Hell at the Breech

by Tom Franklin

  “Where?”

  He pointed west.

  This went on for a long time. Buz finally went to the mail desk and got paper and a pencil and drew a stick man with a star on his chest.

  “Tom Hill? Justice of the peace?”

  Shaking his head.

  “Billy Waite?”

  Nodding. He drew a smaller stick figure.

  “Mack?”

  Nodding. He drew two others, pointing at himself and then to one of the men.

  “You and Huz?”

  Yes. He drew them as they’d been in the woods and then drew three other men sneaking up behind them.

  “Who were they?”

  Shrug.

  Tooch looked out the window again. “If it’s three fellows I ain’t worried. But if it’s more. You think it’s more?”

  Shrug.

  Tooch had laid out several pistols on the counter. He picked up a Winchester and checked its loads. He went to the window. He asked if Buz was hungry and he nodded. “Go on get something,” Tooch said, pointing to a shelf. Buz went about cutting precise squares of cheese and laying them on several crackers he’d lined up along the counter by his pistol and several groups of cartridges he’d clumped into sixes. Tooch walked up and down the aisle.

  “Where the hell’s War and them?” he asked.

  Buz shrugged, chewing.

  “Didn’t I say come back at dawn? It’s on past dawn now, by a spell.” He walked to the front.

  In a few minutes he turned and walked to where he kept the mustache wax and got a tin of it and unscrewed the lid and reached a pair of fingers in and began to twist at the ends of his mustache. He climbed the ladder to where his room was and when he came down he wore a clean white shirt. He got a rag and some shoe polish from a shelf and set about polishing his boots by the window, watching the road more than his work. The clock had just struck ten when he looked up and down and then back up. When he saw how many men it was, he stood. He picked up a pistol from the counter and laid it back down. He looked at Buz Smith.

  “Well,” Tooch said.

  Buz shook his head and pointed to the back.

  “I won’t run,” Tooch said. “They ain’t got nothing on us. If we run they know we’re guilty and they’ll catch us.”

  Buz waved good-bye and trotted down the aisle, grabbing up cartridges and pistols, and he went out the back door, still chewing.

  The store appeared in the distance, and if the posse had expected an army of Tooch’s disciples they saw only the store leaking smoke into the sky. Mack hoped Tooch had left, hoped they all had. He understood that his brother might be dead but turned his thoughts from this.

  Waite whoaed King and turned him sideways in the road, a barrier between the store and the throng of men. He looked behind him as they wiped rain from their rifles and checked the loads in their sidearms. They rattled and clanked, the horses blew and neighed. Some of the men rolled up their sleeves, others pushed their hats back off their heads. The Thompson brothers sat unmoving and side by side like statues of soldiers that might flank the steps up to a regal building. Behind them the pharmacist seemed to be praying and others stared straight ahead. Oscar sat grimly in his flapping coat with his shoulders hunched. He looked at Waite as if they were boys again.

  “You’ll follow my lead,” Waite called. He pulled his pistol from his side. “We won’t have another massacre. If any damned one of you gets out of line in any way, I’ll shoot him myself. Y’all got it?”

  Mumbled assent.

  “Come on, then,” he said, turning King.

  They galloped up in the mud and lined their horses in front of the porch. Every man aimed his gun at the storefront and some aimed pairs of pistols and men were creeping in the sheds on both sides and men were going around back. Tooch was surrounded. Mack hoped again that William was safe, that he would get the hell out of Mitcham Beat and go someplace else. He and the widow could meet up later and go west. See the flat land of the middle west and then climb the mountains and cross the desert to the ocean the widow had described, warm and forever.

  For a moment he found himself beside Waite as they sat their horses in front of the store, waiting.

  “Just be still,” the sheriff said. “Don’t look. This will be over soon.”

  With the men focusing on the store, Mack used his left thumb and forefinger to hold the key and tried to get its teeth into the slot.

  Waite moved his horse to the front of the ranks and called for Tooch Bedsole and his men to come on out, hands in the air. He said surrender or we’ll set fire to the store. He said they had ten seconds. Now nine. Eight. Already there were men lighting torches along the sides of the building, their pistols drawn.

