James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

“I was an engineering major.”

“It shows.”

“Pardon?”

Jack’s eyes wrinkled at the corners. “Don’t let my tone bother you. I got to stop fretting myself about our enemies. Some people aren’t made for the world. That’s the likes of us. That’s why we’re hunted.”

“A man deals his own play. The world doesn’t have much to do with it,” Noie replied. “That’s the way I look at it.”

With his fingertips, Jack began loading one of the ammunition pans, lifting each. 45 cartridge from its individual hole in a Styrofoam block and lowering it into a pod inside the circular magazine, as though he took more pleasure in the ritual than its purpose. “All I ever wanted from people was to be let alone. Learn it soon or learn it late, a man doesn’t have peace unless he’s willing to make war.”

“Have you shot somebody with that thing?”

“They shot themselves.”

“How so?” Noie asked, his throat clotting.

“They line up to do it. They cain’t wait.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

How was Jack to explain that he had two optical screens in his head? On one screen were people who caused him trouble or threatened his life. On the other screen was the backdrop against which they had originally appeared, but they were airbrushed from it. Poof, just like that. The alteration of the images had little to do with him. One side of his brain spoke to the other side. One side defined the problem; the other side took care of it. The people who disappeared from the screen designed their own fate and were responsible for their own diminution.

“Look out the front window,” Jack said.

“At the two-lane?”

“I’m talking about the junkyard. You think anything inside it is of any real value?”

“Not unless you’re keen on junk.”

“But the man who owns the junkyard has razor wire on top of all his fences. That wire probably cost a lot more than anything anybody might steal off those rusted-out or compacted cars. The whole place is the automotive equivalent of a warthog. The wire deflates the value of the property around it and makes Nebraska look like the French Riviera. But nine out of ten people in this county would defend the guy’s right to build a huge eyesore on the highway they paid to have poured.”

“What’s that have to do with your machine gun?”

“Not every asylum has walls.”

“They’re out to get us?”

“The government has been trying to put me out of business for twenty years. So has a guy by the name of Josef Sholokoff. His exbusiness partner, Temple Dowling, would like to see you dead, and Sholokoff would like to see you in a cage so he can sell you to Al Qaeda and screw Dowling. In the meantime, the likes of us are considered criminals. Am I getting through to you?”

“There’s gunpowder residue on your cleaning patch.”

“That’s right.”

“You fired your Thompson recently?”

Jack snapped the top back on the metal drum and began twisting the winding key. “The Oriental woman gave up our location to the FBI. At least that’s my belief until I find out different.”

“Miss Anton? She dressed my wounds. She wouldn’t inform on me.”

“How about on me?”

“You didn’t harm her, did you?”

“No, I did not. But a couple of other guys paid her tab.”

“What are you telling me?”

“You want to be back in Krill’s custody? Time to take the scales from your eyes, son. Who do you think Krill used to work for? The United States government is who.”

“What have you done, Jack?”

“Nothing. I told you that at the outset. Moses slew two hundred of his people for erecting the golden calf. He killed, but he didn’t murder. His followers got what they deserved.”

“Tell me if you killed somebody. Just say it.”

Jack exhaled and stared into space, the lumps in his face spiked with unshaved whiskers. “Years ago I did something that still disturbs me, but you can make up your own mind about it. My mother was a prostitute. Most of her clients were gandy walkers or brake-men off a freight line that went past the boxcar we lived in. One guy in particular would come by every two weeks or so. He had a family in Oklahoma City, but that didn’t stop him from topping my mother when he was on a bender. I’d have to wait outside, which I had more or less gotten used to, but on one occasion it was about fifteen above and snowing, and I spent an hour wrapped in a piece of canvas, crouched down out of the wind behind his car, which he kept locked because he didn’t want a smelly little boy sitting on his leather seats.

“The next summer I was working as a dishwasher in town, and this same fellow came in and ordered the beef-stew special. He looked like he was just coming off a drunk and could have eaten a whole cow between two slices of white bread. That morning I’d swept up some broken glass off the back step and put it in the trash can. The glass was as fine as needles, but I mashed it up even finer and put it in his stew with a lot of potatoes. About thirty minutes later, he went down on the sidewalk like he swallowed a handful of fishhooks. I heard he died, but I didn’t go around asking questions about it.”

Jack snapped the ammunition drum onto his submachine gun and laid the gun lopsidedly inside the guitar case. He wiped the oil off his fingers with a paper towel and gazed somberly into Noie’s face, his eyes melancholy and shiny. Then as though he had been holding his breath underwater to the point where his lungs were bursting, his mouth fell open and his lips creased back in a broad smile. “Got you, boy! I had you convinced you were bunking with Jack the Ripper. My mother was an elementary teacher in Okemah, Oklahoma, and died of Huntington’s chorea. My last job was at a Pee-wee Herman theme park. I couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“What about the submachine gun?”

“I’ve got a whole collection of rare firearms in Rio de Janeiro. One day I’ll show them to you. You don’t believe I’m a rich man, do you?”

“I don’t know what to believe, Jack.”

“That’s because you’re a good kid. Get out your checker set, and let’s put on a pot of coffee and play a game or two.”

The information that came in from the National Crime Information Center on Dennis Rector was of little value, other than to indicate that he had been arrested twice for DWI and once for domestic battery, and the United States Navy had given him a general discharge for the convenience of the service. His wallet contained an Arizona driver’s license, a Social Security card, fourteen dollars, a condom, a GI can opener, a coupon for a box of cereal, a speeding citation that was four months old, a torn ticket to a concert in Branson, Missouri, and a photograph of the deceased in a

navy uniform standing next to an Asian girl wearing a shift and flip-flops. Written in pencil on the back of the photograph were the words “With Luz, Mindanao, Aug. 6, 1982.”

In his right-hand pocket Rector had been carrying seventy-three cents in change, three metal finger picks, and a half stick of gum wrapped in tinfoil.

Hackberry placed Rector’s possessions in a manila envelope and gazed out the window at a pallid and sultry sky and hills that barely contained enough moisture to go with the greening of the season. What was the sum total of a man’s life? Scraps of paper issued by the state? A photo taken with a peasant girl on the rim of the New American Empire on the anniversary of Hiroshima’s bombing? A ticket to a country-music event at which the stage performers wore tasseled red, white, and blue costumes and offered up a meretricious tribute to a culture that celebrated its own vulgarity? A half stick of chewing gum?

Who was Dennis Rector, and what had he come to confess? How could a man who had acquired so little and left such a microscopic trace on the planet be so serious about himself that he would take his own life? What could he have done that was that bad? Hackberry picked up his desk phone. “Would you come in here, Maydeen?” he said.