Those Across the River

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

IT WAS THE last day of October.

Halloween, but nobody celebrated it here.

Although Dora and I had never joined the people of town in their Sunday devotions at the church (covering ourselves with the tattered rags of my Catholicism), I could almost hear Pastor Lyndon intoning, “If God wanted you to have a false face, He’d have given you one.”

Funny that flower-bedecked sacrificial pigs struck him as Christian, but only heathens made jack-o’-lanterns.

We met at the cemetery just before dawn.

Buster Simms handed bullets of silver out to each man in the requested caliber. The gunsmith in the mill town had gouged Buster terribly for the work because the metal was so much harder to melt and fashion than lead, with the result that most men could afford only a few rounds—although Saul had paid for twelve with his daddy’s money, enough to fill his rifle twice. He had insisted on fitting the bullets into the casings himself and had stayed up all night measuring and re-measuring the propellant, seeing to his father’s and brother’s .30-30 shells as well. They took five each.

I requested seven, enough to fill the clip with one in the chamber. These slugs were solid silver; the ones I had gotten from the silversmith were lead with filings in the nose, capped with wax. I had no way of knowing if they would do more than hurt. I thought so, but I was glad to have the solid rounds. The four weaker slugs went last into the clip and in the chamber; the more potent ones, four of them loose in my jacket, would be the last rounds I shot. In case the first ones didn’t do it.

I would have liked to have heard the conversation between Buster and the gunsmith; the silversmith had asked me if I was shooting at haints. Once he explained to me what a haint was, I said he wasn’t too far off.

Buster looked at us, the men he had gathered. He had stood himself near the freshly turned earth beneath which Ursula Noble’s ashes rested in her mother’s jewelry box. This box sat atop the coffin containing what remained of her mother. Buster wasn’t good at talking to groups of men so he let that mound of black dirt do the talking for him. It would say the right things to make of us the vengeful men he wanted, men who would have the strength to go into the country of our enemy and act. Ursula’s father was the first one to speak. His eyes were dry and hard. He snugged his .38 into his waistband and said, “We goin?”

“Yep,” Buster said.

And that was how it started.

Nine men went into the woods.

Myself. Buster Simms. Saul, Lester and John “Old Man” Gordeau. Dr. Harlan McElroy. Arthur Noble. Lawton Butler. The young carpenter Charley Wade.

Three dogs went also.

Lester had these dogs leashed, dogs his father had seen whelped and sold, but had now bought back. Even though he had only worked with them for less than a month, Lester knew these dogs and they knew him. The female, Delilah, was the biggest and best behaved. The boys, Mustard and Shep, had long since tested her and found themselves lower on the rope, so what she did they did.

The Gordeaus had taken these dogs to the Noble place to get their talented noses full of that smell. Their smell. It was strong to the dogs. They hated it and yet they pulled towards it, wanting their masters to extinguish its source. I was sure the dogs knew more about what was in the woods than we did; they had read libraries in the musk and saliva and hair left at the murder scene, and only Delilah’s faith in Lester’s divinity fortified her to drive the other two dogs towards those across the river.

We kept a good pace on the first leg of the journey. We crossed the river pulling the raft across in groups of three. Nobody said it, but all of us sensed that this time was for keeps, and that our hunt would turn around on us if we had not come back across by sundown.

As labyrinthine as those woods were, it was hard for me to see how we would.

We stopped at Magi Rock long enough to drink and to let the animals drink, and then we kept on. Summer was over now and the cool air let us push long and hard without rest. We had left the trail hours ago. None of us knew exactly where we were, but I got the idea that the dogs had been chasing something in circles, or, since we always seemed to be on new terrain, in a sort of broad, lazy spiral.

Looking up, I saw how yellow the trees were above us. Were we on higher ground? It was colder here than in town. Autumn was moving faster here.

It was a little like the Argonne, but for once I was afraid of something besides nonexistent Germans. The fear was almost good this time. There was a reason.

The dogs, who had been pulling us forward with purpose for many hours, were now becoming frantic. Lester had no gloves, so I’m sure even his callused hands were becoming raw from the strength in the leashes.

“Somethin’s close,” he said.

Time slowed down for me as it always did in the moments before some event. I looked down and saw my feet moving towards whatever was out there. One of my boots knocked the top from a mushroom. Sweat trickled in my shirt despite the chilly air. The air smelled clean and good. I opened my mouth to try to hear something besides the baying of the dogs, but I could not.

I marched forward with the rest of them.

