Then everything grew quiet and still. Blood ran between the boards and covered the girl, afraid as she was to come out.
She waited. And waited.
She stayed there hardening in witchblood for three days until hunger like a father’s foot drove her back into the world. And weeks, months, years, later, now and again, with a huffing man driving her across the mattress or the ground, she would whisper two or three of the words of Alice Hanover. ——she would say. —— ——. The man would pause, breath held as the air changed, and say, What in the hell.
Then, because she never recited all the words in their right order, the air would move again and the man would resume his thrusting and she would pinch bloody crescents in the skin of her arm to assure herself that this was real and she was alive and—
You killed him, didn’t you? the dyke said.
She stood backlit in the door holding a pair of boots in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Killed who? Evavangeline asked. She sat up.
My husband, said the dyke. These is his boots.
Evavangeline folded her arms. Well hell Mary, she said. I might jest did. Killed him I meant. What did he look like?
The boots hit the floor. He was a veteran!
Evavangeline leaned forward, her eyes gleaming in the light from the door. Was he also a crow hunter and a raper?
Sometimes! the woman shrieked. When he drank the devil’s whiskey he loved to kill things! And rape them! But if he’s dead and you ain’t gone stay, then I got to feed all these younguns myself!
What about all that cane?
It’s dried out. It’s dead. We lost ever thing. Tate ’ll foreclose on us less we git some money, fast.
Whose children did I see earlier?
My husband rounded em up to sell. He’s supposed to deliver em tomorrow. But that ain’t none of ye business.
The dyke raised her pistol but Evavangeline was already behind her. She kneed her in the kidney and the dyke turned, tearing Evavangeline’s shirt and clawing at her eyes but the girl bit a swatch out of the dyke’s neck and shoved her against a wall and clubbed her with a chamber pot when she bounced back and watched her sink in the corner. She bound and gagged the dyke then put her own clothes and the crow hunter’s boots back on and crept through the house holding the pistol in one hand and an oil lamp in the other. She found the children sleeping on the floor in a room and woke them one by one and waited for them to put on their shoes, the ones who had them, and led them outside past the dyke and through the yard into the root cellar, slapping the oldest boy’s hand from her ass.
Yall stay here, she said to them, till jest fore morning. If ye have to take a piss, use that stew pot yonder. Come first light yall find ye way home.
You a whore? the oldest boy asked. He had the blondest hair.
None ye business, she said. What’s ye name?
William R. McKissick Junior. My daddy was the bailiff over in Old Texas fore Mister E. O. Smonk killed him. I lit out cause I heard it was a woman who took in orphans and would let you screw the girls. The boy cast an evil eye on the children. But so far won’t none of these here ones screw and they ain’t fed us yet. I got me half a mind to git on.
Evavangeline knelt. She took his hard shoulders in her hands and looked in his eyes. She could see he had an erection by the way his pants stood.
If I goose ye one time, she said to him, will ye do something for me?
Ma’am?
If I take care of that there, she said, thumping his britches, will ye then repay me with a promise?
Oh, yessum! he cried.
She led him to a dim recess in the cellar. It smelled like potatoes. The other children followed and watched. She undid his pants and squirted him into the darkness. He made a croaking noise.
Now, ye promise, she said.
He seemed drunk, a sleepy smile, string of drool. Yessum.
From here on, you’ll watch after these here other younguns. Help em get home and don’t let nothing happen to any of em. And don’t try to screw em neither.
But—
Just do like I told you. Get em out of here fore first light.
Yessum, the boy said. Can ye do me that way one more time?
My lord. She reached forward and it was waiting for her, still bouncing from its rapid rise.
7 THE TENANTS
ON SMONK’S TRAIL, MCKISSICK AND GATES HAPPENED UPON A small flat-topped log barn dobbed with straw mortar and cotton, a thin man centered in its door whacking a wagon axle with a hammer. He stopped and rose from his haunches still holding the hammer and stood in the shade watching them walk up on the horse.
This here’s Smonk’s tenant farm, McKissick said. Which would make that feller Smonk’s tenant.
How ye know? asked the blacksmith from behind him on the horse.
Never mind. It’s a few things I know.
You ain’t gone shoot him, are ye?
Not if I don’t have to. Pipe down.
The bailiff halted the horse a dozen paces out from the barn.
The tenant farmer took off his hat and his hair kept the shape of its crown. Evening, he said.
Never mind that, McKissick said. We inquiring about Smonk. Eugene Smonk they call him.
I know of him, sure do, the tenant farmer said. He nodded at the bloody shirt. You want that looked at? Sister yonder’s got the healing gift.
They followed his eyes uphill to a dim shack with a skeletal woman in a slip smudged against the wood like a wraith, her eyes black as snakeholes. A clothesline hung with undergarments stitched down the hillside and several gray guinea hens ran screaming over the grit.
You only pay what ye think ye ought to, the farmer said. Plus the cost of her apothecary bottle, if ye know what I mean. He winked. She’ll do ye, too. For half a dollar. I’m the one ye pay.
Naw, McKissick said. I met a fellow once in a field told me I could go in the house and lay with his two daughters, right in yonder, he said. I paid him and when I went in it was two fellers. I said where’s the girls and they said what girls. I told em I’d paid the feller outside and they said what feller. We looked out the window and that feller was nowheres to be seen. I killed them two when they started laughing at me and then I tracked down that other feller and killed him in Bessemer.
Well, that’s about the most I ever heard ye say, said Gates.
McKissick had lowered his eyes. He raised them now. I’m carrying this here gut wound back to the man give it to me. To the man took ever thing of mine. My farm. Land. Took my boy. A hunk of my flesh here. Wife. My very soul.
That sounds like Mister Smonk, all right, said the tenant. He lives two miles yonder ways. The big spread. You’ll know it. He gestured around. He owns all this here land.
Does he own you too? asked the bailiff.
The farmer shrugged.
Say yer woman ’ll do a bit of whoring? Gates asked.
Finest suck ye ever had. I ought to know. The farmer winked again.
Say she’s got a snort too?
Genuine pure corn licker.
Naw, said McKissick. We best attend our chore.
Reckon I could inquire what that is? the tenant said. Ye chore, I mean. Jest curious is all. Lonesome as it gits out here in the woods. Yall sure ye don’t want a suck?
I could use me a suck be honest, said the smith. Wouldn’t mind a snort neither. Reckon that judge would pay?
McKissick peered at Smonk’s tenant. Naw about the suck and naw about the licker and hell naw about asking after our business. One more such question ’ll earn you a bullet or two where they can’t be dug out.