Smonk

4 THE CROW HUNTERS

EARLY THAT SAME SATURDAY, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE RIVER town of McIntosh and wild loamy climes north, Evavangeline happened upon a quartet of ancient horsemen in their tattered battle grays all these decades later and bearing long untidy beards the color of war. She’d lost her boots and guns to the Tombigbee’s currents and, because of her clothing and short hair, the foursome took her for a barefooted young whippersnapper as folk were wont to do in those simpler times and invited her along on a crow hunt up north ways. It was great fun, they promised, and they had whiskey.

You thank he’s too old? she heard one ask another under his breath.

Naw, he replied, then shushed his companion.

What the dickens yall shushing about? Evavangeline called.

Don’t be so testy, lad, said the man from his horse. You want a ride?

I’d ruther not. I can’t abide me a damn horse.

You a fool to run.

Best not say nothing like that to me when we tap into that whiskey.

Preciate the warning.

Within half a day the crow hunters and their new young compatriot had arrived at a blind made of corn shucks and cane stalks and positioned in the northwest corner of a dried-out cornfield. The men dismounted as Evavangeline leaned against a tree to catch her wind. One of the crow hunters led the horses out of sight and returned later and they all knelt together and entered the blind and lay waiting, their breath meaty and rank. They told jokes on one another and passed the bottle and belched and farted so densely her eyes stung.

You got a extry gun? Evavangeline asked the man nearest her. Faded chevron of a sergeant on his shoulder.

Naw, he said. I jest got my three ones here.

Well, if another one appears by holy miracle in ye waistband or coat pocket or asshole, will ye lend me it a spell?

I will, said the man. He popped her on the rump.

The bottle came her way again. She drank a snort. She could feel it travel the length of her body like a herd of iddy biddy horses. With little naked men mounted upon them. With every swig there were more little horses and more little men.

A hunter told one about his army buddy getting his legs chopped off by mistake and they all laughed and one man spewed whiskey out his nose.

Don’t be wastin that, the first hunter said.

It’s yer turn, they said to Evavangeline. To tell one.

I ain’t got nare.

Got a big ole red scar, one of the men said. On ye neck yonder.

Well, she said, there’s a story.

She told about the time she got in a fight with two Irish. She and the Irish were hiding in an alley together. Evavangeline twelve or thereabouts. The potato-eaters, grown men, made fun of her red spot and she told them to go screw they selves. They came at her and she kicked the front one in the balls and got a fist in the jaw from the other. But his follow-through took him off balance and she uppercut him with her knee and split his lip.

Then I slit both they thoats and rolled em, she said. Did ye like that story?

Damnation, the hunter cried. I’m a veteran. Ever white man of my generation’s been shot. If they ain’t ye can’t trust em. I meant no offense.

We all got scars, another man said.

In a huff, she climbed out the back to make water.

She was squatted there, her head cottony from the whiskey, when the veteran hooted. He’d stumbled out for a piss himself.

Hey fellers! he called. This here high-strung one’s a split-tail!

She tried to rise but he grabbed her ankles. He dragged her hollering and bare-assed and clawing at the turf around to the front of the blind and the others climbed out with the bottle.

This here’s a genuine piece of tail, boys, the veteran said. He unfastened his fly and leapt forward. He prized her knees apart and began to hum “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand” and poke his dong about her thighs.

Boy hidy, said one of the men watching. I call next.

She tried to clamp her knees but he was in there. Then her hand happened upon the pistol he wore backward on his belt. She squeaked the gun from its holster and flipped it in the air like a circus shooter. In quick succession she shot the three men witnessing—gut, chest, neck—who hit the ground dead still holding their peckers before the fellow atop her realized she had the barrel under his chin.

Wait, he grunted, I’m fixing to get a nut—

But he didn’t.

She shoved him away dead, his member still engorged and purple like an obscene mushroom. She swapt it off with his own bootknife and watched the stump blurt a rope of blood and spume like that fountain they had down in Mobile where men went to meet other men.

