Sunset and Sawdust

10

That night, before Sunset and Karen went to bed, it came a rain not too unlike the one that pissed on Noah’s ark, but it didn’t last long. Just wetted up the place, churned the creeks, made them rise, then moved on. The tent had been set up on top of the flooring of the old house, so they didn’t get wet, but they could feel it against the floorboards, begging to come in.

The rain cooled off things, and when she and Karen lay down that night to sleep, it was comfortable and there were no mosquitoes.

Sunset lay in bed listening to the rain move south with a vengeance, thinking about the baby in the jar coated in oil, about how Pete had gone to the trouble to bury it and carve the word BABY on the cross.

It was a kind gesture.

And not like him at all. Especially if he thought the baby might be colored.

It was a side of Pete she hadn’t known existed, and it was a side of him she wished she had known. It was also a side of him that confused her and of which she was suspicious.

Later on she heard the tent flap being thrown back. She sat up in bed and saw a man’s shape standing there. He pushed the flap back farther and moonlight spilled in over him. It was Pete. Grave dirt was dropping off of his body and he looked mad enough to pee vinegar.

He pointed his finger at Sunset and opened his mouth to speak. Dirt fell out. Then he screamed.

Sunset sat up in bed.

She looked at the tent flap.

It was closed and tied. Outside she could hear crickets and frogs. The rain had passed. She had fallen asleep thinking she was awake.

Suddenly, once again, there was a scream.

It wasn’t Pete. It was a panther, roaming the bottomland. They could scream like a woman. The sound of the panther had awakened her, not a dead Pete.

She looked over at Karen.

Still asleep. She gently pulled the covers up to Karen’s neck.

“I love you,” she said softly.

Lying down, she dozed uneasily, dreamed again. But she knew it was a dream this time, and it wasn’t so bad. It was a dream about her putting the pistol to Pete’s head, pulling the trigger, and in her dream the sound of the gun was sharp and sweet and it cut through her thoughts like a bright light and the light opened a gap somewhere down deep in the dark insides of her, and out of that gap came all the answers to questions long asked, and in that moment, that fine and wonderful moment, she knew things.

She came awake.

“Damn,” she said. Thought: Almost had the answers. They were about to be revealed, all the goddamn perplexities of the universe, and I had to wake up.

The tent flap moved.

She reached over and pulled the gun from the holster where it lay on the floor and pointed it.

It was the black-and-white dog. It had stuck its head under the tent flap. It was soaking wet.

“Easy, boy,” she said, but the dog bolted at the sound of her voice.

She put the gun away, lay there waiting to see if the dog would return, but it didn’t.

Next morning, before daybreak, to the sound of birds singing loud in the trees and somewhere an agitated squirrel fussing, Karen got up along with Sunset. Karen started a fire in the woodstove and cooked a breakfast of eggs and toasted some bread on top of the burner for the both of them.

Sunset eyed all this suspiciously. It was the first time in days Karen had shown interest in doing anything.

Karen walked buckets of water from the water pump and heated them in a larger bucket on the stove and poured the hot water into a number ten washtub. By the time she had enough buckets to fill the tub, much of the water had cooled, but it was still warm enough for a bath with minted lye soap and special attention to her hair.

When Karen finished, Sunset went through the same ritual, washing her hair and combing it out. As Sunset dressed in her skirt and shirt, she saw that Karen was already dressed and had put her hair up in a kind of bun. She had on one of the few good dresses she owned, one her grandmother gave her before they had moved into the tent, and she had on her only good pair of shoes.

Sunset noted that Karen had even applied a bit of lipstick, not something she normally bothered with. She was also wearing perfume, and she had put on too much.

While Sunset was pulling on her boots and lacing them, Karen said, “Those boots aren’t very feminine. They look like something someone ought to wear at the sawmill or to shovel horse mess.”

“I’m a constable right now, not a New York fashion model.”

“You ought to put your hair up,” Karen said.

“I see you have. How come you’re putting on the dog?”

