Smonk or Widow Town Part 12

Somebody like me what?

To draw men in. If we can clean you up, get you some decent clothes.

Evavangeline looked down at herself. Her hands on her thighs. She had blood under her fingernails, no idea whose.

Why can't ye draw men in ye self?

We're most of us too old. We have six women of childbearing years. Three were killed yesterday, along with all our men. We need husbands now. We need men to guard us. To do man's work, grow the sugarcane. Someone as young as you...

Well, I can sure as h.e.l.l wh.o.r.e, the girl said. I need to git some money together, you see, cause I got a bunch of younguns- Children? The woman had seized Evavangeline's forearm. I'm sorry. She unclenched and leaned back and poured herself a gla.s.s of water and drank it in one swallow under her veil. Her voice when it came was managed. Did you say you were guardian of children?

I was, Evavangeline said, if ye'd let me finish my d.a.m.n story. Like I was saying. I got them children, rescued em from a d.y.k.e and her raper of a husband-nearest I can tell, her and that raper was stealing em to sell. So there I was trying to get em home when they jest up and lit out on me. I ought to of looked for em but I been in a hurry.

They were in the orphanage west of town? Where are the children now?

That's enough questions. Now it's my turn. Who the h.e.l.l is E. O. Smonk?

The lady looked out the window behind her, as if he might be eavesdropping. He's...a curious creature.

Do what?

Some citizens claim he's of the devil but I say there's no of about it, he is the devil. He bought a big sugarcane farm out east of here a year ago. We were all glad at first, so few men about, but then he started in on us. One by one we ran afoul of his peculiar temper and we've all suffered injustice upon injustice at his hands. By his hands. She stood. But I don't want to talk about him any more. Did you say you were hungry?

Yeah. For some biscuits and gravy. Some meat if ye got it. I can eat a lot, too. As much as ye can make. Also, I like to take my food out and eat it away from ever body. If ye don't mind.

Well, why don't ye go on up the stairs to that second door while I go get it ready. You can get all cleaned up. Change your clothes. Just make sure you don't go in the first door.

Only the advent of her monthlies in conjunction with her hunger sent her upstairs. Mrs. Tate had gone toward the kitchen and Evavangeline paused at the first door. She checked behind her for the old woman and then turned the k.n.o.b. It was dark when she entered, smell of p.i.s.s. Someone wheezing. She nearly slipped on the floor crossing to open the heavy drapes. When she flung them back, light flooded the room.

A shriveled white man-thing roped to a filthy mattress convulsed when the sun hit it. Unnnnng, it said.

She slid the window up and stuck out her head and took in a breath of air and saw below her a pile of dead dogs at the edge of the cane. A woman in black pouring kerosene on the pile looked at her. Evavangeline stepped back and adjusted the drapes to regulate the light. She went to the thing on the bed and frowned at it. Its face chalky and cracked. It didn't have teeth and kept pulling back its lips to show rotten yellow gumwork. The eyes opaque in a way she'd seen before. She bent and looked closely into them. When she reached to touch its cheek it tried to bite her.

s.h.i.t, she said, and hurried out.

The room next door was the frilliest she'd ever seen. She could have walked into h.e.l.l's furnace and been less surprised. Frilly curtains with frilly lace and frilly pillows on the bed and a frilly quilt. A fringed rug underfoot that you d.a.m.n near sank in, it was so soft. There was a dark slab of furniture against one wall with a pair of fancy doors she creaked opened.

h.e.l.l Mary. She'd never seen so many frilly dresses and of such colors that smelled so perty. It was like breathing a cloud. Violet and pink and bright yellow and roses sewn from lovely cloth. Blouses and skirts with st.i.tching so fine you'd be able to see the skin underneath. Her plan, which she was still forming, would involve getting food and medicine and sneaking off to the children. Not bringing them back here, h.e.l.l no. Maybe it was a town full of witches. She'd heard of those from Alice Hanover. She'd keep her guard up. Look at this perty dress here. Shorter, show a little calf-leg. She unhung it from its peg and slipped the dead crow hunter's boots off and stuck the knife in the wall and shucked the pants she'd stolen from Shreveport and that floppy gray shirt with the knife slits and stood naked before the mirror stand.