Movement in the trees made Saul stop and raise his rifle, and the rest of us raised our weapons, too.

Something in the trees off to the left.

One of them.

I felt a tremor in my hands but willed it to stop. I rested my thumb on the hammer of my pistol.

One of them.

The dogs knew.

I knew, too. Which one of them it was. Knew it as surely as I had known my father was dead that night my telephone rang near midnight.

Where are your pants, my friend?

A flash of red in the trees.

“Show yourself,” Old Man Gordeau croaked next to me, then Buster said it louder.

The red flash again, faded cloth.

Pale yellowish skin.

“Hold your fire,” Buster said. “It’s a little girl.”

I moved sideways to get a better look.

I saw the dress, an old dress, faded nearly pink in places, hung on a small, thin figure standing in the brush fifty yards out.

But it wasn’t a girl. It was a mulatto boy of about thirteen.

The same boy.

The boy with no pants.

The dogs were losing their minds, barking with wide eyes, spittle flying from their mouths.

“God,” I said.

“Come over here to us,” Buster said.

But it didn’t move.

“Watch her,” Old Man Gordeau said, shouting over the dogs.

“I think that’s a boy,” said Charley Wade.

“God,” I said again.

It put its thumb in its mouth like a small child might, but there was no innocence to it.

I found my voice.

“That’s one of them. I’ve seen him.”

Saul raised his rifle.

“What do I do?” he said. “I don’t want to squeeze on no little boy.”

He said this mostly to his father, but his father didn’t answer.

Buster moved towards it, and it moved back. Coy like a little girl. The familiarity of the game raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

The whole party edged forward to catch up with Buster.

When Buster moved forward again, it retreated, keeping its distance exactly.

Calmly.

“Shoot that thing,” Arthur Noble said.

Buster said, “We won’t hurt you. It’s them we want.”

“Didn’t you hear Mr. Nichols? It is one of them. Shoot it!”

“No, Arthur. Not no kid.”

It was at that moment that Delilah yanked her leash out of Lester’s hand, startling him so that the other dogs got free, too.

“Hey!” Lester shouted after them, but it was too late. The three dogs charged hard at the boy. It ran farther into the woods. The dogs ran after it. We began to trot now, too, much slower than the dogs or what they were chasing. Just before the thing in the red dress fell completely out of sight, the dogs caught up with it and dropped it to the ground. I assumed from the thrashing in the ferns and leaves that the dogs were tearing the boy apart.

Then one of the dogs made a sound between a yelp and a scream and ran back towards us. The thing in the red dress was up now and running, far away in the trees.

I could see that it was chasing the other dogs.

Away from the party.

They vanished from sight.

The remaining dog was running towards us, trailing its leash behind it and shivering and crying pathetically. While the rest of us just stared, Lester went to the dog.

“Mustard?” he said, though how he recognized it I did not know.

The dog’s face was covered with blood, its own blood. Its nose had been bitten off, and one eye was out. It sat on its haunches and scooted away from Lester, trying to wag its tail and crying, bobbing its ruined head. Lester knelt to the dog and moved his hands around impotently, wanting to help it but afraid to touch it, just saying “Goodmustardgoodmustardgoodmustard” in a hopeless paternoster.

“Do it, boy,” the elder Gordeau said.

But Lester knelt there, wringing his hands.

So Old Man Gordeau shot the dog.

“Just let me see that goddamned thing again,” Saul said, whiteknuckling his rifle. “Just let me see it.”

He would get his wish.

WE TRUDGED FORWARD, following the tracks of the boy and dogs as best we could. Blood showed on the lighter leaves near the boy’s bare footprint, but soon gave out. Odd drops of blood had fallen here and there, and Lester would have other men stand at them, then rotate forward so the line of travel could be established.

Soon they came to a dip in the land with pooled blood and more torn and stamped-down grass and fallen leaves, and then the dog’s tracks stopped altogether.

Lester found other human tracks, larger ones, in a patch of bare soil and on lichen-covered rock nearby.

He groaned and tears formed at his eyes as he scouted the scene.

“Them dogs is dead,” he said, “and someone come up and took em. They went off that way, but the boy kept on ahead. Which do we follow?”

“That damn boy,” Saul said.

Buster nodded, and we kept on.

WE KEPT ON much too late.

The first stone hit just after dusk.

The sky was smoky purple above the canopy of trees, and then the canopy gave out as the posse entered a small clearing. The waxing moon was trying to shine behind thin clouds. I suspected Lester was wondering whether to tell everyone that he had lost the trail, and he pulled out a plug of tobacco, stirring his finger around in it to get the last crumbs.

