Joe Lansdale - Sunset and Sawdust

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.

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.”