Come own, he said.
Evavangeline was backing across the room and didn’t see Mrs. Tate shift her legs.
Daddy—
Dragging his foot, he came at her, the rug bunching at his ankles, the disemboweled bailiff flopped aside, Smonk’s enormous fists balling and unballing and the air aswirl with sulfur.
Do like ye daddy tells ye, he rasped.
We got to go git them younguns, Evavangeline said. She tripped on Mrs. Tate’s legs and fell. Before she could get up Smonk’s face contorted with teeth and he kicked the old lady out of his way and stood panting over the girl.
Take off ye clothes.
She raised the snake charmer. Get back, I’ll shoot ye.
Shoot ye daddy?
If you don’t get back I will.
Shit. Smonk feigned away as if giving up but quick as a rattler grabbed for the gun. She fired into his trunk then he had the snake charmer tossing it away. She tried to dodge him but he caught her by her midriff and raised her into the air with his left hand and backed up, tangled in the rug. He shoved the dead justice from the sideboard and threw her across the tablecloth there.
From the floor, straining to watch, Mrs. Tate began to speak in tongues.
Smonk pinned the girl and tore her dressfront away as she kicked and scratched and bit and thumbed out his glass eye which landed on the sideboard and rolled onto the floor and down a groove in the rug and past Mrs. Tate’s face squinched in babbling prayer. Holding the girl, Smonk opened a brown bottle from his pocket and spilled liquid over her face and she ceased to battle and he fell across her, panting.
Do it, Snowden, Mrs. Tate hissed.
So much for peace!
Walton had carried the elderly woman to a porch and laid her down. He’d returned for her shotgun and his own, intending to investigate the large house down the way, when, almost simultaneously, a gun discharged in that very house and now here came a child running toward him from the other end of town. Walton raised his hand for attention and the boy slid to a stop before him.
Hello, young man, the Christian Deputy leader said. Are you a resident here?
It’s a bunch a resurrecting folks up yonder, the boy gasped. In the church.
Walton squatted before the boy and took his shoulders in his hands. Resurrecting folks?
The church ladies killed em, the boy panted, and Mister E. O. Smonk killed the men. We got to find Hell Mary. Cause them dead younguns down yonder’s done come back to life.
Hail Mary? Are you a little Catholic?
Let go, sissy! The boy jerked his arm free and ran up the street.
Walton stood. Sissy?
Behind him screams and banging doors. They were spilling onto the street, he saw, women in black, each armed. The one on the porch had sat up reaching for her gun.
More than a little “spooked,” Walton broke into a run. He followed the boy to the large residence and hurried up the porch steps and stood peering in the open front door.
Excuse me? he called. He rapped on the doorjamb. Anyone home?
He heard raised voices. Through the foyer door he saw movement. He crossed the threshold and came forward behind his shotgun and what he beheld when he entered the parlor struck him like a boot to the nose.
The large “booger-man” known as Smonk was peeling a stocking off of Evavangeline’s leg, the girl comely and prone and seemingly unconscious on a table. Also prone, but on the floor, bound by bedding, was an elderly woman, black juice dribbling down her chin; a snuff-dipper, like Walton’s own mother. This lady was speaking rapidly in a foreign tongue, perhaps German. Beside her—Walton blanched—the mauled and near-naked body of an eviscerated man, a cornucopia of entrails in the rug’s hills and channels. And finally, completing the mix, here came the little Catholic boy from outside, flinging himself against Smonk’s back.
Killed my daddy, he was yelling. Killed my daddy!
Everyone, Walton called, stop! Cease or I’ll fire!
No one seemed to notice his entreaty over the boy’s yelling and the prone woman’s babbling and Smonk’s own loud exhortations of breath, so Walton hurried forward. His intention was to grab the young boy but instead his foot slipped in blood from the disemboweled gentleman and Walton’s ballet skills aided him once again and he spun in the air, his right leg outspread, and landed on the opposite foot. The elderly woman began to scream—in English—at the boy on Smonk’s shoulder.
Let him be, Willie, she cried. Let him be! He’ll save us all!
Smonk, who had Evavangeline nearly out of her clothing, shrugged the boy off like a peacoat and sailed him across the room where he bounced from a wall and landed on all fours. Smonk tilted back his gourd and drank while he pulled down the girl’s last stocking.
Stop, Walton yelled, or I’ll fire!
No one stopped; instead, the boy clambered up holding a knife and raced across the floor and up Smonk’s back and grabbed him by the hair.
Killed my daddy!
Smonk rolled the bludgeon of his head and bucked but the boy clung on, his fist embedded in that matted red hair. There was a sound like something uncorked and yellow bile spewed as Smonk’s goiter burst and then, while Walton watched, fascinated, a great wash of blood sprayed the girl where she lay on the sideboard. Walton understood that the boy had cut the one-eye’s jugular and was currently riding out Smonk’s death throes, the big “cyclops” jerking and swinging his arms like poles, shattering a lamp and raking pictures off the walls. He staggered past a detonator as the boy rode his neck. He tripped over the woman screaming on the floor and tottered over them all, the boy leaping free as Smonk’s life bled down his chest like water over a fall.
Snow! croaked the old woman from the floor. There’s still time.
But Smonk was done for. When he crashed to his knees the window-panes rattled. He fell forward and grappled for the handle of his detonator but his reach failed and his glasses slid over the floor and his hand thudded on the wood and the fingers unfurled from the fist they’d made and his palm lay open like a bear trap. Lying on his stomach, he flashed his eye once around the room and said, I knew I should of—And then his body sagged out its last hale of air and Eugene Oregon Smonk closed his eye forever.
Meanwhile, William R. McKissick Junior bent over the prone Evavangeline and was wiping blood from her eyes and saying, Get up, wake up. Mister E. O. Smonk killed my daddy but I killed Mister E. O. Smonk. Get up.
Walton backed to the wall, letting it support him, and was therefore out of sight when the town women, young and old, began streaming into the house. They saw Smonk and saw the girl Evavangeline and the boy William R. McKissick Junior. They saw Mrs. Tate screaming and writhing on the floor like a carp and when the Hobbs daughter saw the gutted bailiff she began to scream.
Hush, said her mother and the girl jammed her fist in her mouth.
Quiet her, too, Mrs. Hobbs said of Mrs. Tate, and two women hurried forth and knelt beside the flouncing widow and tried to keep her still. And get him, Mrs. Hobbs said of William R. McKissick Junior, still brandishing his slick Mississippi Gambler. A young woman obeyed, jabbing her rifle barrel at him until he dropped the knife. She took him by his shirt collar and shoved him into a corner where he froze, watching their guns play on him.
Smonk killed my daddy, he said. I killed Smonk. I ain’t scared.
It’s the McKissick boy, one said.
Let’s take him to Lazarus!
Let’s take all the children!
No! barked Mrs. Tate from the floor, but with the women closing on the boy, no one heard.
From concealment, Walton saw his chance. He raised the shotgun and fired into the air and the room stilled and every conscious person turned to him, dusted in powder from the ceiling.
Excuse me, he said to the ladies. He sneezed. I’m only dimly aware of what’s going on here, but I’ll be rescuing this child and the unconscious young woman now. If anybody tries to interfere, I’ll be forced to action. (At which point he realized he’d fired his only barrel.) In other words, he said, drop your weapons, ladies.
