Sunset and Sawdust (23 page)

27

After his talk with McBride, Rooster went to his office, trembling, his hand aching. It wasn’t broken. McBride’s strong grip had shifted bones and now they were shifted back, but it was sore.

Rooster thought about what McBride made him do, felt sick about it, felt about two inches tall if he could wear stilts and stand on a stump. There wasn’t any need for McBride to do that. He had done it just because he could, the wig-headed sonofabitch.

Rooster got a wash pan, filled it with water, used a thick bar of soap to wash his lips, rubbed with it until they were near raw and the soap taste was in his mouth; he thought he’d gag from it, but determined it was a taste better than the one he was remembering.

After the soap, he took off his hat and put his face down in the pan of water and held it there for as long as he could hold his breath. When he came up, snorting, grabbing for a towel, he didn’t feel one bit cleaner.

He marched out on the office steps, looked up the street, stared at the red apartment over the drugstore, felt like he should go in and get the shotgun, trot back over to see McBride. He’d make him suck on the barrel, that’s what he would do. Should have bit the bastard’s dick off, that’s what he ought to have done, tore it out by the roots with his teeth. What a coward he was, doing what he did. Should have let McBride break his hand before he did what he did.

He thought about the shotgun some more, but didn’t think he could do it, and if he tried, he might end up with it up his ass, McBride working the pump action, pulling the trigger till it didn’t work anymore. It was easy to be tough out here on the steps of his office in the sunlight, but up there in that stuffy room with the little bit of light and all the shadows and McBride in his ugly black wig, that was another thing. And there was the Beetle Man, too.

Rooster thought about getting one of Sheriff Knowles’ cigars from the desk drawer, smoking that, to kind of purify himself, clean out his mouth with smoke, but the more he thought about the big fat cigars Sheriff Knowles had smoked, the less he liked that idea.

He walked around the edge of the office and looked to see the colored men still on their line, sleeping, and Plug and Tootie still sleeping as well. The dew had settled on them and Rooster could see it lay damp on Plug’s hat and the knees of his pants. Rooster was so angry, he thought he might take it out on them for sleeping, then he thought better of it. He didn’t want them up.

Rooster observed a fistful of grasshoppers hanging on the edge of the building, and to quench his anger, he used his hand to smash a couple of them, wiped the waste on the edge of the bricks with a quick scraping motion.

He went back around front and stood on the steps again. He was wiping at his mouth with the back of his clean hand, when a blue car came down the street, veered around the passed-out fat woman, paused with the motor humming. The passenger door opened and Hillbilly got out with a blanket bound up and tied over his shoulder. Rooster strained to see who was driving. It was some man he had seen around town, but didn’t know. The car drove on past the office in the direction of the courthouse.

Hillbilly stopped in the road for a minute, studied the fat woman lying there with the precision of a marine biologist studying a beached whale, then came walking toward Rooster. As Hillbilly passed him on the walk, he nodded.

Rooster said, “I thought you was constablin’.”

“Sometimes,” Hillbilly said. “Today I didn’t want to. I don’t know I’m gonna want to again. I’m actually a singer and picker. Did some singing last night, and I know that’s what I got to do. Got some pay, so I hitched in to look for a guitar to buy. You don’t know of any?”

Rooster shook his head.

“Your mouth’s all red. You got some kind of hives?”

“No. I do know this, though. That gal, Sunset, who I figure you like . . . you do like her, don’t you?”

“Well enough and in certain ways,” Hillbilly said.

“She’s in for some hell, friend. There’s a way maybe you can help her.”

When Rooster finished saying this, he felt stunned. It had just leaped from his mouth like a frog.

“I try to mind my own business,” Hillbilly said.

Rooster gave him a quizzical look. “You are the law.”

“Ain’t so sure I want to be any kind of law anymore. I never felt I fit good being the law. Ain’t you the law? This has something to do with the law, you’re the law. I’m retired.”

“I like that redhead,” Rooster said.

“Hell, any man likes that redhead,” Hillbilly said.

“That’s not what I mean. She’s got heart. She’s got more courage than I got. And she’s gonna need it.”

“How’s that?”

“McBride.”

“John McBride?”

“How’d you know?”

“Seen his name on a paper at the courthouse.”

