The bailiff halted the horse a dozen paces out from the barn.
The tenant farmer took off his hat and his hair kept the shape of its crown. Evening, he said.
Never mind that, McKissick said. We inquiring about Smonk. Eugene Smonk they call him.
I know of him, sure do, the tenant farmer said. He nodded at the bloody shirt. You want that looked at? Sister yonder’s got the healing gift.
They followed his eyes uphill to a dim shack with a skeletal woman in a slip smudged against the wood like a wraith, her eyes black as snakeholes. A clothesline hung with undergarments stitched down the hillside and several gray guinea hens ran screaming over the grit.
You only pay what ye think ye ought to, the farmer said. Plus the cost of her apothecary bottle, if ye know what I mean. He winked. She’ll do ye, too. For half a dollar. I’m the one ye pay.
Naw, McKissick said. I met a fellow once in a field told me I could go in the house and lay with his two daughters, right in yonder, he said. I paid him and when I went in it was two fellers. I said where’s the girls and they said what girls. I told em I’d paid the feller outside and they said what feller. We looked out the window and that feller was nowheres to be seen. I killed them two when they started laughing at me and then I tracked down that other feller and killed him in Bessemer.
Well, that’s about the most I ever heard ye say, said Gates.
McKissick had lowered his eyes. He raised them now. I’m carrying this here gut wound back to the man give it to me. To the man took ever thing of mine. My farm. Land. Took my boy. A hunk of my flesh here. Wife. My very soul.
That sounds like Mister Smonk, all right, said the tenant. He lives two miles yonder ways. The big spread. You’ll know it. He gestured around. He owns all this here land.
Does he own you too? asked the bailiff.
The farmer shrugged.
Say yer woman ’ll do a bit of whoring? Gates asked.
Finest suck ye ever had. I ought to know. The farmer winked again.
Say she’s got a snort too?
Genuine pure corn licker.
Naw, said McKissick. We best attend our chore.
Reckon I could inquire what that is? the tenant said. Ye chore, I mean. Jest curious is all. Lonesome as it gits out here in the woods. Yall sure ye don’t want a suck?
I could use me a suck be honest, said the smith. Wouldn’t mind a snort neither. Reckon that judge would pay?
McKissick peered at Smonk’s tenant. Naw about the suck and naw about the licker and hell naw about asking after our business. One more such question ’ll earn you a bullet or two where they can’t be dug out.
I didn’t mean no offense.
Fools never do. If ye see Smonk, don’t tell him you encountered us. Bout the only thing we got in our favor here is the element of surprise. Without looking at his companion the bailiff said, Give nosy here a pay-off.
Gates balanced his rifle on the horse’s back and reached in his bib pocket and tossed down a rusty nail.
Obliged, the tenant farmer said, picking it up to bite, watching the two men continue along their way, the overloaded mule struggling behind.
How many? Smonk asked from the bed, opening his eye. He’d been resting but knew without being told about their visitors.
From the window, watching the men ride into the sugarcane, Ike flashed two fingers.
Two? Shit. Smonk threw a bloody rag across the room. Shamefulest posse I ever heard of is my own. Two. Of all numbers. One’s my former employee, I speck. Missed his liver. The other one, couldn’t tell ye. Not that judge I guarantee ye that. Maybe some laggard didn’t show up at my event. Smonk drank from his jug and belched and moved his sore foot to a cool spot on the quilt. They coming?
Ike shook his head.
Good. We’ll catch our breath, get em on the flipside. He patted the ticking and the woman came from the shadows and lay beside him like a pool of warm wax and started under the sheet with her hand.
Naw, he said. Rub my damn foot.
Ike picked up an eight gauge doublebarrel shotgun from the corner by the door without looking at what the girl was doing and went to the porch putting on his hat and whistled for the tenant.
The man trudged up the hill. Don’t be whistling at me, he said, sticking out his arm. Last time I checked my skin was still white and yers was still nigger-colored.
Ike looked where the men had gone into the trees, watchful that they might sneak back and spy, which he would of done had he been them. Watch the place a day, day and a half.
They wouldn’t bite, the tenant reported. I said jest what I’s supposed to. But they claim they going after Mister Smonk over his place. Like they knew him. It was two of em. One was gigged.
Well, said Ike. I speck you best git on. He’s evicting ye.
What’s that mean?
Kicking ye out.
A nigger? A dern nigger’s booting us out? He reached into his back pocket and unfolded a Case pocketknife.
One of Ike’s eyebrows spiked and his hand struck the knife from the tenant’s hand and his own razor flashed and slit the farmer’s throat and Ike had wiped it twice on the man’s shirt as if it were a strop and slipped it back into his pocket before the tenant could fathom that today death was the color of a Negro.
It ain’t fair, he squeaked.
Ike stepped aside as he fell. Fair, he said, as if there was such a thing.
Meanwhile, Gates had become addicted to sucking the rust off nails. He had ulcerous spaces between his teeth and he would work the nails softly into his gums, where the rust dissolved. It felt good. Also, he had the shits and every half-mile or so had to be let off to do his business in the trees and then run to catch up with his ride.
Ain’t you a fellow renowned for his sense of humor? he asked. Didn’t somebody tell me that?
McKissick didn’t turn. I was. Once.
Can ye say a dirty joke?
Naw.
Little conversation be nice is all. I can never remember no jokes.
I got me jest one more joke to say in my life, said the bailiff. After I’ve cut Smonk’s thoat or gutted him nuts to neck or shot him in the heart, jest fore he dies, I’m gone show him his selfsame glass eye.
Back up a step, pard, said the blacksmith. You got his eyeball?
McKissick frowned over his shoulder but dislodged it from his jaw and spat it into his palm and displayed it. Maybe it would make the blacksmith hush. The fellow reached forth a finger to touch it but McKissick popped it back in his mouth.
Careful, he said. I ain’t so sure he can’t still see thew it. He looked around them. These is strange times.
I seen stranger, said the blacksmith. Did I ever tell ye about the time I seen a cannonball go right thew a boy? In the War? It left a perfect hole in his gut for a second. We all started laughing, what was left of the regiment, even the man with the hole in his middle, laughing, laughing, laughing. Then he fell dead and we laughed harder. We was falling down laughing. Cannonballs rolling past. We pissed ourselves, one and all, and kept on laughing. Then after a time we got quiet and went hid over behind some burnt-up hay wagons. We was about fourteen year old, I reckon. We couldn’t look one another in the eyes no more. We made a pack right after that to never talk about what had happened. But you know something? I talk about it all the time. I’m surprised I ain’t mentioned it before.
I am too.
Presently they rounded a turn on the road and beheld the Smonk homestead at the end of a long double row of cedars. A former sugarcane plantation, the house was as stately as a hotel and boasted among its oddities a cast iron dome with a spike that reached higher than the trees. Fastened to the spike was a bronze weathervane in the shape of a gamecock. The house had three stories and eleven bedrooms, a billiard parlor and hidden arsenal. In the back there was a statue garden which Smonk let go wild and so the naked people frozen in marble looked as if
