Holding the table for support, the bailiff stood to his feet. You dreaming if ye think he’s gone disappear this time. If ye think this is done. You ain’t the only one studied him, Yer Honor. I had my dark associations with ole Smonk too, matters not to speak of now. But in his mind, ye see, we attacked him. Now if we don’t finish the job he’s gone come back tomorrow or the next day with something bigger than that machine gun and burn Old Texas to the ground, or worse. This ain’t over, is what I’m saying. It’s jest begun.
God damn, said the judge. He sat looking perplexed. How in the hell do ye account for him?
I don’t. They say when he come out his momma’s wound he caught his foot on something in her guts and snatched it loose. Say he weighed more than fourteen pounds. Say his eyes was open when the nigger midwife peeled back the caul and he sucked and gnawed on his momma’s tit even after she’d bled to death and started to cool and he never would of stopped eating if the midwife hadn’t prized her dern thumb in to break the seal. You know what else?
What?
They say he was born with teeth. Say the midwife died from the ray bees.
God damn, said the judge.
The bailiff put on his cap. It’s some things in the world ye jest got to take for what they is. On they own terms. He took up his rifle. It’s one other fellow wasn’t numbered among the dead, I heard. Blacksmith down the way. I reckon me and him’s the mob.
Well. If it’s anything yall need, charge the town for it.
I might need a few more guns.
Fine.
And a hoss.
Whatever. The important thing is to catch him and kill him and mail me his goddamn glass eye, which I claim for a souvenir.
The bailiff moved his jaw. I best git on.
Do that. The judge raised his flask in a farewell toast. He had no intention of wiring the governor or anybody else. This backward secluded town had designed its own doom and could burn forgotten to the ground as far as he cared. And as for the bailiff, closing the door behind him, well, the judge expected never to see the poor idiot alive again.
Cheers, he told the room.
Sucking Smonk’s eye, McKissick limped out into the heat. For a moment he leaned against a column until a spell of nausea passed, then he walked faster, hand clamped to his wound. He went to the doctor’s and the doctor’s widow gave him some bandages and lamp oil and he made a poultice. Then he limped along the road to the opposite end of town to the blacksmith shed where he found Gates, a filthy man in his sixties, hammering coffin handles on an anvil. Four covered bodies laid out on various stacks of wood. He’d been staring into his fire and had difficulty seeing who it was.
Who’s that? Will the bailiff?
I was once, said he. Who the hell are you? A blacksmith, or—he indicated the bodies—the damn undertaker?
Blacksmith. By God. My talent’s about the only thing he ain’t took from me. But since old Hobbs was shot, we all jest doing our own setting by. He nodded at the bailiff’s side. Catch one?
Naw. Jobbed me with his sword.
The smith drank from a tin cup and then resumed his hammering. Don’t touch them handles yonder. They still hot.
I’m going after him, McKissick said between hammerfalls. He took my boy. The judge is conscripted me.
Gates used a pair of tongs to turn the coffin handle which glowed orange and went back to whacking it on his anvil. Luck to ye.
McKissick limped to the corner of the shed and pulled back the sheet from a corpse and winced at the face stained in blood, much of the head mown away. Who’s these fellows?
The hammering stopped. That one was Lurleen.
Dern, the bailiff said. Sorry. He cocked his head for a different angle.
Them others is my stepdaughters. Itina there and Clena and that one cut in half yonder’s Revina. I still ain’t found her legs though them toes on the salt lick there’s probably hers. They long enough.
Dern. McKissick studied Gates’s dead wife. How come she’s wearing men’s duds?
All of em is. So they could go see inside the courtroom when Smonk got ambushed. They hadn’t ever saw such a show. We put they hair up under they hats and wrapped cloth around they knockers to flatten em. They was a family of big-bosomed girls, if ye remember.
McKissick did. The stepdaughters who’d lay with any man could muster a hard-on. Their mother who wasn’t a whole hell of a lot older than her oldest daughter but a lot prettier. It was common knowledge around town that she’d had congress with Smonk.
Look close, the smith said, sipping from his cup. You can still see where we drawed mustaches on her lip with ash. We was laughing so hard. Them younguns started cutting up. Scratching they make-believe balls and pretending to hold giant peckers and take a piss. Itina went over to Revina and humped on her. We was all drunk.
My condolences. On the whole brood.
Thank ye. Mine on ye boy.
Hold off on condoling him, if ye don’t mind.
Sorry. Didn’t go to jinx ye.
McKissick picked up a coffin handle from where it lay cooling on a block and threw it down.
Hot, ain’t it, Gates said. I told ye.
Naw. It jest don’t take me long to look at a coffin handle. He blew on his palm. How much longer ye reckon ye gone be here laying em out?
Why?
I come see might ye go with me.
After Smonk? The blacksmith studied his black hands. Their black nails. It wouldn’t be right, he said. I can’t jest up and leave the girls.
What’s worse, leaving em to set a spell here or letting go the scoundrel that killed em? Seems like you got a lot of reason to want Smonk dead. If it’s true what they say about him and—not to speak ill of the dead—ye wife here. Seems you was spared. Like me. I ain’t never thought much of God, but if this here ain’t God saying get yer selves out on a mob I don’t know what is.
The blacksmith didn’t answer. Using his tongs, he raised a glowing bar from the fire and began to beat it.
Well? said McKissick.
Naw, said the blacksmith. I can’t. I ain’t shot a gun in I don’t know when. Don’t even own one. I’m a humble worker. If ye had twenty, thirty fellows, sure, I might go. But jest two of us? No thank ye.
They got a word for not going. It’s called being a chickenshit.
That’s five words.
Don’t be counting my words, Gates. Judge says we can supply up, charged to the town. New firearms and such. Mounts.
Preciate it, naw. These handles won’t forge they selves.
Suit ye self then, chickenshit. I’m taking off terectly, if ye grow some balls.
He raised his hand farewell, shape of a coffin handle burned into the skin, and limped out past the covered bodies. In the town proper he sidestepped a dead horse and turned the corner and limped past the wagon with the machine gun, two young women guarding it.
They were making eyes at him.
In the store the owner’s widow had laid her husband’s body on the shelf where the tins of potted meat were usually displayed. She’d dressed him in his church suit and boots.
I can’t do business today, she told McKissick from behind her black veil. We closed for mourning.
Well, this re-supplying is on the judge, he said. He’s sending me out after Smonk. I’m sure he’d be happy to pay double. The judge, I mean. Or triple.
What is it ye need?
He bought her entire supply of firearms: four pistols, three rifles and two shotguns. She tried to sell him a used twenty gauge single but he glanced at it and said, Junk.
Then he bought all her ammunition. After that he carried his packages to the livery where he bought a tall paint (on the judge) and had the liveryman’s widow remove its shoes for a quieter ride. He noticed that the livery also sold fireworks, and he charged a box of Roman candles and several bundles of bottle rockets and firecrackers, too. His boy Willie if he were still alive would love such noise and fire. And if not, the bailiff would shoot them off in his son’s memory.