Hell at the Breech

by Tom Franklin

  “Slow down, boy,” Tooch told him.

  Mack wanted to look at them, their darkened forms, but he couldn’t raise his eyes from the knife, his finger.

  “This here is a commitment you won’t be able to get out of once you sign up,” Tooch went on. He placed a fatherly hand on his shoulder and squeezed it until Mack looked at him. “Are you willing to own up to the responsibility we’re fixing to yoke upon you?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Tooch looked at Floyd.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Are you willing to kill, if given the order?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  “Willing to die, if it comes to that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I reckon.”

  “In return, you’ll get the protection of this inner circle, and of the larger circle without. Since Arch was murdered, we’ve all bunched together in this alliance, with the goal to set things right, and if we all get rich in the meantime, well, that’s okay, too.

  “If you ever tell any of what you’ll learn, you’ll forfeit your life. We’ll all kill you. Do you understand that, Mack?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Floyd?”

  “I hear it.”

  Mack looked down. He felt William’s gaze on his back. Suddenly he and his brother are sitting together on the sandy edge of the creek beneath the widow’s house, their feet submerged, their lines stretching out toward the middle, bending with the slow current going south. William is fourteen, Mack ten. They’ve caught a mess of bream which pulls at the stringer stuck into the bank and they’re happy because the widow will praise them when they go up for supper. When she calls them just before dark, when the shadows are stretching downhill, Mack is already looking forward to scaling the fish, he likes how when you scrape against the grain the scales fly off in tiny transparent chips that stick to your face, lodge in your hair. He and William always try to flick them into each other’s mouths and laugh and the widow, watching, laughs, too. Yet when they bend to pull up the stringer it’s heavier than it should be. A cottonmouth has attached itself to the fish, has swallowed one and half swallowed another. Delighted and terrified, they pull the stringer onto the bank and begin throwing stones at the snake as it tries to divest itself of the fish and find the water again. The brothers digging up stones and hurling them and laughing as the cottonmouth hisses and strikes.

  “Swear your loyalty,” Tooch said.

  Mack raised his head. “I swear it.” The knife sweat-slick in his fingers.

  Floyd did likewise.

  The men mumbled their assent, faces vivid for a second with lightning. Thunder drumming in the distance, like horses.

  “Okay, then,” Tooch said. “You know what comes next.”

  Mack held his breath. He touched the blade against his finger.

  “Boy,” War Haskew advised, “we found it’s best to make your cut in your palm. Fingers don’t yield enough blood, less you can’t write and just gone mark you a X there.”

  “What’s wrong with a goddamn X?” Lev asked.

  War Haskew didn’t answer but underhanded Lev the jug, which he caught and unstoppered and tilted back. He swirled the whiskey in his mouth and swallowed, belched.

  “Ah, God,” he said.

  Now the jug came Mack’s way as he readied the knife.

  “Have you some of that inside lightning first, boy,” Kirk said.

  Mack nodded his thanks and set aside the knife and worked the cork out and hooked his thumb through the thumbhole and turned up the jug in the fashion he’d seen the other men do. He drank and swallowed. His eyes watered, his chest burned. His supper rose in a hot ball in his throat but he choked it down, his teeth gritty as though the whiskey had dredged up long-settled sand. Maybe it had. Maybe that was what it was for.

  “Easy, now,” Tooch said.

  Someone relieved him of the whiskey. Taking the knife, he opened his right hand as wide as he could, the skin taut, and with the tip of the blade traced one of the lines in his palm. He felt no pain, as when you fire at a deer you hear no shot, feel no recoil from the gun.

  “That’s enough,” Tooch said. “You get gangrene and you ain’t gone do none of us any good.” He reached into his shirt pocket for the folded paper, opened it with care and set it on the counter between them. “Go on.”

  It was half an old newspaper page—the one with the brief story of Arch’s murder—men’s names written in their own blood in two large, irregular columns. It also bore several cross or X marks of men unable to spell their names.

