In the bedroom he got a quilt, brought it back and tossed it over her.
She moaned.
It wasn’t much, but it was a noise.
Henry stopped, listened, looked. Hoped he had heard nothing more than the growling of his own stomach, an unexpected passing of gas. But no, she was moaning again.
Henry went over, lifted up the quilt. Her eyes fluttered weakly, closed. Her hand with the glass still in it flapped away from her mouth and slapped against the floor.
He had been wrong about God.
He bent down and pulled the quilt back over her face, then he took hold of the quilt and pressed it down so that it fit tight over her nose, and he leaned forward, so that he was putting all his weight on her, and weak as she was, she didn’t struggle much. Her foot sticking over the couch waved a few times like a flag of surrender, then went still.
Henry kept pressing. He used his free hand to take out his pocket watch and flip it open. He looked at it and kept the pressure on with his other hand, adding his knee to the side of her head as he pressed. He watched the hands on his watch carefully. Her rolls of fat jiggled, but she didn’t get up and didn’t lift a hand to struggle, just jiggled.
After a moment even the fat had ceased to move, and checking his watch, he saw that he had been holding the quilt over her nose for about four minutes.
Tired, he let go and stood up. Finally, he bent over and lifted the quilt. She looked dead. He got the poker again and prodded her a few more times with it, this time harder than before, but against the quilt so as not to leave marks.
This time God was on his side, even if he had had to help.
He poured another drink, sipped it slowly, then went to get Willie. He could have called, he and Willie had phones, but this was a message he wanted to deliver in person. He hadn’t felt this giddy since he was twelve and got a .22 for his birthday and shot his neighbor’s cat out of a tree.
As he drove over he wondered if Willie had a box big enough for the old bitch. She had to be about the size of a goddamn bear. It would take a bunch of men to haul her out. Maybe even a well-fed ox.
Okay. Not an ox. But he had visions of an ox at the door, long chains fastened to it, then to her foot, and the ox being driven forward with brutal swipes of a whip, pulling her old dead fat ass over the couch and out the door.
Then he thought: Maybe I should dress her first?
No. Too much trouble.
What clothes would he bury her in?
Well, he could cut a hole in a quilt, pull that over her head. That was an option.
Thing was, not to look too happy. It might all double back on him he looked too happy. They might think he, instead of bright and shining fortune, had done her in.
And, of course, he had.
As he drove along, he decided things were good. First the stuff on Sunset, now his wife, dead by drink and gravity and the clutch of his hand.
God love fermentation.
God love Isaac Newton.
God love the muscles in his hand.
Without realizing it, he began to sing.
19
The woods were stuffy with heat and dense with mosquitoes and the sunlight was split by trees. The light hit the cross on the grave and made a shadow and speckled out on the leaf-covered mound on the ground.
Clyde and Hillbilly leaned on their shovels and looked to Sunset for instructions. Hillbilly and Clyde weren’t talking to each other any more than they had to.
Sunset noted that though Hillbilly was not drunk, he had buzzed himself this morning with the hair of the dog, and it made her mad. He had a job and she was his boss and she thought she ought to say something, but decided to let it go.
She wasn’t sure why she let it go, but she had some idea. And she didn’t like that idea. That wasn’t the way to do things. If it had been Clyde she would have said something to him. But it wouldn’t be Clyde. Clyde would show up ready to go and on time. That’s the way Clyde did things.
And today, this morning, she actually decided there was something to do. Thought of it shortly after she drove the car home.
“Y’all just gonna lean on them things?” Sunset said.
“You ain’t got a shovel,” Hillbilly said.
“I’m the boss, so I’ll just fight mosquitoes.”
“I don’t get it,” Clyde said. “What we doing this for? I don’t want to look at no dead babies. Besides, won’t be nothing left but a bone or two if there’s that. And what’s it gonna prove anyhow?”
Sunset slapped at a mosquito, turned it into a little dark wad on her cheek. “I got to know there’s a baby here.”
