one shell. She ran her tongue across her teeth. In the moonlight she could smell him. A thick odor, woodsmoke with old meat cooking over it. She wanted to bite something. She took the porch stairs in one step and crossed the planks and the door swung in.
She heard voices. A man’s, a woman’s. She floated through the dark, drunk on his scent, repeating what Ike said.
She opened the parlor door and there he sat. In his red enormity. Eugene Oregon Smonk.
Upon her entrance he’d simultaneously raised the over & under barrels of his 45-70 and snuffed the candle. But it didn’t matter, she could see in the dark. Could see a detonator and its wire coiling out of the room. See tiny Mrs. Tate contained in a sheet, only her neck and head showing. The points of her feet. Her dead husband on the table with a cloth over his face and another dead fellow half-naked on the floor, his guts soaking the rug.
Evavangeline closed the door. Smonk lowered his rifle and sat it across his knees and took a long hard pull off his gourd, watching her. Where’d ye come from? he growled.
She shrugged. She liked his blue glasses.
What town, girl? The air sulfury with his breath.
I don’t know. I been in Shreveport.
Shreveport, he said. I been there. He showed his teeth.
Mobile, she said. I been there once.
Yeah.
She liked his voice. San Antonio.
Yeah, he said. I spent a year there one week. He flapped a hand at her. Put that gun down, youngun, so we can enjoy our reunion here without fear of getting shot. You wouldn’t murder ye daddy, would ye?
She kept the four-ten aimed true at his heart. I ain’t decided yet.
Ain’t decided yet. He grinned at her. What about ye momma?
I never knew her. Is my name Smonk?
No. It was Mrs. Tate who answered. Smonk is a darky word, she said, not to be spoken within these walls.
Shut yer yap, Smonk said. He pulled on his beard.
Snow! Mrs. Tate hissed. Light a candle so I can see my great-niece.
He twisted the broom handle and air squeaked out. Call me that one more time and I’ll crank so tight yule bleed from ever hole.
No, the girl said. Don’t kill her. Not till I figured this all out. Jest go on light a damn candle.
He struck a match up his leg and touched the flame to one of the candles on the table by the late Justice Tate. For a moment Mrs. Tate squinted at Evavangeline, trying to puzzle her out of the dark. Then her wrinkles narrowed.
You!
Yeah, said the girl. It’s me, escaped. Now say ye damn piece.
Mrs. Tate haled in a breath of air and exhaled it and did this several times as her color paled to its normal white.
Why don’t ye come over here, Smonk said to the girl. Set on my lap.
Listen at her first. Evavangeline pointed the knife at Mrs. Tate, but Smonk wouldn’t take his eye from the girl.
This is hard to tell. The old lady frowned, as if she needed to belch. But my time, she said, with Daddy, it bestowed Chester unto me. Chester. He was the only boy to survive after Lazarus the Redeemer blessed him. But even though Chess didn’t die, he still wasn’t—She writhed within her sheet, as if she needed her hands to talk. He still wasn’t right. In his head.
What about before ye let that dog at him? Smonk asked.
She didn’t answer.
What about him? the girl asked, pointing the knife at Smonk.
Mrs. Tate sagged in her sheet. My sister Elrica, she said. My sister Elrica’s time with Daddy resulted in him.
E. O. Smonk, he said, patting his thigh for her to come sit. At yer service.
That Ike, the girl said, her arm growing heavy with the snake charmer’s weight, he said we evil.
Evil! Smonk spat on the floor. Horseshit. If we so evil how come Ike never killed us? I seen him kill plenty of evil folks but he never killed me. Did he kill you? He tossed the gourd to the gal.
She caught it in her elbow crook and uncorked it with her teeth and turned it up.
Stop drinking, both of you, Mrs. Tate said. Don’t yall see? If I bore Chester from Daddy’s seed, and Elrica bore you, Snow, from Daddy, then it’s obvious that it’s something within our family. I don’t know who this girl is but she must be some relation of ours, a second or third cousin, there are Wrights all over Texas. The ray bees have chosen the Tates. Chester wasn’t right in the head but the ray bees didn’t kill him, either. Somehow he lived. That must mean we—we Tates—are carriers of them, of the ray bees. Our family alone. Don’t you see, the two of you? Don’t you?
I see a perty little gal, Smonk said, grinning at Evavangeline. That’s what I see.
I don’t see shit, the girl said.
Mrs. Tate leaned forward. You must seed this child, Snowden, right now, or our name will die. Our
Oh I plan to, Smonk said, but I done told ye about calling me that. He laid his hand on her tiny shoulder and shoved himself upright, upsetting her so that she squawked and tipped and crashed to the floor, still affixed to her chair.
Smonk stood on uncertain legs, opened his arms. Come here, gal, he said. Give ye ole daddy a
Evavangeline took a step forward. The knife dropped to the floor and stuck upright. The gun slithered out of her hand and fell to the rug. It’s evil, she said. But when she looked at Smonk a strange thing happened. Somehow he didn’t seem evil and he wasn’t ugly and misshapen and old and bloody. He was her daddy. He was only her daddy and she thought he was beautiful. Her guts felt like they’d shifted in his direction and she could feel the ray bees all through herself. They were buzzing in her teeth. Her hair stood on end, her skin tingling. Her nipples hot knobs. The gourd fell from her grip and her hands when she raised them to her mouth were shaking.
Meanwhile, the town seemed peaceful, somnolent, not a “smidgen” of evil in the October moon’s crimson light. But while it might appear lovely, Walton had learned that in such desolate southern climes things were “seldom as they seemed,” a world of plague and temptation, madmen and monsters. He broke open the shotgun and a shell’s brass butt rose from its port. Should’ve further searched the old Negro for additional ammunition. He thumbed it back in and closed the gun quietly as folding a handkerchief and ducked between the rails of the fence and hurried past a pungent pile of burnt animals and rested in the shadow of a cane wagon.
He crept through a long alley and faced the main street, peering out to look it south and north. No sign of movement, the street bright in the moonlight. The windows dark.
Except—he craned his neck—for one. The large residence at the end of the street. In a front room the window pulsed with candlelight. Perhaps a citizen with insomnia. Unthinkable as it was to drop by without an invitation, Walton shouldered the shotgun and marched down the street.
He nearly tripped over an elderly woman flat on her back, clad in a veil and a long, black funereal dress. He knelt and eased his hand behind her neck and raised her head gently and folded back the veil.
Ma’am, he whispered. Are you ill?
She stirred. Her eyes fluttered. Help us, she said.
Smonk, meantime, loomed over Evavangeline and she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his outspread arms and be hugged to death. She heard Ike’s voice—
Get her, Snow, Mrs. Tate hissed. Seed her!
Smonk swiped for the girl but she ducked. Daddy, she said, wait—