  Mack stirred his left pointer finger in his cupped palm which had filled like an inkwell and wrote his first and then his last name on the vacant, corner spot Tooch indicated. As he dipped his finger in his blood again to finish, he felt Tooch’s hand steady his shoulder. He was glad to pass the knife along to Floyd, who cut open his palm with no hesitation and scratched an X on the page. The others clapped the two of them on the back, laughter was general. There were stars popping in Mack’s vision as the jug found its way into his good hand.

  “Welcome,” Tooch said to them both, “to Hell-at-the-Breech.”

  Mack sat and listened to the men talk. When they’d decided on the night of McCorquodale’s assassination—the Yankee holiday of Thanksgiving, which the storeowner insisted on celebrating—it came time to decide who would go. Tooch went to his attic and returned with a sack full of heavy things. Croquet balls, Mack realized. Tooch had said that because Lev volunteered to kill McCorquodale, he would captain the raid. They’d decided two more men were needed, one to go with Lev and one to cover the back.

  Tooch said, “There are six balls here. Lev is accounted for. Floyd can’t go. Which leaves Huz, who’ll be green. Buz is red. War, you’re blue. William, orange. Kirk is black. Mack, our newest and still unproven, will be the yellow one.” Tooch held the bag up, jostled the balls, then lowered it and submerged his arm into the folds and came out with two, orange and yellow.

  “The Burke brothers,” War Haskew declared. “By God, a family affair,” and Mack felt his back slapped.

  Later in the evening the store had grown stuffy with the odor of smoke and sweat so they’d gone out to the porch where the world seemed fresh and cool, washed. Overhead the moon shone so brightly it came through the smoke of a cloud. The men kept talking, planning the raid on McCorquodale. Mack was told he’d cover the back, the easier job, as it was his first time.

  After a while he got up and went down the steps, reeling with a head full of drink, and as he was unbuttoning his trousers Tooch appeared beside him, unfastened his own pants, and began to piss.

  “You’ve joined us now,” he said, the sound of his water on the leaves, “and that’s a sacred vow, boy. You’ve signed in blood and that’s as hard a promise as you’ll ever make. You believe that?”

  He said he did.

  “Good. Now I want you to be real honest with me, Mack. You’re holding your pecker in your hand, and so that’ll be the thing you swear upon.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, though suddenly the urge to piss had vanished.

  “Supposed Oscar York comes out the back,” Tooch said. “Will you shoot him?”

  He thought.

  “I’m glad you didn’t answer fast,” Tooch said. “The man that answers too fast is the man that don’t consider things.”

  “I’ll shoot him,” he said.

  “You sure.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How is it you’re so sure?”

  Mack gave up and buttoned his trousers. “Because if I don’t, Lev will kill me.”

  Tooch was still pissing. “That’s a fact. But fear’s as good a reason as any for what we do, ain’t it? And guess what. Even though that’s your reason this time, next time you won’t need that to be the reason. Cause ever time you do something, no matter what it is, if it’s whacking a croquet ball or catching a fish, ever time you do a thing, the next time it’s a mite easie
r. And finally you get to be good at catching fish, or playing croquet, or even killing. You get to where you can do it without thinking.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mack said.

  “And now,” Tooch told him, shaking himself dry, fastening his own pants, “I got a mission for you.”

  “Who is it?” she called.

  He said his name. Behind him, Tooch’s horse nickered where he’d tied it. He’d ridden all the way over barely aware of the fine white mare between his legs, not even dismounting on the ferry.

  “Who sent you?”

  Lowering his voice, “Tooch did.”

  There was movement inside, her shadow under the door. “Tell me the word.”

  “Breech,” he said.

  The door opened. She was smoking a pipe. The dog looked him over, then returned to the corner by the hot stove and, circling several times, lay down.

  “How old are you?” She was looking at him funny, into his eyes.

  “Sixteen.”

