CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

   In his frenzied escape, Tom Duma thought the church was the only place he’d be safe from the Indians. Though never much of a religious man, he still held the opinion that the church itself would be untouched by the red pagans simply because God himself would protect it.

   He went into the church and found it empty except for broken pews and scattered bibles. On the wall behind the altar scrawled in green paint was a scripture verse. Tom walked up to it.

   “Gold is the devil with the broadest shoulders,” he read. “Jonah 7:25.”

   He waited a long time while the Indians attacked the town. Then the noise lessened and he knew that they were leaving. He had been spared.

   But then the sound of footsteps echoed through the room and a small Indian boy appeared in the doorway. He wore a stove pipe hat made out of cactus needles and human teeth.

   Tom Duma turned around. He stared at the boy and said, “This is a place of God. Do you understand that? This is a holy place.”

   The boy stood silent and held up a pink pistol.

   “Your people are more savage than I ever imagined,” Tom said. He was about to pick up a bible and hand it to the heathen when a bullet went through his eyeball and out the back of his head. He screamed and put his finger to the wound and thought it felt like the inside of a wet pussy. Then he ran to his left and jumped out of a window, landing in the church graveyard.

   A coffin broke Tom’s fall. He found himself in an open grave. With his eye bleeding profusely, he stood up and tried to climb out. He was too heavy for the coffin to hold and the wood broke. Tom looked down with his good eye and saw that there was no corpse in the coffin.

   There was gold.

   Hundreds of gold coins.

   For a few seconds, Tom Duma thought himself a rich man. Then the Indian boy appeared above him, grinning and pointing his pink pistol.

   A second bullet destroyed Tom’s other eye. This time, instead of screaming, he covered his head and whimpered. “Don’t break the glass dolls, mother.”

   The Indian boy put his hand under his hat and pulled out a pink tentacle as long as a bullwhip.

   Now blind, Tom didn’t see the Indian’s new weapon. He only heard the cracking of the whip.

   “Oh please, please, please, please spare me! Please!” Tom blubbered but the Indian had no intention of sparing him.

   With another crack of the whip, the top of Tom’s skull was sliced off, exposing the brain underneath. The Indian jumped down into the grave and finished the killing with a sharpened oyster shell.

   Tom Duma’s blood and viscera soaked the gold. The Indian boy reached down, picked up a blood drenched coin, and put it into his mouth. His eyes watered in ecstatic joy. The taste of blood and gold was intoxicating.