Smonk

13 THE FIRE

MEANWHILE, SOUTH END OF TOWN, MCKISSICK SLOWED HIS HORSE and leapt off despite his aching side and broken wrist. He splashed water from the trough onto his face and covered his privates with his hand as a guard-lady approached down the hill with a shotgun trained on him. He moved behind the trough to hide his pecker and balls and recognized the attractive daughter of Hobbs the undertaker. He bet Smonk had bedded her. She frowned at him, the blood, his burnt skin.

Bailiff McKissick? Is that you?

Yeah. You can go on put that gun down.

She pointed it away from him and craned her neck to see his crotch. You all right? Who done that to ye head? It’s all swoll. She circled and he circled opposite her, keeping the trough between them.

Can I borry ye wrap yonder?

She looked doubtful a moment then unsnagged it from her shoulders and tossed it over the water. He caught it and fastened it around his waist.

She watched him. Did ye find Smonk?

I did.

And done with him?

Yeah. Have ye seen Willie?

Naw, but Mrs. Tate might did. They fount a bunch a younguns. Praise Jesus ye killed him. You want to come back to our barn?

Not jest yet, he said. Stay here. If ye hear shooting, get behind the trough yonder and murder whoever comes running.

She let him pass, inspecting his buttocks, and he put Smonk’s over & under under his arm and crutched up the hill with his broken wrist held by his heart. He hobbled along the backs of buildings to the Tate house where he tried the rear door handle. It was unlocked so he entered and stood within the hall in the dark. He clicked the rifle’s safety off and the sound was enormous in the room. He squeaked open the parlor door, inserting the barrels, and saw Mrs. Tate sitting by her dead husband.

Bailiff McKissick? She strained to see. Is that you?

He stepped into the room.

Yes ma’am, he said. I’ll give ye Smonk’s eye if ye know where my boy is—!

A giant hand had fallen upon his head. McKissick felt himself turned like an auger. Hot breath blasted his face, flecks of blood in his eyes. The rifle slipped from his grip and Smonk’s other hand caught it before it landed.

Thank ye for bringing this Winchester back, fellow, he said. I was always partial to it. Now where’s my fucking eye?

First tell me where my boy is.

Smonk pushed McKissick’s head away like a tent evangelical and the bailiff backpedaled toward the detonator and fell beside it and knocked it askant with his broken arm.

Get up, killer. Smonk checked the 45-70’s loads and snapped the gun shut and lurched over to McKissick, the room seeming to tilt with his weight. Give me my eye.

The bailiff had no strength left and no feeling in his broken wrist. His side was bleeding, his head felt like an anvil. He noticed the detonator and spidered his good hand up to the corner of the casing and seized the bottom of the plunger the way a man grips an ax.

Back, he panted, or I’ll blow it.

Including ye boy, Smonk said. He’s down yonder other end of town with a bunch of younguns these old whores stold. Auntie here and her coven of witches is fixing to turn they mad-dog on em.

McKissick’s grip failed and his hand melted from the handle. Willie? He’s here?

Smonk had advanced. He edged the detonator away with his foot and touched the fallen man’s throat with the tip of his sword and traced it down his gullet, slowly, a long welt in its wake and then a faint line of blood.

My…Willie? McKissick gasped.

Smonk straddled the bailiff and sat so hard upon the man’s chest that blood spewed out of his mouth and burst like a fist from his wound, a penny like magic in Smonk’s fingernails.

Here’s ye tip, bailiff, he said. I thank ye for my rifle’s safe return.

I would, McKissick gasped. Wouldn’t take no penny from you—

I insist, Smonk growled, and with a slight lift of his eyebrows he ground the coin into McKissick’s left eye socket with his thumb. Under him the man’s shoulders shuddered and his legs kicked and floundered. Mrs. Tate screamed until Smonk reached his free hand up and cranked the broom handle and she blacked out. Meanwhile the one-eye had snaked his long trigger finger around the side of the bailiff’s head and dug it into his earhole. He wormed it deep in the canal past a spongy substance until his finger touched his thumb.

Two hummingbirds, McKissick’s mouth said without sound. Father and son.

And he expired.

Smonk groped to his feet using a rail of wainscotting and lifted the man once an assassin, once a bailiff into the air by his head and held him there limply like a large catfish and raked his sword down McKissick’s front. Among what sloshed across the rug was one rolling eye.

Evavangeline trotted to the edge of the woods and kicked off her shoes and scrabbled up an oak and wove to the tree’s topmost where the capping branchwork was thin as her own interlaced fingers. She swayed among the leaves as if she weighed nothing at all, the dark squares and rectangles of Old Texas in the distance like blocks laid out by a child and painted otherworldly by the moon’s red glare. This town Ike had called cursed by God for what it did. Where the people reached. What they pulled out.

