Sunset and Sawdust (32 page)

Clyde appeared to her left. He had Hillbilly with his hands tied behind his back with a twisted pillowcase. Hillbilly looked bloody and bowed, but not too bad off.

“You okay?” Clyde called.

“Almost,” she said. “He hurt bad?”

“Got some pieces in him, mostly wood from the wall. He’ll live.”

The entire wall behind Sunset was on fire and the fire was spreading. She said, “Out the front.”

“Is that all of them?” Clyde said. “Did we get them all?”

“God, I hope so.”

Sunset stood, slapped flames off her skirt where the kerosene had splattered and caught. Clyde kicked Hillbilly in the ass, said, “Move it, songbird.”

When Sunset got to the doorway, she stopped and bent over Bull. She said, “Bull?”

“Is he gone?” Bull said.

“Who?”

“That big nigger in the bowler?”

“I don’t see him anywhere.”

“That’s good.”

“I’m sorry, Bull.”

“Don’t let the peckerwoods have my body.”

“You’re gonna be all right.”

“Got a knife in my back. My legs, everything from my pickle down, gone cold, won’t move no more. We on fire? I smell smoke.”

Clyde was there with Hillbilly now. He said, “Yeah. There’s fire, Bull.”

“Let me burn,” Bull said.

“You ain’t gonna burn. Clyde, go down and put Hillbilly in the car. There’s rope in the trunk, you need it. Use it to tie his legs to his arms, throw him in the backseat, better yet, the trunk. Come back and help me with Bull—Jesus, where’s Daddy? Bull, can you hear me? Where’s Daddy?”

But Bull didn’t answer.

A moment later, Clyde came back in with Hillbilly. “There ain’t no car. Your daddy, he’s hurt.”

“Hurt?”

“Yeah. Leg is broke.” Clyde looked down at Bull. He wasn’t moving and his eyes were closed. “Bull?”

“Bull’s gone,” Sunset said, coughing at the smoke.

“Yeah, and so is this place,” Hillbilly said.

The far wall was fire, and the fire, fed by kerosene on the floor, was creeping toward them.

“Leave him,” Clyde said.

Sunset thought about that, about how he lived and what he told her, said, “Reckon so.”

Sunset took Hillbilly down, her shotgun in his back, and Clyde picked up Lee, carried him.

When they were at the bottom of the steps, Hillbilly said, “I didn’t mean for it to go this way, Sunset.”

“I have a feeling you don’t never mean for nothing to happen, but it always does.”

“I’m kind of cursed.”

“Hell, you are the curse.”

The flames were licking at the apartment and smoke was pouring out the open door and the drugstore below was starting to catch fire. The flames were so hot and bright, the grasshoppers had finally started to recede. Sunset looked up, saw them like a dark rainbow against the sky, going south, and fast, dimming the sun.

When Clyde came down the steps carrying Lee like a baby, Sunset said, “Watch this piece of dung a minute,” and left him with Hillbilly. She went around back, looking for McBride, still cautious, the shotgun at the ready.

She found McBride face forward against the overhang. There were burn marks on the ground where he had dragged himself. He was a blackened shape now, his hands like claws where he had scooped out some clay as if trying to climb up the overhang to God knows where, or maybe burrow through it.

They went across the street to the jail, Sunset with her gun at Hillbilly’s back, prodding, and Clyde carrying Lee. They put Hillbilly in the cell with Plug, and Clyde laid Lee on the bunk in the other cell, called up the town doctor, who came and looked at Lee and said he was bad.

“He’s gonna need a hospital,” the doctor said. “That leg. It might have to come off. I ain’t up for that kind of thing.”

“I got use for this leg,” Lee said, his face covered in sweat.

The doctor, who was a short fat man wearing a plaid shirt and pants that looked as if they could use a wash, said, “Yeah, but it might not have any use for you anymore. I’m gonna do my best to set it, but we got to get you over to Tyler. There’s people there better at this kind of thing than me. This ain’t no simple break. This one’s all twisted up.”

