Killing Mr. Sunday

shooting. His memory was as cloudy as was his blind

eye. How his bad eye got to be blind and when, he

couldn’t say.

Sometimes he got lucky and a gray wolf would

come loping within range. He liked them roasted

best; they were gamier than regular dog, but much

more tasty than badger.

All day he sat like that, even in bad weather, unless

it rained so hard he couldn’t see even with his good

eye. For life had come down to eating, shitting, and

sleeping. Wasn’t no use to worry about anything else,

but a tooth had recently caused him a ton of misery

and forced him to consider prying it out of his mouth,

though he hated the prospect of the pain it would

cause him.

So it was while waiting for something alive to come

along he could shoot and eat that Genius Jackson saw

the approach of a buggy with two folks in it—more

folks than he had seen in months, especially at one

time. It had been four full days since he’d last eaten: a

three-foot coontail rattler that had crawled out from

under the pile of tin cans in pursuit of a pack rat.

His tooth throbbed against his jawbone—one of

them back teeth hard to get at—until it felt like a

clock of misery ticking in his mouth. He’d tried the

previous evening prying it out with the tip of his knife

but it was about like trying to swallow a hot poker.

The pain nearly blinded him in his good eye.

“Look,” the Swede said to Martha. “There’s a nice

house we can move into.”

Martha remained silent. She didn’t want to say or

do anything that would either encourage or discour-

age him. He had that little pistol she was sure he

would not hesitate to use on her. So far, the Swede

had not tried to have relations with her, and for that

she was grateful. She did not want to be unfaithful to

Otis, even if he was dead. And she certainly did not

want to be unfaithful with a man as ugly and crazy as

the Swede.

Martha could see a man sitting on a chair in front

of the distant shack that obviously the Swede could

not. She’d noticed among other things about the

Swede that he squinted a great deal. The sight of an-

other human gave her hope for salvation.

“Oh,” said the Swede as they drew nearer and saw

Genius Jackson sitting on a chair out front. “Some-

body has come to visit . . .”

“Maybe he’s a friend,” Martha said, summoning

up her courage to try and entice the Swede to stop in-

stead of swinging wide of the place.

“Yah, maybe so.”

Martha could see that when the man stood he had

the posture of a nail hit wrong. He had a rifle in his

hands. No shoes and bareheaded.

The Swede drew reins. The wind brought with it

the smell of wet grass.

“Who you and what you want?” Genius Jackson

said.

“I am Bjorn and this is my wife,” the Swede said.

Martha shook her head ever so slightly hoping the

old man would catch her meaning. He didn’t seem to.

“You still ain’t said what you’re doing here, Yorn.”

“I like this house. We going to move in. You got the

keys?”

Genius Jackson’s gaze drifted to Martha and

stayed on her and she could see he had one clear eye

and one that was milky.

Lord god almighty, when was the last time he’d

lain with a woman? He couldn’t recall. Maybe the

summer of fifty-two when he was yet a young waddy?

Or was it in his whiskey-peddling days down in the

Nations? Seemed like there was a squaw woman had

butternut color skin and fat thighs and smelt like

woodsmoke he could recall. It caused his flesh to

crawl just thinking about having a woman.

“Move in, you say?”

“Yah.”

“ ’At might be all right. Get on down from there

and let’s have a look at you and the missus.”

Genius Jackson’s mind was doing a buck dance at

the sight of Martha.

It hadn’t escaped her notice the way the old devil

was watching her. If she had a plugged nickel for every

man who looked at a woman with that same look in

their eye she’d be living in a palace in Egypt. But she

knew, too, that a man with that on his mind could

work to her advantage. Nothing created a distraction

like men fighting over a woman, and a distraction was

exactly what she needed.

“Water?” the Swede said. “My got, it’s been two,

maybe three days since we had something to drink,

yah.” It hadn’t really been that long, but it seemed to

him as though it had.

“The well stands yonder, help yourself,” Genius

Jackson said, hooking a thumb toward the well.

The Swede took Martha by the wrist and led her

over to the well, then winched up a bucket of pure

cold water. He used a hanging tin dipper to slake his

thirst, then handed it to her. Both men watched the