She was crying. Pushing Junior away, she went to her dead daddy where he lay drenched in his own blood. She knelt over him and closed his good eye and ran her fingers into his pockets and found a wad of paper money and several heavy gold coins. She found three pistols and a pair of brass knuckles. A stick of dynamite. She picked up the glass eye from the floor and put it in her mouth.
William R. McKissick Junior had knelt, too. He rolled McKissick over and adjusted his father’s loin cloth and yanked at the rug until he’d covered him and stood and looked, only his daddy’s shoes showing.
Get those, Evavangeline said.
The boy reached down and pulled off the left shoe, the right, and when he did a small package wrapped in brown paper fell out. He took it.
Come on, Evavangeline said, her father’s last things gathered to her chest.
The boy didn’t even notice her titties. The Winchester in the crook of his arm, he held the package in one hand and the shoes in the other and followed Evavangeline’s dirty shoulders into the hall. Walton, covering the widows, was aware of some of the younger ones’ lecherous gazes, and once the girl and boy were outside, he thanked the ladies again and bowed and made his exit.
In the parlor, the women seized their guns and gathered around Mrs. Tate.
Release me, she said.
No, said Mrs. Hobbs. I think we done listened to you long enough.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Hobbs’s daughter’s neck was itching. Like she had a rash. When she felt the circle of cuts on her throat she began to scream—I been bit! I been bit!—and in a moment other women joined her in a discordant harmony as they discovered their own marks.
That was them, wasn’t it? Mrs. Hobbs asked, displaying her ample right bosom with its ring of teethprints around the nipple. Mrs. Tate? Wasn’t it? Them was the chosen ones!
Mrs. Tate turned her face to the wall. It’s done, she said.
The church! someone yelled. If that was them—!
The children!
The women flung away their guns and shoved each other and stampeded outside, toward the waiting miracle. And indeed the buildings at that end of the street were glowing orange, as if the sun were coming up from the west, at midnight.
Walton had given Evavangeline his shirt to cover her naked flesh and she led him and the boy to where the children were kept. Walton posted William R. McKissick Junior at the window as he roused the sleeping youngsters, thin, listless angels with under-circled eyes. He examined their arms for dog-bites but found none. We’re in time, he told Evavangeline but she didn’t seem to hear, leaning as she was against the wall.
They coming, the boy said.
Walton crossed the room and peered out to the street where the women were collecting like a “lynch mob.”
Little boy, Walton said. What’s your name.
William R. McKissick Junior.
William, said the northerner. Can you do something for me? Can you lead these children and this young woman out the back, to safety? Cut through the sugarcane and don’t stop. The wind’s coming from the north so go that way. He pointed, and then, without waiting for an answer, Walton propelled the lad away.
Good-bye, he told them both, and said to Evavangeline: I regret that we weren’t able to chat further; I’d love to have given you my testimony.
She looked at him. It’s a dollar.
Walton had turned to the boy. Go.
William R. McKissick Junior nodded, which was the last thing Walton saw as he turned and let himself out through the front door, locking it behind him. Unarmed, he stepped out and faced the mob of women semi-circling the porch.
He raised his hands. Ladies, I’d like to give you all my testimony. He cleared his throat. Excuse me. Have any of you ever heard of the word “bunker”?
Get him, said Mrs. Hobbs, and the widows came forward. Walton closed his eyes, outspread his arms and blocked the door. He would not be moved. He awaited the impact of their weight, being shoved forcefully into the wood, the women swarming him and pushing him into the air and hoisting him aloft above them and then sucking him down to the floor. He waited, eyes shut tightly, trying to think of an appropriate Verse of Scripture with which to comfort himself. Perhaps lines from the Book of Judges, the scene wherein Samson slew one thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Walton could picture the statuesque Biblical hero atop a mound of fresh corpses with various jaw-shaped abrasions on their persons. Samson in mid-swing, the bone high in the air, half a dozen opponents frozen in the act of falling.
Yet…Walton opened his eyes. He was unharmed, alone. He looked down the street, where the church was on fire. Ah. Instead of mobbing him, the widows had noticed the burning church and were heading there now, collecting handfuls of dust to hurl at the flames. One stout woman mounted the porch and slammed her shoulder against the door, which fell in, engulfing her in fire which swarmed the eaves and roof and up the steeple, igniting the cross.
Below, women had flocked to the windows and were peering in, and perhaps it was the fire that seemed to quake the redeemed as they burned in their seats. Wailing, the widows clambered over the burning corpse of the stout woman on the porch. They flung themselves into the door and stumbled back out, dresses afire, circling the church as its flames licked the bottom of the sky, windows exploding, the steeple creaking, sinking into itself, toppling. It fell for a long time and splintered into a thousand fires and the trees alongside the building and the oaks lining Main Street ignited one after another like torches and dropped burning cobs and cones and limbs and leaves, the red moon blazing over all, heedless how the fire spat itself building to building along the street, Mrs. Tate in her house on her floor still bound as fire raged in from the porch through the open door. She found that she could roll herself in her sheet and rolled through the stew of the dead bailiff’s guts bubbling with heat and rolled past Smonk’s great dead face, his head the marble head of some ancient, unearthed idol. She rolled alongside the detonator as her swaddling began to burn and bent her knees and curled into a U and rocked herself upright enough to place her chin on the handle and closed her eyes and plunged it down.
Meanwhile, Walton had descended the steps and stood in the street watching the widows hurl themselves into the burning church. He might have tarried a spell longer had not the building he’d just quit exploded, of all things, and sent him flying. From somewhere a horse was running past and with no thought whatsoever Walton, in midair, twisted his body and landed on his feet alongside the horse and seized its halter and bounced once, twice, thrice in its rhythm and threw his leg over and stabbed his feet into the stirrups. He leaned alongside the horse’s neck and retrieved the reins and soon had the steed whoaed and panting.
There, there, big fellow, he said, reaching to scruff between its ears.
He looked back. His plan was to return to Old Texas and see to the others, help Evavangeline find the children’s homes; surely no nobler challenge could arise before a man of God. Perhaps he would ask for the young woman’s hand as well.
But as he turned the horse he saw that the burning sugarcane had cast its fire east and west and now closed upon him like a pair of apocalyptic arms, affording him no chance but to heel his mount and flee south. Farewell, he called to the youngsters and the youngsters leading them. I’ll try to find you—
He was interrupted by a falling tree and without command the horse began to run. Behind them, the stores and houses of Old Texas had exploded one by one from the Tate residence down the street, and when the church blew, the widows left alive were lifted in a basket of hot air and thrown into the darkness of the canefield like dice and left to sit up and gaze in wonder at the burning shreds of sky landing around them. They were deaf. They gaped at the hole where the church had been as sections of their own murdered boys fell soundlessly. The sugarcane began to burn. Mrs. Hobbs cackled and tore down her dressfront and with her fingers hooked into claws she fled the burning town, pulling out her own hair.