Sunset and Sawdust (14 page)

“Honey, we don’t even know if the baby and the woman are connected, and if they are, that don’t mean it was your daddy’s baby.”

“They said she was Daddy’s girlfriend. Isn’t that what they were saying, and that you killed her on account of that? Was she really Daddy’s girlfriend?”

“That’s what they were saying. And yes, she was Daddy’s girlfriend. One of many, honey.”

“I thought Daddy loved you.”

“So did I. Once.”

“Do you like Hillbilly?”

“I like him. Yeah.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know anything for sure right now.”

“You kissed him?”

“I did.”

Karen was quiet for a long moment. Finally she said, “Why were those men so mean?”

“Henry wants me out of this job so he can put in who he wants. I don’t know why he’s so determined, other than I’m a woman and he doesn’t like the idea. And he doesn’t like your grandma much. She has more power at the mill than him. She could fire him, she took a mind to, and she might take one, now that your grandpa is gone. I think Henry wants to run for some kind of office. Thinks Holiday and Camp Rapture are going to unite into one town.”

“Are they?”

“I don’t know. Probably. I don’t know why he’s so sweated up over me.”

Karen rolled over on the mattress and lay down, without letting go of her knees. She lay in bed like that and cried so hard Sunset thought she might come apart.

Sunset moved to the mattress, sat down, reached out slowly and touched Karen’s hair, began stroking it.

Karen didn’t resist.

After a while, giving out a loud wail, Karen turned to Sunset and climbed into her lap like a child and clung to her neck.

Sunset held her, kissed her, and a half hour later Karen fell asleep in her arms.

When Karen was asleep, Sunset maneuvered her onto the mattress, covered her, returned to the business side of the tent to put away what she had been writing.

Sadness squatted down on her like a tired elephant. She sat down at the table and put her head in her hands and thought about what Henry and Preacher Willie had said.

Maybe she should just turn in the badge. That would make things easier. She hadn’t killed Jimmie Jo, but Henry and Willie sure wanted to make it look that way, and they wanted to make it look like she killed the baby too, cut it out of its mother’s belly for meanness.

How ridiculous.

They can have their damn badge, she thought. They can have their damn job. And I’ll . . .

I’ll what?

I won’t have any money.

Then people will feel certain I did it.

And even if Henry and Willie don’t tell—and that was unlikely— they’ll have their way.

No. I’m sticking.

I’m sticking and I’m going to find out who killed that woman and the baby, which has to be the baby in the colored graveyard. She hadn’t told Willie about that. Only she, Karen, Hillbilly and Clyde knew. Provided they hadn’t told anyone.

They want this job, they’ll have to take it from me, and I won’t give it up without a fight.

15

After being abandoned by their “boss,” the five men, three women and the young boy trudged along until the sun withered into a thin red line seen faintly through the trees. Then night fell and entwined moonlight through the limbs of the forest in the manner of fine gossamer, finally turned dark and dropped shadows. The moon glowed cool white in the crow-black heavens along with the sharp white points of the stars. Then came a wad of dark clouds, blowing in fast but hanging overhead. There was very little light then, except for that which crept through the gaps in the overcast.

Most of the group decided to camp beside the road, but the man with the suit coat and the boy kept walking toward Camp Rapture.

The trees held the day’s heat like an armpit in a seersucker suit. With the now limited moonlight it was difficult to see far ahead. They walked where the trees didn’t stop them, and this kept them on the road. Crickets chirped all around them, and down where the creek cut through the trees they could hear a bullfrog making a noise that made the hairs on the back of the neck stand up.

“Sounds like he’s got a busted horn,” the boy said.

“Them big ones always sound like that,” the man said. “You’d think after hearing that, you seen the one done it, he’d be ten feet tall. What’s your name?”

“Everybody calls me Goose, but that ain’t my real name.”

“Do you mind being called Goose?”

“It’s better than my real name and what they call my brother.”

“What’s he called?”

“Dump.”

“Dump? Why’s that?”

“I don’t rightly know. Well, I think it was because he was always messing his pants. He was doing that until he was eleven years old. He was older than me by a year.”

“Was?”

“He got something and died. Polio, I think. My mama and daddy had nine kids, and I decided I could do all right on my own. Give them others, my sisters, a better chance.”

“Some of them sisters had to be older than you.”

“Yeah. But they ain’t got the adventure in them like me.”

“You never did tell me why they call you Goose.”

“Cause I run like one.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Draighton.”

“I don’t know that’s so bad.”

“I like Goose better.”

“All right, Goose.”

“What’s your name?”

“Lee.”

“Ain’t that coat hot?”

“It is. I hang on to it because I got to have something when winter comes. I can take it off when I work, put it over me at night. It ain’t so bad to wear just walking, not if you’re used to it.”