  Six seconds, Waite called.

  For a long moment nothing happened. Each second crystallized in the air and passed.

  Then the door opened and out came Tooch. A noise passed over the posse, breath held and let go and leather creaking, the jingle of spur and clack of metal.

  Tooch carried no pistol and wore no coat so they could see he wasn’t armed. Mack wondered why he would come out of the store like this. Why he hadn’t run. Why he stood facing fifty and some upraised firearms with his arms folded. With an ease almost cordial he studied each face behind each barrel with his eyes glittering as if he meant to memorize the events of his own death. The participants. When he came to Waite he gave the shadow of a smile but when he looked at Mack it was with no more or less attention than he gave any other man.

  The sheriff spurred his horse into the dirt between Tooch and the posse. “Tooch Bedsole,” he said.

  “My given name is Quincy,” Tooch said.

  “We know you’re the ringleader of Hell-at-the-Breech,” the sheriff said, “and that at your command such fellows as Lev James have acted. We know you’ve robbed and committed other crimes. We know that you’re responsible for the deaths of Joe Anderson, Ernest McCorquodale, and for the attempted murder of Bit Owen.”

  “Who?” Tooch raised an eyebrow at the name of Bit Owen, but he betrayed nothing else.

  “Friend of mine,” Waite said. “Got some cuts on his neck but he’s in my custody with a hell of a story to tell.”

  Tooch’s eyes narrowed as he cast them over the men before him and Mack thought of the other meeting so long ago and understood that Tooch had lost. He wondered how Tooch didn’t seem to know this.

  “Do you deny knowledge of the things I’m speaking about?” Waite asked.

  “I do,” Tooch said.

  “You deny knowledge of the death of Joe Anderson?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Deny knowledge of the death of Ernest McCorquodale?”

  Tooch seemed at ease. He said, “I’m innocent of ever charge you brought up and of ever one you’ll bring up. I’m a storeowner and a law-abiding citizen, nothing more. If lawless folks are at work, I don’t know ’em. If Ernest McCorquodale’s dead, I don’t know one thing about it. He was a son-of-a-bitch that had enemies, he’d put many a family out. I expect any of these fellows who live out here would be happy about his going under. But I don’t know nothing of it other than what you’ve said. Of Joe Anderson’s death, I only know what I heard. And if you say ‘Bit Owen’ to me, all I can say back is ‘Who?’”

  A murmur went through the posse. He was proclaimed liar, killer, dead man.

  “You ain’t got to do nothing but ask any man in this beat,” Tooch said. “They’ll tell you my reputation. There’s ain’t one here who’ll speak out against me. I see some out there now, among your number. I’m glad they’re here to offer my defense.”

  He looked into the crowd, his eyes settling on Tom Hill.

  “Our good Justice of the Peace,” Tooch said. “Surely you’ll take this man’s word. Tell ’em, Tom. Tell ’em my reputation.”

  Hill sat on his horse. He’d removed the handkerchief from his rifle barrel and now used it to blow his nose. The members of the posse glanced at him but kept their weapons on Tooch.

/>   “I can’t proclaim your innocence,” Hill said, “any more than I can your guilt. I’m only here trying to protect innocent folks so these murderous bastards won’t kill no more children.”

  As if he didn’t hear, Tooch looked to Jonesy Gray, enormous on his mule, his feet nearly dragging the ground. “Tell them, Jonesy. Did you ever see me commit a crime?”

  Gray didn’t answer but looked down at his hands. His cheeks were colored bright red in splotches.

  Tooch turned to one of the farmers the posse had drafted. “Lou,” he said. “Tell these men of my innocence.”

  That man lowered his head.

  “You,” Tooch said to another man, and another. None spoke for him.

  Then, “Mack Burke,” he called.

  All eyes fell upon the boy.

  “You’ve worked in this store along with me for more than a year. Tell these men, have you ever witnessed any unlawful acts here on these premises?”

  Mack’s ears blazed on the sides of his head. He felt sweat underneath his eyes.

  “The boy condemns you with his silence,” Waite said.