Eugene is pure evil turned into God’s right hand, Ike had whispered in her ear, and it done swept thew Old Texas. It took the men, that right hand. Took em all. And it’s time for the other hand to land.

She’d said, He’s my daddy, ain’t he?

Ike hadn’t answered except to say, You don’t need to see him. No matter what.

Now in the sky the girl’s hair blew. It was up to her. Kill the women. Rescue the children. Don’t see Smonk. Well hell Mary, she told the air.

Back at the campfire, Walton stepped out of the bramble behind where the old Negro had lain down. The Philadelphian had a cudgel of wood for his weapon and was half-drunk from his flask. As he closed in on the prone man, he raised the log high.

You gone hit me with that, the Negro said, make it a good shot. Jest one, if ye will.

Walton’s club froze. He circled the fire lowering his arm until he could see the man’s face. There was blood on the ground and an empty pail.

The lost Mountie, said the Negro.

Yes. It is I, Phail Walton. We met earlier. I’m afraid I’m somewhat tipsy.

Forget earlier, the man said. It seemed to hurt him to speak. You been spying on me bout a hour, so you know you got to go help that girl. Help her git them younguns out that town fore Smonk blow ever thing up or them ladies feeds em to they mad-dog.

Sir, Walton said. Excuse me. I have a few question, if you don’t—

But the man’s eyes had closed.

Sir? Sir?

Walton waited in the immensity of trees. Around them the night. When he looked up he saw how far-scattered were the stars which were but an infinitesimal amount of God’s power and reach. The unscrolling dust cast by His hand.

He knelt at the Negro’s side and folded the man’s hands over his chest and placed the Danbury hat over his face. He relieved him of his scattergun and a skinning knife. Had he his logbook he’d have written a receipt. Then he was glad he didn’t have it. He closed his eyes. Lord, he prayed silently, I do not know this man from your own Adam made from dirt, but I cannot name a thing I’ve witnessed of him that causes me to question his integrity. In fact, one thing I can truthfully say of him is this: “He hath bested a fool.” Travel with me, O Lord, on this journey to save Thy children. I ask it of You in Your Own Name. Amen.

Meanwhile, Evavangeline descended the tree like something poured down its trunk and landed in a crouch. She left her shoes on the ground and ran through the woods and fields to the outskirts of Old Texas. She watched the row of houses in back of the stores, the dark windows. She scampered unnoticed by the moon over the dry grass toward the first house and entered through the back door, easy as it was to pick with a nail.

Inside she sank to all fours and skittered over the floorboards and crept along the wall in the front room. Here was the town’s dead lawyer displayed on his own desk and his widow asleep in her chair, head thrown back. Evavangeline circled her on the floor and twined through the chair legs and buried her head in the lady’s skirts. She chose the left calf and warmed the skin with her breath then kissed it open-mouthed, nuzzled the soft meat, slowly latching on. Above her the widow stirred but Evavangeline chewed so gently the crone only sighed and slumbered deeper into a dream of the trip south early in her life when her family slept beneath the wagon and a coral snake crawled into Uncle Lloyd’s bedroll and bit him several times. Uncle Lloyd never woke because such a snake chews, doesn’t strike, its poison in.

At the town clerk’s house she found his widow strewn across her bed, the husband unattended in the next room, his humors puddling on the floor. Evavangeline lay on the bed alongside the woman’s thigh and peeled down her stocking and kissed her behind the knee and tongued the mole that grew there and rubbed her teeth against the skin as the woman shifted and groaned and the girl nibbled and tasted blood and closed her eyes. Her skin buzzing and hot. In one house the stolen children were sleeping on the floor and their guard sleeping in a rocking chair. Evavangeline bit the guard on her side and, as she crawled through a window, one little girl raised her head but saw only drapes flapping.

Evavangeline found the liveryman’s widow awake, gazing at the empty jail cell, and used a hoe to knock her flat and bit her under the right tit which had plopped out of her dress when she fell. She found the doctor’s widow tied to her chair but asleep and without wondering at this oddity gnawed the ray bees into her calf which was shaved and soft.