He was putting the pinch in his cheek when he saw something flash just in front of his nose, making him start and inhale.

The stone caught Charley Wade hard and he went “Ah!” and bent over double, cupping his free hand over his ear and holding his revolver awkwardly in front of him. Lester spasmed and coughed while the rest of us crouched and shouted and pointed our guns in all directions. Still coughing, Lester pointed his rifle from the hip and shot blind into the trees.

Another stone bounced off my shoulder and then Buster ducked a third one that hit the doctor square in the teeth. He jerked and shot his .32 at the trees even though his shot wasn’t clear. Buster shouted God-DAMNIT while more stones fell and more men shot.

Saul broke right and scampered towards cover; I went with him, as did Buster and most of the rest. Arthur Noble ran off left, followed by Lawton Butler, who held on to the back of Arthur’s overalls.

Saul got small behind a tree and sighted down his rifle, waiting. I crouched behind him, then realized Charley was still bent over in the clearing, getting hit again, saying “Ah!” I ran out and grabbed Charley’s hand, catching a rock that felt like it might have broken my collarbone, and I yanked Charley back into the trees. Charley lurched and fell, slinging his gun into the trees and out of sight. The doctor covered his head ineffectively with his hands and ran for the gun, but a stone hit him so hard in the cheek he turned right back around and took cover again.

He shot his own gun dry and I shot once at what turned out to be a dead tree.

Yelling and shooting off left.

Panic.

Buster said, “Red dress!” and shot, then slipped and fell against me. A stone had grazed his head.

Buster’s hand on my white shirt left a bloody print.

Lester, still coughing, was about to shoot another bullet, but his daddy grabbed the barrel and pointed it down, saying, “Stop shootin til you can see somethin.”

I saw one, a Negro woman with wild hair, and I shot twice at her before she ducked behind a tree. Her stone just missed Saul’s head, and Saul turned his rifle towards where it had come from. When she broke cover, she ran so fast I barely saw her. Saul’s shot rang my better ear, and the woman fell.

Everything got quiet after that.

I put my gun away.

“Goddamnit,” Buster said again.

No more stones came.

The woods seemed to exhale.

Lawton Butler stumbled across the clearing, holding his head. Bleeding. “Arthur’s dead,” he said quietly.

Then he said it again.

DR. MCELROY WIPED his hands on his pants.

“I’ve seen cancer as big as a catcher’s mitt. I’ve seen a woman with a fishhook in her eye. But I never thought I’d live to see a man stoned to death.”

“Like in the Good Book,” Lester said.

“Sometimes I wonder how good a book can be that’s full of such as this.”

Arthur Noble lay where he had been trying to cover his head. He had run out of bullets just before Lawton had been hit hard enough to lose consciousness. The pile of stones lay all around him.

“When I come to, it was all over,” Lawton said. “I ain’t made for this. I’m sorry.”

But the doctor was still staring at Arthur, who might have looked like he was about to sing, except that his jaw was wrong.

Buster said, “Doc McElroy.”

He looked at Buster now where Buster was holding a handkerchief to his side, just above his belt.

“I did that,” the doctor said.

“No hard feelins. Just tell me if it’s bad.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but it just hit fat.”

Buster smiled a little at that.

“Put whiskey to it if you got some. When we get back, I’ll go in looking for shirt.”

“You should put something on that face, too. You’re a mess.”

Dr. McElroy pulled out his brass cigarette case and squinted at it, but it was too dark to see his reflection now.

“When we get home,” he said. “If we get home.”

SAUL HAD STAYED watching where he’d shot the woman, worried, perhaps, that she might get up again or that one of them might come back for her. Now Buster said, “Let’s have a look,” and we all went forward.

She was a black woman of thirty-five or so with a shaggy, tangled mane of hair that was just going grey. She wore men’s dungarees and an old-fashioned ladies’ coat that had flapped up to show the bare skin of her back and her narrow waist. There appeared to be no fat on her, but abundant muscle.

Saul had hit her squarely in the head, and her mouth was open and the blood under her could fill a sink. The doctor leaned over her and covered her back with her coat. Everyone kept his weapon on her just in case she grabbed the doctor’s wrist.

She did not.

She was dead.

“WE CAIN’T LEAVE Arthur,” Charley Wade said.

“What about her?”

“The hell with her,” Old Man Gordeau said. “If they want her buried, they can do it. They got all the damn shovels.”

