood floors creaking as the temperature dropped inside. He turned around and stared into the faces of two men whose hats were wilted on their heads, their brown skin shiny with water, their clothes smelling like horses and wood smoke and sweat that had dried inside flannel.

“Why won’t y’all leave me alone?” Cody said.

“You know,” Krill said.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Yes, you know. Do not pretend you don’t know. Do not make an insignificance of my children.”

“I’m worthless as a minister. I’m no different from you. I he’ped put together a bomb that was used on an abortion clinic. I ruined a woman’s life. I’m not worth shooting.”

Krill was already shaking his head, indicating Cody’s wishes had little to do with what was about to occur. Negrito was smiling broadly. “We told you we’d be back, man. But you don’t listen,” he said. “You got anything to eat? I’m really hungry. What was that about a bombing?”

“You got a hearing defect?” Cody said.

“End this silly talk and come with me,” Krill said.

“Where?”

“Out into the rain, hombre.”

“I’m no count as a pastor, no count as a man. That’s not humility talking, either. It’s the truth.”

“ Venga conmigo. Now. No more talking.”

“You don’t have to point a gun at me. I’m plumb worn out with people pointing guns at me.”

“It’s necessary, hombre. Your ears are wood, your thinking processes like cane syrup. It is clear you’re of low intelligence.”

“You want to hold a gun on me? Here, I’ll he’p you.”

“Let go of my wrist.”

“Put one through my heart. I’m tired of y’all pestering me.”

“Show him,” Negrito said.

“Don’t underestimate me,” Krill said to Cody. “I have taken many lives. I have machine-gunned a priest.”