Jackals Read online

  More patrons arrived, the noise level rose, and sunlight turned to twilight, in tum transforming the window family into nodding silhouettes.

  When the dinners were served, Rachel gave Nola a genuine smile, and he could sense the waitress trying to decide just how to handle this, how she should behave. It amused him, but he didn’t smile, and finally Rachel, after pooling some ketchup beside her steak, an act that made him cringe, stabbed her knife over her shoulder. “Nice car.”

  Nola grunted and stood beside him, cocking a hip by his shoulder, not quite touching but close enough to feel. “Honey, it would be if the son of a bitch worked once in a while. Guy I bought it from, he’s from down near Cleveland? he swears I don’t drive it right, but shit, if you don’t want to fly, why buy a plane?”

  He looked up; Nola winked at him again. Broadly.

  “Kin?” she asked, no innocence at all.

  “Not hardly,” Rachel answered for him. Dryly. “Friend.”

  The waitress laughed, reached out and shook her hand.

  “Listen, honey, you come by next door when you’re done, I’ll fix you a drink on the house.”

  “You work there too?”

  Nola laughed loudly, but no one seemed to notice.

  Jim did, and it made him uncertain. Then he glanced up and realized Rachel was trying to wipe a blush from her cheeks.

  “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “Hell, that’s all right,” the waitress said. She leaned over, looked at each of them in tum. “Listen, I got half the mad dogs in this county sniffing around this place, so I’m glad there’s going to be one less of them for a while.”

  Jim choked.

  Rachel laughed.

  “Besides,” Nola continued, “if Jim here wasn’t trying so damn hard to ignore me, I’d think I was losing it.” She made a quick, look-but-don’t-look, gesture to the table in the middle. “Those two boys now, they’ve been sitting there for an hour and all they want is damn coffee. I tell them they can get that in the bar and not take up air and space, and all they do is lift their cups. You think they’re on one of them California diets or something?” She straightened, and smoothed her skirt when a customer called her name. “Eat,” she ordered. “You’ll need your strength.”

  Rachel laughed again, blushed again, and Jim did his best not to strangle the woman. He had known Nola Paine for over a decade, and though he’d been to her house, and she to his, more times than he could remember, he also counted her a friend. A damn close friend. Whenever he got an idea on how to spend his money, she loaded him up with common sense and sent him home; whenever he drank too much and wept openly about his sister, she hushed him, and undressed him, and tucked him into bed.

  He closed his eyes briefly.

  That was going to be the bitch—telling Rachel about Maryanne.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to do it.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to drink in order to do it.

  “Nice lady,” Rachel said into the silence.

  He gave her a sour stare. “Yeah, when she ain’t flapping her lips off.”

  Then something ticked over, something Nola had said, and he glanced at the two men she’d talked about, the ones he’d seen when he and Rachel had come in.

  At the same time, one of them looked at him.

  Smiled broadly, but swiftly.

  And raised his cup in a silent mocking toast.

  Oh shit, Jim thought; oh shit.

  The two men rose, noisily scraping their chairs back. One was tall and lank, his face long, and his eyes long and narrow beneath a shock of hair that dangled over his brow; the other was shorter, but not by much, and heavier, by a lot. They picked up battered and stained western hats from the empty chairs at their table, put them on, hid their eyes, and walked out of the restaurant without looking at anyone.

  Their dusty boots were loud and harsh on the bare floor, louder on the boardwalk that led to the bar.

  Jim swallowed.

  “What is it?”

  It took him several moments before he could see her clearly.

  “Jim, are you all right?”

  The family at the window rose, chattering and shifting, passing in and out of what was left of the light, their voices mingling into a sing-song hum.

  Beyond them, in the twilight dragging over the valley, he saw an automobile pull slowly out of the parking lot, and stop on the road, engine running.

  Rachel was right.

  The Caddy looked like a boat.

  Chapter Six

  Jim didn’t realize he was half out of his seat until Rachel reached across the table and put a hand over his.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She turned as he lowered himself again, turned just as the huge Cadillac passed out of sight.

  The fork dropped unnoticed from her fingers, and she nearly stood herself until her hand caught the edge of the table and held her. Barely held her.

  He said nothing.

  When she twisted back around, her face was drawn and pale, and suddenly those eyes were disturbingly dark. “It was them,” she whispered angrily, and was on her feet before he could move to stop her, her napkin flung onto her plate. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To get them, you shit. They were here, and you didn’t stop them. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  She was halfway across the room before he could think to follow, and already out the door by the time he’d managed to fumble some bills from his pocket and drop them on the table. When he reached the parking lot, she was on the shoulder, shading her eyes as she looked south, a haze of dust hanging over the blacktop. Then she marched back to the car, got in, slammed the door, and glared at him through the windshield until he joined her.

  From inside the bar someone played a blues guitar.

  “Bastard,” she whispered.

  He started the engine.

  “You goddamn bastard.”

  He saw his eyes in the rearview mirror as he backed out of his slot, couldn’t meet the look, and looked away.

  She growled deep in her throat, and punched his arm. Once. Very hard. “They were going to kill me, you son of a bitch, they were going to kill me.”

