Sunset and Sawdust (7 page)

There were laughs in the crowd.

“Would you say Pete was tough?” Marilyn said.

“Yeah,” Henry said.

“What about the rest of you?”

Bill, sitting in the front row with Don, said, “He sure beat the hell out of Three-Fingered Jack.”

“He beat the hell out of a lot of people,” said another man.

“He was tough as a nickel steak,” Henry said. “We all know that.”

“Tough,” Marilyn said, “but Sunset killed him.”

“Well, now,” Henry said, “nothing’s been said, but we was thinking we elected a new constable, maybe charges would be brought up on Sunset.”

Henry looked out at the crowd, eyed a few elders, hoping for support. They murmured agreement.

“Sunset may be kin to me by marriage,” Henry said, “but there’s a number of us think this thing looks wrong, a woman killing her husband for being a husband. And look at her. Going around with a goddamn gun in her belt.”

“So, you’ve heard the whole story?” Marilyn said.

“No. But the law should.”

“The law was my son. And my son is dead.”

“Then another law should hear the story. You don’t just make a killer the law.”

“Self-defense,” Marilyn said.

“Marilyn,” Henry said, “I’d think you’d be for the law looking into this. I don’t understand your thinking. Pete and your old man dead, and Sunset living here in your house. And we don’t even know the story she told is truth.”

“She didn’t beat herself up like that.”

“She could have got hurt in the storm.”

“Not like that.”

“Man ought to be able to beat his wife, she needs it,” one of the elders said.

“A man lays a hand on me, from this day forward,” Marilyn said, “and I’ll kill him.”

“I’ll second that,” Sunset said.

This garnered a long moment of silence. A moth that had gotten trapped in the house beat around the ceiling, looking for a dark spot. This gave an excuse for a lot of men to look at the ceiling.

“I say we let Sunset do the job,” came a voice from the rear of the room.

People turned to see who had spoken. It was Clyde Fox. He had removed his cloth cap and his black hair hung down, almost covered one of his eyes. He was big enough to go alligator hunting with stern language.

Henry felt his grasp on the meeting spinning out of control. He had come here feeling he had the situation by the balls, but now he was beginning to feel a grip tightening around his own scrotum.

“The storm didn’t punch Sunset in the eye and mouth like that,” Clyde said. “Reckon it’s like the lady told it.”

“That’s right,” Marilyn said. “And though it pains me to say it, my thinking is, ones deserve the sword get the sword. Even if it’s my son. And there’s this too. Sunset needs the job. She’s got Karen to take care of. It would help her get back on her feet. We’re a community first, aren’t we?”

“It’s a man’s job,” Henry said. “It ain’t for nobody getting back on their feet. Job calls for a man.”

“That could change,” Marilyn said.

“It’s not gonna change,” Henry said. “We aren’t running a goddamn charity here. This is a lumber mill community.”

Marilyn nodded as if Henry had said something she agreed with. “You been thinking, I reckon, that maybe, if Holiday and Camp Rapture unite, you might have a shot at something like mayor, since Holiday’s mayor run off. Am I right?”

“Well . . . it crossed my mind,” Henry said. “I think I’m qualified. Your father gave me the position I have at the mill based on my qualifications.”

“And marrying his sister,” Bill said.

There was a laugh from the audience.

“Let this cross your mind,” Marilyn said. “You think a woman getting on as constable in your camp would make you look bad, you ran for mayor, if the towns come together. Well, you ain’t the boss of this place to begin with. Just so it’s clear, I own most of the mill.”

Henry swallowed hard. “Well . . . yes, ma’am . . . but . . .”

“But what?” Marilyn said. “Let me suggest strongly that Sunset become constable. Pete had a couple men who helped him from time to time. Clyde being one. I say we let him help her. The other fella, I can’t remember his name. But he moved off. But we can find another. She can finish out the term, then you can elect whoever you want.”

“But a woman?”

“Woman’s okay with me,” Hillbilly said, pushing off from the wall. “I’m new here, and I know you don’t know me, but why not? She doesn’t do the job, get rid of her. That’s fair enough, ain’t it? Give her a month to get a handle on things, and give her some help. She can’t do it, boot her out. Get you whoever. Hell, she’s got her own damn gun.”

Clyde said, “Sounds right to me.”

“It’s a tough job,” Henry said. “She could get hurt. She’ll have to deal with thugs and niggers and no telling what all.”

“That’s what the help’s for,” Clyde said. “Pay me and I’ll help her. I ain’t all that crazy about mill work. I still got all my fingers and arms, and I’d like to keep it that way. I been looking for a career, and I done said more than I usually say in a week.”

“You take the job,” Henry said to Clyde.

Clyde shook his head. “Nope. Rather work for the constable than be the constable.”

Clyde glanced at Sunset. She smiled at him, and he sat down.

“I’ll help too,” Hillbilly said.

“We don’t know you,” Henry said.

“I don’t know you either. I don’t know this here community. But I’m willing to learn about it. I may not be here a long time, but I’ll be here long enough to get her started.”