  Then Mack cried, “No.” His voice was high, a child’s voice. “I ain’t never seen him do nothing bad.” Mack didn’t know the reason he said it, and he would always wonder. Was it pity, guilt, loyalty—or was he simply offering Tooch, here at the end, the only thing he could, proof that the man still possessed the power to endear and ensnare?

  Waite looked back over his shoulder, his lips pursed. Something like wonderment softened the lines in his face and his eyebrows moved up his forehead.

  Someone laughed, then another man, then all were laughing except Mack, Waite, and Tooch.

  Then the moment had passed. Tooch was saying something else. He had moved his eyes past Mack. He was unbuttoning his shirt. He unbuttoned it and spread it open so his chest showed. Bare and flat. Small. Very white.

  “You’ll not dare shoot me,” he said. “You men are here representing the law. You a justice of the peace. You a sheriff. And you have no evidence.”

  All the men were looking at Waite for instruction. Their rifles, shotguns, and pistols were ready. Mack saw that the sheriff now seemed very old and very tired. He and Mack, of them all, were the only two without a weapon pointed at the pale white torso of Tooch Bedsole.

  Waite’s horse began to back up, working its hips past the shoulders of two other horses.

  Tooch was shaking his head. He raised a foot as if to step back.

  “Fire,” Waite said.

  There came a sound as Mack had never heard, that of twenty then thirty then fifty guns shooting. The air seemed to bloom, to blaze with fire and cordite, the noise to come from inside his head.

  Tooch outheld his hands as if to frighten a child but by then he was shaking in a kind of unnatural dance with his mouth opened and eyes wide and the hands out still, with one and then another finger disappearing and bright red circles in his palms and then he was suddenly yanked backward as if by a gust of wind. The air around him a red mist. His arms shaking. The glass windows exploding. His clothes jerked as if bats were trapped in them, pieces of paper from his pockets floating around him. He staggered back into the door, then stepped forward again, already dead, into a wall of bullets and went back yet again. Then he crumpled. Still they kept shooting. Black holes appeared in the bottoms of his feet and scraps of paper turned in the smoke. The boards around him sparked as bullets hit nails. Wall of the store splintered and fragments of glass hung in their molding. Very bright blood began to spread in a circle around Tooch and he lay jerking only because bullets kept hitting him. Something sang past Mack’s ear and he wondered if it was a ricochet.

  They’d been walking along the road heading east, half a mile from the store, when the drumming of horses stopped them in their tracks. William dropped the empty jug. Without a sound they bounded for cover and had just slid down in the leaves when more horses than they’d ever seen thundered past. They saw Judge Oscar York, they saw the sheriff, and they saw—wearing a cold, startled look—Mack Burke.

  “What the hell?” War Haskew said.

  They filled the woods with their breathing as they batted their way through and at last, at the field’s edge, over the picked cotton, beheld from a distance of nearly fifty yards Tooch from the waist up standing on the porch talking to the mob of riders.

  “Your brother.” War Haskew spat. “He’s one of ’em.”

  “No, hell he ain’t,” William said. He pointed. “Look, he ain’t even got a gun. He must be a prisoner.”

  “What ought we to do?” War Haskew said.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Kirk said. “Ain’t no way in hell to outgun that mob.”

  “He’ll talk his way out,” War Haskew said.

  “No,” Kirk said. “Not this time he won’t.”

  Then they saw a curious thing. Tooch began to unbutton his shirt.

  Kirk said, “What the hell?” again, and they saw Tooch’s lips move as he spoke words they couldn’t hear.

  Then the shooting began.

  Tooch raised his hands and danced and fell back and hit the door and came forward again. They kept shooting.

  “Goddamn,” War Haskew shouted, and raised his rifle.

  “No,” Kirk said, but War had fired already.

  In the distance Tooch had vanished, they couldn’t see him over the horses and the men on the horses. William was firing, too, and yelling for War not to hit Mack but Kirk had already run.

  “Cease fire!” Waite was yelling at stragglers—men who’d been late shooting, those with jammed rifles or those who’d needed gunfire to summon their nerve.

  Another bullet whizzed past his ear. Waite looked across the field and saw the smoke.