  Her hair was more blond than he’d thought, her eyes blue. She wore a yellow dress with green and blue embroidered flowers on the bosom. Pleats below the waist. She was barefoot with small, dirty feet, a bandage around one toe.

  “You know the arrangement, I expect,” she said.

  He had the dollar ready, it had sweated in his hand all the way over. He held the coin out and she took it and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Well, then.” She knelt before him, her legs disappearing beneath her dress, and undid his pants. His eyes rolled back in his head, he had no idea where the coin had gone. He thought his knees might give over. She had his pecker out, handling him roughly. He understood it was an examination, but, Lord, it felt good.

  “This your first time, darling?”

  “I don’t remember.” He felt dizzy.

  “Alrighty.” She stood and peered frankly into his eyes and looked his face over. Then she crossed the room pulling the dress over her head. Beneath it she was naked, her wide bottom bruised in the shape of hands and her thick calves shadowed with dark hair. She crawled onto the bed and slipped under the covers, but not before he’d seen her enormous, drooping titties and the black thatch of hair between her legs. He looked down and saw he’d refastened his pants. She moved her legs under the quilt. A tiny black speck—a flea—landed on the back of his hand and sprang away.

  “Come on over here,” she said, “Mack.”

  “How you know my name?”

  “I know some things.”

  He took off his coat and hung it over a chair back, undid his suspenders and let them dangle along his thighs, began battling the buttons of his shirt.

  “Slow down,” she said. “It’s only a boy’s first time once.”

  He made his fingers undo the buttons at a reasonable rate. He told himself to remember every detail to think about later. He imagined telling it to William. Then knew he never would.

  He had his shirt off, but suddenly a pang of shyness clapped around him. As if she understood, Annie turned away, blew out the bedside lamp, and let him undress in the dim light the stove gave.

  He unlaced his shoes and stepped out of each, slid his pants down and left them crumpled atop the shoes, as if he’d been nabbed by the spirit world, snatched right down through the soles of his old brogans. Naked but for his hat and socks, he crawled onto the bed, the mattress soft under his knuckles but sandy, too. She put her hand on the back of his neck, pulled him close. Just the touch of her knees on his shoulders and the sweet-musty tang of a thing he’d never smelled before but recognized instantly sent him into ecstasy and without touching her he wet the sheets between her legs.

  “Shit,” he said, grabbing himself too late. His hand came away sticky. He was sick to his stomach in a sweet kind of way. His foot had a cramp.

  She giggled. “It’s okay, sugar. If I was made the way you was I’d a sprayed them sheets myself.” Her knees bumped against him. “Just come set up here beside me. Let’s talk a spell. In about fifteen minutes you’ll be ready to go again. You got another dollar, ain’t you?”

  He lay stiffly beside her while she kindled her pipe. “Don’t you sull up on me, now,” she said. “I don’t get too many good-looking boys in here with such nice clean peckers.” She moved and lay against him. A fire-yellowed room with dull edges. “Dern, you stiff as a board.” Her fingers touched his thigh and rubbed it up and down. “Relax, sugar. Close your eyes and breathe in and out.” The thick smell of her pipe.

  “Take off your hat.”

  He did.

  “Hang it on the post yonder.”

  He hung it.

  “Now pull off them old socks.”

  He pulled them off.

  She had been stroking him and now, suddenly, he stiffened in her grip.

  “Well goodness,” she said. “That’s the quickest one I ever laid a hand to. You been saving up, ain’t you?”

  She kept her pipe in her lips and rolled over, straddling him. Smoke had filled the dark corner where the bed was, making him dizzy. He nearly gagged. Her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth as she reached between her legs and guided him inside with deft fingers and slipped all the way down atop him with a slurp. He’d imagined it might be a more snug fit but no matter. Warmth had kindled in his pelvis and he forgot to breathe. The bedsprings jingled beneath them as she wiggled and bucked and did a thing where she tightened around his pecker and he felt his insides rally and gather, heard her quick breathing, the smoke burning his eyes.