She dropped from a rafter behind the guard at the blacksmith’s and boxed her ears and slugged her across the face and left a reddening imprint of her teeth on the left cheek of the woman’s ass and at the opposite end of town shattered a bottle from the bottle tree over the guard’s head and bit her on the neck. She bit Mrs. Hobbs, the undertaker’s widow, on her nipple and the woman convulsed but never woke. On through the town, house to house, widow to widow, calf to armpit to lower back to thigh, the women dreaming of moist sugarcane you bite and suck. Of their nursing babies of long ago, the pricks of pleasure from their first teeth. Of Snowden Wright in his heyday as he swung his ax in that onehanded way of his, visiting each lady as he did in the dark hours and ministering to their needs as their husbands would have had they not been off killing and dying.

Lastly she walked along the street with dust curling over her feet. Evavangeline Smonk. In her left hand the Mississippi Gambler and in the right a four-ten snake charmer unclenched from a sleeping widow’s hand. She had one shell. She ran her tongue across her teeth. In the moonlight she could smell him. A thick odor, woodsmoke with old meat cooking over it. She wanted to bite something. She took the porch stairs in one step and crossed the planks and the door swung in.

She heard voices. A man’s, a woman’s. She floated through the dark, drunk on his scent, repeating what Ike said.

You don’t need to see him. No matter what.

She opened the parlor door and there he sat. In his red enormity. Eugene Oregon Smonk.

Upon her entrance he’d simultaneously raised the over & under barrels of his 45-70 and snuffed the candle. But it didn’t matter, she could see in the dark. Could see a detonator and its wire coiling out of the room. See tiny Mrs. Tate contained in a sheet, only her neck and head showing. The points of her feet. Her dead husband on the table with a cloth over his face and another dead fellow half-naked on the floor, his guts soaking the rug.

Evavangeline closed the door. Smonk lowered his rifle and sat it across his knees and took a long hard pull off his gourd, watching her. Where’d ye come from? he growled.

She shrugged. She liked his blue glasses.

What town, girl? The air sulfury with his breath.

I don’t know. I been in Shreveport.

Shreveport, he said. I been there. He showed his teeth.

Mobile, she said. I been there once.

Yeah.

She liked his voice. San Antonio.

Yeah, he said. I spent a year there one week. He flapped a hand at her. Put that gun down, youngun, so we can enjoy our reunion here without fear of getting shot. You wouldn’t murder ye daddy, would ye?

She kept the four-ten aimed true at his heart. I ain’t decided yet.

Ain’t decided yet. He grinned at her. What about ye momma?

I never knew her. Is my name Smonk?

No. It was Mrs. Tate who answered. Smonk is a darky word, she said, not to be spoken within these walls.

Shut yer yap, Smonk said. He pulled on his beard.

Snow! Mrs. Tate hissed. Light a candle so I can see my great-niece.

He twisted the broom handle and air squeaked out. Call me that one more time and I’ll crank so tight yule bleed from ever hole.

No, the girl said. Don’t kill her. Not till I figured this all out. Jest go on light a damn candle. Daddy.

He struck a match up his leg and touched the flame to one of the candles on the table by the late Justice Tate. For a moment Mrs. Tate squinted at Evavangeline, trying to puzzle her out of the dark. Then her wrinkles narrowed.

You!

Yeah, said the girl. It’s me, escaped. Now say ye damn piece.

Mrs. Tate haled in a breath of air and exhaled it and did this several times as her color paled to its normal white.

Why don’t ye come over here, Smonk said to the girl. Set on my lap.

Listen at her first. Evavangeline pointed the knife at Mrs. Tate, but Smonk wouldn’t take his eye from the girl.

This is hard to tell. The old lady frowned, as if she needed to belch. But my time, she said, with Daddy, it bestowed Chester unto me. Chester. He was the only boy to survive after Lazarus the Redeemer blessed him. But even though Chess didn’t die, he still wasn’t—She writhed within her sheet, as if she needed her hands to talk. He still wasn’t right. In his head.

What about before ye let that dog at him? Smonk asked.

She didn’t answer.

What about him? the girl asked, pointing the knife at Smonk.

Mrs. Tate sagged in her sheet. My sister Elrica, she said. My sister Elrica’s time with Daddy resulted in him.

E. O. Smonk, he said, patting his thigh for her to come sit. At yer service.

That Ike, the girl said, her arm growing heavy with the snake charmer’s weight, he said we evil.

Evil! Smonk spat on the floor. Horseshit. If we so evil how come Ike never killed us? I seen him kill plenty of evil folks but he never killed me. Did he kill you? He tossed the gourd to the gal.

She caught it in her elbow crook and uncorked it with her teeth and turned it up.