“All I got is these here clothes and this cap. My shoes got holes in the bottom. I had to stuff them with cardboard.”

“I got mine fixed the same way, son.”

“I got a stick of peppermint I stole from a store. It’s kind of busted up on account of it’s in my front pocket, but I could split it up with you, you want.”

“All right.”

The boy dug the peppermint out of his pocket. It was busted up good, but he collected the pieces and split them up, poured part of them into the man’s hand.

The man put the pieces in his mouth all at once. They had bits of lint and dirt on them, but he was so hungry he thought of the lint and dirt as spice. The last meal he had eaten was two days ago and it was a boiled shoe that he and some bo’s fixed alongside the tracks. There was a tater cut up in the mix, but he didn’t get any of it, and the shoe, though cut up and boiled soft enough to eat, still had the taste of shoe dye about it, and it made him throw up later.

Right now, he was so hungry his stomach felt like his throat was cut.

“What you gonna do in Camp Rapture?” he asked the boy.

“Try and get a job just like you.”

“Boy your age shouldn’t have to work. Chores maybe, but not a man’s work.”

“That’s what I keep saying, but it don’t seem to matter none. I’ve done every kind of work there is, except one that makes big money. I can plow, I can tote, I can paint and I can pick. I worked in a carnival some until the boss bent me over a wagon wheel and stuck his thing up my butt.”

“Sorry.”

“It hurt some, but least he got shit on his dick. Later on I set fire to the little wagon he was in, and he got caught on fire, but the carnies put him out. I run off then, before he got to feeling better and figured out I done it. He had this one pinhead worked there that was real mean when he wanted her to be. She’d jump on you and just whale with both hands fast as she could go, and she could go fast all right. I figured he’d sic her on me. He’d done it to others.”

“You have been around.”

“You name it, if it’s hard to do and hurts the back, I can do it.”

“Wait till you’re my age.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m in my fifties. We’ll leave it at that. Clouds are parting. Moon’s coming out.”

They walked on for a ways, then Lee reached out and stopped the boy. “Look there.”

A huge black snake crawled across the road with a whipping motion, its head held up.

“Goddamn,” the boy said. “That one’s longer than Satan’s dick.”

“You really ought not talk like that.”

“I like you, but you ain’t my daddy.”

“You’re right.”

“Was that a water moccasin?”

“I think it was just a big old chicken snake. They don’t hurt nothing. Less it’s chickens, eggs, or rats. I don’t mind the rats, but you can sure get put out with them if they get in your chicken house and you was wanting eggs for breakfast.”

When they were certain the snake was deep in the woods, they continued walking.

“Chicken snake poisonous?” Goose asked.

“Naw. But they still give me the creeps. I reckon they’re God’s creatures just like us, but I see one, and there’s a hoe handy, I’ll take to it and chop off its head, poisonous or not.”

“Reckon old snake was lucky you didn’t have a hoe tonight.”

“That’s right. One time when I was a kid a coachwhip snake chased me around my house a bunch of times, and when I went inside to hide, it rose up and looked in the window.”

“Naw.”

“It did. Window wasn’t high off the ground, but it scared me bad. Mama got the hoe and chopped off its head. Later, I learned a coachwhip will chase you, but if you stop, it’ll stop, and you can chase it. You stop chasing, it’ll turn and come after you. They’re kind of playing. I think it was looking through that window for me to come out and play some more. Wanted me to take a turn chasing it. And my mama went out there and chopped off its head. Always made me feel kind of guilty.”

“You look kind of like a preacher.”

“Don’t confuse me with one. Though I have done some preaching in my time.”

“Just to make money, work the rubes? Do some of that healing stuff?”

“No, son. I meant it and I didn’t heal nothing, cause ain’t nobody can heal but the Lord God hisself.”

“Why ain’t you still preaching?”

“Sort of fell off the wagon. I could still hear the call but I couldn’t tell no more what the Lord was calling. I felt like a man going deaf. Still good enough ears to hear the sound, but not enough hearing to understand it.”

“What was it knocked you off the wagon? Booze? Gambling? Pussy?”

“I know I’m not your daddy, but you really are too young to talk like that.”

“I don’t know no other way to talk. As for booze, gambling and pussy, I’ve had me some of all three, so I guess I can talk about it, and I can tell you straight out that I like pussy the best. Which was it with you?”

“All of them. Including some you didn’t name. Fact is, I ain’t just here for a job. I’ve come here to set some things I done here right as they can be set. Gonna try and give a lady an apology, if she’s here and willing to take it.”

“And if she ain’t willing to take it?”

“I wouldn’t blame her.”

“What if she isn’t in Camp Rapture?”

