The kid’s face was pulp. His bottom lip swollen and split into segments of a desiccated blood orange. Top lip was gone wherever his front teeth were gone. The runny white of the kid’s eye dried on his cheek. Rats got the yolk. Kid wasn’t dead though. Wheezed his wet accordian lungs on the same schedule as a Yankee Train Station. Every ten minutes the chugging built heavy and then a screech and a couple snorts and a spray of mist. Just the body pushing out fluid is all. If the Indian found him he’d piss in the kid’s face till the kid was too full of fluid to draw a clearing breath. Indian ain’t comin though. I put the bone of his nose into his Indian brain with the butt of my rifle. He pissed hisself, that Indian did, soaked his breeches with urine at the same time his crumpled nostrils spit blood on my good twill.
Kid I said you gonna die if you lay there. Not if when. Don’t don’t start with them tears I says. Tears just another way to suckle flies. Kid I said you gonna survive this if you can stand up. Kid I said you ain’t gonna be good looking no more but your dick still gonna work and if you make ugly kids it ain’t gonna be from what happened here today or yesterday. Kid you gotta stand on those two feet and if you stand on those two feet I’ll put you on my horse. You hear me kid, she a good horse and she hath a broad rump and it’ll hurt kid riding but godammit you’ll live and some of your face’ll even heal up and with a patch you might even put your hand in some dampness you ain’t had to pay for.
He was making words I couldn’t parse. Fresh red blood trickled over some the black blood dried round his mouth. Kid’s chewed up hand almost lifted itself off the dirt. He’d wanted to make his words known to me, but he was weak. Even on my knees crouching next to him I couldn’t translate his gurgle. But I knew he was saying something, and I had to hear it. His people in Montgomery might want to know. Kid I said you got to speak just a little bit louder. And he tried and I put my ear up as near his lips I could.
It wasn’t what he said about my mama that made me cut his tongue out but I have pulled men’s livers out for lesser insults. But I cut that kid’s tounge and I stuffed that tounge into where his eye had been and I made sure he stayed alive for all of it. Cormac McCarthy is the best writer has ever lived a true artist I told him and I won’t stand for no of this race class gender analysis of this story I told the kid. I flicked the tip of his tongue sticking out his eye socket with the tip of my tongue. I said I’m gay as hell motherfucker. No way I can be prejudiced. Tell Ol Roxanne whats her name that.
Kid gurgled some more. I got low.
Bechdel it sounded like he was saying. Failed a test he said.
Only one test I told the kid and that’s who eats when you and a wolf fighting for the same dinner. I put the chrome of my knife through the kid’s windpipe all the way up to the antler handle. I didn’t sup that day but he sure as hell didn’t howl.