Six-Gun Snow White (9 page)

It is around this time that Little Mab Volsky propositions Snow White. Let’s us rob ourselves a bank. Easiest money this side of lying on your back, she says. When a vault busts open it’s like you bust, too. That sweet. That good.

They practice in the woods.

Snow White puts a kerchief over her face and it is a red mask. Little Mab’ll run the show—Snow White can just shoot up the place. They holler at the crick to lie down on its belly, double quick and no funny business. Snow White bags a jackrabbit with a white blaze on his chest like a sheriff’s star. He looked at her crooked. You can’t brook that kind of upfuck. They bash in a rotted stump and get it down to forty-five seconds from first thump to vault open and pillbugs rolling out like dimes.

Little Mab has this to say: “The thing to know about bank robberies is that most fellas who end up blowing dark through some poor soul with a withdrawal slip in his hand wanted to do it before they ever got in the door. They wanted to make a hole in something and fill up the hole with death. Most times the bank is empty anyways. Not too many got much these days. Folks who got unlucky business there, well, they’ll put their bellies on the floor you’ll forget what you came for. They’re like dogs before an earthquake. Some instinct kicks them in the gut and down they go. We’ll take just what we need, enough for doorknobs and seedbags and a good bull to mate to the milk cows. Enough to turn into another day in this world. We’ll get Lainey to fiddle while we rob. Make it nice for them folks on the floor. Ain’t nothing to be done in this life but you can’t make it nicer for them you do it to.”

Snow White can see it clear as day. She’ll land in that bank like a hammer. Rose Red will dance in her hand. She still has a few pearls left. Little Mab will holler and laugh like a fairy on fire. She’ll do a jig in front of the safe like she could cozen it into shedding its cover for her. Snow White can hear Astolaine playing her violin by the door. The customers will all start crying when they hear her tune. Crying out of the same place that told them to lay their head on the cool bank stone.

Snow White wants to shoot the ceiling, the walls, the glass. She wants to put a hole in something, too. She just doesn’t want to fill it up again.

Bang-Up puts the nix on the bank plan. Banks are like little bits of Washington poking up everywhere. Banks are the law.

“Now, we’ve gone to all this trouble to truss up our lives nice and tight with no space for the bad to come in. Why you want to go throwing open the door?”

Deer Boy runs out of scratch somewhere in Wyoming. He starts showing his legs for a dollar in a cathouse. While ranch-hands wait for their friends to finish up. A dollar for a hoof, three for the whole leg. The food is good. There are mirrors everywhere. Deer Boy sees himself all night every night. He looks for the perfect world in them but it’s just him in there.

The girls treat him real sweet. Not like you’d treat a beau—Deer Boy is not husband material. But they’re in the same line of work. One dollar for a peek. Three for the whole show.

One of the cats gets marriage proposals every night. She’s got red hair and a pretty voice on her. Deer Boy hears the men begging her through the walls. Through the mirrors.

Give me your heart.

It happens just as autumn’s coming on red and sharp.

Bang-Up Jackson’s gone south to haggle over jerseys and a lump of tourmaline the shape and weight of a human heart. Witch Hex is drunk down the gulch and letting the sun sop her further. Woman Without a Name is burning ash for soap by the creek. Everyone’s minding theirs.

Old Epharim sees her come, but nobody and nothing troubles that old bear. She stirs her stew. Badger, beans, and black honeycomb.

Snow White hears a knock and she thinks she knows what’s up, thinks she knows to turn away whatever’s rapping. But she’s not ready and she could never be. Out the window stands her mother. Not Mrs. H. No, this is Gun That Sings. Older, grey in the pomp, face carved like someone meant to write something there and never finished. But it’s her. Snow White sees her own face. Her dark eyes. Her mouth red as feeding. Her hurt laid out like leather. It’s not a fair fight. Not even a whiff. Some things a girl has in her to say no to and some things cut her down before she knows she’s gone. Sure, some twiggy, thorny snap in her says:
no, this is awry, this is a bent thing
, in that place that tells her to belly up to the floor before anyone’s even shadowed the doorframe. But it don’t matter. You can’t ask why she did it, when she was warned, when she was told. The plum truth is you would too, if everything impossible stood out there saying you could be loved so perfect the past would go up like a firecracker and shatter across the dark.

Snow White grabs on to her mama and don’t let go. First she’s quiet like morning, then she says
mama
a couple of times, real small against that brown shoulder. Sure, Gun That Sings don’t smell right—smells like a cold forest and a pool of frozen silver—but maybe that’s what a mother smells like. How would she know?

“There now,” says Gun That Sings. “I found you. It’s all right.”

“You’re dead.”

“What’s dead but a little slower than the living? I got here. Let’s you and I roll us some cigarettes and talk up the moon. I bet no one ever taught you to roll a cigarette proper.”

She don’t sound right either. Sounds like the wheels spinning on a slot machine, rolling up all winter.

“Remember what I said about magic and don’t be so quick to call me the devil, child.”

Snow White wants a mother so bad it’s like a torn up body wanting blood. She knows how to roll a damned cigarette. Could teach the Tobacco King of Carolina to do it nice and tight for once. But she lets her mama show her, crushing the dried up leaves against white paper.