Sitting in the dirt, she held her head for a while, then pulled on her pants. Insects were gathering at the edge of the pooling blood like souls needing baptism. She wrenched the boots from the veteran and stabbed her feet into them. She reloaded his revolver and shot him a few more times in the gape where his jaw had been and collected their guns and then, despite her disinclination, she found the horses where they were tied and freed three and for herself chose the tall bay with spotted legs and leapt into the saddle.

In the afternoon the field began to fill up with crows gorging on corn. After a while they came through the stalks and gorged on the eyes of the men, and then their tongues.

Meanwhile, time passes. The chase stretches. The men endure. Some forget who they’re chasing or why.

But Walton never forgets. They’ve commandeered a steamship now, chugging upriver, the horses irritable, the men bored.

A river is no place for a man, the Christian Deputy leader thinks, pacing up the deck and back. On the bank he sees a wildcat lift its dripping muzzle from a slain “razorback” hog. Walton flings his hand in the air. There! That is the life for a man. Any moment that a man is not wearing a bloody beard he is less than he can be. The leader gave a two-fingered salute. You are manly, noble wildcat! But not I, not with this, not with this, with this, this, this this this this bull-crap!

Lord forgive the profane word I just thought in my head. My flawed human brain! No excuse but my pent-up wrath at this sinner I’m chasing. I won’t even say her name. She “galls” me, Lord. This Evavangeline. She tempts me, my Savior. They all think she’s a man but I know the truth, O Lord Savior. Mine eyes are better than mine companions’ eyes are and I was first in the door, Lord Jesus, and I know that while they are just mites, they are womanly breasts indeed, Lord Jesus Christ, and what else she had, O God in Heaven, I won’t mention in Your Devine Presence, but You of course know Yourself, don’t You, as Your Noble Lucky Hands formed it Themselves, didn’t They, Lord? There it was, glistening, O Holy, just for the flick of a second, Lord Jesus Christ Above, and I saw it from behind! Her “cooter,” Lord! Her delicious red vulva! Lord my Christ my Healer! And thus I am forever tempted by this woman. Evavangeline. Evavangeline. Hers is the first vulva I have seen other than Mother’s, O Lamb of God O Perfect Prince. Please in the meantime forgive this hapless sinner, Lord. Amen.

Across the deck, on Walton’s command, Ambrose was teaching the troops to read. There’d been grousing about having a Negro tutor the men, but Walton had delivered a stirring lecture about the necessity of the races getting along. It was why, he confessed, he’d chosen a Negro as his number two man. When no one seemed moved by their leader’s oratory brilliance, however, he had threatened to dock the pay of any bigot. Meanwhile, Walton spotted the tip of a bow among the troops.

Red Man! he called, replacing his hat, securing the cinchcord underneath his chin.

A tall red-skinned man stepped up out of the crowd of students; the bow belonged to him.

You’re Cherokee or something, aren’t you? Walton said.

Something.

Don’t get “riled.” Why isn’t your hair longer? In a braid? There’s not really a C.D. rule about hair length. In fact, it might be fashionable if you were to let it grow—

Long hair is vanity.

Ah. Yes. We agree. I’ve been needing to “get my ears lowered” too. But listen. What’s your opinion of, if we’re tracking a certain convicted sodomite, and we’re on a steamboat, say, forging upriver, and our quarry is probably, you know, on land by now, going really fast, train or horseback, whatever, and we’re stuck here on this unholy lurching boat moving about a knot a day which is essentially not moving?

I’m not sure I understand, Mister Walton.

Captain Walton, please. Okay. I used to be a schoolmaster. He looked at his troop of eager readers. None of you all knew that, did you? Schoolmaster from Philadelphia. (Suddenly he ached for his chalkboard, but alas it was packed aback the mule.)

What I mean, he went on, is that I’m adroit at explaining things. Especially with a blackboard. But let’s try it this way, Red Man. Is it okay for us to get off this unholy raft and get the horses some exercise before they go crazy, and get the men some exercise before they go crazy? We’ll gallop to the next dock and find out if she got off or stayed on. I mean he.

I see. The tall Indian leaned his bow aside and adjusted his quiver of arrows. He frowned and pursed his lips and squinted his eyes and gritted his gleaming teeth, as if for him thought manifested itself as a severe headache.

