Smonk

10 THE MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER

THOUGH SHE HATED TO, EVAVANGELINE HAD FORSAKEN THE PONY with the star on its forehead since to reclaim it meant chancing upon the speckled man with the tore-up arm and the rifle. She wished the pony well, hoped it got out of the madman’s way.

Her head throbbed from being conked and from time to time her vision blurred, but she kept walking, trying to ignore the dogtooth marks on her elbow, leading Junior and the children away from the path and north through the tangled woods as fast as she could make their legs go, ducking briars and battling through a vicious crossfire of thistle and thorny weeds and sticker bushes, her skin redlined with cuts and clothes snagged to threads. Snake tails melted into the brush before her and twice whitetail deer rose on springs out of the bramble and bounded away as if the bushes were air. She shivered.

Presently they happened upon some luck, a dry creekbed curving through the bottom of a gully, and they began to follow it, the going easier through the sand and pebbles. She stopped in the lowest, shadiest place she could find and dug into the bottom for water but found only more sand. Walking a few yards behind her, the children held hands in a line, quiet and obedient, with Junior bringing up the rear, slicing at green snakes with his Mississippi Gambler.

Late in the afternoon there was light up the hillside on the left and they ascended the incline using vines and at the top the eight of them peered out at a field of sugarcane with another field after it and field upon field as far as any of their eyes could see. Evavangeline was about to push through out of the woods when Junior tugged her sleeve.

Miss Whore? he said. You don’t want to go this a way. That goes where I jest come from. Old Texas. It’s a bad place.

She looked back at the children, standing half-asleep, their clothes torn to rags, thorn welts laced over their skin.

It’s a town ain’t it? It’s got people in it ain’t it? Ain’t it?

The boy didn’t respond.

She repeated: Ain’t they people there?

The boy shrugged.

Ain’t they no children to play with?

He shook his head. I never seen nare one. Ner dog neither. We lived there for a while. Fore that we was traveling around. We went all over the wilderness till we fount Old Texas slap dab in the middle of nowheres. They was real happy to see us all the men was and ladies specially and they said what job did Daddy always want and he said he always fancied being a bailiff. Well what do ye know, they said, they happened to be bad in need of a bailiff.

William R. McKissick Junior wanted to tell Evavangeline more. How the ladies of Old Texas had watched him on the sly. They were all the time bringing covered dishes to the shack outside town where he lived with his father, trying to make Daddy send him to school and church, but Daddy said no. Schools and churches was for girls and sissies he’d said. Said a man had to make his own way and wasn’t nothing a book could say a gun wouldn’t say better. Said that’s why he liked being a bailiff. You got to collect people’s guns. What about the Scripture, the ladies of Old Texas had asked his daddy. It could sure tell ye plenty couldn’t it? the ladies said. Was it words scratched on paper? Daddy asked them. Most certainly, said the ladies. Not interested, said Daddy. Thank ye for the turnip greens but we’ll pass on the sermonizing. Herding them out. Yet when William R. McKissick Junior rode to town with Daddy and shot marbles in a circle drawn in dirt or played mumbly peg with Daddy’s three-bladed pocketknife while he was doing whatever business he had to do, the boy had always perceived the ladies’ eyes on him from behind their drapes.

He shuddered.

Well, Evavangeline said, I’m the oldest and I say we bound for Old Texas. She burst out into the field, the cane a pleasure to tromp through the way the sugarcane stalks broke apart, the train of children following her, even Junior, skulking along at the end of the line. They crossed several fields without talking until she paused to hold open two strands of a barbed wire fence for the children to squeeze through.

As Junior passed, she took his arm. Even if it ain’t no children, it’s got men and ladies, ain’t it?

Not no men, he said. Not no more. He dipped through the fence and held it for her, trying to see down her shirt as she ducked.

She let the children get a little ahead and walked alongside the boy.

A town that ain’t got children ner men neither?

