Sunset and Sawdust

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “I know Mr. Jones is gone,” Sunset said. “I know that.”

  “Last night I had enough. That boy in there, he wouldn’t be dead today had I not taken that hitting business from Jones without fighting back. Had I stood up for myself or took Pete and left, it wouldn’t have happened.

  “I didn’t want my boy dead, Sunset, but I figure I’m to blame as much as Jones. I know you done what you had to do. Last night, I near done it to Jones. You hadn’t done what you did, you might have got killed, and in time Jones might have killed me. I reckon he’d finally got too old to have the full fire in him, but he had enough to hurt me. Had days when hurting me made him feel better. He’d say I was off with some man, when he knew I wasn’t and couldn’t have been, cause I had been around all day. But reason had nothing to do with it.

  “When I saw Pete in there, it all come to the surface, and I had had enough. I didn’t care about making nothing work no more. I sewed Jones to the bed while he was sleeping and beat him with a yard rake.”

  “A rake?”

  “That’s right. Then I got Jones’s shotgun and I sent him packing.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “What are we both going to do now? I suppose we’ll stay here together. I got money, dear. And I got me a resolve now. That’s the word, ain’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I got. A resolve. I haven’t felt this good and strong in years.”

  “I can’t live on your money, Marilyn, and won’t.”

  “Don’t be too high and mighty. What else you going to do?”

  “I’ll do something.”

  “It’s best for Karen you live here. In time, you’ll find another husband, or if you’re lucky, maybe you won’t.”

  “All men can’t be that way.”

  “My experience is limited, and not good.”

  “I want to work, Marilyn. I want my own money for me and Karen, and I don’t want to be dependent on a man. I been in that situation, and I didn’t like it none.”

  “That ain’t easy to do, dear. Not unless you’re willing to accept my taking care of you until you can do better.”

  Sunset said, “I don’t know if Karen will ever really forgive me.”

  “She ought to. I have. I don’t like the fact my boy’s lying in there dead, but I don’t want to lose you and my granddaughter too. We’re gonna do okay, Sunset. I promise. Know what?”

  “What?”

  “We need to go inside and let me work on that face of yours. I got some stuff will help take the bruising out and bring the swelling down. And I got some clothes might fit you better than those I gave you. I wasn’t always so thick in the middle. Come on, dear.”

  Marilyn stood, smiled, held out her hand, and Sunset, after a brief pause, took it.

  The funeral was on a little hill under a large oak. Pete was buried near the oak, next to the grave of Jones’ mother and father, not far from the unmarked grave of a family hound that had traveled with them all the way from up North, then to Nacogdoches, and Camp Rapture, and finally, at the ripe old dog age of fifteen, had choked to death on a chicken bone at a family celebration.

  The crowd was large. Many were there because they knew Pete, and many were there because it was the polite thing to do and there was not much else happening. They knew that afterward, at Marilyn’s house, there would be lots of food brought by women from all over the camp.

  Sunset didn’t attend. Karen went to the funeral with her grandmother. Mr. Jones came, stood on the opposite side of the grave. He gave a good-soldier smile to his granddaughter, and she smiled at him. When he looked at his wife, the smile went away.

  The preacher said good things about Pete and wished him to heaven, then the crowd walked away and two colored men, hired on for the day, threw dirt over the coffin.

  There was a gathering at the Jones house. There was food and there was talk about Pete. About how brave he was. The times he did this or that. And there was the story of Three-Fingered Jack, of course. Finally the talk turned to crops and animals, the tornado, and the mill. Gradually that petered out, and everyone came by and spoke kindly to the family and left.

  In the end, there was only Marilyn and Karen and Jones.

  “There ain’t no way we can get past this?” Jones asked.

  “Karen,” Marilyn said, “you run out so the adults can talk.”

  Karen hugged her grandfather, then, reluctantly, left.

  “Can’t believe you’re doing me this way,” Jones said, “after all these years being together, and our boy dead too.”

  “Should have done it years ago.”

