The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  Our house looked as if it had been painted with jumbo crayons by a kid with wild hands who enjoyed bright colors but lost interest fast. That kid was me, in general, and I did try any paint we had in the shed. The paint was mostly different stripes of white, plus a bit of yellow, blue, and red. Glenda maybe painted a low corner or a window sash before her tea kicked in and she might drag out a kitchen chair and sit where the shade fell and talk about such subjects as clothes she had once she wished she still did, sweaters, stoles, and silky sorts of stuff, or places she had been escorted to for eats back when and hoped to someday take me to, spiffy tablecloth places in Kentucky and Miami and Cleveland.

  Red either was there or he was not and he made it plain it was none of our fucking business which. He kept busy off and away from us with his thieving buddies hunting for soft crimes to pull and maybe some not so soft. When he was home he was never home every day in a row more than three or four days, and when he was not there he might not be for two or three weeks. He’d be gone long enough to get my hopes high, lighten my heart, then I’d hear whichever heap he then drove come grumbling into our drive and dash me again.

  THE FIRST place I robbed for Red stood tall, set high on a brick wall, and the only way to reach so high on that brick wall was to shinny up the gutterpipe. Red dropped one claw on my shoulder and used the other to point along the brick wall to the window he was sending me to. The shade there hung part down so the window fairly winked a yellowy shade. That window winked at a corner on the third floor of a squatty sour old place with bricks of that worn-out color, a color passing years slap on, three stories in height and set lonesome by the stockyards, sort of asking to be robbed.

  “I’m a li’l hefty to climb the whole way up there on that pipe.”

  “It’ll hold.”

  “Stuff has broke under me before.”

  “It’ll hold,” Red said. “If it don’t, me and Basil’ll be sure and catch you on the way down, hey, Bas’?”

  “Oh, yeah. We’ll call ‘I got it! I got it!’ so’s we don’t collide and make an error.”

  Red’s one claw clenched its nails into my skin.

  “That pipe’s been holdin’ all this century, fat boy, and you ain’t so goddamn special it’s goin’ to fly apart over you. So hush your worryin’.”

  I looked at that winked window from where I stood, and charted the distance there in my head.

  “That could be, uh, forty feet, I think. I think they say that’s too many feet to fall, you know, and walk away.”

  That claw raised from my shoulder and became a fist and bopped down on top of my skull.

  “Jesus, you’re a pussy,” Red said. “That witch has made somethin’ purt near use-less out of you.”

  This night was a big-moon night. They shared slugs from a bottle, Red and Basil, gin, I believe. They did shove the clear bottle from one to the other and back for a while, releasing glug-glug sounds and lip squeaks. They had faces washed pale by that big-moon glow. The stockyards lay empty but did remain good and stinky, ankle deep with mush. The two of them and me kind of stood around one of the slat gates to the holding pens, the swinging kind, or else leaned on it. Mosquitoes drilled us in our soft spots and sounds of slapping hands ran across the feedlot one way and towards the town square the other.

  Red blew his gin breath low at me, his features taken off by the dark, but I could tell he stared steady. “And if somethin’ flew wrong and you got your ass pinched, then what?”

  “I’m just a kid,” I said in a put-on kid voice. “I’m just a kid out pullin’ stupid pranks, Officer. I sure am sorry.”

  “And if you don’t get pinched?”

  “Fill this here pillowcase with all the drugs and things I can see.”

  Basil said, “That means things liquid, too, Shug. Some of the best dopes come in liquid style.”

  “I been told.”

  Basil Powney was Red’s main cohort in life. They had in common both being a bubble off plumb. They had come along as kids together and gone along to prison almost together, just a month apart ’cause their trials had got split. Basil was a tall narrow fella with ways easy to like. He was tall by nature and kept narrow by dope, I do imagine. His head did not quite fit with his body, being maybe a size small for balancing with that lanky trunk. As to hair and eyes, he was dark. Most often he showed a beard of some kind or went about unshaved, and his teeth shined plenty white as he doted on them. He carried a toothbrush in a hip pocket where most might pack a comb. He scrubbed at his teeth every time you turned around, even when he seemed too drunk to stand or had got hopped up on dope and wanted to get going somewhere. He just about did not ever call me names or get rough in my direction.

