Sunset and Sawdust

by Joe R. Lansdale

  When she looked up she saw Sunset, but quickly shifted her gaze to Hillbilly. Hillbilly smiled, and Sunset could see the woman swallow, and she had an idea how she felt in her stomach because she felt that way herself the first time she saw him.

  Sunset explained her purpose, law business, but didn’t go into detail.

  The badge and Hillbilly’s looks did it. The woman walked them down a long corridor, and on either side of the corridor were laced-up boxes. As the lady walked, her hams shifted beneath her black dress in a way that made Sunset think she might be trying to throw her ass out of her clothes.

  Sunset noted Hillbilly was watching this with appreciation, and she gave him an elbow. He gave her a grin.

  “Everything you want is in these rows, and there are some tables and chairs in the back. You can look at whatever, but you can’t take anything. You don’t plan to put anything in that box, do you?”

  “We got some law business in the box,” Sunset said. “I’m not going to put anything else in it.”

  “All right, then. You are the law. But I had to ask. That’s my job.”

  The woman went down the corridor, and Hillbilly watched her go. So did Sunset. It was an impressive departure that warranted the music of a marching band, certainly plenty of bass drum.

  At the table in the rear, Sunset opened the tin box and took out the two maps. At the top of each was a letter and a number. One read “L-1999.” The other read “L-2000.”

  Sunset used the pad and pencil on the table, wrote the numbers down, put the maps back in the box. They went down the corridor looking until they came to a row low down containing boxes with those numbers written on them. They each took a box to the table. There were strings attached to a clasp, and these held down a cardboard flap. They removed the strings and opened a box and poured the contents on the table.

  Inside were maps that looked like the maps they had.

  Almost.

  They were marked up different. Hillbilly said, “I can’t make head or tails of this.”

  “It’s the same maps.”

  “I know that. But so what?”

  “It must mean something, or why else would Pete have put them in the grave. Wait a minute. Same maps, but they’re marked different. See this. It doesn’t quite match. The land is cut up different by this red line.”

  “Maybe the reason there are two maps is someone bought a piece of the land, cutting it up.”

  “Could be.”

  Sunset opened the other box and studied the papers inside. There were numbers written on the papers too. She studied these and studied what else was in the cardboard box, similar papers.

  “This is giving me a headache,” Hillbilly said.

  “Look here. These numbers are the same on the maps, they’re cut up different on the courthouse maps, but the names of ownership are the same.”

  “Where are you seeing that?”

  Sunset showed Hillbilly some papers she had gotten out of the cardboard box. “The names are Zendo Williams for one piece of property, and for the other a list of names: Jim Montgomery—he’s the mayor of Holiday. Or was till he disappeared. Well, I’ll be damned. Henry Shelby.”

  “From the mill?”

  “One and the same. John McBride. I don’t know him.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You said the mayor disappeared. To where?”

  “No one knows. Some think he ran off with a woman. It’s anybody’s guess.” Sunset frowned. “Now my head is starting to hurt.”

  Sunset studied the maps, studied the dates on the papers that declared ownership.

  “They charged Zendo more an acre than was paid for this other land, which is right next to him. See?”

  “So?”

  “They charged him more because he’s colored.”

  “That happens,” Hillbilly said.

  “It shouldn’t.”

  “World is full of shouldn’ts, dear. Most of the time what goes on is what folks can get away with. That’s my rule of thumb.”

  “Something else. Zendo’s land shows two hundred and seventy-five acres. That’s how it’s drawn out on the map from the grave. But on this other map, it shows a piece of Zendo’s land being part of the land owned by Henry, the mayor and this McBride fella.”

  “Maybe Zendo sold it to them.”

  “Maybe. But the dates on all the papers are the same. Looks to me, Pete had the originals in the grave, and these are the replacements, and they’ve slightly altered Zendo’s land.”

  “Wouldn’t he notice?”