Buster said, “We ain’t got time for buryin. We got to hunt or run. I say hunt, but we gonna vote.”

“What do you mean, vote?” Lawton said, still holding his head, which was bleeding less, although his drunken slur and difficulty focusing suggested he had a concussion.

I said, “Lester, can you find them?”

“Not in the dark, not without dogs. But maybe with the light.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Saul said. “Hunt.”

Old Man Gordeau said, “Hunt.”

“Run,” the doctor said.

“Run,” Charley said.

“This isn’t even worth a vote. We’re beat,” Lawton said, quivering his lip like a child about to cry.

Buster said, “I’ll take that as ‘run.’ Three each. Two left. Mr. Nichols?”

I put my hands on my hips and looked down at my feet for a long moment before I spoke.

“As soon as this is over, I’m putting my wife in the car and driving out of here for good. This is your town. I thought maybe it could be mine, too, if I fought with you, if I planted my feet and stayed. But it’s not. I won’t run out on you tonight. I’ll do what you say. There’s eight of us. Seven should vote so we don’t split down the middle. I abstain.”

“No,” Lawton said. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Who’s left?”

“Lester.”

Buster looked at him.

Everybody looked at him.

He was about to say “run,” but when his daddy shifted his weight from one foot to the other, Lester looked down and the word “hunt” came out of his mouth so quietly I wasn’t sure what he said.

“No. Do what y’all want. I’m leavin.”

Then Lawton Butler turned from where he stood near Buster and walked slowly away.

“Hey!” Buster shouted at his back, but Lawton kept walking.

He had only gotten a few steps when Buster trotted up behind him and spun him around, trying to be gentle, but the man’s balance was bad and he fell into Lester Gordeau’s leg. He crabbed up to his feet and looked wide-eyed at Buster.

That was when he made the mistake of pulling his pistol out of his trousers. He probably only meant to back Buster away with it, but Old Man Gordeau, who wasn’t five feet away, didn’t wait to find that out and shot him in the chest with his deer rifle, just left of the sternum. When his heart stopped, Lawton Butler shrugged his shoulders and made a sound like a man about to throw up, then raised his pistol, shot Gordeau once in the stomach, and fell down dead.

The old man sat down hard with a groan and said “Jesus” through clenched teeth as his sons clutched at him and everyone else, even the doctor, stood fish-mouthed at what had just happened. Gordeau kept saying “Jesus” until he passed out and that was when the spell broke and Dr. McElroy came over to him, felt his neck and lifted his shirt.

“He’s not dead, but the way he’s bleeding, he’ll die.”

“Ain’t there no chance?” Lester said.

“Maybe in a hospital. Not out here.”

“I just changed my vote,” Lester said. “Let’s get out of here. Please.”

THERE WAS NO good way to carry Old Man Gordeau.

In the end, the Gordeau boys used the hand-axe Charley Wade had brought and cut down saplings to make the frame for a crude litter. Saul stripped the jacket from Arthur Noble and the pants from Lawton Butler with little hesitation (even when Lawton’s eyes opened and the dead man belched, causing Lester to jump back as if from a rattlesnake), and the brothers stretched these between the poles.

Charley Wade asked about the propriety of abandoning their friends, but nobody wanted to haul them, not even Charley, so they stayed. Handkerchiefs over their faces were the only funeral rites the two of them got; Dr. McElroy, covering Arthur, said “Poor Sadie” in lieu of a prayer.

Buster took Arthur’s gun, saw that it was empty, and tossed it into the trees. Lester, whose rifle was almost dry, took his daddy’s six bullets. Each man checked his remaining load. I looked in Lawton Butler’s pistol and found it empty. The bullet in Gordeau’s belly had been his last.

We looked where Charley had slung his gun as he fell, but it was too dark and the brush was too thick. The gun was gone.

For the first hour, Gordeau came in and out of consciousness as his boys carried him along, groaning when his litter bearers encountered a root or shifted his weight clumsily. Dr. McElroy’s improvised dressings had soaked through and there was nothing clean for which to swap them out. The old man only spoke once; he looked at Lester tight-lipped and said, “Boy,” but then seemed too tired to say the rest.

He died some time soon after that.

When it was clear that he was gone, the boys set the litter down, as they had already done several times to rest their arms, and Lester started to cry. Saul looked away from him.

“Quit that,” he said. “Daddy wouldn’t cry over you.”

“I guess not,” Lester said.

But then Saul cried, too, less for his father than for himself; for what had happened to him, what would likely happen to him yet.