Walton’s thoughts ran back to Evavangeline. To that day in Shreveport when she worked the door in the tavern across from the cheap hotel where he was living. (When they “bunked” in town on rare occasions, the other deputies usually shared a room, Ambrose out back in a barn or shed as most of these establishments harbored ill feelings for Negroes. But Walton always preserved his privacy for devotionals and prayer. It wasn’t classist, he insisted to his mother in his long, florid letters, but was instead the necessary separation of leader from led.) On the day in question, he was ambling out of the barber’s from having a shave and boot shine and saw her standing in the door under the saloon’s awning. One in the afternoon. She was dressed like a schoolgirl. Pigtails. Her cheeks smattered with fake freckles. She fetchingly held a sign that said “Fuck $1” and was illustrated by a crude drawing of a man and woman copulating “doggie-style”; Walton assumed the latter was for Shreveport’s copious illiterate. The leader of the Christian Deputies stood in the middle of the street watching the girl. Then she noticed him. He couldn’t look away. A clatter of horse and buggy blocked them and then they saw one another again, his clothes flecked with mud and horseshit, a lump in his pants. She fingered the lapel of her shirt and flashed him a quick-tiny breast, startling and white in the sun and then gone, but not before he’d seen the bloodred nipple as big as a thirty-eight caliber cartridge.

Mother! Lord Jesus!

He’d covered his eyes with both hands and whirled, weeping. She went back inside.

The next day he’d spent in his room. He prayed and slammed his fingers in the drawer of the desk on which he ought to have been writing dialogue for the play he’d been outlining in his logbook. He would try that. He dipped his quill in the inkwell and swirled it around. He brought it up dripping and blotted it. It was hard to write with his fingers throbbing. He made a mental note to slam his other hand next time. Painfully, he began to make a letter. Capital “B.” He followed it with a lowercase “r” and was well on his way to spelling “Breast” when he slammed down the pen. His fingernails were turning black, and he had a sudden restored memory of being dressed like a girl, his nails painted red. He covered his face with his hands and his eyes gazed out through the bars of his fingers.

O Lord Jesus Christ comfort me in my prison of pain!

He shut his eyes and prayed that he would be miraculously transported to another location, as when God had miraculously transported Lot and his family from the doomed sodomites in the cities of the plain. But opening his eyes he could still see the harlot out the window across the street wiggling her hips like an effigy of sin itself. Right there. In the doorway. Dressed as a squaw this time. A drunk sidled up to her and stared openly. He appraised a hand along her hip. She turned around at his behest and raised her leather skirt. O her bottom! Walton jerked his head hither and yon, discombobulating the things on his desk, but the man’s own wide buttocks blocked the view of hers.

The Christian Deputy leader fell back onto his bed, sobbing and pinching himself.

In a flash he was at the window again.

Beneath the awning the drunk man was whispering in the girl’s ear, braced on her shoulder to stay afoot. She nodded and they went inside. Walton watched, his breath fogging the glass, his heart an overheated toad frying in the cauldron of his ribs. Upstairs, across the street, the harlot appeared in a window to pull down the shades. Before she did, though, he saw her lick out her tongue at him.

Serpent!

He tried to fill a cup with urine so he might drink it, but his turgid member refused to cooperate, the down-bending so pleasurable in itself that it nearly betrayed him.

He had rushed downstairs right then, pants abulge, ascot atangle, and burst into the deputies’ room, where the men were supposed to be engaged in an exercise about the sucking out of snake venom. There were several empty liquor bottles scattered about the floor that, without being asked, Loon testified had been left there by the room’s previous tenants. He hiccupped.

Men, Walton cried. Sin! He pointed upstairs.

Thus rallied (Ambrose rounded up from witnessing to a group of degenerates playing “craps” in the alley), the entire troop lurched across the street in full uniform, several adjusting the things in their pockets, their leader seen by some to be pinching his male member through his tight pants. They entered the saloon, Red Man lowering his bow, an arrow notched, to fit inside. They bounded up the stairs, behind Walton. Red-faced, he had kicked down the door and burst in the room and away she’d flown out the window like a shade flapping up.

