Later, as night fell, he saw a lone boy crouching in from the west, ducking through the cane. Good stealth on him. Centered in Ike’s spyglass, the boy became William R. McKissick Junior, the mule thief. Ike pursed his lips. How come he hadn’t took off like a boy with sense would of? What in the hell would keep a body here?
He swung his attention back to the livery barn and wondered what or who they were watching in shifts. Could be something simple as a stock animal in labor, of course, but nothing about Old Texas and its citizenry seemed simple.
He was about to creep back around to his camp when something made him freeze. He flattened himself against the ground as two old ladies and the six dazed-looking children they led passed within fifty feet of him.
Come on sugar, the ladies were saying. Come on, sweetie.
When they were gone Ike lowered his eyes. Still at it, he thought. All these years.
On the other side of the town, as he lay waiting to sneak in and find the whore, William R. McKissick Junior saw the children, too. Captured.
Dern, he thought. Now Hell Mary would be mad. He might not get his handjobs. Double-dern. He wished he hadn’t traded her the Mississippi Gambler knife. If he had it to do over, he wouldn’t trade.
Yes he would. He wished he had it to do over so he could see her titties and cooter again. That stripe of hair between her legs. Her hand on his devil’s tool as his own was now.
He got a nut and relaxed.
Naw. He oughtn’t to of traded his only knife. Especially one give to him by Mister E. O. Smonk. William R. McKissick Junior thought if he saw Mister E. O. Smonk again he would cut his thoat with that knife. He thought that if Mister E. O. Smonk hadn’t come and made Momma squeal so hard maybe she wouldn’t of kept running off. Killing a man like Mister E. O. Smonk wouldn’t be easy, though. The boy knew this. Such a man had survived dozens of attempts on his life. Man who’d shot his way out of fights up and down the map, yesterday killing a whole town’s worth of men including his, William R. McKissick Junior’s, daddy. A fellow like that wouldn’t go quiet.
But William R. McKissick Junior had picked up a thing or two about murder in all the long years of his life. Number One: Whenever you’re fixing to kill somebody using a knife, get behind them. His daddy had taught him that. Five years ago in the country of Texas America Mister E. O. Smonk had sent Daddy after that sheriff over in Throckmorton County. The sheriff had written a letter, against Smonk, to the newspaper, accusing Smonk of all manner of activities up to and including murder, by his own hand and by order. William R. McKissick Junior’s daddy had to take the boy along on the trip to assassinate the sheriff because his momma had run off again.
His daddy said it would be a good plan, though, that nobody would ever suspect a man would carry his own son with him to kill a sheriff. And if he—William R. McKissick Junior’s daddy—got killed before he finished the job, the boy was to get home by himself. Daddy said if he couldn’t find the way he didn’t deserve to get there. The boy remembered how him and his daddy took the train together and Daddy kept slipping nips from his flask. Then they loitered in the sheriff’s town for an afternoon. Jest getting the lay, his daddy said. They used fake names (the boy was Cole Younger James) and sat for an hour on the porch of a general mercantile, drinking Co-Colas and watching the jail down the way. They had oyster crackers and tobacco. Hard candy. His daddy bought him another Co-Cola and the boy drank it in one gulp and belched so hard his eyes watered and the old men who were lined up on the bench laughed. They bought him another Co-Cola and they were all burping and laughing and the old men started giving him pennies and ruffing his hair and up till his first handjob it’d been the best time of his life, that hour.
Then his daddy saw the sheriff had got back in town and they excused their selves and went behind a building. Him, his daddy said. That’s the man we’re gone assassinate.
Assassinate.
That night they’d waited in the dark alley beside the jail. A stray dog tagged along with them—this back when dogs were everywhere. Get away, the boy’s daddy kept saying, but the dog just wagged its tail and panted.
The sheriff walked by, right on schedule. He heard the dog panting and raised his kerosene lantern and looked in the alley.
The town clock bells starting bonging.
Is it something going on back in here? the sheriff called. Is that you, Roscoe?
Hello, his daddy yelled to the sheriff. We back here. I think we got us a mad-dog, he called. It’s acting all crazy. But I’m a stranger to this town and don’t want to shoot a dog that may belong to a citizen of this very nice town. I’d like to meet the sheriff of this very nice town and congratulate him on such a pleasant place. I’ll certainly direct some business this way. If that’s what the good citizens want.
A mad-dog, say? Toting the lantern, the sheriff had bumbled back to his own death in the dark where the boy’s daddy hid behind a pole. As soon as the sheriff walked past him, his daddy appeared behind him in the yellow lanternlight and clamped his arm around the sheriff’s throat and drove his knife so far through his back that the tip came out in the sheriff’s belly and split the shirt. The lantern fell and burst. A fire started. The sheriff staggered to his knees, jerking Daddy off his feet behind him, and the boy watched as the two men struggled on the ground in the firelight. William R. McKissick Junior had begun to vomit, then, from all the Co-Cola. Ain’t you shamed, his daddy said once he stood up. He flung blood off his fingers. See if I brang you one more got-dern time.
That had been in Butler Alabama. But this was Old Texas Alabama. His daddy was dead. Killed by Mister E. O. Smonk. Same man that stole his momma. Now, William R. McKissick Junior, hidden on the edge of the town, holding his devil’s tool in his left hand, laid his head on the ground asleep, an ash of grass rattling under his nose.
Meantime, having doubled back and hidden in the trees near the three-way crossing, it was a snickering Ambrose who’d shot Onan off his horse. He would’ve shot Walton next, in the head, and then Loon, in the gut maybe, but his Winchester jammed. He’d spent the next two hours trying to fix it but gave up in the end and decided it would be good enough fun to let the fools sit there terrified, pointer-fingers buried in their pockets.
Leaving his rifle stuck in the ground, Ambrose unraveled the ascot which he’d always hated and stuffed it in his back pocket like a handkerchief. He fumbled through his pants pockets and ditched the clanking paraphernalia he’d argued against toting. A sextant? A goddamn jew’s harp? He boinged it into the shrubs and turned his hat backward which was how his father had worn hats. He rolled his sleeves up and unbuttoned his top buttons so his chest showed, its tiny black springs of hair, and retraced his steps to where his mount waited, eating poison ivy. Fool animal, he said and climbed on and donned his boots and egged the horse to a trot over the parched land, leaving Walton and Loon still on their horses, in the sun, waiting for doom. Ambrose began to whistle.