Snow White
and the Money Tree
It is around this time that Little Mab Volsky propositions Snow White. Let’s us rob ourselves a bank. Easiest money this side of lying on your back, she says. When a vault busts open it’s like you bust, too. That sweet. That good.
They practice in the woods.
Snow White puts a kerchief over her face and it is a red mask. Little Mab’ll run the show—Snow White can just shoot up the place. They holler at the crick to lie down on its belly, double quick and no funny business. Snow White bags a jackrabbit with a white blaze on his chest like a sheriff’s star. He looked at her crooked. You can’t brook that kind of upfuck. They bash in a rotted stump and get it down to forty-five seconds from first thump to vault open and pillbugs rolling out like dimes.
Little Mab has this to say: “The thing to know about bank robberies is that most fellas who end up blowing dark through some poor soul with a withdrawal slip in his hand wanted to do it before they ever got in the door. They wanted to make a hole in something and fill up the hole with death. Most times the bank
is empty anyways. Not too many got much these days. Folks who got unlucky business there, well, they’ll put their bellies on the floor you’ll forget what you came for. They’re like dogs before an earthquake. Some instinct kicks them in the gut and down they go. We’ll take just what we need, enough for doorknobs and seedbags and a good bull to mate to the milk cows. Enough to turn into another day in this world. We’ll get Lainey to fiddle while we rob. Make it nice for them folks on the floor. Ain’t nothing to be done in this life but you can’t make it nicer for them you do it to.”
Snow White can see it clear as day. She’ll land in that bank like a hammer. Rose Red will dance in her hand. She still has a few pearls left. Little Mab will holler and laugh like a fairy on fire. She’ll do a jig in front of the safe like she could cozen it into shedding its cover for her. Snow White can hear Astolaine playing her violin by the door. The customers will all start crying when they hear her tune. Crying out of the same place that told them to lay their head on the cool bank stone.
Snow White wants to shoot the ceiling, the walls, the glass. She wants to put a hole in something, too. She just doesn’t want to fill it up again.
Snow White
and Yellow Jacket
Get Turned Back
at the River
Bang-Up puts the nix on the bank plan. Banks are like little bits of Washington poking up everywhere. Banks are the law.
“Now, we’ve gone to all this trouble to truss up our lives nice and tight with no space for the bad to come in. Why you want to go throwing open the door?”
Red Deer
Learns a Trade
Deer Boy runs out of scratch somewhere in Wyoming. He starts showing his legs for a dollar in a cathouse. While ranch-hands wait for their friends to finish up. A dollar for a hoof, three for the whole leg. The food is good. There are mirrors everywhere. Deer Boy sees himself all night every night. He looks for the perfect world in them but it’s just him in there.
The girls treat him real sweet. Not like you’d treat a beau—Deer Boy is not husband material. But they’re in the same line of work. One dollar for a peek. Three for the whole show.
One of the cats gets marriage proposals every night. She’s got red hair and a pretty voice on her. Deer Boy hears the men begging her through the walls. Through the mirrors.
Give me your heart.
Part V
Snow White Comes
to Life Three Times
Snow White
Gets Shot with
a Pine Tree
It happens just as autumn’s coming on red and sharp.
Bang-Up Jackson’s gone south to haggle over jerseys and a lump of tourmaline the shape and weight of a human heart. Witch Hex is drunk down the gulch and letting the sun sop her further. Woman Without a Name is burning ash for soap by the creek. Everyone’s minding theirs.
Old Epharim sees her come, but nobody and nothing troubles that old bear. She stirs her stew. Badger, beans, and black honeycomb.