Smonk Page 12

  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.

  McKissick and Smonk had met in Utah in the sheep town of Hornwall Bend, where Smonk was hiding out and McKissick was in jail waiting to hang. While E.O. had been laying with some man’s wife, her husband and his friends had arrived home unexpectedly. Ike, the nigger Smonk traveled with, crowned the husband with a shotgun but another fellow got the drop on Ike and they arrested him and pronounced him guilty without a trial and had him scheduled to hang in the near future. Smonk got away Scot free and mounted sugar bags on a horse he’d stolen from a town fifty miles away. He fired a pistol and scared the horse off, it running in the direction home, the weight bouncing on its back exactly Smonk’s. From beneath the whorehouse, he watched most of the town’s men ride off in a posse, leaving an inexperienced deputy to guard the prisoners.

  Thus McKissick, jailed for murder (banker, strangled), sat in the cell beside Ike and yelled it wasn’t fair for a white man to be caged up with a coon. Get this watermelon out of here. Ike never said anything. Just sat with his arms folded and eyes closed.

  Hey, McKissick called.

  At midnight there came a scuffle from the front office where the deputy was sleeping. Ike sat up from his bunk and began lacing his shoes.

  What the hell, McKissick wanted to know.

  Then, lit by the lantern he held, in walked the strangest fellow you’d ever see. He looked like an orangutan McKissick had seen at a zoo once. Smonk told Ike there were no keys to be had, the sheriff had taken them. Under his arm he had a big shield of iron that he handed through the bars to Ike. Ike propped the plate up against his bunk and got behind it. Smonk—he hadn’t acknowledged the other prisoner—was lighting a stick of dynamite.

  Panic flickered over McKissick’s face as Smonk stood the stick against the east wall and walked out of the room.

  Ike said, Come on.

  McKissick dove behind the iron shield as the TNT exploded and when he looked out the town newly revealed gleamed with rain.

  To follow were years of robberies, blackmail schemes, McKissick and Smonk meeting in a city and making their money and fading in different directions and communicating via secret code in newspaper advertisements. (McKissick never again saw Ike during their transactions. For all he knew, in those years and in these, the nigger was gone.) Their partnership would dissolve every year or two because McKissick was the guilty sort, and each time an innocent was murdered in crossfire or blown to bits in the wrong place at the wrong time, he would give up his guns and go straight. He’d disappear.

  Smonk always found him.

  One time he found him and McKissick had got married. Lived in a brick house in Carter Wyoming, happy the first time in his life. She was a reformed whore who would still use her whore tricks on him and did each night…until the dawn McKissick walked out naked on his porch to piss and saw Smonk sleeping there, a bottle for a pillow. Soon as his wife saw Smonk it started. It always did. Smonk got all the girls, they couldn’t resist him. It was something of the animal about him, was McKissick’s notion, a wild element men had left behind with the advent of such peacekeeping creations as the six-shooter or Gatling gun.

  McKissick helped Smonk extort several thousand dollars from a mayor who was a secret octoroon in a nearby town. Later, after he caught Smonk in his, McKissick’s, bedroom, with his, McKissick’s, wife, McKissick took the girl and fled. They both pretended the baby was McKissick’s, and hell, maybe he was. They lived in Oklahoma in poverty and the boy grew up skinny and by the time Smonk found them again McKissick was lean himself, short of fuse, unable to find work, happy to extort or threaten or burn or kill.

  It’s a tobaccy farmer, Smonk had said, pushing gold coins across the table, the boy hiding beneath. E.O. had lost his eye by now, lost his looks. He’d gotten fatter. Hairier. Brown spots on his skin. Chancre sores. But he was short none of the appeal he had for women. In these lean years McKissick’s wife had stopped performing her wifely duties with McKissick, but here she was flirting with Smonk, and here was Smonk paying gold coin after gold coin to McKissick so he’d go outside and tend the one-eye’s horse while he visited with the woman. McKissick kicked the dog across the yard on his way to the barn.

  McKissick murdered the tobacco farmer and when he came back his wife was gone, took off after Smonk. So with the boy in tow McKissick had chased them. He found his wife in a town in east Texas, whoring, but she refused to take him back and he shot her dead and with the boy behind him on his horse he rode off after Smonk. They’d chased E.O. all over the world it felt like, for years, winding up at last in the wilderness between the rivers. He’d installed himself as bailiff in the nearest town (Old Texas) and clipped his chin whiskers and cut his hair. He’d donned the overalls and bicycle cap of a town bumpkin and waited in disguise.

  Now, naked, he thumped the eye in the air and caught it and popped it in his mouth. Its taste growing on him.

  He turned to go and there stood E.O. Leaning against a tree. He had his cane in one hand and a pistol in the other. Somehow he looked even worse than he had the day before, coughing, dragging one leg as he
came forward, blood oozing into his beard. McKissick stepped back, closing his hands. For the first time since he’d known the one-eye, Smonk looked killable. Like murdering him would do him a favor. McKissick was backing up, aware he was naked, his loin cloth draped over a branch near where he’d defecated.

