by Tom Franklin
What happened? she asked.
Wasn’t to be, he said. Those eyes of his looking down. Wasn’t long fore the midwife figured out she had the ray bees. Cause he’d bit her. That baby had. Teeth already in. When the shivers come on her some days later her husband snuck to town. He seen with his own two eyes what was going on. Seen a boy mad in a cage and the ladies praying round him. Which was how his wife was fixing to die, too, he knew. Mad. Drooling like a dog. But she was a good, good woman. Name Inetta. And she knew what them ladies didn’t know. Knew the redeemed boy they was looking for was already here, born with ray bees.
What happened to the midwife?
Her husband. He shot her in the head when she starting getting mean. He shot her in the head and burned her in a fire along with they house, and he knew he ought to thow in that squalling baby too. Baby born out of a sinful union and carrying the ray bees that killed his wife. Be better for ever body he was to jest go on thow it in the fire. Jest thow it on in. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. It warn’t that baby’s fault things were how things were. He didn’t evil his self into the world. He was jest a baby. And then that poor heart-broke man smelled the baby’s head and got drunk on it. He didn’t thow him in. That night he left, rode a mule and led a goat on a rope and fed the baby on goatmilk from a bottle and raised him up his own self and loved him even though he was a evil little—
Wait, said Evavangeline. It was you.
Meanwhile, William R. McKissick Junior crept toward the south end of town, approaching the single-room church building which also served as the schoolhouse, and crept up the wide plank steps and stood on the porch looking in the window. The ladies had tried to get him inside this place before. Saying he needed God and learning. That was two things could never be took from ye, they told him. God and learning. William R. McKissick Junior didn’t give a good dern for neither God ner learning. Heck. If air one of them ladies had jest flashed him a titty he would of gone.
Behind him somebody was coming so he jumped off the porch and ran east alongside the building and paused in the shadow of a cord of stacked firewood, looking behind him, waiting, listening. The rat-bite on his leg stinging. He crept to the church window and took the sill in his fingers and scrabbled up the clapboards and peered in. In the pews in the shadows he saw them. Dozens of them, very still. Praying maybe. Or maybe being punished. Grown folk did that sometimes if you misbehaved. Back in Oklahoma William R. McKissick Junior had gone to school for two days while his daddy stalked and killed a ranch hand. That teacher-lady had made him stay late and bang chalk erasers both days because he’d beat up several other boys. He learned to crawl under the school during play time and peep through the cracks in the floorboards and see up her dress. Then his daddy said it was time to move on and they’d moved on.
William R. McKissick Junior looked through the glass, smeared with his own breath, and imagined his head among theirs, bowing, praying, learning to write and read and add numbers. He pushed the top of the window but it was locked. He dropped to the ground and crept alongside the building. Back door locked too. The other windows. Then—heck—it was somebody coming. He slipped under the church and rolled through spiderwebs to the dark center and watched the guard-widow’s black skirt-tails trundling the dust.
Smonk could feel the morphine working. To test himself he hovered his heavy, flat hand over the detonator handle.
How do you know these lies? Mrs. Tate asked.
Smonk moved his hand. Tell ye what else I know, too, he said. War ’d been done almost a year when four, five of ye men begun to trickle home. Didn’t they? Fellows with they eyes empty and they beliefs all sacked. They was skeletons, warn’t they? Had arms off, legs gone.
How do you know this?
They wanted to know where the younguns was, didn’t they. And how come all the unmarried daughters was knocked up?
She lowered her chin. Yes, she said. Some came back. Yes, they wanted answers. We told them what happened in a simple version. Told them about Daddy’s vision and even as we told it, it began to sound false. But the simple men believed it. If they hadn’t been so eaten up by the War they might have done something else. Might have called it all madness. Might have said that Daddy ’d gone crazy with the ray bees and made us all crazy, too. How had we listened to him? How many little boys had we given to our struck dog?
But them men, they didn’t say none of that, did they?
