I didn’t mean no offense.
Fools never do. If ye see Smonk, don’t tell him you encountered us. Bout the only thing we got in our favor here is the element of surprise. Without looking at his companion the bailiff said, Give nosy here a pay-off.
Gates balanced his rifle on the horse’s back and reached in his bib pocket and tossed down a rusty nail.
Obliged, the tenant farmer said, picking it up to bite, watching the two men continue along their way, the overloaded mule struggling behind.
How many? Smonk asked from the bed, opening his eye. He’d been resting but knew without being told about their visitors.
From the window, watching the men ride into the sugarcane, Ike flashed two fingers.
Two? Shit. Smonk threw a bloody rag across the room. Shamefulest posse I ever heard of is my own. Two. Of all numbers. One’s my former employee, I speck. Missed his liver. The other one, couldn’t tell ye. Not that judge I guarantee ye that. Maybe some laggard didn’t show up at my event. Smonk drank from his jug and belched and moved his sore foot to a cool spot on the quilt. They coming?
Ike shook his head.
Good. We’ll catch our breath, get em on the flipside. He patted the ticking and the woman came from the shadows and lay beside him like a pool of warm wax and started under the sheet with her hand.
Naw, he said. Rub my damn foot.
Ike picked up an eight gauge doublebarrel shotgun from the corner by the door without looking at what the girl was doing and went to the porch putting on his hat and whistled for the tenant.
The man trudged up the hill. Don’t be whistling at me, he said, sticking out his arm. Last time I checked my skin was still white and yers was still nigger-colored.
Ike looked where the men had gone into the trees, watchful that they might sneak back and spy, which he would of done had he been them. Watch the place a day, day and a half.
They wouldn’t bite, the tenant reported. I said jest what I’s supposed to. But they claim they going after Mister Smonk over his place. Like they knew him. It was two of em. One was gigged.
Well, said Ike. I speck you best git on. He’s evicting ye.
What’s that mean?
Kicking ye out.
A nigger? A dern nigger’s booting us out? He reached into his back pocket and unfolded a Case pocketknife.
One of Ike’s eyebrows spiked and his hand struck the knife from the tenant’s hand and his own razor flashed and slit the farmer’s throat and Ike had wiped it twice on the man’s shirt as if it were a strop and slipped it back into his pocket before the tenant could fathom that today death was the color of a Negro.
It ain’t fair, he squeaked.
Ike stepped aside as he fell. Fair, he said, as if there was such a thing.
Meanwhile, Gates had become addicted to sucking the rust off nails. He had ulcerous spaces between his teeth and he would work the nails softly into his gums, where the rust dissolved. It felt good. Also, he had the shits and every half-mile or so had to be let off to do his business in the trees and then run to catch up with his ride.
Ain’t you a fellow renowned for his sense of humor? he asked. Didn’t somebody tell me that?
McKissick didn’t turn. I was. Once.
Can ye say a dirty joke?
Naw.
Little conversation be nice is all. I can never remember no jokes.
I got me jest one more joke to say in my life, said the bailiff. After I’ve cut Smonk’s thoat or gutted him nuts to neck or shot him in the heart, jest fore he dies, I’m gone show him his selfsame glass eye.
Back up a step, pard, said the blacksmith. You got his eyeball?
McKissick frowned over his shoulder but dislodged it from his jaw and spat it into his palm and displayed it. Maybe it would make the blacksmith hush. The fellow reached forth a finger to touch it but McKissick popped it back in his mouth.
Careful, he said. I ain’t so sure he can’t still see thew it. He looked around them. These is strange times.
I seen stranger, said the blacksmith. Did I ever tell ye about the time I seen a cannonball go right thew a boy? In the War? It left a perfect hole in his gut for a second. We all started laughing, what was left of the regiment, even the man with the hole in his middle, laughing, laughing, laughing. Then he fell dead and we laughed harder. We was falling down laughing. Cannonballs rolling past. We pissed ourselves, one and all, and kept on laughing. Then after a time we got quiet and went hid over behind some burnt-up hay wagons. We was about fourteen year old, I reckon. We couldn’t look one another in the eyes no more. We made a pack right after that to never talk about what had happened. But you know something? I talk about it all the time. I’m surprised I ain’t mentioned it before.
I am too.
Presently they rounded a turn on the road and beheld the Smonk homestead at the end of a long double row of cedars. A former sugarcane plantation, the house was as stately as a hotel and boasted among its oddities a cast iron dome with a spike that reached higher than the trees. Fastened to the spike was a bronze weathervane in the shape of a gamecock. The house had three stories and eleven bedrooms, a billiard parlor and hidden arsenal. In the back there was a statue garden which Smonk let go wild and so the naked people frozen in marble looked as if they were being strangled by vines and ivy. To the left were several outbuildings including a barn and beyond the barn lay an apple orchard and on the other side of the house there was a stone well with a shed covering it and boards over the mouth and stones over the boards. The men glanced at one another. The house seemed deserted, its shutters closed except for one, tapping open and shut in the wind, unkempt ivy lacing the front columns and weeds through the porch. The dome windows were dark and there were perhaps a dozen dead dogs on the porch and others strewn in the yard.
Bad luck had sent an angry red moon which flung the men’s shadows before them on the ground. The bailiff and blacksmith dismounted and crept along the twin rows of cedars leading the horse and mule as insects screamed in the trees and fields. They eased off the cobblestone road with the animals in tow and skirted the house and came in downwind through a scraggle of bitterweed, pausing in the moon shadow of the barn.
You want to rest up inside here a spell? the blacksmith asked.
I speck so, said McKissick. I done got dizzy.
Yeah. Gut wound ’ll do that.
You ever had one?
Naw.
They entered the barn and moved quietly through the darkness among the lumbrous animals, the bailiff tying their mount and beast of burden to a crossbeam near the door. The blacksmith was thirsty so he set aside his weaponry and slipped between boards into a stall and squatted next to the cow and rang milk into a bucket by squeezing her udder. When he had his all he offered the bucket to the bailiff.
Naw, said he. I’ll not take nourishment till Smonk’s head is separated from his shoulders.
The blacksmith reached up and grasped the cow’s ear to help him to his feet. He had a milk mustache. It might make ye somewhat less lightheaded, he said.
Don’t worry about the weight of my head. It works fine enough to come up with a plan. Listen, McKissick said, and told how he would sneak up to the manor and break in and try to assassinate Smonk and rescue the boy, if he were still alive. If anybody who wasn’t the bailiff or his son came out of the house, the blacksmith was to use the Winchester rifle to ambush him from the barn.
Gates agreed. But his plan—his secret plan—was to wait until McKissick had killed Smonk and then ambush and kill McKissick. Or even if they didn’t find Smonk, which would of been fine with the blacksmith, he could still prove he killed Smonk by possessing his eye. He imagined showing it to several young girls and how their titties touched his elbow.