I told ye. I don’t know where the children went, I never seen none the whole time we was there, but Mister E.O. Smonk killed the men. Ever last one. I told ye. I seen him myself a day or two ago. The boy drew out his Mississippi Gambler. He give me this knife.

Can I see it?

Nome. I don’t let nobody hold my knife.

I’ll trade ye, she said.

He looked slyly up. What ye got?

I got two size small titties and one genuine cooter with the hair shaved in a stripe. If ye give me that knife I’ll let you see em all.

Thow in a pecker tug.

When they walked on a moment later she was slipping the knife down the back of her pants and he was smiling. Far ahead they saw a cluster of buzzards hanging in the air. More were coming from the south behind them, attending some event of death the way stars attended the night. Soon she spotted the faintest smudge of smoke on the horizon.

She looked back at the children, dazed and filthy. Why don’t yall set down a bit. It’s some shade over yonder.

They walked to where her finger pointed, a sapling pine grown out of the field, its needles brown but not yet dried to falling, and sat around it.

She looked toward the town. Then down at Junior. How in the hell can one fellow kill ever man in a town?

The boy shrugged. Mister E. O. Smonk ain’t no normal fellow. He’s of the devil.

Well. Even if they ain’t no children, and even if the men’s all dead, ain’t it a bunch of ladies there?

He didn’t answer.

Ain’t it?

Yeah.

Then they could feed these younguns and doctor em and see to they needs and yers too, and I could be along my way. I can’t lose no more time on account of a bunch of damn younguns.

Why? Where ye going?

She stopped. For the first time it occurred to her: She didn’t know, she’d never thought of it. Well first, she said, I’m gone to get shed of the rest of yall and the closest place to do it in is Old Texas.

I ain’t going up in there.

Fine. You can stay in the damn sugarpatch then.

I will.

Hell Mary, she said. She stood looking at him. Okay, wait here with the younguns, then. I’ll go in and check it out. If I don’t come back by dark, you get these here younguns to some other town. Do not, I repeat, do not, come up in there.

Yessum. Will ye do me one more time fore ye go?

She looked down. No. But I’ll do ye twice when I see ye next.

He watched her go. Hell Mary, he whispered, believing that to be the whore’s name. Hell Mary.

Evavangeline had been smelling smoke for half an hour when she caught her foot on a set of rusted locomotive tracks that stretched as far as she could see east in one direction and west in the other. She doubted a train had rattled by in years, though. Nearby, an overflowing well-pipe gurgled water into a clay trough, its bottom coated with slick green moss. At her appearance several buzzards had flown from the rim of the trough, this likely the only water for miles. Lesser birds had congregated in the limbs of trees, waiting a turn that might never come. In the woods back from the road she saw the twin eyes of a wildcat and knew it had been watching her a long time. It wanted to eat her. Drink her blood.

There were flat stones arranged at the well for sitting and working and she imagined ladies washing clothes here. She dunked her head and shoulders in the trough and nearly lost her breath it was so cold. She straightened up and shook like a dog, keeping her eye on the wildcat. She drank handful after handful of the water—strong taste of sulfur—until she vomited it back up. She drank more in careful sips and looked around. The strip of shade she’d found to stand in was benefit a dead tree with medicine bottles and jars on the branches. She adjusted the knife in her waistband and walked up the hill into Old Texas.

The town was twelve or thirteen buildings facing one another across the road and houses scattered back among oak trees and dead gardens. Fences. Outbuildings. At the bottom the road turned a sharp right and there was a building still smoldering from a fire. Its chimney so tall it must of had stairs and a story up top. Across the street was what looked like a mercantile.

Women in black dresses and veils and holding rifles came onto their porches to watch as she walked along the street. She looked behind her and they were following her.

To ditch them she ducked right and went up the steps and through the screen door of what looked to be a nice house, hoping to find a lonesome gentleman who’d take her to his room. Maybe a bottle. There was a fellow reclining on a sideboard and she meant to sweep her hand up his leg to his crotch and see what he had. When she approached him, though, he was dead. Hence all the flies. His brown face had collapsed like a fallen cake.

