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.
5 THE MOB
EVENING AT LAST IN OLD TEXAS. THE PARCHED OAKS LINING THE street. The dry throats of whippoorwills. The ladies of the town in their mourning color numbly lugging pails of water uphill from the well to fight fires arisen from cinders that combust upon landing like flies raised from hell. One elderly woman collapses in the street and, spilling her water, begins to wail. A younger woman takes up the buckets and totters back down to the bottom where buzzards hop off and where, flat under a bristle of scrub brush across the tracks, a wild cat ragged in its coat of dust waits, dying of thirst, twitching with the ray bees.
The judge, meanwhile, was hiding in the cluttered back room of the town clerk’s office stuffing a valise with confidential records in case he had to blackmail his way out of this brouhaha. The clerk, and Justice of the Peace Elmer Tate, and Hobbs the undertaker and a passel of business-owners, all killed, were to be memorialized in a ceremony the following Monday, and the judge expected to be asked by their widows to say a few words about each man. He was in a slight panic because he didn’t know any of them. He was always drunk on his stops here which had winnowed from bimonthly to once or twice a year. He usually passed sentence without remembering from one case to the next what he’d said. Most of the time he couldn’t even find the tiny office they provided him.
He looked up to see the bailiff watching him from the door. A Winchester rifle in one hand.
Oh, said the judge. He shut the bag and buckled it.
I don’t give a good got-dern what yer stealing, the bailiff said. Such cares is for the living, which I no longer count myself among. Did ye want to see me before I left?
I did, yes. Are ye shot?
Naw. The bailiff raised his shirt and revealed the purple anus of his wound. Stobbed a tad but it ain’t the first time.
You might want to get that looked at, the judge said. Or the rest of us ’ll stop counting ye among the living too.
The doc’s dead. Shot thew his thoat, among other places. And I’ve had worse than this anyway. The pain ’ll remind me of Smonk’s treachery.
I could write ye a statement to similar effect. In the meantime, go on lower ye tunic. I get the picture. He opened a pocket of his valise and removed a flask. Cheers, he said and drank and dabbed his lips with a handkerchief and took a seat on one side of a small writing table and waited for the bailiff to roll a stool across and sit opposite him, laying his cap between them.
What’s that in ye jaw? the judge asked. Hard candy?
Naw.
My ulcer’s griping. A rock of candy ’ll help sometimes. But that’s neither here ner there because my ulcer ain’t gone git no better until we do something about this Smonk dilemma. Cause now that you done shot them gun-killers instead of arresting em for questions, it’s no way to link Smonk to em. Is it.
I reckon not.
You reckon right. Legally, anyhow. He cleared his throat. Now. I’m willing to take into account that you was protecting the town and won’t file no charges of obstructing justice ner murder on ye.
Preciate it.
However. I’d like ye to listen real careful to a letter I got. He un-crinkled a piece of paper so oft-clutched in his sweaty palms it was thin as tissue. I’ll skip the personal references and things I deem beyond ye and jest read the particulars. To save time. He cleared his throat again. To the attention of Judge et cetera et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Ah. Here. “It is of Urgency that You come preside in the E. O. Smonk Trial. No Town has ever suffered more than Ours bedeviled and beset upon as We have been by this Devil or Homunculus or What Ever He claims to be He lives several Miles outside Town in a large Manson He comes to Town Saturday Nights and wrecks Havoc on our Citizens beating them with his Fist at Night when good People ought to be in Bed getting ready for their Day of Labor. In a bold Gesture We Citizens of Old Texas have brought criminal Charges against Mr. Smonk. Mr. Smonk claims He will attend the Trial only if a Judge of the State Circuit is brought to mediate the Matters. No One Man or Group of Men will go to his Land and arrest Him. He is armed with Weapons from the United States Army,” et cetera, et cetera.
The part he didn’t read further said: “Since We are on your Circuit, We find it curious that you have not visited our Village in more than one Year. What might the Governor think.”
Signed, the judge finished, Justice of the Peace and Beat Supervisor and U.S. Postmaster M. Elmer Tate. Owner of the Tate Hotel.
He folded the letter away. After that alarming news, he said, I began to use my copious influence and asked around about our Mister Smonk, and listen what I found out. Jest listen. Apparently it’s been years old E.O.’s done slipped around the law, hither and yon all over the goddamn country. Years I said. Rumors mostly. Accounts as far west as Nevada and as far south as Mexico north up to Dakota. Man that always gets what he wants. One way another. Threats of violence and actual violence. Lawyers when he can use em cheap, gunmen if he can’t. Bribes, extortion, name it. Blackmail. No crime ner coercion small ner large enough, with no loyalty ner fealty to country ner king. But impossible to nab. What do ye think of that, bailiff?
What?
That he disappears at will and is gone for a year then turns up someplace else. That nobody knows where he come from ner what he is. He was likely born out west where the law’s jest now setting its teeth. Such an abomination as Smonk is would of never been allowed to carry on so far here in the Confederacy. He paused and took a long drink and continued. The part I don’t understand is that for some reason not given in this letter, he’s chose my quadrant of the goddamn county for a base of operation in these his waning years.
The bailiff shifted in his chair.
You okay there? Please leave the room if ye need to pass gas.
I’m hunkydory. Can ye get to the point?
The goddamn point is we could of strang him up—fount him guilty, is what I’m saying—but instead this town of fools tries to lynch him unbeknownst to me and of course he escapes. Old Texas! What in the hell was yall thinking anyway? Leaving all ye guns on a sideboard? Not a single goddamn dead-eye sniper hid anywheres?
The women had guns. They was hid.
The women.
We figured he’d of smelt something if we done anything different like. Out of the ordinary.
Well, he might of at that. What I hear he’s had his share of experiences walking into and out of courthouse doors and he’s got an extry sense about him. How come nobody informed me of the plot?
The bailiff looked out a window.
Well?
Don’t nobody trust ye.
There’s a fine hidy-do, ain’t it. God almighty damn. At least with Smonk a body knows where he stands.
The bailiff worked his jaw. Best take care not to sound like ye admire the bastard too much.
Who wouldn’t admire the gall of a fellow brings a machine gun and a peck of hired killers to his own goddamn trial? Who wouldn’t admire a fellow never leaves a trail of evidence? That’s got this far in the world and galled so many folks and killed twice that number and cheated the rest, all without being blowed to itty bitty pieces or hanged by his goddamn neck or succumbing to one of the countless infirmities he seems to collect like a goddamn hobby, hell yeah I admire the son-of-a-bitch.