I ain’t got to tell you, the boy said. William R. McKissick Junior.
Well, Junior. I seen ye before. Ain’t I? I mean before I told ye to watch my mule which you will not be paid for, case ye was wondering.
Yessir. Our mule. You seen me fore that.
I thought I recognized ye daddy. A fucking bailiff, no less. Smonk’s knees clicked as he squatted then sat against the wheel spokes to catch his breath. He had both hips eaten up with the rheumatism, and every time he got down like this it felt like he might never rise.
Reckon ye old man’s bit by the respectable bug agin, he said. Well, I wish him luck but don’t allow none ’ll smile down on him, life he’s led.
The boy’s eyes egged when he saw Smonk’s speckled plank of a face up close, his bloody teeth and lips, the bright red string dripping into his beard, the hole an eyeball once held.
The boy pointed. Something got ye eye.
Smonk touched the hole. This? He put his fingertip in it.
The boy leaned in for a closer look. How deep can it go?
Smonk made a noise in his chest like rocks grumbling and spat under the wagon. Hear that, I? How deep do it go?
He did a trick where he pretended to put his whole trigger finger in but in truth he was just bending it back.
The boy laughed and clapped his hands.
Smonk lit a cigar. You ever seen a picture of a pirate?
Naw sir, what’s that?
A robber that uses a ship and robs other ships. Out in the high seas. They carry curved swords called cutlasses and kill whales for fun and fly a goddamn skull for a flag. Wear eyepatches too and about half the time they got these birds riding on they shoulder. I never did put the two together till it was too late. See, I’d always wanted to be a pirate, way back a hundred years ago when I was a youngun like you, reading dime novels, and in them days I reckon it might of been possible. But then I growed up as ye will if somebody don’t murder ye first and anyway one month of June not too long back I spent playing blackjack in a gutted-out church in Biloxi Mississippi. Remember, Ike? This coon-ass dealer used to wear him one of them pirate birds on his shoulder and I got to coveting that goddamn bird. It would say ante and bust, and it was the funniest thing. It never got old. Not one time. Ante. Bust! The whores loved it. If a man had owned that bird the whores would of fucked him for free.
The boy listened beatifically. The word whore had risen the devil’s tool in his britches.
Smonk didn’t notice or if he did didn’t say. It was one of them perfect nights, he talked on, smoking. I got on a hot streak and couldn’t of lost if I’d wanted to. Done won all they money and then won they pistols and a week of free whoring and a knife and a beefsteak ever day for the rest of my life and the steeple off they church. But it was near four in the morning fore finally I won the bird. And on threes! When I left that parrot was setting right cheer. He tapped his shoulder.
They was waiting for me in the alley, them coon-asses. I shot them I could and stobbed one or two and was about to kick the last one to death fore Ike pulled me off. And the whole time the bird never flew off my shoulder. When I finished it said Bust.
Overhead, Ike made a sound with his lips. A whistle of air.
I know, I know. Smonk winked and ashed his cigar. Brother Isaac here, he whispered to the boy, never did cater to that bird. Used to say don’t trust it. Say Let’s eat it ever time we got hongry. But I’d always concealed me a weakness for things of the air. I cherish a damn hoot owl. The ravens out west. Even yer common finches and spares. Bats, too. Always contained me a soft feeling towards a bat.
The boy wished he had a pet bat. It could fly and fetch things. Nothing big, just bat-size things. Ladies’ earrings. A pocketwatch. Flitter of wings and the tiny shiny objects of the world at your command.
Smonk waited till he was paying attention again.
So I come to enjoy this particular bird’s company and let him ride my shoulder ever minute of the day. I remember it could say fart and sang Clementine and it could do any birdcall it ever heard. Squirrels barking. A bobcat. Opera. It was jest a treasure. Then one night I was drunk on some vile potato splo a goddamn Irish foisted on me and without a speck of warning that cunning bird reaches over and takes out my goddamn eye with his beak, jest like that. Smonk snapped his fingers. Swallered it like a pill.
The boy slapped his own forehead. Dad gum! What ye do?
First thing I done I sobered up right quick, case he meant to go for the other one. Then I plucked him of his feathers and twisted off his little yaller legs and his beak and et him alive.
Dang, said the boy. How’d he taste? Had ye give him a name?
I had. Stan. Such was the name I give him. He jest looked like a Stan to me. And good. He tasted real good to be such a traitor. Somehow he was still tender.
Ike’s eyes shrank in their wrinkles, which was how you knew he was smiling, as he studied the horizon for pursuers, and Smonk rubbed his goiter thoughtfully. During all this excitement the mule had wandered up and was pushing its snout against his shoulder, the saddle off center from its run and sweat tracks down its gray sides. Burrs in its tail. Smonk ignored the mule for the whore it was, off with the first little shit to put ass to it, and studied the boy.
Didn’t I use to hold congress with ye momma?
Sir?
Fuck her, ye twit.
Yessir. I were six year old and a half that last time ye got some. I’m near bout twelve now and this much taller. He held his hand to his throat as a measure. But I remember it real good.
She like it when I nailed her?
Seemed to, yessir. The boy paused and peered into Smonk’s eye. Daddy says you a coldblooded killer. He says you ain’t like normal folks. Says you of the devil. You gone kill me, too, Mister Smonk?
Smonk glanced at Ike.
Well, he said. I reckon ye daddy would know plenty about the devil. But I done met my quota today, so naw, I ain’t gone kill ye. But get the hell out of here lest I change my mind.
The boy disappeared into the sugarcane.
Smonk let Ike haul him to his feet where he drank more whiskey, easing the pressure of his goiter with a series of crisp belches. He tossed the jug back and chewed his cigar.
You called it, I, he said. Trap, sure as sin. I’ll concede ye that one.
Ike puffed his pipe and his gaze swept the horizon.
Smonk followed where he looked and saw the road he’d just blistered with speed. The red dust still settling. The sugarcane had been baked by the unremitting sun and the stalks if you touched one would crumble in your hand. The sky beyond glaring white while every leaf of every tree or bush had been coated red, the far-reaching sugarcane itself crimson in the distance.
Ike said nothing. He looked behind him where a hawk dropped from the sky into the cane and rose back up, the fieldmouse in its grip still clutching sprigs of straw in its tiny fingers. The lessons the world taught were everywhere.
Mister Smonk?
The boy. Tapping his elbow.
Junior, Smonk said not looking down, if I want any more shit outta you, I’ll squeeze ye head.
I wondered might I get my balloon back’s all. You can keep that dern mule. It kicked me one time.
Smonk looked at the balloon over his shoulder, gray-blue and traced with veins and linked by a string to the mule’s ear. He looked at the boy’s dirty face, its skewed grin and missing front teeth and dimples and glittering blue eyes.
He reached in his bootleg with a grimace and withdrew a gleam of light that when turned in the air became a pearl-handled Mississippi Gambler stiletto with a groove in the blade for bloodletting.