Sunset and Sawdust

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Henry didn’t answer.

  “You gonna pay me?”

  He still didn’t answer.

  “Then you gonna clean it up yourself, that’s what you’re gonna do. I ain’t got nothing against them knackers.”

  “. . . and I can be of help,” Hillbilly said, finishing off a kind of diatribe, and when he said it, he tried not to let his voice crack, hoped he wasn’t sweating too bad. It was hot in the apartment, but he was sweating more than the man in front of him, McBride. McBride was sitting in a chair that he had drawn up right in front of Hillbilly, whom he had asked to sit on a low couch by the wall.

  Hillbilly sat there with his hands in his lap, for once not thinking about how bad he hurt, because this McBride, his eyes made Hillbilly queasy, and he was wearing a funny wig and a goddamn apron. A frilly thing that went from chest to knees, had red splatters on it. But he didn’t look sissy and it didn’t seem funny. Not this fella.

  Maybe he was just getting soft, getting his ass whipped like that by an old man, and it was making him less confident about everything and everybody. He hadn’t had an ass whipping since he was a boy and his daddy beat him with a razor strop, beat him unconscious a couple of times. But since leaving home he hadn’t lost a fight, and now he had lost one to an old man, and here was another old man, and he was scared of him. More scared of him than of Sunset’s father. This fella, something had fallen away from him that ought to be there, that was for damn sure. You could see it in his eyes.

  That wasn’t bad enough, there was the big nigger too, and he was called Two, and he had been talking to himself, asking questions like someone was with him, not questions directed at him or McBride, but questions in the air, questions he answered himself. And now, goddamn it, the big nigger was sitting on the couch beside him, and he had one hand on Hillbilly’s knee, and Hillbilly, he couldn’t figure that, didn’t know what that was about, but the hand lay there like a big black crab, heavy and warm and firm as a log grapple.

  The blonde had been made to leave the room, and he wished she was there, wished he had been nicer to her. He needed a friendly face right now. These fellas, he found it hard to charm them. Men were like that a lot of the time, saw through him, maybe not all the way, but deep enough to get bothered. Women, that was another matter. He liked to talk to women. He liked to move around women, and they liked to watch him move, but these two, or was it three, they weren’t impressed.

  “So, you want to get even with this guy you had a fight with?” McBride said, lighting his cigar. He was sitting there in his frilly white apron and his nigger-black wig, and the big coon, he was wearing a jacket like you might expect to see on one of those guys had a wand, waved it around in front of a band, an orchestra. He had on a bowler hat too.

  “That’s one thing, yeah,” Hillbilly said. “Another is, I thought maybe I could make some money.”

  “You know all about the oil deal, to hear you tell it,” McBride said. “You know everything.”

  Hillbilly nodded.

  “Knowing everything, that could get you in some shit, couldn’t it, Two?”

  “It could,” Two said. And then, in another voice. “That’s the facts, my friend.”

  “Show him just a little bit of shit, Two,” McBride said. Two squeezed Hillbilly’s kneecap so hard, Hillbilly thought it would pop off. He reached down with both hands and got hold of Two’s wrist.

  Two said, “Let go.” And his other voice said, “Yes, do.”

  Hillbilly let go, and Two, he kept squeezing, and Hillbilly, without even realizing it, put the side of his hand in his mouth and bit down on the flesh to keep from screaming. Just when he thought he was going to bite through his own hand or his kneecap was going to come off, Two let go, gave Hillbilly’s thigh a pat.

  “That’s a little shit,” McBride said. “I don’t like someone knowing my business, and me not telling it to them. I don’t like you getting it from Rooster, cause I don’t like Rooster. He ran off, you know. Smarter than he looked. I didn’t have much more use for him and I guess he knew it, figured what was coming. You, maybe I got some use for. That face of yours, it heals up, bet it looks pretty good. It look good?”

  “Yes,” Hillbilly said. “It does. But my nose, it ain’t never gonna be straight again.”

  McBride burst out laughing, and Two, he grinned, big and wide and white.

