The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  There came a time to rest and we sat in the dirt gutter that went alongside the road. We squatted on the high hump with our feet down. I got my knife out and sprang the blade open and sat there slicing the points from a blackberry whip. The buckets stood nearby, gray and getting heavy, almost full.

  She said, “Your profile would sure show well on a silver coin, I think.”

  “I’ve got a double chin.”

  “Well. It makes you appear successful, Shug. Worthwhile. Like the prosperous, who eat so good.”

  “Naw. I’m thirteen, Glenda. It’s just fat when you’re a teenager.”

  She made a pout, pooched her lips out plump and pink and turned them down, and her eyes loomed big.

  “I guess I have my work cut out, teachin’ you to see yourself as I do, hon.”

  “How’s that?”

  “As an ace waitin’ to be played.”

  “An ace? Shit—cut the comedy.”

  She dropped her head so her face and that look of big-eyed pouting could be used on me more.

  “You’ve got so much to live up to, sweet, sweet darlin’. The man whose name you carry stood at the head of the parade. He stood where bosses stand and he stood there big as life, too. He wasn’t called the Baron as a joke. Huh-uh, he sure wasn’t. He was the man who told you yes or no, sink or swim.”

  In the woods beyond the spot where we sat little creatures told jokes on the other little creatures and clicked their nails on tree bark and skittered so the leaves waffled and twisted as they laughed their kind of laughs. From somewhere off yonder came a soft mumble of a creek dreaming a good one.

  “Did he look like me?”

  “No. But you sort of look like him for some reason.”

  “We’re built alike?”

  “When you rise two inches taller you’ll look so like him my heart’ll break again.”

  This fella the Baron was a fella of legend Glenda came to know, or so I got told, at some stretch of time when Red did not stand at her side twisting her arm. She never said that man was my actual founding daddy, but pounded it at me that I carried his front name, which I did not care for and was Morris.

  “What’re you doin’ with Red, anyhow?”

  Glenda got slow to her feet and stretched, her hands palms down at the low spot of her back, shoulders turning this way and that, pushing up and away from the road on tippy-toes so her leg muscles showed sleek. Under her arms her shirt was damp from sweat and probably her shorts should have fallen longer to be classed as motherly.

  “Listen,” she said. “You might not believe it, but the first time I ever set eyes on Red Akins he looked like a Greek god. Understand? A Greek god who was maybe a li’l short, shorter’n you figure most Greek gods stood, and his hair was the color it is and already just a li’l bit thin, but still, you know, he was chiseled together like some daddy god or other had put considerable overtime in on the job of hammerin’ him out.”

  I pitched the whip I’d shaved smooth, and closed the knife.

  “He still fairly pops with muscles, Mom.”

  “Oh, I reckon that’s so. I reckon it is. But his poppin’ muscles don’t bring Greek gods to mind anymore.”

  “How do we stand him?”

  “Well,” she said. “Well.” She picked up a bucket and began a stroll on down the road so I hefted the other and caught up to her. When I did I took her bucket from her and carried both buckets swinging below what I guess were my fat but somewhat strong arms. The buckets felt like spare heads with long hair handles. After we’d kicked a ways down the dusty road she said, “You wake up in this here world, my sweet li’l mister, you got to wake up tough. You go out that front door tough of a mornin’ and you stay tough ’til lights out—have you learned that?”

  “I think so.”

  “Hmm. There’ll come a time when we’ll just see about that. Mm-hmm. I’m dead sure that time is gonna come.”

  My mom let men have ideas about her. Some would say me too. She had a way of shuffling generally real loose at the pivot points that made you look when she went by, wherever it was that she went by you: store, alley, roadhouse, country lane. Granny said Mom could make “Hello, there” sound so sinful you’d run off and wash your ears after hearing it, then probably come back to hear it again. I never used the word “sinful” on her in my head. It was just that she was so pretty and willing to smile and fellas got the idea they had a good chance with her when she smiled if they showed a little effort and tickled her some way.