“We’d have to pay you,” Henry said.

“That’s right,” Hillbilly said. “I want the job because it’s like this fella just said. Still got all my fingers and arms and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“We haven’t got that kind of money,” Henry said. “There’s only so much in the account for things like this. You’d make more at the mill.”

“I’ll take less on account of not having to be at the mill,” Hillbilly said.

“We couldn’t manage half of what you’d make at the mill.”

“I’ll help pay the first month for all of them,” Marilyn said. “Out of my own pocket. After that, community fund takes over. Doesn’t work out, we can get rid of her. Give her a month with Clyde and . . . what’s your name, son?”

“Hillbilly. That’s what I’m called, anyway.”

“All right, Hillbilly. She works out, let her finish Pete’s term. That’s okay with you, isn’t it, Henry? A month’s trial.”

Henry looked at Marilyn and his stomach turned sour. He could tell she didn’t give a flying damn if it was all right with him or not. Jones had always been his buffer between Marilyn and himself. He knew she never liked him. After her daddy died, she got the idea that he had pocketed some of her father’s money through fancy bookkeeping.

She was right. But she didn’t know it for a fact and Jones hadn’t believed it. But now with Jones gone, he knew his dick was in the wringer. And he knew her hand was on the wringer handle.

“We don’t even know she wants the job,” Henry said.

Marilyn turned her attention to Sunset, said, “Well, dear?”

Sunset was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “I’d like to give it a try.”

There was a murmur in the crowd.

“We should put it to a vote,” Henry said. “We only do things here at Camp Rapture the democratic way.”

Marilyn smiled at Henry. “You’re about as much a democrat as Genghis Khan.”

There was laughter.

“Let’s do it this way,” Marilyn said. “Who here is against Sunset being constable? But first, I ought to make a little announcement. Depression or no Depression. I’m going to instate a nickel an hour raise across the board for everyone. Except Henry. He makes enough money.”

Marilyn grinned at Henry.

Henry tried to grin back, but the inside of his mouth hung on his teeth and he couldn’t make his lips do what he wanted. All he could think was Marilyn had never before had any say in the mill. She had never bothered to say anything. It was as if, with Jones’ death, she had been given a dose of some kind of tonic. One thing he hated was a woman trying to grow balls. He wished now he had held the meeting in the church. Maybe she wouldn’t have attended.

Then he thought: No, she’s thought this one through. She wants Sunset for constable. People are going to laugh because I wasn’t able to control this woman and her murdering daughter-in-law. If Holiday and Camp Rapture unite, no one is going to want to elect me to any position, not even street sweeper, not if I can’t control these women.

“Marilyn,” Henry said, “this isn’t really a good idea, and you know it. Let’s get serious.”

“Oh, I’m serious,” Marilyn said. “Show of hands for those who do not want Sunset as constable and a nickel raise. Stick them up there.”

“When’s that nickel an hour go into effect?” Bill Martin asked.

“As of next workday,” Marilyn said.

“Gal’s got my vote,” Bill said.

There was a bit of foot shuffling. Some of the men looked off as if something exciting might be happening in a corner of the room, or somewhere near the ceiling.

A few hands went up, came down quickly, like they had merely been swatting at an annoying bug. Henry felt as if he had swallowed a bug.

“Good,” Marilyn said. “Few against, so that means them that remain are for Sunset as constable. So, Sunset, you’re the constable.”

8

Clyde called her Constable Sunset, and the name stuck. Most men called her that around Camp Rapture as a joke, often said it within Sunset’s hearing.

“There’s ole Constable Sunset. Give her trouble, she’ll make you put your nose in a circle in the corner.”

“Or shoot you when you ain’t looking and your pants is down.”

The women weren’t any nicer.

“She don’t come from much, and she killed her husband, but look at her now. Thinks she’s some kind of police. Ain’t that precious?”

“She could put her hair up too. Looks like a floozy, all that red hair hanging down. I was her I’d dye it some more natural color.”

After a few days of that, Sunset decided to move back home, such as it was, and to take her constable practice with her. She might have to see and deal with these people, but she didn’t need to live right next to them.

Her mother-in-law made her a couple of skirts of khaki and tightened up a few men’s shirts to go with them. Sunset wore Pete’s star made of tin with the word CONSTABLE on it and a pair of lumberjack boots. She wore Pete’s old gun holster too, and along with it, the .38 she had used to pop him.

She rode home in Clyde’s rattling, wheezing pickup, along with Hillbilly. There was a hole in the floorboard where you could see the road go by.

Clyde sat on one side of her, Hillbilly on the other. Karen rode in the back of the pickup with supplies. Food. Incidentals. Some lumber, several large tarps, and a tent. This had been paid for by Marilyn, and Sunset made a note of the price, planning to pay her back soon as she could afford it.

As they bounced along the dusty road, Sunset noted that Clyde’s clothes smelled of the sawmill. Clean, but with that faint aroma of sawdust and resin. The brim of his big black cowboy hat was curled up tight and the hat had a film of dust on it and the feather in the band was ragged, like a fish skeleton that had been picked clean by cats.