  “I fought Jack Johnson once, before he was anybody,” McBride said. “He broke my nose. I didn’t even know it till later. It hadn’t been for a hurricane coming, messing up our fight, I think I’d have won. Never got to find out. We had to stop it before it got started good. A nose, it’s a funny thing. It’ll break easy. Let me show you.”

  McBride leaned out of his chair very fast and hit Hillbilly in the nose with a short right. Blood sprayed and Hillbilly dropped his head and moaned.

  “You just thought it was broke before,” McBride said. “Wasn’t nothing before. Now it’s something. You come to me, and you tell me things I don’t think you ought to know, and I’m thinking, thing to do is have Two give you the big nigger job. He can twist your head off like you was a chicken, fuck your neck stump while you bleed out. He could do that, and he wouldn’t bat an eye. I could do it, but I don’t want to get blood on my dick. You hear me, Used To Be A Pretty Boy?”

  “Yeah,” Hillbilly said. “I hear you.”

  “Good. I’m gonna let you live, but take what we done here as a kind of lesson, a message. You twisted on that gal, come to me, and that’s all right, but you twist on me, I’ll twist you. Hear me?”

  “Yeah. I hear you. Loud and clear.”

  “That’s good. That’s damn good. Now let me tell you what you’re gonna do, and at this stage of our association, you ain’t got no say anymore, hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Two slid over and put his arm around Hillbilly’s shoulders. When Hillbilly turned, Two was real close, his white teeth grinning, his green eyes bright as emeralds.

  He turned back to McBride, and McBride began to talk.

  While Sunset and Clyde were gone, Lee and Goose and Karen, using Clyde’s pickup, had moved the tent and all the belongings, making four or five trips, to Clyde’s place.

  When Sunset and Henry and Clyde pulled up at Clyde’s place, the tent was up, and out to one side of it was the tarp Clyde had erected, and to the other side, the house he had burned down. Out front of the tent a large post had been cut and there was a thick chain fastened around the post, fixed so that it ran through a place drilled in the center. The chain was pretty long and Ben was fastened to the chain by means of a collar made out of an old belt. Lee and Goose and Karen came out of the tent and Lee was carrying a chair with him.

  “What in hell are you doing?” Henry said.

  “Jail,” Sunset said. “You’re going to jail.”

  “What jail?”

  Sunset put the car in gear and pulled up the hand brake, turned in the seat to look at Henry, who sat in the back with Clyde. Clyde had used a short piece of rope to tie Henry’s hands together, and Henry looked as mad as a hornet in a fruit jar.

  “That’s exactly what I got to thinking,” Sunset said. “What jail? I need a jail for Henry, but I haven’t got one. And I got to thinking too, you got friends, and I take you to my place, leave you there, they might come and see me. So, we’ve moved. People know where I live, that’s got around, but Clyde, they might not think of his place, and if they do, well, Clyde, he’s lived out here pretty much by himself for years. Right, Clyde?”

  “Oh, yeah. And except for Hillbilly for a while, I ain’t had any visitors, so anyone might matter to you, I doubt they know where I live. It could be found out, but that’s what shotguns are for, nosy bastards.”

  “You’re gonna regret this, girlie,” Henry said.

  “I already regret it,” Sunset said. “Regret the day I took this job and found out anything about you.”

  Henry looked puzzled. “Then let me go. Drop the job. Take off. Hell, the money offer
is still open. We can toss Clyde in too.”

  “I regret the day, all right,” Sunset said, “but there’s this thing about having a center, and damn it, I got one, and I don’t want it to shift.”

  “Do what?” Henry said.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Sunset said.

  They took Henry out of the car. When they got to the post in front of the tent, Sunset spoke to Lee, said, “Well, Daddy, is the post in solid?”

  “Ben thinks so. He tugged for a while, then laid down.”

  “All right, then.”

  Clyde went in the tent, came out with a pair of handcuffs and a padlock. He used a knife to cut Henry loose, then put the handcuffs on him.

  Sunset took the collar off Ben, who came over and sniffed Henry’s crotch like he might like to bite it off.

  “What in hell are you doing?” Henry said.

  “Putting you in jail,” Sunset said. She looped the chain through the cuffs and used the small padlock to stick between links.