Meanwhile, on the boat, Red Man had recovered from his bout of thinking. No sir, he said. Regarding your question of abandoning ship for hot, dusty horse travel overland.

Why?

Because to track a man is to know him. To track a man is to honor him.

Pardon?

Knowing and honoring a man are aspects of tracking him. In my tribe before the Wars and dark years of reservation life, before I fled east to escape the Apache and Comanche and the Pawnee and the Rangers and revenuers and cavalry men and bounty hunters, I, like you, also was a teacher. Of young braves. Sometimes the other warriors called me coward for choosing to be with the little ones instead of out earning feathers and ribbons and pieces of clothing taken from massacred white men and women and children and kept and passed father to son in a family for as many generations as the piece of clothing lasted—sometimes just a scrap, the cuff from a shirt, or only a button—

What in the world are you talking about? Walton asked.

To track a man is to know him. To know him is to honor him. And to truly honor him (which is part of tracking him) you have to go exactly where he went, suffer his very path, riding when he rode, walking when he walked, as close as you can get, stepping when possible in his very footsteps. You finger every broken branch, touch each smudge of dirt with your eager tongue, you work at becoming him—

Wrong, said Walton. Why would I want to become a sodomite? Captain! he called.

A dour, scruffy man shuffled forward. Aye?

Steer us over to the bank, sir, hard aft. The leader clapped his hands. “Pronto!”

At this speed? We’ll run aground.

Speed, sir? My gracious! You call this speed? Walton threw open his arms. Evolution is moving faster than we are!

Meanwhile, the deputies learning to write had been smudging “Walton” in asbestos on the side of the boat. While they worked, chewing their lips like giant, frightening children, Ambrose plucked a pencil from his Afro and saw how many littler words he could make from “Walton.” He listed “wal,” “ona,” “alton” and “walto” (except for “w” and “l,” he drew the line at single-letter words). He added “lto” to his list then looked up and noticed that Loon seemed to have a condition where he spelled all his words backward; so when he copied the Christian Deputy leader’s name in his large, uneven characters, it caught Ambrose’s attention.

Mister Walton, he said to his commander. You ever noticed what ye name is wrote backerds?

Great Scott. It’s “not law.”

The men, keen of ear, began to watch him murderously. They clattered to their feet in an asbestos cloud. Since the reading lesson, a plot of mutiny had circulated among their number. They’d decided that to earn any respect as a gang they had to kill somebody, Walton the logical choice. Ambrose next.

Not law, they chanted, coming forward drawing out their swords. Not law, not law, not law.

Deputy Ambrose! Walton whispered. Do something. That’s an order.

Not law, not law, not law…

Red Man! the Negro called.

Everyone stopped saying “Not law” and looked at the tall Indian.

Ambrose jabbed his finger up in Red Man’s face. Didn’t you say ye Injun family and other ones like it ’d keep as keepsakes the clothes of—yer own words here—of “massacred white mens and womens and childrens”?

Yes, Red Man said. Why? Then his face sagged. Oh shit, he said.

Mister Walton done tole you bout cussing, Ambrose said, and without a moment’s hesitation the stocky second-in-command drew his long-barreled revolver and shot the Indian in the forehead. Red Man stood for a moment, cross-eyed, then fell straight back, his bow toppling after. A plug of his head splashed in the water barrel.

Oh, Walton said. I may faint.

Yet the deflecting tactic worked, and as the blood pooled about the dead Indian’s neck the remaining deputies forgot about Walton’s backward-spelled name and the plot to murder him and, to a man, except Red Man, went back to their reading lesson, though visibly distracted.

That nigger better not kill me, a deputy said.

Nice work, Walton whispered to his second, once it was clear the danger had passed.

Ambrose eyed the men as they bent over their work. Can I shoot me a white ’n next?

Certainly not, said the leader. But you can “cover” yon captain so that he complies with my order.

Right, boss. Ambrose crossed to the steering platform and jammed his revolver in the man’s ribs. Nigger with a gun, he whispered. Only thing missing is a reason.

There, called Walton, pointing to a small peninsula overhung with trees, jutting out into the river at a bend. Bank us there!

Kiss now, boys! the captain shouted. Here comes the end!

