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 pinata.
“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.”
“You’re wrong.”
Jack gazed silently through the front window, his forehead crosshatched with lesions, his thoughts, if any, known only to himself.