  Go ahead; tell her.

  “Who are they, Scott, friends of yours? Good ol’ boys from good ol’ Potar Junction? Don’t rock the fucking boat, you’ll ruin your precious little hillbilly kingdom? Is that it, huh? Is that it?”

  He didn’t look; he could hear the tears in every word.

  “You son of a bitch.”

  The sun had set, the mountains and hills pulling back into the dark.

  There were no streetlights, only the headlamps that turned the blacktop grey.

  “Christ, you’re probably one of them.”

  He braked so hard she nearly slammed into the dashboard.

  He didn’t turn his head.

  “I am not one of them,” he said quietly, though it seemed as if he were shouting. Then he did face her, and was not moved by the way she shrank against the door. He knew what he looked like. He knew how he sounded. “Say it again, lady, you can walk the hell back to Virginia.”

  Her lips trembled; she didn’t speak; her left hand quivered, and pushed at the air, drive on, drive on, for God’s sake, drive on.

  He did.

  And when he reached the entrance to the Third Church of Jesus Christ, he swerved sharply into the driveway without touching the brakes and sped toward the house, ignoring her angry questions as he took a narrower blacktop drive around to the right and parked in front of the veranda. Huge redwood tubs at each of the six pillars held well-tended shrubs, and flanking the high double doors similar tubs each held a small palm tree whose fronds were thin and limp.

  Maurice Lion, in a white suit and white plantation hat, sat in a white wicker chair and held a tall glass in his hand. Behind him stood two young women in billowing white robes, their skin much darker than his, their hair in plaits curled atop their heads.

  Jim go
t out without speaking, without looking to see if Rachel would follow. He followed an inlaid brick path to the steps and nodded to himself when he heard Rachel’s door slam. But he really didn’t care. She came, she didn’t come, he didn’t give a damn. Not now.

  “Maurice,” he said.

  The preacher showed his teeth. “James. Welcome.” Then he waved to Rachel and bade her join him with a grandiose gesture. “And young lady, welcome as well. I do hope you are enjoying your stay in our country.”

  She glanced at Jim, anger shifting awkwardly to confusion.

  He touched her arm and followed her up the steps. “He means God’s country. We’re all visitors here.”

  “You learn well, my friend.”

  “You say it long enough, I’m going to remember it whether I want to or not.”

  Maurice’s laugh came in short bursts, each burst a note, each series a chorus. Had the mountains been closer, they would have echoed into a choir. Then he stood and swept off his hat, and Rachel took an involuntary step back. He was tall, the preacher was, and though he’d never given a measurement, Jim guessed him to be damn close to seven feet. He was also completely bald. Though clearly black, his skin was light, and as he brushed the air over a chair for Rachel, his long fingers flowed, his lips moving in a murmur until her comfort was assured. A snap of his fingers, and the two women glided into the house, closing the doors behind them without a sound.

  “My angels,” he explained as he retook his own seat.

  “Reverend, I …” Rachel blinked several times in confusion. “Jim …” She gave up.

  Jim understood. It had taken him years to get hold of the man; he was forever dancing, forever a shadow, now you see him, now you don’t, and it was no wonder the people around here, black and white, either feared him, or laughed at him, or would march to the sea on razor blades for him.

  He leaned a shoulder against one of the posts, a thumb tucked behind his buckle. Above his head, and at intervals along the veranda, electric insect grids glowed faintly. Globed lamps hung from chains, but they remained unlit. There was only the glow from the tall windows that faced the yard. and that was dim enough.

  Maurice leaned forward, hands clasping his knees. “Child, you seem worried.” He looked at Jim. “Is she troubled? Has she need?”

  “She—”

  “I was attacked the other night, Reverend,” Rachel said bluntly. “Someone chased me off the road up on that ridge where you wanted to put the cross. Jim told me about it after I managed to make it to his place.”

  Maurice straightened. “The police?”

  “I … we didn’t call them.”

  “James.” A chiding, a question, a demand.

  Jim wiped his face with the back of his free hand.

  “He knows who they are,” she accused bitterly. “We just saw them at that restaurant back there, and he didn’t try to stop them.”

  “I couldn’t,” he said to the preacher. “I wasn’t sure until it was too late.”

  Rachel snorted.

  An insect died in a buzzing explosion.

  Maurice leaned back and crossed his legs. He wore no socks, no tie, his shirt was open to the center of his chest. Then his eyes half closed, his fingers tenting beneath his chin.

  “Ah,” he said, and drew out the sound until it came close to sighing.

  “God!” Rachel shouted. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Indeed,” said Maurice with a quick nod. “For the Lord has placed His beloved creatures every one upon His Earth for every reason. Some to kill and some to feed and some to carry beauty and some to remind others that beauty can be deadly. Isn’t that right, James? Is that not His purpose?” He answered himself with another short sharp nod. “And the Lord created us all, and Man to hold dominion. It is said, child, that nothing is wasted which cannot be used, and nothing that cannot be used shall be wasted, for it is sinful.”

  “For crying out loud, Maurice,” Jim muttered impatiently. What he didn’t need now was one of the man’s impromptu sermons.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Rachel snapped.

  Maurice blinked.

