Smonk

woman’s hand as well.

But as he turned the horse he saw that the burning sugarcane had cast its fire east and west and now closed upon him like a pair of apocalyptic arms, affording him no chance but to heel his mount and flee south. Farewell, he called to the youngsters and the youngsters leading them. I’ll try to find you—

He was interrupted by a falling tree and without command the horse began to run. Behind them, the stores and houses of Old Texas had exploded one by one from the Tate residence down the street, and when the church blew, the widows left alive were lifted in a basket of hot air and thrown into the darkness of the canefield like dice and left to sit up and gaze in wonder at the burning shreds of sky landing around them. They were deaf. They gaped at the hole where the church had been as sections of their own murdered boys fell soundlessly. The sugarcane began to burn. Mrs. Hobbs cackled and tore down her dressfront and with her fingers hooked into claws she fled the burning town, pulling out her own hair.

Moments later the other women followed Mrs. Hobbs, howling and ripping their clothing. Walton in the meantime reversed directions and nearly collided with the mob of shrieking women; they clawed and snapped at his legs, the khaki of his pants darkened with their saliva and his extra pockets shorn away, until the horse broke free and galloped south.

When Walton saw Loon in the same spot he’d left him he slowed his new mount and called, Come on, deputy, if you want to live.

Loon kept his hands out of sight. Naw. I reckon not.

Loon, Walton said, Oswald. There are times to trust another. This is one of those times. Please, I beg you. Put your faith in me.

Naw, Cap’n, I believe I’ll stick to my position here.

The horde of screaming women burst into the field and Walton kicked his horse. Suit yourself.

He rode on.

A moment later the women spotted Loon and changed direction and raged toward him. When the deputy began to point his deadly fingers, no shots answered—not when the naked ladies grew close and closer, not when they pulled him sideways off the horse and fell upon him and began to bite him. Not even when he pointed to his own forehead.

Riding, with Loon’s screams muted in the smoke behind him, Walton unpocketed his flask and drank until there was nothing more to drink and pitched the flask into the dark. Whether the cool tears tracking his cheeks and neck were the result of the alcohol, the copious smoke or his own stripped emotions, he was too tired to consider. What he did instead was close his eyes and cling to the horse, it seemed to be flying, and race the fire into the night.

Meanwhile Evavangeline, William R. McKissick Junior and the children had left the house moments before it exploded. They rattled through the sugarcane and headed north, into the wind, the fire cracking like rifles behind them. Soon they forded the shallow Tombigbee, William R. McKissick Junior carrying the littlest girl, and by the time anyone looked back they were in another county and it was beginning to rain. That night they rested in a barn and Evavangeline blew up the new balloon and she and the children batted it to one another until they fell asleep in the hay.

In the morning before the barn’s owner stirred Evavangeline emptied the henhouse of its eggs and led the younguns away. Within two days they came upon the town of Suggsville, where the first little stolen boy lived. His weeping parents fed them ham and biscuits and cow’s milk and Evavangeline and William R. McKissick Junior would have been heroes in that town had they not collected the other children before first light the following day and left.

In the end it would take seven weeks to get all the children home, Evavangeline rewarding Junior with a handjob upon each child’s safe return. Near Christmastime, after they’d seen the last little girl reunited with her parents, William R. McKissick Junior was himself adopted by a wealthy childless couple in a lumber town called Fulton. The house he would live in had indoor plumbing, and there was a big sweet gum tree to climb, right outside the window of his bedroom.

On Christmas morning before anyone else was awake Evavangeline left riding north on a spotted pony she called Little Bit, the season’s first crumbles of snow glistening in the animal’s mane and in her own eyelashes. She’d not produced a mile’s worth of tracks when she turned to see the boy in his new sheepskin overcoat and galoshes. He was running to catch her, his breath trailing like a scarf.

Hey, she said.

Hey, he panted. His cheeks red apples. I needed me one last one. He held up a silver dollar.

The pony looked back over its shoulder. Well hell Mary, Evavangeline said. She rolled off and flapped her blanket out over the weeds and lay on her back and scooched down her britches with snow landing all around. We can do better ’n a damn handjob, she said. Come here, honey.

Three months later, she feels a thump in her middle. She stops on the sidewalk in Memphis under a striped awning beside a short nigger in the doorway sweeping. The nigger looks up.

In the coming weeks she finds work in an upscale house of harlotry for men who desire girls in a family way. She is treated well by this class of specialist, a cost of forty dollars a night, the house taking half, she the rest plus meals and licker. Her little baby likes shrimp and champagne. He kicks all the time, and hits and rolls, especially when she smokes opium or skunkweed. Sometimes he keeps pounding on her right side and she knows to go right. Or he’ll get so hungry he runs in place. His sharp little toes. Right there in her tummy.

A goddamn miracle.

And now, after tonight’s daddy has gotten his nut and rolled off snoring his beer and farting his steak, she watches clouds out the window and sucks E.O.’s eye in her jaw and cradles her melon of a belly. She has known death and love and danger and Alabama in her long tally of years, and she swears to God in the sky or the devil in the dirt—whoever bets the highest—that it’s her honor to be knocked up with a tiny new Smonk, and if he takes her life when he fights out into the world of light and air, nothing will make her happier. And if little Ned wants to suck on her plump titties as she closes her eyes, then that too will pleasure her, yall. Infinitely. Which means forever.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank Beth Ann Fennelly—my wife, best friend and first reader—for her loving work on the Smonk manuscript; for her advice, criticism, insight and wisdom; and, mainly, for never running screaming from the house. Thanks to my daughter, Claire, whose mishearing of “skunk” gave this book its name, and to my son, Thomas, for joining our family. To my generous, understanding parents, Gerald and Betty Franklin. To my colleagues and students at Ole Miss. To Nat Sobel, more uncle than agent, Judith Weber, and their amazing staff. To Smonk’s early readers: Chris Gay, William Gay, Michael Knight, Hardy Jackson, Jack Pendarvis and Steve Whitton. To Kathy Pories. To the Fairhope, Alabama, gang and especially Sonny Brewer and Joe Formichella. A raised Bud Light to my pals (there and gone) at City Grocery: John, Whitey, Joe, Chip, Enright and Norm. Thanks to Jim Dees, John T. Edge, Tom Howorth, Walter Neill, Ron Shapiro and Franklin Williams. To Richard and Lisa Howorth, Lyn Roberts, and everyone at Square Books. To Earl Brown who took me back to 1876 and Steve Wallace who told me about Old Texas. Continued thanks to all the folks at William Morrow and HarperCollins, especially Tim Brazier, Kevin Callahan, Lisa Gallagher, Michael Morrison, Michael Morris, Sharyn Rosenblum and Claire Wachtel, my editor. And in memory of the writers Larry Brown and James Whitehead.

     Portions of Smonk appeared in Murdaland, 9th Letter, Climbing Mt. Cheaha: Emerging Alabama Writers and Verb: An Audioquarterly, and I thank these editors.

About the Author