Hillbilly didn’t have a drop of dust on him. He wore his cap at a jaunty angle. No feathers. Unlike Clyde, the collar on Hillbilly’s shirt was well arranged and the shirt wasn’t missing any buttons. He smelled like something sweet, and maybe even edible.

Clyde and Hillbilly helped Sunset remove Pete’s file cabinet from the wrecked car and place it on the flooring that had been their house. Sunset took the loose files and put them on top of the damaged cabinet, determined to fix the cabinet and organize the files in the near future.

When they finished, Hillbilly said, “Reckon that ole car has gone its last mile.”

“Clyde?” Sunset said. “Are we going to use your truck for our business?”

“Long as the gas is paid for and it don’t fall apart. I got the engine held in with coat-hanger wire in places, so I don’t want to hit any bumps too damn hard.”

“I suppose we got what we got,” Sunset said.

They used the lumber and canvas to put up a large tent over the flooring. It took them most of the day.

Inside, they marked off half the floor with a series of blankets and quilts hung from a rope that went from the front of the tent to the back and fastened to the tent poles. On one side of the tent was Sunset and Karen’s living quarters, on the other, the constable’s office.

Sunset’s half had a mattress on the floor for her and Karen to sleep on, a washbasin, a couple of chairs, a table, four kerosene lamps, a stack of food and supplies, and a book on police work that had been Pete’s. She had found it in the back of the file cabinet. It looked as if it had never been opened.

The office side consisted of the filing cabinet, four chairs and a long wooden table that had been donated by the sawmill. The top of it was pocked and marked from years of abuse, and on the edge of it someone had written: “Hannah Jenkins is a whore and she ain’t no good at it.”

First day they got the table, Sunset sandpapered the remark away and painted the table a dark green. The same green that was used to paint most of the houses in the camp, as well as the mill houses. It gave everything a kind of military look.

Clyde and Hillbilly repaired the wooden file cabinet and built a temporary outhouse of boards and the remaining piece of tarp.

“If a high wind don’t come,” Clyde said, “nobody will show their ass in the shitter. It comes a blow, all bets are off. Maybe tomorrow I can fix up a real outhouse and put some catalogues in there.”

“He’s got plenty of them,” Hillbilly said. “Fact is, he’s got more paper and catalogues and junk than the law allows. His house looks like it got blown away by that tornado come through here, and it all got put back willy-nilly in a pile by a flash flood.”

“It’s my pile,” Clyde said.

That night, after Hillbilly and Clyde left, Sunset and Karen sat on their mattress on the home side of the tent. Karen still wasn’t talkative. Sunset missed her old chatter. Karen went to bed early. Sunset read the one book she had on law enforcement.

Nothing in the book reminded her of anything Pete had done, besides wear a badge—the one she had on, in fact—and carry a gun. There wasn’t a section on how to beat the hell out of people or how to cheat on your wife either. She got through about a quarter of the book before becoming bored.

She got a mirror and looked in it. Her face had lost most of the swelling, but her eyes were still black, and the left side of her lower lip looked like a tire with a heat bubble on it.

Sunset blew out the lamp and tried to sleep, but only dozed a bit. She dreamed off and on. Thought of her mother, who had been knocked up by the good Reverend Beck, the one who had inspired the log camp to call itself Camp Rapture. “Yeah,” Sunset’s mother used to say, “the Reverend Beck put more in me than the spirit of Jesus.

“Man will lie to you to get what he wants, kid. Even a man of God. Especially a man of God. Remember that, darling. Keep your legs crossed until you’re about thirty if you can do it. You won’t be able to, but work at it. And remember, it takes more than a poke to make you happy. Have him work that little button down there. You don’t know what I mean, but I guarantee you, in time you’ll find it.”

Sunset hadn’t understood the extent of the message then, except for the button part, which she had already discovered. By the time she understood the rest of it, she was too much in love with Pete to care about it. At least he married her after he knocked her up. That was something. It was better than her mother got.

Her mother had not only gotten knocked up and lost her man when Sunset was thirteen, she soon took up with a traveling shoe salesman who played the banjo, wandered away with him and his shoes, probably to the sound of a banjo breakdown, up and out of there, leaving a note that read: “Sorry, Sunset. I got to go. Mama loves you. I left you a good pair of shoes in there on the kitchen table. They shine up easy.”

Sunset stayed with a farm couple for a couple of years, but they primarily wanted a farmhand. She wore out on that. Dug and picked up so many potatoes she had more dirt under her fingernails than a mole had in its fur. The man who owned the farm had also taken a liking to her. He never touched her, but she felt the way he was looking at her would lead to trouble. Anytime she was bent in the potato field, she had a sense that an arrow was pointed at her ass. But when she turned, instead of an arrow, it was the farmer’s eyes.

She moved out. Or to be more precise, ran off. Got up in the middle of the night, threw what little she had in a canvas tote bag, and hit the road, way her mama had, but without the banjo and the shoe salesman.

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.”