Unbury Carol(105)

And when she looked back to Moxie, she saw he was staring seriously toward town. She knew he was thinking about Dwight.

“I can do it,” Carol said.

Moxie shook his head no.

“If it’s between you or me…it’s me. The one who took to the Trail. The one who can live, easily, with what’s about to happen.”

Carol nodded. They stared into each other’s eyes for a long time. Then Moxie, covered in soot from Smoke’s oil and blood from Smoke’s heart, left her standing in the woods.

She didn’t need to ask where he was going any more than she needed to ask if he’d return.

The bell-string hanging from his dirty right hand, walking with a limp toward the horse he’d stolen from downtown Harrows, James Moxie looked every bit the outlaw Hattie had once predicted him to be.

If you ask me, John Bowie had once said, curled up on the wicker chair on the front porch, holding a red rubber ball, I think you should steal away one night and find your way to Mackatoon. There’s a man there who, when you bring him up, your eyes get as bright as the sky. He sipped his drink. I have half a mind to go fetch the outlaw myself.

Then John closed a fist around the ball, and when he opened it again, it was gone.

Love vanishes, he said. Then he got up out of the chair and clasped his hand in Carol’s. Carol felt the rubber ball appear in her palm. But it has a way of coming back.





Dwight maintained his grieving visage the entire ride home. He parked the coach in the drive and patted the gray horses sympathetically, as if even the beasts might detect disingenuous sorrow. Upon entering the house, his house now, he loosened his tie and set it over the back of a parlor chair and walked quietly upstairs. He was tired. In his bedroom he removed his shoes and lay upon the bed.

Carol was buried and Opal was satisfied and hell’s heaven it was an easy thing to get away with, murder, when your wife’s condition made it so.

A sense of overwhelming completion swept over him. It was a big enough wave to send him into a heavy slumber.

He woke to a man standing at the foot of his bed.

“Do you see these guns?” the man said, his face as black as greasepaint for the stage. “You move a finger and you trigger every one of them.”

Dwight blinked twice and saw the man had blood all across his chest and neck. Despite the warning, he made to move but felt something tugging on each of his ten fingers. He looked to his hands and saw that all ten fingers were curled unnaturally, held taut with string he might have missed had he not looked as closely as he did. He blinked again and saw that the ten lines of string extended beyond the bed, to the dresser, the vanity, the wardrobe. Ten guns, indeed, set up around the master bedroom, held in place with more string.

The man at the foot of the bed stood in the center of the web as if they were an extension of himself. As if he had the power to create them out of thin air.

Like magic.

“What is this?” Dwight cried.

“You knew she was alive.”

Dwight now knew who this man was. “What? Who? Who’s alive?”

“You should’ve smothered her.”

Dwight, unable to move, only mustered a muttered response. “I…who…I…”

“You hired the Cripple.”

“Alive? Are you talking about my wife?”

Terror shook the words from his mouth.

The man stared at him out of the blackness of his face. A devil risen from a writhing graveyard, a Trail that got no sun.

“I buried my wife today! I’m grieving!”

“You buried your wife alive today.”

The man looked to the scratch on Dwight’s face. For Dwight, it felt something like the man had caught him naked. Dwight shook his head frantically.

“Alive? Who? Carol? Is she? Why…that would be wonderful. Alive you say?”

Dwight, wide-eyed, sweating, looked to his fingers. The string was taut, too taut.

When he looked back at the man he saw he was holding something and heard the soft jingling of a bell.

“The string was cut,” the man said.

Dwight said suddenly, “How did you get that?”

Then Moxie tossed the bell-string to him and Dwight, unthinking, went to catch it.





Three young men sat on a couch in a second-story apartment in Charles and talked about the local women. One of the men said he was going to quit going to the cathouse because word spread in a town this size and he didn’t want his hopeful to hear about it. The youngest said he wouldn’t stop going to the cathouse for any woman and damn be pig-shit if she didn’t like it. The third simply belched.

The front door to the small apartment was kicked open and wood splintered at the hinges. The young men called out as the outlaw stepped inside and turned to the three frightened faces on the couch. His features were sharp, his clothes were dirty, and the face he wore bore no forgiveness.

The outlaw looked at the third. Then spoke.

“You have something of mine.”

The young man stammered a response and the outlaw pulled his gun, cocked it, and trained it on the young man’s chest.

“You have something of mine.”

Trembling, the young man said, “I sold it.”

“Buy it back.”

The young man nodded yes, hurriedly, and rose from the couch.