“Zendo saw it,” Clyde said.
“I know,” Sunset said. “I believe him. But I want to see if the baby ended up here.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” Hillbilly said.
“I don’t know,” Sunset said. “I guess it would. But what I’m wondering is why was Jimmie Jo and the baby killed?”
“Pete could have done it,” Clyde said. “Got pissed off at the woman over most anything, and done it, just the way he might have done it to you, you hadn’t killed him first.”
“That’s been considered,” Sunset said. “He was mean and capable of killing, but I don’t think he’d have done it like this. He would have just raped her and shot her in the head and been done with it.”
“Someone did shoot her in the head,” Clyde said. “And with Pete’s caliber of gun. One you’re wearing. Way I see it, you just solved who killed who, and that’s what I’d tell that damn council. Pete got mad at his girlfriend, killed her and her baby, and if he was drunk enough to rape and kill that woman, like he might have done you, I think he was drunk enough to cut a baby out of her. After he done it, he got drunk or drunker and got to thinking on it, took it out on you and damn near killed you. End of story. Let’s go to the house. It’s too damn hot to dig.”
“Lots of people got a thirty-eight,” Sunset said. “Course, I wouldn’t have thought Pete would hit me when we married. I wouldn’t have thought he could give anyone a beating like he gave Three-Fingered Jack.”
“What was that all about, anyway?” Hillbilly said. “It must have been some beating. I hear about it all the time.”
“Pete was fighting over Jimmie Jo,” Sunset said, “so I ain’t partial to the memory. And he done it in front of me. He seen Jack, told him to leave Jimmie Jo alone, with me standing right there, then started in on him. Pete didn’t care I knew he was pulling her panties down. He cared Jack wanted to. I figure Jimmie Jo told him about Jack, to get something started. She was like that. It might have been Jack didn’t have nothing to do with her and she was disappointed he didn’t want it.”
“I’m starting to wish I’d seen that fight,” Hillbilly said.
“Other thing I’m thinking,” Sunset said, “is Pete may have known she was carrying his baby, and that’s what made him so mad at Jack.”
“You’re saying he was in love with her?” Clyde said. “Not just catting around?”
“I think he gave me a beating over knowing she was dead. He wanted her and couldn’t have her, so he took it out on me. He loved her, not me.”
“Well, he didn’t have no taste,” Clyde said. “And I still think he killed her. He might have done it because the baby wasn’t his. You think about that? It might not have nothing to do with love. He could have beat Jack up because he was jealous all right, but not because he was so in love. Just didn’t want some other man pawing over what he thought was his. It’s something to consider, ain’t it?”
“It is,” Sunset said.
“That’s how it could have been,” Clyde said. “Could have made him mad enough to cut the baby out of her, hide her and the baby out there by Zendo’s field. Zendo found the baby, so Pete come and looked it over and didn’t try to blame it on Zendo, not because he was nice but because maybe he felt a little guilty about it and didn’t want to nail someone he knew didn’t do it. So he took and buried the baby, hoping the woman wouldn’
t be found.”
“That’s another thing I don’t get,” Sunset said. “He killed her, why did he bury the baby here and leave her in the field?”
“Maybe he wanted her found for some reason,” Clyde said. “Didn’t mind her being found, but maybe didn’t want folks to know he’d rip a baby out of her.”
“That was figured out pretty quick by Willie,” Sunset said.
“He might not have known it could be figured that easy,” Clyde said. “I ain’t got that part figured out. But he could have done it, then got killed, and now all his bad work is showing up. Damn, that sounds pretty smart for me.”
“Maybe,” Sunset said. “Guess I don’t want to believe it was Pete. Don’t want it to be that. He’s still Karen’s father. And it just shows my judgment in men was worse than I thought.”
Clyde looked at Hillbilly, said, “A woman can make some bad judgments in men.”
“Let’s dig,” Sunset said.
“Still don’t see the point,” Hillbilly said. “There’s a baby, so what? Still won’t know any more than you did, baby or not.”
