House of the Rising Sun: A Novel (39 page)

“
We
are not breaking any laws. Mr. Po’s transactions take place overseas. The vendors in this country will receive from him. The product grown in the Orient will be sold by him. And he will pay us for the guns we ship to friendly countries or democratic insurgencies.”

“I’m confused. I don’t want to talk anymore about this.”

“You are not confused about anything, Maggie. You understand the nature of power. There are two kinds of people; those who have it and those who do not. Think back on what it was like when men such as those who just left here were your clients. No, don’t put that pout on your face. The world fucked you, just as it did me. Now it’s our turn.”

“I want to see Ishmael.”

“Listen to me,” Beckman said. He lifted his chin and used one finger to trace the chain of scars that ran down his cheek and neck into his collar. “I got this in one of the early mustard-gas experiments. It involved putting the gas in an exploding shell. I also lost my sense of smell. The scientists who did this to me could not have cared less.”

“Mr. Beckman say profane words but is a visionary,” Mr. Po said.

“Time to make a choice, Maggie. You’re on board the
Pequod
or not. But we’re going to kill the great white whale with or without you, girl,” Beckman said. “Think back to when you were nineteen and scared to death and glad to be offered a bare mattress and a water pan in a straddle house for the kind of roach bait that just walked out of here. Did you like their hands on you, their breath on your skin, their fingers knotted in your hair?”

Her cheeks were flaming, her hands clenched in her lap, her mouth so dry and her face so tight that she couldn’t swallow or even blink.

A
FTER COD BISHOP
left his house, Hackberry called the sheriff and asked a favor.

“You want Darl Pickins to drive you back to San Antonio?” Willard asked.

“Somebody has got hold of my son. I need to get him back.”

“I just got two calls from the authorities in Bexar, Hack. Guess what they were about.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Three security workers at the carnival got tore up by some wild man.”

“That’s too bad.”

“The wild man who attacked them said he was a deputy sheriff in Kerr County. About six and a half feet tall. Maybe a little more. An older man. He said his son had been wounded in France.”

“These were full-grown men, I assume. Not children or paraplegics?”

“Most likely.”

“I think I know who they might be. The same ones who put my boy on display in the geek cage. I cain’t imagine somebody putting the boots to them. That’s a heartbreaking story.”

“I swore you in as a peace officer. You don’t have permission to beat the hell out of whomever you feel like.”

“They had it coming.”

“Your badge goes in your dresser drawer today, Hack. I’ll pick it up the next time I’m out.”

“I think I did the right thing.”

“It might have been the right thing twenty-five years ago. You know what got Wesley Hardin killed?”

“A bullet through the brain. It does that sometimes.”

“It’s what his kind look for. From the day their parents throw them out with the slop jar. You’re always skirting the edge of it. That’s what I don’t understand.”

“Darl cain’t drive me to San Antonio?”

“They’re going to put you away, Hack. In Huntsville or an asylum or some other shithole you’ll never come out of. Why do you let them do it to you?”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“I give up.”

The line went dead.

T
HE PITY THAT
flowed in the veins and the cup of mercy that could fill the heart in a second had always remained mysteries to Hackberry. Their power was so great and disarming that he often feared them.

Of all people to cause these emotions in him, it had to be Cod Bishop. As Hackberry was trying to find somebody to take him to San Antonio, he looked out the window and saw Bishop walking through the pasture along the riverbank, toward Hackberry’s house, without a hat or coat, staring furtively at the bluffs and the sky as though they contained either an omen or a threat. Even his gait seemed out of sync with the world; he walked as though his feet were sinking in snow or ice.

Hackberry went out on the back porch, hoping Bishop had finally decided to tell the truth about his relationship with Arnold Beckman. More important, maybe he knew where Ishmael was being held. Maybe Cod Bishop was on the verge of starting a new life.

Vanity, vanity. If ever Hackberry had seen a man in the midst of a nervous breakdown, it was Cod.

“What’s going on, partner?” Hackberry said.

“I was digging in the ash, cleaning and stacking the bricks,” Bishop said. “I’m not bad with a trowel and cement. I’ve worked right alongside many a tradesman.”

“I’m not quite following you.”

“Where the darkies used to live. There was a fire years ago, and they moved away. I’m rebuilding their houses.” Bishop’s white shirt was streaked with charcoal, the armpits ringed with sweat, a manic shine in his eyes. “I aim to find them and bring them back. What with modern communications, you can always find people.”

Hackberry nodded. “Why don’t you come in?”

Bishop looked over his shoulder. “I should be getting back. I need to order lumber and nails and shingling. Where do you think the elderly woman went to? I can’t remember her name.”

“That was probably Aint Ginny.”

“Know where she might be?”

“She’d be pretty old.”

“Yes, I guess we’re all getting along in our years. You must take care, Mr. Holland. There’s evil abroad in the world. All of us must be on the lookout.”

“I’ll make some tea. Come inside and rest a bit.”

“That’s very kind of you. I was speaking to the minister at the church. I told him how neighborly you’ve been.”

Hackberry opened the screen door and waited for Bishop to walk ahead of him. Instead, Bishop stared across the river at the bluffs, as though trying to remember something that lay just beyond the edges of his memory.

“Is something troubling you?” Hackberry said.

“Why, no, not at all. As Little Pippa says, ‘God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.’ See the bluffs? In its way, they’re our tombstone. We go into their shade and then rise again. It’s all part of a plan.”

“I never thought of it that way.” Hackberry slipped his hand under Bishop’s arm and helped him up the steps and into the kitchen. “I’m going to fix us a sandwich and some warm milk instead of tea. Then I’ll drive you home in my carriage. I think you might have caught a chill.”