“No reason. Just felt like it.”

Sunset went to the dressing table they had rigged, held up a hand mirror. She thought: Maybe I could put my hair up.

Her face was no longer puffy and the bruises were starting to fade. She was beginning to look like herself, with a touch of raccoon styling.

About nine o’clock, Clyde’s truck pulled up. Karen heard it, smoothed her dress, opened the tent flap.

Through the opening, Sunset could see Clyde climbing out of the truck, and on the other side, Hillbilly. She stood up, strapped on the holster and gun, stood in the opening.

A black car with white doors and a gold-and-black police insignia pulled up behind Clyde’s truck. A man wearing a big white hat and khaki clothes, a gun and badge, got out of the car and walked over to Clyde and shook his hand, then Hillbilly’s. He looked agitated. He spoke to Clyde.

Clyde said something, pointed toward the tent.

The man with the badge did a double take.

Clyde said something else. The man took off his hat, and with Clyde and Hillbilly trailing, he hustled over to the tent as Sunset stepped outside, Karen following.

“Miss,” the man said, “I’m the deputy over at Holiday. Name’s Morgan. I was sent here to get the constable for help. We heard Pete got killed by his wife, but I didn’t know it was a woman took his place. I can take these here men with me-”

“I’m the constable. And I’m the wife… or was.”

The deputy raised his eyebrows. “I’ll be damned.”

“Why do you need us?”

“Nigger’s gone on a rampage. Killed the sheriff.”

“Oh,” Sunset said.

“Knowing that,” Morgan said, “maybe you ought to stay here.”

“What’s the situation?” Sunset said. She had heard Pete say just those words.

“Well, I come over here cause me and Rooster are the only deputies, and this nigger, well, he done blowed the sheriff’s head off and holed himself up in the picture show and won’t come out.”

“The picture show,” Clyde said. “He didn’t ruin it or nothing, did he?”

“I think he broke some of them giveaway dishes,” Morgan said. “Some of the townsfolk wanted a piece of him, and the grocer brought out a gun and tried to go in there, and that nigger cut him off at the knee. I figure they’ll be pulling that grocer around on a wheeled board now. Thing is, it’s a nigger done it, and the town wants to lynch him. Sheriff didn’t go in for that sort of thing, though I ain’t really against a lynching when it’s deserved. They’re gonna want to rush the picture show, get that nigger and string him up and set him on fire, or burn down the picture show with him in it. Frankly, it’s Rooster who’s against it. He’s got the nigger pinned in the show, and he’s got them townsfolk pushing in on him, wanting him to get out of the way. He’s between a rock and a hard place. I didn’t know nothing else to do but to go to the nearest law for help. But I didn’t count on no woman, and I ain’t sure we ought not just let them have him.”

“We’ll follow in the truck,” Sunset said. “Karen, you stay here. Clyde. Hillbilly. You got guns?”

“Not on us,” Clyde said. “We got to go by my house.”

“Reckon I gotta get back,” Morgan said. “Wouldn’t have come here it hadn’t been so close, and you being the law and all. And well, Rooster sent me and he’s head deputy. Still, I knew Pete was dead, but I didn’t know you was no woman.”

“We’ll be there,” Sunset said. “You go on back and help Rooster.”

“I’ll do that,” Morgan said, “but it gets too much out of hand, I’d rather it be that nigger than me. Gets that far, I’ll hold the goddamn rope for them.”

“You’re a sworn officer of the law,” Sunset said. “You’ll do what you’re supposed to do.”

“Who the hell are you to talk to me that way?” Morgan said. “You’re just a constable. Hell, you’re just a woman. And wearing a skirt made out of some kind of man’s pants.”

“Let me put this where you can understand it, Morgan,” Clyde said. “Give her any more mouth, and I’ll hit you so hard, the mud flaps on your car will blow up. You hear me?”

Morgan’s face muscles twitched. “You ain’t got to say that. You and me have worked together before. That kind of talk ain’t necessary. I just didn’t know she was a woman.”