Rooster nodded. He saw the fat woman lying in the street move, start to get up. She managed to roll over and get a knee under her.

“I think you’re a man that’ll play angles,” Rooster said. “I’m not sure Sunset is a woman that’ll do that.”

“What does that mean, I’m a man will play angles? What are you getting at, Rooster?”

“I think you can help her and maybe make some good money quick like.”

“Where does it come from, this quick money?”

“Me.”

“Tell you what, buddy. I got better things to do with my morning than play at riddles.”

“Henry Shelby over at the mill in Camp Rapture—”

“I know who he is.”

“—he come up with this idea, you see. He was hunting on land belonged to this colored, Zendo, and he found oil. Zendo don’t even know it’s his land. Or if he thought it was his land, Shelby fixed that. Day after he found the oil, he went and asked Zendo if he’d sell, telling him he wanted it for the lumber company, and Zendo said no, he didn’t want to sell, and Shelby asked him how big his land was, and Zendo didn’t know. Just bought him a patch and farms part of what he knows is his patch. A colored, he don’t ask a lot of questions when he gets something around here, even if he pays near double for it. Glad to have what he knows to be his, even if he has more and don’t know it. Course, he don’t know about the oil. That might change his thinking. Surveyors hadn’t even bothered to come and stake out the land he bought. Just drew it up on paper, and you got to really study them papers to know what they’re about. And Zendo, if he’s like a lot of the coloreds around here, he don’t even read. So, Henry Shelby, he says, ‘Tell you what, I’ll pay to have your land surveyed so you’ll know exactly what’s yours, cause since I can’t buy your land, I can buy land next to you.’ That’s no big thing to Zendo, a free survey, cause now he’ll know exactly what he owns.”

“And the land got cut up different than it was supposed to be,” Hillbilly said. “Yeah, me and Sunset sort of got that part.”

They watched as the woman from the street came stumbling by. Rooster thought she looked like one of the women from Dodge Street. She was lurching in that direction. When she passed them and was far enough away, Rooster continued.

“They cut Zendo a bigger piece than he thought he owned, to make him happy about things. But they kept the rest of it, a big chunk, the oil land. Shelby, to make this work, had to have the mayor in on it. He knew him pretty good, see.”

“I thought I heard he run off, or something,” Hillbilly said.

Rooster nodded. “Or something. Mayor and Henry were card-playing and whore-running buddies. Shelby tells him what he knows, cause he needs the mayor to mess with the papers at the courthouse. Make it official. So he has to cut him in. Then this McBride shows up, and the mayor, he isn’t around anymore. I reckon Henry wasn’t that big a buddy of the mayor after all.”

“Ain’t it kind of scary you knowing what you know?”

“They needed me, they cut me in. I don’t get a piece of the oil, just get paid, by them. McBride mostly, but I know it comes from Henry. Now I’m in deep. And I’m scared. I don’t want to do nothing really bad, and I’m figuring that’s what they’re gonna want. Something bad. Sometime soon.”

“You’re trying to keep those maps secret, might not hurt you put a better guard on things at the courthouse,” Hillbilly said. “You’re gonna be a thief or help out thieves, figure you ought to be smarter.”

“They never thought anyone would think to look, Pete dead and all. And if they did look, so what? The original papers were gone. Then Sunset comes up with them. I should have asked for them. She’d have given them to me, wouldn’t be no problem.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

Rooster shook his head. “I don’t never make good choices. I got to get them papers back. For her. And for me. I thought maybe you could do it, for her. It’s worth a hundred dollars.”

“That’s a lot of money right now.”

Rooster nodded.

“But you still haven’t laid it all out for me,” Hillbilly said.

“What you need to know is this: Get the papers back and she won’t get hurt, cause there’s someone will hurt her for those papers.”

“McBride?”

“Yeah, McBride. He may not do it himself, but it’ll get done. Get the papers, the maps, she’s got nothing, maybe there’s no problem.”

“Just make up some new maps.”

“The old ones show up, that’ll make a mess.”

“Tell you what,” Hillbilly said. “Hundred dollars sounds good, but that part about you being scared and the mayor missing, that don’t sound good. Thing best for me to do is to forget we talked and stay away from Sunset. I’ve had my moment there, and it was a good one, but I’m moving on.”

“Maybe you’re a lot smarter than I thought.”

