Sunset and Sawdust

by Joe R. Lansdale

  It was a fire.

  He went over to the bank, got down on one knee, said, “It’s me, Karen. Hand up the shotgun if you can.”

  Karen’s hand poked out and took hold of a root, and she swung out with her back to the water, one hand holding her up, and she extended the shotgun to him with the other. He took it, and Karen swung out on the root and got her feet on other roots, started working up the bank. Clyde grabbed her wrist and helped pull her the rest of the way up.

  “Are they gone?” she said.

  “From here. They’ve gone back to the tent.”

  He pointed toward the brightness shining through the trees.

  “Lord—what about Goose?”

  Clyde shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  They crept back the way they had come and found Goose lying in the trail. His mauled hand lay close to his chest and the revolver he had tried to shoot Two with lay busted by his side.

  Karen got down on her knees and touched his head and cried softly. “They didn’t have to do that. They didn’t have to do none of this. Why?”

  “Money, dear,” Clyde said. “I’ll take care of him later. Leave him.”

  Karen bent forward and kissed Goose’s cold forehead.

  They waited out in the woods for a time, and Clyde finally slipped back by himself. He saw there was a terrific blaze, and he realized now what the explosion had been. They had set fire to his truck, probably a rag in the gas tank, and that had blown it up. They had set fire to the tent and his tarp as well. One thing about them, they didn’t just do a thing halfway.

  He eased up that way, the shotgun ready, but there was nothing to shoot. Henry’s body still lay by the post, and Ben’s nearby.

  Clyde went back to find Karen and when they came back they got the well bucket, some pans from under the tarp, and went about trying to wet the ground down around the fire, keep it from spreading to the kindling-dry woods beyond.

  36

  The house in the woods that had been Pete and Jimmie Jo’s was small but much nicer than the one Zendo and his family had lived in.

  “You trying to tell me this is our house,” Zendo said to Sunset.

  “I’m saying when it all works out, it will be,” Sunset said. “Ain’t no one else using it now, and no one would expect you to be here, so it’s safer than your place. And I’d stay out of the fields for a couple days. You can afford that, can’t you?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Just a couple of days,” Lee said.

  “And Bull will be with you,” Sunset said. “Right, Bull?”

  “Right,” Bull said, and he found a chair and sat, the ten-gauge across his lap.

  “I just feel funny being in someone else’s house,” Zendo said.

  “Your dog’s on the front porch and he’s happy,” Lee said. “He knows it’s home. And the pig, he’s here in the room with you.”

  The pig lay on its back on the floor, its feet in the air, happy because it didn’t know what its future was, couldn’t foresee itself as bacon.

  “Look here,” Sunset said, “they built this place on land that’s yours. All that oil under the ground on this land, it’s yours, Zendo. You’re rich.”

  “I’ll be dead, that’s what I’ll be,” Zendo said. “Rich don’t do a man no good if he’s dead.”

  “That’s what we’re going to change,” Sunset said. “You getting dead and this land not being yours. We’ve got Henry arrested, and when I figure how to go from there, we’ll do the rest. In the meantime, I think you’re safer here. And it’s built on your land, and that makes it yours as far as I’m concerned.”

  “And she’s the constable,” Bull said.

  Zendo’s wife, the toddler clinging to her leg, said, “We didn’t know about all this, we wouldn’t be hiding. We wouldn’t have no oil, but we wouldn’t be hiding.”

  “Eventually, they would come for you,” Sunset said, “you knew about it or not.”

  “I don’t like it none,” Zendo said.

  “I’m sorry it’s this way,” Sunset said. “But that’s how it is. Me and Daddy, we got to go back now. I got to figure what to do with Henry, who to go to so I can be backed up. Bull, you need anything?”

  “Outside of being twenty years younger,” Bull said, “I don’t reckon so.”

  The first thing Sunset saw through her bug-splattered window were roaring flames licking high at the sky and the shapes of high-flying grasshoppers. Then she saw Clyde’s truck, or the blazing skeleton of it; the windows had blown out, the doors had been knocked open by the blast, and the truck bed was torn off; the remains of the bed lay nearby, the ass end of it pointed toward the sky.

