Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

“It is a child,” said the doctor. “Voila.”

At that moment, the young deputy appeared in the doorway with the water. He spilled it in waves upon the office floor as he brought it to the doctor’s side. The doctor set the baby in the water, which was fairly warm and seemed to have a mildly calming effect — though the screaming did not stop.

Sugar was collapsed into the bench and bleeding from a visible tear that vanished beneath him. It might have gone on forever, back up to his shoulders and around, for all Alice knew.

“You are late with this,” said the doctor.

“I’m… is that it?” said the deputy. His eyes watered over at the site of the baby coming clean in the water.

The doctor lifted it and began to wipe the slick matter from its arms and legs.

“This is the child.”

“Is he?”

“Not dead,” said the doctor.

“Let me see it,” said Sugar, without lifting himself up.

“It’s a girl,” said the doctor.

“Let me see it,” said Sugar.

The other deputies tried to make a point of not looking, but the doctor caught several of them stealing glances.

“The child’s in good health and will stop crying eventually,” shouted the doctor to the room. “It is not a demon. Not yet.”

“Can I hold it?” said Alice.

“Let me see it,” said Sugar.

The doctor set the child in Alice’s arms, and showed her how to hold it.

He washed his hands in the red water in the basin then dried them on the remaining blankets.

“Where did you get these blankets?” said the doctor.

“From a woman… down the street. I just…”

“They’re dirty,” said the doctor.

“I…”

“It doesn’t matter now,” said the doctor. “But you have made a mistake.”

“Let me see it,” said Sugar. It was chant-like. Less a request and more a rhythm he was holding in his mouth.

Alice brought the baby to his side and knelt to place it in his arms. She showed him how to hold it.

“What is it?” said Sugar.

The doctor set down the dirty, stained blanket and joined the sheriff on the porch. He stuck in a plug of tobacco. His hands were starting to settle. The road was crisp before him and the sun was fully baked in the sky. He needed a drink.

“An abomination,” he said, and spat.

Mary, Martha, and Bird had walked through the night. They had not stopped. They had not eaten. Mary spoke as they walked, but of nothing in particular. Bird did not cry. Martha did not respond to the many things there were to respond to, but she watched the edges of the darkness around them and, every once in a while, she would sing. Softly to herself, something Bird could not quite make out. It was not soothing. There was something much worse about it than the silence.

Mary complained that they were not stopping but Martha paid her no mind. Bird was glad to keep moving. He was glad Martha had brought the weapons, hung one from her shoulder and carried one in her hand. They looked natural on her, comfortable, though he had never seen her anywhere near a gun before.

An hour or so after daybreak, they began to see other people. A few men pulling carts along the road at a slow pace. A woman and two children in clean, pressed clothes, carrying small black books held to their chests or under their arms. They were moving toward a thinly populated area. Toward a town that suddenly appeared before them like a mirage.

Sugar was feeding the baby. It was not something he knew how to do, but something that had simply happened to him. It was a familiar enough idea, and when it came time to perform the task himself, something in him settled the child and his own body into place and the baby took hold. The sheriff left the doctor on the porch to smoke and chew and curse and approached Sugar splayed out in the cell with the baby attached. The sheriff gripped the baby by its sides and detached it from Sugar, who protested and was met with the barrel end of peace and order.

“That’s enough,” explained the sheriff. “You’ll hang tomorrow, and we’ll be done with all this.”

The baby was crying. Screaming. Alice worried they were hurting it and she went out onto the porch to tell the doctor. He was no longer settled there but was ambling back toward the porch where she had first joined him.

When she finally caught up with him, he was at the door of the bar and fumbling to open it against its will. An armed woman and a dirty little girl and a crippled boy were gathered across the street, on the steps of the inn. Alice waved at the boy but he did not notice or he did not care.

“I think it’s locked,” she said.

“I know it’s locked,” he replied. “I am trying to get in.”

“I think they’re hurting the baby,” she said.

“Babies cry,” said the doctor. “That creature will never have a happy life.”

“Where did it come from?”

“That’s a story for when you’re older,” said the doctor.

He kicked at the base of the door, knocked with his fist, and pounded with his palm.

There was suddenly a gunshot, and then there were many gunshots. The doctor ducked, then lowered himself onto the porch. Then he rose, grabbed Alice, and lowered the both of them onto the porch. She was crying.

“Are you shot?” she said.

He was not.

He had first thought the shots were a kind of warning from the barkeep to ease off the door, but as they continued he realized they were coming from down the road.

He spied two of the deputies huddled behind a cart and a barrel out in front of the jail.

The windows were broken. He could see the piles of glass shining up from the porch.

“He’s shooting from inside,” said the doctor.

“Inside of what?” said Alice.

“The jail.”

“The sheriff?”

“I highly doubt it,” said the doctor.

The bartender cracked the door then and ushered them in. The shots continued. They kept their bodies low.

“Why did they bring this on us?” said the bartender. He kept his hand on the small of Alice’s back, pressing her to the floor.

The doctor reached from the floor and batted his hand about the surface of the bar until it found the edges of a bottle. He brought it down and examined the label, then uncorked it with his teeth.

Outside the jail, one deputy reloaded while the other kept his gun on the door. Sugar was moving around inside, but hadn’t fired in some time. The sheriff must have been dead. The other deputies were dead. The youngest, their dear friend, was gut shot and slung over the splintered railing that marked off the jail’s porch. It bowed toward the earth. At any moment it would come down.

The deputy finished loading and looked to the other from behind his cart. The other deputy was curled up behind his barrel, bravely peeking out every so often to determine what they were up against. They summoned their courage. They spotted the strength in one another’s eyes, and the fears. They would stand together. They would avenge their partners and protect this small town. They took their pistols into each hand, gave one another a final look, then rose to rush the doorway.

They moved several crouched steps before Sugar stepped onto the porch and fired upon them. One received bullets to the chest and gut. The other, a bullet to each leg. Scrambling on his back like a beetle, he gathered one of his guns from where it had fallen and brought it up to meet Sugar. Sugar kicked it from the man’s hand and sent a stray bullet into the body of the young deputy slung over the porch. The railing rocked with the impact and came cracking, splintering toward the earth, where it deposited the limp body of the young ranger.

Sugar put a boot on the deputy. Sugar was still naked from the waist down. The deputy decided in the brief moment it took for Sugar to arrange himself above him that he would tell the killer everything he wanted to know. When Sugar asked, who are you? who sent you? what’s my crime? the deputy would proudly spill his guts.