The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  “Quit! Quit thinkin’ and tellin’ me about it.” Red plumbed deep in his jeans pocket and raised his fist around a choker of cash, then unleashed a long jerky sweep of his arm and threw the cash like dice onto the table. The choker of cash stopped rolling smack under her nose. “Now you best hush the fuck up about what you think.”

  I pushed out the screen door to the back stoop, then moved towards the shed. A wave of goldfinches rolled from a tree as I passed and rolled away towards the sun. A train screamed over the hill. I could see out into the bone orchard and could see two ladies there who stood holding hands beside a grave so fresh it was just raw dirt in a heap. They did drop flowers on the dirt.

  The tractor shed leaned some, an old shed of gray wood leaning some, and it had junk written on the inside walls by ink pens and crayons that went back to at least “Ozark League Champions 1938.” Some of the written stuff came across funny but most seemed to be by people pining for people they ain’t going to know the way they want.

  The tractor started up with the first touch and I backed into the side yard.

  The back door to the house swung open and Red and Basil came out. Red wore a stag-cut black shirt that left his big arms of big muscles on view, and he’d done a recent slicking of his hair. Red was coming to me. Basil climbed behind the wheel of the car he drove that day, a tan Impala I admired, and fired the engine. I sat upon the tractor seat and saw that Red had something to say. He wiggled his fingers in that way of wiggling that means come closer. I leaned down closer to him and got my ear to his mouth.

  “Keep an eye on that witch, dig?”

  Except for the noise of the tractor it rode about the way I figured some horses might. Except also for the stink of oil smoke and gas and the noise when the gears gnashed. Except for all that it rode pretty horsey, jostly and bouncy, me sitting high in the saddle wearing spurs. The exhaust smoke would remind me by the minute though that I rode not an Appaloosa named Tango or Champ, but an old gas-burner that did not prance and did not cut much of a figure, but did get the job done.

  The grass had sprung a little too high to where it rippled in the wind, and Mr. Goynes, who checked the grounds on days I didn’t see coming, liked the grass short and stiff and never rippling. To do the grass used four hours as a rule. The tractor part took ninety minutes and the other minutes got used pushing the regular mower in the tighter spots, and mowing those tighter spots caused the minutes that made the job sweaty and in some heats awful.

  The cemetery offered more than one look, more than one feel. The tombstones came in a variety of ways. The oldest needed to be read with fingers, the words and numbers had been blown off by the years and the stuff years throw at a thing, so the names were only a letter here and a letter there, though the rock still stood. In the newer parts the tombstones tended to shine and stand clean and easy to read as a stop sign. There were lots of names hammered into those tombstones of all ages that had the same names as many of the streets of town that I would walk on when I went around. Same names as streets and stores and car lots and grade schools. I shaved the fuzz from the entire dead, one and all, if I ever had heard of them, or never had, I gave the same shave to each.

  A church group of boys and girls passed along the road beside the bone orchard, hiking over the hill to Hudkins Park or maybe doing the long hike clear out to Canaday Bridge. The girls mostly wore shorts and several held long sticks while they hiked. Their legs flashed by in the sun like spokes. The boys walked at the back and walked like they were by themselves. There were plenty in the church group who knew me, and me them, but none did wave, so me neither.

  In the last hour of mowing Glenda came out and came over to me. She brought me a giant glass of cola. She had a dress on, the summer kind with flowers in the cloth, and I swelled looking at how good she looked, Glenda. Her face had eased of nerves and fear and her hair was combed loose.

  My lips made a dive for the cola the way pony lips dive for a pond.

  “I think he was so messed in the head he grabbed out of the wrong pocket, Shug. He left a fair little pile. More’n he knew, I expect. And you know what that makes me think? That makes me think a boy who works as hard as you deserves to see a movie tonight. You think you’d like to take me to a movie tonight? Would you?”

  Granny Akins could not chew much. Not too many teeth stuck in her head and none of the best teeth did. She was sickly skinny and might have been sickly skinny even with teeth. Her hair was some shade of white, but not pure. Her skin looked like a dry leaf fallen to the road and waiting to crinkle into pieces. She had the little-bitty Akins place outside the city limits and lived in it off government checks and her paper route, a route I helped her throw once in a while, especially in winter.