  “Buy a chunk that big, someone else wants it, white men, they could have had it surveyed the way they want. That way, Zendo wouldn’t know they shaved off what looks like twenty-five acres. It’s all trees along the border there, or mostly, so he could get fooled. He’s pretty much got to take their word for things anyway. They robbed him with some little red flags and a marker on a piece of paper, and he probably doesn’t even know it.”

  “So this whole map thing is about stealing some nigger’s land.”

  “Looks that way—Hillbilly, don’t call Zendo that. ‘Colored’ is polite.”

  “Whatever you like. But I still don’t see why your husband was hiding this in a dead baby’s grave.”

  “Me either.”

  Sunset folded up the maps from the cardboard boxes and put them in the tin box.

  “You lied,” Hillbilly said.

  “Law business. I’m not going to bother to explain to Miss Pendulum. I don’t want any more folks knowing about this than need to know. Whatever it means.”

  “You are a sneaky one.”

  “And pretty too. Plug says so.”

  “Plug is right.”

  Sunset laced the cardboard containers up, put them back in place, and left, Hillbilly carrying the metal box from the grave.

  23

  When Clyde got out to Zendo’s place, most of his anger had gone away. He could see why Sunset would prefer Hillbilly to him in the looks department, but she wasn’t considering his worth. Course, he had a burned-down house and an about-to-fall-apart pickup and was living under a tarp, but inside he was as good as anybody and better than most. He had plenty of goddamn worth. He was certain of that. Or pretty certain. Certain enough.

  He drove with the windows down so that the wind blew away some of his stink. The night before he had slept under the tarp on a pallet on the ground, and during the night he had rolled off of it and gotten filthy, and when morning came, he wasn’t up to washing off in cold well water and didn’t have time to heat it, and if he had, all the bathtub he had was a number ten tub. Sometimes, he got in that tub, he had a hard time getting out, big as he was. It was like that damn tub stuck to his ass. The larger tub, the long one he kept on the back porch, he’d forgotten to save in the fire. It had melted.

  That aside, one thing was certain, he wasn’t going to win any points with Sunset if he didn’t bathe.

  When he got to Zendo’s field, Zendo was in a row, plowing. It was a narrow row between corn high as an elephant’s eye and green as fresh grass. Zendo was using only one mule. He was plowing in the opposite direction, so Clyde leaned against the tree where Zendo ate his lunch and waited until he came to the end of the row and started back around another.

  As he came, Clyde saw Zendo raise a hand in greeting, and keep plowing. Clyde waited for the long run to end, and when Zendo pulled the mule out of the field and tied the lines to the plow, Clyde came forward and shook his hand.

  “How you doing, Clyde?”

  “Hanging low and to the left.”

  “Least you hanging. Get out there, plow a few rows of this business, them doodads will suck up.”

  “No plowing for me,” Clyde said. “I had that job once and the mules run off. I was working for Old Man Fitzsimmons, and he wasn’t none too happy. I spent the day chasing mules and didn’t get no real plowing done. He fired me.”

  Zendo chuckled. “Well, now, you c
ome all the way out here to tell me about chasing mules?”

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “Constable sent me. Who owns the land next to you, Zendo?”

  “I don’t rightly know. Ain’t never seen anyone over there, but I heard trucks along the road back there. Well, I did see Mr. Pete there a couple times, riding along.”

  “How’d you see him?”

  “Now, don’t tell on me, Clyde, but there’s a little pond over there, and I thought I’d try some fishing. It’s fed from a creek, so I thought it might be ripe with fishes. Wasn’t. But I was down there fishing when I heard a car and seen it was Mr. Pete.”

  “There’s a road there?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Is that where you took the baby’s body?”

  “I’m ashamed to say it was.”

  “Hey, I was in your shoes, knowing how white people can be, I might have done the same.”

  “You’re white.”

  “Partly. Part of me is Indian. And lot of me is contrary. Can you show me where you put the baby? It might be important. I’m not sure why, but it might be, and Sunset—the constable—wants me to look around.”