They exploded onto land. Ambrose flew overboard. Timbers splintered like gunshots. Bleating livestock flew past. The heavily packed mule crashed braying into the river, pulling a pair of horses with it. The men on the ship were too busy to watch, scrambling out of the way of sliding ponies and airborne barrels.

Walton used the forward momentum to his advantage, however, and, arms akimbo, pirouetted from the deck and grabbed a lowhanging limb. Those ballet lessons had done a bit of good, after all.

From the tree, he called out instructions. Deputies staggered about rubbing their heads, removing splinters. Two were swimming for the other side of the river. Deserters. If he could’ve spared the manpower, Walton would have sent after them. Meanwhile, a soggy Ambrose dragged ashore picking leeches off his arms and neck. The horses and pack mule at the bottom of the river were dead.

Look here, Ambrose said. Red Man lay in a heap where he’d been catapulted from the ship.

Walton watched his lieutenant kick him over. Underneath were small foot tracks.

Yep. It’s him, said Ambrose. The pre-vert we’re after. I’d know that sign anywheres. Reckon he come out the river barefoot, then took off.

They looked at Red Man’s body, birdcalls piercing the human silence like bright arrows.

That, deputies, Walton said at length, is dedication. To discover “sign” even after death. Perhaps you oughtn’t been so “trigger-happy,” Deputy Ambrose.

But Mister Walton—

No excuses, please. Your pay is hereby docked.

Ambrose grumbled under his breath as Walton assembled the men for an inspirational talk on Red Man’s service to his country. By now all the horses were ready save the ones dead in the river—for which the Christian Deputies observed a moment of silence—and leaving two eager volunteers to bury their fallen comrade, Walton and his men mounted up and were off.

Within an hour they’d spotted dozens of buzzards circling in the sky. At the edge of a parched cornfield they gazed upon four dead men, a gory scene which Walton characterized in his logbook as a “carnage of Old Testament vicissitudes (sp?).”

The crows had given way to buzzards, slick reeking ungainly flesheaters, summoned by death like family members called home. The large sneering birds were everywhere, tubercular frowns pasted in the sky, leaning malignant growths of tumor in the limbs of trees.

The deputies dismounted in unison as they’d been instructed and drew their revolvers and aimed them all about, some men kneeling, one on his belly, as the drill called for. Walton came forward proudly, stepping over the prone man. Excuse me. He crossed the ground and knelt beside the jaw-shot veteran. The leader removed his glove then slid his goggles onto his forehead and pinched his nose shut at the horror, studying the body. Where was its member? Ill at the sight, he looked about and inspected the other three men, dispatched by precise shots. Their members, while all taken out of their pants, remained intact. Walton gagged. The buzzards had been having a “fiesta.” The dead men’s eyes had been picked out and were grotesque purple festers now.

The leader belched and turned away. What do you make of this, Deputy Ambrose? Anybody see the missing, er, part?

Naw, said the Negro, but I’m gone fuss less bout these here goggle-ma-jigs.

Walton belched again and replaced his own eyewear. Fan out, he said, his voice nasal.

The deputies unclenched their stances and pretended to look. Two began to vomit from the odor. Walton himself had begun gagging again. Another fellow was whistling, hands pocketed, walking backward toward the river.

Shew, said Ambrose. Stink don’t it. He peered inside the blind. No pecker to report, Mister Walton, but they was here all right. Our pre-vert amongst em, look. Here’s his tracks. They was waiting on something, looks like. Or somebody. You can see where they guns was laid. Here and here and here and here and here. And here and here. Here. Stink so bad from they farts you can smell the rabbit they’d eat for supper.

Walton clapped his hands. Guns, Deputy Ambrose. That’s it! Guerilla warriors is what we have. Which explains the uniforms of these dead. Perhaps left over from the War, lo all these years later. “Sore” losers, these guerillas. Mis-perceived as heroes. Men unwilling to march out of the past. Praise God, we might just get a shot at testing our mettle in actual battle.

Battle? cried Loon.

Let me tell you what else I suspect, Deputy Ambrose. I suspect that somebody in their own party shot them. A traitor!

