"How it ended was like this," she resumed. "There was a woman named Sarey Foster; lived as far south in Taney County as you can get without being in Arkansas. She leaned Union but her husband, Thomas, was a secessionist. He had been captured by a regiment of Blues in Christian County and was going to be executed, for what I cain't remember, 'til he remarks to the Yankees, 'I think I can do us all a great blessing: Grays and Blues, regarding the one thing we agree on.'
'What?' they ask.
'Killin' Alf Bolin.'
'How?'
'I've heard he goes to my wife, Sarah. Him and his men. She gives him food.'
'Does she give him ought else?'
'If I wasn't manacled, I'd cut your throat for asking that. Though I confess I've wondered the same.'
'So we're supposed to just cut you loose on your word that you are somehow gonna conspire with your wife to deliver Alf Bolin? Is that what we are to understand?'
'Yessir. Would it be worth it to you? 'Cause it would be to me. And he wears gray, though I don't think he gives a damn 'bout nothing but meanness.'
"So, they thought this over, and here's what they done. They had Thomas Foster put his grays back on, put him on a coach with a Yankee escort, also in gray, and took 'em south of Branson. Neither of them could carry a weapon, 'cause even dressed Confederate, Alf and his men would shoot them dead if they caught up with them and they was armed. Then Thomas starts walking all night long to Sarey's and his cabin, while the Yankee rounds up a few Blues, and they all tuck back close to Layton Mill. Anyhow, Tom gets to his cabin about an hour before dawn and slips in to tell Sarey the whole story—how he was a condemned man, but if she plays along and helps him bring in Alf, they can lick this thing. The game was this: Sarey would take Tom in, pretending he was a wounded Rebel; she would put him up in the loft bed, moaning and whimpering, where Alf would hear him. And she knowed Alf would come—we'll leave it at that. Now if his men tried to come in, it'd get tricky, and Sarey would have to say, no, they must remain outside on account of she wants to be alone with Alf and doesn't want a bunch of pigs grunting around while she and him are playing. But they almost always stayed outside anyhow. So Tom and Sarey fleshed out their plan, and then Tom snuck out to where there was some old junk metal and found him a plow coulter, rusted but still sharp enough at the point, and he leans it against the fireplace. Then he builds a fire and goes up to the loft and cuts the inside of his thigh, pretty long and just deep enough. Then he pulls his britches back up to let the blood seep through.
"Sarey starts cooking whatever she's got handy—some conies and greens and whatever else—and Tom lies up there in the loft waiting for the door to open. Soon enough it does, and he hears, 'Sarey? Ise here. You got anything for me?'
"Tom moans and rolls so Alf can hear the corn husks rasping in the mattress.
"'Who's that?' Alf asks, and he reaches for his pistol stuffed in his belt.
"Sarey answers and says, 'It's a Confederate boy come by half-dead. I don't know if he's gonna pull through. He was with his men over around Melva because they heard a contingent of Blues was going to be on the shunter, but they got ambushed on the way, and he's shot in the leg. He made his way here, and he was able to get up in the loft. See—there's blood on the ladder.' After Tom had cut the inside of his leg, he smeared blood on the ladder.
"Alf asks, 'Where's his horse? I didn't see nary horse.'
"He was brought here. The others've gone to find their regiment."
"'Confederate, huh? Let me look.'
"So Alf climbs up and sees Tom lyin' in the bed, and Tom lets his eyes get dull as he can, and he rolls over so Alf can see the blood on his pants.
'He looks bad but maybe not too bad.' Alf climbs back down and sets at the table and puts his pistol beside his plate. 'What you gonna give me?'
'I've got stew,' says Sarey, and she takes the pot out of the ashes and sets it on the table. Then she spoons some meat and gravy onto Alf's plate.
'I'm hungry,' Tom moans from the loft.
'Can you climb down here, or am I gonna have to bring it up to you?' Sarey asks.
'I'm coming down. I'm sicka this here bed, and I gotta find my regiment.'
'Your regiment? See if you can climb the down the damn ladder first and then we talk about your regiment,' says Sarey.
"So Tom slings his good leg onto the ladder and lets himself down slow. He turns to the table, and Alf is a-setting there pointing his pistol at Tom's chest, saying, 'Easy there, Johnny Reb.'
'Just want some stew, no trouble. Then I'll dress this leg best I can and push on to find my company.' Tom raises his hands and sits on the side of the table closest to where the coulter's propped against the fireplace. Then he puts his hands flat on the table and lowers his head like he's thinking about dying.
"Alf keeps ahold of the pistol in his right hand and eats with his left, drawing a piece of johnny cake through the gravy, whilst Sarey ladles some stew in front of Tom. Tom eats like he ain't had nothing for days, wolfing his food and asking for more corn bread. And for some reason, that eases Alf's concern. Alf watches Tom eating like that, and then he just lays his pistol beside his plate and leans back in his chair.
