The Cadillac’s rear tires exploded. Biggun, for all his bulk, jumped two
feet in the air. He made a noise that was a combination of hootenanny yodel
and opera aria. Wade and Bodean whirled around. Biggun came down with a
concrete-cracking concussion.
Smoke drifted around a figure that stood behind the Cadillac, next to Mr.
White’s parked tow truck. The Candystick Kid was holding his pistol in his
right hand.
“What the fuckin’ hell of a shit—!” Biggun raged, his face swelling up
with blood and the tip of his beard quivering.
Sheriff Amory jumped from his car. “Owen! I told you I didn’t want you
around here!”
The Candystick Kid ignored him, his cool gaze riveted to Biggun. “Know
what this is called, Mr. Blaylock?” He suddenly spun his pistol around and
around his trigger finger, the sun glinting off the blued metal, and he
delivered the gun to its butt-first position in the left-sided holster with a
shricking noise of supple leather. “This is called,” he said, “a standoff.”
“Standoff, my ass!” Biggun shouted. “Nail him, boys!”
Wade and Bodean opened fire as Sheriff Amory yelled, “No!” and brought up
the rifle he’d been holding at his side.
The Candystick Kid might have been an old, wrinkled man, but whatever was
in him that had made him the Kid now showed its mettle. He dived behind the
tow truck as bullets crashed through the windshield and pocked the hood.
Sheriff Amory squeezed off two shots, and the Cadillac’s windshield blew out.
Wade yelped and went for the ground, but Bodean turned around with fury
contorting his face and his pistol popped. Sheriff Amory’s hat flew off his
head like a pigeon. The next shot from the sheriff’s rifle put a part in the
side of Bodean’s crew cut, and Bodean must’ve felt the heat of its passage
because he hollered “Yow!” and dropped to a snake’s view.
Mr. Marchette climbed out of the sheriff’s car, holding a pistol. Dad
scrambled out of the pickup truck and threw himself to the pavement, and a
thrill of mingled pride and fear went through me as I saw he was gripping a
gun, too. The Moon Man stayed in the truck and ducked his head, only his top
hat showing.
Boom! the double-barreled shotgun said. The tow truck shook, pieces of
glass and metal flying off it. Biggun was on his knees beside the Cadillac,
and it came to me that he shouldn’t destroy that tow truck because he was
going to need it to stand up again.
“Daddy!” Donny shouted from the sheriff’s car. “Get me outta this,
Daddy!”
“Ain’t nobody takin’ what belongs to me!” Biggun yelled back. He fired
off a shell at the sheriff’s car, and the grille exploded. Steaming radiator
water spewed like a geyser. From the back seat, where he must’ve been
restrained by cuffs or a rope, Donny hollered, “Don’t kill me ’fore you save
me, Daddy!”
I saw where Donny got his smarts from.
Biggun reached up and grabbed the ammo bag’s strap, and he hauled it down
with him to reload. Another bullet smacked into the Cadillac, and a taillight
crashed. The Candystick Kid was still at work.
“Ain’t no use!” Biggun said, snapping the shotgun shut again. “We’re
gonna go through you like shit through a goose! Hear me, Sheriff Junior?”
Dad got up. I almost shouted for him to stay down, but he ran alongside
the sheriff’s car and crouched next to Sheriff Amory. I could see how pale his
face was. But he was there, and that’s what counted.
There was a lull as everybody got their second gulp of courage. Bodean
and Wade began firing at the sheriff’s car again, and Donny hunkered down in
the back seat. “Stop that shootin’, ya damn fools!” Biggun commanded. “You
wanna blow your brother’s head off?”
Maybe it was my imagination, but neither Wade nor Bodean stopped firing
as fast as they should have.
“Get around behind ’em, Wade!” Bodean yelled.
“You get around behind ’em, dumb ass!”
Bodean, proving the cunning of a poker player did not translate into
common sense, stood up and sprinted for the building’s corner. He got about
three strides when a single gunshot rang out and he grabbed at his right foot
and fell sprawling to the pavement. “I’m shot, Daddy! Daddy, I’m shot!” he
whined, his pistol lying out of reach.
“Didn’t think you were fuckin’ tickled!” Biggun roared back. “Lord God,
you got the brains of a BB in a boxcar!”
“Gimme somethin’ else to shoot at!” the Candystick Kid urged, well-hidden
in the shadow of the tow truck. “I got a gun full of lonely bullets!”