You mean didn’t the pre-vert we after kill em, don’t ye?

Listen. The reason I suspect a traitor, is that whoever killed these fellows could have never attacked head on. This place is a bunker.

A what?

Walton half-smiled. “Bunker.” I’m circulating it as a new word here in the Southland. It’s a secret club I and several of my old college chums originated. As social experiments, we coin new words and use them with authority. See if they catch on.

Ambrose pushed his goggles up on his forehead. You can’t be doing that.

Oh, I can’t, can’t I?

You gots to be a lingrist or something. A senator. The word gots to be around a long time. Work its way into convocations. Official. Folks got to agree.

So why can’t you and I agree? I’m practically an aristocrat, nearly a blueblood, and in addition to that a northerner. In other words entitled. You’re a darky but one who can read. You’re fairly well mannered, except for your propensity for profanity. I propose that you and I name the word and use it, Deputy Ambrose! “Bunker!” Such a stout word, I predict it catches on, especially if you’ll employ it among your dusky pals when you return home on leave.

Ambrose thought about it. Why not. So that crow blind yonder’s a bunker, and the pre-vert we’re chasing killed them fellers?

Walton blinked. Exactly.

The men had begun howling with laughter; a deputy had been caught masturbating in the blind.

Walton called a meeting and informed the men that this deputy would now have the nickname “Onan.” He described the Biblical masturbator, which caused a few sniggers among the troops.

Self-abuse, the Philadelphian admonished, is no laughing matter. Onan, your pay is hereby docked.

The men grew solemn.

Their leader clasped his hands behind his back and began to study the brown-stained grass for traces of further evidence. In the last few weeks, he had been trying to create descriptive nicknames for each deputy in hopes that it would bring them closer together and help him, Walton, tell the fellows apart. “Loon” and “Red Man” had caught on quickly and tipped him that these aliases must be psychologically and/or physically descriptive; if they were mildly insulting as well, the humorous aspect further aided the men’s memories. The head deputy imagined that his subordinates bandied secret nicknames for him as well. “Sarge.” “His Majesty.” He wondered if they had conversations about him. They must. Aside from alcohol, tobacco, gambling, whores and a taste for mindless violence, what else did they have in common but Phail Walton? Often at night, as they bivouacked under the stars, he pretended to sleep, even committing counterfeit snores so that he might hear what they said about him. He’d recruited them from everywhere. Bums, mostly. Drunks. Criminals. Men “on the lam.” While they suffered in steadfastness, loyalty, courage and obedience, they were cheap and easy to replace.

Look here, Ambrose called. Tracks go this a way. Peers like he made off with one of these fellers’ horses. Stole the guns and this one’s boots. Look how little his feet is. Like girl feet.

Add thievery to the list, Walton said. Mount up!

Shouldn’t we bury these fellows here? Loon asked.

Shall I describe a certain pervert? Walton said. We’re in pursuit? Besides, I think our last two grave-digging volunteers have joined their fellow deserters. I’m onto that “scam” and we’re fast losing men.

But it ain’t Christian, Loon persisted. I was brung up to bury folks. My daddy was a gravedigger and my granddaddy before him was too and my great-granddaddy and all my uncles and so forth was. My brothers was and one tomboy sister a bull-dyke. We all gravediggers is what I’m saying. We dig good ditches and privies, too. So I’m jest making a point. You got a man with a talent, me, it’s a dang shame not to let him exercise his God-give gifts. What you think there, there, you, nigger—what’s ye name agin?

Ooh, Mister Walton, Ambrose sneered, I agrees with the white fellers. He glared at them, one by one. Loon with his missing ear. Onan stepping from the bunker, smoking a cigarette. An as-yetun-nicknamed deputy picking his teeth and on down the line.

Why don’t we jest ignore the heat and spend a hour digging giant holes to stick these dead strangers in? the second-in-command snided. And then why don’t we climb in this here smelly-ass bunker and sang a few hymns, too? Recite some Bible scriptures? Sang Christmas carols?

The deputies were shamed.

Walton gave his dark-skinned lieutenant a fond, thankful look, and the two men smiled at one another with unabashed collegiality.

Mount up, Walton called, but everybody had already.