“Humor me,” Sunset said.
They dug deep before they found a little wooden box. Sunset said, “I think we ought to crack it open.”
“Don’t feel right about this, Sunset,” Clyde said. “Dead baby and all, disturbing its eternal rest.”
“Because it’s eternal,” Hillbilly said, “you aren’t disturbing anything.” Sunset took the shovel from Clyde, stuck the point of the shovel between lid and container, levered the lid off.
There was an object wrapped in a small blanket that had become damp and dark and was starting to rot. Sunset reached down, unwrapped a small, dark, leathery-looking skull.
“It’s a baby all right,” Hillbilly said.
“Poor little Snooks,” Clyde said.
Sunset touched the skull. “Oil on it is what preserved it,” she said. “Darkened it and made it leathery.”
“Is it a colored?” Hillbilly asked.
“I don’t know,” Sunset said. “I don’t think anyone could know now.”
Sunset peeled aside the blanket. The rest of the body was small and wiry-looking and a lot of it was rotted away. Clyde said, “Guess the head got the main dose of oil.”
“Yeah,” Sunset said.
“What’s that?” Hillbilly said.
Sunset rewrapped the baby and looked at what Hillbilly saw. It was a metal box. It nearly filled the casket and there had been some kind of cloth over it, but the cloth had almost rotted away and was the texture of an old spiderweb.
When the baby was wrapped again, Sunset gently lifted it and placed it on the ground and pulled the long rectangular box out of the casket. “It’s padlocked,” she said.
“Stand back,” Hillbilly said, and when Sunset moved away he struck the lock with the point of the shovel and there was a spark and the lock snapped open.
Sunset opened the box. Inside was an oilskin bundle wrapped in rotten twine. She snapped the twine and took out what was in the wrapping.
A ledger.
Sunset opened it. The pages had maps drawn on them and bits of arithmetic worked out in the margins, and there were a couple of pages folded up inside the ledger. She opened one of them and looked at it. It was a page with a land description on it. The other was more of the same.
“Looks like a surveyor’s map,” Hillbilly said. “See that stamp on it. It was registered in Holiday. My guess is it’s supposed to be there, in the courthouse.”
“I don’t reckon Pete put this here for nothing,” Clyde said. “Still, that’s pretty awful, hiding it that way with poor Snooks, for whatever reason.”
“Why don’t we try and figure on it where there aren’t so many skeeters?” Hillbilly said.
“All right,” Sunset said. She folded up the papers, put them back in the ledger, laid it on the ground, put the baby back in the box and they reburied it.
“Clyde,” she said. “You’re religious some. Say a prayer over it. I haven’t got a damn thing to say to God, if there is one.”
Clyde studied Sunset for a moment, said a few words. Sunset returned the ledger to the strongbox and let Hillbilly carry it back to the truck for her.
She sat between Clyde and Hillbilly and Clyde drove. While they drove Hillbilly played a harmonica, and he was good at it.
“I thought you was a guitar man?” Sunset said.
He stopped playing. “Am. But what I got is this harmonica. I got a Jew’s harp too, but I’m not too good at it.”
“I can agree with that,” Clyde said. “I’ve heard him play.”
“Clyde,” Hillbilly said, “you wouldn’t know good music if it stuck its finger up your ass.”
“Maybe it ain’t good the way you play it.”
“Boys,” Sunset said. “What about a guitar, Hillbilly?”
“Got to get some money first. Thought we got paid for this.”
“End of the month, I think.”
“I’ve done a lot of work along the road I didn’t get paid for,” Hillbilly said. “Lot of people kind of faded when it was time to put the money down.”
“There’s nowhere for them to fade,” Sunset said. “Marilyn is good for it.”
“I got to buy a little lumber and start building on a house,” Clyde said. “It comes winter, my young ass is gonna be pretty damn frosty I don’t get a roof and walls . . . Sunset, what do you think all this stuff with the book and the baby means?”
