Smonk

they were being strangled by vines and ivy. To the left were several outbuildings including a barn and beyond the barn lay an apple orchard and on the other side of the house there was a stone well with a shed covering it and boards over the mouth and stones over the boards. The men glanced at one another. The house seemed deserted, its shutters closed except for one, tapping open and shut in the wind, unkempt ivy lacing the front columns and weeds through the porch. The dome windows were dark and there were perhaps a dozen dead dogs on the porch and others strewn in the yard.

Bad luck had sent an angry red moon which flung the men’s shadows before them on the ground. The bailiff and blacksmith dismounted and crept along the twin rows of cedars leading the horse and mule as insects screamed in the trees and fields. They eased off the cobblestone road with the animals in tow and skirted the house and came in downwind through a scraggle of bitterweed, pausing in the moon shadow of the barn.

You want to rest up inside here a spell? the blacksmith asked.

I speck so, said McKissick. I done got dizzy.

Yeah. Gut wound ’ll do that.

You ever had one?

Naw.

They entered the barn and moved quietly through the darkness among the lumbrous animals, the bailiff tying their mount and beast of burden to a crossbeam near the door. The blacksmith was thirsty so he set aside his weaponry and slipped between boards into a stall and squatted next to the cow and rang milk into a bucket by squeezing her udder. When he had his all he offered the bucket to the bailiff.

Naw, said he. I’ll not take nourishment till Smonk’s head is separated from his shoulders.

The blacksmith reached up and grasped the cow’s ear to help him to his feet. He had a milk mustache. It might make ye somewhat less lightheaded, he said.

Don’t worry about the weight of my head. It works fine enough to come up with a plan. Listen, McKissick said, and told how he would sneak up to the manor and break in and try to assassinate Smonk and rescue the boy, if he were still alive. If anybody who wasn’t the bailiff or his son came out of the house, the blacksmith was to use the Winchester rifle to ambush him from the barn.

Gates agreed. But his plan—his secret plan—was to wait until McKissick had killed Smonk and then ambush and kill McKissick. Or even if they didn’t find Smonk, which would of been fine with the blacksmith, he could still prove he killed Smonk by possessing his eye. He imagined showing it to several young girls and how their titties touched his elbow.

Can I see that eyeball agin? he asked.

Hell naw. Jest kill anybody comes out the house. Anybody cept me. Or Willie.

Gates gave a thumbs-up.

McKissick trotted off and left the blacksmith to peer through a crack in the barn wall wondering who Willie was. The bailiff closed the distance to the giant house, such an expert he seemed at skullduggery that even watching him the blacksmith sometimes lost track of the assassin’s position.

As McKissick neared the house one live dog rose from among the dead ones and began to growl and snap. It came tottering down the stairs. It’s got the ray bees, the blacksmith whispered to himself as the dog charged. McKissick dropped to one knee and steadied his pistol arm with the other and shot the dog once in the head and stood to watch its final staggering steps. It fell not five yards from his boots and he replaced the spent cartridge with a fresh one from his new gunbelt and looked back toward the barn.

Gates waved behind the boards but McKissick was back on the go, melting shadow to shadow across the open yard and blending alongside the house. He holstered his pistol and scaled one of the trellises and pried open the shutters of an upstairs window and his legs disappeared inside.

Waiting, Gates screwed his pipe wrench all the way out and then all the way back in. He did this several times. He saw a rat creeping up on him and stomped on its head and the pest lay wiggling. Damn, he said. You a big one ain’t ye. He jingled the nails in his pocket then lined them up on the ledge of the cow’s stall and selected the rustiest and sucked it into his gums. He saw another rat and threw a clod of mule shit at it. He found a pail and shat a hot stew and told the horse, Dang, that sum-bitch stinks so bad I can’t hardly squat over it. Holding his nose, he carried the pail out the back door and urinated in the straw and, inside again, began to name all the dead citizens of Old Texas and knew he was leaving somebody out.