  She stopped by after pitching her papers that time and came in and sat a spell. She did say she had news, but did not share it for about three cigarettes and a tumbler of Glenda’s tea. Granny was also fond of regular sips from the stuff in Glenda’s tea but never bothered to claim it was tea she sipped.

  “Carl’s comin’ on home,” she said. “He’ll get partway on a airplane first, then ride a bus.”

  I asked, “Is he…?”

  “He ain’t sayin’, boy. Not yet.”

  “Well, still—I can’t wait! Carl likes stuff I like!”

  Uncle Carl was Red’s surprise baby brother but had first been a surprise baby to Granny who had reckoned her body too old for hatching babies. Carl came along eighteen years junior to Red and had got himself scrambled with the marines during the springtime past. We each, even Red, had watched the news hard for news of Carl’s squad until the telegram came that said he was hurt for good and gone from there. He had been for quite a while in a hospital with a Mexican sort of name waiting to find out if he would have to hop places the rest of his life or could he learn to walk okay again.

  “We’ll sure be glad to see him,” Glenda said. “I hope it didn’t get his face.”

  “He ain’t said that it did.”

  “Boy, I can’t wait to see Carl.”

  “I needed to come by to tell Red, but naturally he’s off somewheres.”

  “I’ll be sure and tell him,” Glenda said. “He might be out a week—who knows.”

  “Not me,” Granny said. “I never did know.”

  Supper cooked on the stove. The smell had grown strong and smelled ready to be dished. I knew and Glenda knew that Granny felt bad eating in front of people, any people, even kin, but Glenda had to say something.

  “Would you eat, Granny?”

  “Oh, no, no,” she said, and stood up with her head shaking. “No, I believe I eat best on what I cook myself. My diet, you understand. My diet which I need to run along home and fix. Y’all just let Red know what I told you. The grass out there sure does look fine, Shug.”

  When the doors to the movie house flung open Glenda and me were carried out by the crowd. The crowd rushed us along caught between all those other people, bumped about and carried away like the chuck wagon amidst a cow stampede. This stampede here was only a short one and ended when folks spilled their different ways in the parking lot. The lot was new the same as the movie house, and topped by whitish gravel. The gravel showed well in the night. Dust lay beneath the gravel and cars took off fast and did kick the dust into the air and the dust rose in spurts behind wheels and stirred a boiling cloud, then settled.

  “Shug, wasn’t that girl behind us a girl you know?”

  “She was in my grade, is all.”

  “I believe, li’l sweet mister, that she was trying to get you to notice her.”

  “I saw her.”

  “When girls get moony about you, hon, you should be friendly back.”

  “Girls don’t get moony about me. Plus, I don’t care.”

  “She was squirmin’ like she liked you.”

  “Probably she had to pee and didn’t want to miss any movie.”

  Glenda had dressed herself nice in a light-red dress and tall white shoes and had her raven hair
covered by a red scarf. Men surely did take looks at her. When she walked she got that meat to shaking awful pretty on her bones. It was the sort of shaking that did appeal to most. Most would look, some would look away real sudden and clinch their gals, and plenty made whistle-lips and gestures that go with whistle-lips.

  The car Red had left behind was a Dodge. The Dodge was blue on the body, white on top. The Dodge was by years not all that old, but it had turned a high total of miles in those years and was not going to stand for too much more.

  When we got to the car Glenda just stood there, so I stood there, too, watching her. She smelled of tea, but I dug the smell of tea on her.

  “Well?” she went. “Well?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Well, what?”

  “Get the door for me, Shug. You hold the door for ladies.”

  “Oh.”

  “Didn’t you notice the man in the movie?”

  “Uh-huh.” I pulled the door open and held it wide for her. “But he was, uh, like a rich, rich man—I knew those types did this shit.”

  “You should, too, Shug.”

  I went around and got in, slid into the passenger seat, and she had her cigarette pack in her hand and again went, “Well?”