'She cooks good, don't she?' asks Alf.
'Good enough,' says Tom.
'I think you keep eating like that and you'll be back to killing Yankees. Sarah says you ain't got a horse.'
"'Nope. Mine was shot out from under me.'
"'Maybe we can get you a horse.'
"Alf then take a short stem pipe from his shirt pocket and begins to fill it with baccy. He tamps it and then gets up from his chair and turns to rake a coal from the fire place. He first reaches for the coulter, and then who knows why—maybe it was just too large—he rakes out a coal with a poker. They's a pair of tongs on the mantle, and so Alf leans down to pick up that coal—"
The listeners lean forward. The moment has arrived. Justice and holiness and courage and trickery are like the moon hanging over the cabin. Tom Foster leaps with the alacrity of a doe, and seizes the coulter and drives it into Alf's back so fierce the point pushes almost all the way through and bulges outward against the skin of his abdomen. Alf groans and pitches forward, his head hitting the top of the fireplace. And he would have fallen into the fire, but Tom grabs his right foot and pulls him back, and then he and Sarah drag Alf into an adjoining bedroom.
"Sarey wrapped a dishtowel around his mouth and tied it tight, because she knew, they both knew, that if Alf hollered or thumped his leg or had the chance to fire his gun, that the men would swarm that cabin and slaughter them all and burn it down around them. So they drug Alf into the bedroom, and Tom kissed Sarey hard on the mouth when they suddenly heard Alf make a kind of groan in his throat. So Tom fetches the coulter in, and he rolls Alf face up staring at the ceiling, and he stabs him in the chest two, three, four times, so that the blood just spurts on everything, and Tom is walking in the blood and it's getting on the cuff of his britches. Tom was making a meaty wound, and Alf looked like he had been struck in the chest by a 8 pound cannon ball. And Sarey was doing all she can not to laugh, because Alf had this astonished look on his face, like a man who never considered the possibility that someday he might just become nothing more than a bad idear himself.
"The cabin was quiet now, and even the killing hadn't been that loud. Who knows what the Bolin gang was thinking or doing out there in the woods. As I said, it apparently wasn't the first time they had waited outside the cabin, but Tom Foster never chose to ask why or probe Sarey on what she did for Alf. And what could Sarey have done anyhow? War ain't never done nobody any good.
"Tom and Sarey laid low, and when night fell, they could see through the window a fire or two burning some ways off, far enough that Tom slipped out the back door and made his way to Layton Mill. He tells the Blues what him and Sarey done, and so they come riding in and shoot as many Bolin boys as they kin and drive the rest into the woods. Then they come into the cabin, and there lays Alf with a rag stuffed in his mouth and his dead eyes looking at nothing. And the men nodded at one another and shook Tom's hand. And if the Grays would've been there, they would've shook his hand, too. In fact, the whole damned war might've come to a stop right there over the butchered body of Alf Bolin. Shame it didn't end that way."
The listeners are happy and satisfied. Alf is dead, the moon is up, and the rhythm of the rocker has slowed to a gentle creaking.
The denouement of the story is the joy of justice. Sarah and Tom and the Union boys load Alf in a rig to carry him to Ozark where a contingent of Blues are stationed. Not only is Tom spared, but he and Sarah are heroes, soon-to-be recipients of reward money. Ma Cloud couldn't "remember whether it was one thousand or four thousand, but it was a goodly sum."
Alf was stinking so bad by the time they got him to Forsyth, they cut off his head and threw the rest of him down a valley for the skunks and the buzzards.
"I was the one," Ma Cloud said, "they called on to testify that, yes, it was Alf's head they'd cut off. Some law men come riding up to my place, and almost at the very spot where Bolin cut my Calvin down, they dumped his head out of a sack. I rolled it over with my foot and when I saw that dead cat smile and them Satan's eyes, I danced. I did. I danced and I spit tobacco in his hair and I sang praises to Almighty God. And if the men hadn't taken me by the arms, I would've grabbed a log and smashed his head just to hear the skull crack. Anyhow, after that they carried the head up to Ozark and mounted it on a long stick and drank whisky. It was a good time."
With that, the rocker stopped. The story had been told again, and all good things were restored. Alf Bolin was dead, and while nothing changed for his victims and no meaning was discovered, still the listeners were more fit for the next day's labor. Someone began playing a harmonica, a whip-poor-will called out to the moon, and the peepers trilled in the woods.
These things, we must remember, do not necessarily ameliorate the meanness of men, for Bolin and his men had often heard this same music. But the indifference of nature perks up and takes a keen interest in the justice of men when a son of a bitch like Alf Bolin is sent rolling headless into hell.