Bishop sat down at the breakfast table and continued to stare across the river. He pinched his temples, his brow furrowing, as though someone had tapped a nail between his eyes. “I think I’ve done something terribly wrong, Mr. Holland. But I don’t know what it is.”

“Does it have to do with me or my son?”

“No, I gave up a secret, I think. I’m trying to remember what it is. I feel very bad about it. I can’t bring it to mind. You think it’s about the darkies?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t fret on it right now.”

“I look around me and all I see is darkness.”

Hackberry looked into Bishop’s eyes. They were as mindless as water in an empty fish bowl. “We’ll have our snack, and then we’ll give Dr. Benbow a call.”

“The secret is about that cave, isn’t it?”

“It could be.”

“Thank you, Mr. Holland. It’ll be good to have Aint Ginny and the other colored people back. It’s funny how they get to be family. Then one day they’re gone.”

R
UBY DANSEN HAD
not slept more than two hours since Ishmael had disappeared from the clinic. She bought bread and a wedge of cheese and an apple from a grocery by the hotel and ate them in her room, then drank as much water as she could to kill the hunger pains in her stomach. She had money for perhaps three more days in the hotel, but not if she ate in the café down the street or hired a jitney to Maggie Bassett’s house. So she put on the best dress she had, one made of maroon velvet; a gray hat that had a tall black feather in the band; and walked four miles in the wind to Maggie’s home, her energy gone, her vision speckled with tiny dots.

This time she didn’t twist the doorbell, she banged on the door with her fist. She saw Maggie’s face appear behind a curtain, then the door opened and Maggie was glaring at her, her nostrils white around the rims. “Why are you hammering on my house?” she said.

“Where are you hiding my son?”

“I’m not hiding him anywhere. What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you go back to Denver? Why do you look at me as the source of all your problems? Why would I hide Ishmael? I think you’re a lunatic.”

“You’re a liar,” Ruby said. “Your friends kidnapped him from the clinic. Don’t tell me they didn’t. I was there.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“But you know where he was taken. You know they kidnapped him. You’re disingenuous at best.”

“Oh, there it is with the vocabulary again.”

“You never answer the question. Everything that comes out of your mouth is to protect yourself at someone else’s expense,” Ruby said.

Maggie leaned out the door. “Who’s with you? How did you get here?”

“I walked. I’m by myself.”

“You walked from town?”

“What did I just say?”

Maggie looked at nothing, then back at Ruby. “I think of Ishmael as my son. I wouldn’t see him hurt for the world.”

“You whore.”

There was a wrinkle of triumph at the corner of Maggie’s mouth. “Let me remind you of your own rhetoric, Ruby. You said you forgave me. Now you walk miles to my home and beat on my door to insult me. Does that seem like rational behavior to you?”

“You take orders from company swells, Maggie. I talked with the IWW. Arnold Beckman is a union buster. He kidnapped my boy, and I think you know why.”

Ruby waited, hoping Maggie would conclude that she possessed information which in reality she did not. But the eyes of Maggie Bassett never gave up secrets, never showed defeat or guilt or acceptance of responsibility and, more important, never lingered on the injury of others.

“Who says Arnold told me anything?” Maggie asked. “I don’t take orders from anyone. Do you know what your hat reminds me of?”

“My hat?”

“Don’t misunderstand me. It’s certainly cute. Do you go to the flickers? Actually, people call them ‘the movies’ now. Arnold took me to his studio in the Palisades. You must come out there sometime. I think people would be dying to meet you.”

“Have they hurt him?”

“Who?”

“My son.”

“I have to run some errands. Do you want a ride back to town? I love your hat. It puts me in mind of Robin Hood’s followers, medieval trolls on bandy legs toddling around the set, pretending they’re part of a grand cause.”

“I guess my trip has been a waste. Would you forgive me for what I’m about to do?”

“No more shopgirl silliness, Ruby. Bye-bye, now.”

“Please give Arnold Beckman this message: If he doesn’t return my son, I’m going to kill him.”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

“Thank you. I will. In the meantime, I really need to do something else, for your sake and mine.”

Ruby punched Maggie Bassett squarely in the face, knocking her on her bottom in the middle of the hallway.

W
HO ARE YOUR
friends?
Hackberry wondered.
The ones who will lend you money in times of need? Pull you from a raging creek or a burning house?
No, the real ones were the people who granted a favor simply because you asked it of them. There was no interrogation, no weighing of the scales, no equivocation. They backed your play. They were the kinds of friends you never let go of.

He called Beatrice DeMolay’s house in San Antonio and waited while the operator got her on the phone. “Miss B.?” he said.

“Mr. Holland?” she replied.

“I need some he’p.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I never learned how to drive, and I need to get to San Antonio. The sheriff, in spite of the good soul he is, has pulled my badge. My boy has been kidnapped, most likely by Arnold Beckman’s employees. Can I hire your man, what’s-his-name, the zombie, to drive me around?”

“His name is Andre, Mr. Holland.”

“Whatever. He looks like he could scare a corpse out of a graveyard. Can he come get me?”

“Yes, he can. I’m sorry to hear about your son. What does the sheriff’s office say?”

“Take a guess.”

“They’re not interested?”

“They may have had a hand in it. The motorcar that took him away may have had a bell on it. Anyway, I don’t have any credibility in San Antonio. I shot and killed a Medal of Honor recipient, and last night I worked over three thugs who had Beckman’s business card in their wallets.”

“I didn’t get that last part.”

Through the window, he saw two motorcars come down the dirt road and turn under the archway onto Cod Bishop’s lane. One was the departmental car usually driven by Darl Pickins, and the other was the motorcar of Dr. Benbow, the part-time county coroner.

“Hello?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. I know what Beckman wants. I’m not going to give it to him. There are many reasons why not, but the chief one is he will kill Ishmael as soon as he gets what he wants. Am I wrong?”