“We’ll get you to the doctor, Daddy,” Sunset said. “He don’t know that’s what will happen for sure.”

“If I mess with it much, it is,” the doctor said.

“Can you take him to Tyler?” Sunset said.

“I can,” said the doctor, “but it’ll cost.”

“He’s a deputy constable.”

“He’s your daddy.”

“And he’s still a deputy constable. You see he gets there. You bill Camp Rapture—better yet, you bill Holiday. And give him something for pain.”

“For Christ sakes, yes,” Lee said. “Knock me out. Give me some dope. Something.”

“Daddy,” Sunset said, liking the sound of calling him that better and better, “still believe what you said, about the union of everything in the universe, us and everything in it all being part of one big thing?”

“Not so much,” Lee said.

“What about these two?” Clyde said, nodding toward Hillbilly and Plug.

“They’re for the law,” Sunset said.

“There ain’t no law,” Clyde said.

“Today there is. And you’re it. Stay till we figure something out. I’m gonna check on Karen.”

“What then?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

When it was done and Lee was on his way to Tyler, courtesy of the doctor and his car, Sunset got the keys to the sheriff’s car, went out and cleaned the windshield free of bugs and got in. She sat there and thought about the fact that she and Clyde were unhurt, her dad was the worst off and he hadn’t even gotten inside the apartment. And Bull. Poor Bull. He was dead, and all she had was a few bangs and cuts and some little shotgun pellets in the back of her heels, pellets she could pick out with tweezers.

She sat and looked at what was left of the fire across the way. The fire department, such as it was, was trying to put it away, but mostly they were running around the fire truck and cursing. They had succeeded in flushing the building with a lot of water from their big red engine, and what was left of the apartment and the drugstore was nothing but some charred timbers you could stir with a stick.

She thought about Bull, burned up in there, and it made her think of the story she’d heard about Greek heroes, how they put them on piles of lumber and burned them up and sent their souls up in smoke and flames.

On the way home, Sunset saw the sky had cleared and it was full of nothing but a crow. The trees, grass, anything that had been green, was gone. It was as if green had been a dream. Now that the storm of wings and legs had departed, there was only desolation. Even the bark had been stripped off the hardwoods. All about were dead grasshoppers, victims of collisions and fights with their hungry partners.

She drove along until she came upon her car. It was beside the road, the driver’s door open. Sunset stopped near it, took the shotgun lying on the seat and got out. The morning had come in full now, and it was hot, but she felt more cold than hot as she moved alongside her car, looked inside. Nothing but dried black blood on the front seat.

She walked along the road slowly, crunching dead grasshoppers under her feet, looking right and left. Then she saw him. He was sitting with his back against a great pine tree that was stripped of its needles. He had his hands on his thighs and he was looking at her. His bowler hat was on the ground, the crown touching the earth. Flies were so thick on the front of his shirt they looked like a vest. His coat was pushed back over his shoulders, as if he had tried to give himself a little breeze. The scar on his head looked raw and stood out, like an actual horseshoe was inside his skull, working its way to the surface.

Sunset kept the shotgun pointed at Two, moved toward him slowly. When she was standing over him his vest startled and flew away. She saw part of his bottom lip was bit off, and she thought: Good for you, Bull. His green eyes were filmed over and still and a fly was on one of them.

“I guess the both of you are dead,” Sunset said.

37

They buried Goose in the same graveyard where Pete and Jones and Henry’s wife lay. They didn’t know Goose’s last name, and since he hadn’t liked his first name, they put on the wooden cross GOOSE. A GOOD BOY.

Lee couldn’t attend, but from his hospital bed he wrote out some words and Sunset read them. They were simple and nice and there were Bible quotes.

Ben was buried at Sunset’s place, near the big oak where he liked to lie. Sunset said her own words over that grave. “You’re home, boy.”

Two weeks later, in her bug-scarred car, Sunset drove over to see Marilyn. She drove past Bill and Don working their mules, other men working oxen, driving trucks, doing this and that.