  That day of the berries we came to the creek that crosses the rock road at a low-water depth. This was a ways out from town past Venus Holler a distance and from the creek to Lake’s Market was likely over a mile.

  I set down our buckets and we splashed water at each other. It seemed maybe my flesh had broke quite a few of those sticker teeth from the blackberry lashes as I picked, and Glenda’s back seemed like it had also. I pulled my shirt off and she bent to the creek and cupped her hands in the water and raised the cup to my back and let the water run slow across my bloody spots. She repeated that several times and it brought comfort to me.

  She said, “You look like cats hate you.”

  “There’s drops of blood on your shirt too, Glenda.”

  She did then kneel at the creek lip, knees squishing mud, her raven hair a fallen tangle, and did lift the rear of her shirt so I could rinse her back. The sun never worked much tan into her skin, so pale was she forever. The dots of blood had crusted. There was no bra strap where usually there should have been. I did do to her that cup stuff with my hands and the water, poured and poured. The water gushed down from her shoulders and flooded inside her white shorts and waterlogged them.

  “That’s good,” she said. “That’s enough. That’s fine.”

  When she stood I could see her panties inside her wet white shorts and I do suppose her panties were entirely wet, too. A flesh tone showed through plus dark patches. She never did lose her figure, which was good to great.

  Mom looked at me funny for a spell there, standing in the sunlight so damp and revealed, then laughed.

  “What will Lake pay for these berries, Shug?”

  “He pays by what they weigh. Let me show you how to do this.”

  I dropped into a deep squat and scraped together a handful of stones from the creek bed. The stones had a bevy of colors but most all were only shades of white or brown. Some might have been orange-brown, quite a few were cream. It’s possible somewhere in the pile were a couple that fit black. Once the handful of stones suited me I duckwalked to the buckets of berries.

  “Just pull some up,” I said, which I did. I pulled a bunch of berries up in one hand, started dropping stones in with the other. The berries gave out a smell I always felt flush when smelling. “Just put a few stones in the bucket, see. That’ll raise your pay when he weighs them. Old man Lake knows how much his buckets weigh, so he just puts it on the scale when you hand it in and does the subtraction and what not to pay you.”

  “You’re a sneaky young shit, ain’t you, hon?”

  “You raised me,” I said. “Don’t use big stones—he’ll spot those. Just a handful of li’l stones, see, and not on the bottom where they’ll clank. Bed them in the middle of the berries and, also, then if he did find them, he’d have to wonder if they were there by accident.”

  “Can you still tote both buckets, hon?”

  “Oh, yes ma’am. You bet. I mean, it’s not that far, for a man, right?”

  We walked home the way we came, which was the long way. The sun had begun to work harder and work us harder, too. Twice we saw snakes drawing spaghetti lines in the dust of the road. One was a bad snake and one was a kind it’s supposed to be good to have around. I tried to bean both with rocks but didn’t. Glenda had huffed herself several strides ahead of me.

  “That was awful,” she said. She smoked a cigarette from the pack we bought at Lake’s. The brand was one of those he-man brands of smoke, but it had the taste she liked. “That was so l
ow-rent. A grown lady such as me, caught cheatin’ on berries!”

  “It seems he’s learned how I do him.”

  “Oh, yeah! He’s learned, all right.”

  “I didn’t figure he had yet.”

  “Oh, I ain’t going to rag on you for tryin’, Shug. Only I shouldn’t have stood there, too.”

  “Uh-huh. Got you those smokes, anyhow.”

  “Yup. Certainly did do that, okay.”

  “So why not give me a taste of one?”

  “Hmm. I don’t know about that, Shug. I don’t know. Now, the Baron smoked, naturally. Of course, that man had such fine taste in so many things, and manners, too. The smooth way he undid a napkin, even, and tucked it in his collar, so high-tone! He’d been places. Places where the good stuff happens. And it is a fact, Shug, the Baron smoked this kind.”

  “That’s why I’ll try me one, huh?”

  She halted and dished a cigarette to me, then held my hand steady so she could put fire to it.