“I’ll have to study on it,” Sunset said.
20
Lee and Marilyn sat on the edge of Uncle Riley’s porch, sweated, dangled their feet and drank lemonade Aunt Cary had made. Aunt Cary had gone back to the woods to gather roots and such, and Uncle Riley was plucking a chicken in the backyard while Tommy climbed a tree.
“Reckon he’s gonna be all right now,” Marilyn said.
“I think so. Glad you came along.”
“Me too. You looking for work?”
“I am.”
“The mill’s pretty full, and there ain’t much else in Camp Rapture. You might try Holiday. They’re hiring a lot over there because of the oil business. It’s booming.”
“Heard tell of it. But I got some things to do in Camp Rapture first.”
“Is it a secret?”
“Guess not, though I don’t know I want to scream it from the rooftops. Haven’t really talked to anyone about it before ’cept God, and he didn’t seem interested. You interested?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“All right. Long time ago, when I was a young man, twenty or so, I got the calling. Lord come to me one morning and I knew I had to preach.”
“I’ve always wondered. How does the Lord come to a preacher? Did you see him?”
“No. And it wasn’t no burning bush neither. My family tried to settle some land in Oklahoma, but it didn’t work out. There was some Indians felt it was their land, and I reckon it was. Government had cut it all up and given it to white folks wanted to settle, but these Indians, four or five of them, they thought it was theirs.”
“You mean, like they were on the warpath?”
“Not like no cowboy movie. These were civilized Indians. Had suit coats and hats and forty-fives. But they was less civilized when they killed my mom and pa. Murdered them in our home and left me there with the bodies. I don’t know why they didn’t kill me, but they didn’t. One of them put a pistol right to my forehead, and cocked it, but he didn’t pull on me. He just looked at me for a minute, then he and the bunch of them run off. For a few days I wished they’d killed me, but after a while I was glad they didn’t, cause I set out to hunt them down.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. This was in ninety-four or so.”
“Did you hunt them down?”
“Law got one of them, and he was hung. I got after two myself. Chased them all the way into Kansas. They split up there and I settled on one of them. Laid for him outside a whorehouse in Leavenworth, an
d when he come out, I jumped on him from behind and cut his throat.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Pretty horrible. But it didn’t faze me then. I went on the lookout for the other one, finally found him, and shot him in the back. Hid up in a tree where I knew he’d ride by, and when he did I used a rifle I’d stole, and shot him. You know I learned later a colored man was hung for that rifle I stole. I didn’t know about it until years later, but he was hung cause it was thought he done it, even though they didn’t find the rifle. He rode through same place I had not long after I’d come by. Imagine that, hanging a man for stealing a rifle. And on top of that, he didn’t steal it. I had a mind, once I found out about it, to say something, but I didn’t, because I figured I might get hung myself, and my telling the truth wasn’t going to bring that man back.
“Anyway, after I killed the second man, I figured on finding the other ones, and I was lying out in a field somewhere in Kansas, in the open, at night, trying to sleep, looking up at the stars, and the vengeance went out of me. Felt like the Lord reached down and got hold of my heart and pulled the blackness out of it and filled me up with a light. Decided I was gonna be a preacher right then. Ended up in Camp Rapture about 1900.”
“My God. You’re the Reverend.”
“Not anymore. Name’s Lee Beck. But, yeah, I was the Reverend then. And I came to what you now call Camp Rapture, and I done some good. I done some baptizing and civilizing. And then, like David, I lost my way. I took advantage of a young woman. Her name was Bunny Ann.”
“I knew her.”
“You did?”
“Yes. Not well. But I knew her.”
“I had my way with her and run off. I don’t know if she’s married now, or around, or what, and I don’t want to disturb her life. I just want to come and apologize to her. Set things right.”
“What about your daughter?”
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t know she got pregnant, had a daughter?”
Lee’s shoulders sagged under his coat.
“A daughter. She had a daughter?”
Sunset and Sawdust Page 18