There were a lot of trees to work. The grasshoppers’ short reign had caused a large number of them to die and they were being cut fast and furious, hauled in, put on the belt, run through the saw.

Bill looked up from his work as Sunset drove by. “She ain’t treated that car right. See how it’s all cut up.”

Don nodded. “She looks all right herself, though, don’t she?”

“I got to go with that,” Bill said. “I don’t like her none, but me not liking her ain’t hurt her looks. And she’s got some guts, things she did, her and that Clyde. I knowed that Hillbilly wasn’t worth the steam off shit when I first seen him.”

“You didn’t know no such thing,” Don said.

“I did. Just didn’t say so.”

“Watch them mules,” Don said.

Sunset drove past the mill, on up into Marilyn’s yard. She went up on the porch and knocked. While she waited she looked at the haze of sawdust over the mill, listened to the sound of the great saw.

Marilyn opened the door with a smile. She looked splendid and young in a white housedress with blue designs.

“Good to see you, Sunset. After all that business I haven’t seen you much. And you’re all dressed up. That’s a nice dress.”

“I bought it in Holiday. I wanted something green, there not being much green left.”

“I ain’t never heard of such a thing as them grasshoppers acting that way. Not here. North and West Texas, Oklahoma maybe, but I ain’t never heard of them here, not doing like that.”

“They ate all there was up there, so they came down here.”

“Here now,” Marilyn said, pushing back the screen. “Don’t stand on the porch, sweetie. Come on in.”

Inside Sunset took a chair. It was the same chair Marilyn had slapped her out of some weeks ago. She could hear the big clock ticking away.

“Where’s Karen?” Marilyn asked.

“At Uncle Riley’s.”

Marilyn considered this for a moment.

“She there because of the baby?”

“Aunt Cary helped her on that.”

“She . . . she got rid of the baby?”

“She didn’t want his child. Not after all that.”

Marilyn nodded, sat silent for a time.

“I suppose that’s right. I don’t think God would judge a girl on that.”

“No,” Sunset said. “I don’t think he would.”

“And Clyde?” Marilyn said, trying to change the subject.

“Holiday. He’s still being the sheriff. Think they’re gonna hire him for real.”

“And your daddy?”

“Still in the hospital. Gonna keep the leg, but it’ll be stiff. Going to Tyler to get him when I leave here.”

“I’m sorry to hear about his leg, but it could have been worse.”

“Could have. Though Bull might disagree.”

“I didn’t even know he was real.”

“He was real all right.”

“There was a deputy involved—”

“Plug. He’ll see trial. He tried to help me some, so that might make it a little easier for him. I don’t care if it does, really.”

“After all that,” Marilyn said, “I heard Zendo moved off, and him owning all that oil. All that happened, and he moved off.”

“He moved up North, and he still owns the oil. Clyde manages the place for him. People around here will leave Clyde alone, but they wouldn’t like a colored man owning all that oil. Zendo can be rich up North easier than he can be rich here, and he gives Clyde a little cut to manage it. The house, the one Zendo lived in, the one on the oil land, Clyde’s got them both. He’s gonna live in one, rent the other. That’s okay with Zendo.”

“Clyde sure is sweet on you. He’d be a catch. Especially now.”

“I suppose he would. I wanted it to go that way, but when it all settled out, going through what we all went through—I just don’t feel like that about Clyde. I don’t have that feeling, you know? Something missing. After all the killing, nearly being killed, I don’t feel like wasting a moment, making a mistake that’ll hurt me or him.”

Marilyn smiled. She had taken a chair herself. “I know. You got to have that. That feeling. Jones, when he was young, like Pete with you, he made me feel that way.”

“Hillbilly made me feel that way. I guess, in the end, it isn’t enough. Clyde didn’t like me telling him, but I think he understood. Best he could. In the end, I think he’s more of a bachelor anyway.”