Hell Mary, she said.

Beside him was a settee and a pitcher of water, a tall standing clock and a chaise lounge. There was a newspaper on a table. Out of nowhere her monthlies let go and ran down her legs into her boots. She began wadding the paper into a ball and stuffing it into her pants.

You can go on use my newspaper there to stop your flow, a woman said. I used to do it myself on occasion. Usually read it first, though.

Evavangeline spun. It was a bent little woman in black. White hair glowing under a black veil which obscured her features.

I’m sorry, the girl said. It come on me quick.

Do you get cramps?

Nome. Jest get a good ole hearty flood, then it’s done.

My mother used to say, Aunt Flo’s come to visit.

Evavangeline wished she’d had a momma to say wise things. Or a daddy one.

Well, it’s a nickel, the woman said.

What is?

That newspaper.

Shit I ain’t got no nickel. Can I take it out in trade? Maybe get a meal, too? I ain’t eat in a number of days. Who’s that?

That was my husband, the lady said of the dead man. He was killed yesterday early in the three o’clock hour by a murdering devil and his gang of swine.

The woman indicated that Evavangeline follow her and they passed from the foyer into a parlor bathed in amber light through the drapes and sat together on the cushy fainting sofa.

What the hell’s going on here? asked the girl.

Through the window, she saw women gathered in the street. A dozen maybe.

The lady crossed her legs and made a steeple of her fingers on her knees and cleared her throat.

My name is Mrs. Tate. I’ll answer all your questions, if you’ll answer mine. Now. One. What’s your name?

Evavangeline.

Is that your given name?

Well. Somebody give it to me.

Who did?

How long does this last?

Not much longer. What’s your Christian name?

My what?

Your last name.

I ain’t got nare.

The woman frowned. How old are you?

Perty old.

Where are your mother and father?

Dead I reckon. I never knew em.

The women outside had congregated on the porch. One separated and came inside.

Miss Evavangeline, Mrs. Tate said, this is Mrs. Hobbs. Mrs. Hobbs, I’m just interviewing Miss Evavangeline here. For our position. You ladies can go on back to your dead.

Mrs. Hobbs nodded and left the room and reported to the others who disbanded and disappeared.

Well, said Mrs. Tate. We’ve been needing someone like you in our town.

Somebody like me what?

To draw men in. If we can clean you up, get you some decent clothes.

Evavangeline looked down at herself. Her hands on her thighs. She had blood under her fingernails, no idea whose.

Why can’t ye draw men in ye self?

We’re most of us too old. We have six women of childbearing years. Three were killed yesterday, along with all our men. We need husbands now. We need men to guard us. To do man’s work, grow the sugarcane. Someone as young as you…

Well, I can sure as hell whore, the girl said. I need to git some money together, you see, cause I got a bunch of younguns—

Children? The woman had seized Evavangeline’s forearm. I’m sorry. She unclenched and leaned back and poured herself a glass of water and drank it in one swallow under her veil. Her voice when it came was managed. Did you say you were guardian of children?

I was, Evavangeline said, if ye’d let me finish my damn story. Like I was saying. I got them children, rescued em from a dyke and her raper of a husband—nearest I can tell, her and that raper was stealing em to sell. So there I was trying to get em home when they jest up and lit out on me. I ought to of looked for em but I been in a hurry.

They were in the orphanage west of town? Where are the children now?

That’s enough questions. Now it’s my turn. Who the hell is E. O. Smonk?

The lady looked out the window behind her, as if he might be eavesdropping. He’s…a curious creature.

Do what?

Some citizens claim he’s of the devil but I say there’s no of about it, he is the devil. He bought a big sugarcane farm out east of here a year ago. We were all glad at first, so few men about, but then he started in on us. One by one we ran afoul of his peculiar temper and we’ve all suffered injustice upon injustice at his hands. By his hands. She stood. But I don’t want to talk about him any more. Did you say you were hungry?

