Sam knelt down, moved the long black beard out of his way and placed the pistol’s muzzle under the man’s chin, leaning close through the smell of him. “Can you see me?”

“Some.”

“My name’s Sam Simoneaux. Don’t you even blink. You people came down to Louisiana and murdered my whole family, didn’t you?” In his mouth he could taste the words like a metallic poison.

Box’s milky eyes widened. “I ain’t did nothin’. I was just a kid.”

“Look, I didn’t come down here to kill anybody. Understand that. I just want the truth.”

“You sure enough sound like them Frenchies.”

“Who did it?”

“What part Louisiana?”

“Down south. Sugarcane country.”

He squirmed against the pistol. “Yeah. All they let me do was to hold the horses. Said they wouldn’t trust my eyes with no gun.”

“Right. So who did it?”

“I ain’t telling you shit.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to tie you up and go talk to your daddy.”

“He’s sick as a dog. Rotten sick. He ain’t got no breath to tell you nothin’.”

“Where’s your rope?”

“Bring me along, you got me covered. I can talk to him yit.”

Sam glanced around the room. The floor sagged, and the splayed wallboards showed the daylight beyond. There was only a shuck mattress killed flat and greasy and a poplar-wood washstand leaning away from a wall, a handful of corroded rifle shells spread over its alligatored top. “All right. If you get me the answers I want, I’ll leave you alone. But if I think you’re lying to me I’ll paint the wall with your brains. You understand?”

Box nodded and struggled to his feet. “You ain’t the first what said such.”

“Who else lives back here?”

“Just who you seen.”

“You have a woman?”

“The last up and died on me.”

He thought a moment. “Do you miss her?”

Box’s face screwed up at him. “What?”

“Come on.” He put the Colt against his back. “Let’s go see Daddy.”

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.”