gallop, more of the air than earth, whooping and wheeling his arms.
For he was going at last to the woman who took in orphans! There were no other children in Old Texas and the boy wanted somebody to play with. Rumor claimed there were no rules in the orphanage ner chores neither and that you ate whatever you wanted whenever you wanted and went to bed when you chose and you could even screw the girls if you had a mind to. William R. McKissick Junior very much wanted to screw a girl. It was all he thought about. Screwing girls. Now here was his chance for some real cooter. He ran faster than he ever had before saying Cooter, cooter, cooter, cooter, cooter. Then he ran even faster than that, his new knife slicing the air like a curse on its course. If only he had the balloon.
4 THE CROW HUNTERS
EARLY THAT SAME SATURDAY, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE RIVER town of McIntosh and wild loamy climes north, Evavangeline happened upon a quartet of ancient horsemen in their tattered battle grays all these decades later and bearing long untidy beards the color of war. She’d lost her boots and guns to the Tombigbee’s currents and, because of her clothing and short hair, the foursome took her for a barefooted young whippersnapper as folk were wont to do in those simpler times and invited her along on a crow hunt up north ways. It was great fun, they promised, and they had whiskey.
You thank he’s too old? she heard one ask another under his breath.
Naw, he replied, then shushed his companion.
What the dickens yall shushing about? Evavangeline called.
Don’t be so testy, lad, said the man from his horse. You want a ride?
I’d ruther not. I can’t abide me a damn horse.
You a fool to run.
Best not say nothing like that to me when we tap into that whiskey.
Preciate the warning.
Within half a day the crow hunters and their new young compatriot had arrived at a blind made of corn shucks and cane stalks and positioned in the northwest corner of a dried-out cornfield. The men dismounted as Evavangeline leaned against a tree to catch her wind. One of the crow hunters led the horses out of sight and returned later and they all knelt together and entered the blind and lay waiting, their breath meaty and rank. They told jokes on one another and passed the bottle and belched and farted so densely her eyes stung.
You got a extry gun? Evavangeline asked the man nearest her. Faded chevron of a sergeant on his shoulder.
Naw, he said. I jest got my three ones here.
Well, if another one appears by holy miracle in ye waistband or coat pocket or asshole, will ye lend me it a spell?
I will, said the man. He popped her on the rump.
The bottle came her way again. She drank a snort. She could feel it travel the length of her body like a herd of iddy biddy horses. With little naked men mounted upon them. With every swig there were more little horses and more little men.
A hunter told one about his army buddy getting his legs chopped off by mistake and they all laughed and one man spewed whiskey out his nose.
Don’t be wastin that, the first hunter said.
It’s yer turn, they said to Evavangeline. To tell one.
I ain’t got nare.
Got a big ole red scar, one of the men said. On ye neck yonder.
Well, she said, there’s a story.
She told about the time she got in a fight with two Irish. She and the Irish were hiding in an alley together. Evavangeline twelve or thereabouts. The potato-eaters, grown men, made fun of her red spot and she told them to go screw they selves. They came at her and she kicked the front one in the balls and got a fist in the jaw from the other. But his follow-through took him off balance and she uppercut him with her knee and split his lip.
Then I slit both they thoats and rolled em, she said. Did ye like that story?
Damnation, the hunter cried. I’m a veteran. Ever white man of my generation’s been shot. If they ain’t ye can’t trust em. I meant no offense.
We all got scars, another man said.
In a huff, she climbed out the back to make water.
She was squatted there, her head cottony from the whiskey, when the veteran hooted. He’d stumbled out for a piss himself.
Hey fellers! he called. This here high-strung one’s a split-tail!
She tried to rise but he grabbed her ankles. He dragged her hollering and bare-assed and clawing at the turf around to the front of the blind and the others climbed out with the bottle.
This here’s a genuine piece of tail, boys, the veteran said. He unfastened his fly and leapt forward. He prized her knees apart and began to hum “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand” and poke his dong about her thighs.
Boy hidy, said one of the men watching. I call next.
She tried to clamp her knees but he was in there. Then her hand happened upon the pistol he wore backward on his belt. She squeaked the gun from its holster and flipped it in the air like a circus shooter. In quick succession she shot the three men witnessing—gut, chest, neck—who hit the ground dead still holding their peckers before the fellow atop her realized she had the barrel under his chin.
Wait, he grunted, I’m fixing to get a nut—
But he didn’t.
She shoved him away dead, his member still engorged and purple like an obscene mushroom. She swapt it off with his own bootknife and watched the stump blurt a rope of blood and spume like that fountain they had down in Mobile where men went to meet other men.
Sitting in the dirt, she held her head for a while, then pulled on her pants. Insects were gathering at the edge of the pooling blood like souls needing baptism. She wrenched the boots from the veteran and stabbed her feet into them. She reloaded his revolver and shot him a few more times in the gape where his jaw had been and collected their guns and then, despite her disinclination, she found the horses where they were tied and freed three and for herself chose the tall bay with spotted legs and leapt into the saddle.
In the afternoon the field began to fill up with crows gorging on corn. After a while they came through the stalks and gorged on the eyes of the men, and then their tongues.
Meanwhile, time passes. The chase stretches. The men endure. Some forget who they’re chasing or why.
But Walton never forgets. They’ve commandeered a steamship now, chugging upriver, the horses irritable, the men bored.
A river is no place for a man, the Christian Deputy leader thinks, pacing up the deck and back. On the bank he sees a wildcat lift its dripping muzzle from a slain “razorback” hog. Walton flings his hand in the air. There! That is the life for a man. Any moment that a man is not wearing a bloody beard he is less than he can be. The leader gave a two-fingered salute. You are manly, noble wildcat! But not I, not with this, not with this, with this, this, this this this this
Lord forgive the profane word I just thought in my head. My flawed human brain! No excuse but my pent-up wrath at this sinner I’m chasing. I won’t even say her name. She “galls” me, Lord. This Evavangeline. She tempts me, my Savior. They all think she’s a man but I know the truth, O Lord Savior. Mine eyes are better than mine companions’ eyes are and I was first in the door, Lord Jesus, and I know that while they are just mites, they are womanly breasts indeed, Lord Jesus Christ, and what else she had, O God in Heaven, I won’t mention in Your Devine Presence, but You of course know Yourself, don’t You, as Your Noble Lucky Hands formed it Themselves, didn’t They, Lord? There it was, glistening, O Holy, just for the flick of a second, Lord Jesus Christ Above, and I saw it from behind! Her “cooter,” Lord! Her delicious red vulva! Lord my Christ my Healer! And thus I am forever tempted by this woman. Evavangeline. Evavangeline. Hers is the first vulva I have seen other than Mother’s, O
