Why? Because of those children? If you tell us where they are, Mrs. Tate said, we"ll bring you some milk.
I had enough of yallses milk.
Well. If you change your mind, tell the guard here and she"ll let me know.
Mrs. Tate and another lady walked out of the barn. The guard moved a wooden bucket near the door and spread a dish towel over it and sat holding a pistol. She flung the knife which stuck in the wall. For near an hour Evavangeline tried to talk to her, but she may as well have been asking a salt block for a nickel for all the good it did.
Jest give me my knife, she begged.
The lady ignored her.
Eventually she gave up and fell asleep and dreamt again of Ned, this time wringing a pullet"s neck with his hands and tossing it to her to pluck and secret the feathers away in a bag for a surprise pillow she was stuffing. Settling against the kitchen wall and breaking wind and letting her pull off his boots and then dragging down his britches. She woke with hay stuck to her face and beyond the bars her guard knitting a boy"s sweater.
Ned had made whiskey money by whoring her out to pa.s.sing men, signs along the road saying "Yung Gurl One Dolar" and with arrows directing customers to their house. Once a town lady big in her church stole a bunch of the signs and Ned tracked her to her house and killed her dogs and a peac.o.c.k and threw them on the roof and said if she ever messed with his signs again he"d come back and burn her place to h.e.l.l with her in it and all the younguns. She and her children had replaced the signs immediately, and after that everybody left them alone and a man or two a week was their average. More at Christmastime.
Once he was showing her how to make stew with the c.o.o.ns she"d brought in. Their hides were nailed to the logs outside to dry, hung over holes in the walls to stop the wind. It was not so cold that she needed to be bundled up, the fireplace glowing in one room and the stove in the other, and she moved around the dark smoky kitchen in a short dress made from a flour sack. He was at the woodstove dropping carrots and taters and onions into a bubbling pot that painted the air the color of a pretty picture. She walked barefoot on the dirt floor, then began to dance, humming, Ned"s large fingers dropping in celery and parsnip and she grazes the slope of his shoulders with her little biddy t.i.ts and he spins in his chair and grabs her onehanded by her ribcage and pulls her face into his beard.
Another time she got mad at him for bedding a c.o.o.n-a.s.s wh.o.r.e and tried to poison him with gun powder but he smelled it in the grits and put her out and said never come back and she"d lived outside in the yard for near a month with him never once looking at her as she shrank and shriveled from lack of food not willing to catch a c.o.o.n ner wildcat ner skunk jest waiting for him to forgive her fore she died. He"d come out to feed the chickens and step over her where she was asleep in the dirt. If he was riding his mule he"d ride it right over her. If the mule hadn"t liked her so much it would of stepped on her a hundred times. But then Ned forgive her when the thaw come and he was out of money and more men was showing up needing they corks pulled. He took her back and burned her clothes and fed her and doctored her wounds and wormed her and cured her of the head lice and scrubbed her red in a tub and dried her on his shirt and then held her nekkid up in front of him lying down his arm purring.
He said, Evavangeline.
It was the only time she ever heard him say her name. Till then she hadn"t known she had one other than Gurl. Every morning after that when she opened her eyes she repeated it to herself, so she wouldn"t forget it. She remembered every hit, kiss, bite. She remembered the time he fed her watermelon heart. She would of drawn his face in the dirt with a stick but earth and wood couldn"t do him justice. She could of smelled him in wind blown past a dead skunk if only there were wind of him to blow. He told her he must of got the ray bees from one of them c.o.o.ns though he never saw no sign of em. He said he hadn"t told her yet cause he didn"t want to scare her. Wanted to be sure she didn"t have em too. But now it was time for him to do what he had to, he said, before he got all cross-eyed. He said he could feel his eyes crossing right now.
They were sitting beside one another by a fire in the yard. He"d been burning furniture out of the cabin all morning and not saying why. She leaned in to look at his eyes. There was something wrong with them, they were yellow and jumpy, toadfrogs drowning in shots of milk.
I can"t drank water, he told her, s...o...b..ring. Can"t stand the sight of it. He twitched. My thoat"s all swoll. Come I"s to hit ye last night? It"s cause ye offered me a sup of water. Member?
Yessir.
It"s the ray bees, he said. I run around all night shivering with em. I wanted to come in there with ye. I ain"t never seen no ray bee but I heard of em. I feel ever minute like there"s less of me and more of them. I feel like biting ye right now. He snapped his teeth at her.
She jumped back.
It ain"t that I want to, he said. But it"s part of me does. He snapped his teeth again and she slid a knife out of her shoe.
He looked hard at her and bared his teeth. I can"t see ye as clear as I used to could, neither. And I got no idea what my name is.