  Zendo took Clyde for a walk through the woods. It was a long walk and it was so warm, breathing was like sucking in cotton balls. It was some time before they came to the pond Zendo told him about. It wasn’t very large, and you could see where the creek fell into it. The pond water was dark and scummed over and no vegetation grew in it and growth was thin around it.

  “Can’t believe you thought anything was in that hole. A snake maybe.”

  “I was just hoping.”

  They went around the pond, through some brush, came out through a split in the trees. A narrow road twisted between the pines, curved into them again, ran out of sight.

  “I put the pot with the baby in it right here,” Zendo said. “Figured maybe Mr. Pete would see it. Or someone. Didn’t think about it being tracked back to me. Clyde, you think maybe we could go back? I ain’t never been no farther than this, and shouldn’t have been that far. Could be a white man’s property.”

  “You’re with me.”

  “I am, but you’re different. Some other white man see me over here, might think I’m getting too big for my britches. Besides, I got lots of plowing to do, and that ole mule only stand so long before it wants to try and get loose of that tree I tied it to.”

  “I understand. I’m going to look around.”

  Zendo walked away, and Clyde strolled down the road. He hadn’t gone far when the trees disappeared and there was just a stretch of land where sickly saw grass and a lot of pathetic yellow weeds grew.

  Clyde saw sunlight gleaming off something on the ground, walked over there, found the saw grass was mushy beneath his feet. He thought at first it was water running under his shoes, but it was too dark for water, even stagnant water.

  He bent over, stuck his fingers in the stuff, rubbed them smoothly together. He smelled his fingers, knew then what was under him.

  Moving forward a bit, the ground became softer and the grass disappeared. Seeping up through the ground was something dark and slimy-looking and the sunlight striking it made it look blue. Dead dragonflies and frogs and even a bird were in the seep and they were slicked over with it.

  Oil.

  In that moment, Clyde knew why the pond behind him was so filthy and dead-looking. The water was mixed with oil.

  “Goddamn,” Clyde said.

  He walked wide of the seep, careful not to step in any deep place. He strolled around and studied the oil seep from all sides. It was fairly wide, and if it was finding its way to the surface like this, then there was a lot of it down deep.

  He had seen an oil well go off in Holiday, and it had been something. The earth rumbled like it was coming apart. Men put their hands over their ears or stuffed them with mud. Oil exploded out of the ground, through the derrick, sprayed high and wide in one black rush, tossing hot drops all around. It took them a long time to tap it, and that well was still pumping. A place like this, it could do that. Down below was enough oil to make a man filthy rich with just one carbon-black ejaculation.

  Clyde thought of the baby and how it was dark with oil, thought about what Sunset had said about the body of Jimmie Jo, how it too was oiled down.

  Clyde took off his hat, wiped his face with it, was about to leave when he saw a flash of light through the trees. The light held, so he started walking toward it.

  Pretty soon he was in the trees, and after that he came to a clearing in their center. In the clearing was a house. It wasn’t a large house, but it was a good one. It had been built simply and had a tin roof and Clyde could see a bit of tar paper poking out under the tin.

  The flash he had seen was sunlight hitting the roof. A good distance to the side, in the trees, he could see an outhouse. It too had a tin roof with projecting tar paper.

  There wasn’t any porch on the house, and the door was close to the ground, but there were rocks under the door, and all around the edge of the house. Since this wasn’t a rocky area, they’d have to have been hauled in. It had been tedious work. Someone had cared about this little house and wanted it to be good and sound.

  Clyde called out, “Hello, the house.”

  No one answered and he didn’t hear anyone stirring.

  Clyde touched the door, and it swung open. He checked and found the lock wasn’t broken, just unlocked.