  “We’re being shot at,” he yelled, pointing. He tried to wheel King around but bumped into somebody’s horse. He looked for the boy, but a shot hit the ground beside him with a thud. He tried to aim across the field but King turned again.

  Now others in the posse had caught on and were turning their screaming horses. They were trying to reload, dropping bullets, a panic setting in. A man Waite didn’t know chirped in pain and fell and lay gasping in the dirt, clutching his neck or shoulder. Tom Hill and his friends were riding off. Several others had drawn second or third guns and were shooting wildly in the air and at the trees and then the Thompsons were leading a charge over the field, Claudius firing his long pistol and Virgil the one-armed brother with his sword drawn and reins in his teeth.

  Waite worked to get King settled. The shooting had stopped and the Thompson brothers paused at the edge of the woods to wait for reinforcements before they began the chase. His horse calm, Waite sought Oscar’s eyes but his cousin was staring at Tooch Bedsole where he lay in a red muck.

  The men with torches were lighting the building afire, though Waite hadn’t ordered it and flames were racing up the walls and smoke poured from the chimney in the back. Something popped inside the store and then a window burst out, fire eating its way up the boards and onto the roof.

  Oscar dismounted and tried to pull his horse away, watching. He took his hat off. “My Lord,” he said.

  The last of the unhurt riders had recovered their mounts and most were crossing the road. The dentist was seeing to a man who’d been shot, yelling for him to hold still. Another—lying on his back, a wound in his neck—looked dead already, Waite didn’t know his name. He walked to the edge of the field where riders were entering the woods and then looked back. To the east. The west. “Macky,” he said.

  William and War Haskew had shot their rifles empty before the men across the field realized they were being fired upon. Calmly, they reloaded.

  “I ain’t never shot this bad in my life,” War Haskew remarked.

  “What?” William said. He couldn’t hear.

  They raised their guns for another volley, War Haskew firing exclusively at Sheriff Waite as he looked their direction and pointed.

  Now the mob’s horses began t
o rear and buck. The man next to Waite fell. William had reloaded a third time and begun firing again when War Haskew took him gently by the shoulder.

  “Let’s get on out of here, buddy,” he said. “They’ll be coming.”

  “Do what?” William yelled.

  Some of the men were pointing to their position where smoke from their firing hung thick. William waved wildly to scatter its rags from his face.

  “If we don’t go now,” War Haskew yelled back, “we don’t ever go!”

  Men were already gathering for a charge, two old longhaired soldiers halfway over the field. Bullets clipped leaves and hummed through the limbs. William looked for Mack but couldn’t see him for the smoke. Maybe he’d got loose.

  He and War Haskew turned and ran.

  “Split up,” War called.

  William nodded and veered left down a gradual incline toward where he knew the woods grew thicker. His hat flew off. His feet smacked over the leaves. The ground dropped sharply like a step and he lost his footing and slid on his hands and knees in a froth of leaves to the bottom and landed running, thick arches of briar springing up, snatching at his clothes. He’d lost his pistol in the fall but didn’t go back for it.

  The trail tapered into nothing and he burst through a beard of Spanish moss, strings of which clung to him ferally, and he kept running, tiny barbs and thorns in his cheeks and neck and his right eye weeping blood and blurry from a whipped limb, a sharp pain in his side, cold tears tracking the dirt on his cheek. They’d lose the advantages of their horses in here, though, and if he got lucky he might be able to get to the Bear Thicket where you’d be crazy to go if you didn’t have to. Running, ducking low limbs and dodging vines, he worked at reloading his rifle.

  At the store, a few men remained in the road, some tending jammed weapons, others simply watching the fire, their hats clutched in their fists. A couple in the cotton field were chasing a spooked pony. Oscar had taken off his long coat. He removed his gloves with shaking hands and let them drop to the ground and pushed back his hat, his hair soaked with sweat.

  Waite stuck to business. Kneeling, he sought a pulse in the wrist of the neck-shot man and, not finding one, removed the man’s coat and covered him with it. He pinned the arms of the other shot man as the dentist bound a wound in his upper thigh.