'Ever see a man die by whip, Bogart?' Bigboy asked.
'Seen one,' said Earl. 'An old man chained. Don't take much guts wise to kill a chained-up old man.'
'You'd be surprised. Lots don't have the entrails for the work. But I see he was talking about you at the end. You came back, riding a pale horse, just like he said you would. You've done good, Bogart. The sky is bright with what you've done. You are a hero. But remember once I told you about the hero's flaw. It's his vanity. Do you know what that means?
Self-love. Self-adoration. And that's your flaw. You came out here alone. Where are those other fellows with all their guns? I knew you'd come alone, even if you didn't, for what good's being a hero in a fairy tale if you don't face the beast? That's what's ticking away inside you.'
'This ain't no fairy tale.'
'No, it ain't. This is the whip man with nine feet of cat rawhide for you, delivered in licks so perfect you won't believe it. I took one ear.
I'll take the other. I'll take the nose and the fingers and the eyes and the knees. Then I'll put such a roar of lashes against you, you'll pray to die. I'll take each of your nerves. Then I won't kill you. Then I'll leave you blind and tongueless and paralyzed and hideous ugly as a human stump. That'll be Bigboy's bequest to the world.'
The whip snaked and this time it cracked at Earl's good ear with a sound so loud it all but busted the eardrum.
'Who are you?' Bigboy said. 'Tell me that and I'll hit you so hard upside the head you'll go unconscious, and I'll get one of those guns and shoot you neat in the heart. Who are you?'
'Bogash. I'm a truck driver. I hope to run a hunting lodge down here for rich sportsmen from Little Rock.'
'You are a stubborn bastard.'
Earl rushed. He wasn't fast enough. Bigboy pinwheeled the whip and flicked three cuts into Earl so explosively he knocked Earl down in the dust. Where the cuts were it hurt so bad he thought he'd die. Who knew a thing could hurt like that?
'Bad, huh? Yeah, it gets worse. You can't do it. No man can face up to the whip man, no matter how tough and quick he is. It can't be done.'
Earl came again and learned the same lesson, only worse. This time the whip man lashed him perfectly on the top of one hand, opening a deep cut. That hand went numb and useless at once, as if it had been stung by a hundred bees. It swelled into something fat and puffy and yellow.
'You still ain't close enough. You think you can get inside the whip?
That's what they all think. But no one can take the pain, no one. And no one's got that kind of speed to him.'
'One of my boys'll be along soon. He'll shoot you dead and laugh about it. He's killed plenty in his time.'
'That little kid?' said Bigboy. 'He looks like he'd wet his pants you yell at him. Only that one's long passed. I take it he's going to blow the levee and flood the place. A good plan. It'll let me slip away, too, and start again, and wouldn't you know I've got a pretty penny cached in New Orleans banks. You're really doing me a favor and?'
Earl's fingers scooped and tossed a cloud of dust toward Bigboy's eyes, but it didn't produce blindness, only laughter.
'That's a good one. Oh, ain't I seen that in two hundred pictures or so.
And I'm so stupid I'm going to fall for that one! You must not even yet know who I am.'
Think! Earl demanded of himself.
Read him! What's he going to do next? Anticipate.
Earl stood and backed off a few feet.
'Oh, you think you can get away. I'll take you down across the ankles and whip your back so raw you can't move a bit. You want that? It could be so easy. You tell me who you are and the lights go out. No pain.'
'Except after I tell you, you tell me you're going to kill my wife and boy after you kill me. Then you whip me slow, laughing.' 'You got an imagination,' said Bigboy. 'That I give you, an imagination.'
An insight passed into Earl's mind. He is a fighter. He is a fighter with a long right-hand punch. You rotate away from it.
He began to rotate to his own right.
'Where you going, son? You think this is a boxing match? You think you can out-think me?'
With that Bigboy pivoted to his own left, and snapped the whip into the dust to Earl's immediate right, to stand him still. But Earl saw it coming, for that was Earl's gift, and though he knew he'd never be fast enough to catch the whip with foot or hand and pin it, he might bring that trick off with his whole body, and even before Bigboy had pivoted for his strike, Earl had started his dart to the ground, and in the same second the whip lashed the dust, he landed on it, stilled it, and rolled three spins toward Bigboy and came up until they faced each other across three feet of dead whip now wrapped tight to Earl's body.
A flash of panic hit the big man's eyes, but Earl stepped in and hit him hard in the nose, breaking it, and the big man recoiled, roared in pain, and grappled bear wise against Earl, his big strong arms crushing the smaller man.
Earl bit his fucking nose. Didn't know where that trick came from, it was just what he did.
Bigboy loosened his grip and the two spun, groping for advantage, until it arrived at Bigboy, who lifted Earl off his feet and threw him seven feet through the air, where he crashed into the shed of tools, splintering it.
Bigboy waited for the man to pull himself up so that he could finish the job, and had even begun to move in for the kill, when he came to an abrupt halt. Earl staggered from the wreckage, but rotated slightly, blinking to clear his mind, and as he turned he revealed that in his hand he held an ax.
'You want your whip back, sir?' Earl inquired. 'Come on over here and get it.'
Bigboy's eyes dropped and he feinted a retreat, but Earl had seen this move, too, and as the big man came at him full bore, too close for Earl to swing the blade in an over-the-shoulder arc, Earl dipped under the rush and heaved through his arc horizontally. It lit with a thunk and was then torn from his grip.
Bigboy stepped back and looked with curiosity at the ax blade sunk into his hip, and the black blood that welled from it, and the two feet of wooden haft that hung off it. He went to one knee, groggy, shaking his head as if to make the spiders and firecrackers leave his mind.
Earl had another ax by this time, and when the big man regained his sense of purpose and came at him, Earl was fast enough to sidestep, and go top to bottom with his arc, and bury this one in the shoulder.
The two axes stuck deep in the big man, each slightly aquiver. Big boy turned, spied Earl with ax Number 3.
'You goddamned bastard,' he said.
He lurched, with enough power still but no speed, and Earl planted this one in his stomach, hanging it up among the loops of entrails which split open, and it wasn't just blood that came out, it was also shit and turnips.
'You bastard,' he said again, and Earl was amazed that the man was so tough. He had never seen toughness like this, not even from the Jap naval infantry. But that didn't stop him from seizing another ax from the pile. Bigboy staggered left, and reached for his own ax, and Earl chopped off his right hand. Bigboy looked at the stump, as if to waggle phantom fingers, but became fascinated with the arterial spray spurting from the wound. Then, once more he launched himself, and Earl teed off with the fourth ax, a ballplayer with a fat pitch too slow to miss. He felt like Dimaggio. It went with a noise that was new to his ears, unheard even in all the close combat of the Pacific, on the diagonal across Bigboy's face, tearing out eye and nose and cheekbone, and he stepped groggily away as if he couldn't yet believe this thing had happened to him and looked at Earl, face halved like a melon by the last of the axes, which all still lay set in him.
'Earl Swagger,' Earl said. 'United States Marine Corps.'
Bigboy fell at last, as dead as they get.
Somehow the town itself became engulfed in flame. No bombs had been thrown. But evidently in the melee, as the convicts ripped lumber from the dogtrot cabins and hammered them into frameworks on the pontoons of the waterproof coffins, a lamp was spilled over. That flame caught, and a wind or whatever propelled its jump to another cabin and another.
The conflagration didn't matter, though. By this time, far into the night, the original townspeople had long since departed, taking with them what they could, cached money and food, old photos, a treasured Bible. Sally had been everywhere among them, cajoling, speaking gently, helping the elderly, giving guidance or medical help or
