Smonk

our Citizens beating them with his Fist at Night when good People ought to be in Bed getting ready for their Day of Labor. In a bold Gesture We Citizens of Old Texas have brought criminal Charges against Mr. Smonk. Mr. Smonk claims He will attend the Trial only if a Judge of the State Circuit is brought to mediate the Matters. No One Man or Group of Men will go to his Land and arrest Him. He is armed with Weapons from the United States Army,” et cetera, et cetera.

The part he didn’t read further said: “Since We are on your Circuit, We find it curious that you have not visited our Village in more than one Year. What might the Governor think.”

Signed, the judge finished, Justice of the Peace and Beat Supervisor and U.S. Postmaster M. Elmer Tate. Owner of the Tate Hotel.

He folded the letter away. After that alarming news, he said, I began to use my copious influence and asked around about our Mister Smonk, and listen what I found out. Jest listen. Apparently it’s been years old E.O.’s done slipped around the law, hither and yon all over the goddamn country. Years I said. Rumors mostly. Accounts as far west as Nevada and as far south as Mexico north up to Dakota. Man that always gets what he wants. One way another. Threats of violence and actual violence. Lawyers when he can use em cheap, gunmen if he can’t. Bribes, extortion, name it. Blackmail. No crime ner coercion small ner large enough, with no loyalty ner fealty to country ner king. But impossible to nab. What do ye think of that, bailiff?

What?

That he disappears at will and is gone for a year then turns up someplace else. That nobody knows where he come from ner what he is. He was likely born out west where the law’s jest now setting its teeth. Such an abomination as Smonk is would of never been allowed to carry on so far here in the Confederacy. He paused and took a long drink and continued. The part I don’t understand is that for some reason not given in this letter, he’s chose my quadrant of the goddamn county for a base of operation in these his waning years.

The bailiff shifted in his chair.

You okay there? Please leave the room if ye need to pass gas.

I’m hunkydory. Can ye get to the point?

The goddamn point is we could of strang him up—fount him guilty, is what I’m saying—but instead this town of fools tries to lynch him unbeknownst to me and of course he escapes. Old Texas! What in the hell was yall thinking anyway? Leaving all ye guns on a sideboard? Not a single goddamn dead-eye sniper hid anywheres?

The women had guns. They was hid.

The women.

We figured he’d of smelt something if we done anything different like. Out of the ordinary.

Well, he might of at that. What I hear he’s had his share of experiences walking into and out of courthouse doors and he’s got an extry sense about him. How come nobody informed me of the plot?

The bailiff looked out a window.

Well?

Don’t nobody trust ye.

There’s a fine hidy-do, ain’t it. God almighty damn. At least with Smonk a body knows where he stands.

The bailiff worked his jaw. Best take care not to sound like ye admire the bastard too much.

Who wouldn’t admire the gall of a fellow brings a machine gun and a peck of hired killers to his own goddamn trial? Who wouldn’t admire a fellow never leaves a trail of evidence? That’s got this far in the world and galled so many folks and killed twice that number and cheated the rest, all without being blowed to itty bitty pieces or hanged by his goddamn neck or succumbing to one of the countless infirmities he seems to collect like a goddamn hobby, hell yeah I admire the son-of-a-bitch.

The judge took his monocle off and polished it with his handkerchief. His eye looked small and weak without it, a puddle drying up. Well, he said, if you’ll permit me, this next part’s why I’m a goddamn circuit judge and you only a bailiff. See, what none of yall folks know out here in the wilderness between the rivers is that I’m a man of principle like none you’ve met. When I learned of this Smonk’s existence, at great personal expense I sought him out to discern and divine his motives. With only the good of my constituents in mind and of course the interest of science and theology as well.

The meeting had occurred a week before, the judge remembered, down south in Mobile, where he’d met Smonk for supper in a dive overlooking the bay. Smonk had brought a big ball-headed nigger and a chink whore in with him and several people got up and left the room.

I don’t usually eat with niggers, the judge had said, his black coat folded over his arm. Chinks neither.

Smonk bumped the table sliding in. We don’t usually eat with judges.

They’d had shrimp, which the judge despised. Bugs were what they looked like to him. He’d enjoyed the broiled potatoes, however, and speared them with his fork and added salt and chewed slowly as Smonk gobbled his shrimp—legs and shell and back veins in his beard—and rambled about the bridges he’d blown up in the War with the Spanish. How crucial the placement of the charge. How perfect the timing need be. How you always get your pay in advance. The ball-headed nigger never said a word, just ate quietly and with perfect manners which offended the judge. They were in a corner booth overlooking the water and shaded by a shutter propped open with a pool cue. Every door in the dive had a horseshoe nailed over it with the ends up.

His shoulders to the wall, Smonk smoked one cigar after another and ate a raw onion like an apple and had fits of coughing that shook the table. Once, he spilled a cup of salt then scooped a few grains and flicked them behind him. The judge had heard Smonk never left a building by any door except the one he’d entered. That he wouldn’t touch a toadfrog. Wouldn’t begin a trip on Sunday or bring anything black aboard a boat. Wouldn’t carry a hoe, ax or shovel into a house. That he never stepped over a fishing pole or under a ladder. Never swept beneath a bed or sang before breakfast or watched the full moon through green leaves. He made a point of getting his hair wet in the first May rain shower and believed that to take the rings off your finger would bring heart trouble and that a mouse-hole gnawed in your floor had to be patched by someone other than yourself. He believed it was bad luck to take cats into a new house. He believed that whatever you dreamed while sleeping beneath a new quilt would shortly come true, and that a dream of muddy water meant death.

His hands were abnormally large, though whether that was normal for his own peculiar brand of physiology or a symptom of one of his many ailments, the judge could only postulate. Smonk’s fingertops were hairy and his breath hot and acidic, hanging in the air like burnt skunk, occasioning the judge to chew with his handkerchief over his mouth. Smonk had positioned the whore under the table to rub his feet and once in a while he looked down and said something to her.

Oh, yah, she answered. Mista Smonk weal, weal hod. Weal, weal big. From under the table her hands appeared, a foot apart.

Trained her good, didn’t I? Smonk said grinning to the nigger but the nigger didn’t grin back or otherwise commit. Nor did he lower his eyes to the judge’s satisfaction when the judge stared at him, but this seemed a prudent time to set one’s sense of propriety aside for the greater good, so instead of having the impertinent fellow hanged, the judge had let it go for that day and turned to study Smonk’s features. In profile E.O.’s nose and mouth extended farther than your normal white Christian’s, an African feature which might locate some nigger in his past. And his eye, the one of use, was narrow, like a chink’s. Hell, wondered the judge, am I even dealing with a white man at all? Smonk had parched skin the color and texture of an ancient saddle and matted red hair tied at his neck, a cascade of beard graying down his chest but red around the lips like a consumptive’s. There’s your coughing. It was impossible to say how old he was. Might be fifty, might be eighty. Could of been handsome too in his young days, but now with nicks and sores and carbuncles and liver spots, et cetera, and that purple scar the size of a goddamn dirtdobber nest going up his neck behind his ear, well hell, it looked like any day could end his journey of years.

Smonk had sensed this inspection and for a moment locked his eye—as clairvoyant and intent as a wolf’s, gazing at snow with blood on it—with the judge’s.

The judge looked away.

You want ye shrimps, fellow? Smonk asked.

Naw. The judge swallowed. I don’t eat bugs.

Don’t eat bugs.

Weal, weal, weal hod.

Little more was said. After Smonk waited for the judge to pay, they’d walked down a narrow flight of stairs and through a back alley past mounds of rotting shellfish and along the tracks to the rail station where three men