  “It’s goin’,” I said.

  Glenda had been sunned dry but dust had settled on her clothes when they were damp and the dust dried a stain on those white shorts so they looked like a dirty coffee cup. She took short steps along the road and hummed to herself. After some steps she’d spring up on one leg and spin on her foot so dust got splashed and rocks rolled away. She had an idea of what moves to make, dance steps she’d once known and done plenty, I reckon.

  The smoke she trained me on had a taste that seemed gruff, kind of a big-bully taste, a taste which apparently the Baron favored. She watched me draw in the smoke and pipe it out and when I coughed her eyes narrowed as if she fought against finding me silly, a child, a silly child. I saw myself different by then. I drew in two or three more swallows of smoke real manly and did not cough or turn a bad color and she nodded several satisfied nods my way.

  I stamped the butt into the road dust.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Could be that’ll be my kind.”

  “Oh now, I’d bet on that. I’d bet plenty on that.”

  Once we reached the creek there was a Thunderbird parked in it. The rear wheels sat dry on the road and the front tires rested in running water up to the hubcaps, which shined. The sunlight hit those hubcaps and bent. The car had the style and reputation that got me and Glenda to pause staring. The color was a special green color called something I don’t know. The inside of the car was white in general and factory clean. A barefoot man stood in the water, his pants legs rolled up to the knees. The pants were gray dress pants and he wore a necktie loose around an open white collar. He had crouched over and was sponging and scraping dead bugs from the grille and headlights, flicking them to the creek.

  Glenda stalled where she stood. She only moved her eyes while she studied that car, which was of one of the legendary vintages of Thunderbirds. It was the kind you drive in your head. It was the kind most everybody wheeled around in their heads. She just stood there stalled like she was following orders a voice I could not hear had barked to her.

  The man in the water looked up and rubbed his hands together with his eyes on Mom. He was a fairly big chubby fella without too much hair growing and what there was seemed basically gray. His hair sat on his head wispy like a dust bunny above the screen door. He stared at her and smiled a smile that twisted way up on one end of his mouth.

  I said, “Hey, mister! What the hell you lookin’ at?”

  “Shoosh, hon—don’t address this man that way.”

  “But I know what he’s thinkin’.”

  “I surely do hope you don’t, Shug.”

  The man said, “How do, folks. No offense meant, kid.”

  She went into that stall again.

  Finally she says, “It’s green.”

  “Uh-huh, it is.”

  “It’s green like the future.”

  “The future? How is that?”

  “The future’s still green I imagine, at this stage, I mean. Don’t you?”

  “Oh yeah, uh-huh. Now I get you.”

  “Come on, Glenda.”

  Her eyes went on that Thunderbird and lingered.

  I pulled her by the hand but she had took root there on that spot. I leaned my head forward and sagged my weight with her hand in mine and got her off balance and she came stumbling along splashing through the creek.

  Again she stalled on the other side of the water and turned about to stare.

  I put together a long chain of the words “Come on, Glenda, come on, Glenda, come on, Glenda.”

  I could not say why but suddenly her shoulders fell and she came along meek, me tugging at her hand, and never said a thing until that rock road had led us home.

  RED HAD beat his guitar since midnight. Red and Basil had got happy on some kind of dope in the kitchen. They did get happy and the guitar did get beat and parts of songs flew from it. They each smoked cigarettes and burned enough cigarettes to send smoke signals from the kitchen. Their happy had run wild all night and they had not begun yet to fizzle towards bed. By the sun it had turned breakfast time but on their clocks run by dope they seemed to be at another hour, another hour around early night when fun stuff had just got started. The kind of happy they had got was the kind that would get loose and would slop about into the way of everybody else.

  Red beat old rhyming songs from that box and Basil sort of knew some of the words so he sort of sang them along with Red. Their voices sounded as bloodshot as their eyes. The songs were just parts of songs, the remembered parts of songs that sleep in the head and will come awake when those certain sounds get beat from the box.