“We’ll see you in Holiday,” Sunset said.

Clyde’s place was on the way, off the main road, down a washed-out forest-lined path spotted with holes deep enough to lose a feed wagon.

They stopped there to get Hillbilly a shotgun and Clyde a pistol. At first, Sunset thought Clyde’s weathered shack had been hit by the tornado, but the more she looked at it, the more she realized this was its common state.

The shingles had been flapped up, and some of them tossed around the yard. From the looks of them, way they were half buried in the dirt, they had been there for a long time. The chimney was held up by a board, and she could see inside the place through a gap between chimney and house. What she could see looked filthy and greasy and piled. Most of the windows had cardboard in place of glass. The yard was cluttered with pieces of wood and chunks of car parts and renegade chickens. A rooster charged at them with a business attitude, flapped his wings and pecked at one of Sunset’s boots, then charged off, mission accomplished.

“That rooster was mine,” Sunset said, “he’d be in the cooking pot tonight.”

“That’s George,” Clyde said. “He’s all right. He thinks he’s protecting the hens.”

Stepping over yard junk, fending off chickens, tiptoeing through a narrow garden path with bug-eaten vegetables, they moved cautiously over the creaking porch, avoiding gaps where the lumber had cracked.

The inside was cluttered with magazines and newspapers, car parts, broken dishes, cardboard boxes and apple crates full of who knows what. There were buckets arranged on the floor and on top of boxes and crates. Water was dripping from the roof into them.

Clyde wandered off to get the guns, threading his way through debris.

Hillbilly looked at Sunset, said, “Home, sweet home.”

“Don’t know what’s sweet about it.”

“He spilt some syrup over there by the stove, probably about, oh, I don’t know, ten years ago would be my guess from the looks of it. But it’s still sweet. I know, cause flies gather in it and get stuck. Want to see?”

“No thanks.”

Clyde came back with a shotgun and a revolver. They looked much cleaner than anything else in the house.

“Is there anything you don’t save?” Sunset said.

“Money,” Clyde said. “I’m hungry. Had time I’d make me a little sandwich to take with me.”

“Well, you don’t have time,” Sunset said, “but we could probably manage a little backfire through this place before we leave, and by the time you get back, things would be cleaned up real good.”

“At least I know where everything is,” Clyde said.

“No, he don’t,” Hillbilly said.

“I knew where these guns were,” Clyde said, and gave the shotgun to Hillbilly. He handed him a fistful of shells as well.

“Where do you sleep?” Sunset asked Hillbilly.

“Not sure. Place never looks the same.”

“You didn’t ask where I sleep,” Clyde said.

“This is your house. I figure you have a place. I was wondering about the houseguest.”

As they climbed in the truck, Sunset said, “From now on, you boys need to be armed at all times. We can’t be stopping off at Clyde’s house for weapons when we need them.”

“Just don’t seem necessary most of the time,” Clyde said, shifting gears. “This slap jack,” he patted his shirt where it lay inside, “is usually enough.”

“Well, you’re full-time now, not part-time,” Sunset said. “We’re professionals and we got to act and look like professionals.”

“Is that what we are?” Clyde said. “Professionals?”

Hillbilly patted Sunset’s leg below the holster, said, “I see you’re armed.”

Sunset knew Hillbilly’s pat on the leg and remark were unnecessary and an excuse to touch her thigh, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything against it.

She wished she could say, “Put your hand here, your mouth there, twist one of my legs behind my head and make me say calf rope,” but instead she said, “I got the gun, but I don’t have many bullets. Just what’s in it.”

“Things go well,” Clyde said, “maybe you won’t have to shoot any more people than you got shells. Some police officers, even in big cities, go a whole day without shooting anybody, including dogs with the hydrophobia. Hell, Pete didn’t never shoot but one man, and I think he hit him by accident. Course, he sure beat a lot of them up, and Three-Fingered Jack died from a whupping, so maybe that evens out the score.”