He’d arrived in the town two years prior, had been on the run from the law for bigamy and arson and trying to sell a wagonload of stolen exotic snakes. A posse had chased him out of Jackson Alabama and he’d fled south through the woods, exhausting the horse he’d stolen and splashing on foot into a swamp. From there he found the river and followed it up the country, enmeshed in such a tangle of wilderness he’d of gladly submitted to a noose just to get out of the damn mosquitoes. It might of been days or weeks he was lost, eating bugs and frogs, finding a new leech on his balls ever morning. At some point he’d mistaken a creek for the river and followed it inland, half-mad from malaria and worms in his stool, his beard wild and flowing, his clothing long since shredded, skin covered in tears and gashes. It was pure chance that Lurleen had been out looking for berries. She’d carried him on her back to Old Texas and called the doctor who ministered to him for weeks and by the time he was sitting up in bed he was somehow engaged to be married. He reckoned it didn’t matter he had two wives already and took the plunge a third time.

It ought to of been a dream, Lurleen decent enough to look at, plus her daughters—the three of them prancing about the house trying to show him their wares. Lurleen made it plain that he could lay with any one of them he wanted, said it was all in the family. Said the town needed younguns or it would dry up and die. For a number of months Gates had found himself in heaven, four women with large knockers and appetites, constantly vying for his knob. But anything could get old and within a year he dreaded each time they came to him, every night and morning, raising their skirts. He’d sneak down to his shop where he hid his whiskey and there would be Clena bent over his anvil with her bloomers down.

Thrown in the mix, too, was Old Texas—the entire town—with its strangenesses and secrets. Where were the children? Why the shortage? Lurleen said it was because of the War. Said all the men and boys had gone off to fight and left the women alone. The other men who were there were men like Gates, fellows who’d found their way here and married a widow and were themselves as happily sexed as any men anywhere. But whenever a gal got knocked up, it was something happened to the baby. Better not to ask, Lurleen had said. It’s church business. And Gates, always one to mind his own affairs, hadn’t.

He’d accumulated about enough of the mysteries when Smonk had started coming to town, though. Year ago. To tell the truth, he’d kind of liked Old E.O. He was ugly but he always had licker to sell, and if you didn’t get crossways of him, he wouldn’t get crossways of you. He would beat you at cards, but as long as you paid he was pleasant enough. Good licker too. Plus he was another man for the stepdaughters to moon over. And Lurleen. He remembered the night of the barn dance when she was out on the hay with Smonk. Gates was adding licker to the punch bowl when McKissick elbowed him and said, Uh oh.

Smonk’s hand was on Lurleen’s caboose and ever body was looking to see what Gates would do. Had he had his druthers, the blacksmith would of told Smonk, Take her. Please.

Then McKissick pushed Gates out over the hay. Everybody had seen what was going on, so poor old Gates had little choice but to start his banty-rooster strut, raising his hand for the fiddler to stop and that knucklehead on the triangle too.

Smonk must of known Gates was coming though Gates was behind him. The one-eye twirled Lurleen out of the picture and stood with his back to the blacksmith, waiting.

Gates glared at him. Then he said, Reckon that’s my woman, Smonk.

She is, Smonk said, is she?

He turned without looking at them and walked out of the barn. A strut of his own. Before he stepped outside he gave Gates’s wife a wink. She squealed. She squealed and jumped up clapping her hands and ran out after him. She never looked back.

Poor old Gates. Standing there pulling on his thumb. No man wanted to go out after E. O. Smonk, in the dark. But Gates had no choice. Out he went.

They found him half an hour later in the livery barn with his head bashed in. Near about dead. The men had a town meeting about it and agreed to meet again, but finally it was their wives harping on them that made them round up a mob and ride out to Smonk’s. Gates hadn’t yet awakened from being conked and might never, for all they knew. That would be murder, the ladies had pointed out. And this town needed every man it could get.