James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

“You zoning out on me?” Dowling said.

“No, not at all. I was thinking about you and what you represent.”

“Yes?” Dowling said, lifting his hands inquisitively.

“That’s all, I was just having an idle thought or two. Goodbye, Mr. Dowling. There’s no need for you to drop by again. I think your appointment in Samarra isn’t far down the track. But maybe I’m wrong.”

“My appointment where?”

Noie Barnum had experienced a recurrent dream for years that was more a memory than a dream. He would see himself as a boy again, hunting pheasants on his grandfather’s farm in eastern Colorado. Noie had no memory of his father, who had died when he was three, but he would never forget his grandfather or the love he’d had for him. His grandfather had been a giant of a man, and a jolly one at that, who dressed every day in pressed bib overalls and, even though he was a Quaker, wore a big square beard like many of his Mennonite neighbors. When Noie was eleven, his grandfather had taken him pheasant hunting in a field of wild oats. The plains rolled away as far as Noie could see, golden and gray and white in the sunshine, backdropped by an indigo sky and the misty blue snowcapped outline of the Rocky Mountains. He remembered telling his grandfather he never wanted to leave the farm and never wanted to go back to the little town where his half sister was not allowed to bring her female date to the high school prom.

His grandfather had replied, “It doesn’t matter where we live or go, Noie. The likes of us will always be sojourners.”

“What are sojourners?”

“Folks like me and you and your mother and sister. We’re the descendants of John Brown. We have no home in this world except the one we create inside us.”

Just then two pheasants had burst from the stubble, rising fat and magnificent and thickly feathered and multicolored into the air, their wings whirring, their strength and aerial agility like a denial of their size and the laws of gravity.

“Shoot, little fellow! They’re yours!” his grandfather had said.

When Noie let off the twelve-gauge, the recoil almost knocked him down. Unbelievably, the pattern hit both birds; they seemed to become broken in midair, dysfunctional, their wings crumpling, their necks flopping, their feet trying to hook the air as they tumbled into the stubble.

That night Noie had cried, then the sun rose in the morning as though he had wakened from a bad dream, and for years he did not think about the birds he had killed.

But after 9/11, the dream came back in a mutated form, one in which he no longer saw himself or his grandfather. Instead, he saw curds of yellow smoke angling at forty degrees across an autumnal blue sky and two giant birds on a window ledge entwining their broken wings and then plunging into a concrete canyon where fire trucks swarmed far below.

Noie woke from the dream, raising his head off his chest, unsure where he was, staring down the long dirt road that led to an unpainted gingerbread house.

“Who’s Amelia?” Jack asked.

“My half sister. I must have dozed off. Where are we?” Noie said.

“Right up from the Chinese woman’s place. Does your sister live in Alabama?”

“No, she died nine years ago.”

“Sorry to hear that. I was an only child. It must warp something inside you to see your sibling taken in an untimely way.”

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

“That’s the way I figure it. We all get to the same barn. Why study on it?” When Noie didn’t reply, Jack said, “You scared of it?”

“Of what?”

“Dying.”

“There are worse things.”

“Cite one.”

“Letting evil men harm the innocent. Not doing the right thing when honor is at stake. Why are we parked here?”

“Since we’re wanted all over the state of Texas, I thought it might be a good idea to wait until it was dark before we drove into the yard of somebody who knows us.”

“I don’t think this is smart, Jack.”

“Many a man has tried to put me in jail, but I’ve yet to spend my first day there.”

Jack got out of the car and unlocked the trunk and came back with a suitcase that he set on the hood.

“What are you doing?” Noie asked.

“Changing clothes.”

“On a dirt road in the dark?”

Jack began stripping off his soiled white shirt and unbuckling his trousers and slipping his feet from his battered cowboy boots, not replying, intent upon the project at hand, whatever it was. His chest and shoulders and arms and legs were white in the moonlight, and scars were crosshatched on his back from his ribs to his shoulder blades. He buttoned on a soft white shirt and pulled on a pair of tan slacks and slipped a pair of two-tone shoes on his feet, then unfolded a western-cut sport coat from the suitcase and pushed his arms into the sleeves. He sailed his wilted panama hat up an arroyo and knotted on a tie with a rearing horse painted on it and fitted a blocked short-brim Stetson on his head. He turned toward Noie for approval. “You know the mark of a man? It’s his hat and his shoes,” he said.

“You look like the best-dressed man of 1945,” Noie said. “But what in God’s name is on your mind, Jack?”

“Options.”

“Can you translate that?”

“An intelligent man creates choices. A stupid man lets others deal the hand for him.”

“You’re not going to hurt that woman, are you?”

“You must think pretty low of me.”

“Not true. But I got to have your word.”

“That’s what my mother used to say, right before she made me cut my own switch and skinned me into next week,” Jack said.

The front porch light was on when they parked in the yard of the gingerbread house and knocked on the screen door. “Just an advanced warning, Noie,” Jack said. “I think some lies are being told about me. So don’t necessarily believe everything this lady says.”

“What lies?”

“If people faced the truth about how governments work, there would be revolutions all over the earth. So they blame the misdeeds of the government on individuals. I happen to be one of those individuals. You never read Machiavelli up there at MIT?”

“?Venga!” someone called from the kitchen.

“You heard her,” Jack said.

They went inside and sat on the couch. A heavyset Mexican woman with a wooden spoon in her hand and her hair tressed up in braids came into the living room. Jack’s Stetson was propped on his knee. He rose from the couch, his hat hooked on one finger. “Where’s Ms. Ling?” he said.

“She went to the store. She’ll be right back. I’m Isabel,” the woman said.

“Mind if we wait?” Jack asked.

“The people are coming. If you don’t mind them, they won’t mind you,” Isabel said.

“What people?”

“ La gente. The people.”

“Yeah, I got that. But what people?”

“The people who always come. You can sit at the tables in back if you want. I already put Kool-Aid out there. You can help me carry out the food,” Isabel said.

“We don’t mind in the least,” Noie said. “Do we, Jack?”

Jack’s expression made Noie think of a large yellow squash someone had just twisted out of shape.

They carried out lidded pots of beans and fried hamburger meat and plates of hot tortillas smeared with margarine. They set them on the plank tables under the trees and helped light the candles affixed to the bottoms of jelly jars. In the distance, they could see the headlights of several vehicles headed up the dirt road toward them.

“You have a bunch of wets coming through here?” Jack said.

“No, no wets,” Isabel said, wagging a finger. “These are not wets, and ‘wets’ is not a term we use. You understand that, hombre?”