“I try not to think about that. It makes me feel bad to think that, so I don’t think about it, and won’t, unless she ain’t here. Then I got to start up with a new set of worries.”

“It happen a long time ago?”

“Yeah.”

“So let it go. My pappy always said, you already done something, ain’t no use noodling on it. It ain’t gonna get better if you do.”

“He may be right. But I’m not doing it just for her. Doing it for me.”

“Hell, I don’t feel guilty about nothing I’ve done.”

“Maybe it’s because you haven’t done anything really bad.”

“I stole that peppermint. I’ve stole other stuff.”

“That’s bad, but it could be worse.”

“It wasn’t so bad you didn’t eat that peppermint.”

“I was hungry.”

“Why I stole it and about four others. That was just the last one left. Got a cigarette, Lee?”

“No. Don’t smoke. And you’re too young to smoke.”

“There you go with that young stuff again,” Goose said. “What about a chaw, or some snuff?”

“Same answer,” Lee said.

After an hour or so, Lee and Goose discovered they were farther from Camp Rapture than they thought and that it looked unlikely they would make it before morning.

This was all surmise on their part, as neither had any exact idea how far it was. Lee had been there before, but it was many years past, and much had changed since then.

Goose said, “I’m so damn tired, I think I’m gonna fall over.”

“Me too,” Lee said. “I can tell by the hang of the stars there. Look right there through them trees—”

“I see em.”

“I can tell by where they’re hanging it’s getting pretty late on, and I’m as tuckered out as a tick in a tar bucket.”

“Me too. But I can go on a bit if you can.”

They walked on a little ways more until they decided they just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Ain’t like when we get to Camp Rapture they’re gonna be waiting on us with open arms and a hot meal,” Goose said. “Reckon dirt out here is good as dirt around there. Won’t be the first time I’ve laid in dirt.”

“You’re right,” Lee said. “Let’s cash it in.”

They veered off the road, into the woods, looking for a place to lie down. Just a few yards off the road they found where leaves were mounded up under a tree, and in that moment that pile looked like a featherbed. Then Lee saw that the tree, a massive oak, had a large low limb that had been split, possibly by lightning. It was wide enough to hold a body and split deep enough to serve as a kind of natural hammock. Lee put leaves in the limb and said, “Now you got you a bed, Goose.”

“Not me. I can take care of myself. I don’t need no help to lay down somewhere. Besides, I don’t climb no trees I don’t have to. I don’t climb nothing I don’t have to.”

“Isn’t more than five feet off the ground,” Lee said.

“Still, ain’t for me.”

“You ain’t much of a boy, not wanting to climb trees.”

“It ain’t the climbing worries me. It’s the falling.”

Lee took the limb and Goose lay down on the leaves. “These leaves piled up like this, my daddy used to tell me that there was ape-men did it at night. Piled them up, I mean.”

“You think they did?”

“I don’t know. I guess not. It was a good story.”

“What were your people like, Goose?”

“Just like other people, I reckon. Poor. But they was poor before the Depression. My mama was part Cherokee, and my papa was half Choctaw. When the dust come I left so they wouldn’t be in such a bad way with all us kids. I went down here to East Texas, and they carried on out to California.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“Didn’t want to go no place where the weather stays the same. Can’t stand it when summer drags on. I like it when I don’t know it’s going to rain or storm, be clear or hot. Course, I liked it better before I didn’t have a roof to get under and some regular food. Maybe I’d have been better to have gone out there to California, now that I noodle on it.”

“I been. It’s nothing special. Just more of the same, only with a steady climate and oranges. Like you, Goose, I don’t like it steady all the time. Changeable weather teaches a man how to be changeable hisself. He can move with events. You can’t learn character when everything is smooth.”

“Maybe I don’t need no character. Maybe what I need is three meals a day and a bed and some kind of something over my head so I don’t get rained on.”

“Could be, Goose.”

Pretty soon Lee heard Goose snoring, and was surprised that now he couldn’t sleep. His mind was racing, and Goose’s snoring wasn’t helping.

He lay there and looked up into the limbs of the tree. At first it was just dark up there, but in time his eyes adjusted and he could make out limbs, and finally, through gaps he could see a few stars.

He felt an old urge. The one he had when he was preaching. The urge to reach out with his thoughts to God, who surely must lie behind that veil of night and stars, and maybe wasn’t as mean as he seemed to act. Sometimes he thought God was just mean to him.

Maybe he deserved it.

He didn’t know what he deserved anymore, and didn’t reckon it mattered. Deserving had nothing to do with it.

There once was a time when he had felt close to God, had thought himself God’s servant.

But that was many sins ago.

He lay there and looked and thought and finally the sky lightened, and finally he closed his eyes.