Nobody suggested they leave Gordeau behind, though all of them wanted to. I could see in Charley Wade’s eyes that it was all he could do not to sprint for the river.

The boys picked Gordeau up and moved along.

I was the one who recognized the trail.

I spotted a fallen log with two gnarled branches reaching up like someone asking to be lifted, an image I had noted in our last excursion. We found the path back to the river just on the other side of that. This cheered us, and, even though it was getting near midnight and the river was an hour away, Buster thought it might be smart to rest.

“Sit a minute, and smoke if you got it. We still got a ways to go.”

I accepted a cigarette from the doctor.

Lester and Saul, who had worn themselves out carrying their father, sat against the same large tree and napped, each holding his rifle in his lap, their heads nearly touching. Buster asked Dr. McElroy to look at his pocket watch and tell him when it had been fifteen minutes. He and I kept our eyes on the still, cold woods around us. Charley Wade melted against the fallen log with the outstretched limbs. The doctor sat next to him and smoked.

Nobody saw it happen.

“Time,” the doctor said.

Buster roused each man separately, quietly.

A moment after Saul awakened, he started and stood up fast.

“What is it?” Lester said.

“My rifle. Lord, my rifle.”

Saul was holding a branch with rotten bark.

He had been sleeping with that on his lap.

His gun was gone.

ONLY CHARLEY WADE saw where the first shot came from.

He was halfway through the words “Look out!” when the BANG of Saul’s stolen rifle bounced in the woods. Chips of bark flew near Lester as he scrambled to his feet.

“Gimme that!” Saul said, reaching for Lester’s rifle, which he held out to his brother, but Saul’s fingers had just brushed the stock when the next shot from the woods rang out and Saul fell down, grabbing his jaw. Screaming womanishly. I had heard this noise before.

Got the one behind Jesus God I’m next

The rest of the party crouched and ducked and now opened up, firing madly in the direction the shot had come from.

The half-moon had come out, throwing pale light down through the trees.

I saw that we were obliged to shoot over the body of Old Man Gordeau, whose face was bare and drawn in the moonlight.

Another muzzle flash from the trees; it had relocated. Or there were two. We kept shooting. I reloaded the clip with the shells from my pocket, fired two at a silhouette, then got a stove-pipe jam. I cleared it, then stopped shooting. The doctor flinched as a bullet passed quite near his head. He was otherwise frozen, holding his empty pistol in front of his face for no good reason.

Lester emptied his rifle and said, “I’m out!”

“Me, too,” said the doctor.

Buster said, “Shut up!”

“I think they shot six!” Lester said. “If all they got’s the Enfield, they dry, too.”

“Could be they got my gun. They’s still three in that,” Charley said.

“Shut the hell up about how many bullets you got,” Buster yelled.

It was hard to be heard over Saul.

He was shrieking, hoarsely now.

I had two bullets left.

I resolved then and there not to use them unless I was within ten feet of one; to save them until I was certain I would die unless I shot. My resolution would be tested very soon. I looked around at the group. Lester had his shirt off, his white limbs bare to the cold; the doctor had dropped his empty gun and now held Lester’s shirt bunched and pressed against Saul’s jaw, muffling his cries somewhat. Lester was looking around to see if there was a dropped gun he could shoot, but he could see none, and nobody was firing now. We all panted, crouching behind trees, our breath pluming.

Lester saw something and fixed his gaze on it.

I looked where he was looking.

The red dress. The boy with no pants walked out almost nonchalantly into the moonlight. Buster stood to fire, but the boy saw him and crouched low, fast, just as Buster squeezed. The bullet whined off into the trees. The boy now bent down and grabbed Old Man Gordeau by the pants legs and began pulling him across the trail to the trees on the other side. Lester Gordeau broke from where his brother thrashed and groaned and ran to the trail, grabbing his father’s arms.

“Let him GO!” he shouted at it, but it pulled grimly, stronger than Lester, jerking at the dead man’s legs in a series of short, hard tugs like a dog pulling at a knotted sock. Lester was losing ground. He dug in and tried to pull harder. He knew it was staring at him but he would not look at its face.

The moon went behind a cloud again and it got darker.

I wanted to shoot the boy but would not part with those last bullets; nor could I make myself run onto the trail to help Lester.

“Let go, Lester!” Charley yelled.

“Lester, get back here!” shouted the doctor.

That was when the boy in the red dress dropped the old man’s legs and walked up to Lester, who stood stupefied, holding his father’s arms. He didn’t even move his head away when it reached up like a magician about to do a trick, and grabbed Lester’s ear. The boy yanked Lester’s ear off.