Stop drinking, both of you, Mrs. Tate said. Don’t yall see? If I bore Chester from Daddy’s seed, and Elrica bore you, Snow, from Daddy, then it’s obvious that it’s something within our family. I don’t know who this girl is but she must be some relation of ours, a second or third cousin, there are Wrights all over Texas. The ray bees have chosen the Tates. Chester wasn’t right in the head but the ray bees didn’t kill him, either. Somehow he lived. That must mean we—we Tates—are carriers of them, of the ray bees. Our family alone. Don’t you see, the two of you? Don’t you?

I see a perty little gal, Smonk said, grinning at Evavangeline. That’s what I see.

I don’t see shit, the girl said.

Mrs. Tate leaned forward. You must seed this child, Snowden, right now, or our name will die. Our kind will.

Oh I plan to, Smonk said, but I done told ye about calling me that. He laid his hand on her tiny shoulder and shoved himself upright, upsetting her so that she squawked and tipped and crashed to the floor, still affixed to her chair.

Smonk stood on uncertain legs, opened his arms. Come here, gal, he said. Give ye ole daddy a hug.

Evavangeline took a step forward. The knife dropped to the floor and stuck upright. The gun slithered out of her hand and fell to the rug. It’s evil, she said. But when she looked at Smonk a strange thing happened. Somehow he didn’t seem evil and he wasn’t ugly and misshapen and old and bloody. He was her daddy. He was only her daddy and she thought he was beautiful. Her guts felt like they’d shifted in his direction and she could feel the ray bees all through herself. They were buzzing in her teeth. Her hair stood on end, her skin tingling. Her nipples hot knobs. The gourd fell from her grip and her hands when she raised them to her mouth were shaking.

Meanwhile, the town seemed peaceful, somnolent, not a “smidgen” of evil in the October moon’s crimson light. But while it might appear lovely, Walton had learned that in such desolate southern climes things were “seldom as they seemed,” a world of plague and temptation, madmen and monsters. He broke open the shotgun and a shell’s brass butt rose from its port. Should’ve further searched the old Negro for additional ammunition. He thumbed it back in and closed the gun quietly as folding a handkerchief and ducked between the rails of the fence and hurried past a pungent pile of burnt animals and rested in the shadow of a cane wagon.

He crept through a long alley and faced the main street, peering out to look it south and north. No sign of movement, the street bright in the moonlight. The windows dark.

Except—he craned his neck—for one. The large residence at the end of the street. In a front room the window pulsed with candlelight. Perhaps a citizen with insomnia. Unthinkable as it was to drop by without an invitation, Walton shouldered the shotgun and marched down the street.

He nearly tripped over an elderly woman flat on her back, clad in a veil and a long, black funereal dress. He knelt and eased his hand behind her neck and raised her head gently and folded back the veil.

Ma’am, he whispered. Are you ill?

She stirred. Her eyes fluttered. Help us, she said.

Smonk, meantime, loomed over Evavangeline and she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his outspread arms and be hugged to death. She heard Ike’s voice—Don’t, don’t, don’t—and took a step back. Her foot touched something and she picked up the snake charmer.

Get her, Snow, Mrs. Tate hissed. Seed her!

Smonk swiped for the girl but she ducked. Daddy, she said, wait—

Come own, he said.

Evavangeline was backing across the room and didn’t see Mrs. Tate shift her legs.

Daddy—

Dragging his foot, he came at her, the rug bunching at his ankles, the disemboweled bailiff flopped aside, Smonk’s enormous fists balling and unballing and the air aswirl with sulfur.

Do like ye daddy tells ye, he rasped.

We got to go git them younguns, Evavangeline said. She tripped on Mrs. Tate’s legs and fell. Before she could get up Smonk’s face contorted with teeth and he kicked the old lady out of his way and stood panting over the girl.

Take off ye clothes.

She raised the snake charmer. Get back, I’ll shoot ye.

Shoot ye daddy?

If you don’t get back I will.

Shit. Smonk feigned away as if giving up but quick as a rattler grabbed for the gun. She fired into his trunk then he had the snake charmer tossing it away. She tried to dodge him but he caught her by her midriff and raised her into the air with his left hand and backed up, tangled in the rug. He shoved the dead justice from the sideboard and threw her across the tablecloth there.

From the floor, straining to watch, Mrs. Tate began to speak in tongues. Hela-bo-sheila-bo—

Smonk pinned the girl and tore her dressfront away as she kicked and scratched and bit and thumbed out his glass eye which landed on the sideboard and rolled onto the floor and down a groove in the rug and past Mrs. Tate’s face squinched in babbling prayer. Holding the girl, Smonk opened a brown bottle from his pocket and spilled liquid over her face and she ceased to battle and he fell across her, panting.

Do it, Snowden, Mrs. Tate hissed. Do it now.