“Give it up, Biggun!” Sheriff Amory said. “You’re washed up around here!”
“If I am, I’ll make you choke on the soap, you bastards!”
“Ain’t no use anybody else gettin’ hurt! Throw out your guns and let’s
call it quits!”
“Sheeeeyit!” Biggun snarled. “You think I got anywhere in this life by
callin’ it quits? You think I come up from hog turds and cotton fields to let
a little tin star take my boy away from me and ruin everythin’? You shoulda
used that money I been payin’ you to buy a head doctor with!”
“Biggun, it’s over! You’re surrounded!” That was my father’s voice. To my
dying day I shall never forget the steel in it. He was a Blackhawk, after all.
“Surround this!” Wade jumped up and started firing with his rifle in my
father’s direction. Biggun hollered for him to get down, but Wade was balanced
on the lunatic edge just like Donny. Bullets struck sparks off the concrete,
and one of them thunked into a tire in my nest of concealment. My heart seized
up, it was so close. Then the Candystick Kid’s gun cracked again, just once,
and a chunk of Wade’s left ear spun off his head and red blood spattered the
Cadillac’s hood.
You would’ve thought the bullet had chopped off something more central,
because Wade screamed like a woman. He clutched at his ragged ear, fell to the
ground, and started wheeling around and around like the Three Stooges’ Curly
having a caterwauling fit.
“Oh, my soul!” Biggun moaned.
It was obvious that, like the Branlins, the Blaylocks could dish it out
but they sure couldn’t take it.
“Damn, I missed!” the Candystick Kid said. “I was aimin’ for his head
instead of his ass!”
“I’ll kill ya!” Biggun’s voice returned to the thunder zone. “I’ll kill
every one of ya and dance on your graves!”
It was a frightening sound. But with Bodean and Wade writhing on the
pavement and Donny yelping like a sad little puppy, there wasn’t much
lightning left in the storm.
And then the pickup’s passenger-side door opened and the Moon Man stepped
out. He was wearing a black suit and a red bow tie, as well as his top hat.
Around his neck were six or seven strings and attached to the strings were
small things that looked like tea bags. A chicken foot was pinned to one
lapel, and he wore three watches on each wrist. He didn’t duck or dodge.
Instead, he began walking past the sheriff’s car, past Fire Chief Marchette
and my dad and Sheriff Amory. “Hey!” Chief Marchette shouted. “Get your head
down!”
But the Moon Man kept going with a deliberate stride, his head held high.
He was going right to where Biggun Blaylock crouched by the Cadillac holding a
loaded double-barreled shotgun.
“Cease this violence!” the Moon Man intoned in a soft, almost childlike
voice. I had never heard him speak before. “Cease this violence, for the sake
of all that’s good!” His long legs stepped over Wade without hesitation.
“Keep away from me, you nutty nigger!” Biggun warned. But the Moon Man
would not be halted. Dad shouted, “Come back!” and started to get up, but
Sheriff Amory’s hand closed on his forearm.
“I’ll blow you to voodoo blazes!” Biggun said, indicating that he indeed
knew the reputations of the Moon Man and the Lady. Biggun’s eyes had taken on
the wet glint of fear. “Stay away from me! Stay away, I said!”
The Moon Man stopped in front of Biggun. The Moon Man smiled, his eyes
crinkling up, and he held out his long, slim arms. “Let us search for light,”
he said.
Biggun aimed the shotgun at the Moon Man at point-blank range. He
sneered, “Well, light one for me!” and his thick finger wrenched both triggers
at once.
I flinched, my eardrums already cracking from the blast.
But there was no blast.
“Stand up and walk like a man,” the Moon Man said, still smiling. “It’s
not too late.”
Biggun gagged and gasped at the same time. He wrenched the triggers
again. Still, no blast. Biggun snapped the shotgun open, and what was jammed
into the chambers came spilling out over his hands.
They were little green garden snakes. Dozens of them, all tangled
together. Perfectly harmless, but they did some damage to Biggun Blaylock, and
that’s no lie.
“Gaaaaakkkk!” he choked. He knocked the snakes out of the chambers,
reached into his ammo bag, and his hand came out full of rippling green
bodies. Biggun made a noise like Lou Costello coming face-to-face with Lon
Chaney Junior’s werewolf—“Wo wo wo wo wo!”—and suddenly that monstrous bulk
was up on its feet and showed that he might not walk like a man but he sure
could run like a rabbit. Of course, in such cases the reality of physics must
eventually intrude and Biggun’s weight crashed him to the concrete before he
got very far. He struggled and thrashed like a turtle turned on its shell.