Ned- Ye look like food, he said. I would eat you starting with ye face. I would start with ye eyes.
Ned- He clicked his teeth.
Ned! She put her hands over her ears.
Gurl, he said. I was jest fooling with ye, he said. Come give ole Ned a love.
His beard twisted into a grin that frightened her but she hurled herself into his arms nevertheless and hugged his neck with her arms and his belly with her legs. She burrowed her face deep into his collar and ground her cooter against him. He was nibbling her shoulder, hard, groaning, sucking, it would leave a good hickey.
A second later he was eating into her neck and a cold shock went through her. She squirmed from his grasp and dragged her knife through his back and twisted the blade and catapulted herself away. He fell with his legs quivering and blood painting the sand and the knife buried halfway up its handle. She tumbled over the dirt and slid into the foliage and lay panting on her belly and bleeding from her neck and watching through her fingers as he lolled and howled and flailed his arms, jibbering like a shot animal, tearing his shirt off and rolling and growling and clawing at his chest. She was still watching when rain began to fall and she was watching still as thunder crashed overhead and the horizon flickered in the distance like the backdrop of creation and he shook in a fit and his tongue flagged out black and thick and his beard was foaming.
She watched with her mouth wide open and cried until she gagged. She gagged until she vomited. He heard her and began to claw himself toward her in the dirt. He was drooling. His lips cracked and bleeding. She vomited more until there was nothing left to vomit and all she could do was retch herself inside out and cry and see him crawling at her till he couldn"t crawl any more and then see him flapping his arms at her and baring his teeth, no pupil to be seen in the milky holes his eyes were.
In the morning he still wasn"t dead. She was cried plumb out and shivering, her face salt-raw and scaling. His belly jerking up and down. The flies had found him, all the flies there were, it seemed. She waited as he grew black with them until he"d twitch and they"d all lift and for a moment hover above him like a cloud before descending back. She watched. DIE! she would scream. She hated him. Why wouldn"t he just DIE? She wished she could go inside the shack and get his shotgun and shoot him in the head but she couldn"t move. She was rooted to this spot. She watched the slow tack of the world as the shadow of the roof inched toward her over the yard and then past her and she lay bathed in its cooler air and remembered a thousand things, all bad. She p.i.s.sed where she lay and didn"t bat the flies. She slept at last deep in the night and was not surprised come dawn when his belly somehow still moved. She watched for hours hating the sun.
Now, in her cell in Old Texas, she wriggles to the backmost corner and grinds into the hay. Tries not to think of how at dusk, that day so long ago, Ned"s upper thighs wobbled and spread a little and a red cone emerged from a hole in his pants. She watched, not breathing. It was a fat possum, covered in blood. It wiggled its way out, then Ned"s stomach wiggled more and another fat, b.l.o.o.d.y possum rolled out and she understood that they had been inside him eating his guts. Suddenly a swirl of buzzards landed like an event of weather and the black h.e.l.lish flesheaters stood swiveling their necks and hissing and looking at her with eyes soulless as bullet holes.
Let"s ride, men, Walton repeated.
He"ll shoot us, Loon answered, watching the trees.
Good heavens! I told you, there"s no gunman in the woods, Walton insisted. I"m afraid we"ve been "bluffed." We"ve been shown leniency as well, I should imagine. That feral-looking "cuss" might have shot us all.
Bluffed? Onan said. By that old n.i.g.g.e.r in his wagon?
Negro. Yes. And didn"t, just moments ago, Ambrose take his leave as well? Was he shot? No.
The deputies looked at one another.
Who? Loon asked.
Walton stared at one then the other. Ambrose? Our former second-in-command?
That stumpy n.i.g.g.e.r, ye mean?
Negro, please.
h.e.l.l, I didn"t know he ranked me, Onan told Loon. I"d of been done killed him if I"d knew that.
Yeah, added Loon. We ain"t got to kill n.o.body.
Could we continue this discussion, Walton said, in transit? He swept back his hand to indicate the road.
What about that feller in the woods?
Walton clenched his fists. For the last time, there is no "feller" in the woods! It"s absurd to think that pointing would occasion murder. Look. He jabbed a finger at Onan, who yelled and covered his face with his hands.
Nothing happened.
See?
Onan lowered his hands. Then a shot cracked and the deputy flew backward out of his saddle.