  “Plus guns,” Red said. “If the ol’ doc has got any guns they are always welcome.”

  “I’ll look,” I said. “If I get there.”

  “You’re gonna have to get there.”

  “Maybe I can.”

  “Maybe gets your butt kicked, dig?”

  “I guess.”

  Car lights ran around and about the night, cars turning corners or rounding bends, letting their beams loose to graze on the dark. Twice I did see smoochy couples paused on the square. A hurt-voiced dog was chained up lonely or locked out not too far away and did bay and bay, baying so’s I could understand, baying the way I felt.

  Basil said, “Now’s good as anytime, Red.”

  “Yup.” Red grabbed me and shook me. He handed me a chisel. “Put that in the pillowcase and tie it to your belt.”

  Before I could get that task done all the way and proper, get the knot snug, he said, “Come on, fat boy, come on—play at bein’ a monkey and scoot your ass up that pipe.”

  The gutterpipe had the color of rust but from paint, paint that had matched the sour old bricks. My hands could just almost join around the pipe. The skin of the pipe was not on there smooth, but had gougy spots of dried gunks, itty-bitty sharp ridges, places that scraped.

  “Now what? What’s holdin’ you now?”

  There at the corner of the building the builders had made a sort of design of bricks that left brick lips pouted out every few feet which I could touch my toes on and push, those brick lips and toe pushes being the main reason I did go up the pipe. Pretty quick I had got up to a height I would not want to fall from, unless into water or something softer, and kept on. The pipe let out sounds as I went up, weak, screechy sounds such as olden folk give when the breaths they draw are not full enough and they do try and try for more, those noises of that sort, and now and then something close to a grunt or scold.

  “Go, fat boy, go!”

  I had come close to the window, close to where I could spit to it, when the pipe buckled. The pipe buckled, grunting and sagging from the wall, but in the main held to the bricks. I did slip and I did clamber and I did say words I do not recall.

  “You ain’t fallin’. You ain’t fallin’.”

  I held to the pipe at the sagging spot and held it dear. I could see from there beyond the square to the lights on the hill and the other way to the lights that stood over Broadway and the special light at Dog’N Suds on that street. The wind up there felt glad to meet me.

  “You ain’t a statue—get goin’.”

  I had a lost moment in a hope of mine, which was that I would if I could hope to be buried in a tin can. Have the doctor render me to nuggets the size of seeds and put me in an old tin can, the kind with the jagged lid still clinging, and nailed high in a tree so birds will feed on me from the can and then flap and flap and fly all across the globe shitting me on everybody still alive down there. That is the funeral I did hope for at certain times and clung to that gutter I did again. I wanted that tin can nailed about level with where I clung.

  “I’m gettin’ tired.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Tired.”

  “Naw, not at your age, you ain’t. You should never get tired at your age.”

  “My arms are shiverin’.”

  “Ge
t on in there—do your job.”

  Basil said, “You know, Shuggie, remember the Little Train Who Could, right? They still teach that? The little train and the big-ass hill or whatever? Woo! Woo!”

  I guess my toes found a brick lip. I guess my arms did shiver and pull, shiver and pull. I know I got to the ledge by the window and reached toes towards it. The ledge was a ledge you could stand on, which I did do. My butt was flush to the glass as I stood to unknot the pillowcase and bring out the chisel.

  Along the ground down there Red and Basil goofed about, slap-boxing and like that, and once Red came under a light where I did see him kick the air with his boots that had white wings that started at the point and flared back and feathered, I knew, up to the shin part. The boot wings were intended as white eagle wings. His kicks came and went fast as blinks.

  Then him and Basil stood still and whispered a list of what they hoped I might steal for them. The whispers that went back and forth came up so I could hear.