  Lee put the chair up against the post.

  “This is your jail,” Sunset said.

  “Out here?” Henry said.

  “It’s kind of shaded,” Sunset said.

  “You can’t do this.”

  “Sure I can. Just hope I haven’t lost the keys to the cuffs or the padlock. Sit down, or I’ll have Clyde sit you down. Karen, go get Henry some water, would you?”

  “You are going from bad to worse,” Henry said.

  “Sit down, Henry.”

  “How long you going to keep me here?”

  “I don’t know. I got to figure what to do with you, which lawman will not let you go, which ones aren’t with the Klan or got Klan connections, or who won’t change their minds by letting money touch their hands.”

  “You may find that a difficult person to find,” Henry said.

  “Not everyone’s crooked,” Sunset said.

  “I believe they are,” Henry said. “I believe, it comes to push or shove, everyone’s crooked, or at least willing to compromise. It’s the way of the world, girlie.”

  “Sir,” Lee said, “call my daughter girlie one more time, and we’ll see how many times I can chase you around that post before the chain seizes up.”

  Henry sat in silence. Karen came with a cup of water. Henry took it and threw it on the ground.

  “Damn, Henry, and that’s all you get until nightfall,” Clyde said.

  “Can I sic Ben on him?” Goose said.

  “Not just yet, honey,” Sunset said.

  35

  The tan Plymouth hummed through the darkness like a bee, and though it was hot, the windows were mostly rolled up because of the grasshoppers. The grasshoppers were everywhere. Even now, at night, they were hopping in front of the lights and making little messes against the front of the car.

  Plug pulled the car to the side of the road and picked up the bottle on the seat, twisted off the cap and took a sip and the smell of whisky filled the air. Hillbilly, sitting on the front passenger side, said, “You don’t need none of that.”

  “I’ve already had plenty.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. You don’t need any more.”

  “I don’t get why you’re sheriff. Never even heard of you before, and now with Rooster gone, they make you sheriff. Just seen you once, with the redhead, and now you’re sheriff.”

  “For one thing,” Hillbilly said, “I’m not stupid.”

  “You better watch it,” Plug said. “You don’t want me on your ass.”

  Hillbilly laughed.

  Tootie, who was sitting in the backseat, shifted the shotgun on his lap, said, “I think we all ought to have some. We’re gonna need it. I could get out right now and start walking, and that’s what I ought to do, start walking, but if I’m gonna stay, gonna do this thing, I’m gonna need some of that. We all ought to have some.”

  Two, sitting beside him, a shotgun across his lap, said, “No one walks anywhere.”

  “That’s right,” Two’s other self answered. “We all stay. Get the car moving.”

  “I want a drink,” Tootie said. “I don’t think a brain-kicked nigger talks to himself ought to tell me I can’t have a drink. A nigger ought not tell a white man anything.”

  Two lifted the shotgun in his lap casually and put it to Tootie’s right ear and pulled the trigger. The blast took off the top of Tootie’s head and took out the window and peppered the inside of the car with shot. There was blood all over the back of Hillbilly’s neck, all over the backseat, all over Two and his black jacket and his black bowler hat and the inside of the car smelled like sulphur.

  Plug jerked open the door and leaped out. He raced around to the front of the car and put both hands on the hood. He said, “Goddamn. Goddamn.”

  Hillbilly hadn’t moved. He felt Tootie’s blood running down the back of his neck.

  “I don’t like people who don’t want to finish what they start,” Two said.

  “Me neither,” said the Other Two.

  “No,” Hillbilly said, his hands trembling on the shotgun in his lap. “I don’t like them either.”

  “Open the back door,” Two said. “Drag him out.”

  Hillbilly placed the shotgun carefully and slowly on the seat. He couldn’t have been more slow and careful if it was an egg that already had a crack in it. He didn’t look back at Two. He got out and opened the back door. When he did, Two said, “Stand back,” and lying with his back against his door, he put both feet on Tootie and kicked him out. Tootie fell to the side of the road in a sitting position. Grasshoppers were everywhere, and soon they were all over the body.

