I see, Walton said.
He watched Ambrose pull one man’s pants down over his hips and, a precise motion of his beltknife, slice off his member and place it without ceremony in its owner’s mouth. He did the same to the second dead deputy. Then Walton watched the Negro not speak respectful words over the bodies and, arms full of “booty,” languidly pursue his horse across the field and charm it calm and gather its reins.
Frozen at the site, Walton clutched his hat and quoted a few apt verses of Scripture to usher the dead men wherever their journey next took them. The leader then prodded Donny with gentle heels and followed his distant second-in-command whose silhouette now rode back toward the last two deputies, Loon and Onan, and soon the four of them rode together at a fair clip without speaking a word. Deputy Ambrose whistling and practicing with his sword, lopping off the tops of small trees.
The man had walloped the whore-lady in the back of her head, William R. McKissick Junior witnessed it from the bushes. He watched the walloper squat with his rifle and regard her a while, the whole time that dang dog trying to eat the door off. The man rose and William R. McKissick Junior saw that he was tall and wore overalls tucked into his boots and had no shirt on underneath the straps. There was a red kerchief around his neck and every patch of his skin the boy could see was covered with freckles. He’d never seen such a speckled man before, but this one was going through Evavangeline’s pockets and touching her in all the secret places that William R. McKissick Junior wished he were touching. He’d best kill that man. He held the Mississippi Gambler by its blade tip and closed his eye and judged the distance and flung the knife.
It flew behind the man as he stepped over the prone girl and slashed into the brush. The freckled man, busy with his prisoner, set his rifle against the shed and took a forked stick and went to the door where the dog was still making its racket.
Shet up! he bellowed. Ye got-damn cannon mouth cannon mouth cannon mouth. He kicked the door which quieted the dog.
Then it was back, more savage still.
Creeping through the foliage, William R. McKissick Junior saw the man use the stick to unlatch a small trapdoor in the center of the larger door. He saw him throw down his stick and fling sweat from his fingers. When he lifted the girl her eyes were fluttering. The man tussled Evavangeline forward in his arms as if they were dancing, her feet off the ground, intending to job her arm in where the mad-dog was. Without a thought he was running from behind the shed out into the dappled light, falling on his hands once and getting back up. The speckled man had stuck Evavangeline’s forearm in the hole but when he saw William R. McKissick Junior he dropped her and scrambled for the rifle and she fell, withdrawing her arm. William R. McKissick Junior grabbed the rifle but couldn’t make it shoot before the man was on him. The man raised him up in the air by his collar and looked him in the face a moment then underhanded him into the shed wall where the boy slid to the ground and moved his elbow a second before the mad-dog’s snout left frothy drool peeling down the wood. He cocked the rifle and aimed down the barrel where the boy lay scowling.
Then an idea seemed to dawn upon the man’s long face. He resembled a horse, his lips bore a perpetual pucker of protruding yellow teeth which made him seem to be smiling. Scabs of beard dotted here and there among the freckles. He came forward leering behind the gun and grabbed the boy’s foot.
I’m gone sell ye, ain’t I, he said. Get a get a get a get a real good price.
He backed toward the whore dragging the boy and didn’t see that she’d opened her eyes. The forked stick was within her grasp and her fingers closed around it. The speckled man was bent over, looping a rope over that boy from the orphanage. Her sodden brain couldn’t call up his name but she pushed off the ground and held the stick in both hands and swung hard and whacked him a good one across the base of his skull and using the momentum of her first swing swung again as he turned to face her and this time she hit him hard across his mouth and burst his lips and nose. Then fell herself.
The boy helped her to her feet, staring at her breasts, their nipples targets in her thin sweaty shirt.
Thank ye, she said, holding her head in her hands.
He pulled the bloody hairs off the stick and offered it to her for a crutch.
Thank ye. He conked me a good one.
The boy kicked dirt on the downed man. I’d call ye even now.
Is he dead?
As if in answer, the speckled man stirred. The two youngsters looked at him and then at each other and then at the shed door which had never ceased its rattle. It took them both to drag him to the door and push him up against its side and prop him there as he muttered and jerked and tried to wake up. They pushed his arm in the hole and fled as he hung, hooked by his own armpit, and the dog had its way. From the safety of the woods Evavangeline and the boy watched him come to his senses. He snatched out his arm which had been gnawed to a bloody stob. He glared at the woods, seeking them, then tore his handkerchief off his neck and did a rough onehanded job of bandaging his elbow.
Evavangeline knelt and squinted so she could see in the boy’s blue eyes. Her vision was blurry, there seemed to be two of him. She blinked and tried to focus. What did ye say yer name is agin?
William R. McKissick Junior.
Well, Junior. Where’s them younguns you promised to look after?
He pointed behind her.
There they were, three boys and the same number of girls. They were filthy and gaunt and hollow-eyed and holding hands. She might of gotten angry except it was then she noticed the dog-bite on her elbow.
9 THE EYE
MEANWHILE, MCKISSICK THE BAILIFF AND GATES THE BLACKSMITH had spent a few hours sleeping on the hard earth, the latter tossing and afraid, and after a morning of hard riding, he squirmed atop the pack mule, waiting for McKissick to return from moving his bowels. He could hardly keep from humming, close as he was to getting the eye.
It ought to of happened first thing today, according to what the bailiff had said was his gut’s regular schedule.
Ever morning, he’d said.
You lucky, Gates thought. I done a bucketful earlier and I could fill up another one right now.
Perhaps the wound had irregulated his system, as McKissick claimed, which now worried Gates that Smonk’s eyeball might of already popped out of the injury unbeknownst to them. Shit. Such a nag would eat at him like possums on a dead cow till he saw the eye. Until he knew it was safe, until he could roll it in his fingers and smell its smell. Insisting on privacy, McKissick had ridden his horse into a stand of mimosa trees a dern half-hour ago. Dang. Gates craned his neck. For all the blacksmith knew, his partner had shat the eye and played with it a spell and gone off to kill Smonk alone. Gates breeched his rifle. Still empty. He uncocked it and sighed. Everything was against him.
Meanwhile, naked as an Indian but for his borrowed shoes, McKissick plucked Smonk’s eye from the rope of coal-black shit he’d deposited across a rotten log. He wiped the ball clean on his shoe-toe and admired it from several angles. How the light hit it. He had no intention of giving it back. He meant to keep it. Smonk had bullied his way into McKissick’s life which had become the kind of situation where once E.O. was there he would never leave until somebody killed him.
He’d met Smonk several years before, when E.O. still had two eyes, one green, one blue, in the lost train of days when Smonk looked like a damn savage, red hair streaming down his back, those arms that were like battering rams and hairy as a bear’s. He could crush a brick in his hand, which frequently won him drinks in saloons. His other bet was that he had a cock that hung below his knee. There were always takers against this boast, and Smonk would pull down his britches and show them the rooster on a noose tattooed on his shin. Laughter would be general, and the nature usually good, but on a couple of occasions McKissick had seen men get testy and challenge Smonk. Some fellows took his short, squat stature as weakness. Like one time this lanky dentist—said he bare-knuckled his way through dental school—outright refused to pay. He was drunk on Smonk’s shine. Threw a jarful in Smonk’s face and said the real cock in the room was Smonk his self. Smonk grabbed the dentist’s head in one hand and popped it like a coconut. Then E.O. called for the man’s brother who shuffled forward out of the crowd. You gone pay me? Smonk asked. I am, said he. McKissick had covered Smonk in that altercation, and had the brother said anything other than, “It’s okay, Mister Smonk, he always was a cheap skate,” McKissick would of shot him in his knee. Or higher up, depending on how much whiskey he’d had.