Meanwhile, the children from the orphanage lay flat on their bellies with their hands over their ears, as William R. McKissick Junior had told them to, before he left. No matter what they heard, he"d said. He"d said witch ladies were about. If they saw a witch lady to run as far as they could and when they were far enough he told them to lay on the ground flat as a flapjack and quiet as a dead mouse. The children had seen two witch ladies dressed in black earlier and run a mile away and been lying in the sugarcane for the hours since. They"d never once spoken and barely moved and slept in fits, one little girl starting awake when her hand slipped from her ear and she half-heard a distant voice calling, Baby? Honey? It was a lady"s voice. Darling? Sweet pea? Doll? Angel? then repeating the cycle but ending this time with Dolly, which was what this girl"s mother had pet-named her. Dolly clambered up, still half-asleep. With straw in her hair and her nightdress torn and soiled she toddled off toward the lady beginning her list again. Baby? Honey? Darling? Sweet pea?
11.
THE TOWN.
THE BAILIFF, MCKISSICK, RAISED HIS ELBOW TO WARD OFF THE blacksmith"s next blow and heard his wrist snap. He called out his own name and said that they had Smonk on the run, he was theirs for the taking, but Gates seemed intent on murder. He raised the stock again and brought it down and McKissick"s world darkened at its edges and the room began to peel away and he was sinking in a warm, pleasant sea.
Gates stood panting. The rifle slick with blood. His face red with it. He staggered back against the log walls, his hands shaking. He couldn"t get his breath, he thought he might vomit. McKissick lay still in his own blood. Dead? Gates watched a gorgeous blue knot unwhorl from the bailiff"s temple as if his brains were about to rupture. Alive yet, or how might a knot rise? The blacksmith clenched his fists to still his hands and stepped past the dead wh.o.r.e and searched among the wreckage of the cabin until he found a huge butcher knife stuck in a wall and fell across his former partner. McKissick was naked and wearing his, Gates"s, shoes. He touched the blade to the bailiff"s chest where he imagined the heart to be and raised his other hand, palm flat. He closed his eyes.
He opened them.
McKissick had him by the b.a.l.l.s. Gates forgot the knife and tried to twist away but the bailiff only squeezed harder. Somehow McKissick had gained the knife and swiped Gates across the chest and the gush of blood was such that the bailiff nearly choked on it before he could scrabble away and watch the man twitch and gurgle.
He tried to pull himself up and overturned a table. He couldn"t focus his eyes. He sat against the wall, trying to catch his breath. The room seemed bright. Then it seemed very bright.
Meanwhile, from the hill at the edge of the east woods, Ike gazed at the irregular houses and buildings and oak trees of Old Texas. He"d done this slow circuit dozens of times before, the town globed in his spygla.s.s as he scanned the angles and doors of each building and outbuilding. A ladder that wasn"t there yesterday. The alterations of firewood piles and how long it took a splotch of birds.h.i.t to fade from a windowsill. There were ten widows in the town, ages he"d calculated from forty to eighty-five, and half a dozen young women and girls. He knew who lived where. Who"d had which husband.
Ike squatted and studied the ruin of the hotel. Looked like nothing saved, a total loss. He smiled grimly-Smonk always had been thorough-and focused the telescope when he saw a widow go in the livery barn"s side door and, a moment later, the girl he"d seen go in three hours ago come out.
Shift change. What were they guarding?
Near dusk, from beside a tall oak in the southeast, he spied a wildcat crawling on its belly toward the well. It raised to its hind legs to drink but at the sight of the water it convulsed and ran down into the town snapping its teeth. A widow hurried out and shot it with a snake charmer four-ten. She returned a moment later carrying a pitchfork with which she speared the cat and lugged it out of his sight. Ike moved for a better vantage and found himself watching the smoldering pile of dead animals they always kept burning. The widow tending it, in her early forties, used her stick to help the other dislodge the wildcat from her tines. When the first left, Ike watched the second douse the new arrival in kerosene and strike a match and drop it on the animal which burst into flame. The dog and cat faces in his spygla.s.s frozen in waxen agony.
Later, as night fell, he saw a lone boy crouching in from the west, ducking through the cane. Good stealth on him. Centered in Ike"s spygla.s.s, the boy became William R. McKissick Junior, the mule thief. Ike pursed his lips. How come he hadn"t took off like a boy with sense would of? What in the h.e.l.l would keep a body here?
He swung his attention back to the livery barn and wondered what or who they were watching in shifts. Could be something simple as a stock animal in labor, of course, but nothing about Old Texas and its citizenry seemed simple.
He was about to creep back around to his camp when something made him freeze. He flattened himself against the ground as two old ladies and the six dazed-looking children they led pa.s.sed within fifty feet of him.
Come on sugar, the ladies were saying. Come on, sweetie.
When they were gone Ike lowered his eyes. Still at it, he thought. All these years.