  “I ought to slap your face, woman.”

  “Want your granddaughter to know how you treat me? She don’t know that. I told her I just wasn’t happy with you being around. But I didn’t tell her the whole of it. Hit me now and hear me scream all over camp. I held it all them times before, but no more. You want that on the day we put our boy down?”

  “I didn’t never mean nothing by it.”

  “It meant something to me.”

  “You’re letting that murderer stay here?”

  “She did what she had to.”

  “How can you say such a thing?”

  “Go, Jones.”

  Jones took his hat from the chair beside the door, where he always put it, placed it on his head and went out. Then he came back. He said, “This ain’t over, you know. Not between me and Sunset, not between me and you.”

  He went away. She could hear his heavy boots pounding on the porch and down the steps. She stood at the screen door and watched him walk away. She was surprised to discover it hurt her to see him look so sad and small, his feet throwing up clouds of dust.

  7

  Henry Shelby and the camp elders came to see and talk to Jones late on a Friday afternoon, two weeks after Pete went into the ground. They thought it was past time to decide on a new constable for the camp and the surrounding area, so this meant a meeting was in order, and these meetings were always held at the Jones house, as it was the largest in the community, except for Henry Shelby’s house, and Henry’s wife didn’t allow company because she drank.

  Wasn’t she didn’t want folks there because they might see her drunk. She didn’t want them because they might interrupt her drinking. Or she might have to put clothes on, being as she liked to drink naked, though she was prone to wearing one shoe from time to time. She once told Henry it made her feel closer to nature doing her drinking that way. Like maybe at birth everyone was squirted out with a birthday suit and a fifth of whisky, and one shoe.

  Henry didn’t like seeing his wife naked. She had been sweet when young, a lean-limbed woman with a peach between her legs. Now, when she sat, or when she stood for that matter, she looked like a pile of something, and the peach between her legs had become a rotten persimmon.

  Still, he preferred her drunk. Kept her out of touch. Back when she was in touch, she always seemed on the verge of a hysterical fit or a case of the vapors. Always on him about some damn woman he was giving the eye, or about his own drinking, which was minimal to hers, or about his clothes, or how his hair had gone gray, as if he could help it, and did he have to carve the bunions off his feet with a pocketknife.

  The alcohol had burned all that out of her.

  She quit complaining.

  She hadn’t even complained when she heard her kin, Jones, had been shot by his wife. She was so far gone she just said, “Who?” Didn’t attend the funeral. Stayed home naked and drunk, wearing that one shoe, scratching her back and no telling what else, with a stretched-out wire coat hanger.

  Henry hoped his wife didn’t have a lot of world time left. Hoped the time she did have she would stay drunk. Drinking all the time, he figured she was doing bad things to her liver. You can’t live long with a bad liver. He’d always heard that, and he was counting on it. He had noticed a kind of yellow look to her complexion of late, and thought it might be due to some kind of jau
ndice from drinking. Then again, it could be from irregular bathing. The rolls of fat certainly held the odor, and sometimes when she moved, it was like shaking out a huge rug that had been wadded and mildewed.

  But now the meeting was on Henry’s mind. Not a pleasant matter, but more pleasant than thinking about his wife. He hadn’t pushed the matter of the meeting before because of Jones. Didn’t want to replace Pete too quick, as if he had never mattered. Not with Jones being a prominent person at the mill and in the camp, and his wife being someone who owned a large portion of the mill. That wouldn’t be smart.

  But now it was time, and Henry, along with the elders, decided to pursue the matter.

  Jones was at his desk in the Big Saw House. His desk was not far from the saw, and Jones stuck cotton in his left ear, which faced the saw, to pacify the noise. At the end of the day, when the saw was turned off, it took an hour to stop hearing the grind of it.

  When the elders came in, Jones turned his right ear toward them, listened carefully, nodded, went back to his paperwork. The elders, who had brought the proposition to him, this business about a new constable and how the camp needed to decide on someone and vote, stood for a while waiting for Jones to respond, until they realized he was no longer paying attention and had forgotten they were there.

