Deadman's Crossing (13 page)

 
CHAPTER
1
 

WOOD TICK

WOOD TICK
wasn’t so much a town as it was a wide rip in the forest.
The Reverend Jebidiah Mercer rode in on an ebony horse on a
coolish autumn day beneath an overcast sky of humped up, slow-blowing, gun-metal-gray clouds; they seemed to crawl. It was his
experience nothing good ever took place under a crawling sky.
It was an omen, and he didn’t like omens, because, so far in his
experience, none of them were good.

Before him, he saw a sad excuse for a town: a narrow clay
road and a few buildings, not so much built up as tossed up, six
altogether, three of them leaning south from northern winds that
had pushed them. One of them had had a fireplace of stone, but
it had toppled, and no one had bothered to rebuild it. The stones
lay scattered about like discarded cartridges. Grass, yellowed by
time, had grown up through the stones, and even a small tree had
sprouted between them. Where the fall of the fireplace had left
a gap was a stretch of fabric, probably a slice of tent; it had been
nailed up tight and it had turned dark from years of weather.

In the middle of the town there was a wagon with wooden bars
set into it and a flat heavy roof. No horses. Its axle rested on the
ground, giving the wagon a tilt. Inside, leaning, the Reverend
could see a man clutching at the bars, cursing as a half dozen
young boys who looked likely to grow up to be ugly men were
throwing rocks at him. An old man was sitting on the precarious
porch of one of the leaning buildings, whittling on a stick. A few
other folks moved about, crossing the street with the enthusiasm
of the ill, giving no mind to the boys or the man in the barred
wagon.

Reverend Mercer got off his horse and walked it to a hitching
post in front of the sagging porch and looked at the man who was
whittling. The man had a goiter on the side of his neck and he
had tied it off in a dirty sack that fastened under his jaw and to
the top of his head under his hat. The hat was wide and dropped a
shadow on his face. The face needed concealment. He had the kind
of features that made you wince; one thing God could do was he
could sure make ugly.

“Sir, may I ask you something?” the Reverend said to the
whittling man.

“I reckon.”

“Why is that man in that cage?”

“That there is Wood Tick’s jail. All we got. We been meaning
to build one, but we don’t have that much need for it. Folks do
anything really wrong, we hang ’em.”

“What did he do?”

“He’s just half-witted.”

“That’s a crime?”

“If we want it to be. He’s always talkin’ this and that, and it gets
old. He used to be all right, but he ain’t now. We don’t know what
ails him. He’s got stories about haints and his wife done run off
and he claims a haint got her.”

“Haints?”

“That’s right.”

Reverend Mercer turned his head toward the cage and the boys
tossing rocks. They were flinging them in good and hard, and
pretty accurate.

“Having rocks thrown at him cannot be productive,” the
Reverend said.

“Well, if God didn’t want him half-witted and the target of
rocks, he’d have made him smarter and less directed to bullshit.”

“I am a man of God and I have to agree with you. God’s plan
doesn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy in it. But humanity can do
better. We could at least save this poor man from children throwing
rocks.”

“Sheriff doesn’t think so.”

“And who is the sheriff?”

“That would be me. You ain’t gonna give me trouble are you?”

“I just think a man should not be put behind bars and have
rocks thrown at him for being half-witted.”

“Yeah, well, you can take him with you, long as you don’t bring
him back. Take him with you and I’ll let him out.”

The Reverend nodded. “I can do that. But I need something to
eat first. Any place for that?”

“You can go over to Miss Mary’s, which is a house about a mile
down from the town, and you can hire her to fix you somethin’.
But you better have a strong stomach.”

“Not much of a recommendation.”

“No, it’s not. I reckon I could fry you up some meat for a bit of
coin, you ready to let go of it.”

“I have money.”

“Good. I don’t. I got some horse meat I can fix. It’s just on this
side of being good enough to eat. Another hour, you might get
poisoned by it.”

“Appetizing as that sounds, perhaps I should see Miss Mary.”

“She fixes soups from roots and wild plants and such. No
matter what she fixes, it all tastes the same and it gives you the
squirts. She ain’t much to look at neither, but she sells herself out,
you want to buy some of that.”

“No. I am good. I will take the horse meat, long as I can watch
you fry it.”

“All right. I’m just about through whittling.”

“Are you making something?”

“No. Just whittlin’.”

“So, what is there to get through with?”

“Why, my pleasure, of course. I enjoy my whittlin’.”

