Tim Gautreaux - The Missing

Outside, he was watchful for an ambush from the other five houses, though three were homes for vines only. Ropes of poison oak ran into windows, carpeted porches, barberpoled up stovepipes, leaders scouring the blank sky for someplace better to grow. One house was lined with termite tracks, its front wall spotted with bullet holes, not a pane of glass intact anywhere.

Box stepped up onto a leaning porch made of barge boards. There was a pen next to the house and an enormous hog poked its dripping snout through the rails, its huge eye on them. The stink was intolerable. A cow with one horn was in a second pen, leaning against a post and holding a raw hind leg out of the mud. The woman came over, sneered at the pistol, and went inside. The front room was a jumble of unwashed clothes, furniture strewn about as though whoever brought it didn’t know what it was or where to put it. In a single bed against an open side window lay a skeleton drawn over by rashy skin. Box made a coughing noise and the skeleton opened its yellow eyes.

The woman sniffed and glanced at Box. “Holler when go so’s I clean shit off him.” She walked out into the yard, leaving the door wide.

Box stood next to the bed looking down cautiously, as if the figure below him might leap up and tear out his throat. “Daddy?”

The eyes rolled past him and looked at Sam. “Who’s that?” The voice was parched.

“Stranger.”

“Why’nt you kilt him?”

“My rifle stovepiped another shell on me.” He looked back at Sam’s pistol. “This here’s Daddy Molton.”

“My guts burn.”

“You want water?”

“I’m afeared.”

“He says he ain’t gonna kill nobody.”

“What’s he want, then?”

“He come up askin’ about Uncle Jimmy.”

Molton tried to turn his head, but after two small jerks gave up. “Jimmy was kilt.”

“He knows that,” Box said impatiently.

“So what’s he want?”

Box looked at Sam and squinted.

“I want to know what you did about it.” Sam tried to control his voice, to filter all the disgust out of it.

“Did?” This time the head managed to turn. “Jimmy was the smartest one in the whole family. Could do numbers in his head. Could read and write like a schoolmaster. He was a travelin’ businessman. When somebody kilt him, we got word. We went ridin’.”

“My uncle told me you shot through the house two hundred times,” Sam hollered.

The head rose off the pillow, its spidered eyes glowing. “I won’t gonna risk gettin’ another of us dead.”

Sam placed his pistol behind Box’s ear. “You killed my daddy, mamma, brother, and sister.”

The elder Cloat took a gulp of air and said calmly, “I was there.”

“You old bastard. Your brother was a stupid drunk jerking the head off a good horse. My father gave him a little jolt with a switch and he fell off and hit his head on a step. My daddy never meant to kill him.”

“But he died anyways.”

“And you killed a whole family for it?”

Molton tried to speak, but began coughing. Sam hoped he might have said something that bore a hint of regret. When the words did finally roll out on a string of red phlegm, he said, “Appears I missed one.”

Box closed his eyes. “Daddy.”

Sam’s grip tightened on the Colt. The veins in his neck felt full of lead. “How many of you were there?”

“We was nine.”

“Where are they?”

“What?”

“Where are they?” he yelled.

“Lemme die in peace.”

“Batch, Slug, Grill, and Percy-were they there?”

“They was along but done gone on.” He drew up his legs and began to whine. “It hurts. Hurts like hellfire. Leave me be, damn you.”

“Who else? That’s only six.”

“Box, call me that woman.”

“Who else ?”

“All right, damn it. Sim, my other brother; Loganthal, who used to run with us; and that woman’s daddy, Payette.”

“I want to talk to them.”

“That’d be kindly hard. They dead,” the old man groaned. “Dead,” he said again, as though the word were a delicacy to be enjoyed a long time.

“You’re lying.”

“Sim was kilt by the Rayville posse, strung up from the railroad trestle. Payette got on opium and died two year before he stopped breathin’.”

“What happened to the one called Loganthal?”

Molton squeezed his eyes shut. “I couldn’t say.”

Sam looked at Box, who shifted his gaze away and said, “I don’t rightly recall myself, but he’s dead as dirt, that’s for sure. Ease up on that grip, won’t you?”

Sam pushed Box onto the bed and a rancid stink rose from the blanket. “Tell me how he died.”

“I don’t know how to call it,” Box said.

“Was it a disease?”

“Won’t no disease. He started not talkin’ and about a year after that we’d hear him jabberin’ in the night. All night. Then he commenced hollering out of nightmares and Daddy like to went over and shut him up a bunch of times good. His woman lit out.”

A voice rose from the bed. “Then he shook for two year.”

“He what?”

“Like they was a rattlesnake in his bed. Like he seen the end and didn’t like it none. Now leave me be.”

“There wasn’t anybody else?”

“Nine of us,” Molton whispered. “By God, can’t you hear?”

“There wasn’t a Skadlock there?”

“Skadlock,” the man said slowly. “I knew that batch. Little steal-in’ folks. Not cut out for the big show. Stupid. Spent more on makin’ their liquor than they could get for it, most times. Ah, blazes, here come another.” He gritted his few yellow teeth, his lips drawn back, the enamel grinding, ric-ric.

In the yard the woman threw something into the pen, and the hog grunted like fleshbound thunder.

“I want to know one more thing,” Sam said.

“Aw.”

“Did you see them dead?”

Molton gasped a breath. “Yeah.”

“What’d they look like?” He put the gun down at his side, and Box remained still.

“Look like? They was dead.”

“I want a picture. If you give me a picture, I’ll leave you alone.”

“Box’ll tell you. I’m give out.”

“I stayed with the horses, Daddy.”

“Tell me.”

One eye opened. “Then you’ll clear the hell out?”

“Tell me.”

The voice now was low, fired with a deep, anxious rasp. “They died all at once. Nobody was movin’ when we got in.”

“Go on.”

“The woman was on her stomach and the girl was under her left arm.”

“What color was their hair?”

“Damn it to hell, I can’t recollect that. Don’t you know?”

He got down on his knees and put the pistol on the edge of the blanket. “You’ve got to understand. That’s why I’m here. I never saw my mamma’s hair.”

Molton looked him in the eye. “It was brown,” he said. “Clean. And so was the little girl’s.”

“Where was the boy?”

“Agin the back door.”

“How was he dressed?”

The old man wet his lips. “I remember that. He had him on a new bandanna. A slug passed through it and broke his neck.” He looked up and focused. “He went quick, too, that one. Hardly any blood.”

“Broadcloth?”

“Striped broadcloth. We saw the loom out back.”

“My father?”

“He was the one we come to get.”

“Were you drinking?”

“Well, hell, yes. And I don’t guess we thought he was in there with nobody.”

“Where was he?”

He writhed. “I checked his damn eyeballs to make sure that one was dead. I remember he was startin’ to bald. Ain’t that picture enough for you?”

“Where was my father?”

“Dead agin the stove. We pulled him under a light, seen he was finished, then we rode off.” His eyes blinked and watered with the pain of telling.