  Quietly, Henry and the others went out, shaking their heads.

  Out of earshot, Henry said, “He’s popped his top.”

  They hadn’t been gone fifteen minutes when Jones finished up the last of his paperwork, some lumber orders for a town in Oklahoma, got up and wandered over to where the great circular saw was cutting pine with a loud buzz and a spray of sawdust and splinters.

  Jones watched it whirl and cut for a long time. Watched as men loaded logs on the conveyor and the logs were split by the saw and they fell to each side and were moved along to be planed and prepared. He thought about Sunset, thought about Marilyn and Karen, but mostly he thought about Pete. It was on a day like this, hot and lazy, when the blood ran slow, that he had liked to take Pete fishing.

  Jones wished Pete were alive so they could go fishing now. He would throw down everything if he could go fishing one more time with his son.

  Jones was glad now that Sunset had shown no interest in him. He had hoped at some point she would let him into her pants. He thought his boy had made a mistake marrying Sunset, coming from the background she had, though he could understand why he would want to, way she looked, those long sleek legs, that fiery red hair, those fine, high titties. He thought maybe she would give it up for him the way she had for his son, but she didn’t. Surprised him by taking her wedding vows seriously.

  Now, all things considered, he was glad she had resisted him. He didn’t like to think he might have taken pleasure from the pink little wound of a woman who killed his son.

  In the last couple of days, he had gone from being sharp with grief to being dull with it. He felt like something small trapped in a corked bottle, a moth beating against the glass while the air was breathed up.

  When a new pine log rolled onto the conveyor belt, Jones carefully removed the cotton from his left ear and climbed on top of the log and lay down on his back as if to nap, head toward the saw. He lay there and felt the hard bark through his shirt, listened to the saw whine. It made his eardrums throb, but he did nothing to protect them. He found he was pushing his head hard against the log, trying to see the blade by looking back, but he couldn’t see it. He finally closed his eyes and the sound of the saw grew, became so loud he thought his eardrums would burst. He heard a man yell and heard men running toward him and he felt the log beneath him start to split as it went into the saw and he felt sawdust on his face and he knew he had won and that the great teeth of the saw would give him rest before the men could reach him.

  By the time it was realized what he was doing, Jones was in the saw. The mew of the saw on skull and meat sounded different from the way it sounded when a log was cut, and unlike a log, it didn’t cut smooth. The blade caught Jones’ skull and whipped him around, snapping his neck. The lower part of his body swung into the blade. The saw teeth got hold of his khakis and snatched them off and wadded them up. The saw jammed, spraying Jones all over the Big Saw House. The saw screeched and wobbled and started to come loose, then someone who was thinking jumped for the switch and cut it off. When the saw died the air was so still it hurt the men’s ears as much as the whine of the blade had.

  Zack, who worked with a great hook on a long pole to feed the logs onto the conveyor belt, saw it happen. For years after, he said a man’s sap sprayed even worse than a fresh pine log. He helped get what was left of Jones out of the saw with his hook and his bare hands. Later, he got the job of cleaning and re-oiling the saw. He found Jones’ wedding ring caught up on one of the teeth. It was hooked there as if it had been placed carefully for safekeeping while Jones washed his hands or wiped his ass.

  Zack thought about giving it to Mrs. Jones, then thought it might be better to take it into town and sell it. But if someone found out he sold the ring, it could go bad for him. So he put the ring in one of Jones’ boots after removing what was left of ankle and foot. Interestingly enough, both boots were in good shape. No cuts or tears. Just bloody inside.

  Later that night, at home, Zack thought about the beating Pete had given him and the way Jones had made him carry the body back. He thought about the ring again and wished he had kept it.

  A week later, when Zack found a chunk of Jones, possibly a testicle, under a log fragment in the mill house, he kicked it around a while before using a stick to toss it out to the one-eyed stray cat that hung around the mill.

