House of the Rising Sun: A Novel by James Lee Burke Page A

conduct your personal life.”
    “Miss Ruby is my bookkeeper,” Hackberry said. “She also takes care of my house. I’d like to call her my companion, but she’s not. If you allude to her in a disrespectful way again, I’ll bury you up to your neck in an ant pile.”
    “I’m sure you would, Mr. Holland. At least if you were drunk enough.”
    Hackberry scratched at his eye and gazed at the river. It was coppery green in the early sunlight, a long riffle undulating through gray boulders in the deepest part of the current. “Did you know Aint Ginny prepared breakfast for Davy Crockett and his Tennesseans on their way to the Alamo?”
    “No, I didn’t. And I don’t care. She sassed me. Do you allow your servants to sass you?”
    “I don’t have servants. I’ll take these people with me, though.”
    “Then your niggers await you, sir.”
    “We’re not quite finished here.”
    “Stand back from me,” Bishop said.
    “I heard popping sounds on the road. I bet those were her preserve jars blowing up.”
    “I’m armed, Mr. Holland. I won’t hesitate to defend myself.”
    Hackberry slapped him across the face. Bishop stumbled backward in shock, one hand rising to protect himself. Hackberry struck him again, harder, using his knuckles. “Apologize.”
    “I’m a white man, sir. I do not apologize to niggers.”
    “Don’t address me as ‘sir.’”
    “What?”
    “‘Sir’ from a man of your ilk implies we belong to the same culture. We do not.”
    “You cannot behave like this. You’re an officer of the law.”
    This time Hackberry broke his nose.
    “These men are witnesses,” Bishop said. He had to cup his hand under his nose before he continued. “I’ve done nothing to provoke this.”
    Hackberry pushed him backward into the smoke from the cabins. He tore open Bishop’s coat and pulled a five-shot nickel-plated revolver from his belt and threw it in the river. “Take off your clothes.”
    “What?” Bishop’s face was trembling, his upper lip slick with blood.
    “Strip naked and crawl into the ash.”
    “Somebody do something about this.”
    Hackberry knocked him to the ground and kicked him between the buttocks. When Bishop screamed, he kicked him again. Then a persona that invaded his dreams and shimmered in daylight on the edge of his vision stepped inside his skin and took control of his thoughts and feet and hands and the words that seemed released from a place other than his voice box. When these episodes occurred in his life, and always without expectation, he became a spectator rather than a participant in his own deeds. He saw his boot descend on Bishop’s face and the side of his head and his neck and mouth; he saw Bishop’s men trying to dissuade him, waving their hands impotently in the air, their mouths moving without sound, while Cod Bishop crawled for safety through hot ash like a caterpillar trying to crawl through flame. Someone was screaming again? Was it Aint Ginny or a child or Bishop? He didn’t know. Then he felt a hand seize his upper arm. He turned his head slowly, blinking, the world coming back into focus, as though someone had removed an ether mask from his face.
    “Hack?” Ruby said. “Hack, it’s me. Enough.”
    “Enough what?”
    “He’s done.”
    Hackberry looked down at Bishop. “Get up and stop groveling around like that. Tell your darkies you’ll make things right.”
    “Come home with me, Hack,” Ruby said.
    “What are you talking about, woman?”
    “Let me drive the buggy. I’ve always wanted to drive one.”
    “That would be fine,” he replied, widening his eyes. “Come along with us, Aint Ginny. The rest of y’all can come, too. Look at the rain and sunlight on the hills. I declare, if this world isn’t a frolic.”
    Ruby held his arm tightly as they walked to the buggy, in a way she had not done previously.
    A THUNDERSTORM STRUCK THAT night and lit the clouds with fireworks and filled the air with the smell of sulfur and mown hay and