Joe Lansdale - Sunset and Sawdust

Got a job in the cotton gin just outside of Holiday. Lived in the back of a dress shop for a month, sleeping on a pallet next to a widow woman and her three kids. Then she took up with Pete, who was tall and lean with coils of muscles knotting under his dark skin, shiny black hair, and a smile that made her heart melt like candle wax. One day he filled her belly with Karen.

She and Pete were married right away. He was twenty, and at that time working in the cotton gin. His beatings didn’t start until after marriage. It must have been a Jones tradition. No beating your woman until the wedding vows were taken.

She lay there thinking about all this until she was as lonesome as an adolescent’s first pubic hair.

She sighed, got out of bed, went outside barefoot and in her night-gown, strapping on her holster.

It wasn’t a full moon, but it was pretty bright and the air was clean and a little cool. The night was full of fireflies. It looked as if all the stars had fallen to earth and were bouncing about.

As she stood there watching the fireflies circle her head, she heard a growl. She pulled the revolver and looked, saw a big black-and-white dog with one ear that stood up and one that hung down, squatting in the road, dropping a pile.

“Easy, boy,” she said. “I’m not going to shoot you.”

But the dog growled and ran away, leaving the faint aroma of fresh dog shit behind.

“My reputation gets around,” Sunset said. She decided one of the first things she wanted was a box of ammunition. She felt safer with the gun than without it. She wanted enough bullets to shoot up the world.

She stood outside for a while, but the mosquitoes began to flock. She swatted a few of them, went inside, strapped down the tent flap, went to bed.

But she couldn’t sleep. She thought about how she and Karen were just a few feet from where she had put the gun to Pete’s head.

Boy, was he surprised.

The sonofabitch.

Still, having Karen here, near where her father had been shot, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Wasn’t really good mothering. Another place might have been better.

But where?

She couldn’t stay with her mother-in-law. Forgiven or not, it just didn’t feel right.

Sunset sat on the edge of the mattress, went over to the business side of the tent, seated herself at the table, pushed a pencil and a blank notebook around. Bored of that, she lit a lantern and carried it to the file cabinet, pulled up a chair for herself and one for the lantern.

There was a pile of loose files on top of the cabinet. She took the first folder and prepared to file it.

On the front was written: MURDERS.

Sunset turned up the wick on the lantern and opened the file. There was a list of murders that had happened over the years Pete had been constable.

She thought it would be a good idea to familiarize herself with what had gone before. If she was going to play constable, she might as well know how to play.

One file said COLORED MURDERS.

She opened the file and read a bit. What it mostly amounted to was so-and-so shot so-and-so and so what?

Wasn’t a lot of concern in there for the colored community. No intense sleuthing to find out who did what to whom.

There was one interesting situation that Pete had written about. A colored man named Zendo had found a buried clay jar with a baby in it while plowing his field. Scared he would be blamed for the baby’s death, he moved the jar and its contents to the woods and left it there.

Since Zendo had the richest soil around, through heavy application of animal manures and leaves, his land had turned black as a raven in a coal mine. This dirt clung to the jar and was inside of it, along with the baby.

Pete tracked Zendo by using the dirt. He knew where the jar had come from, no matter where it had been found.

Pete finished his report with:

Talked to Zendo about the dead baby. Known Zendo for a while. Not a bad nigger. Don’t believe he killed anyone. Probably some nigger gal had a kid she wasn’t supposed to have, and it died, or she killed it, and buried it in Zendo’s field because the ground is easy to work.

Can’t tell if the baby was black or white cause it’s all rotted up and ants have been at it. But I figure Zendo found it and didn’t have nothing to do with it. He’s a good enough nigger and I haven’t never known him to steal nothing or do nothing bad. He even works hard. I think he hid it to keep from getting in trouble. I had it buried in the colored graveyard on suspect of it being a nigger baby.

There was nothing else written. End of case. It was dated a couple weeks earlier. It didn’t mention who found the jar in the woods, which seemed a bad bit of investigative work. Sunset thought that sort of information might be more than a little important.

She wondered too how Pete could see such a thing and not even mention it to her. Then again, he didn’t mention much of anything to her if it didn’t have to do with cooking his meals or taking her clothes off. He spent the rest of his time being constable or shacking up with other women, especially Jimmie Jo French, the cheap slut.

Sunset looked through the other murder cases for a while, grew tired, stashed the murder files, put out the lantern and went to bed.

Next morning, sitting at the table with Clyde and Hillbilly, Sunset had their first meeting. Clyde had let Hillbilly stay at his house and had given him a lift.

Sunset noted that Hillbilly looked fresh, shaved, his hair combed and oiled. It even looked that way after wearing a cap.

Clyde, on the other hand, looked as if he had rolled out of bed, pulled on his pants and someone else’s shirt. It was about a size too small and one of the bottom buttons was unfastened. For that matter, his pants were high-water, ending about two inches above his socks and shoes. He still wore his hat, and his hair stuck out from under it like porcupine quills. He needed a shave.

Clyde said, “You see that big old black-and-white dog out there?”

“Saw him last night,” Sunset said.

“Belonged to the Burton family. Old Man Burton moved off to look for some kind of work. Got too old for the sawmill. Had a relative up in Oklahoma said there was work. So he left the dog. Think they called him Ben. Ain’t that something? Going off and leaving your dog cause you’re moving. Like the dog don’t get its feelings hurt.”

“It’s a dog,” Hillbilly said.

“Yeah, but a dog’s got feelings.”

Clyde and Hillbilly argued this for a while.

Sunset said, “You know, this job ain’t as exciting as I thought it might be.”

“That’s good,” Hillbilly said. “Way I want it. I’m getting paid for sitting here, same as if I wasn’t sitting here. I like it not exciting.”

“I’m not complaining,” Sunset said. “Just surprised. Pete was always gone doing something. Or doing someone. Now that I think about it, I think it was mostly the last part.”

“Jimmie Jo French,” Clyde said, then turned red. “Damn. I ain’t got no sense.”

“It’s okay,” Sunset said. “That’s the truth, ain’t it? I know it and everyone else knows it.”

“I used to not talk so much,” Clyde said.

“Fact is,” Sunset said, “you was kind of known for that.”

“Out at his house he didn’t say no more than two words,” Hillbilly said.

“Told you where the soap and such was,” Clyde said.

“All right. Four words. I had to clean up out at the water pump, fight off mean chickens while I washed.”

“They just don’t know you,” Clyde said.

“If we’re gonna talk about baths and chickens,” Sunset said, “this job is more boring than I thought.”

“It’ll take time to get into a routine,” Clyde said. “You wouldn’t think much goes on in Camp Rapture and round about. But it does. And you’re supposed to help Sheriff Knowles over in Holiday if he needs it. Come Saturday night, it can get busy over there, with them honky-tonks and whorehouses and such.”