  Two got out and came around and laid his shotgun on the ground. He lifted Tootie’s head, fanned at grasshoppers with his big hand, leaned forward until his mouth was close to Tootie’s. Two reached behind Tootie’s head, his long thumb and longer forefinger locking into the hinges of Tootie’s jaw. He squeezed and Tootie’s already open mouth went wider and Two bent close and put his mouth over Tootie’s mouth.

  “Good God,” Hillbilly said, “what in God’s name are you doing?”

  Two sucked at Tootie’s mouth for a moment. Then he dropped Tootie in the dust.

  “What God wants,” said Two.

  “I ate his soul,” the Other Two said. “Ate it and it was sweet.”

  “Good God,” Plug said from the front of the car.

  Two picked up the shotgun and stood, said to Hillbilly, “Drag him off.”

  The Other Two said, “Pull him in the woods there.”

  Hillbilly did as he was told, and promptly. As he dragged Tootie away, grasshoppers leaped in all directions and when he got to the edge of the woods he saw the foliage was all eaten away by the hoppers and the brush was just sticks. Hillbilly pulled Tootie through the bare brush, back where there were some big trees, and left him lying on some pine needles.

  Two walked over to Plug, said, “You got trouble doing what you’re supposed to do?”

  “Wasn’t no cause for that,” Plug said. “He was just talking. We all got second thoughts. He didn’t mean nothing by it. Wasn’t no need in that. We ain’t like you—either of you. We ain’t done this kind of thing before.”

  The big man stood silent, the shotgun cradled in his arms. He tilted his head to one side.

  Plug said, “I’m over it. I ain’t got no second thoughts.”

  Hillbilly cut off a piece of Tootie’s shirt, used it to wipe the blood off the back of his neck. He dropped the cloth on the ground, went back, got in the car. The sound of the shot going off had not been right in his ear, but he had a ringing in it. Everything he heard, he heard well enough to understand, but it was as if the words were being called up to him from inside a cave.

  Plug started the engine, said, “All I’m saying, Two, is you didn’t have to do that. He didn’t mean nothing. He was just nervous. He’s got a wife, a kid.”

  “You think these others don’t?” Two said. “Think he’s any better than them? There’s no need to put
good or bad or wives and kids into it. That sort of thing doesn’t matter. It’s not in God’s universe. Babies die all the time. Old folks die all the time. God isn’t concerned with dying. He’s concerned with souls.”

  And the Other Two said, “You think it matters to me? You think anything matters to me? Wives and kids, they die like anyone else. We hold all the souls we can, and when God calls us, we give them to him. Our death will be worth more than the multitude, because we are the multitude.”

  “I can see that,” Hillbilly said, and cocked an eye at Plug.

  Two said, “When we get through, this car is gonna take some real cleaning.”

  “And we got to order a glass,” the Other Two said. “And get some paint. Brother McBride likes this car and he’ll want it fixed.”

  When they came to the place where Sunset lived there was only the floor of the house where the tent had been and the outhouse and the tall post where Marilyn had started a clothesline.

  “They done run off,” Plug said. “We ain’t gonna have to kill nobody.”

  “I don’t think they run off,” Hillbilly said.

  “Sure they run off,” Plug said. “They didn’t, where are they?”

  “They don’t know I’m with you,” Hillbilly said. “They don’t know I got some ideas about where they are. They’re hiding all right, but not the way you mean.”

  “Tell us,” Two said.

  “I think we should try Clyde’s,” Hillbilly said. “I was them, that’s where I’d go, take my tent with me, start over.”

  “Clyde?” Two said.

  “Deputy,” Hillbilly said.

  “What about Henry?” Two said. “Brother McBride said he was arrested today. Said some maid told someone and someone told another someone, and then Brother McBride got the news.”

  The Other Two said, “That’s what this is all about, you know. Henry. And the woman.”

  “And the others?” Plug said. “It about them?”

  “It is,” said Two. “It’s about them and this Zendo.”

  “But Zendo, he don’t know nothing,” Plug said.

  “He may know something now,” the Other Two said. “But what about Henry?”