  I remembered this part from the movie. Her lighter was on the seat. I took the pack from her, shook two smokes loose, stuck them in my mouth and scratched a flame from the lighter. I puffed and puffed to get both smokes burning good, then handed one to her.

  I said, “There you are, madam.”

  Glenda liked that. She grinned and snickered.

  “Shall we go?” she said.

  The Dodge had that row of buttons on the dash where you pushed a button to change gears on the car. That style of shifting gears seemed funny to us both. She took the first hill slow, then swung onto a dirt road that would make for a roundabout back way to the house. She goosed the gas then and her scarf flapped and snapped in the wind. The dirt road had ruts across it but she kept the gas pedal down, so some ruts we hit and bounced, but there were plenty we sailed over smooth, too.

  “I’m gonna stop here, hon. I like the man to drive.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Get behind the wheel and see.”

  I got out and went around and she slid over to let me take the wheel.

  “I punch D, right?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  I just could reach the gas pedal good. I did not steer us too straight but I did miss the ditches on either side. Glenda poured herself some tea, shook fresh smokes from the pack for her and me, then handed me mine burning. I clenched it with the hand high on the steering wheel. I guess I drove slow, too slow, and seemed a boy, a boring boy driver.

  Glenda eased over and sat where a date sits when her boyfriend is at the wheel. She scooted in snug to me. She put an arm across my shoulders. She kissed me on the cheek, mainly, but touching the mouth.

  “Faster wouldn’t scare me, hon.”

  I did okay going faster on the dirt road. Glenda laughed and squeezed my neck. I got up to a fair speed. Rocks kicked about under the car and made pings and thuds. She laid kisses on me a few times. Curves I took fine but full turns tested my steering. When we came to the main road, the hard road into town that ran to the bone orchard, I took it too fast and leaked wide in the turn, nearly to the far curb, then pulled on the wheel too hard the other way. Glenda slapped a hand on the wheel to help me get straight. We both had begun laughs of relief before the bubble lights of a cop flashed behind us.

  “Oops!” went Glenda. “Stay cool.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Don’t stop. Not yet. Don’t stop ’til you get in our drive.”

  Home was straight down the road. It took a minute more of steering, which went okay except when a car came at me and the car had big headlights aimed in my eyes. Glenda muttered something but not about my steering. I closed my eyes to the blinding lights and my body went still like I was trying to keep my balance like I thought keeping my balance would keep the car straight on the road.

  The bubble lights behind didn’t mess me up.

  The drive had been laid out to be maybe one hundred yards long, and curled. The drive ran through the heart of the bone orchard and had two clear ruts and a little stripe of regular dirt and grass ran between the ruts. The cop followed us right onto the drive and on up to the front of the house.

  Glenda said, “Don’t say a thing.”

  “Mom—the lights are on inside the house!”

  “Oh, crap,” she said. “Hit P for park.”

  The cop had got out of his car and had come to stand by ours by the time we got out. He was a cop from town who looked familiar. He’d been by before.

  He said, “What the hell was that back there at the corner?”

  Glenda said, “I dropped my cigarette and lost concentration for only that one second or two. Silly ol’ me.”

  “Uh-huh. But since the boy there was drivin’, that ain’t gonna work for an excuse.”

  “What do you mean, the boy was drivin’? Huh? That’s crazy.”

  “Mrs. Akins—don’t. You can put all the wings you want on that dog but it still ain’t goin’ to fly. I seen the boy drivin’, and that’s for certain.”

  “Oh, phooey,” she went. “I let Shug drive the last little bit home ’cause he has got to learn somehow. Isn’t that a fact? Boys have to learn some-how.”

  “Have you been drinkin’?”

  “Not especially.”

  The front house door was open to the screen and I saw Red ease up to where he could see and hear, then pretty quick he shoved out.

  He said, “Is that you, Herren?”

  “Hello, Red. You been bein’ good?”

  “Yup. What’s your problem with my wife?” Red came down the steps, no shirt on but his hair combed, and he had that calm way about him that I’d seen before and my legs got jittery. My heart revved high seeing him seeming so calm. He put his hands on his hips and tried to smile. “She didn’t mean nothin’.”