Yeah. For some biscuits and gravy. Some meat if ye got it. I can eat a lot, too. As much as ye can make. Also, I like to take my food out and eat it away from ever body. If ye don’t mind.

Well, why don’t ye go on up the stairs to that second door while I go get it ready. You can get all cleaned up. Change your clothes. Just make sure you don’t go in the first door.

Only the advent of her monthlies in conjunction with her hunger sent her upstairs. Mrs. Tate had gone toward the kitchen and Evavangeline paused at the first door. She checked behind her for the old woman and then turned the knob. It was dark when she entered, smell of piss. Someone wheezing. She nearly slipped on the floor crossing to open the heavy drapes. When she flung them back, light flooded the room.

A shriveled white man-thing roped to a filthy mattress convulsed when the sun hit it. Unnnnng, it said.

She slid the window up and stuck out her head and took in a breath of air and saw below her a pile of dead dogs at the edge of the cane. A woman in black pouring kerosene on the pile looked at her. Evavangeline stepped back and adjusted the drapes to regulate the light. She went to the thing on the bed and frowned at it. Its face chalky and cracked. It didn’t have teeth and kept pulling back its lips to show rotten yellow gumwork. The eyes opaque in a way she’d seen before. She bent and looked closely into them. When she reached to touch its cheek it tried to bite her.

Shit, she said, and hurried out.

The room next door was the frilliest she’d ever seen. She could have walked into Hell’s furnace and been less surprised. Frilly curtains with frilly lace and frilly pillows on the bed and a frilly quilt. A fringed rug underfoot that you damn near sank in, it was so soft. There was a dark slab of furniture against one wall with a pair of fancy doors she creaked opened.

Hell Mary. She’d never seen so many frilly dresses and of such colors that smelled so perty. It was like breathing a cloud. Violet and pink and bright yellow and roses sewn from lovely cloth. Blouses and skirts with stitching so fine you’d be able to see the skin underneath. Her plan, which she was still forming, would involve getting food and medicine and sneaking off to the children. Not bringing them back here, hell no. Maybe it was a town full of witches. She’d heard of those from Alice Hanover. She’d keep her guard up. Look at this perty dress here. Shorter, show a little calf-leg. She unhung it from its peg and slipped the dead crow hunter’s boots off and stuck the knife in the wall and shucked the pants she’d stolen from Shreveport and that floppy gray shirt with the knife slits and stood naked before the mirror stand.

A knock came from the hall and she went and opened the door, uncaring of her nakedness.

Oh, Mrs. Tate said, holding a glass. I came to see if you were thirsty, and if you wanted a bath while I got dinner ready.

The gal took the glass and drank it.

The bath’s this way, said the lady. Still naked, Evavangeline followed her down the candlelit hall past a line of closed doors into a room with pulled drapes and a tin washtub centered on a rug. There was a partition for changing and a toilet table with colored puff-bottles and powders and brushes and combs in neat rows. Evavangeline chewed her nails and watched the woman move boiling pots of water from the fireplace and pour them in and soon found herself steaming in sweet bubbles with Mrs. Tate behind her scrubbing her shoulders with a long brush and trickling hot oils on her neck and rubbing soap into her scalp.

You need to let your hair grow out more, she said.

Ummm, said the gal. She felt like going to sleep but the scar from Ned was starting to itch like hell. She tried to rise but Mrs. Tate’s hands held her down. Shhh, the old woman said.

Meanwhile, the Christian Deputies were cantering their horses northward, a beatific Ambrose at point, Walton in the rear slouching in his saddle, when the distance revealed an uncovered farm wagon headed in their direction. As they drew nearer one another, the deputies noted that the pair of mules pulling the wagon wore straw sombreros, slits cut for their ears, the entire clattering operation driven by an elderly, thin Negro, his dark skin darker still from years of endless sun. He wore a Danbury hat—the exact style hung on Walton’s hatrack in his apartments in Philadelphia, the ousted leader realized. Fur-lined brim. Lizard skin band made from genuine South American iguanas.