“Comes to watching out for me, I’m plenty smart.”

“What about Sunset?”

“Haven’t a thing against her. She’s a woman can make a man happy. I just don’t want to be that happy, having the same woman around all the time. It’s not the way I am. I got to have bigger stakes than any hundred dollars. My rules for me is take the path where there ain’t nothing in it, and if there is, go around. See you, Rooster.”

Hillbilly went down the street. Rooster watched him for a while, then a shadow fled over Main Street.

Rooster glanced up.

At first he thought it was a flock of birds. But they were close down and he could hear the buzz of their wings.

Insects. A large swarm of them. They turned suddenly as one, darted to the top of the overhang behind the red apartment, disappeared into the woods.

It was the day of the town meeting. Sunset thought about it all morning. She also thought about Hillbilly. She sent Clyde to search for him. It wasn’t a thing Clyde wanted to do, but she knew he’d do it, knew she had that power over him, and felt like an ass because of it. But not enough of an ass not to do it.

Walking toward her car, Sunset noticed there was a lot of space between the limbs of the trees, letting in more sunlight than usual, and for a moment this confused her. Then she realized it was because lately it had been so hot and dry the trees were thirsty. Their limbs sagged, the leaves shriveled, turned brown and let loose, crunched beneath her feet like crackers.

She was thinking about the meeting when Marilyn’s pickup rumbled into the yard and parked. Inside Sunset saw not only Marilyn and Karen, but sitting next to the passenger window, a big, somewhat handsome older man. In the truck bed was a young boy.

When they got out, the man, wearing a worn-out suit coat, lingered by the truck, and the boy stayed in the truck bed. Karen came up to her mother, reached down to pet Ben, who was sitting beside Sunset in a manner of defense.

“Is Hillbilly here?” Karen asked, and her voice broke when she spoke.

“No,” Sunset said.

“Where is he?”

“I’m not sure. Who’s that?”

“I don’t know. We picked them up at Uncle Riley’s house. I heard the boy got snakebit. That boy keeps looking at me, Mama. He makes me nervous.”

“Why don’t they come on up?”

“They’re afraid of Ben.”

“Take Ben in the tent with you. Make him lay down.”

“Can I talk to you later?”

“Sure. Put Ben up.”

“Come on, Ben.”

Ben and Karen disappeared into the tent. Marilyn stopped at the water pump to pump water and wash her face. She looked up at Sunset, beads of water rolling off of her. “That’s Lee. The boy is called Goose.”

“Who are they?”

“The man is someone you ought to meet.”

“Yeah?”

“Lee,” Marilyn said, “come on over.”

Lee came over and nodded. He said, “Hello, Sunset.”

“You know me?” Sunset said.

“No. But I’d like to.”

Sunset looked to Marilyn for help. Marilyn walked off toward the great oak by the road. Goose wandered over to the outhouse and went inside.

“I don’t know you, then?” Sunset said.

Lee shook his head. “No. But we have a connection. I’m your father.”

Sunset and Lee both stood silent for a long time, then Sunset, very quickly, slapped Lee, slapped him so hard he actually went to one knee.

Slowly Lee rose, a hand to his reddened face.

“You sonofabitch,” she said.

“You hit hard for someone so little.”

“Sonofabitch.”

“Without a doubt,” he said. “If it means anything, I didn’t know you existed.”

Karen and Ben stuck their heads out of the tent. Goose came out of the outhouse in time to see Lee rising to his feet. He said, “Lee, you all right?”

“I’m fine. Just stay back.”

“Go on back in the tent,” Sunset said to Karen.

“But Mama . . .”

“Just once, just goddamn once, do what I tell you.”

Karen’s head darted back inside, followed by Ben’s.

“Just had your way with my mother and took off?” Sunset said. “That was it, huh?”

He nodded. “Yes, that’s what I did. But I didn’t know about you, not until Marilyn told me.”

Sunset tossed a look at Marilyn.

Marilyn, standing by the oak, shrugged.

“After all these years you show up, and it’s supposed to matter to me?” Sunset said.

“It doesn’t have to matter. I understand why it might not matter. But I didn’t know about you, Sunset. I was young. Your mother was young. We made a mistake. Hell, I made a mistake. I seduced her, and me a preacher . . . back then anyway. Not now.”