Tires shrieked. A pickup truck loaded with men roared into the gas
station. I recognized among them Mr. Wilson and Mr. Callan. Most of the men
held baseball bats, axes, or guns. Close behind them came a car, followed by
another car. Then a second pickup truck skidded to a stop. The men of
Zephyr—and many of the Bruton men, too—leaped out ready to bust some heads.
“I’ll be,” Sheriff Amory said, and he stood up.
They were sorely disappointed, to say the least, that it was all over. I
later learned the noise of the shootout had thawed their guts and brought them
out to defend their sheriff and their town. They had all thought, I suppose,
that someone else would shoulder the responsibility, that they could stay home
and be safe. A lot of wives had done a lot of crying. But they had come. Not
all of the Zephyr and Bruton men, by far, but more than enough to take care of
business. I imagine that seeing the crowd of wild men with butcher knives,
Louisville Sluggers, hatchets, pistols, and meat cleavers, the Blaylocks
thanked their lucky stars they weren’t going to jail in snuffboxes.
In all the confusion, I came out from hiding. Mr. Owen Cathcoate was
standing over Wade, lecturing him about the straight and narrow path. Wade was
listening with only half an ear. My dad was with the Moon Man, over by the
Blaylocks’ Caddy. I walked to him, and he looked at me and wanted to ask what
I was doing there, but he didn’t because the answer to that would lead to a
whipping. So he didn’t ask, he just nodded.
Dad and I stood together, staring down at Biggun’s shotgun and the ammo
bag. Green garden snakes wriggled around each other like a big mass of
seaweed, overflowing from the bag.
The Moon Man just grinned. “My wife,” he said. “She one craaaaazy old
lady.”
8
From the Lost World
THE BLAYLOCKS, IT MAY BE SAFE TO SAY, WENT DIRECTLY TO jail. They did not have
a Get Out of Jail Free card, they did not collect two hundred dollars, and
their mean monopoly was smashed. I understood that they were as tight-lipped
as clams at first, but then the family ties began unraveling as the state
investigators drilled them. Wade learned that Donny had stolen a large chunk
of his moonshine profits, Bodean found that Wade was skimming the gambling
den’s money, and Donny suspected that Wade had put some arsenic in his bottle
of moonshine and that’s why he thought he’d seen a ghost. As the Blaylock
brothers began spilling their guts, Biggun decided to take the high road. He
fell on his knees at the arraignment and professed, sobbing to shame
Shakespeare, that he was Born Again and had been duped into following the
paths of Satan by his own misguided sons. They must take after their mothers,
he said. He vowed to devote his life to being a minister, if, by the grace of
the Lord above, the judge would offer him the cup of mercy.
He was told he would have a very long time in which to practice his
preaching, and a nice secure place to catch up on his Bible reading.
When they dragged him out of court, kicking and screaming, he damned
everybody in sight, even the stenographer. They said he threw so many curses
that if those bad words had been bricks, they’d have made a three-bedroom
house with a two-car garage. The brothers went before judges as well, to
similar results. I didn’t have any sympathy for them. If I knew the Blaylocks,
they’d soon be running the prison store and making a killing off every
cigarette and square of toilet paper.
One thing, though, the Blaylocks refused to divulge: what was in the
wooden box they’d sold to Gerald Hargison and Dick Moultry. It couldn’t be
proven that any box even existed. But I knew better.
The Amorys left town. Mr. Marchette gave up being fire chief and stepped
into the role of sheriff. I understand Sheriff Marchette told Mr. Owen
Cathcoate anytime he wanted to wear a deputy’s badge it would be fine with
him. But Mr. Cathcoate informed the sheriff that the Candystick Kid had gone
to roam the frontiers of the Wild West, where he belonged, and from here on
out he was just plain old Owen.
Mom was in a zombie state for a while, as visions of what might have been
careened through her mind, but she came out of it. I believe that deep in her
heart she might have wanted Dad to stay safe at home but she respected him
more for making up his own mind about what was right. When my lie became
obvious, Dad debated not letting me go to the Brandywine Carnival when it came
to town but he wound up making me wash and dry the dinner dishes for a week
straight. I didn’t argue. I had to pay the piper somehow.
Then the posters began appearing around town. BRANDYWINE CARNIVAL IS ON
ITS WAY! Johnny was looking forward to seeing the Indian ponies and trick
