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?”
“When is the lady of the house due back?” he asked.
“Any time now. Sit down. We have plenty of food for everyone.”
“We’re not here to eat,” Jack said.
“You should. You look like a scarecrow,” Isabel said.
Jack stared at her back as she walked away.
“What are you thinking?” Noie asked.
“That woman has a figure like a garbage can with a pair of bowling pins under it.”
“What lies would Miss Anton be telling about you, Jack?”
“Eat up and don’t worry about it.”
A caravan of cars and pickup trucks pulled into the yard, and Mexican working people filed around the sides of the house and through the front door without knocking and out the back door and sat at the tables and began filling their plates, talking incessantly, paying no attention to either Jack or Noie. Through the window of the chapel, Noie could see several of them placing their hands on the base of a wooden statue. “Why do they do that?” he asked.
“They’re ignorant pagans is why. Didn’t you ever read Ernest Hemingway?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? What do you people read in college? Hemingway said Spain was a Catholic country but not a Christian one. Same with this bunch.”
Noie hoped the people sitting near them did not know too much English.
Several children began battering a piñata with a broom handle, tearing apart the papier-mâché and colored crepe paper and stringing pieces of wrapped candy over th
e dirt apron under the tree. Several girls and young women sat down across from Noie and Jack, their backs turned, watching the children, sometimes reaching behind them to pick up a jar of Kool-Aid or a rolled tortilla. Jack was eating frijoles with a spoon, watching the women and girls, a smear of tomato sauce on his chin, the lumps in his face as swollen and hard-looking as cysts. The hair of the women and girls was so black it had a purple tint in it, like satin under a black light. Their skin was sun-browned, their teeth tiny, their eyes elongated, more Indian than Mexican. Their faces and throats were fine-boned, their features free of cosmetics; they looked like girls and young women from the Asian rim who might have just arrived in a new land where they would bear children and be cared for and loved by husbands who considered them a treasure and not simply a helpmate or a commodity.
Jack tore a section of paper towel off a roll on the table and wiped his mouth with it and balled it up in his hand. His eyes seemed to go in and out of focus; he pressed a thumb into his temple as though someone had shot an iron bolt into it.
“You have a migraine?” Noie said.
Jack didn’t answer. He seemed to be counting the number of girls and women sitting on the other side of the plank table. There were nine of them. The wind had come up, fluttering the candles inside the jelly jars, blowing the hair of the women and girls into strands, like brushstrokes in an Oriental painting. The piñata finally exploded from the blows of the broom handle, showering candy on the ground, filling the air with the excited screams of the children. Jack’s eyes were hollow, his mouth gray, his hands like talons on the tabletop.
“You don’t look too good,” Noie said.
“Are you saying something is wrong with me?” Jack said, glaring into Noie’s face. “You saying I got a problem?”
“No, I was wondering if you were sick. Your eyes are shiny, like you’ve got a fever, like you’re coming down with something.” Noie tried to touch Jack’s forehead.
“Mind your damn business, boy.”
“That’s what I’m doing. If you live with someone who’s sick, you ask about him.”
“It’s the dust and the insect repellent and the stink coming out of that pot of tripe. I told you to eat up.”
Jack kept huffing air out his nose, then leaned over and spat into the dust. But he didn’t raise his eyes again and kept his gaze focused on his plate. “Where’s that Amerasian or Chinese woman or whatever she is?”
“Don’t speak rudely of Miss Anton. She’s a fine woman. What’s gotten into you?” Noie said.
“We have to go.”
“It was your idea to come here. It’s a grand night. Look at the stars. Look at the children playing. You should have a family, Jack. You’d see things different.”
“Best shut your mouth, son.”
“Sticks and stones.”
“I cain’t believe I’ve become a warder for a moron.”
Jack stared at the women and girls again and pressed his fist under his chin to keep his hand from shaking. Now Noie had no doubt about the origins of Jack’s discomfort. He lowered his voice when he spoke. “These are poor and desperate people, Jack. Why are you upset by them? Their kind are the salt of the earth. Come on, you’re a better man than the one you’re acting like.”
Jack rose from the bench and picked up Noie’s paper plate and their uneaten food and threw it in the garbage can. “You can get in the car or walk, I don’t care which,” he said.
“There’s Miss Anton now,” Noie said. “Why don’t you talk with her? I’m like these others, I think she’s a holy woman. We’re already here. What’s to lose? It’s just like giving witness at a prayer meeting.”
“You like to quote Saint Paul, do you? ‘I put no woman in authority over a man.’ Did he say that or not? He understood the treachery that’s inherent in their nature. Tell me he didn’t say that?”
“Paul was talking about cultists in Corinth who belonged to a temple dedicated to the worship of Diana. They were courtesans and were behaving as such in the church. Stop acting like you’re unlettered.”
“A pox on you,” Jack replied.