  “Jesus,” Sunset said. “Karen.”

  She drove faster and would have driven right up on the blaze had Lee not yelled at her to stop. She slammed on the brake, leaped out of the car and started running, screaming Karen’s name. Lee slid over and took the rolling car out of gear and pulled the hand brake, got out.

  He began to call. First for Karen, then for Clyde. He saw Sunset bent over something on the ground. When he got close, he saw it was Ben and where Sunset had put her hands on the dog, they came away red.

  They found Henry. The blaze had gotten to him and burned off one of his legs and it was working its way up. Lee stamped on him until the flames went out. They walked around the blaze that was the tent, and Sunset, seeing there was nothing left of it but fire, lost the strength in her legs. She sagged and Lee caught her.

  “It don’t mean she was in there,” Lee said.

  There was movement, shapes seen through the fire. Then the shapes came around the fire, one carrying a syrup bucket, the other a large pan.

  Karen and Clyde.

  “It was Hillbilly,” Clyde said.

  They all went to Sunset’s car and she drove it away from there, down the road a piece, and pulled over on a narrow logging road.

  “I knew he was a piece of shit,” Sunset said. “But this—Jesus. It’s all my fault. Everything is all my fault.”

  “It’s that sonofabitch’s fault,” Clyde said. “He brought Plug here, and that big colored man. Big as Bull. The one you told me about.”

  “Two,” Sunset said.

  “Poor Goose,” Lee said. “I was more than fond of him.”

  “Me too,” Karen said. “Oh, Mama, I can hardly breathe.”

  “I’ve got to go back and bury him,” Lee said. “I got to do that now. I got to see him.”

  “No,” Sunset said.

  “What do you mean, no?” Lee said.

  “I’ve tried to go about this slow,” Sunset said, staring into the fire. “Tried to put all my ducks in a row. Like arresting Henry. But they killed him. And they killed Goose and Ben and they tried to kill Clyde. That’s my fault. I shouldn’t have thought we were safe. It’s time we end this. It’s time we arrest them. You saw them, Clyde. You’re not only a witness, you’re a deputy constable. And you saw them, Karen. We know who they are, and what they did. I have to arrest them. I got the right. They were in my jurisdiction.”

  “This colored fella,” Clyde said. “He don’t look like no pushover. And Hillbilly, I found out he wasn’t neither.”

  “Daddy whipped his ass,” Sunset said.

  “He certainly did,” Clyde said.

  “We’re going to get Bull, and we’re going to go into town and we’re going to arrest them.”

  “Goose?” Lee said.

  “He’d understand a bit of a wait,” Sunset said. “He’d want us to get them. And McBride, his bunch, they won’t expect us to come so soon. We go get Bull, make them open up the company store, and get some guns and ammunition, go get McBride and Two and Plug, and especially Hillbilly.”

  “All those guns,” Clyde said. “That doesn’t much sound like an arrest.”

  “We got to persuade them,” Sunset said. “Way they are, they might need a lot of persuading. But we’ll arrest them if we can. We ain’t like them. First, we got to try and make sure this fire don�
��t spread.”

  The fire burned itself out and they damped all around it using pans filled with water from the well. Then they drove to Camp Rapture first, to the sawmill store. Sunset didn’t bother with finding the store manager to open it. She took a tire tool out of the trunk of her car and jimmied the back door and they went in. By flashlight, they got what they needed— ammunition, guns, all shotguns. They went over and got Marilyn out of bed, then they all stuffed into the car. They drove over to where Bull and Zendo’s family were.

  “But you said Bull would be with us,” Zendo said.

  “I know what I said,” Sunset said. “But things have changed.”

  She told them what happened, said, “They won’t be thinking about you. They do, they don’t know you’re here. If you want, you can hide out in the woods. But I got to have Bull. Some reason you don’t hear from us, say by tonight, you ought to leave.”

  “And go where?” Zendo’s wife asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sunset said.

  Bull stood up, said, “Keep the ten-gauge, Zendo. That’ll be good company. I think the constable’s right. We take it to them. It was me, I’d have done that from the start. Then again, I ain’t no law.”