  That’s yer stob? Smonk pointed his cane. No wonder that whore of yern used to fret so on mine.

  McKissick’s rifle lay across the log.

  Smonk stepped closer. He wore an eyepatch but had it flipped up so you could see in the hole. The bailiff remembered Smonk telling the story of how, after he lost the eye, its attachments had rotted in his head and for dern near a year he’d had to stuff garlic in the hole to make it bearable and keep the gnats and flies away.

  I recollect ye now, fellow, Smonk said. Here we are ain’t we. A reunion in the woods.

  McKissick kept backing up and Smonk paced him step for step. He was like a grizzly about to stand.

  I want my rifle yonder, Smonk repeated. And I want my fucking eye.

  McKissick edged to his right, toward Smonk’s blind side, but the one-eye angled his head and wagged his finger at such a squarehead move.

  McKissick, Smonk said, ye got nerve, boy. I’ll give ye that. To come after me when you know what I’ll do to ye.

  It was cause of my boy.

  Ye boy.

  William Junior. Willie. He was at the trial when ye butchered the town. When I come to he was gone and I knew you must of took him.

  Smonk’s good eye narrowed. I remember that little sneak, he said. Ike caught him, all right. Done stole my mule. Knucklehead’s got sand.

  Where is he?

  Hell if I know.

  McKissick had been backing toward the log and when he was close enough he dove over it and, airborne, kicked the stock so the over & under flipped and he landed on his back behind the log and caught the gun. He’d swallowed the eye again, this time on purpose. He raised up to fire but Smonk was gone, except for his voice, which boomed in the high treetops and dropped acorns and seemed to shake the sand.

  GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING EYE!

  “Give me back my fucking eye”? the blacksmith repeated down to his mule. He gazed into the dark trees. Did you hear that?

  The animal didn’t answer.

  The woods were soundless and still, a picture of woods with him sitting in the middle of it.

  Well, shit my britches, he said, looking upward where dapples of blue highlit the leaves. He was poking the mule’s ribs with his heels. Why don’t we get the hell out of here.

  He goaded the mule to a run in the direction of the tenant farm. If devilry were going on, if Smonk was out in the woods killing McKissick and saying such a string of words a Christian ought never hear, Gates could sneak back and see the whore for a quick suck and a spot of licker to sustain him on the long ride to come. He could charge it to the judge.

  Yah! he said, kicking the mule harder.

  McKissick peered over the log.

  He’s done for, the bailiff thought. Or I’d be dead already.

  He stood up. He scanned the spaces between the trees. He saw a sparrow. He saw a chipmunk. A butterfly blinking past.

  The sniper’s shot he half-expected never came.

  So Smonk was gone. His eye, however, was working its way down the bailiff’s gullet.

  He strapped his loin cloth on and cinched its knot. If E.O. had indeed retreated, it showed weakness. Here was their chance. McKissick turned, he was running toward his horse. He’d circle back, get Gates, and the two of them would track Smonk and kill him once and for all.

  Gates rolled off the mule at the farmhouse and reined it to the rail. He mounted the stairs, brandishing the empty Winchester like Daddy used to, when he hit Momma. He looked around, then knocked on the wall with the rifle-stock. He knocked again, then again, and finally creaked open the door. A slab of light fell into the room and the dark corners tensed. He stepped in from the sun and waited.

  The mule brayed behind him.

  Dry up, said the blacksmith. He lit a lamp and found a jar of yellow liquid on a shelf and sipped it but spat it back out. Piss, he said. I drunk piss! In a rage, he overturned chairs and kicked up the rug and stomped through floorboards and tore apart the stove. Not even a shot’s worth. That lying tenant farmer. Hell. By now Gates was so ready for a taste he’d of swallowed the jar of piss if it had been a drunk had pissed it. He walked onto the porch and glared down the hillside, nothing except more woods and sugarcane. Mule ’d got loose. Out in the field pulling up grass. Shit.

  At the insistence of his bowels, he left the porch and picked his way through the weeds alongside the cabin. He saw the tenant farmer spread out on the ground, his throat cut. His face covered with ants. Serves ye right, Gates said, stepping over the body. He searched the man’s pockets and reclaimed the nail he’d given him earlier but found nothing else. Dusting ants from his hands, he walked a few yards farther, into a stand of oaks.

  The whore stood up from a crouch and grinned. She was unhooking her slip from one shoulder and then the other. It fell from the skeleton and skin she was and she glowed white in a burst of sunlight where the forest roof hadn’t yet stitched out the sky. His bowels forgotten, Gates rushed toward her fumbling with his britches and she met him with her teeth bared and they fell coupling. She was a zestful lover who growled and scratched and bit, just the way he liked, and when he flipped her to her stomach and held her arms behind her back she groaned and took his wad which was all he wanted from any lady, whore or otherwise.

