Six-Gun Snow White - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,32

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.

Snow White hears a knock and she thinks she knows what’s up, thinks she knows to turn away whatever’s rapping. But she’s not ready and she could never be. Out the window stands her mother. Not Mrs. H. No, this is Gun That Sings. Older, grey in the pomp, face carved like someone meant to write something there and never finished. But it’s her. Snow White sees her own face. Her dark eyes. Her mouth red as feeding. Her hurt laid out like leather. It’s not a fair fight. Not even a whiff. Some things a girl has in her to say no to and some things cut her down before she knows she’s gone. Sure, some twiggy, thorny snap in her says: no, this is awry, this is a bent thing, in that place that tells her to belly up to the floor before anyone’s even shadowed the doorframe. But it don’t matter. You can’t ask why she did it, when she was warned, when she was told. The plum truth is you would too, if everything impossible stood out there saying you could be loved so perfect the past would go up like a firecracker and shatter across the dark.

Snow White grabs on to her mama and