No. Because of what they’d seen in that War. That Goddamned War. Because of what they’d done there. One man—boy!—who I’d known from girlhood and once had held hands with—in this very parlor—he returned home with that selfsame hand blown off. The other women sent him to visit me and he saw in my eyes I had a secret. He took hold of my hand with the hand he had left and twisted until I told him that Elrica had gone to the darkies to have her baby.
So the men collected they guns and rode out to Niggertown, Smonk said, and the niggers said the girl never had been there and said the midwife died of natural causes.
I suppose.
But when they dug the midwife up out the ground, it was a bullet hole in her head and it warn’t nothing natural about that, was it.
I suppose not.
They found another fresh grave, too, didn’t they?
I suppose they did. Without a marker I suppose. And when they dug it up they found Elrica wrapped in bloody sheets. But no baby. The Old Texas men tortured the darkies and burned their houses and barns until they found out that the midwife’s husband had stolen the child and run off.
Out west.
We didn’t know where. But before our men entered pursuit, they came here first. All covered in blood. They had Elrica in a wagon. My baby sister. Under a sheet. Said it was my job to clean her up. Put her best dress on. Bury her like white people. The worms had already been at her but I didn’t care. Here was my ’Rica returned to me, and men with arms and legs off were already departing on their horses to find our stolen child.
She was weeping.
Them fellows never found the nigger, did they. Or the youngun.
We don’t know, she sobbed. They never came back.
Wait, Smonk said. If them fellers never come back, then who the hell was all those sons-of-bitches got killed yesterday?
Mrs. Tate’s breath hitched. Strays, she said. Men who showed up over the years. Drummers, some. Some thrown off riverboats. Others lost in the woods. Running from the law. We needed them to work the fields. We took them as our husbands and as the husbands of our daughters. We let them have any job they wanted to make them stay. We let them have their way with us when they wanted, with our daughters, hoping for boy children so we might find our promised child.
What if a fellow didn’t want his youngun bit by a mad-dog?
Any man who objected was given to Lazarus the Redeemer.
Boards creaking, Smonk moved around front so she could see him. He lowered his good eye to within a foot of her face and she turned away. Loose strands of her white hair stirring in gusts of his breath.
Please, she said. Go ahead and kill me.
Shhhhh. He raised his swordblade to her cheek and turned her to face him. When she wouldn’t open her eyes, he prized them apart with his fingernails.
Don’t ye recognize ye sister’s son? he said.
Meanwhile, a riveted Walton watched the old Negro and the unidentified white woman—age hard to judge from her back. He’d heard almost everything the colored man had said, a tale worthy of that delightful E. A. Poe, indeed, a tale he’d not have believed except he heard it with his own ears. And as earlier today he himself had witnessed the churlish villain “Smonk” in the flesh, Walton felt no need to doubt the veracity of the Negro’s narration.
Now the young woman in her fetching dress tottered and the “darky” reached over the fire to steady her. When she turned away and Walton saw her face, he clapped his hand over his lips. It was her!
Evavangeline!
He stopped breathing.
He’d
found her!
This ain’t from no licker, she was yelling to the old colored man. She raised her shaking hands and snatched her arm away from him and her face seemed like it might cry. I got em ain’t I? The ray bees?
Rabies? Walton thought.
They got me, the girl cried, ain’t they?
Naw, miss. You gone be fine, the colored man said. He coughed. Jest don’t bite nobody ye don’t want dead.
A kind of “Typhoid Mary”? Walton wondered.
My head’s hurting, the girl said.
I speck it is.
Why you telling me this shit?
Cause you got to go back up in there. Back up in Old Texas.
The girl sat down. To a bunch of old witches that done put me in jail once? Sorry to disappoint ye, Mister Ike, but I’m gone pass. I got a itch to get going north and nothing’s gone sway it.
Miss, he said. Old Texas is north. You gone pass right thew it. That itch ye got ain’t nothing more than burning ray bees in the air. It’s piles of dogs and coons and possums burning all around. You done smelled it and followed it here.
I ain’t smelled nothing.
And while ye there, Ike said, in Old Texas, ye might think about collecting that passel of younguns, including that McKissick boy. Help em find they way home.
