Then he saw me. Then he looked incredibly mean. And very low.
The last thing ah remember seeing was the face of Christ, a configuration of blues and greens, come floating towards me, his forehead studded with red pearls of blood, and ah remember thinking what overwhelming compassion resided in His eyes. Then something like a mule kicked me.
Ah awoke to the aroma of lavender.
Ah tried to open mah eyes but mah left eye felt like it had two angry leeches for lids, leaving me the merest slit to see through. Mah right eye simply would not open at all. Everything ah could see was bathed in a scarlet light and ah wondered where the fuck ah was. Was ah still in the land of the living? Had ah died and gone to Hell?
Then a cool hand descended and touched mah brow lightly. It was attached to a pale, draped arm and the arm was part of the sweetly-scented body of Cosey Mo.
Ah was helpless. There was nothing ah could do to defend mahself. Ah tried to stand but mah body protested with a thousand aches and algos, great and small. Ah watched her as best ah could – bathed in red – dabbing and stroking and patting me, and ah tried to figure out what she was up to – touching me like that all the time. Was she hexing me? Casting some terrible spell?
Ah needed water and ah lifted mah head slightly and was about to at least mouth the word ‘war-tah’, when she said: ‘Drink this. It’s water.’
‘Don’t try to speak. Just lie back. It’s all right, I saw what happened. If it weren’t for me calling off those dogs they would have… Here, lie still – he’s one mean brute, that Jock Snow – ssshhh, don’t speak,’ she whispered, and pointing one fire-crowned finger, she gently pressed it to mah lips.
Cosey Mo’s face was tinted in scarlet light, pinking her chrysal curls that tumbled down each breast as she leaned across me to dab at mah battered face, and despite the protestations of mah sorry body ah could feel the mollitude of her locks brush lightly across mah trembling thigh.
‘Sooo, you’re the peep… so, you’re the watcher,’ she said with a peculiar smile upon her lips. ‘That ain’t the first time, is it sweetheart? You’ve been here before.’ Then lowering her voice she said, more to herself than to me, ’… those chicken-shit sons of bitches…’
Her smooth white breasts swelled and shifted beneath the slippery satin fabric of her nightgown. Ah inhaled a sweet axillary sourness. With those two honey-hued orbs filling mah mind and her hushed voice saying, ‘Ssshhh, close your eyes now, sugar,’ ah guess ah fell away…
IX
Listen, ah don’t wanna speak ill of the dead but have ah told you that mah mother was a great whopping whale of a cunt? Well she was precisely that – a great whopping whale of a hog’s cunt with a dry black maggot for a brain.
The slobstress was wont to play pedagogue when she’d hit the piss just enough to be able to stand and to speak. It was a woeful thing to see.
One particular evening when Pa had retired early, Ma decided she wanted to teach me about mah heritage, mah ancestry, mah family tree and so forth. Ah was sitting in the hardback chair and we were playing this sort of game she used to enjoy.
Weaving about in front of me with her brown stone bottle in one paw and an old plastic fly-swat in the other, she would first give the lesson, which could take anything up to an hour, sometimes two, and then she would shoot questions at me. If the answer was ‘yes’, ah was to raise mah right hand, and if the answer was ‘no’, ah was to raise mah left. If ah answered incorrectly and raised the wrong hand, she would deliver a stinging blow to the top of mah scalp with the fly-swat. If ah did not answer at all, which was often, as both mah hands had been tied to the front legs of the chair, she would swat me across the right ear or the left ear depending on which she thought was the correct answer.
Sometimes, toward the end of the bottle, she would find she had forgotten the answer herself and then ah would receive a blow to both ears. When at last she couldn’t remember the question, or, for that matter, even the topic of the lesson, or eventually why ah was tied to a chair and she had a fly-swat in her hand at all, she would fly into a frenzy of slaps, swats, strikes, back-handers, flying tackles and stomps, until at last she would collapse exhausted in her armchair. Ah would then have to wait until Pa decided it was safe to enter the room and untie me.
Anyway, ah don’t want to sink here and sling a lot of crap at a corpse – because that’s all she is now, a mess of maggots – oh yes, and a soul, a shrieking, burning soul. Ah wanna tell you what Ma revealed to me on this particular evening about mah ancestry, about mah blood line, on mah father’s side – strange things, things ah always suspected, about mah heritage, about mah blood. Yes, about mah blood.
Ma roared, for she rarely spoke. ‘Your family tree, baw, on y’Pa’s side, is one very shady tree, and ah don’t mean it’s gotta lotta leaves growin’ on it neither. Ya Pa’s side is just one big fucken black twisty knot planted in the backest backwoods – I’m talking hill-stock, baw, and there ain’t no lower ass-ended inborn breed than that. That’s why ya Pa’s a half-wit – that’s why you’re not all there either, not countin’ ya dumbness. Ya know ya name ain’t Eu-crow? Ya Pa changed it when he left the hills. Ever hear of the Morton Clan? Well it weren’t healthy having Morton as ya tag forty years ago. Forty years ago they were hangin’ Mortons by the dozen. Hills were fulla them. Rounded most of ‘em up, but a few got away – like ya Pa. Blew his own ear off doing it. Them Mortons were the lowest inbred animals t’ever pleasure a pig! Their blood was black! Same’s yours. Sick black blood! Look at ya eyes. There’s some troubled blood in there. I seen it from the first. Troubled blood…’
And so on and so forth, her monologue turning with the time and with the moonshine bad in her brains – bad talk, bad time, bad shine – right there before mah eyes – yes, right there before mah very troubled eyes. And ah would wait, sitting in the hardback chair, bent double at the waist and bound by the wrists to its wooden legs, like a witch on a ducking stool awaiting the inevitable ‘trial’ – mah test – awaiting the stings and stripes of that fat fairy’s wand, awaiting the eventual spilling of mah sick, of mah black, of mah sick, black blood.
‘Just as ah remembered,’ ah thought, with genuine relief, ‘red.’ Ah dug a fresh hole with mah good hand and returned the scissors to the ground at the foot of the gallows-tree. Ah mean, if this rain is washing up coffins and tombstones, then a pair of scissors was not gunna last too long in the ground unless it was anchored with something solid. Ah stomped on the sloppy grave as best ah could, knowing full well that this mud was not the burying kind.
Perching on a root that rose like a blanched knuckle from the eroded soil at the base of the gallows-tree, ah took a large handkerchief and ah daubed at the dark pool of blood that swelled and slowly filled mah cupped hand. Holding the bloody rag up to the dim afternoon light the blood looked even redder.
Convinced, ah rinsed both hand and handkerchief. Ah laid the latter over the scarlet bead that sprang from the hole in mah palm and knotted it back.
‘Ah will look again tomorrow,’ ah thought, knowing full well ah would pick the sick, black scab away tonight.
Ah shinned the slabby climb, shack-bound and weary.
X
And then came the preacher, Abie Poe.
The crack of his blue steel pistols shattered the massy scab of despond that had spread across the Ukulite community like some alien excrescence. All along Maine musty curtains fluttered and parted and the haunted faces of the once faithful hovered like so many blaked and unhappy moons. Apprehensively each one looked toward the commotion in the town square, surprised to see that one lone man on a horse was responsible for such a formidable alarum. Their murine faces twitched and cringed with each bullet spent as they strained to comprehend the nature of his business above the roar of his guns and the ceaseless, pounding rain into which he fired.