  “You like it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Later he lay beneath her, he could feel her paunch of belly touch his flat one as she breathed. He’d grown soft, still embedded inside her, but didn’t want to leave her yet. She seemed to sense this, not moving. He gazed up at her, she was facing the stove. Here he lay and here she was on top of him, breathing with her mouth open and her false teeth out.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She giggled.

  Then she lay back onto the fronts of his thighs and put her ankles on his shoulders. It felt as if his whole middle—and hers—were a puddle of warm water.

  “I love you,” he repeated.

  “Lord, if you ain’t the sweetest thing,” she said, giggling again.

  Suddenly he was angry, gathering his legs to push her off. Then the dog began to bark.

  “Damn it to hell,” she said, rolling off him. His bare middle was very cold. He sat up and began groping for the covers.

  A pounding on the door.

  “What is it?” she called, feeling for the dress with her feet. The dog lay back down.

  Laughter. “Tooch, he sent me.” William’s voice was full of whiskey. “Hell-at-the-Breech, woman.”

  “Hell’s breech,” Lev’s voice added, “has done sent us all.”

  There followed a loud argument about who was going first, and then a scuffle, then William saying, “Okay, okay, let go, let go.”

  “Relax, sugar,” Annie said to Mack, who was trying to pull his pants over his boots. “Let ’em whoop up on each other for a spell.”

  When Mack stepped out with his hair ruffled they cheered. William handed him the whiskey jug and slapped him on the cheek. Lev fired his shotgun into the air. Buz Smith was pissing off the edge of the porch and grinning toothlessly and wagging his bushy eyebrows. Annie at the door looked out—she was mopping the space between her legs with a rag—and said, “My lord. Look at the mob of you.”

  He walked uphill in the pine-scented air scratching at the fleabites on his arms, the weather cold on his cheeks. They’d all fallen asleep on her floor and he’d awakened in the afternoon. His privates were sore and chapped so he walked a tad bowlegged, something William had teased him about as he’d left. Come with me, he’d asked his brother, but William had said no, he was going with Lev, get more to drink.

  How long since you seen her? he’d asked his brother.

  She don’t want to see us, William had said.

  Do what?
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  But William wouldn’t say why and Mack had gone on alone, leaving William the horse.

  Not too much longer now before dark. The widow would be putting supper on, piling her logs in the fireplace, maybe a crock of collards stewing. Or did she even make supper anymore? What was her life like now that her boys were gone? An image came to him, her rising in the morning and putting on water for the tea leaves she liked but forgetting to drink it. Going to the porch and sitting in her rocking chair, gazing out over the valley below her house, the dog already gone, left because she’d stopped feeding it and herself, nothing underneath her dress and men’s pants but bones now, the loose cloth and nothing else keeping her from blowing away. He walked faster.

  But when he smelled the sulfur breeze he stopped. How long since he’d been here, to the house where he’d grown up, to the old woman who’d given herself to raising them? How many nights had she carried him in his babyhood, how many nights staying up with him as he couldn’t breathe, talking to him, telling him stories, describing the ocean? And how had he repaid her? By killing a good man. He tried to recall Arch Bedsole’s face and couldn’t, could only picture Tooch, as if he were standing in front of Arch, blocking Mack’s view.

  The dog leapt from the porch when he came into sight, recognizing his walk or smell perhaps, and bounded toward him. He knelt and let her lick his cheeks and neck, unable to stop the laughter he barely recognized, the laughter of a boy.

  When he at last pushed her away, marveling at how she’d forgotten that here with her was the murderer of her six pups just a year before, he saw the old woman standing on the porch, holding something in her arms.

  “Granny,” he called.

  He walked so as to appear grown up, though he wanted to run to her and spring into her arms. And then he saw what she held.

  The baby. He’d forgotten it.

  “Macky,” she said.

  “Granny.”

  “You’re back.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Guess I am.”

  They looked at each other and he felt a hole open within his chest, one he knew would never fully close.

  “Tooch let me off,” he began, “and I figured—”