  Jim shifted to face her. “What it means is that he knows them too.”

  Her eyes widened, her lips moved in an attempt to speak which she gave up when she could find neither the words nor the emotion. Instead, she slapped to her feet and demanded to be taken to the authorities in Potar Junction, or wherever the hell they were.

  Jim couldn’t argue, and cut Maurice’s answer off with an upheld palm. “Not now,” he told him. “Not now.”

  The preacher didn’t protest. He picked up his glass and sipped, picked up an empty glass and offered to pour Rachel a share from the pitcher on the table beside him. She refused. He sipped again.

  Jim cleared his throat, turning her face to him. “You asked me what I did.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And you told me you didn’t do anything, you were rich.”

  “I lied,” he told her, and added quickly, “Well, not quite a lie. I am rich, that’s the truth. It’s just that what I do doesn’t go on very often.”

  “Oh brother,” she said disgustedly. She started for the car. “Take me to the police. Now.”

  He grabbed her arm, and didn’t try again when she smacked his hand away.

  “Give me the keys,” she demanded, facing him squarely. “Give me the goddamn keys.”

  He didn’t move.

  She appealed to the preacher with a trembling right hand.

  Jim said, “Remember the other night?”

  She froze.

  “They’re out there again.”

  Her breathing turned to shudders.

  “And that’s what I do, Rachel. When I can, I hunt the jackals.”

  Chapter Seven

  Madness is what it was, and the strength of it made her weak.

  She refused to look at either of them, but when she stepped nervously away from the house and saw the stars, saw the moon, she couldn’t look there either. Her hands flapped uselessly at her sides, fingers searching for a grip on something, finally raking into her hair and down across her chest.

  They were watching her.

  With a deliberate turn of her head, she tried to find something peaceful, something comforting about the vast sweep of lawn that reached back to the fence, about the barn she spotted back there in the far comer and the recognition of a pungent smell, a barnyard, that wrinkled her nose though it wasn’t unpleasant.

  Madness; it was madness.

  She swallowed a sob, because it would have turned to laughter.

  Then she heard the preacher say, “They were there, James? In Cider’s den?”

  “Christ Almighty, not you, too.”

  “It’s a fair question, don’t you think?”

  Angrily Jim pushed away from the pillar. “No, goddamnit. No, I do not think it’s a fair question. How was I supposed to recognize them, huh? Give me a hint, Maurice, give me a fucking hint.” He took a breath. “You think they carry goddamn name tags? Hello, my name is whatever the hell they call themselves these days? You think they carry signs?”

  In three steps he was across the veranda and leaning over the cleric. Rachel saw his hands grab the armrests, how his arms trembled not to throw a punch, how the preacher merely lifted his hat’s brim so he could see his friend’s eyes.

  “I am not one of your almighty prophets, Maurice.” His voice was low again, rough again, and when he lifted a finger to point it at the preacher, the preacher flinched. “I am not a goddamn superman.”

  Rachel flinched as well; she had seen the fear, there and gone, in Lion’s eyes.

  This man was more, much more than she’d believed.

  The two men glared at each other for several unbearable seconds before Jim shoved himself upright and spun toward her. His face was in shadow, all the light behind him. Taller, somehow. Larger. Hair turned to harsh white fire.

  “I didn’t know.”

  It wasn’t an excuse. It wasn’t a pl
ea for reason.

  It just was, nothing more.

  She didn’t respond. A dizzying weariness threatened to fell her because there had been too many swings from hope to confusion to anger and back. Each time she thought she’d reached solid ground, a shadow became a hole, and she was tired of not quite falling in.

  Momma always told her, don’t bite off more than she could chew.

  It had sounded stupid all her life; not so stupid now.

  “James,” Lion said quietly, “she came to your house.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Jim looked at her, but she knew, with a chill, that he didn’t really see her.

  “James, did you hear me?”

  Her head jerked left. Something flared up on the road.

  “James?”

  Jim came off the steps in a slow hurry, and she backed away, out of reach of the light, as he walked far enough into the yard to be able to see for himself what she had spotted—three pair of headlamps shooting around the curve out of the valley, and finally the sound of three racing engines bouncing off the hill on the far side of the road.

  With an unnecessary motion for her to stay where she was, he moved quickly to his right, to see around the other side of the house as the headlamps became taillights that rose and fell with the land before winking out in the tunnel of trees.

  He watched.

  She watched with him.

  The cars didn’t return.

  She moved up behind him. “I don’t get it. Why do you call them jackals?”

  “It is the way the Lord made all His creatures,” Lion answered from the veranda. “There are those who hunt, and those who are hunted.” He took off his hat with a flourish and balanced it on his knee. “And there are those who are ordained to sweep behind the armies and clear the land of the fallen, the injured, those who cannot carry the Lord’s Word any longer. It is written in—”

  “Maurice,” said Jim wearily, “will you shut the hell up?”

  “I only speak the Lord’s Will.”

  “Try speaking when spoken to.”

  Lion rose smoothly to his feet, and swept on his hat. “I will forgive you, James, because, God knows, you need forgiveness.”

  “The hell with me, use it on Charlie. He’s dead.”