Lester yelled and dropped his father.

Both brothers yelling now.

The boy tucked the ear in his mouth like a piece of candy. I sighted down the barrel now, arguing with myself about whether to shoot the boy; that was when Buster grabbed Charley’s axe from his belt and ran at it.

It didn’t even duck.

Buster swung hard and hit true.

He buried the axe in the boy’s head as if in a soft tree stump; I knew the sound it was making even though I couldn’t hear it, knew that Buster was feeling that sound in the bones of his arm. He let the handle go. The boy staggered backwards until he hit a tree, then slid to the ground as his legs buckled under him. Every man stood still, holding his breath.

A gout of blood poured down the boy’s head.

Then stopped.

The axe fell out of the boy’s head and onto the trail. And then the wound was gone. The men who were close enough to see it gasped. The boy wiped the blood out of his eyes with the hem of his dress and stood up, picking up the axe.

Buster backed up a step. I walked onto the trail and stood next to Buster, my gun pointed at the boy. Not ten yards away. Despite my shaking hands, I was sure I would hit him.

The boy dropped the axe.

Grinned his sharp-toothed grin.

Then started to shake.

The doctor might have thought it was a seizure from the head wound, but that had not just been a wound any more than this was just a seizure.

Buster and I backed away.

The boy changed.

Quickly, tearing the red dress.

The moon came back, shone on its dust-colored fur.

It stepped out of what was left of the dress.

I remember smelling urine and thinking Buster’s bladder had loosed. Turned out it was mine.

I sensed Buster turn and run beside me, so I turned and ran also, still holding the pistol with two shots left in it.

I believe all of us ran.

All except the doctor, with Saul’s head in his lap.

I never saw them again.

Or Lester.

BUSTER AND I ran together until we could not run. Twice I hit trees, once so hard I almost lost consciousness. When we could no longer run we trotted, and then we walked. Buster wore the expression of a tragedy mask and, at times, made a sound between panting and sobbing. I put my arm around the big man’s shoulders but Buster didn’t seem to care; just clutched his hands under his chin like a child saying grace and made that sound.

I don’t know how long that went on. I know we were making for the river, and I have no idea if we were heading in the right direction. I was sure we wouldn’t get there. I was right.

When strong hands took my arm and spun me, I didn’t resist. I had no fight left. “This one?” said a small-eyed Negro with an unevenly trimmed woolly head. A white man said, “Yeah. This’n shot me. With this.” He had already plucked my pistol out of its holster. He had permanently matted long hair and a huge mustache. They were both naked, as was a white woman with a curly brown mane, who moved past us and made for Buster. Thankfully I didn’t see any more. The men hoisted me on their shoulders like a rolled-up rug and started running with me.

Behind me I could hear Buster screaming hoarsely, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Not about the men running with me; about whatever the woman was doing to him.

I knew I was going to die.

And something odd happened; I relaxed.

And it all got funny.

The white one, the one with the cowboy mustache, was running in front with my legs, limping, favoring his right side. I remembered now shooting one of the monsters in the haunch the night my wife was bitten. The right haunch. I started laughing.

Then I realized that I recognized his mustache.

He was one of the hobos who came through town looking for work. I sat next to him while he ate ice cream at Harvey’s on that hot summer day. The colored with the bad haircut had been with him. It was also possible that Curly Woman was the pipe-smoking “Polish” woman. Jesus, they had our number. They hadn’t been angels looking for honest men; they had been devils making maps.

I laughed harder.

The colored with the bad haircut, who was holding my upper body, laughed, too, and said, “Sound like young marse got a joke to say.”

I thought about Dora, alone in the house, and I stopped laughing. I clawed and tried to dig my fingers into the black man’s eyes. He didn’t yell, just made a sound like ack, twisted out of it and dropped me. Because the other one had my feet, my head hit the ground. Now my feet were dropped. I opened my eyes just in time to see the black one straddle my chest fluidly and sit down on me like an anchor. I remember the moonlight on his blousy but threadbare shirt, how old and dirty it was, and his stink. It was the not-unpleasant smell of a Negro’s skin and hair corrupted with something feral and something coppery like old blood. I had smelled it while he ran with me, but now it washed down over me.

“You need a bath,” I said.

He blinked his small eyes in surprise.

“Lawd, you got a mouth on you,” he said admiringly, then hit me with incredibly hard open hands until I blacked out.

I think it was twice.