Ambrose raised his fist and the troop slowed and endured its own dustcloud as the wagon-driver clicked his teeth to halt his mules. Walton was aware that if something didn’t happen, he would be the first white man in the history of these United States to lose his command to a Negro. He imagined drawing his pistol and shooting Ambrose in the back of the head and telling his mother about it.

Behind Ambrose, the remaining two deputies, Loon and Onan, walked their horses down the sloping land to within a few yards of where the elderly Negro had stopped his wagon. The two roads converged here into one, and the parties were going in the same direction. Walls of dense foliage would not permit both to pass at once, so one party would have to back up and let the other go. Whorls carved by countless wagon wheels—deep ruts, savage grooves cemented on the face of the land—indicated this juncture’s history in rainier times, submerged in water and likely impassable. Walton unclipped the rawhide safety thong from his sidearm and spurred Donny and sat alongside his fellow deputies.

Back up, uncle, Ambrose ordered the wagon-driver. Let us thew.

The colored man wore canvas hunting pants and a denim shirt faded almost white with silver snaps on the breast pockets. A red scarf tied at his neck. He held the reins loose in one hand and a short whip lash in the other.

I ain’t gone tell ye agin, Ambrose said. He drew his pistol and tapped it on his thigh. Abscond, ye rickety old nigger.

Ambrose, Walton said.

Yet the fellow sat perfectly still. One of the mules began to urinate, then the other followed suit.

That’s bad luck for somebody, Onan pointed out. Two mules pissing same time facing east.

For uncle here it is, Ambrose said. He pointed his pistol at the stranger. I’m gone count to five, he said. One. Two. Three. Four. Fi—

Wait! It was Walton. He threw his leg over Donny’s saddle and dismounted. His hand in the air signaling “Attention,” he hurried over the ruts past Ambrose’s horse to the wagon and laid a casual hand on the brake and lowered his goggles to show how earnest his eyes were.

Sir, he addressed the seated Negro, who didn’t look down at him. We Christian Deputies will certainly employ diplomacy when possible. But we are in a remarkable hurry here.

No response.

Sir! Walton repeated, knocking on the side of the wagon as if it were a door. Please, he said. Let us pass. This need not grow into a “scuffle.” There are several of us. You are a Negro, alone and unarmed. Quite elderly as well. We are most of us young, white and armed. We are trained, well-equipped professional lawmen on a mission to better this land for each us all, irregardless of the pigmentation of our skin. And, I hasten to add, we have already encountered two casualties today, witnessed by mine own eyes, two men murdered by yon fellow Negro. I worry in fact that he desires blood again. So I beseech you, sir: Let us pass.

The wagon-driver had been looking languidly at Deputy Ambrose who was still aiming his pistol. Now the stranger fixed on Walton those eyes with their enormous pupils.

Naw sir, the man said. It’s yall. Need to get out my way cause I’m in a hurry too. And what I got to deliver ain’t gone wait and ain’t gone want to eat yallses dirt all the way to town.

I beg your pardon? Walton showed the sky his palms—What in heaven’s name was going on here? Had every Negro in Alabama chosen today to assert his independence? Now, look here, the Philadelphian said, his voice rising in pitch. I’m normally very conscious of the lower races—

Hang on, Cap’n. It was Walton the driver addressed. What kind a commander ride all his men to a low spot of trees without sending one or two of em in thew the woods scout a ambush?

Walton glanced at the trees, their dusty twitching limbs and leaves, dawning with danger. Each acorn the squat sight on some hooligan’s “scattergun,” as if Death had stepped onto the road. He swallowed. Why, sir, do you ask?

For a long moment no answer came. Then the Negro said, Ye buck yonder’s demonstration of counting’s done inspired me. Pick one ye men.

