Sunset and Sawdust (27 page)

“You both jumped on him?”

“Not exactly,” Clyde said. “Not that I’d have cared if we had, and had some help. I wouldn’t have felt bad the army helped us.”

“Tell me.”

“We went over where Hillbilly told me he was,” Clyde said, “and he was with some whore, and your daddy went up there and beat Hillbilly’s ass like he was nailed to the floor, threw him out a window. I hit him with the slap jack then. Twice.”

Sunset brought her hand to her mouth. “Did it . . . hurt him?”

“Hell, yeah,” Clyde said. “He didn’t bounce worth a damn. You hit a guy with a slap jack, it’s gonna hurt. But that slap jack, it wasn’t nothing to what he got upstairs, way he came out that window, butt naked.”

“Is he . . . dead?”

“Naw,” Clyde said. “Wasn’t that big a fall. But he ain’t pretty no more. I don’t know it’s permanent, but he looks like he went through some kind of grater and got put back together by a drunk.”

“I’m sorry, Sunset,” Lee said. “I know you had feelings for him.”

“Should have seen it when Lee hit that sonofabitch with his new guitar,” Clyde said. “That was an ace moment, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

Sunset slowly smiled. “Wish I had been there to see it.”

“Especially that part when he come naked out that window,” Clyde said, “flapping his arms. Fallen from five feet higher, they’d be digging his ass out of the ground with some kind of machinery.”

Sunset laughed, got between them, put her arms around them, “You boys ought to be arrested, but hell, that ain’t my jurisdiction, now is it?”

“No, it ain’t,” Clyde said.

“There you are,” Sunset said. “I’m gonna have to let it go. Come on inside. We got fried squirrel to eat.”

32

Back in bed, upstairs, the whore nursed him, but Hillbilly didn’t like it none, because she had seen him get his ass beat. And handily. And by an old man. And he wasn’t looking so good right now. When he checked himself in the mirror, he saw a guy he didn’t know. Guy with glass cuts all over him, like some kind of pox, a broken nose, fat lips, swollen right eye and a cheek that looked like something a chipmunk ought to have, all stuffed up with nuts. But it was just a swelling where a back tooth had come out. His balls weren’t peachy either. All black from being kicked, like rotten plums about to drop off. The fall made him hurt all over. His knees were banged and so were his elbows. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t broken something. He felt a little shook up inside, like something big and fast had run through him, gut to gill.

The blonde pulled a glass sliver out of his penis with her fingernails, put it on a handkerchief on the end table by the bed.

“You can go,” Hillbilly said, as she placed a damp cloth on his business, making him wince.

“Honey, you sure?”

“Yeah. I want you to.”

“That fall was bad. You could be broke up inside. Maybe you ought not be alone.”

“No. You can go.”

“You gonna come see me?”

“Sure.”

“It won’t cost you nothing. You didn’t finish, you know.”

“I know. You go on, now.”

She got up, put on her clothes. When she was at the door, she said, “I’m sorry about your guitar.”

“Okay.”

“You still got the harmonica.”

Hillbilly snatched the damp rag off his crotch and threw it at her. “I said get out.”

The rag struck her on the shoulder. She opened the door and went out quickly.

Hillbilly lay there and thought about what he would do next. Besides move slowly.

Then it came to him. Rooster had given him an idea. It wasn’t the one Rooster had, the one he wanted him to do, it was another.

He thought about the red apartment over the drugstore, where McBride stayed. He had to go over there, talk to the man, see was there a place for him in this operation McBride and Henry had going.

One thing he prided himself on was he took the easy path on everything, unless it had to do with getting even. The easy path wasn’t necessary then. He’d crawl over sharp rocks and kiss a mule’s shitty ass to get back at someone did him wrong, especially some old man made him look and feel foolish in front of a goddamn whore.

He thought he’d get up right then, get dressed, go over and see McBride, but his body thought different.

It said: Lay down, boy. You ain’t doing so good.