  “They’ll be so busy with us,” Lee said, “they won’t be thinking about you, Zendo.”

  “If I didn’t feel you were safe, I wouldn’t ask you to keep Karen with you,” Sunset said. “But again, we don’t come back, go, and take Karen away from here too.”

  “Oh, Mama,” Karen said.

  “We’ll be back,” Sunset said. “I’m just saying.”

  “Goose, he ain’t gonna be back, now, is he?” Karen said.

  “You got to be strong,” Sunset said.

  “I’m scared,” Zendo said. “I won’t lie to you none.”

  “We’re all scared,” Sunset said. “And I’m tired of being scared and confused, accused of things I didn’t do. Tired of bigwigs and tough guys cheating and stealing and killing, and I’m tired of my not knowing one of my own constables was a liar and a bastard. They killed a boy, Goose. A good boy. They killed one of their own, shot him while he was chained to a post. And they killed my dog.”

  They gathered round and passed out guns. All of them took twelve-gauge pumps and a box of shells. They took some of the shells and loaded the guns and put spare shells in their pockets.

  Sunset made sure her .38 had six shells in it. She and Bull were the only ones with handguns. Sunset gave hers to Karen, said, “Don’t shoot yourself.”

  Sunset turned to Bull and Lee, said, “Bull, Daddy, by the power invested in me, you are now deputy constables.”

  “Damn, that count for a colored?” Bull asked.

  “Does today,” Sunset said.

  The pig grunted. Clyde said, “That is one swell pig. I was you, I wouldn’t eat it.”

  When they came out of the little house to get in the car, there was a sound in the air like a great sigh. Looking up, they could see the moon was hidden by a flow of grasshoppers, and the sound of them grew louder, from a sigh to a buzz to a hum that reminded them of the great saw up on the hill in Camp Rapture. They couldn’t know it at the time, but the grasshoppers had already descended on Zendo’s field. There would be no need for him to work it again this summer, for in a matter of minutes, the dark wave of insects had come down with the moonlight and eaten out the field, leaving nothing but roots and dirt. Then they had moved on, filling the sky above Sunset and her posse.

  Sunset drove, Clyde beside her; in the backseat were Bull and Lee. Daylight was coming and the black sky was lightening, and as they drove the windshield became so littered with bugs Sunset had to stop and get a stick and scrape them off. She used a rag she had in the glove box to wipe the glass, but all it did was smear. As she cleaned the windshield, bugs hit her, stinging her flesh. They had to stop three times so they could clean the windshield, taking turns, Clyde next, then Lee.

  When the sky became lighter they saw an amazing sight.

  The landscape had changed and the world was void of greenery. The trees were like the skeletons of giants that had fallen from heaven, poking bones every which way. Low down was the same. Green had gone to gray and brown and the song of the hoppers ebbed and flowed as they ate their way through the dry summer morning and the bugs struck the car so hard Sunset could see paint chip off.

  They fought the road and fought the bugs and drove on slowly into Holiday, where the first strong light of morning showed the streets and buildings were entwined with waves of insects, and up on the hill, the overhang above the drugstore, even as they watched, the greenery disappeared, like some kind of conjurer’s trick.

  They drove past the apartment, over to the sheriff’s office, jumped out. They ran a gauntlet of bugs that was like an ocean wave. The wave knocked Sunset down and staggered the others, except for Bull. They went in the front door of the sheriff’s office, one at a time, guns ready.

  Plug sat behind his desk, as if waiting on them. His hands were in plain sight, resting on the desktop. Sunset yelled and stuck the shotgun under his chin.

  Plug said, “Go on. Do it. I didn’t hurt nobody, but do it.”

  “I saw you,” Clyde said.

  “But I didn’t want no part of it. I got away from them when we got back to town. But I didn’t know nowhere to come but here. I don’t got nowhere to go. And I didn’t shoot nobody. Nobody at all.”

  “Consider yourself under arrest,” Sunset said. “I’m the law now. And be damn glad of it.”

  Plug got up, lifted by the shotgun barrel at his throat. Sunset pushed him backward toward the cells.