“I tried to find the Crow Nation. I tried to find you.”

“Oh, you don’t want to do that,” croons Gun That Sings. “You’d be the fairest of them all. No more at home than at your father’s table, all dolled up like any dress could fix you. Don’t go sticking your hangdog face where it’s not wanted. Ain’t those poor folk been strick enough? Don’t need Miss H to haul water for them, no ma’am.”

Snow White takes the name like a fist.
Go inside
, her bank sense says.
She’s nothing but a creature and she ain’t your mama. This will go bad on you.

Snow White takes a shaky draw on her cigarette and falls down dead.

Snow White comes to with Bang-Up kissing her, sucking the smoke out of her body like steam coming off a pond. Bang-Up’s nearly crying which for most folks is all the way crying and it’s a bad night. Coughing, throwing up black pitch like the devil’s shit, Old Epharim feeding her bear broth and everyone growling her
didn’t we say, didn’t Hex tell you up and down, what’s addled you, girl.

When Snow White finally sleeps it’s like being buried, that deep, that heavy.

You said. You said.

It happens again when acorns start their rat-a-tat falling, like cavalry guns on the hill.

Little Mab’s gone west to do a train job: coin and corn and a hunk of pearl as heavy as a human heart. She couldn’t stand it, not stealing anything for so long. Cocklebur is entertaining a law-man with a taste for green stockings. Astolaine Bombast is skinning a raccoon for fur and victuals. Everyone’s minding theirs.

Old Epharim sees her come, but nobody and nothing troubles that old bear. She stirs her stew. Beaver, beans, and beets as red as blood.

Snow White hears a knock and she thinks she knows what’s up, thinks she knows to turn away whatever’s thumping. She’s not even surprised to see her mama there again, looking like nothing ever went south, like she just wanted to see her girl again. Just wanted to jaw about the weather. Door’s open before Snow White can stop herself. A mother’s like a poison made for only one soul. She opens the door because on the other side it’s her own face looking back, it’s a mirror as big as her whole life and she just wants to be saved.

“Come on, baby girl. We didn’t finish our conversating. Set on the porch with me and we’ll share some good whiskey. I bet no one ever taught you how to drink whiskey straight.”

Snow White sits down. She knows how to drink for fuck’s sake. Could teach the Scottish laird who dreamed up whiskey in his sheep pen to bolt it down and never flinch.

And this time she’s got Rose Red with her.

Snow White cocks her girl and she doesn’t say
who are you
or
if you play me poor I can play you back
. She just sits there with death pointed at her mother. She can feel the blood in her cheeks and her breath hitches.

“You look just like your father, staring at me like that,” sneers the thing wearing the face of Gun That Sings.

Snow White swallows that like a sword. She lets the hammer click back in its place. Everything in her that’s not nailed down is shaking loose.

Snow White slugs back her whiskey and falls down dead.

She comes to and Bang-Up’s got her fingers down her throat. The whiskey comes back up like it hates her personal, there’s puke everywhere and a skunky red in her eyes. Bang-Up punches a few walls and it’s a bad night. No one comes round from a thing like that looking pretty. Retching and sweating and a lump of hide in Snow White’s mouth so she don’t make supper of her tongue. Everyone snarling
twice means you wanted it, what’s soured out in you girl, is you looking for your death or just banging into it full stupid?

When she finally sleeps it’s like drowning, that dark, that final.

I’m looking for it. I’m looking for it.

It happens again when the snow starts riding the wind, not fallen yet but ashing the air.

Everyone’s in camp this time. They see it happen. Even Bang-Up. But they don’t interfere. Everyone’s minding theirs. Only so much you can do to keep a body going when it’s bent on blowing town. They all see her come.

Old Epharim stirs her stew. Fox meat and coyote bones and deer hearts black as secrets.

Snow White doesn’t wait. In the bank of her whole self she’s already laid out on the floor. But it’s not her mama come to shoot the place up.

It’s Mrs. H.

Older, white freezing the edges of her hair, lines in her face like someone meant to scar her forever but didn’t have the heart to finish up. But it’s her. Snow White sees a face she knows and fears and loves in an ugly, bunched up way. A family way.

It’s not a fair fight.

Mrs. H is holding a basket of apples. They look real nice. Snow White keeps her mouth shut—it’s all said anyway. She just looks at her stepmother holding her death bag of Puritan magic between them like they don’t both know what’s going to happen.

And yet. Mrs. H falters. Snow White is the best draw going and her stare punches a hole at point blank. She aims to fill it this time.

“Everything in this world requires a heart in trade,” Mrs. H whispers. “There’s no such thing as a good bargain.”

Yeah. That’s about the speed of it.

Mrs. H pulls out a deck of cards. Thompson’s fox-teeth show on the back of the seven of spades. She offers Snow White the cut, fair as fair as fair.

Snow White don’t take it.

Snow White reaches out and grabs an apple from the bag. She bites into it and never looks away from Mrs. H, from the crevice of her, and this is a suicide we’re watching, full faith and knowledge.

Snow White swallows that piece of sweetness and falls down dead.

Her mother catches her.