Hillbilly listened. Let his body have its way. But his mind raced, and his mind had ideas, and his mind was mean.

After they finished eating, and the ass whipping Lee had given Hillbilly was told another time, and everyone was sitting around inside the tent drinking coffee, Sunset slipped outside with a strip of white cloth she had torn from an old towel. She tied it to a limb on the back of the big oak tree.

Ben trotted up, watched her tie it. When she finished, she knelt down and gave him a pat.

All she could do now was see if Bull showed.

She hoped he would.

She needed him.

And she was pretty sure, Zendo, though he didn’t know it, needed him as well.

33

Couple of days went by and the white strip hung from the oak limb and the weather turned deadly hot and the trees sagged as if the sky were leaning its weight on them. Grasshoppers were everywhere, nibbling at what greenery they could find.

Walking about was like trudging through invisible bread dough and breathing was like sucking up dried leaves. At night, Sunset came out and sat by the oak. Clyde had taken to sleeping in his truck in the yard, and Lee was sleeping on the business side of the tent, with Goose, and she and Karen were sharing the other side.

But when everyone was sleeping, Sunset went out, found Ben, pulled a chair next to the oak, waited for Bull to show up. Sat there petting the dog until he tired of that business and lay down at her feet.

After a couple of nights, she was starting to have doubts Bull would show. He didn’t really owe her anything, and what goodwill he felt for her may have passed. He might never come this way again, never even know a rag was hanging.

She thought about Hillbilly, remembered how he had touched her and cooed to her and made her feel. She thought about Karen, what he must have said to her to have his way. Maybe he said the same things to Karen he said to her. Though, now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember him making her a promise at all. Not with words, anyway, but his hands and lips and eyes spoke volumes, and those were all lies.

She was glad her daddy had kicked his ass.

And yet she hoped he wasn’t hurt bad.

Hoped his looks weren’t spoiled.

She didn’t like him, but didn’t like to think of him messed up, ruined. The kind of beauty he had ought not be ruined. Fact was, it shouldn’t age, never change one teeny bit.

And what about Henry and McBride and the one called Two? What of them? What should she do?

She was thinking on this when Lee came out holding a cup of coffee in either hand. She looked up as he came over. “I thought you were asleep.”

“You think I’m asleep every night when you come out here. Besides, Goose snores.” He handed her a cup of coffee. “Thought you might want this.”

She smiled at him. “Sure.”

Lee had her hold both cups while he dragged the other chair over, sat down, took a cup and sipped it.

“Daddy, I’m in kind of a mess. I ain’t sure what to do about things.”

“You saying you want to tell me?”

“Yes.”

And she did. Told him all of it, about Zendo and Zendo’s land, about Henry Shelby and McBride and Two, about her talk with them in the church. And for the first time she told someone about Bull, about the rag she had tied to the oak.

She ended saying, “I think maybe they’ll take it out on Zendo. I decided just now I’m going to have Clyde go there, maybe be a lookout, in case they send someone around. Have him go over there with a shotgun. And then there’s Bull. He said he’d help.”

“People say lots of things.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“I’ve said some things myself, but there’s not a thing I say now I don’t mean. Do you believe that?”

“I’m trying. I want to believe. But that’s the story of my life, believing the wrong people.”

“All right then, for what it’s worth. You can look at this two ways. It ain’t really your problem. You didn’t cheat Zendo. It’s not your fault someone might want him killed. You could just warn him, move on, let it go.

“Course, if he’s out of the way, a little nifty work with a pen, that land could end up theirs. With him alive, they could do it anyway, but he might could make enough of a stink to prove it’s his. So either way, you’re taking a chance with his life.”

“I want answers, not choices.”

“I might have been able to give you some years ago, during my preacher days, cause I thought I knew everything. What I do know is you got to have a kind of center, Sunset. You follow me? You got to work out of that center, and you don’t let that center shift. You may fail it, but you don’t let it shift.”