Walton peered past the mules to where his troop, such as it was, sat their horses. Why, sir? he repeated.

Don’t sir me. If ye don’t pick one, the man said, I’m gone choose for my own self. He raised his chin to better see the deputies, who were eyeing the trees for ambushers.

I must insist, Walton pressed. Why?

Cause whichever one ye pick, Ambrose called, that feller gone die.

Walton could not move. That’s not true, is it? How? he asked. A demonstration of voodoo?

Voodoo? The colored man’s eyes shrank and his hat flexed back on his head and the wagon began to shake, as if it were laughing. He nodded to Walton. That’s right, boss, he said. Show is. Voodoo fixing blink its eye. Or a feller out in the woods, one. When I count up to five you can see.

The Christian Deputy leader threw Ambrose a panicked look.

One, counted the man.

Not Loon, Walton thought. Not Onan. Both were studying the trees, trying to spot the sniper.

Two.

Perhaps offer myself? thought Walton. As a gesture?

Three.

Ambrose! Of course! Here would be his chance.

Four.

Let him shoot Ambrose.

Walton glanced at Ambrose and the Negro saw, in Walton’s eyes, that he was about to be “sold down the river.”

Fi—

Wait! Ambrose swept his gloved hand toward the west. Go on, ye old snake-doctor. Fuck off with ye.

At which point, not even a display of gratitude, the uppity Negro cracked his whip lash and the farm wagon clacked forward, Walton leaping to the ground to avoid being crushed and the horses scrambling as the wagon banged over the whorls in the pass and then up the opposite hill where weeds grew in the road, dusty white grasshoppers fizzing in the air like fireworks set off by gnomes. When the wagon was gone the pass in the road seemed enormous.

Ambrose sheathed his pistol. Hey, Captain Fool?

Walton found it hard to stand as his knees had jellied. Give me a moment, he said. Please.

When ye ballsack descend back down out ye asshole, I want ye to write a entry in ye diary yonder says we jest got backed down by one old nigger and two old mules. The second-in-command took off his gloves and threw them in the dirt. Shit, he said and turned his horse and trotted away, in the opposite direction the farm wagon had gone.

Walton watched him, then turned to the wagon as it squeaked away. Before he had time to think better, he’d taken off, on foot, in pursuit of the old man. Walton was not one to “pull rank” because of his skin color, but this was uncalled-for behavior from a “darky” old enough to remember how conditions had been before Walton’s northern associates had liberated the slaves. For emphasis, he drew his revolver, which he had no intention of using, and was closing on the wagon, about to grab its tail-gate, when suddenly the driver whoaed his mules and the wagon stopped and the Christian Deputy founder nearly walked into its rear end. He raised his pistol—perhaps a warning shot in the air?—the same instant the tarp in the wagon-bed rolled like a swell of water and a fat bearded man elbowed himself up from the hay on the floor.

Who interrupted my nap? he demanded.

Shrugging the tarp aside, he clomped the over & under barrels of a long black rifle on the wagon’s back rail, so close to Walton the northerner could smell gun oil.

Toss ye iron in here, he said. Keep ye hands where I can see em.

Walton complied, blanching at the horrific fellow’s goiter and grizzled brown skin and its pockmarks, gashes, scars, and moles. He wore dark lenses with an eyepatch under one and a bush of wild red hair in a braid hanging over his heart and a sprawling beard that made his head larger. His teeth were red and the rattle of his breath like a dog’s low growl. Perhaps here was a “moonshiner,” Walton thought. Which might account for his pensiveness.

What the hell you supposed to be in them outfits? the odd fellow said. A fucking Mountie? Canader’s a few miles north ways, ain’t it, I? He laughed and coughed.

I’d prefer less graphic language, Walton said, gazing into the rifle barrels. He raised his hands, showing no threat. I, sir, am Captain Phail Walton and those men behind me are my Christian Deputies.

Christian? The man coughed and sprayed Walton’s face with blood. Deputies?