  The cat took it in its mouth and ran away with it into the woods.

  Marilyn got the news. She got Jones’ boots, but not the clothes. The clothes were too much of a mess to return. She found the ring in the bottom of one of the bloody boots. She put the ring back in the boot, took it out back of the house, got down on her knees and buried it next to the chicken pen, crying as she did.

  Sunset and Karen, standing amidst Marilyn’s houseplants, watched her do this from the sleeping porch. The plants were tired-looking and slightly brown, needed watering. Sunset set it in her mind to water them and to clean up a dried dirt ring at her feet, the remains of a pot and plant now missing, probably dead and tossed.

  “I can’t believe it,” Karen said. “Daddy, and now Grandpa. He couldn’t live without her. She shouldn’t have kicked him out.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t live with himself,” Sunset said.

  “I think he loved her. I think he missed her.”

  “I think he missed having someone to hit.”

  Couple days after the funeral there was a camp meeting. As expected, it was held at the Jones house, though the church was briefly considered.

  But as Willie Fixx, the preacher, veterinarian and part-time doctor, pointed out, “It’s hot in there.”

  Henry Shelby called the meeting.

  After a short day at the mill, six in the afternoon, they gathered there. All the men came directly from work and they stunk like dogs that had rolled in shit.

  Sunset and Karen went around the house and opened windows, but it didn’t help much. The air outside was stiff and heavy with humidity. It seemed to hold the stink in the room as if it were plugging the windows with its weight.

  All of the men were white. Coloreds were not allowed at the meetings and had no say in the matter. Many of the men were shy a finger or two, and in some cases a thumb. The saws liked little sacrifices.

  Sunset stood at the back of the room with Karen, watching. She had on one of her mother-in-law’s sundresses and she had a big black belt around her waist, and the revolver was conspicuously poking in the belt. She knew it was silly, but she never let that gun get too far away from her.

  Sunset’s head turned as Hillbilly came into the room. Someone had hired him, maybe her father-in-law, or Henry. When he came in he entered like a king. You almost expected someone to roll a red carp
et in front of him.

  He stood at the back of the room opposite her and Karen, leaning against a wall, giving it a sweat stain. Even dirty and sweaty, with sawdust in his hair, his cap in his hand, she thought he looked pretty good. She tried to decide if he was twenty-five or a beautiful thirty-five.

  Sunset watched the men idle about for a while, shaking hands, making sure to tell Marilyn how sorry they were about Mr. Jones.

  Henry Shelby went up front. He had a way of walking that made you think of a man pinching something vital with his ass. He had on a black suit that smelled of naphtha. All of his suits smelled that way. His white shirt looked yellow in the overhead light. His black tie was wilted and fell over his chest like a strangled man’s tongue.

  Henry said, “Let’s call this meeting to order.”

  The men sat.

  Henry looked about, eyeing the camp elders. He said, “We’re not going to bother with minutes or any fooferrah, we’re going to get right to it. Everyone knows why we’re here. With Pete gone, it’s time to elect a new constable. Things have got rowdy out in the community of late. Been a run on chicken stealing, for one. My chickens. And I want the hound that done it arrested.”

  A few men laughed.

  Henry grinned, feeling like he had made a pretty good joke.

  “Truth is,” he said, “the community is growing. I think in a year or so, maybe less time than that, we’re gonna come together with Holiday and make a real town. Holiday wants to expand, and they’ve found oil over there. Oil is bringing in money, just like the mill. And it’s bringing in all kinds of lowlifes too. Gamblers, whores—”

  A couple of men cheered.

  “Very funny,” Henry said, realizing a couple of them knew how well he knew the whores. “It’s also bringing in grifters, thugs, you name it. Things are gonna get more out of hand, and instead of just having a constable here, a sheriff is gonna be needed eventually, and if Rapture and Holiday come together, there’ll be just one law. Maybe a chief of police, some deputies. If it don’t happen, we still need a constable around the community here. Now, I think it ought to be a young man, but not too young, and I think—”