Deadman's Crossing by Joe R. Lansdale

shadow.
      

      CHAPTER 1  
    WOOD TICK
    WOOD TICK wasn’t so much a town as it was a wide rip in the forest. The Reverend Jebidiah Mercer rode in on an ebony horse on a coolish autumn day beneath an overcast sky of humped up, slow-blowing, gun-metal-gray clouds; they seemed to crawl. It was his experience nothing good ever took place under a crawling sky. It was an omen, and he didn’t like omens, because, so far in his experience, none of them were good.
    Before him, he saw a sad excuse for a town: a narrow clay road and a few buildings, not so much built up as tossed up, six altogether, three of them leaning south from northern winds that had pushed them. One of them had had a fireplace of stone, but it had toppled, and no one had bothered to rebuild it. The stones lay scattered about like discarded cartridges. Grass, yellowed by time, had grown up through the stones, and even a small tree had sprouted between them. Where the fall of the fireplace had left a gap was a stretch of fabric, probably a slice of tent; it had been nailed up tight and it had turned dark from years of weather.
    In the middle of the town there was a wagon with wooden bars set into it and a flat heavy roof. No horses. Its axle rested on the ground, giving the wagon a tilt. Inside, leaning, the Reverend could see a man clutching at the bars, cursing as a half dozen young boys who looked likely to grow up to be ugly men were throwing rocks at him. An old man was sitting on the precarious porch of one of the leaning buildings, whittling on a stick. A few other folks moved about, crossing the street with the enthusiasm of the ill, giving no mind to the boys or the man in the barred wagon.
    Reverend Mercer got off his horse and walked it to a hitching post in front of the sagging porch and looked at the man who was whittling. The man had a goiter on the side of his neck and he had tied it off in a dirty sack that fastened under his jaw and to the top of his head under his hat. The hat was wide and dropped a shadow on his face. The face needed concealment. He had the kind of features that made you wince; one thing God could do was he could sure make ugly.
    “Sir, may I ask you something?” the Reverend said to the whittling man.
    “I reckon.”
    “Why is that man in that cage?”
    “That there is Wood Tick’s jail. All we got. We been meaning to build one, but we don’t have that much need for it. Folks do anything really wrong, we hang ’em.”
    “What did he do?”
    “He’s just half-witted.”
    “That’s a crime?”
    “If we want it to be. He’s always talkin’ this and that, and it gets old. He used to be all right, but he ain’t now. We don’t know what ails him. He’s got stories about haints and his wife done run off and he claims a haint got her.”
    “Haints?”
    “That’s right.”
    Reverend Mercer turned his head toward the cage and the boys tossing rocks. They were flinging them in good and hard, and pretty accurate.
    “Having rocks thrown at him cannot be productive,” the Reverend said.
    “Well, if God didn’t want him half-witted and the target of rocks, he’d have made him smarter and less directed to bullshit.”
    “I am a man of God and I have to agree with you. God’s plan doesn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy in it. But humanity can do better. We could at least save this poor man from children throwing rocks.”
    “Sheriff doesn’t think so.”
    “And who is the sheriff?”
    “That would be me. You ain’t gonna give me trouble are you?”
    “I just think a man should not be put behind bars and have rocks thrown at him for being half-witted.”
    “Yeah, well, you can take him with you, long as you don’t bring him back. Take him with you and I’ll let him out.”
    The Reverend nodded. “I can do that. But I need something to eat first. Any place for that?”
    “You can go over to Miss Mary’s, which is a house about a mile down from the town, and you can hire her to fix you somethin’. But