  Inside it was musty and hot, but the place, though simple, was nice. It was one big room with a cookstove, bed, table, a few chairs, a cedar chest. There were some nice curtains and on the table was a pretty fancy kerosene lamp with a big brass shield for throwing light. There were shelves with dishes on them and a half-full bottle of hooch.

  Clyde found some matches on the table next to the lamp, and lit it. The room filled with light. There wasn’t really anything special to see. He opened the cedar chest. It was full of women’s clothes, some of them a little on the garish side. He recognized one of the dresses. He’d seen Jimmie Jo wear it.

  Clyde closed the chest, put out the lamp, and started back to Zendo’s property. When he got there, Zendo offered him water from a wooden barrel. Clyde took the dipper and drank. He didn’t say anything to Zendo about what he had found. He wasn’t sure what to make of it, and he thought he ought to discuss it with Sunset before anyone else.

  He drove into Camp Rapture, went by the general store and bought a soft drink. Driving out, he saw a funeral going on up on the hill. A massive tool crate was being lowered by mules, rope, pulley and tripod, into a hole big enough to bury a baby hippo. He recognized Henry up there, next to the hole, along with Willie Fixx, the preacher. There was a colored man working the mules and two other coloreds standing on either side of the hole, managing the lowering of the box.

  Clyde recognized the colored man in control of the mules as Zack Washington. He didn’t know the other two. No one else was there. He wouldn’t have known it was a funeral if it hadn’t been for Fixx’s pickup with the black cloth over the side boards.

  He wasn’t sure whose funeral it was, but he figured it was someone had to do with Henry. Considering it was a crate and not a coffin going down, he made the jump to Henry’s wife. It was rumored she’d gotten strange and fat, scary and pickled, and now Clyde figured she had gotten dead.

  Goose was sitting in a rocking chair on the shack’s weathered porch. He had a plate of fried chicken balanced on his lap. He was eating a piece of it greedily and greasily. A yellow cat was sitting on the ground near the porch watching Goose eat and the cat had a look that made you think seeing Goose eat that chicken was tearing its heart out.

  Lee was in the yard with Uncle Riley, placing sawed logs on a chopping block for Uncle Riley to split with an axe. Uncle Riley was in his undershirt and it was covered in dark bursts of sweat. When he swung the axe it came down hard and he gave out a grunt and the wood went in half and grasshoppers jumped. The yard see
med full of them.

  “I ain’t never seen so many grasshoppers around,” Uncle Riley said.

  “I have,” Lee said, “but it was more than this, thousand times more. They come out of the sky like a buzzing cloud and ate every damn green thing there was, including shirts.”

  “For real?”

  “If it was green, they went at it. It was the dust bowl, and them bugs was starving like everyone else.”

  “Now that’s a story.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I wouldn’t think a bug knew one color from another.”

  “I’m just telling what I seen.”

  After a few more pieces were chopped, Uncle Riley said, “That’s enough. We got stove wood for supper, breakfast and tomorrow noon, and besides, my back hurts.”

  “I can chop some,” Lee said.

  “Naw. That’ll hold us.”

  Uncle Riley slammed the axe into the chopping block, took a bandanna out of his back pocket, used it to wipe sweat from his face and the back of his neck. He looked where Goose was eating.

  “Boy’s healing up good.”

  “Yes, he is. Thanks to you and Aunt Cary.”

  “She knows her business.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. Tell you another thing, way he’s been fed here, I think it’s the most food he’s had in a week. I appreciate it.”

  “He is a scrawny thing. You his daddy?”

  Lee shook his head. “He told me a story about his family and him going off on his own so things would be easier at home, but I think they abandoned him somewhere. I don’t think he could go home if he wanted to. Me and him, we worked together at a farm, got cheated out of our money, and we were on the road together, then he got snakebit and Marilyn came along. We ended up here. Thank goodness.”

  “You better leave him here another day or two.”

  “I like the idea of him staying, because he needs to. Me, I don’t want to impose on you.”

  “You ain’t imposing. You the first man I’ve had to play checkers with in a long time.”