A knock came from the hall and she went and opened the door, uncaring of her nakedness.

Oh, Mrs. Tate said, holding a gla.s.s. I came to see if you were thirsty, and if you wanted a bath while I got dinner ready.

The gal took the gla.s.s and drank it.

The bath's this way, said the lady. Still naked, Evavangeline followed her down the candlelit hall past a line of closed doors into a room with pulled drapes and a tin washtub centered on a rug. There was a part.i.tion for changing and a toilet table with colored puff-bottles and powders and brushes and combs in neat rows. Evavangeline chewed her nails and watched the woman move boiling pots of water from the fireplace and pour them in and soon found herself steaming in sweet bubbles with Mrs. Tate behind her scrubbing her shoulders with a long brush and trickling hot oils on her neck and rubbing soap into her scalp.

You need to let your hair grow out more, she said.

Ummm, said the gal. She felt like going to sleep but the scar from Ned was starting to itch like h.e.l.l. She tried to rise but Mrs. Tate's hands held her down. Shhh, the old woman said.

Meanwhile, the Christian Deputies were cantering their horses northward, a beatific Ambrose at point, Walton in the rear slouching in his saddle, when the distance revealed an uncovered farm wagon headed in their direction. As they drew nearer one another, the deputies noted that the pair of mules pulling the wagon wore straw sombreros, slits cut for their ears, the entire clattering operation driven by an elderly, thin Negro, his dark skin darker still from years of endless sun. He wore a Danbury hat-the exact style hung on Walton's hatrack in his apartments in Philadelphia, the ousted leader realized. Fur-lined brim. Lizard skin band made from genuine South American iguanas.

Ambrose raised his fist and the troop slowed and endured its own dustcloud as the wagon-driver clicked his teeth to halt his mules. Walton was aware that if something didn't happen, he would be the first white man in the history of these United States to lose his command to a Negro. He imagined drawing his pistol and shooting Ambrose in the back of the head and telling his mother about it.

Behind Ambrose, the remaining two deputies, Loon and Onan, walked their horses down the sloping land to within a few yards of where the elderly Negro had stopped his wagon. The two roads converged here into one, and the parties were going in the same direction. Walls of dense foliage would not permit both to pa.s.s at once, so one party would have to back up and let the other go. Whorls carved by countless wagon wheels-deep ruts, savage grooves cemented on the face of the land-indicated this juncture's history in rainier times, submerged in water and likely impa.s.sable. Walton unclipped the rawhide safety thong from his sidearm and spurred Donny and sat alongside his fellow deputies.

Back up, uncle, Ambrose ordered the wagon-driver. Let us thew.

The colored man wore canvas hunting pants and a denim shirt faded almost white with silver snaps on the breast pockets. A red scarf tied at his neck. He held the reins loose in one hand and a short whip lash in the other.

I ain't gone tell ye agin, Ambrose said. He drew his pistol and tapped it on his thigh. Abscond, ye rickety old n.i.g.g.e.r.

Ambrose, Walton said.

Yet the fellow sat perfectly still. One of the mules began to urinate, then the other followed suit.

That's bad luck for somebody, Onan pointed out. Two mules p.i.s.sing same time facing east.

For uncle here it is, Ambrose said. He pointed his pistol at the stranger. I'm gone count to five, he said. One. Two. Three. Four. Fi- Wait! It was Walton. He threw his leg over Donny's saddle and dismounted. His hand in the air signaling "Attention," he hurried over the ruts past Ambrose's horse to the wagon and laid a casual hand on the brake and lowered his goggles to show how earnest his eyes were.

Sir, he addressed the seated Negro, who didn't look down at him. We Christian Deputies will certainly employ diplomacy when possible. But we are in a remarkable hurry here.

No response.

Sir! Walton repeated, knocking on the side of the wagon as if it were a door. Please, he said. Let us pa.s.s. This need not grow into a "scuffle." There are several of us. You are a Negro, alone and unarmed. Quite elderly as well. We are most of us young, white and armed. We are trained, well-equipped professional lawmen on a mission to better this land for each us all, irregardless of the pigmentation of our skin. And, I hasten to add, we have already encountered two casualties today, witnessed by mine own eyes, two men murdered by yon fellow Negro. I worry in fact that he desires blood again. So I beseech you, sir: Let us pa.s.s.

