“Don’t be nervous.”
The muzzle shook and waggled as two-handed the man pulled the revolver’s trigger. He wanted to reassure him.
“Do a good job,” he said, waiting, anticipating.
Time crawled by. He could hardly breathe. There was a wind and dry dust lifted and was carried in the darkly moving air. He consigned himself to death, endured his wait. He thought of his brother, his father, his mother. Then he became aware of a sound rising up from his chest, the sound of a cry. He made the one sound as if drawn from his throat and then no more.
He waited and waited for his life to be ended, but it was not and then there was the snap of a dry fire, the steel hammer collapsing on an empty cylinder. It was then his belly burned with what felt like boiling water. A roar went up and there was laughter all around and loud cheers.
He knew to smile and he could do no other than to let his head go back on his neck and laugh with them. It was a dirty joke but a joke nonetheless.
The man behind him clapped his ears viciously. It was as if his body had been struck by lightning instead of flattened hands. He could not hear and he could feel as his body was stripped naked.
The woman sat her horse and watched as they were hung from a live oak by their wrists and beaten with a heavy wet rope until he had little feeling left, his flesh so shocked there was only the thud of dull impact. She smoked a cigar while they were beaten. He could smell the drifting smoke and when he could smell it no longer that was the end of their beating and they were cut down.
13
P RESTON WAS LYING on the ground beside him. He was crying in a ragged, tortured, unstoppable way. His tears were burning down his face and choking in his throat. His body convulsed with each wracking sob.
Napoleon lay beside him, dry with the source of pain his own body had become.
Was this the same night of the strange morning of the night before? The morning they rode across the land while the sun was flat on the earth line?
He spoke to the sobbing man harshly, quietly.
“Shut up, god dammit,” Napoleon said quietly. “Quit your bawling. You are killing yourself,” he told the nerve-shattered man.
“I can’t help it,” Preston said.
“They won’t pity you,” he told him. “You are embarrassing them and yourself and they’ll hate you for it and then they’ll have to kill you.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“It ain’t your call,” he said, and then his own pain-ridden mind thought, You poor gone bastard. But why did he care? There were so many things he did not care about anymore.
And then in his next thought, I still got a chance. You always had a chance until you were dead. The thought was involuntary and he did not like having it. It was best to not think at all and to let the mind that resided within the mind do the necessary thinking that led to action and then he could think about what he’d done later.
Against the night’s darkness the white flames of the cook fires flagged in the wind. He lay bound and naked and contorted in that high place and was as if cast to an outer rim of a cold, waterless world. Shapes crossed before the cook fires and the fires disappeared and then the fires appeared again. How silent and beautiful the scene of the crackling fires. The civilization of the fires was as if the only civilization on the land and he was cast from it into a world starkly terrible.
They were being watched over by little boys, barely able to hold the shotgun they passed on with each changing shift. The little boys wore sandals and white cotton britches knotted with rope at the waist. They wore blankets and castoffs and all manner of headgear. One of the boys wore magenta-colored socks with his sandals.
There were hard flowers. What kind they were he did not know. The little boy who wore the magenta socks picked a handful after he handed the shotgun to the next little boy.
A man he’d not seen before came forward. He wore a
The muzzle shook and waggled as two-handed the man pulled the revolver’s trigger. He wanted to reassure him.
“Do a good job,” he said, waiting, anticipating.
Time crawled by. He could hardly breathe. There was a wind and dry dust lifted and was carried in the darkly moving air. He consigned himself to death, endured his wait. He thought of his brother, his father, his mother. Then he became aware of a sound rising up from his chest, the sound of a cry. He made the one sound as if drawn from his throat and then no more.
He waited and waited for his life to be ended, but it was not and then there was the snap of a dry fire, the steel hammer collapsing on an empty cylinder. It was then his belly burned with what felt like boiling water. A roar went up and there was laughter all around and loud cheers.
He knew to smile and he could do no other than to let his head go back on his neck and laugh with them. It was a dirty joke but a joke nonetheless.
The man behind him clapped his ears viciously. It was as if his body had been struck by lightning instead of flattened hands. He could not hear and he could feel as his body was stripped naked.
The woman sat her horse and watched as they were hung from a live oak by their wrists and beaten with a heavy wet rope until he had little feeling left, his flesh so shocked there was only the thud of dull impact. She smoked a cigar while they were beaten. He could smell the drifting smoke and when he could smell it no longer that was the end of their beating and they were cut down.
13
P RESTON WAS LYING on the ground beside him. He was crying in a ragged, tortured, unstoppable way. His tears were burning down his face and choking in his throat. His body convulsed with each wracking sob.
Napoleon lay beside him, dry with the source of pain his own body had become.
Was this the same night of the strange morning of the night before? The morning they rode across the land while the sun was flat on the earth line?
He spoke to the sobbing man harshly, quietly.
“Shut up, god dammit,” Napoleon said quietly. “Quit your bawling. You are killing yourself,” he told the nerve-shattered man.
“I can’t help it,” Preston said.
“They won’t pity you,” he told him. “You are embarrassing them and yourself and they’ll hate you for it and then they’ll have to kill you.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“It ain’t your call,” he said, and then his own pain-ridden mind thought, You poor gone bastard. But why did he care? There were so many things he did not care about anymore.
And then in his next thought, I still got a chance. You always had a chance until you were dead. The thought was involuntary and he did not like having it. It was best to not think at all and to let the mind that resided within the mind do the necessary thinking that led to action and then he could think about what he’d done later.
Against the night’s darkness the white flames of the cook fires flagged in the wind. He lay bound and naked and contorted in that high place and was as if cast to an outer rim of a cold, waterless world. Shapes crossed before the cook fires and the fires disappeared and then the fires appeared again. How silent and beautiful the scene of the crackling fires. The civilization of the fires was as if the only civilization on the land and he was cast from it into a world starkly terrible.
They were being watched over by little boys, barely able to hold the shotgun they passed on with each changing shift. The little boys wore sandals and white cotton britches knotted with rope at the waist. They wore blankets and castoffs and all manner of headgear. One of the boys wore magenta-colored socks with his sandals.
There were hard flowers. What kind they were he did not know. The little boy who wore the magenta socks picked a handful after he handed the shotgun to the next little boy.
A man he’d not seen before came forward. He wore a
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