So much for peace!

Walton had carried the elderly woman to a porch and laid her down. He’d returned for her shotgun and his own, intending to investigate the large house down the way, when, almost simultaneously, a gun discharged in that very house and now here came a child running toward him from the other end of town. Walton raised his hand for attention and the boy slid to a stop before him.

Hello, young man, the Christian Deputy leader said. Are you a resident here?

It’s a bunch a resurrecting folks up yonder, the boy gasped. In the church.

Walton squatted before the boy and took his shoulders in his hands. Resurrecting folks?

The church ladies killed em, the boy panted, and Mister E. O. Smonk killed the men. We got to find Hell Mary. Cause them dead younguns down yonder’s done come back to life.

Hail Mary? Are you a little Catholic?

Let go, sissy! The boy jerked his arm free and ran up the street.

Walton stood. Sissy?

Behind him screams and banging doors. They were spilling onto the street, he saw, women in black, each armed. The one on the porch had sat up reaching for her gun.

More than a little “spooked,” Walton broke into a run. He followed the boy to the large residence and hurried up the porch steps and stood peering in the open front door.

Excuse me? he called. He rapped on the doorjamb. Anyone home?

He heard raised voices. Through the foyer door he saw movement. He crossed the threshold and came forward behind his shotgun and what he beheld when he entered the parlor struck him like a boot to the nose.

The large “booger-man” known as Smonk was peeling a stocking off of Evavangeline’s leg, the girl comely and prone and seemingly unconscious on a table. Also prone, but on the floor, bound by bedding, was an elderly woman, black juice dribbling down her chin; a snuff-dipper, like Walton’s own mother. This lady was speaking rapidly in a foreign tongue, perhaps German. Beside her—Walton blanched—the mauled and near-naked body of an eviscerated man, a cornucopia of entrails in the rug’s hills and channels. And finally, completing the mix, here came the little Catholic boy from outside, flinging himself against Smonk’s back.

Killed my daddy, he was yelling. Killed my daddy!

Everyone, Walton called, stop! Cease or I’ll fire!

No one seemed to notice his entreaty over the boy’s yelling and the prone woman’s babbling and Smonk’s own loud exhortations of breath, so Walton hurried forward. His intention was to grab the young boy but instead his foot slipped in blood from the disemboweled gentleman and Walton’s ballet skills aided him once again and he spun in the air, his right leg outspread, and landed on the opposite foot. The elderly woman began to scream—in English—at the boy on Smonk’s shoulder.

Let him be, Willie, she cried. Let him be! He’ll save us all!

Smonk, who had Evavangeline nearly out of her clothing, shrugged the boy off like a peacoat and sailed him across the room where he bounced from a wall and landed on all fours. Smonk tilted back his gourd and drank while he pulled down the girl’s last stocking.

Stop, Walton yelled, or I’ll fire!

No one stopped; instead, the boy clambered up holding a knife and raced across the floor and up Smonk’s back and grabbed him by the hair.

Killed my daddy!

Smonk rolled the bludgeon of his head and bucked but the boy clung on, his fist embedded in that matted red hair. There was a sound like something uncorked and yellow bile spewed as Smonk’s goiter burst and then, while Walton watched, fascinated, a great wash of blood sprayed the girl where she lay on the sideboard. Walton understood that the boy had cut the one-eye’s jugular and was currently riding out Smonk’s death throes, the big “cyclops” jerking and swinging his arms like poles, shattering a lamp and raking pictures off the walls. He staggered past a detonator as the boy rode his neck. He tripped over the woman screaming on the floor and tottered over them all, the boy leaping free as Smonk’s life bled down his chest like water over a fall.

Snow! croaked the old woman from the floor. There’s still time.

But Smonk was done for. When he crashed to his knees the window-panes rattled. He fell forward and grappled for the handle of his detonator but his reach failed and his glasses slid over the floor and his hand thudded on the wood and the fingers unfurled from the fist they’d made and his palm lay open like a bear trap. Lying on his stomach, he flashed his eye once around the room and said, I knew I should of—And then his body sagged out its last hale of air and Eugene Oregon Smonk closed his eye forever.

Meanwhile, William R. McKissick Junior bent over the prone Evavangeline and was wiping blood from her eyes and saying, Get up, wake up. Mister E. O. Smonk killed my daddy but I killed Mister E. O. Smonk. Get up.

Walton backed to the wall, letting it support him, and was therefore out of sight when the town women, young and old, began streaming into the house. They saw Smonk and saw the girl Evavangeline and the boy William R. McKissick Junior. They saw Mrs. Tate screaming and writhing on the floor like a carp and when the Hobbs daughter saw the gutted bailiff she began to scream.

