Smonk

and laid a hail of bullets across the windowfront of the apothecary’s. Meanwhile, Mister Tate’s hair had fallen but he kept crawling. The gunman shot once more then knelt and turned the man over and began going through his shirt.

There were more pockets of return fire now and the gunner swiveled the Maxim and dragged its anchor of bullets across the storefronts and ladies dove out of sight.

The rifleman in the street grabbed his chest and McKissick looked to the large house, second floor window, where Mrs. Tate, the justice’s wife—widow—was levering her rifle to shoot again. The man she’d killed crumpled and lay on his side. The gunner tried to turn toward her house, catty-corner the hotel, but bumped the shoulder of the man filling the coolant.

McKissick was high-stepping through the logjam of arms and legs, dodging a fiery falling roof timber and grabbing Smonk’s over & under which he’d squirreled away beneath the sideboard—he’d always admired the stout Winchester and knew it would be perfectly sighted. He hopped across the undertaker and clicked the rifle’s safety with his thumb and knelt at the window and sighted the gunner no more than a second before he shot him in the temple and then shot the other man before the first landed.

McKissick stared down at the rifle, heavy in his hands, the line of upswept gray smoke from its barrels a shade lighter than the smoke in the air. You done good, he told the over & under.

Since coming to, he’d been conscious of an ache in his left side, and now that he had a quiet moment he reached inside his shirt. When he drew out his fingers bloody pellets of the rice he’d eaten for dinner were stuck there. Smonk’s got-dern sword must of run right through him. He steadied himself against the pinewood wainscotting. Gritted his teeth.

Surrender? someone called.

Across the room through coils of smoke a revolver butt flagged with a white handkerchief raised itself above an overturned table. The judge’s eyebrows inched up and then his face. He waved.

You that goddamn bailiff, he called. Ain’t ye? I forget ye name. Mic-something.

How come ye ain’t dead? McKissick asked.

How come you ain’t?

I jest about am. Case ye ain’t noticed.

God damn, said the judge, fanning at smoke. Might we finish this discussion elsewhere?

A woman screamed from outside. McKissick ducked through the window and stood blinking on the splintered porch. The wind changed the smoke’s course and the street appeared before him. He lowered the rifle.

The dead were strewn and splashed along the porch, halves and quarters of horses and men splattered in puddles of tar in the street. A crater smoking where it looked like a bomb had gone off and arms and half-legs and other fragments here and there. The world seemed too bright. McKissick felt like somebody had boxed his ears. Women followed their own screams outside and whisking their skirts over the dirt sprang corpse to corpse calling out the names of the dead. At the corner of what used to be the hotel a woman held a severed hand by its pinky and screamed, Oliver! Over in the alley by the store McKissick saw the abandoned gun, still steaming, pointed at him. He tongued Smonk’s eye around the horseshoe of his jaw.

Inside the hotel, the judge crashed over the table and fell off his dais. God damn, he cried. My arm’s on fire!

The bailiff ignored him. He looked up the street and down. His memory was coming back. The mule…

The balloon!

Where’s my boy? he yelled, so hard his wound farted. He unstuck his hand from his side and raised it to the sky, rice on his fingers. Willie! he yelled.

Still making their noise, the widows in silhouette looked up from the murdered while behind them the hotel roof collapsed, fire and smoke bursting out the top windows and a moment later those on the ground floor, the air fogged with smoke and the yowls so baleful and plaintive it seemed Hell had breeched its levee and poured forth its river of dead.

Eugene Oregon Smonk, McKissick yelled, is done stold my got-dern boy!

Ike was waiting for Smonk at the three-way crossing, smoking his cob pipe and fanning his face with his hat. He’d shaved clean but for a bristly goatee, and under thick eyebrows white as a cottonmouth’s yawn his pupil bores were pinheads, watching. Old as he was and weary, he leaned against the railing of his farm wagon holding the mule thief’s hand high behind his head as the boy squirmed, kicked, spat and cursed. The mule was biting up sheaves of grass, the balloon still floating above. The mare shivered under Smonk so he dismounted and slapped her hard on the rump. Farewell yer highness, he said and watched her gone in a rattle of dust and grasshoppers.

Ike tossed him a jug which he caught onehanded. He thumbed off its thong and drank a long time with little care for what spilled into his whiskers.

The boy groaned.

Smonk gazed down. Almighty damn, he said and took another swig. Go on turn him loose, I.

Ike released the hand and the boy fell to the ground.

You run, Smonk said, I’ll shoot ye in the ass.

Dad gum that hurt. From beside the wagon wheel, the boy glared up at Ike.

What would ye name be? Smonk asked.

I ain’t got to tell you, the boy said. William R. McKissick Junior.

Well, Junior. I seen ye before. Ain’t I? I mean before I told ye to watch my mule which you will not be paid for, case ye was wondering.

Yessir. Our mule. You seen me fore that.

I thought I recognized ye daddy. A fucking bailiff, no less. Smonk’s knees clicked as he squatted then sat against the wheel spokes to catch his breath. He had both hips eaten up with the rheumatism, and every time he got down like this it felt like he might never rise.

Reckon ye old man’s bit by the respectable bug agin, he said. Well, I wish him luck but don’t allow none ’ll smile down on him, life he’s led.

The boy’s eyes egged when he saw Smonk’s speckled plank of a face up close, his bloody teeth and lips, the bright red string dripping into his beard, the hole an eyeball once held.

The boy pointed. Something got ye eye.

Smonk touched the hole. This? He put his fingertip in it.

The boy leaned in for a closer look. How deep can it go?

Smonk made a noise in his chest like rocks grumbling and spat under the wagon. Hear that, I? How deep do it go?

He did a trick where he pretended to put his whole trigger finger in but in truth he was just bending it back.

The boy laughed and clapped his hands.

Smonk lit a cigar. You ever seen a picture of a pirate?

Naw sir, what’s that?

A robber that uses a ship and robs other ships. Out in the high seas. They carry curved swords called cutlasses and kill whales for fun and fly a goddamn skull for a flag. Wear eyepatches too and about half the time they got these birds riding on they shoulder. I never did put the two together till it was too late. See, I’d always wanted to be a pirate, way back a hundred years ago when I was a youngun like you, reading dime novels, and in them days I reckon it might of been possible. But then I growed up as ye will if somebody don’t murder ye first and anyway one month of June not too long back I spent playing blackjack in a gutted-out church in Biloxi Mississippi. Remember, Ike? This coon-ass dealer used to wear him one of them pirate birds on his shoulder and I got to coveting that goddamn bird. It would say ante and bust, and it was the funniest thing. It never got old. Not one time. Ante. Bust! The whores loved it. If a man had owned that bird the whores would of fucked him for free.

The boy listened beatifically. The word whore had risen the devil’s tool in his britches.

Smonk didn’t notice or if he did didn’t say. It was one of them perfect nights, he talked on, smoking. I got on a hot streak and couldn’t of lost if I’d wanted to. Done won all they money and then won they pistols and a week of