Unbury Carol(89)

He snickered and brought his boot heels down on the horse. It felt good to laugh. Even a snort. Even as the tin dug into his mangled knee. Both he and the horse propelled by the sting of sharp metal against flesh.

The wind picked up, the beast moved fast, and Smoke felt the town approaching.

“You gonna lose your arms, too, Cripple! Ahahahahaha!”

At last: real, full laughter.

Smoke felt the cool, dark air pass over him. As if he were traveling through a wall of ghosts. The horse was moving fast, dangerously fast, but Smoke didn’t care. The horse could fall, could step hard in a divot, break two legs, send Smoke into the brush. Smoke could lose his own legs, lose his oil, but hell’s heaven, he could smell that shitter town and the nonsense legend that lurked there.

“You done lit yer last fire, Cripple!”

“I’m gonna enjoy breaking the rest of those legs!”

“Ahahahahahaha!”

Tree branches scratched at his arms and chest. Rocks flew from the horse’s hooves. Smoke was gaining. Moxie wasn’t going any farther than the finish line.

“Ooh-eeeh! We ridin’ now!”

He brought his shins down hard and felt the slosh within. Some spilled. Smoke didn’t care. Not tonight. Tonight he could finish the outlaw with one drop. That was all he’d need. One drop of oil in Moxie’s mouth. One drop of oil in his eye. Smoke felt it coming: the moment, the kill…

The burn.

They were past the pines now and the moon lit up the fields beyond them. Smoke knew these fields were the last landmark he’d see before crossing the town’s dotted line. Ahead, bathed in moonlight, he saw the town’s outline, Harrows’s silhouette, the downtown boardwalk and shops nestled at the base of a hill that boasted the finer homes and barns. Far to the right burned the many lanterns that framed the graveyard, making it look something like a ship to Smoke now, tombstones and markers out to sea, bobbing in the blackness.

Smoke imagined. Smoke prepared.

He was going to stand over Moxie and watch the flesh crinkle from his face, curl back black from his hairline and ears. The outlaw’s mouth would open with fright; his last scream for life; his forever-howl. He’d like to see Moxie bring his hands to the flames on his face. Oh, what glory to know Moxie’s brain would burn inside his mythic skull, for inside that brain was the explanation for the Trick at Abberstown and once it was burnt, it was gone, and once it was gone, it was nothing…no more.

No legend. No more.

Smoke was going to watch the horse burn, too. Count on that. He’d been staring at the hoofprints forever. He’d start with the horse. The outlaw would hear the beast screaming and leap from the whore’s bed he shared. He’d rush half naked out onto the balcony and see the good horse jerking its head from the hitching post, rendered ash and bone in the road. Had the great James Moxie ever heard the sound a horse makes as it burns? He would. Then he would know it had begun, that the man following him was now the man who had caught up, and the fire that made the mare scream was the very one coming for him.

    Moxie Moxie Moxie my!

We can’t both get out of this alive!



Passing the dark, low fields just south of Harrows, Smoke saw a scarecrow that reminded him, in shape, of his mother. Inspired by it, he imagined her burning. He imagined the dresses from her closet…the curls in her blond hair…the rims of her glasses…all of it and everything blistering, bending, burning.

The fire he imagined for her was blue and smelled like childhood. And childhood reminded him of the children he once knew; he imagined a girl named Merrily melted to the shape of a chair, another, Henry, sitting upon her in a classroom.

He’d like to burn them all. Every face he’d ever seen.

Excited now, Smoke saw the mothers of these former schoolmates rushing from their homes, desperate feet pattering on the porch boards, able to discern the smell of their own child burning above all others. Smoke would be there when they came. He’d be there with a piece of meat on a stick.

Dinner over childhood’s fire.

Hey, Ma! This meat only gets better the longer it cooks!

Moved, Smoke imagined more.

Men in suits bursting into flame upon exiting church. Families sitting down to eat burnt food, blackened bread, ashen meals upon scalding-hot plates.

Come on, Billy! Eat your fire! EAT YOUR FIRE!

A blazing funeral. A funeral in flames. Shitty Benson caskets lowered into blackened holes. A graveyard of open lids; men and women screaming help us, covered in oil, drenched in dread. Heat-thunder breaking open a midnight sky. And Smoke, the minister, walking the rows, dropping a match for each along the way. Plots exploding into…

…fire.

A combustible wedding next. The happy couple exchanging tongues of white flame. Smoke bringing their parched faces together, kiss the bride, kiss the groom, kiss the ashes upon the broom.

Scalding birth. A lady on a bed of straw, a doctor on his knees, encouraging, push, push, as the hell-howl escaped the mother’s mouth and the doctor’s face caught fast…the inferno erupting from all the way within the woman…the womb…the tin colander every mother nurtures…

Doctor! I can’t control it! I can’t!

Oh, Smoke would assure the young mother, but look at its face!

“You set on dying, Cripple?”

“Ol’ Magic Moxie gonna make you disappear!”