The old man, who gave the Reverend his name as if he had given
up a dark secret, was called Jud. Up close, Jud was even nastier
looking than from the distance of the hitching post and the porch.
He had pores wide enough and deep enough in his skin to keep
pooled water and his nose had been broken so many times it moved
from side to side when he talked. He was missing a lot of teeth, and
what he had were brown from tobacco and rot. His hands were
dirty and his fingers were dirtier yet, and the Reverend couldn’t
help but wonder what those fingers had poked into.

Inside, the place leaned and there were missing floorboards.
A wooden stove was at the far end of the room, and a stovepipe
wound out of it and went up through a gap in the roof that would
let in rain, and had, because the stove was partially rusted. It
rested heavy on the worn flooring. The floor sagged and it seemed
to the Reverend that if it experienced one more rotted fiber, one
more termite bite, the stove would crash through. Hanging on
hooks on the wall were slabs of horsemeat covered in flies. Some
of the meat looked a little green and there was a slick of mold over
a lot of it.

“That the meat you’re talkin’ about?”

“Yep,” Jud said, scratching at his filthy goiter sack.

“It looks pretty green.”

“I said it was turnin’. Want it or not?”

“Might I cook it myself?”

“Still have to pay me.”

“How much?”

“Two bits.”

“Two bits for rancid meat I cook myself.”

“It’s still two bits if I cook it.”

“You drive quite the bargain, Jud.”

“I pride myself on my dealin’.”

“Best you do not pride yourself on hygiene.”

“What’s that? That some kind of remark?”

Reverend Mercer pushed back his long black coat and showed
the butts of his twin revolvers. “Sometimes a man can learn to like
things he does not on most days care to endure.”

Jud checked out the revolvers. “You got a point there, Reverend.
I was thinkin’ you was just a blabber mouth for God, but you tote
them pistols like a man who’s seen the elephant.”

“Seen the elephant I have. And all his children.”

The Reverend brushed the flies away from the horsemeat and
found a bit of it that looked better than the rest, used his pocket
knife to cut it loose. He picked insects out of a greasy pan and put
the meat in it. He put some wood in the stove and lit it and got
a fire going. In a short time the meat was frying. He decided to
cook it long and cook it through, burn it a bit. That way maybe he
wouldn’t die of stomach poisoning.

“You have anything else that might sweeten this deal?” the
Reverend asked.

“It’s the horse meat or nothin’.”

“And in what commerce will you deal when it turns rancid, or
runs out?”

“I’ve got a couple more old horses, and one old mule. Somebody
will have to go.”

“Have you considered a garden?”

“My hand wasn’t meant to fit a hoe. It gets desperate, I’ll shoot
a squirrel or a possum or a coon or some such. Dog ain’t bad you
cook ’em good.”

“How many people reside in this town?”

“About forty, forty-one if you count Norville out there in the
box. But, way things look, considerin’ our deal, he’ll be leavin’.
’Sides, he don’t live here direct anyway.”

“That number count the kids?”

“Yeah, they all belong to Mary. They’re thirteen and on down
to six years. Drops them like turds and don’t know for sure who’s
the daddy, though there’s one of them out there that looks a mite
like me.”

“Bless his heart,” the Reverend said.

“Yeah, reckon that’s the truth. Couple of ’em have died over the
years. One got kicked in the head by a horse and the other one got
caught up in the river and drowned. Stupid little bastard should
have learned to swim. There was an older girl, but she took up
with Norville out there, and now she’s run off from him.”

When the meat was as black as a pit and smoking like a rich man’s
cigar, Reverend Mercer discovered there were no plates, and he ate
it from the frying pan, using his knife as a utensil. It was a rugged
piece of meat to wrestle and it tasted like the ass end of a skunk. He
ate just enough to knock the corners off his hunger, then gave it up.

Jud asked if he were through with it, and when the Reverend
said he was, he came over, picked up the leavings with his hands
and tore at it like a wolf.

“Hell, this is all right,” Jud said. “I need you on as a cook.”

“Not likely. How do people make a living around here?”

“Lumber. Cut it and mule it out. That’s a thing about East
Texas, plenty of lumber.”

“Someday there will be a lot less, that is my reasoning.”

“It all grows back.”

“People grow back faster, and we could do with a lot less of
them.”

“On that matter, Reverend, I agree with you.”

When the Reverend went outside with Jud to let Norville loose,
the kids were still throwing rocks. The Reverend picked up a rock
and winged it through the air and caught one of the kids on the
side of the head hard enough to knock him down.

“Damn,” Jud said. “That there was a kid.”

“Now he’s a kid with a knot on his head.”

“You’re a different kind of Reverend.”

The kid got up and ran, holding his hand to his head, squealing.

“Keep going you horrible little bastard,” Reverend Mercer said.
When the kid was gone, the Reverend said, “Actually, I was aiming
to hit him in the back, but that worked out quite well.”