The wagon-driver had been looking languidly at Deputy Ambrose who was still aiming his pistol. Now the stranger fixed on Walton those eyes with their enormous pupils.

Naw sir, the man said. It's yall. Need to get out my way cause I'm in a hurry too. And what I got to deliver ain't gone wait and ain't gone want to eat yallses dirt all the way to town.

I beg your pardon? Walton showed the sky his palms-What in heaven's name was going on here? Had every Negro in Alabama chosen today to a.s.sert his independence? Now, look here, the Philadelphian said, his voice rising in pitch. I'm normally very conscious of the lower races- Hang on, Cap'n. It was Walton the driver addressed. What kind a commander ride all his men to a low spot of trees without sending one or two of em in thew the woods scout a ambush?

Walton glanced at the trees, their dusty twitching limbs and leaves, dawning with danger. Each acorn the squat sight on some hooligan's "scattergun," as if Death had stepped onto the road. He swallowed. Why, sir, do you ask?

For a long moment no answer came. Then the Negro said, Ye buck yonder's demonstration of counting's done inspired me. Pick one ye men.

Walton peered past the mules to where his troop, such as it was, sat their horses. Why, sir? he repeated.

Don't sir me. If ye don't pick one, the man said, I'm gone choose for my own self. He raised his chin to better see the deputies, who were eyeing the trees for ambushers.

I must insist, Walton pressed. Why?

Cause whichever one ye pick, Ambrose called, that feller gone die.

Walton could not move. That's not true, is it? How? he asked. A demonstration of voodoo?

Voodoo? The colored man's eyes shrank and his hat flexed back on his head and the wagon began to shake, as if it were laughing. He nodded to Walton. That's right, boss, he said. Show is. Voodoo fixing blink its eye. Or a feller out in the woods, one. When I count up to five you can see.

The Christian Deputy leader threw Ambrose a panicked look.

One, counted the man.

Not Loon, Walton thought. Not Onan. Both were studying the trees, trying to spot the sniper.

Two.

Perhaps offer myself? thought Walton. As a gesture?

Three.

Ambrose! Of course! Here would be his chance.

Four.

Let him shoot Ambrose.

Walton glanced at Ambrose and the Negro saw, in Walton's eyes, that he was about to be "sold down the river."

Fi- Wait! Ambrose swept his gloved hand toward the west. Go on, ye old snake-doctor. f.u.c.k off with ye.

At which point, not even a display of grat.i.tude, the uppity Negro cracked his whip lash and the farm wagon clacked forward, Walton leaping to the ground to avoid being crushed and the horses scrambling as the wagon banged over the whorls in the pa.s.s and then up the opposite hill where weeds grew in the road, dusty white gra.s.shoppers fizzing in the air like fireworks set off by gnomes. When the wagon was gone the pa.s.s in the road seemed enormous.

Ambrose sheathed his pistol. Hey, Captain Fool?

Walton found it hard to stand as his knees had jellied. Give me a moment, he said. Please.

When ye b.a.l.l.sack descend back down out ye a.s.shole, I want ye to write a entry in ye diary yonder says we jest got backed down by one old n.i.g.g.e.r and two old mules. The second-in-command took off his gloves and threw them in the dirt. s.h.i.t, he said and turned his horse and trotted away, in the opposite direction the farm wagon had gone.

Walton watched him, then turned to the wagon as it squeaked away. Before he had time to think better, he'd taken off, on foot, in pursuit of the old man. Walton was not one to "pull rank" because of his skin color, but this was uncalled-for behavior from a "darky" old enough to remember how conditions had been before Walton's northern a.s.sociates had liberated the slaves. For emphasis, he drew his revolver, which he had no intention of using, and was closing on the wagon, about to grab its tail-gate, when suddenly the driver whoaed his mules and the wagon stopped and the Christian Deputy founder nearly walked into its rear end. He raised his pistol-perhaps a warning shot in the air?-the same instant the tarp in the wagon-bed rolled like a swell of water and a fat bearded man elbowed himself up from the hay on the floor.

Who interrupted my nap? he demanded.