Hush, said her mother and the girl jammed her fist in her mouth.

Quiet her, too, Mrs. Hobbs said of Mrs. Tate, and two women hurried forth and knelt beside the flouncing widow and tried to keep her still. And get him, Mrs. Hobbs said of William R. McKissick Junior, still brandishing his slick Mississippi Gambler. A young woman obeyed, jabbing her rifle barrel at him until he dropped the knife. She took him by his shirt collar and shoved him into a corner where he froze, watching their guns play on him.

Smonk killed my daddy, he said. I killed Smonk. I ain’t scared.

It’s the McKissick boy, one said.

Let’s take him to Lazarus!

Let’s take all the children!

No! barked Mrs. Tate from the floor, but with the women closing on the boy, no one heard.

From concealment, Walton saw his chance. He raised the shotgun and fired into the air and the room stilled and every conscious person turned to him, dusted in powder from the ceiling.

Excuse me, he said to the ladies. He sneezed. I’m only dimly aware of what’s going on here, but I’ll be rescuing this child and the unconscious young woman now. If anybody tries to interfere, I’ll be forced to action. (At which point he realized he’d fired his only barrel.) In other words, he said, drop your weapons, ladies.

He sneezed again.

They grumbled until he clicked back the shotgun’s hammer in one final “bluff,” and at last their guns began to clunk one, another, to the floor.

Thank you, Walton said, for your cooperation.

He glanced at Evavangeline, naked on the sideboard, and saw her fingers flutter. Her eyes opened.

Son, he said to the boy, please help the young woman to her feet.

From the floor, Mrs. Tate hissed, Who are you to interfere in our affairs?

Phail Walton, said he, founder and leader of the Christian Deputies.

Christian! croaked Mrs. Tate. Get him! she said to the bristling widows. Don’t let them go!

The women muttered and milled.

Hurry, child, Walton said to the boy.

William R. McKissick Junior grabbed the over & under rifle in one hand and pulled Evavangeline to her feet where she steadied herself on the boy’s shoulder like a drunk. They hobbled across the room but paused when they came to where Smonk and McKissick lay, very near one another. For a long moment Walton and his captives watched Evavangeline stare down at the face of Smonk.

She was crying. Pushing Junior away, she went to her dead daddy where he lay drenched in his own blood. She knelt over him and closed his good eye and ran her fingers into his pockets and found a wad of paper money and several heavy gold coins. She found three pistols and a pair of brass knuckles. A stick of dynamite. She picked up the glass eye from the floor and put it in her mouth.

William R. McKissick Junior had knelt, too. He rolled McKissick over and adjusted his father’s loin cloth and yanked at the rug until he’d covered him and stood and looked, only his daddy’s shoes showing.

Get those, Evavangeline said.

The boy reached down and pulled off the left shoe, the right, and when he did a small package wrapped in brown paper fell out. He took it.

Come on, Evavangeline said, her father’s last things gathered to her chest.

The boy didn’t even notice her titties. The Winchester in the crook of his arm, he held the package in one hand and the shoes in the other and followed Evavangeline’s dirty shoulders into the hall. Walton, covering the widows, was aware of some of the younger ones’ lecherous gazes, and once the girl and boy were outside, he thanked the ladies again and bowed and made his exit.

In the parlor, the women seized their guns and gathered around Mrs. Tate.

Release me, she said.

No, said Mrs. Hobbs. I think we done listened to you long enough.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Hobbs’s daughter’s neck was itching. Like she had a rash. When she felt the circle of cuts on her throat she began to scream—I been bit! I been bit!—and in a moment other women joined her in a discordant harmony as they discovered their own marks.

That was them, wasn’t it? Mrs. Hobbs asked, displaying her ample right bosom with its ring of teethprints around the nipple. Mrs. Tate? Wasn’t it? Them was the chosen ones!

Mrs. Tate turned her face to the wall. It’s done, she said.

The church! someone yelled. If that was them—!

The children!

The women flung away their guns and shoved each other and stampeded outside, toward the waiting miracle. And indeed the buildings at that end of the street were glowing orange, as if the sun were coming up from the west, at midnight.

Walton had given Evavangeline his shirt to cover her naked flesh and she led him and the boy to where the children were kept. Walton posted William R. McKissick Junior at the window as he roused the sleeping youngsters, thin, listless angels with under-circled eyes. He examined their arms for dog-bites but found none. We’re in time, he told Evavangeline but she didn’t seem to hear, leaning as she was against the wall.

They coming, the boy said.