The leader moved to reach for a handkerchief in order to blot the blood from his face when the stranger bopped him on the head with the rifle barrels, dislodging his hat. I told ye don’t move, sissy.

Ouch, Walton said, suddenly dizzy.

The fellow had began to chuckle and the wagon creaked with his mirth. Ye looks like a bunch of goggle-eye dandy boys, he said. In them faintsy getups.

We don’t appreciate that kind of insinuation, Walton said.

Shit, said the one-eyed man. The driver whipped his mules and the operation clattered off, the eerie man in the back laughing or coughing, it was hard to tell which.

Walton began walking backward toward the others, wondering what ilk of black magic he’d stumbled upon. Was the peculiar man in the receding wagon’s bed some “haint” of the backwoods? What monsters still roamed these southern wildernesses? Why, here might be Darwin’s “Missing Link” or a specimen of the fabled “Big Foot” of western climes. Walton put his hands on his hips and watched.

The wagon was nearly out of sight.

Meanwhile, loyal Donny wandered up on his own and nibbled Walton’s ear as the old man’s laughter or coughing hackled over the fields. Walton closed his eyes and summoned what wherewithal he had left and pulled the clammy sack of his body into the saddle without opening his eyes. He let Donny walk himself toward the others and thought about Ambrose. How he’d found the Negro face-down, beaten nearly to death, in a Memphis alley. Rats tearing at his pants leg. Walton recalled frightening off the large rodents and helping the wheezing wretch to his feet, procuring him a bowl of turtle soup and rice and giving his testimony while eating with him and several other hungry denizens of the underclass, the Philadelphian thrilled by his own display of open-minded philanthropy.

And now here rode that same philanthropist with quite a different mind, shivering on his horse, backed down, again, ready in fact to give his own man up. He remembered Ambrose “watching his back” on the riverboat and deflecting the murderous intent to Red Man. Later siding with Walton about the burials. How he’d said “bunker” with such faithfulness.

Perhaps it was time, wasn’t it, for Walton to face the fact: Ambrose was right. He, Walton, was indeed an F-U-L, fool. Wasn’t he out here in the wilderness only because he’d backed out of a duel at a Halloween costume party at an Admiral’s summer home in Boston? With Mother on his arm, he’d gone as a “gunslinger,” red shirt and khaki pants with their extra pockets full of “loot,” the polished riding boots, ascot and hat. For fun he’d worn a real gun, unloaded of course. After a misunderstanding, a meaty, red-faced Italian “thug” pulled Walton’s leather gloves from his gunbelt and slapped him across the cheek several times despite Walton proclaiming his innocence in the matter of the Italian’s wife. Yet the Italian, dressed as a giant rabbit, shoved Walton into the seaman’s rosebushes. He then kicked him in the crotch and spat upon him and threw drinks in his face. He hit Walton in the back of the head with his, Walton’s, own pistol.

Walton’s cheeks burned at the memory. Hadn’t he, bleeding from rose thorns, knelt and begged his beefy opponent not to murder him? The man flipping off his rabbit hood now, blood speckled on his faux fur. Hadn’t the Italian agreed to let him go only if Walton removed his pants, crimson shirt and underwear and crawled naked from the party? The mob of them (including a “loose” woman) following in their buggy—not part of the agreement—costumed in masks and gaudy outfits and top hats, swinging lanterns and spewing him with bottles of champagne. Banging cans and firing pistols at the stars. Later, the first strains of morning light had caught him sneaking through a back alley; a Boston police captain on his way to the station-house nabbed him as he tried to sneak into Mother’s hotel. Wrapped in a dirty shirt, Walton was thrown in jail. His head shoved in the chamber pot by the degenerates in his cell. Lice in his hair. Instances of painful sodomy. Mother, her carriage-driver holding her arm, her handkerchief over her mouth and nose, fetched him out of the jailhouse. She’d brought him a scarlet hood and would only suffer his company if he wore it. His darling betrothed Miss Annie’s younger brother had returned Walton’s grandmother’s diamond ring along with a letter he’d only read once but could recite from memory: Dear Phail, please tell me which Parties you plan on attending in the Future so I will not. Never speak to me again. You should spell yr. Name with a “f.” I wish you were dead. Or I was. Somebody. I hate you.—Sincerely, A.