  Half an hour later, making good time on the horse, McKissick with his balls bouncing on the saddle and his thighs blistered and his burns coated with sand rode harder yet and seemed to lift from the horse’s back. They skidded to a stop before the farmhouse, the mule chewing grass.

  McKissick ran up the steps and through the open door, rifle at ready. The naked woman, tied to a chair, raised her head and bared her teeth and hissed, Did ye come back for more? She writhed against her ropes and flung her strings of hair about and, still bound, began to scoot toward him chair and all. I got some sugar for ye, she said and licked her tongue over her front teeth. Come here let me give ye a kiss.

  He stepped back, onto the porch. I reckon I’ll pass, he said.

  She spat at him and snapped her teeth, foam clinging to the corners of her mouth and her fingers clawing the seat of her chair. She writhed in her ropes and craned out her neck and in her fervor to bite him upset herself and crashed to the floor.

  McKissick wiped sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand and cocked the over & under.

  Now she was scootching toward him over the floorboards. He could see scabbed-over bite marks on her buttocks and legs and titties. A wide circumference of mouth, huge radius of teeth.

  Smonk do extract a price, McKissick said. He raised the rifle and fired and the concussion rang in the room. She lay still with a trace of smoke rising from the hole in her forehead. Behind him the mule brayed and a dark cloud of crows blackened the sky. McKissick steadied himself against the wall. Dern. He bet she’d been a good ole girl in spite of it all and suddenly he missed his wife.

  Meanwhile, Gates had crept up behind him, and before the bailiff could turn, his own partner had whacked him across the back of the head with a rifle butt. McKissick stumbled forward with blood hot like sunlight on his neck and fell across the whore.

  10 THE MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER

  THOUGH SHE HATED TO, EVAVANGELINE HAD FORSAKEN THE PONY with the star on its forehead since to reclaim it meant chancing upon the speckled man with the tore-up arm and the rifle. She wished the pony well, hoped it got out of the madman’s way.

  Her head throbbed from being conked and from time to time her vision blurred, but she kept walking, trying to ignore the dogtooth marks on her elbow, leading Junior and the children away from the path and north through the tangled woods as fast as she could make their legs go, ducking briars and battling through a vicious crossfire of thistle and thorny weed
s and sticker bushes, her skin redlined with cuts and clothes snagged to threads. Snake tails melted into the brush before her and twice whitetail deer rose on springs out of the bramble and bounded away as if the bushes were air. She shivered.

  Presently they happened upon some luck, a dry creekbed curving through the bottom of a gully, and they began to follow it, the going easier through the sand and pebbles. She stopped in the lowest, shadiest place she could find and dug into the bottom for water but found only more sand. Walking a few yards behind her, the children held hands in a line, quiet and obedient, with Junior bringing up the rear, slicing at green snakes with his Mississippi Gambler.

  Late in the afternoon there was light up the hillside on the left and they ascended the incline using vines and at the top the eight of them peered out at a field of sugarcane with another field after it and field upon field as far as any of their eyes could see. Evavangeline was about to push through out of the woods when Junior tugged her sleeve.

  Miss Whore? he said. You don’t want to go this a way. That goes where I jest come from. Old Texas. It’s a bad place.

  She looked back at the children, standing half-asleep, their clothes torn to rags, thorn welts laced over their skin.

  It’s a town ain’t it? It’s got people in it ain’t it? Ain’t it?

  The boy didn’t respond.

  She repeated: Ain’t they people there?

  The boy shrugged.

  Ain’t they no children to play with?

  He shook his head. I never seen nare one. Ner dog neither. We lived there for a while. Fore that we was traveling around. We went all over the wilderness till we fount Old Texas slap dab in the middle of nowheres. They was real happy to see us all the men was and ladies specially and they said what job did Daddy always want and he said he always fancied being a bailiff. Well what do ye know, they said, they happened to be bad in need of a bailiff.

  William R. McKissick Junior wanted to tell Evavangeline more. How the ladies of Old Texas had watched him on the sly. They were all the time bringing covered dishes to the shack outside town where he lived with his father, trying to make Daddy send him to school and church, but Daddy said no. Schools and churches was for girls and sissies he’d said. Said a man had to make his own way and wasn’t nothing a book could say a gun wouldn’t say better. Said that’s why he liked being a bailiff. You got to collect people’s guns. What about the Scripture, the ladies of Old Texas had asked his daddy. It could sure tell ye plenty couldn’t it? the ladies said. Was it words scratched on paper? Daddy asked them. Most certainly, said the ladies. Not interested, said Daddy. Thank ye for the turnip greens but we’ll pass on the sermonizing. Herding them out. Yet when William R. McKissick Junior rode to town with Daddy and shot marbles in a circle drawn in dirt or played mumbly peg with Daddy’s three-bladed pocketknife while he was doing whatever business he had to do, the boy had always perceived the ladies’ eyes on him from behind their drapes.