“There’s some fellas in prison gonna like Hillbilly,” Marilyn said. “You know what I mean, him being all pretty and everything.”

“Not yet,” Sunset said. “And I don’t know if he’ll heal up so pretty. Daddy sure gave him a beating. Thing is, he got loose. In Tyler, where they took him for the trial. The jailer had a daughter.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“They caught the daughter. Hillbilly run off, left her in an unpaid room in Texarkana. They figure he’s in Arkansas somewhere.”

“He is one dog,” Marilyn said.

Sunset nodded.

“You act like something is on your mind,” Marilyn said.

“Didn’t know I was gonna bring it up for sure. I didn’t come here knowing I was gonna say anything. Not really. But I am. Woke up yesterday morning, and I was thinking about something. It’s been with me a while, and I couldn’t let it go. Back of my mind, buried back there. Yesterday it come floating up, and I let it go. Today, I’m not feeling like I can.”

“What in the world do you mean?”

“How did you know Jimmie Jo had a baby?”

“What?”

“You told me she had a baby, but I didn’t tell you.”

“I guess it was around the camp. Preacher Willie.”

“That she was shot with a thirty-eight.”

“It was around—Sunset, what are you getting at? I’m sure everyone knew about that business.”

“That’s what I thought, it was just around. But there were other things. You showing me how to use posthole diggers, saying how you could dig with those better than a shovel, even straight down. That’s how Jimmie Jo was buried. Straight down. And the baby—where’s the flowerpot that used to be on the porch, Marilyn?”

“It broke.”

“Yeah. I saw pieces of it out at the baby’s grave.”

“You’re going wrong here, Sunset.”

“I’d like to be, but I don’t think so. McBride, he knew about the oil on Jimmie Jo, but he didn’t know about the thirty-eight. I think he had, he’d have told me. He didn’t care. He didn’t know what I was talking about. Pete, when he came to you, crying, did he come to you and tell you about Jimmie Jo?”

“He didn’t kill her, if that’s what you mean.”

“It isn’t. You let me think he might have, but he didn’t.”

“It didn’t matter. Not right then. Jimmie Jo was dead, so was Pete.”

“Just tell me, Marilyn. Why?”

Marilyn was silent for a long time. The grandfather clock chimed noon.

“I didn’t do what you think I did,” she said.

“What did you do?”

“Pete was upset about you. He cried about you. He didn’t think you were the kind of wife you could be, and he’d met that woman, that whore, Jimmie Jo—I was protecting you. And him. But I didn’t—it isn’t what it seems.”

“What is it, then?”

“My plant, the one that was in the pot on the back porch. It died. Everyone knows Zendo has the best soil around. I thought I’d take the back road, the one that’s on the oil land, the one I thought was someone else’s. Just forgotten land. Thought I’d go out there, see if I could get some of that dirt. I meant to ask Zendo, but if he wasn’t around, figured I’d just take some. I got out there, saw the house, the one Pete built for his whore. He told me about it, but when I seen it, I was sick. It was better than the one you lived in, Sunset. I was mad, and I went up there to see her, but she wasn’t there. And when I left, driving home—I’d forgot about the soil, you see—well, I seen her. There was an oil pool and she was lying out there beside it. She had on an orange and green dress. A gaudy whore’s dress. I could see it good, the part wasn’t covered in oil. You couldn’t miss her lying there. I pulled over for a look. She was lying there, and she was just the same as dead. She had drowned, like. Her brain was dead, but her body was still moving. She had been drowned but wasn’t all of her dead. Whoever done it, they’d left her for dead, but she wasn’t. And she was having the baby, Sunset. Even after she was by all reason dead, her body was giving that baby life.

“I had seen Aunt Cary deliver a baby, and I knew whose baby that was. My grandchild. And I delivered it, cutting it out of her cause she wasn’t alive enough to worry about doing it the right way, did it best I could remember how, but it was born dead, Sunset. Dead baby from a dead mother. I just made sure she was all dead. I didn’t do her any harm wasn’t already done. Shooting her like that, it was merciful.

