Smonk

lick and cried for them to run fetch her—

It warn’t no her you pervert, said the Christian Deputy horsewhipping him.

I swar it was, cried the man. She were a gal! A gal I say!

They were behind the jail, a crowd gathering to watch. People pointing that the man being whipped still bore his member in the strategic position.

I sucked on her titties! the beaten man cried. The whip snapped mud off his shoulders. Wee tomboys I’ll grant ye, but teats sure as the world! I swar!

If that had been a woman, chided the tall, long-chinned head Christian Deputy, blushing aback his white stallion, then we’d have no reason to chase “her,” now, would we? Perhaps a dress violation. Or you could file a charge of robbery, if you want us to interrupt your “whooping” so you can fill out the paperwork and list each stolen garment.

I do! the recipient of the beating cried. A sock! he cried. A real old union suit! A hank of rope!

He continued to bawl out the names of garments, his flagpole ever faithful.

Is they even such a thang as a dress violation in this jurisprudence, boss? asked Ambrose, the deputies’ second-in-command, a short, stocky Negro who could read. His shirt sleeves and pants cuffs were rolled to accommodate his shorter limbs and his ascot had bunched at his chin. Look, he said and gestured at the scene around them. Dirty, diseased creatures of indiscriminate gender slogging through the mud wore rags, newspapers, sack cloths, loin cloths, croaker sacks, animal skins and corn shucks. Some were naked and hairy as apes.

Go, find out, said Walton, for that was the head Christian Deputy’s Christian name. “Seek and ye shall find. Ask and it shall be given unto you.”

Ah. Re-search, said Ambrose.

A bodice damn ye, cried the man being beaten. A red lacy garter!

You have to search for it first, before you can prefix it with “re,” haven’t you? asked Walton.

You’d thank so, said his ebony-skinned lieutenant. But what I heard now’s they demarcating it re-search. They do that once in a while. Ever few years. Change a word or come up with a new one altogether. It don’t make a shit normally—

Deputy Ambrose, warned his leader. You “cuss” again, I’ll have your badge.

A week later the gal Evavangeline stood in a boardinghouse bedroom in Mobile Alabama stark naked, frowning at her cactus of a body. Her titties barely qualified for the word. Old checker-playing geezers along the waterfront had better humps. And that goddamn scar Ned had give her! Big as a damn half-dollar piece! She spat into her palm, thinking to try and scrub it off. But she didn’t. It wouldn’t come off no matter how much she scratched at it and the truth was she liked it for a reminder of him. When it itched she thought Ned might be trying to tell her something. Or just saying hello. I’m out here somewheres.

In the mirror she thumped her nipples, which made them rise. She wondered about getting knocked up because she knew it made your titties grow. What she didn’t know was if they shrank back after you had the kid. Seemed like maybe they’d stay full as long as the kid sucked on them. The stickler was that she didn’t want a damn youngun to tote along, just some bigger titties. Maybe after she got the kid she could ditch it and find her a customer who’d suck the milk. There had to be men would go for that. Main thing she knew after all these years of being alive was that men existed with every possible appetite.

She gazed at her belly and wondered how a girl got knocked up. She was as skinny as a skeleton and no matter how much she ate she couldn’t put on no fat. But you got fat when you got knocked up. Maybe it was a pill you bought or something you shot. She bet a doctor could tell her.

The morning suffered on and she snuck down the drainpipe of the boardinghouse without paying the lady and found a window table at a dive overlooking the bay and sipped dark rum and slowly ate the cork and listened to the hurdy-gurdy and smoked hash mixed with tobacco as endless boats bobbed past and crows and seagulls dipped in the breeze. She ordered another rum. She saw a man get mugged on the wharf. She dozed for a while and woke thinking how much she loved money. She saw a shark attack a small dinghy. She visited the privy and on her return saw a pair of rats fornicating under the piano stool. The mugged man still lying where he’d fallen on the boards.

Inside, the smoke was so thick it was like sitting in a low cave. No one who entered displayed the stylings of a doctor, though what that might have been she had no clue. She hoped it would be self-telling. A black bag maybe. One of those contraptions on the head. If somebody were to get shot, she mused, a doc would likely appear.

She ordered another rum.

The place stank of fish and privy. Flies and gnats so thick the wind from their wings was nearly a comfort. Because of Evavangeline’s clothing and scrubby hair, a wispy red-eyed whore floated up and said, You wanna buy a girl a drank, handsome?

No, thank ye.

You lean the other way?

My leaning’s my own business.

The whore’s husband, the famously hot-headed owner of the dive, heard her. Whoa, Nellie, he said. Hold it right there.

He had a growth of mole the size of a man’s thumb dangling from his chin. Blackly purple with a marbling of red, veiny, sparsely haired and peeling a tad, it was hard not to stare at, jiggling as it did when he talked.

Hell Mary, she said. Do it grow?

Buster boy—The owner pointed a bottle of bourbon at her. If you (A) keep looking at my birthmark, and (B) ever talk to my wife like that again, I’ll (C) bust this here whiskey over ye head and make ye (E) pay the two bits the drank cost and (R) mop up the mess.

Is that right.

Yeah that’s right, dandy boy.

Don’t call me no dandy boy.

Why not? Dandy boy?

Cause I’m dranking. It don’t do to mess with me in such times.

That’s it. He slammed his hand on the countertop. I’m furious now.

He tugged at a revolver in his waistband but the gal jumped up with a sawed-down singleshot sixteen from under the table. Several glasses exploded behind him and he flew backward without even flapping his arms and his bowler hat landed spinning on the bar.

She flattened it with her open palm. I told ye.

You damn shore did, said his widow, pouring herself a whiskey heading for the cashbox.

Evavangeline hopped over the bar, her ears ringing. She knelt beside the man and tugged the long revolver from his waistband and checked its loads and stood up and cocked it with her thumb and closed her left eye for better aim and bit her bottom lip as was her habit when shooting and shot the growth of mole from the owner’s chin without blinking at the noise. She inhaled smoke from the barrel then grabbed the mole which was burning on one end and swaddled it in the owner’s dishrag for later study. Nobody in the place seemed to mind, not his wife, not the other patrons, not even the rats who’d dogged each other halfway across the floor, and no doctor had arisen from his chair. The hurdy-gurdy was playing “I’m a Good Ole Rebel.” Evavangeline vaulted through an open window and darted along the wharf carrying her guns, ducking ships’ moorings and upsetting a Hasidic Jew with an armload of beaver pelts.

Still thinking about doctors, she stowed away aboard the next steamboat upriver. She had no idea where she was going but she had always been a creature of strong instinct, and north felt right. She slept on deck and stayed sober, shooting dice in the afternoons with a group of niggers. It was hot. Her head especially. The niggers were full of stories of a character they called Snert or something. She barely listened it was so hot. When the boat docked and took on passengers she would ask the gentlemen embarking and disembarking if he was a doctor.

No one owned up.

Then, at the muggy river town of McIntosh, one stubby Irish dribbling piss off the side of the boat admitted to Evavangeline that yes he was indeedy the ship’s sawbones and further earned her credibility when he asked, You a gal under them duds and that dirt?

In his tiny room he lit a stick of incense and a candle which gave hardly any light. He smoked some