The quiet afterwards was unholy. Men didnt know what to speak to one another having seen what they had. Some joked, but none really laughed. Most smoked, and one or two, off by themselves, tried not to cry. Trenchmouth stood and watched as the dead were lined up in the street. Dragged by the armpits, their boots cut ridges in the mud. Rain came in the form that taps your hat brim every few seconds, then not at all.
Mayor Testerman was dying slowly, his wife at his side. Others were tended to as they sat in storefronts stopping blood with rags.
The No. 16 train arrived after all, and the passengers aboard craned their necks and stared at the row of dead men laid out for them to behold. The engineer nearly lost his handle on things as he gawked. Trenchmouth watched their faces, clicking past one after another. A mother and her three little ones. A man with an eye patch. A frail girl whose eyes couldnt understand what they saw. He watched her watching them as the train slowed near to a stop. What ugliness for a child to see, he thought, and then he had to check himself so as not to cry. He kept his eyes on the girl until he no longer could, then looked back at the dead by his feet. One of the killed miners was closest to him, and a single drop of blood had dried on his earlobe, pale and clean otherwise. Trenchmouth stared at the red marking. It was perfectly round. Dark. It began to widen in his gaze, until it filled up and covered over the young mans head, his body, everything around him. Dark, glowing red, like the sun had landed on the earth.
Someone kicked a dead detective beside the miner and Trenchmouth jumped. He looked back to the train but couldnt find the girl. A hand brushed against his back, and he turned to see uglyscar Kump holding the Colt.38 hed had tucked in his belt. Kump had disappeared during all the shooting. Ill give it back, he said, smiling the way no man should in front of so many dead. Then he walked down the line of them, seven dead Baldwin-Felts, and put a bullet in each until the hammer hit hollow. No one cared to pay much mind, and Trenchmouth hoped the little girl had passed on the train. He couldnt look up to see.
Sid Hatfield walked over and stood above the lifeless body of Al Felts. He took the warrant hed had issued that day from his shirt pocket, opened it and spread its creases. He slapped it on the dead mans chest, stood up again and spat. Now, you son of a bitch, he said, now Ill serve it on you.
FOURTEEN. Strange Days And More Of The Same
Mr Bern of the New York Times wrote about the shootout, as folks had taken to calling it in the days following. It made the front page for a while. In the eyes of people everywhere who toiled with their hands, the Baldwin-Felts men had gotten what was coming to them. Theyd burned and bulleted and evicted their way through towns and families for too long, and theyd come upon one town, one sheriff, whod had enough. At least this is how it was spoken on by most in the days following. Trenchmouth didnt do talking of any sort. Mostly he drank. Drank to sleep. But his slumber was ravaged with the kind of nightmares reserved for men who kill other men, and when he sat up alone in his new hideout, he thought his heart might explode from the force of blood coursing through it. More than once, he put his revolver to his head.
At midnight on June 1st, the same day Sid was arrested in Huntington for sharing a hotel room with Mayor Testermans widow, Trenchmouth ran out of moonshine. It was time to leave the hideout, something hed not done in ten days. There was only one place that called to him. Home.
He kept to the dark insides of the ridges skirting Warm Hollow. He moved as a tracker moves, without rustling ground, without any sound, as the Widow had trained him to. When hed circled the house twice and convinced himself no one was there that shouldnt be, he walked through the front door.
Both women were seated at the kitchen table. Both had nothing but their undergarments on, and they fanned themselves alternately with the Sears Roebuck. They looked at him there in the doorway like theyd expected him at that very moment. I reckon we can say hes alive then, the Widow said to Clarissa, who laughed so that she hog-snorted in between. It was the laugh of someone desperate not to cry. Trenchmouth took off his muddied boots and closed the door behind him. He watched Clarissa cackle. Then the Widow started in.
The women were sweaty, and they were drunk.
On the table between them was a lantern, and next to it, a jar of the house pull. The best blend. Trenchmouth felt his stomach lurch, his tongue swell at the sight of it. He walked to the table clumsily and reached out for the jar. When he got there, the Widow kicked him in the shin and smacked his face hard. She pulled the moonshine to her breast and held it there as if it was a child. The laughter was over with. You aint earned the right, she told him. Aint even truthfully lived here since you was a boy, not in your mind. Not in your body for damn near six months.
Clarissa got up and hugged him. She felt his shoulders, his back, his arms. Gripped at him to make sure he was real. For Trenchmouth, it was like the time with her on the train all over again. Electric. He rested his head on her shoulder and they stayed like this.