Walton crossed the room and peered out to the street where the women were collecting like a “lynch mob.”

Little boy, Walton said. What’s your name.

William R. McKissick Junior.

William, said the northerner. Can you do something for me? Can you lead these children and this young woman out the back, to safety? Cut through the sugarcane and don’t stop. The wind’s coming from the north so go that way. He pointed, and then, without waiting for an answer, Walton propelled the lad away.

Good-bye, he told them both, and said to Evavangeline: I regret that we weren’t able to chat further; I’d love to have given you my testimony.

She looked at him. It’s a dollar.

Walton had turned to the boy. Go.

William R. McKissick Junior nodded, which was the last thing Walton saw as he turned and let himself out through the front door, locking it behind him. Unarmed, he stepped out and faced the mob of women semi-circling the porch.

He raised his hands. Ladies, I’d like to give you all my testimony. He cleared his throat. Excuse me. Have any of you ever heard of the word “bunker”?

Get him, said Mrs. Hobbs, and the widows came forward. Walton closed his eyes, outspread his arms and blocked the door. He would not be moved. He awaited the impact of their weight, being shoved forcefully into the wood, the women swarming him and pushing him into the air and hoisting him aloft above them and then sucking him down to the floor. He waited, eyes shut tightly, trying to think of an appropriate Verse of Scripture with which to comfort himself. Perhaps lines from the Book of Judges, the scene wherein Samson slew one thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Walton could picture the statuesque Biblical hero atop a mound of fresh corpses with various jaw-shaped abrasions on their persons. Samson in mid-swing, the bone high in the air, half a dozen opponents frozen in the act of falling.

Yet…Walton opened his eyes. He was unharmed, alone. He looked down the street, where the church was on fire. Ah. Instead of mobbing him, the widows had noticed the burning church and were heading there now, collecting handfuls of dust to hurl at the flames. One stout woman mounted the porch and slammed her shoulder against the door, which fell in, engulfing her in fire which swarmed the eaves and roof and up the steeple, igniting the cross.

Below, women had flocked to the windows and were peering in, and perhaps it was the fire that seemed to quake the redeemed as they burned in their seats. Wailing, the widows clambered over the burning corpse of the stout woman on the porch. They flung themselves into the door and stumbled back out, dresses afire, circling the church as its flames licked the bottom of the sky, windows exploding, the steeple creaking, sinking into itself, toppling. It fell for a long time and splintered into a thousand fires and the trees alongside the building and the oaks lining Main Street ignited one after another like torches and dropped burning cobs and cones and limbs and leaves, the red moon blazing over all, heedless how the fire spat itself building to building along the street, Mrs. Tate in her house on her floor still bound as fire raged in from the porch through the open door. She found that she could roll herself in her sheet and rolled through the stew of the dead bailiff’s guts bubbling with heat and rolled past Smonk’s great dead face, his head the marble head of some ancient, unearthed idol. She rolled alongside the detonator as her swaddling began to burn and bent her knees and curled into a U and rocked herself upright enough to place her chin on the handle and closed her eyes and plunged it down.

Meanwhile, Walton had descended the steps and stood in the street watching the widows hurl themselves into the burning church. He might have tarried a spell longer had not the building he’d just quit exploded, of all things, and sent him flying. From somewhere a horse was running past and with no thought whatsoever Walton, in midair, twisted his body and landed on his feet alongside the horse and seized its halter and bounced once, twice, thrice in its rhythm and threw his leg over and stabbed his feet into the stirrups. He leaned alongside the horse’s neck and retrieved the reins and soon had the steed whoaed and panting.

There, there, big fellow, he said, reaching to scruff between its ears.

He looked back. His plan was to return to Old Texas and see to the others, help Evavangeline find the children’s homes; surely no nobler challenge could arise before a man of God. Perhaps he would ask for the young woman’s hand as well.

But as he turned the horse he saw that the burning sugarcane had cast its fire east and west and now closed upon him like a pair of apocalyptic arms, affording him no chance but to heel his mount and flee south. Farewell, he called to the youngsters and the youngsters leading them. I’ll try to find you—

He was interrupted by a falling tree and without command the horse began to run. Behind them, the stores and houses of Old Texas had exploded one by one from the Tate residence down the street, and when the church blew, the widows left alive were lifted in a basket of hot air and thrown into the darkness of the canefield like dice and left to sit up and gaze in wonder at the burning shreds of sky landing around them. They were deaf. They gaped at the hole where the church had been as sections of their own murdered boys fell soundlessly. The sugarcane began to burn. Mrs. Hobbs cackled and tore down her dressfront and with her fingers hooked into claws she fled the burning town, pulling out her own hair.