Noie stood up and smiled as Anton Ling headed for their table, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She had parked her truck by the barn and was coming hard across the horse lot, past the windmill and the water tank, amid the tables and the seated diners and the children who were still hunting for the pieces of candy they had scattered on the ground. She paused only long enough to pick up the broom handle the children had used to burst the piñata.
“What are you doing here?” she said to Jack.
The women and the girls at the table scattered.
“To determine if you betrayed me to an FBI agent by the name of Ethan Riser,” Jack said.
“Betrayed you? Are you insane?”
“Agent Riser tried to kill me. With no provocation.”
“You murdered him. You also shot a man from Parks and Wildlife.”
“I defended myself against them.”
“Listen to me, Mr. Barnum,” Anton said. “I don’t know why you’re with this man, but he’s a mass murderer. He killed nine Thai girls with a submachine gun. He’s a coward and a bully and mean to the bone. Stand up, Mr. Collins.”
“I tried to be your friend, woman. I came to your house when Josef Sholokoff’s men attacked you.”
“Don’t you ever address me as ‘woman.’”
“How dare you sass me?”
“How dare you be on the planet?” she said, and swung the broom handle down on the crown of his head just as he was rising from the bench. Then she attacked in serious mode, gripping the bottom of the handle to get maximum torque in her swings, slashing the blows on his ears and shoulders and forearms and forehead, any place that was exposed, cracking him once so hard on the temple that Noie thought the blow might be fatal.
“Miss Anton!” he said. “Miss Anton! Ease up! Please! You’re fixing to kill him!”
Jack stumbled away from the table, blood leaking out of his hair, one arm crooked to protect his face. She followed after him, hitting him in the spine and ribs, finally breaking the broom handle with a murderous swing across the back of his neck. “Go into the darkness that spawned you, you vile man,” she said. “Find the poor woman who bore you and apologize for the fact of your birth.”
Jack fell to one knee. He had left his hat behind him, on the table, crown down. He seemed to look at it with longing, as though he had left behind the better part of him. Noie picked him up and helped him to the Trans Am, staring back over his shoulder at Miss Anton and the Mexicans standing in the backyard, their faces lit by the porch light and the candles flickering on the tables. Noie pushed Jack into the passenger seat. “I’ll drive,” he said.
“You’re going with me?”
“What’s it look like?”
Jack was smiling, his face threaded with blood running from his forehead. “You’re a good kid.”
“The hell I am.” Noie started the engine and headed south down the dirt road, the headlights bouncing off mesquite that grew on the hillsides.
“I know a stand-up young guy when I see one,” Jack said.
Noie accelerated, aiming over his knuckles at the road in front of him.
“Did you hear me?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, I heard you. Everything you’ve said. Night and day. I hear you. Boy, do I hear you. You killed an FBI agent and shot somebody from Parks and Wildlife?”
“They dealt the play. I didn’t go looking for them.”
Noie’s jawbone tensed against his cheek in the dash light, but he said nothing in reply.
“You picked me up out of the dirt back there even though your ribs haven’t mended. I know how much broken ribs hurt. There’re not many kinds of pain I haven’t experienced. But pain can be a blessing. It gives you fire in the belly you can draw on when need be, and it allows you to understand others, for good or bad. You hearing me on this, son?”
“I’m not your damn son.”
“Have
it your way.”
“You have to help me find Krill.”
“Why rent space in your head to a half-breed rodent?”
“I want Krill in leg irons,” Noie said, looking away from the road into Jack’s face. “That’s the only reason I’m on board. You got that?”
“You believe I killed those Thai women?”
Noie’s hands tightened on the wheel, and he looked at the road again. “Did you?”
“What’s the deal with Krill?”
“He can take me to Al Qaeda. He was going to sell me to them. Then he decided to sell me to some narco-gangsters because it was easier.”
“I think I’m seeing the landscape a little more clearly. Your sister died on 9/11?”
“In the Towers.”
“If I he’p you find Krill and maybe even these asswipes from Al Qaeda?”
“I’ll stay with you. I’ll be your friend. I won’t let you down.”
“Turn east at the highway. We’re not going back to our place. I’ll show you a road through a ranch into Coahuila. Only a few wets know about it.”
“But we leave everybody else here alone? Right? We find Krill but that’s it?”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Jack said. “All I’ve ever wanted was to be left alone. I never stole, and I never went looking for trouble. How many people can say that?”
Noie looked back at him. “I know you’ve done some dark deeds, but I can’t believe you mowed down a bunch of innocent women. I just can’t believe that.”
“Believe whomever you want. I’m tired of talking. I’ve tired of everything out there.”
“Out where?”
“There, in the dark, the voices in the wind, the people hunting and killing each other while they scowl at the likes of me. If I study on it, I have moments when I want to write my name on the sky in ways nobody will ever forget. That’s the burden you carry when you’re born different. You told me once your sister grew up bisexual or whatever in that small southern town y’all come from. Did she have a good time of it there? I think you’ve got more of me inside you than you’re willing to admit, Noie.”