“I took the baby then, put it in the jar. I had posthole diggers with me to get dirt at Zendo’s, and I stuck the baby in the jar and buried it over there on his land.”

“Why, Marilyn?”

“The child was gone. Wasn’t anything gonna bring it back, and it wasn’t something you needed to know. I was trying to protect you, Sunset. Really. I buried Jimmie Jo too, using the diggers. I just wanted them out of the way. I thought maybe Pete did it—I thought that then. I know now it was that other man—McBride, you called him. But I thought if Pete killed her, and the baby died because of it, and people heard, then no matter how much he was liked, that was too much. And you and Karen, you’d suffer. I made a mistake, though. I left my posthole diggers. I carried them back to the truck, leaned them against it, then I forgot—upset, you see. Drove off and they just fell to the ground. Pete knew who they belonged to. He came and asked me about it, brought the diggers with him. He asked me about Jimmie Jo. I think he thought I killed her.”

“You did,” Sunset said. “When you shot her, you killed her. Figure that’s why Pete wrote out the file the way he did, buried the baby as a colored. To protect you.”

“Jimmie Jo was already dead. That McBride, or one of them working for him, they drowned her.”

“McBride wasn’t as good at killing people as he thought. In the long run, he couldn’t even fight grasshoppers. If he’d been good, you wouldn’t have had to finish the job.”

“Why would I kill the baby?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you didn’t want Pete having a baby by some whore he wasn’t married to. I don’t know.”

“It was perfect, Sunset. Really. She was out of your way, out of Pete’s life, and out of my life. The baby—I don’t know, maybe it’s like Karen’s baby—it was best. The way it ought to be. Way God wanted it. Pete, I told him where they were buried. Zendo found the baby first, moved it, and Pete found it, moved it to the colored graveyard. Guess he did that until he could put it in a white cemetery. I don’t know. We never got the chance to talk about it. You killed him.”

“He hid the land business with the body,” Sunset said. “Marilyn, you didn’t mind me taking the blame for killing Jimmie Jo and the baby.”

“I did mind. I just couldn’t say anything.”

“You know what I think?” Sunset said, standing. “In the long run, you thought it would work out fine, me taking the blame. You knew Pete wouldn’t end up taking it, not the way everyone felt about me. That way, you had me too, for killing Pete. And you could stay in good graces with Karen.”

“I done a lot of good by you, Sunset. I got you that car. I helped you.”

“Maybe so. Maybe you really did it all for Karen. And yourself. Thing is, I’m nervous around you, Marilyn. You might get moody. I might wake up sewed to my bed, you standing over me with a rake. A shotgun. That thirty-eight.”

“You did some things yourself.”

“I defended myself against your son. I went to arrest some men who were breaking the law and who tried to kill my daughter and my deputy and killed a boy I cared about. A dog I liked. They would have killed me, Daddy. My conscience is clear. What about yours, Marilyn?”

Sunset started out the door.

“You gonna arrest me?”

“I’m not wearing my badge. Or my gun. I don’t intend to put them on again. I don’t need them anymore.”

Sunset pushed the screen door open and let it fly back. Marilyn came out and stood on the steps as Sunset reached her car.

“You’re quitting?”

“I am.”

“You’re not going to arrest me, then?”

Sunset shook her head.

“What are you gonna do?” Marilyn said, and she had to strain to hear Sunset over the buzz of the great saw that had started up again.

“I’m gonna pick up Karen, say good-bye to Clyde, go get Daddy, then—I don’t know. Maybe just keep going.”

“Do you believe me, Sunset?”

“I don’t know. Don’t know it matters anymore. Not enough, anyway. But I got some doubt, and that much is too much. Important thing is, I got my center.”

“Do what?”

“So long, Marilyn.”

Sunset got in her car and drove away and Marilyn stood on the front porch and watched until she was out of sight and all that was left to see was the road and the dust from the passing of the car.