Walton thought, Children. In peril!
How come you don’t go git em? Evavangeline asked.
The old man looked into the fire. I’m done for, he said. He opened his coat and Walton saw that his shirt was bloody.
The girl was silent. Then she said, When ’d ye catch one?
His eyes shut. For the first time he seemed pained. When I was rescuing you, miss.
She came across the fire and sat down next to him and put her hand on his arm and listened as he talked quietly, so low Walton couldn’t hear. The girl didn’t move for several minutes after he’d had his say. Then she got to her feet and walked away from the Negro, away from Walton, to the edge of the trees.
It’s one more thing, he said, looking directly at Walton where he eavesdropped from hiding.
She paused. You gone be all right?
Yeah, he said. Jest don’t go in that church. Whatever ye do.
Meanwhile, William R. McKissick Junior used his head to bump at a board overhead. Then another. When he found a loose one he lay on his back and kicked it free and stuck his head through the floor. Instantly he snatched it back, the smell awful. Holding his breath, he tried it again and slipped his entire body through and up into the room. It was dark but he could see shoes and the ends of benches and an aisle down the middle.
Hey, he said. He rose into the church.
No answer. The pews, from where he stood, seemed full of boys his age.
Hey! he called, stepping away from the hole. Ye bunch a town sissies.
Behind him was a table. Still eyeing the shadowy audience, he swept his hand over the dust until he felt a box of matches. He turned, his breath held. The box rattled in his fingers. He snapped the first stick in half and dropped the second. The third flared, showing a pair of candles on the table. He lit them and held both candles out before him and faced to the room like a celebrant, and, remembering to breathe, stepped into the aisle. Flickering down the front pews and hazy in the rows behind were the faces of boys. Dozens of boys. All wearing neckties, dark church suits. Some of their heads were cocked to the side and some tilted forward, showing widow’s peaks and cowlicks. Some tilted back. Many of their eyes were closed, others half-mast. They looked sleepy. Their mouths were open. William R. McKissick Junior bent closer to the front row. Some of the boys seemed to be tied with twine to keep them upright. Their cheeks were drawn and gray.
Hey, sissies, he whispered. I can whirp ye all.
As if in answer, a cockroach flickered across the face closest to him and William R. McKissick Junior banged back into the table, its leg chirping on the floor. He clambered underneath dropping the candles and scrabbled out the other side overturning the pulpit and began to claw the floor for the hole he’d used to get in. He couldn’t find it, couldn’t find it, couldn’t find it. Hell Mary! he yelled. Behind him, in the light from the burning rug, the heads were moving.
13 THE FIRE
MEANWHILE, SOUTH END OF TOWN, MCKISSICK SLOWED HIS HORSE and leapt off despite his aching side and broken wrist. He splashed water from the trough onto his face and covered his privates with his hand as a guard-lady approached down the hill with a shotgun trained on him. He moved behind the trough to hide his pecker and balls and recognized the attractive daughter of Hobbs the undertaker. He bet Smonk had bedded her. She frowned at him, the blood, his burnt skin.
Bailiff McKissick? Is that you?
Yeah. You can go on put that gun down.
She pointed it away from him and craned her neck to see his crotch. You all right? Who done that to ye head? It’s all swoll. She circled and he circled opposite her, keeping the trough between them.
Can I borry ye wrap yonder?
She looked doubtful a moment then unsnagged it from her shoulders and tossed it over the water. He caught it and fastened it around his waist.
She watched him. Did ye find Smonk?
I did.
And done with him?
Yeah. Have ye seen Willie?
Naw, but Mrs. Tate might did. They fount a bunch a younguns. Praise Jesus ye killed him. You want to come back to our barn?
Not jest yet, he said. Stay here. If ye hear shooting, get behind the trough yonder and murder whoever comes running.
