what!
“We’ve got to make a choice, Lowell,” said the older of the two brothers.
“What sort of choice?”
“It’s been eatin’ at me ever since that sumabitch, Johnny Montana murdered Pa!” Carter’s face wasfull and pink like his daddy’s had been, like the pinkness of cooked hog meat.
“We can stay here and raise pigs the rest of our lives, and make out like nothin’s happened, act like the old man’s blood
being spilt don’t mean a thing…or, we can go after that sumabitch and bury him in the ground!”
Lowell stared off into the dark purple haze of dusk, and saw a shadowy landscape that no longer felt familiar.
His words came out thick and slow, like the land itself, like the sluggish rivers, like a hound dog walking down a dirt road
on a summer’s day.
“I’m with ya, Carter, you know that. Family has to stick together. But, we ain’t gunmen. Ain’t neither one of us ever killed
nothin’ but a hog in all our lives. We catch hold of Johnny Montana, he’s liable to be more than we can stand.”
Lowell was a leaner, taller man than his brother. His face was ridged with bone. His knuckles and wrists and elbows were ridged
with bone. He was bone and sinew and black restless eyes. His ridge of jawbone worked under the knotted muscle as he sat there
contemplating the darkness, contemplating Carter’s suggestion.
“Well, if you’re with me then I say good. I can’t see just doin’ nothin’. Raising hogs don’t mean a thing to me anymore!”
“Maybe we could hire us a man to go after Montana,” said Lowell.
“Hire somebody! Like who would
we
hire?”
“Maybe we could hire ol’ Knife Davis,” said Lowell, shifting his long bony legs stretching his back. “Everyone knows that
ol’ Knife killed some boysdown around the Gulf. Killed them over liquor, or some such. A man like that don’t mind killing so much. Probably could get
ol’ Knife to do the job for a hundred dollars, maybe less.”
“Knife Davis is a drunkard and can’t be trusted,” said Carter. He could smell the pigs now that the wind had shifted, could
hear their rooting and squealing. Pigs, he thought. God damn hogs! It felt like a fire in his belly.
Carter swung his bulk down off the porch and stood in the yard staring off at something Lowell knew wasn’t there. Without
turning to look at his brother, Carter said: “Besides, I won’t pay any man to take care of our family business. Either we
do this thing ourselves, or we just let it go!”
“What about the farm?” asked Lowell. “What about the hogs?”
“We’ll get cousin Ed to tend to it.”
“How we going to find Johnny Montana, Carter?”
“We’ll find him. He bragged around about how he was goin’ to go to Texas. Hell, Texas can’t be all that big.”
“He’s got a week’s start on us.”
“Yeah, but he don’t know we’re even after him, probably never figure in his life that a couple of hog farmers would try and
track him down.”
“Probably not,” said Lowell. “Least not us.”
The body of State Senator Willard F. Gray lay in a black mahogany casket that had silver handles and silver palm leaves on
the lid. His hair had been combed and parted with rosewater; his gaunt, stone face had traces of white powder in the hollows
of his cheeks. He wore a boiled shirt with a paper collarand pearl buttons, a black suit with velvet lapels and black silk trim; his hands looked as though they had been sculpted
out of wax.
There was no evidence whatsoever of the small black hole that Johnny Montana’s bullet had made just below the senator’s right
nipple.
Constituents, friends, and strangers came to view the body as it rested on a catafalque directly beneath the dome of the state
capitol building; their footsteps echoed on the marble floor as they passed by.
After three days of Lying-In-State at the capitol building in Little Rock, a train carried the senator’s body to his home
in Montgomery County