“All right, that’s all well and good. But what do I do? I thought about telling Zendo, but I’ve been afraid to tell him. Thought that might be worse for him. He might say or do something he shouldn’t.”

Lee sipped coffee slowly, said, “In other words, you’re not treating him like a man. You’re treating him like a slave that needs tending, and you’re his massa.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I’m saying how it seems to me.”

“People here, a lot of them, they see it that way. That a colored ain’t supposed to make too many decisions. I try and treat Zendo like he’s not colored, and he thinks he can make some choices like everyone else, I could get him killed.”

“You could treat him like a man, go to him, tell him the truth, say, hey, I don’t know what I can do for you. There’s just me, and Clyde, and my run-down old man, and these guys, they’re professionals and serious. Cheating and killing, that’s what they do. So you’re on your own. Then you’ve warned him. It’s up to him to take care of himself. You could do that.”

“And my center wouldn’t have shifted?”

“You have to decide that. I can’t tell you that. You got to feel you’ve done the right thing, what you could.”

“Or?”

“You do the job you signed on for. Most of the time this job isn’t anything much, but sometimes it might be. And when it is, do you decide then to not do it because it’s hard? Could be you’re not up to it, and if you’re not, that’s no shame, that’s just the way it is. But if you’re up to it and not willing, that’s a whole different thing.”

“How do you know you’re up to it?”

“You don’t. But you got to want to be up to it.”

“And if I decide I want to be?”

“Plan. And count me in.”

“Howdy.”

Sunset and Lee jumped.

Ben sat up, looked embarrassed, like, man, I’m the goddamn dog here, and I didn’t hear this fella, didn’t see him.

Standing behind them, one hand on the back of Sunset’s chair, was Bull. The air seemed charged with electricity, and it was full of an earthy smell that bit at their nostrils.

“Don’t you ever come up normal?” Sunset said.

“I don’t know normal,” Bull said.

“Daddy, this is Bull.”

“Hello, Bull,” Lee said. “You damn near made me load my pants.”

Bull grinned, gestured at the white strip hanging from the limb. “See you done hung the rag out. Need me?”

“I do,” Sunset said.

“What way?”

“Zendo, a colored fella. He needs a protector.”

“You mean the farmer?” Bull asked.

“Yeah. You know him?”

“Know who he is. Everyone knows who he is, cause of the way he farms, way his soil is, like it’s magic or something. He can grow big old tomatoes in the hottest of weather, corn higher than two of me. He’s the best there is. He’s got a name for it.”

“That’s right,” Sunset said. “Even while we’re talking, it could have already happened, someone getting to him, hurting him and his family.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Bull asked.

Sunset explained. When she finished, Bull went over and sat down with his back against the oak, considering. After a moment he said, “So you waited on me for this? Ain’t there plenty of white men around? Your daddy looks ready enough. Little long in the tooth, like me, but them’s the ones you got to watch, ain’t that right, dad?”

“That’s right,” Lee said.

“You kind of waited a while to decide maybe Zendo needs help, didn’t you?” Bull said.

“I don’t think I really knew what I wanted until tonight,” Sunset said. “I don’t think he was in any real trouble till just lately, after I talked with Henry and McBride. But even then, I didn’t really know what to do. Then tonight, I talked to Daddy, and well, he said some things, and it come together. I think. And frankly, this watching Zendo, I think you’re better able to do it than me, or Clyde or Dad.”

“Say you do?” Bull said.

“Don’t you?” Sunset said.

“Maybe. But I do this. Zendo wants the help. You got to do something else. You got to stop these men want his land. Ain’t that your law job?”

“It is.”

“It would please me big to see a colored make big money, and that oil could do it.”

“And it could make him a target,” Lee said. “You can’t spend money in the grave.”

“Yeah, well, there’s that,” Bull said. “White folks can’t hardly stand a nigger if he’s gonna have money, especially if he might get more than them.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Sunset said.

“Lady,” Bull said, “you can trust me to do what you want, but I got to trust you to do what I’m saying. You got to go after them bad men and take them down. Arrest them, whatever it is needs doing, you got to do it.”

