Feast Day of Fools - James Lee Burke [144]
“What’s the name?”
“W. W. Guthrie. Google took me to a folksinger by the name of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie.”
“That’s Woody Guthrie, R.C. He didn’t just write folk songs. He published two books. One was Bound for Glory. It was made into a film. I think you just found the hideout of Preacher Jack.”
“I’m on my way out there right now. I’ll call you back as soon as I find out anything.”
“What kind of help are you getting from the feds?”
“At the courthouse, one of them told me where the men’s room was. Another one said he thought it might rain directly. That’s the word he used—‘directly.’ Like he was talking to somebody on Hee Haw. Are they as bright as they’re supposed to be?”
“Probably.”
“They sure know how to hide it,” R.C. said.
Hackberry finished eating and left thirteen dollars on the table and used the restroom and dried his hands and picked up his hat from the booth and started toward the front door. Then he paused. “I almost forgot,” he said to the bartender.
“Forgot what?” the bartender said. He was a big, dark-haired man with a deeply creased brow who wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up high on his arms.
“Can you put a bag over that snake jar the next time I come here?”
“Any reason?”
“Yeah, so I don’t have to look at it while I’m eating.”
“Who lit your fuse?”
“Did you read the paper this morning?”
“Something happen?”
“If I come in here again, refuse to serve me,” Hackberry said. “I’d really appreciate that.”
Halfway to the office, his cell phone vibrated again. “Sheriff Holland,” he said.
“It’s me, Sheriff.”
“Yeah, I thought it might be you, R.C.”
“How you doin’?”
“Fine.”
“I’m parked at this cabin that’s between a creek and a bluff. You cain’t see it except from the air. Feds are all over the place, but I found something they missed. It’s a checker. They didn’t know what it was.”
“I’m not quite tracking you.”
“It’s a homemade checker, one somebody carved out of wood. I’m not explaining myself real good. The property is in the name of W. W. Guthrie, but nobody around here seems to know what he looks like or where he’s from. When the feds got here, the cabin and the house were clean. I went out to the barn and saw the same Michelin tire tracks we saw at Anton Ling’s place. Then I went inside, and this fed was looking at a little round wood button that he found behind the kitchen door. You following me?”
“Not really.”
“I’ll try again. On the bottom of it were the initials N.B. For ‘Noie Barnum.’ On the top was a K. The fed didn’t know what that meant. I told him it was K for ‘king.’ So he says, ‘Yeah, it must have rolled behind the door.’ So I went into the bedroom and found another one, except this one was wedged in the side of the dresser. That whole place was broom-sweep clean, Sheriff. The second checker, the one stuck in the dresser, wasn’t left there by mistake. When I showed the fed what I’d found, he looked pretty confused.”
“Noie Barnum isn’t a willing companion of Jack Collins?” Hackberry said.
“Or he’s covering his ass,” R.C. replied.
Or he has his own agenda, Hackberry thought. “You did a fine job, bud. Come on in,” he said.
Minutes later, he called both Maydeen and Pam into his office.
“Is this about my language?” Maydeen said. “If it is, I’m sor—”
“Forget your language. The feds have treated us like dipshits. Find out everything you can about Noie Barnum,” he said.
KRILL SQUATTED DOWN on a bare piece of ground a few feet from the common grave where he had buried his three children. The grave was marked by a Styrofoam cross wrapped with a string of multicolored plastic flowers. He upended an unlabeled bottle of mescal and drank from it against the sunset, the light turning to fire inside the glass. A copy of the San Antonio Express-News was weighted down on the ground with rocks he had placed on each corner of the front page, the paper riffling with wind. Krill drank again from the