Joe Lansdale - Sunset and Sawdust

McBride leaned out of his chair very fast and hit Hillbilly in the nose with a short right. Blood sprayed and Hillbilly dropped his head and moaned.

“You just thought it was broke before,” McBride said. “Wasn’t nothing before. Now it’s something. You come to me, and you tell me things I don’t think you ought to know, and I’m thinking, thing to do is have Two give you the big nigger job. He can twist your head off like you was a chicken, fuck your neck stump while you bleed out. He could do that, and he wouldn’t bat an eye. I could do it, but I don’t want to get blood on my dick. You hear me, Used To Be A Pretty Boy?”

“Yeah,” Hillbilly said. “I hear you.”

“Good. I’m gonna let you live, but take what we done here as a kind of lesson, a message. You twisted on that gal, come to me, and that’s all right, but you twist on me, I’ll twist you. Hear me?”

“Yeah. I hear you. Loud and clear.”

“That’s good. That’s damn good. Now let me tell you what you’re gonna do, and at this stage of our association, you ain’t got no say anymore, hear me?”

“Yeah.”

Two slid over and put his arm around Hillbilly’s shoulders. When Hillbilly turned, Two was real close, his white teeth grinning, his green eyes bright as emeralds.

He turned back to McBride, and McBride began to talk.

While Sunset and Clyde were gone, Lee and Goose and Karen, using Clyde’s pickup, had moved the tent and all the belongings, making four or five trips, to Clyde’s place.

When Sunset and Henry and Clyde pulled up at Clyde’s place, the tent was up, and out to one side of it was the tarp Clyde had erected, and to the other side, the house he had burned down. Out front of the tent a large post had been cut and there was a thick chain fastened around the post, fixed so that it ran through a place drilled in the center. The chain was pretty long and Ben was fastened to the chain by means of a collar made out of an old belt. Lee and Goose and Karen came out of the tent and Lee was carrying a chair with him.

“What in hell are you doing?” Henry said.

“Jail,” Sunset said. “You’re going to jail.”

“What jail?”

Sunset put the car in gear and pulled up the hand brake, turned in the seat to look at Henry, who sat in the back with Clyde. Clyde had used a short piece of rope to tie Henry’s hands together, and Henry looked as mad as a hornet in a fruit jar.

“That’s exactly what I got to thinking,” Sunset said. “What jail? I need a jail for Henry, but I haven’t got one. And I got to thinking too, you got friends, and I take you to my place, leave you there, they might come and see me. So, we’ve moved. People know where I live, that’s got around, but Clyde, they might not think of his place, and if they do, well, Clyde, he’s lived out here pretty much by himself for years. Right, Clyde?”

“Oh, yeah. And except for Hillbilly for a while, I ain’t had any visitors, so anyone might matter to you, I doubt they know where I live. It could be found out, but that’s what shotguns are for, nosy bastards.”

“You’re gonna regret this, girlie,” Henry said.

“I already regret it,” Sunset said. “Regret the day I took this job and found out anything about you.”

Henry looked puzzled. “Then let me go. Drop the job. Take off. Hell, the money offer is still open. We can toss Clyde in too.”

“I regret the day, all right,” Sunset said, “but there’s this thing about having a center, and damn it, I got one, and I don’t want it to shift.”

“Do what?” Henry said.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Sunset said.

They took Henry out of the car. When they got to the post in front of the tent, Sunset spoke to Lee, said, “Well, Daddy, is the post in solid?”

“Ben thinks so. He tugged for a while, then laid down.”

“All right, then.”

Clyde went in the tent, came out with a pair of handcuffs and a padlock. He used a knife to cut Henry loose, then put the handcuffs on him.

Sunset took the collar off Ben, who came over and sniffed Henry’s crotch like he might like to bite it off.

“What in hell are you doing?” Henry said.

“Putting you in jail,” Sunset said. She looped the chain through the cuffs and used the small padlock to stick between links.

Lee put the chair up against the post.

“This is your jail,” Sunset said.

“Out here?” Henry said.

“It’s kind of shaded,” Sunset said.

“You can’t do this.”

“Sure I can. Just hope I haven’t lost the keys to the cuffs or the padlock. Sit down, or I’ll have Clyde sit you down. Karen, go get Henry some water, would you?”

“You are going from bad to worse,” Henry said.

“Sit down, Henry.”

“How long you going to keep me here?”

“I don’t know. I got to figure what to do with you, which lawman will not let you go, which ones aren’t with the Klan or got Klan connections, or who won’t change their minds by letting money touch their hands.”

“You may find that a difficult person to find,” Henry said.

“Not everyone’s crooked,” Sunset said.

“I believe they are,” Henry said. “I believe, it comes to push or shove, everyone’s crooked, or at least willing to compromise. It’s the way of the world, girlie.”

“Sir,” Lee said, “call my daughter girlie one more time, and we’ll see how many times I can chase you around that post before the chain seizes up.”

Henry sat in silence. Karen came with a cup of water. Henry took it and threw it on the ground.

“Damn, Henry, and that’s all you get until nightfall,” Clyde said.

“Can I sic Ben on him?” Goose said.

“Not just yet, honey,” Sunset said.

The tan Plymouth hummed through the darkness like a bee, and though it was hot, the windows were mostly rolled up because of the grasshoppers. The grasshoppers were everywhere. Even now, at night, they were hopping in front of the lights and making little messes against the front of the car.

Plug pulled the car to the side of the road and picked up the bottle on the seat, twisted off the cap and took a sip and the smell of whisky filled the air. Hillbilly, sitting on the front passenger side, said, “You don’t need none of that.”

“I’ve already had plenty.”

“That’s what I’m saying. You don’t need any more.”

“I don’t get why you’re sheriff. Never even heard of you before, and now with Rooster gone, they make you sheriff. Just seen you once, with the redhead, and now you’re sheriff.”

“For one thing,” Hillbilly said, “I’m not stupid.”

“You better watch it,” Plug said. “You don’t want me on your ass.”

Hillbilly laughed.

Tootie, who was sitting in the backseat, shifted the shotgun on his lap, said, “I think we all ought to have some. We’re gonna need it. I could get out right now and start walking, and that’s what I ought to do, start walking, but if I’m gonna stay, gonna do this thing, I’m gonna need some of that. We all ought to have some.”

Two, sitting beside him, a shotgun across his lap, said, “No one walks anywhere.”

“That’s right,” Two’s other self answered. “We all stay. Get the car moving.”

“I want a drink,” Tootie said. “I don’t think a brain-kicked nigger talks to himself ought to tell me I can’t have a drink. A nigger ought not tell a white man anything.”

Two lifted the shotgun in his lap casually and put it to Tootie’s right ear and pulled the trigger. The blast took off the top of Tootie’s head and took out the window and peppered the inside of the car with shot. There was blood all over the back of Hillbilly’s neck, all over the backseat, all over Two and his black jacket and his black bowler hat and the inside of the car smelled like sulphur.