  “Redbirds.”

  “Footballs.”

  “Dexies.”

  “Yellowjackets.”

  “A nice thirty-eight.”

  “Brompton’s punch.”

  “Tuinals.”

  The wood of the window had been through a lot, sun and ice, snow and rain, years and years. It did now wiggle in the frame, wiggle loose at the joints, and I poked the chisel at a joint, then went bang with my hand on the chisel, then went bang once more, and those two bangs broke it loose from the frame. The wood came apart easy like pulling baby teeth. One section of glass slid loose, but slid loose all of a piece, and I caught it and carried it inside with me and laid it down whole.

  “Hey—I made it! Look at this—I made it!”

  “Hush your mouth. When you get back out—that’s when you made it, dig? That’s when you crow.”

  One step inside the window I bumped a desk and then felt of it, scouted my hands about the flat part to hit a lamp, maybe, which happened. I scouted my hands up to the lamp neck but the button wasn’t found, so I scouted back to the root and did find the button there and did push it. The light made was plenty.

  I took the chisel and used it against everything, popped drawers, popped cabinets, opened desks. Whatever I took to be a pill or bottle of medicine juice or a box that could hold either I dumped into the pillowcase. I dumped until I filled it pretty heavy. When I went to the window and looked down the buckled gutterpipe, the one speaking voice in my mind did say and say, Huh-uh, huh-uh.

  In the car, Red said, “You wasn’t supposed to just waltz down the stairs and bust out the fuckin’ front door. That wasn’t what I fuckin’ told you.”

  Basil did the driving. The car was one I did not know, a white Corvair that sounded like a vacuum cleaner. He was grinning and whistling and tapping his fingers on the wheel. He said, “The boy by God grabbed up all the shit, though. And plenty of that was what we hoped for.”

  “He was told to come down the goddamn gutter.”

  Red and Basil had got beer at Slager’s. It was the kind of beer they had in those days that came loose in plastic bags, six cans to a bag, and cost the least of any kind. The beer cans popped open and added one more smell to the car that did not set with me. There was the gin, there was the sweat, there was the beer, and there was stinks I could not name. None set with me good.

  Finally Red said, “But you did okay. You got plenty.”

  “Uh-huh. So, what will, uh, will be my share?”

  Red twisted to look at me and his face did not look generous.

  “Well now, would you just listen to fat boy!”

  “I just figure I should get a share.”

  “Not hardly,” Red said. “Not in this lifetime.”

  “Now, I was him,” Basil said, “I’d figure on a share.”

  “You ain’t even got no kids, so shut the fuck up about it. Dig?”

  The Corvair ran us on around town awhile. Streets of quiet, slow cars, houses going dark for sleep. Nobody said anything for some time, a long drinking quiet passed. Those two opened more beers, foamy stink sprayed.

  Then Red spoke. “I wanted you to use the gutter, Shug. It was safer. You should know I’ve got to be mighty careful ’cause of my priors. Those are always hangin’ over me.”

  I did not answer except with a nod, which he caught.

  Basil said, “Hey, Red—let’s us fall on by and visit Patty and them, what say?”

  “Pull over, Basil.” We were at the graveyard edge, the far edge from the house. Several of my favorite dead ones were laid out right by where the Corvair stopped, dead ones I tended, dead ones I’d sat amongst. Red held the door open so the light on the roof shined, and he yanked open the pillowcase and did run his fingers through the many tinkling handfuls of what I stole. “Not bad. This’ll work. You get on out now and walk on home—we need to be somewhere. And if that witch pushes her nose in and asks what we got up to, boy, you just tell her, ‘Men stuff.’ Not one word more. That’s all you need to tell her, ‘Men stuff.’ She’ll hear you.”

  Glenda said, “I don’t much like the sound of that.”

  “That’s all we did.”

  “Was he nice to you?”

  “Practically.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she went. “I’ll bet you could use your snack now, hon, couldn’t you?”

  “I feel ready for it.”