She let him pass, inspecting his buttocks, and he put Smonk’s over & under under his arm and crutched up the hill with his broken wrist held by his heart. He hobbled along the backs of buildings to the Tate house where he tried the rear door handle. It was unlocked so he entered and stood within the hall in the dark. He clicked the rifle’s safety off and the sound was enormous in the room. He squeaked open the parlor door, inserting the barrels, and saw Mrs. Tate sitting by her dead husband.
Bailiff McKissick? She strained to see. Is that you?
He stepped into the room.
Yes ma’am, he said. I’ll give ye Smonk’s eye if ye know where my boy is—!
A giant hand had fallen upon his head. McKissick felt himself turned like an auger. Hot breath blasted his face, flecks of blood in his eyes. The rifle slipped from his grip and Smonk’s other hand caught it before it landed.
Thank ye for bringing this Winchester back, fellow, he said. I was always partial to it. Now where’s my fucking eye?
First tell me where my boy is.
Smonk pushed McKissick’s head away like a tent evangelical and the bailiff backpedaled toward the detonator and fell beside it and knocked it askant with his broken arm.
Get up, killer. Smonk checked the 45-70’s loads and snapped the gun shut and lurched over to McKissick, the room seeming to tilt with his weight. Give me my eye.
The bailiff had no strength left and no feeling in his broken wrist. His side was bleeding, his head felt like an anvil. He noticed the detonator and spidered his good hand up to the corner of the casing and seized the bottom of the plunger the way a man grips an ax.
Back, he panted, or I’ll blow it.
Including ye boy, Smonk said. He’s down yonder other end of town with a bunch of younguns these old whores stold. Auntie here and her coven of witches is fixing to turn they mad-dog on em.
McKissick’s grip failed and his hand melted from the handle. Willie? He’s here?
Smonk had advanced. He edged the detonator away with his foot and touched the fallen man’s throat with the tip of his sword and traced it down his gullet, slowly, a long welt in its wake and then a faint line of blood.
My…Willie? McKissick gasped.
Smonk straddled the bailiff and sat so hard upon the man’s chest that blood spewed out of his mouth and burst like a fist from his wound, a penny like magic in Smonk’s fingernails.
Here’s ye tip, bailiff, he said. I thank ye for my rifle’s safe ret
urn.
I would, McKissick gasped. Wouldn’t take no penny from you—
I insist, Smonk growled, and with a slight lift of his eyebrows he ground the coin into McKissick’s left eye socket with his thumb. Under him the man’s shoulders shuddered and his legs kicked and floundered. Mrs. Tate screamed until Smonk reached his free hand up and cranked the broom handle and she blacked out. Meanwhile the one-eye had snaked his long trigger finger around the side of the bailiff’s head and dug it into his earhole. He wormed it deep in the canal past a spongy substance until his finger touched his thumb.
Two hummingbirds, McKissick’s mouth said without sound. Father and son.
And he expired.
Smonk groped to his feet using a rail of wainscotting and lifted the man once an assassin, once a bailiff into the air by his head and held him there limply like a large catfish and raked his sword down McKissick’s front. Among what sloshed across the rug was one rolling eye.
Evavangeline trotted to the edge of the woods and kicked off her shoes and scrabbled up an oak and wove to the tree’s topmost where the capping branchwork was thin as her own interlaced fingers. She swayed among the leaves as if she weighed nothing at all, the dark squares and rectangles of Old Texas in the distance like blocks laid out by a child and painted otherworldly by the moon’s red glare. This town Ike had called cursed by God for what it did. Where the people reached. What they pulled out.
Eugene is pure evil turned into God’s right hand, Ike had whispered in her ear, and it done swept thew Old Texas. It took the men, that right hand. Took em all. And it’s time for the other hand to land.
She’d said, He’s my daddy, ain’t he?
Ike hadn’t answered except to say, You don’t need to see him. No matter what.
Now in the sky the girl’s hair blew. It was up to her. Kill the women. Rescue the children. Don’t see Smonk. Well hell Mary, she told the air.
Back at the campfire, Walton stepped out of the bramble behind where the old Negro had lain down. The Philadelphian had a cudgel of wood for his weapon and was half-drunk from his flask. As he closed in on the prone man, he raised the log high.