Hadn’t Walton traveled “coach” on the railways south to this wasteland of dry sugarcane and human detritus in the very costume of his shame and with the sole intention of getting himself murdered? Would that not show them all? Did you hear? Phail’s dead! Killed in battle in a southern wilderness. He was no coward after all. We were so wrong about him. They’re going to publish his logbook. A perfect plan: South then dead. Yet somehow he’d discovered a niche for himself. His leadership had given these shiftless men shift. He added focus to their lives. He was their salvation. And might they not be his?

He gazed across the fields of brown to where faithful Loon and Onan waited, glancing at the trees around them. Thus far Walton had squandered chance upon chance for the glory of death in battle, “kill or be killed,” to even his score on God’s night sky of a chalkboard. Red Man should have been Walton’s kill, not Ambrose’s. Hadn’t that rightly been Walton’s mutiny to quell? And those deserters ought to have died impaled by Walton’s sword, not killed by Ambrose’s Winchester. And only moments ago, this wretched man-thing with his enormous rifle and rebellious Negro! They were obviously criminals. Yet was the man-thing dead? Was the Negro?

Was Walton? Had he fought like a man or surrendered his sidearm without a thought? The Christian Deputy leader straightened in his saddle. Strength had returned full force to his knees and he rose in the stirrups and clasped his pommel and nodded as he rode up alongside his men.

Deputy Loon, he said. Deputy Onan. He smiled grimly. Let’s go get that son-of-a-bitch.

Neither man moved.

I see, their leader said. He lowered his gaze. So I’ve lost my authority completely. Not that I blame you—

Naw, Onan said from the side of his mouth. It ain’t that. He and Loon were casting their eyes fearfully at the trees. We jest don’t want that nigger’s friend in the woods to shoot us.

Ned’s face in her dreams but gone when she opened her eyes. She lay in warm hay, it moved with her breath. She was glad there wasn’t any shit in the stall now but there had been some here before. Her face was away from them but she knew that of the three women behind her two were having her time of the month and one was past prime. She tried to sit up but her hands were bound behind her. She rolled over.

They wore black dresses and veils. She didn’t know who the two in back were but the one in front was Mrs. Tate, she could tell from her smell of her dead husband. She blinked and blew hay from her face and rolled over. They’d put her in a barn stall made secure with bars like a jail cell. Hay for sleeping. Slop jar in the corner. Nothing else.

Mrs. Tate held the Mississippi Gambler in her hand. What did you plan to do with this? Cut my throat?

Yall poisoned me, she said.

The ladies said nothing.

Mrs. Tate, Evavangeline said. Did I answer ye questions wrong and this is what I get?

I’m sorry, said the little woman. She handed the knife away. But you can’t say names here. We don’t have names here. You’ve been bitten by a struck dog. I saw the marks on your arm while you bathed. These other ladies have witnessed them as well. So we have no choice but to confine you. For your own safety. See if the ray bees have got you.

No, she said. She wriggled up against the wall and fell forward, her ankles bound as well. I ain’t got none, I swar. That dog was my own pet dog. It never had no ray bees.

If you don’t exhibit any symptoms, we’ll set you free and you can be a citizen of our town. And if you do have them, we’ll shoot you quickly and burn your remains.

But I got to go, Evavangeline said.

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 passing 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 peacock 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 hell 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 coons 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 tits 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 coon-ass whore 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 coon 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 coons 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, slobbering. 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 pissed 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, bloody 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 hellish 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 nigger 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 nigger, ye mean?

Negro, please.

Hell, 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 nobody.

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?