  A song they went at again and again had a main line about wanting one cup of coffee and a cig-a-rette, and then some other lines Red and Basil made ragged guesses at, ragged different guesses from each made at the same time.

  Glenda stood there at the stove not truly dressed for daylight, sweating even so early in the day over the black skillet, melting butter for winkeyes. Sleep had mashed her hairdo lopsided.

  “For goodness’ sake,” she said, “drop that song, would you? Sing something you know the goddamn words to.”

  The song stopped and I heard the guitar hit the floor and skid.

  Red said, “Best keep quiet in the peanut gallery.”

  To help Glenda cook I stood nearby pinching eyeholes from the center of bread slices. I’d roll the bread from the pinched eyeholes in my fingers, I’d roll it into tight balls like fish bait and go for them each in one gulp.

  “I love winkeyes.”

  “There’ll be plenty, hon.”

  The other two had took more dope, pills which were shook from a rattling bottle, and took to giggling and getting windy with words.

  Red said, “I always feel like I own just as far as I can piss in every direction.”

  “You oughta drink more beer!”

  “Yup. I ain’t got much, you know, but I’ll still fight over it.”

  “Ain’t that the truth! Ain’t that the sorry fuckin’ truth.”

  When the butter in the skillet took to hissing and popping inside the bread center Mom would bust an egg and dump it to fill the eyehole, the winkeye hole. The egg roared hitting the hot butter, then cooked fast, and cooked hard and came to look sort of like an eye a dumptruck had run over. I could eat six winkeyes on my sickest day but did not get to usually. Glenda said three was tops.

  She gave me a plate with three winkeyes to carry and I did, over to the table we had that tilted real easy, tilted enough to slop cereal from a bowl, but would not tilt over. I held the table steady with a toe and sicced my hunger quick after that stack of winkeyes.

  Basil slouched against the fridge, scratching his toothbrush at his teeth, and ran his mouth about a silly story he had already unloaded on us once that morning.

  “Anyhow, the boy gets naked and humps his young ass up the tree trunk to where the cute knothole is, talks sweet and pokes it…”

  “Then he slips, don’t he?”

  “… snaps his dick like a pretz
el.”

  “Takes two doctors to rig him a dick-splint from Popsicle sticks.”

  “The boy says, ‘That maple is a sneaky, no-good bitch!’ ”

  They giggled crazy at that, giggled like a big bag of giggles had busted open.

  Glenda sat across the tilting table from me and had her own regular breakfast of java and smokes and stray bites from my plate. She never did look worse than okay, and that morn in bed clothes with a sleepy face she did look way better than that.

  She spoke low to me. “Eat up and get outside, Shug. Who knows what the hell’ll happen in here—understand?”

  I nodded and she nodded.

  “You get on outside and mow the bone orchard.”

  “I will.”

  “I never can get that ol’ tractor to run the way you can, Shug. You’ve got the knack.”

  “Mom, I’ll do it.”

  For some short minutes I sat facedown and stared at the empty plate. I put spit on a fingertip and stabbed crumbs that stuck in the spit, then raised the finger and licked the crumbs clean.

  Smoke rose from Glenda and each new big noise caused her eyes to flinch and she would pull her nightclothes together tighter at the throat.

  “Better get,” she said. “He’s boiled.”

  I ran to the john. I had business there.

  When I came back to the kitchen Red stood before Glenda, saying, “I don’t know for how long, but we’re goin’ out scallybippin’. You got that now?”

  “Bring plenty of shit,” Basil said.

  “There’s two bottles over there.”

  “I do feel like drivin’ some. You know how I get, I get to feel like drivin’, drivin’, drivin’.”

  Then Glenda said, “There’s not a dollar in the house, Red.”

  “Poor baby.”

  “There’s maybe fifty cents somewhere.”

  “Aw! That won’t buy you no bus ticket to nowhere, huh, honey?”

  “I’m thinkin’ food, Red. I’m thinkin’ breakfast, lunch, and supper. I’m thinkin’ about soap powder so your clothes are clean. I’m thinkin’…”