On the other side of the town, as he lay waiting to sneak in and find the wh.o.r.e, William R. McKissick Junior saw the children, too. Captured.
Dern, he thought. Now h.e.l.l Mary would be mad. He might not get his handjobs. Double-dern. He wished he hadn"t traded her the Mississippi Gambler knife. If he had it to do over, he wouldn"t trade.
Yes he would. He wished he had it to do over so he could see her t.i.tties and cooter again. That stripe of hair between her legs. Her hand on his devil"s tool as his own was now.
He got a nut and relaxed.
Naw. He oughtn"t to of traded his only knife. Especially one give to him by Mister E. O. Smonk. William R. McKissick Junior thought if he saw Mister E. O. Smonk again he would cut his thoat with that knife. He thought that if Mister E. O. Smonk hadn"t come and made Momma squeal so hard maybe she wouldn"t of kept running off. Killing a man like Mister E. O. Smonk wouldn"t be easy, though. The boy knew this. Such a man had survived dozens of attempts on his life. Man who"d shot his way out of fights up and down the map, yesterday killing a whole town"s worth of men including his, William R. McKissick Junior"s, daddy. A fellow like that wouldn"t go quiet.
But William R. McKissick Junior had picked up a thing or two about murder in all the long years of his life. Number One: Whenever you"re fixing to kill somebody using a knife, get behind them. His daddy had taught him that. Five years ago in the country of Texas America Mister E. O. Smonk had sent Daddy after that sheriff over in Throckmorton County. The sheriff had written a letter, against Smonk, to the newspaper, accusing Smonk of all manner of activities up to and including murder, by his own hand and by order. William R. McKissick Junior"s daddy had to take the boy along on the trip to a.s.sa.s.sinate the sheriff because his momma had run off again.
His daddy said it would be a good plan, though, that n.o.body would ever suspect a man would carry his own son with him to kill a sheriff. And if he-William R. McKissick Junior"s daddy-got killed before he finished the job, the boy was to get home by himself. Daddy said if he couldn"t find the way he didn"t deserve to get there. The boy remembered how him and his daddy took the train together and Daddy kept slipping nips from his flask. Then they loitered in the sheriff"s town for an afternoon. Jest getting the lay, his daddy said. They used fake names (the boy was Cole Younger James) and sat for an hour on the porch of a general mercantile, drinking Co-Colas and watching the jail down the way. They had oyster crackers and tobacco. Hard candy. His daddy bought him another Co-Cola and the boy drank it in one gulp and belched so hard his eyes watered and the old men who were lined up on the bench laughed. They bought him another Co-Cola and they were all burping and laughing and the old men started giving him pennies and ruffing his hair and up till his first handjob it"d been the best time of his life, that hour.
Then his daddy saw the sheriff had got back in town and they excused their selves and went behind a building. Him, his daddy said. That"s the man we"re gone a.s.sa.s.sinate.
a.s.sa.s.sinate.
That night they"d waited in the dark alley beside the jail. A stray dog tagged along with them-this back when dogs were everywhere. Get away, the boy"s daddy kept saying, but the dog just wagged its tail and panted.
The sheriff walked by, right on schedule. He heard the dog panting and raised his kerosene lantern and looked in the alley.
The town clock bells starting bonging.
Is it something going on back in here? the sheriff called. Is that you, Roscoe?
h.e.l.lo, his daddy yelled to the sheriff. We back here. I think we got us a mad-dog, he called. It"s acting all crazy. But I"m a stranger to this town and don"t want to shoot a dog that may belong to a citizen of this very nice town. I"d like to meet the sheriff of this very nice town and congratulate him on such a pleasant place. I"ll certainly direct some business this way. If that"s what the good citizens want.
A mad-dog, say? Toting the lantern, the sheriff had b.u.mbled back to his own death in the dark where the boy"s daddy hid behind a pole. As soon as the sheriff walked past him, his daddy appeared behind him in the yellow lanternlight and clamped his arm around the sheriff"s throat and drove his knife so far through his back that the tip came out in the sheriff"s belly and split the shirt. The lantern fell and burst. A fire started. The sheriff staggered to his knees, jerking Daddy off his feet behind him, and the boy watched as the two men struggled on the ground in the firelight. William R. McKissick Junior had begun to vomit, then, from all the Co-Cola. Ain"t you shamed, his daddy said once he stood up. He flung blood off his fingers. See if I brang you one more got-dern time.
That had been in Butler Alabama. But this was Old Texas Alabama. His daddy was dead. Killed by Mister E. O. Smonk. Same man that stole his momma. Now, William R. McKissick Junior, hidden on the edge of the town, holding his devil"s tool in his left hand, laid his head on the ground asleep, an ash of gra.s.s rattling under his nose.