Shrugging the tarp aside, he clomped the over & under barrels of a long black rifle on the wagon's back rail, so close to Walton the northerner could smell gun oil.

Toss ye iron in here, he said. Keep ye hands where I can see em.

Walton complied, blanching at the horrific fellow's goiter and grizzled brown skin and its pockmarks, gashes, scars, and moles. He wore dark lenses with an eyepatch under one and a bush of wild red hair in a braid hanging over his heart and a sprawling beard that made his head larger. His teeth were red and the rattle of his breath like a dog's low growl. Perhaps here was a "moonshiner," Walton thought. Which might account for his pensiveness.

What the h.e.l.l you supposed to be in them outfits? the odd fellow said. A f.u.c.king Mountie? Canader's a few miles north ways, ain't it, I? He laughed and coughed.

I'd prefer less graphic language, Walton said, gazing into the rifle barrels. He raised his hands, showing no threat. I, sir, am Captain Phail Walton and those men behind me are my Christian Deputies.

Christian? The man coughed and sprayed Walton's face with blood. Deputies?

The leader moved to reach for a handkerchief in order to blot the blood from his face when the stranger bopped him on the head with the rifle barrels, dislodging his hat. I told ye don't move, sissy.

Ouch, Walton said, suddenly dizzy.

The fellow had began to chuckle and the wagon creaked with his mirth. Ye looks like a bunch of goggle-eye dandy boys, he said. In them faintsy getups.

We don't appreciate that kind of insinuation, Walton said.

s.h.i.t, said the one-eyed man. The driver whipped his mules and the operation clattered off, the eerie man in the back laughing or coughing, it was hard to tell which.

Walton began walking backward toward the others, wondering what ilk of black magic he'd stumbled upon. Was the peculiar man in the receding wagon's bed some "haint" of the backwoods? What monsters still roamed these southern wildernesses? Why, here might be Darwin's "Missing Link" or a specimen of the fabled "Big Foot" of western climes. Walton put his hands on his hips and watched.

The wagon was nearly out of sight.

Meanwhile, loyal Donny wandered up on his own and nibbled Walton's ear as the old man's laughter or coughing hackled over the fields. Walton closed his eyes and summoned what wherewithal he had left and pulled the clammy sack of his body into the saddle without opening his eyes. He let Donny walk himself toward the others and thought about Ambrose. How he'd found the Negro face-down, beaten nearly to death, in a Memphis alley. Rats tearing at his pants leg. Walton recalled frightening off the large rodents and helping the wheezing wretch to his feet, procuring him a bowl of turtle soup and rice and giving his testimony while eating with him and several other hungry denizens of the undercla.s.s, the Philadelphian thrilled by his own display of open-minded philanthropy.

And now here rode that same philanthropist with quite a different mind, shivering on his horse, backed down, again, ready in fact to give his own man up. He remembered Ambrose "watching his back" on the riverboat and deflecting the murderous intent to Red Man. Later siding with Walton about the burials. How he'd said "bunker" with such faithfulness.

Perhaps it was time, wasn't it, for Walton to face the fact: Ambrose was right. He, Walton, was indeed an F-U-L, fool. Wasn't he out here in the wilderness only because he'd backed out of a duel at a Halloween costume party at an Admiral's summer home in Boston? With Mother on his arm, he'd gone as a "gunslinger," red shirt and khaki pants with their extra pockets full of "loot," the polished riding boots, ascot and hat. For fun he'd worn a real gun, unloaded of course. After a misunderstanding, a meaty, red-faced Italian "thug" pulled Walton's leather gloves from his gunbelt and slapped him across the cheek several times despite Walton proclaiming his innocence in the matter of the Italian's wife. Yet the Italian, dressed as a giant rabbit, shoved Walton into the seaman's rosebushes. He then kicked him in the crotch and spat upon him and threw drinks in his face. He hit Walton in the back of the head with his, Walton's, own pistol.