  “Where are the keys?” she asked.

  “In the drawer,” he said.

  Lee got them. They put Plug inside and locked the cell door. Sunset said, “I want to just cut down on you. I want to kill you, Plug. Goose, he wasn’t nothing but a boy.”

  “I didn’t kill nobody and didn’t want to,” Plug said, sitting down heavily on a bunk. “I thought I did, but I couldn’t. I didn’t shoot nobody. The nigger done it. He done it all. That Hillbilly, he would have, but he never got the chance. The nigger, he’s crazy. He blew Tootie’s head off. Almost blew mine off. No money’s worth that. But I couldn’t get away from them. I had to stay with them. They threatened to kill me.”

  “So did I,” Sunset said.

  “Go on ahead. I don’t mind if you do it. I just didn’t want that nigger sucking on me. He shoots you, then he sucks on you. He thinks he’s taking your soul out of your mouth,” Plug said. “He got kicked in the head by a horse. He’s got the mark. It made him crazy. He thinks he’s two people. Maybe he is. Jesus, he’s one crazy nigger.”

  “Where’s Hillbilly?” Sunset said.

  “I think he’s up at the red place,” Plug said. “I think he’s with the nigger and McBride. They got a whore over there. I was gonna run off, but the bugs came. I thought they passed on, I’d run off. But I don’t know what I’d have done, where I’d have gone.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere, Plug,” Sunset said. “What’s the red place?”

  “Apartment over the drugstore. Just across the street there.”

  “All right, then,” Sunset said. “We go get them. The whore, we don’t want to hurt her. She’s not in on this.”

  “There’s a front way and a little back stairs,” Plug said. “Remember I tried to help you. Remember that.”

  They fought bugs and got in the car and sat. They could see the apartment across the way. Close enough to walk to, but in this storm of bugs, not a good idea.

  Sunset said, “I’m gonna drive right up close. Daddy, you and Bull, you take the front. Me and Clyde, we’ll take the back. We surprise them, away from their guns, we got a good chance. Much as I know you’d like to, don’t shoot you don’t have to. Try to arrest them. But they try and hurt you, then shoot to kill.”

  “What do we do?” Clyde said. “Knock?”

  “That’s one way,” Sunset said.

  Sunset drove acro
ss the street. The insects were rising and falling in waves. The grasshoppers were so close together they looked like a great speckled ribbon of green and brown and gray and black. They wound around the town, the buildings, the cars, the oil derricks that poked up willy-nilly here and there.

  No one was on the streets except them and the bugs.

  Sunset drove them right up to the front stairs, then she took a ribbon from her shirt pocket and tied her hair back.

  “I don’t know what more to say,” she said. “You’re through the front, we’re through the back.”

  “That’s all I need,” Bull said.

  “Personally,” Lee said, “I’d like something a little more specific.”

  “Sorry, Daddy. I’m not Robert E. Lee on the war plans.”

  “It’ll do, then,” Lee said.

  “Everyone, please come back,” Sunset said.

  She and Clyde got out of the car and ran around to the side of the drugstore. The insects were less there. They went along the side until they got to the back of the drugstore, the smaller set of stairs there. The bugs were thick again. They got low and went forward. Sunset had to raise the shotgun stock to cover as much of her face as possible and she could feel the little legs of the bugs working in her hair, in the long tail of it tied back behind her.

  Pretty soon they were at the stairs and going up, Clyde pushing to try and get in front of her, but she didn’t let him, kept the lead, and finally they came to the back door.

  Bull and Lee went up the front way, quick and ready, shotguns pumped full of a load, ready to cut down if need be, or simply ready to knock on the door, arrest all volunteers.

  The insects were so thick they could hardly climb the stairs, and just as they were about to reach the top, a smear of insects splattered on the top stair caused Lee’s shoe to slip, and he slid and one leg went through the railing, and he did a kind of drop, as if the ground opened up below him, and there was a cracking sound like hot fire eating a dry stick, and Lee just sat, his one good leg poking through the railing, the other coiled under him like it had no bones. He let out a yell so loud it almost drowned out the plague of locusts.