Meantime, having doubled back and hidden in the trees near the three-way crossing, it was a snickering Ambrose who"d shot Onan off his horse. He would"ve shot Walton next, in the head, and then Loon, in the gut maybe, but his Winchester jammed. He"d spent the next two hours trying to fix it but gave up in the end and decided it would be good enough fun to let the fools sit there terrified, pointer-fingers buried in their pockets.
Leaving his rifle stuck in the ground, Ambrose unraveled the ascot which he"d always hated and stuffed it in his back pocket like a handkerchief. He fumbled through his pants pockets and ditched the clanking paraphernalia he"d argued against toting. A s.e.xtant? A G.o.dd.a.m.n jew"s harp? He boinged it into the shrubs and turned his hat backward which was how his father had worn hats. He rolled his sleeves up and unb.u.t.toned his top b.u.t.tons so his chest showed, its tiny black springs of hair, and retraced his steps to where his mount waited, eating poison ivy. Fool animal, he said and climbed on and donned his boots and egged the horse to a trot over the parched land, leaving Walton and Loon still on their horses, in the sun, waiting for doom. Ambrose began to whistle.
Meanwhile night with its endless lines had etched the county black, and from the west two figures conjoined in shadow negotiated the rails of the fence at the edge of the field and hobbled together across the dust toward the dark back windows of Old Texas. There were no dogs to bark the alarm, and though the ladies had posted armed guards at the well and next to the blacksmith"s place, with still another guard walking the street, they"d left exposed the rears of the stores. In broad-brimmed sombreros, Smonk and Ike disappeared between buildings and a few moments later the Negro returned and crossed back toward the cane.
At the Tate house, Smonk used a pair of nippers to pick the lock. He leaned against the doorjamb in the parlor. He held his walking cane in his right hand and a gourd in the other. The old lady Mrs. Tate snored, slumped in a rocking chair next to her husband dead on the sideboard. Odor of rot swirling in Smonk"s nostrils. Something else too. His stomach growled. She"d lain her head beside the dead man in the nest her arms made, shoulders rising with each breath she haled and falling when she let it go. Smonk wiped his lips with the back of his hand and came clicking in his bones toward her and bent at the waist and nosed himself to within an inch of her mouth. She was tiny as a child but her face was a thousand years old. Hair so thin it looked like dandelion puffs. Her veil lay on the floor next to her foot, fallen there or thrown he didn"t know.
Ike had returned in his soundless way with a pair of scatterguns, barrels sawn down the way Smonk liked them. He had Smonk"s lucky detonator and several coils of wire. His pockets full of TNT. He set it all down and indicated upstairs with his chin and Smonk watched him start to tote things up.
Without a look over his shoulder, the one-eye left Mrs. Tate to her slumber and ascended the stairs toting the detonator, resting halfway to the top and again on the landing. There was a door by his ear and he inclined his head and listened. He set the detonator box down and twisted the k.n.o.b and the thing on the bed leaned its head toward him and snapped its gums. Smonk was about to go in when Ike came to the door behind him, the satchel cradled in his arms.
Eugene, he said. You ought not go in there.
Naw, Smonk said. He stepped in the room and closed the door on the old colored man and clicked its lock and crossed the floor. Moonlight enough he could see the ruined body, the contorted face. The eyes that he covered with his hand as he sank his knife in the invalid"s chest.
Meanwhile, the field in which the two remaining Christian Deputies displayed stooped posture upon their horses had seemed its brightest as the sun died over the treetops; dusk had lingered, then, but at last night had commenced its slow overland bleed, shadowing the trees and shrouding the deputies in its cloak. Loon remained convicted that pointing meant instant death, though the proof had vanished as Onan"s horse had tottered off several hours earlier, dragging the dead masturbator with it and leaving a swipe the width of his shoulders on the parched ground.
Now? Walton said. May we go?
Loon glanced around. It is perty dark.
Indeed. Surely yon "sniper," if he even exists, cannot see us now, the leader said.
Yeah, Loon said out of the side of his mouth, but he might be a dang Smonk or something.
A skunk? Are they nocturnal? I suppose they are.
No, a Smonk. Loon barely moved his lips.
Is this a local "tall tale"? Walton wanted his logbook, to make a cultural entry, but was afraid to retrieve it from his thigh-pocket. His goggles hung loosely around his neck.
Well, Loon confided, some n.i.g.g.e.rs thinks he"s the booger-man, I reckon. Say he goes about killing innocent white folk by tearing they dang thoats out. The ones that lives catches the ray bees and dies going mad.