The Widow paid the display no mind. I believe those detectives reaped what they sewn. But if you had the kind of hand in it they say you did, well She looked at the top of her boys head there on her girls shoulder, the two of them swaying, Clarissa because she was drunk and heard music that wasnt there, Trenchmouth because hed fall if he didnt follow. Im your mother, the Widow said. Ill help you. But you got to get out of Mingo altogether now. Thats all there is to it.
Clarissa began to hum in his ear. Down by the O-H-I-O she hummed, fast and joyful. Shed heard it on Fred Dallaras new gramophone. They were set to be married in August.
But at Freds place, on Freds shoulder, shed never felt like this. This was happiness in the face of death and impending warrants for arrest. This was childs glee in the shadows of a shitstorm waiting to break loose. Her brother was alive, she thought, and then, just as quick, she thought of Fred Dallara again. The fancy word fiancée. But Clarissa kept smiling because she was drunk and because it seemed funny to her in that little, crumbling house that her fiancée didnt drink moonshine. That he thought those who did were mountain trash. Fred Dallara thought the union was foolish at best, dangerous and worthy of breaking at worst. So to keep her laugh from turning to a cry, she stopped thinking of the man she was to marry then. She hummed louder in Trenchmouths ear. Led him in a made-up procession of steps across the creaking floorboards. She hummed and sang what few words she knew: put my arms around her and kiss her again, down by the Ohio, shes just a simple little country girl I know. Clarissa sang loud enough so that she no longer heard the Widow, and neither did Trenchmouth, as she said to him, her boy, tomorrow youll eat what Ive got to fix, say what goodbyes you need to say, and be gone.
The next morning, Trenchmouth walked creekbeds forty pounds heavier. The Widow had pulled an infantrymans pack from a trunk in the loft and filled it. Her uncle Homer had worn it in defense of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Her father had fought against Homer, his own brother-in-law, wearing a similar Union pack, but somebody had taken it off him while he lay holding his breath, pretending to be dead, at Kesslers Cross Lanes. Somehow, her father had managed to hand down the enemys backpack to his daughter. It was a dusty monstrosity, but it had held up. Black canvas, brass mounts, it rode high up on a mans back. The compartments were plentiful. While her boy had slept inside exhaustions relief, shed filled each one with what she knew hed need. Moonshine. Dried beef and water canteen. A jar of the mouthwash concoction shed made for his condition. Anything that held long and packed little. In one compartment shed packed just before he walked out the door was something hed never seen. It was my husbands, shed said, Richards. Your Daddy had he lived to be. It was a big silver flask with an intricate etch. She showed him how it worked. The bottom left section released with the press of a thumbnail-sized catch at the cap. Inside the released section, completely encased, was a Double Derringer, silver like its housing. Like he did before you, use whats here with temperance, she told him. She meant both the shine and the pistol.
Even with four boxes of fifty rimfire cartridges, 22 longs at that, there was room in the pack for a few of his own things. His real daddys harmonica. Map and compass. A pen, pocket knife, and hunting knife. Paper and pencil.
He was almost to Arly Scotts house when the pack grew heavy on his shoulders. He switched his rifles strap from his left to right shoulder and back, but it never rode comfortable next to the pack.
Even with four boxes of fifty rimfire cartridges, 22 longs at that, there was room in the pack for a few of his own things. His real daddys harmonica. Map and compass. A pen, pocket knife, and hunting knife. Paper and pencil.
He was almost to Arly Scotts house when the pack grew heavy on his shoulders. He switched his rifles strap from his left to right shoulder and back, but it never rode comfortable next to the pack.
They were sitting on a wide chopblock in the dirt patch behind the house, Sr and Jr, praying in song. Mrs Scott stood above them, her eyes shut and her fists half-clenched. She sang, Whoa, Satans like a snake in the grass, and the two men answered, Thats what Satans grumbling bout. Mrs Scott went up a pitch, He going bite and conjure you, and again they answered her, Thats what Satans grumbling bout. Then, together, they intoned, And I wont stop prayin, I wont stop prayin, I wont stop prayin, thats what Satans grumbling bout. Trenchmouth stood behind a rhododendron bush and waited until theyd finished. Had they kept on, he could have listened all day. Hed lost God somewhere along the way, but in that sound, in their voices, he could almost feel him again. When hed wiped the wet from his eyes, he approached.