  “She can go,” Herren said. “Just, I don’t want to see nothin’ like that again. That sound fair, ma’am?”

  She said, “That’s a mighty fancy mustache you got.”

  “Thanks, ma’am, it catches crumbs real good.”

  Me and Glenda made it to the porch and stood there and kept touching our hands to each other.

  “Is your parole up?”

  “This fall.”

  “You workin’?”

  “Odd-job sort of stuff, ’round and about.”

  Glenda did take me by the hand about then, and lead me up the few steps of the porch and into the front room. I could hear fingernails tapping on the sink in the kitchen. The tapping sounds did sound upset.

  She said, “I’m afraid we stepped in it but good.”

  The cop car soon headed away and Red came inside. He turned at the screen door and watched until the cop had gone from sight.

  “He’s out of here,” he said.

  “Good,” Glenda said. “He seemed nice.”

  “Did he?” Red hit her flush just above her left eye. The scarf flew back and fell around her neck. She bent in half and spun away. He punched her in the back, grabbed her hair and jerked until her face pulled clear of her hands, and smacked her more, whipping her to and fro with his fingers spread, numerous sharp bony smacks. “You just nearly got that ‘nice’ cop killed, you know that? I ain’t takin’ another fall—so I’d’ve had to take fuckin’ Herren off the fuckin’ count, dig?”

  “Let her be,” I said, which I knew not to say, I knew not to speak up to him, not ever, but then I did. “I was drivin’.”

  Red had all the bad habits but still did seem a good athlete. He made moves as fast as a housefly moves. He hit me in the gut with a punch that dropped me towards the floor but did also manage to clout the back of my head before I reached bottom.

  “You punched him! Damn you!” Glenda raised her hands so her fingernails might save her, but Red grabbed her by
both wrists and shook and shook her.

  “Come here! Come here, you witch! You, too, fat boy.”

  I had spread a thick spittle of supper on the rug.

  He raised me by the neck and drug us to the kitchen, where he screamed, “Never draw no fuckin’ heat on me! Are you idiots?”

  The kitchen was stacked full with swag. The swag was soda, soda bottles in wooden cases, and the wooden cases stood in stacks from wall to wall in the kitchen. The back door could hardly be got to. The overhead light was blocked by an eclipse of swag. This swag amounted to around two hundred cases of soda, I would imagine, and several crates of other items with a value I could not guess.

  Basil stood next to the sink in a slump. Basil never liked to be around this side of Red. He did not care to be on hand whenever Red led a family boil-over.

  He said, “This’ll be out of your kitchen tomorrow night, Glenda. There’s a guy who’ll take all we got.”

  “Don’t tell her nothin’—she might let slip to the nice cop.”

  Her eye was rising, just at the eyebrow, even in the bad light flesh rose so I could see a blood egg rising, and as it rose it pulled the skin so her eye took on a sorry lumped shape. Her nose was walloped an ugly kind of rosy and her top lip swollen, but no blood spilled that I saw. She did try not to cry but could not keep a few leaks from running.

  A strange something had happened to me that night and I looked off from her swelling and trying not to cry and let myself loose at him. I came loose from sense and did try to rush the man, but he pushed me hard to the floor and laughed.

  “I would’ve slapped you, boy, but shit splatters.”

  She took a swipe at him and he clamped claws on her nipples, clamped truly mean, and twisted until she sagged and moaned and fell away snuffling.

  I rushed him again. He shoved me up against the fridge easy as tossing a pillow. I raised my hands as fists, trembling fists. The stacks of swag seemed to be taking his side, edging close, backing him up.

  “Oh yeah, baby! You’re thinkin’ of hittin’ me now, ain’t you, fat boy? Think you’ve got to where you’re ready? Huh?” Each time he said huh he smacked my head backwards so it thumped the icebox door. “Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Oh yeah, baby, you want to hit me! Hit Daddy! Huh? Come on with it, boy. Hit Daddy! I mean it, come on. Huh? Don’t want to? Huh? Got your dukes ready, boy, so swing at me. Come on, come on. Huh? Huh?”