  The TV was turned where it always was at this time of a weekday, on that channel she favored, the channel that did go on with the show beyond when people with jobs went to sleep. The show was ol’ Johnny and his movie-star friends gassing, mostly. A big fat gray couch tracked back from the TV so a person could lay flat and view the whole screen without spraining their neck. On the floor flopped a beanbag chair, which would act like a horror-movie flower trying to eat you if you sat in it, a bright yellow color. TV trays were stood around and had pictures on the tray parts showing bottles of cola that wore aprons to barbecue or danced in a barn wearing cowboy hats or played badminton at a picnic, the family cola was the kind. Glenda’s tea did sit as usual on such a tray, and did lay a puddle there as the ice got smaller.

  I sat on the couch turned a nudge towards the screen where a bald cartoon giant spun about in a whir showing an actual human mother how best to clean her house. I could hear my snack being built in the kitchen. There was the icebox sucking shut, the rattle in the knife-fork-spoon drawer looking for the scoop, water coming to a boil.

  At night Glenda liked to dress like she had somewhere to go. Somewhere to go where people showed up in high-hat clothes. Glenda wore a cool thin green thing, green as those green jewels, and the thing was bottom and top in one connected piece, and the top left her back skin out altogether and had thin straps that came up in a knot behind her neck. The green thing fit loose low on the legs but fit real huggy at the important other places.

  “There, Shug.”

  The snack came in a batter bowl, and did as always come in the same batter bowl, cherry-colored on the outside and snow white inside around a heap of vanilla ice cream that had got splashed by a cup of coffee to make a sweet mud. When I ate, Glenda, as usual, put an arm around me and held her drink up for sips and acted like we were out for the evening to somewhere else. I kept busy with the spoon, spooning every drop from the batter bowl while her arm lay across my shoulders.

  She said, “Now, that man, Shug, I don’t think that man is so durn funny. He’s just rude, is all. Johnny should boot him.”

  I leaned to set the empty bowl on a tray and on the tray I spotted a scratch pad all scribbled on in ink that said: “Glinda? Glynda? Glenda Ambers Akins? Gllynda? Glynnda? Glenda Akins?”

  A little later Glenda let her head sag to my neck and her breath ran hot along my skin and I swallowed the smell of her and her perfume and tea.

  “Man stuff, is it?” she mumbled. “I don’t believe that’s good news, hon.”

  THE BEST ones were always surrounded by stickers. She said that over and again as if those words amounted to a
n answer. The berries had come up from nubs in the sunshine and rain and come to the good size and ripeness. The sharp stickers on the ropy whips of bushes did their damage, such as short thin scrapes along forearms, points pushed into thumbs, a blow of wind loosing a whip of stickers so it raked a neck or backside. The berries were spotted all about in amongst the thicket of stickers and big numbers of them, too.

  The berries were black, the buckets were gray. She had a bucket and I had a bucket and most of the berries in her bucket had got picked by me and each of the ones in my bucket had. My skin showed plenty of tiny blood spots. Small freckles left where small pains had called. The morning weather wasn’t so bad. The heat slept in and a wind roamed. The berries could fetch us a price at Lake’s Market.

  “There just always is stickers around the best ones,” Glenda said for the severalth time. “The ones you need to pick.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re showin’ blood, baby. Blood on your knuckles. On your arms.”

  “My neck, too. Sweat runs in there and God damn but it stings.”

  “Don’t get yourself overhot, Shug.”

  We walked together along a lonely road that ran out from that side of town. The road had heavy brownish dust and those chunky rocks on it with edges that can hit tires like tomahawk blades sometimes. Anyplace there were berries we went. I’d straddle the barbed-wire fences and let my fat shove the rusty wires low so she could step over. She’d step over careful ’cause she wore shorts and pick the ones easy to pick along the outside of the thickets. I would get down and crawl into low rough spaces after berries if I saw them and it was like tunnels in there. Tunnels for things way smaller than I and walled in by sharp points that hurt but not enough to make you stop and go away.