Walton's cheeks burned at the memory. Hadn't he, bleeding from rose thorns, knelt and begged his beefy opponent not to murder him? The man flipping off his rabbit hood now, blood speckled on his faux fur. Hadn't the Italian agreed to let him go only if Walton removed his pants, crimson shirt and underwear and crawled naked from the party? The mob of them (including a "loose" woman) following in their buggy-not part of the agreement-costumed in masks and gaudy outfits and top hats, swinging lanterns and spewing him with bottles of champagne. Banging cans and firing pistols at the stars. Later, the first strains of morning light had caught him sneaking through a back alley; a Boston police captain on his way to the station-house nabbed him as he tried to sneak into Mother's hotel. Wrapped in a dirty shirt, Walton was thrown in jail. His head shoved in the chamber pot by the degenerates in his cell. Lice in his hair. Instances of painful sodomy. Mother, her carriage-driver holding her arm, her handkerchief over her mouth and nose, fetched him out of the jailhouse. She'd brought him a scarlet hood and would only suffer his company if he wore it. His darling betrothed Miss Annie's younger brother had returned Walton's grandmother's diamond ring along with a letter he'd only read once but could recite from memory: Dear Phail, please tell me which Parties you plan on attending in the Future so I will not. Never speak to me again. You should spell yr. Name with a "f." I wish you were dead. Or I was. Somebody. I hate you.-Sincerely, A.

Hadn't Walton traveled "coach" on the railways south to this wasteland of dry sugarcane and human detritus in the very costume of his shame and with the sole intention of getting himself murdered? Would that not show them all? Did you hear? Phail's dead! Killed in battle in a southern wilderness. He was no coward after all. We were so wrong about him. They're going to publish his logbook. A perfect plan: South then dead. Yet somehow he'd discovered a niche for himself. His leadership had given these shiftless men shift. He added focus to their lives. He was their salvation. And might they not be his?

He gazed across the fields of brown to where faithful Loon and Onan waited, glancing at the trees around them. Thus far Walton had squandered chance upon chance for the glory of death in battle, "kill or be killed," to even his score on G.o.d's night sky of a chalkboard. Red Man should have been Walton's kill, not Ambrose's. Hadn't that rightly been Walton's mutiny to quell? And those deserters ought to have died impaled by Walton's sword, not killed by Ambrose's Winchester. And only moments ago, this wretched man-thing with his enormous rifle and rebellious Negro! They were obviously criminals. Yet was the man-thing dead? Was the Negro?

Was Walton? Had he fought like a man or surrendered his sidearm without a thought? The Christian Deputy leader straightened in his saddle. Strength had returned full force to his knees and he rose in the stirrups and clasped his pommel and nodded as he rode up alongside his men.

Deputy Loon, he said. Deputy Onan. He smiled grimly. Let's go get that son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h.

Neither man moved.

I see, their leader said. He lowered his gaze. So I've lost my authority completely. Not that I blame you- Naw, Onan said from the side of his mouth. It ain't that. He and Loon were casting their eyes fearfully at the trees. We jest don't want that n.i.g.g.e.r's friend in the woods to shoot us.

Ned's face in her dreams but gone when she opened her eyes. She lay in warm hay, it moved with her breath. She was glad there wasn't any s.h.i.t in the stall now but there had been some here before. Her face was away from them but she knew that of the three women behind her two were having her time of the month and one was past prime. She tried to sit up but her hands were bound behind her. She rolled over.

They wore black dresses and veils. She didn't know who the two in back were but the one in front was Mrs. Tate, she could tell from her smell of her dead husband. She blinked and blew hay from her face and rolled over. They'd put her in a barn stall made secure with bars like a jail cell. Hay for sleeping. Slop jar in the corner. Nothing else.

Mrs. Tate held the Mississippi Gambler in her hand. What did you plan to do with this? Cut my throat?

Yall poisoned me, she said.

The ladies said nothing.

Mrs. Tate, Evavangeline said. Did I answer ye questions wrong and this is what I get?

I'm sorry, said the little woman. She handed the knife away. But you can't say names here. We don't have names here. You've been bitten by a struck dog. I saw the marks on your arm while you bathed. These other ladies have witnessed them as well. So we have no choice but to confine you. For your own safety. See if the ray bees have got you.

No, she said. She wriggled up against the wall and fell forward, her ankles bound as well. I ain't got none, I swar. That dog was my own pet dog. It never had no ray bees.

If you don't exhibit any symptoms, we'll set you free and you can be a citizen of our town. And if you do have them, we'll shoot you quickly and burn your remains.

But I got to go, Evavangeline said.