Moments later the other women followed Mrs. Hobbs, howling and ripping their clothing. Walton in the meantime reversed directions and nearly collided with the mob of shrieking women; they clawed and snapped at his legs, the khaki of his pants darkened with their saliva and his extra pockets shorn away, until the horse broke free and galloped south.

When Walton saw Loon in the same spot he’d left him he slowed his new mount and called, Come on, deputy, if you want to live.

Loon kept his hands out of sight. Naw. I reckon not.

Loon, Walton said, Oswald. There are times to trust another. This is one of those times. Please, I beg you. Put your faith in me.

Naw, Cap’n, I believe I’ll stick to my position here.

The horde of screaming women burst into the field and Walton kicked his horse. Suit yourself.

He rode on.

A moment later the women spotted Loon and changed direction and raged toward him. When the deputy began to point his deadly fingers, no shots answered—not when the naked ladies grew close and closer, not when they pulled him sideways off the horse and fell upon him and began to bite him. Not even when he pointed to his own forehead.

Riding, with Loon’s screams muted in the smoke behind him, Walton unpocketed his flask and drank until there was nothing more to drink and pitched the flask into the dark. Whether the cool tears tracking his cheeks and neck were the result of the alcohol, the copious smoke or his own stripped emotions, he was too tired to consider. What he did instead was close his eyes and cling to the horse, it seemed to be flying, and race the fire into the night.

Meanwhile Evavangeline, William R. McKissick Junior and the children had left the house moments before it exploded. They rattled through the sugarcane and headed north, into the wind, the fire cracking like rifles behind them. Soon they forded the shallow Tombigbee, William R. McKissick Junior carrying the littlest girl, and by the time anyone looked back they were in another county and it was beginning to rain. That night they rested in a barn and Evavangeline blew up the new balloon and she and the children batted it to one another until they fell asleep in the hay.

In the morning before the barn’s owner stirred Evavangeline emptied the henhouse of its eggs and led the younguns away. Within two days they came upon the town of Suggsville, where the first little stolen boy lived. His weeping parents fed them ham and biscuits and cow’s milk and Evavangeline and William R. McKissick Junior would have been heroes in that town had they not collected the other children before first light the following day and left.

In the end it would take seven weeks to get all the children home, Evavangeline rewarding Junior with a handjob upon each child’s safe return. Near Christmastime, after they’d seen the last little girl reunited with her parents, William R. McKissick Junior was himself adopted by a wealthy childless couple in a lumber town called Fulton. The house he would live in had indoor plumbing, and there was a big sweet gum tree to climb, right outside the window of his bedroom.

On Christmas morning before anyone else was awake Evavangeline left riding north on a spotted pony she called Little Bit, the season’s first crumbles of snow glistening in the animal’s mane and in her own eyelashes. She’d not produced a mile’s worth of tracks when she turned to see the boy in his new sheepskin overcoat and galoshes. He was running to catch her, his breath trailing like a scarf.

Hey, she said.

Hey, he panted. His cheeks red apples. I needed me one last one. He held up a silver dollar.

The pony looked back over its shoulder. Well hell Mary, Evavangeline said. She rolled off and flapped her blanket out over the weeds and lay on her back and scooched down her britches with snow landing all around. We can do better ’n a damn handjob, she said. Come here, honey.

Three months later, she feels a thump in her middle. She stops on the sidewalk in Memphis under a striped awning beside a short nigger in the doorway sweeping. The nigger looks up.

In the coming weeks she finds work in an upscale house of harlotry for men who desire girls in a family way. She is treated well by this class of specialist, a cost of forty dollars a night, the house taking half, she the rest plus meals and licker. Her little baby likes shrimp and champagne. He kicks all the time, and hits and rolls, especially when she smokes opium or skunkweed. Sometimes he keeps pounding on her right side and she knows to go right. Or he’ll get so hungry he runs in place. His sharp little toes. Right there in her tummy.

A goddamn miracle.

And now, after tonight’s daddy has gotten his nut and rolled off snoring his beer and farting his steak, she watches clouds out the window and sucks E.O.’s eye in her jaw and cradles her melon of a belly. She has known death and love and danger and Alabama in her long tally of years, and she swears to God in the sky or the devil in the dirt—whoever bets the highest—that it’s her honor to be knocked up with a tiny new Smonk, and if he takes her life when he fights out into the world of light and air, nothing will make her happier. And if little Ned wants to suck on her plump titties as she closes her eyes, then that too will pleasure her, yall. Infinitely. Which means forever.