Sunset and Sawdust

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Henry,” Marilyn said, “I think someone else might have ideas.”

  Henry turned, saw Marilyn sitting on a chair near the wall. “I’m sorry, Marilyn. You got someone in mind?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, go on. Give us who you think.”

  “Sunset.”

  The room went silent.

  “What do you mean, Sunset?” Henry said.

  “I mean Sunset for constable.”

  Sunset said, “What?”

  “That’s right,” Marilyn said. “You, dear.”

  “Me?” Sunset said. For a moment, she thought she might pee herself.

  “Sunset helped Pete keep records. Knew all about who was who. Didn’t you Sunset?”

  “Well, yeah . . . I kept some records. Some.”

  “You see,” Marilyn said.

  Henry didn’t see. There were murmurs in the crowd. Henry said, “We know you’re upset over all this, but—”

  “She should take over the job until Pete’s term is finished,” Marilyn said. “You aren’t forgetting he still had a year on his term?”

  “But . . . he’s dead,” Henry said.

  Marilyn’s face reddened. “I’m fully aware of that, Henry. Fully. But he had a year. That means whoever you pick takes his place until the year’s out. That’s the way it was worked up in the Camp Rapture charter. Sunset here can take his place, at his community pay, and at the end of the year, she wants to run for the job, she can.”

  “But she’s a woman,” Henry said.

  “She is at that,” Marilyn said. “Ain’t like a puppy. Don’t have to turn her over to know what kind of thing she’s got down there.”

  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 m
anage 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 t
ornado 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.”