“All right,” Sunset said.

“You got a gun, Bull?” Lee said. “Cause I figure you might need it.”

Bull pulled up his shirt. A little pistol was in his waistband. “This just for close up. Leaning against a gum tree in the woods there, got me a pump ten-gauge. Thought maybe you’d take better to me I didn’t stroll in with it in my hand.”

“Ten-gauge will do,” Lee said.

“You’re telling me,” Bull said.

“Sunset, is there anyone else you can go to for help?” Lee said. “More the merrier, something like this.”

“Problem is,” Sunset said, “I don’t know who’s in Henry’s pocket, and who isn’t. Don’t know all who’s Klan. I could take a chance here and there, but I’m thinking more people know about this, bigger we might make the problem. I could be lining up people I think are on my side, and they could be on Henry’s.”

Lee nodded. “That sounds right.”

“What about you, girl?” Bull said. “Your family? You think on that?”

“All the time. I thought about sending Karen to her grandmother’s, but that would just put Marilyn into it too. Wouldn’t be any safer. Goose, course he don’t know. Guess he ought to, so he’ll have a choice to leave or stay. And Clyde, he knows everything, except he don’t know about you.”

“That him over there with his foot on the dash of that truck?” Bull asked, pointing to Clyde’s old battered truck in the drive.

“That’s him,” Sunset said.

“All right, then,” Bull said, “I know what needs to be. I’m gonna see Zendo, talk to him.”

“When?” Sunset asked.

“Figure since I don’t sleep much nohow, I’ll go over there now, stay near till morning, watching. Zendo comes out tomorrow for work, I’ll talk to him.”

“Is Zendo’s place close by?” Lee asked.

“No,” Bull said. “But I can go through the woods, cut down on some distance.”

“Better yet, I can drive you there, drop you off near the place,” Lee said. “That is, if Sunset will loan me her car, and you’ll show me the way.”

After Bull recovered his ten-gauge and Lee drove off with him, Sunset walked by the truck where Clyde lay, peeked in. A flashlight shone in her face. She flinched, put her hand to her eyes.

“Sorry,” Clyde said sitting up, turning off the light.

“I thought you were asleep,” Sunset said.

“No. Just lying here. Listening to you and Lee and Bull talk.”

“That’s eavesdropping.”

“It wasn’t on purpose. I was sleeping here.”

Sunset opened the truck door and slid in beside him as he sat up behind the steering wheel.

“You got a place of your own,” she said.

“Sort of. If you count burned-up lumber.”

“You saw Bull?”

“I rose up for a peek. He’s large.”

“I’ll say.”

“Do you think you can trust him?”

“He came to me. He told me to put a strip of cloth on that tree when I needed him, and he came. So, yeah. Clyde?”

“Yeah.”

“I been pretty stupid—about Hillbilly, I mean.”

“I agree.”

“Sometimes, well . . . you can have something beautiful right in front of you, not see it because you’re looking around it, trying to see something else.”

“You’re not talking about me, are you?”

“I am.”

“Listen, Sunset . . . if I thought you meant that . . . I mean, I know you don’t mean it . . . that way. But if you meant something good by it. Anything. It would make me happy. But I don’t want pity.”

“Don’t make me mad, Clyde. I’ll borrow that slap jack of yours and hit you with it. I’m an idiot. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not proposing or anything. I’m not saying I’m in love. But I’m saying I was an idiot and you tried to tell me. You’re a good friend.”

“Again,” Clyde said, “I got to agree with you.”

“Be all right if I give you a kiss?”

“Just friendly, you mean?”

“Sure.”

Sunset leaned over and kissed Clyde on the cheek.

“That kiss wasn’t pity, was it?” Clyde asked.

“Don’t be silly, Clyde. There’s nothing to pity about you.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“I’m not. It was what it was.”

“Whatever it was, it was good enough. Good night,” Clyde said.