The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  “Ol’ son, ol’ son,” said Basil. “Don’t bust him up to where we can’t use the kid. Don’t bust him up—we’ll be soon needin’ the kid.”

  “Did I fuckin’ ask you? Did I?”

  Basil held his hands up in surrender.

  “Now, don’t bother whippin’ me, Red—I’m already whipped. Remember? I came in here whipped. No need to whip me.”

  “Aw, man,” went Red. “Aw, man—let’s split.”

  “There’s a notion.”

  “Let’s split and run wild.”

  “I’m sold, ol’ son.”

  Red turned to Glenda. He breathed real fierce so his nostrils flexed and his lips curled like he wanted to spit some shit he’d been waiting all his life to spit in her face. She did not raise her face to him.

  “Listen here—I’m goin’ out now, see, and I’m goin’ out to bag my limit. So fuck you. And your fat boy? That tub of shit ain’t never goin’ to get to no age, ever, where he wants to mess with me, dig? The day ain’t goin’ to come when he can whip me for you. Not now, not ever. So fuck the both of you.”

  She and me slumped to the floor there and sat breathing hard. The bad light helped us not to look at each other just yet. We heard the screen door slam. I hated him solid that night. We heard car doors slam. Her dress had lost two buttons. We heard the engine roar and the car rattle away down the drive.

  “I guess I’ll fetch ice,” I said. “If there is any.”

  “No, no, hon—you sit. I’ll fetch the ice. You just sit. Mom’ll fetch the ice this time.”

  THE NEXT place was a house. Wherever dope beckoned from I would be sent. The house was part of a nest of houses down the highway, a village called Wamper, and hung back from the street it was on. The path to the house from the street called for sixty paces, easy. The house had been made of bricks, with two levels, and a yard lamp in front and a pretty rock patio to the side that also included a brick barbecue pit. Old trees laid out plenty of shade and the yard did also have flowers showing bright colors along the edges.

  “You just walk on in like you belong there,” Red said. “Walk in like you’re best buddies with the kid that lives there.”

  “He’ll be there, though.”

  “He’s sick. He ain’t goin’ to say much to you, and even if he did say somethin’ he can’t do nothin’. He’s sick.”

  “That’s the whole deal,” Basil said. “The kid’s sick, Shug, so you want to get in there quick before he uses all them painkillers they give him. Find what gives him relief and steal it.”

  I don’t guess I said anything to that.

  Red looked at his sheet of paper that had addresses and other news typed up and down on it.

  “Patty reckons there should be plenty, too. They just checked the kid out last night.”

  Basil drove back and forth twice so I could see the house and the way to it and the ways to get inside it and set the map in my mind. Not far along the street, neighbor kids played army in the woods that grew beside a puny creek that cut between houses. They carried those play rifles that spouted corks and play hand-grenades and were busy laying ambushes in the weeds for each other and did not see us pass. That day the car was still the tan Impala I dug, and Basil had tried to get me jolly and josh me along on this errand by driving fast, making the engine growl, showing me how to speed-shift from second gear to fourth, until Red said, “That’s right, dipshit, get us pulled over on our way to steal dope so the fuzz’ll know for a fact we were around here.”

  On past the creek and the kids playing war, Basil turned around, faced again towards the brick house, and put the Impala at idle. I could see those kids in the weeds, flat on the ground, about to spring a trap on the kids that were shuffling along on patrol. Past them I saw a yellow car pull from the drive at the brick house. It came towards us.

  “Put your head down. Heads down…. Okay, it’s gone.” Red jerked me close to him as he could. “Listen, if you get jumped up in there, and maybe you could punch or kick some and get away, then okay, go ahead. But don’t stab nobody or nothin’ crazy.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You don’t need to,” Basil said. “You don’t need to be stabbin’ over a B-and-E charge, not at your age.”

  “Don’t hit ’em in the head with a brick or nothin’, neither—you never do know with that stuff, see, how the skull will take it, and you got no priors.”

  “Plus you’re a juvie.”

  “You won’t get much but maybe a mean talkin’-to. They’ll talk mean and try to throw a scare at you and see if it sticks.”

  “I don’t know about this,” I said. “I don’t feel so hot.”

  “Bullshit, bullshit,” went Red. “Bull-shit.”

  “Loosen your wig, Shug. Really. This ain’t no biggie.”

  “And get goin’. Get out, and get your flabby ass goin’.”

  They gave me a satchel to tote. The satchel had a strap that hooked over my shoulder, and the pouch part said on the side “Grit.” This would make me seem to be out selling Grit, that country sort of newspaper containing many country sayings and farmer facts and such, door to door. I made the satchel into saddlebags in my thoughts. My horse had broke a leg in the desert but the gold dust remained in the saddlebags. I walked on out of the desert in the blazing sun and past the soldiers in the creek and the couple of houses between the creek and the brick house.

  A cat sat stretching in the yard and looked at me and said something. Its mouth opened showing pink and a noise came loose. I nodded, Howdy, cat. The big shade from the old trees felt sweet to walk under. I had a strong sweat running and the shade fell over me feeling the good way a surprise breeze feels.

  A black motor scooter leaned against the side of the brick house, beside the paved drive, the sort of scooter you stand on and has a horn that makes yips instead of honks. Back next to the garage the nose of a white boat poked out from below a green tarp, and another cat rested in the shadow under the boat. The barbecue pit let out a smell from meat drippings burned and sauce scorched during family get-togethers, a sort of happy-ashes smell.

  The side door was not locked. The hinges squeaked forth a sound of croaking, a long yawning croak.

  “Grit?” I said, like I hoped nobody would hear. “Grit for sale.”

  That door yawned open to let me into the kitchen. The kitchen was spick-and-span, all in order, kept cleaner than my ears. Jugs and canisters and a bread box sat on the counter to hold stuff from sight. A cuckoo clock did tick-tick-tick high on a wall. An open doorway took me into another room where a jumbo table of wood stood, and the wood glowed from polish, surrounded by chairs that matched the wood and the glow. A bunch of doilies, a white kind, were spread about on the table, but spread about on purpose, spread to spots they were meant to rest on.

  All kinds of nice things showed themselves in that house. I figured I knew from TV shows that in a house of this nature the kid would have his own room upstairs, maybe even with a separate john. Thick carpet covered the steps on the stairs. The rail was wooden and thick, with tracks and grooves running up it in a design I did not get but thought handsome. The stairs elbowed left halfway up.

  At the top step I heard the kid breathing. His breaths came with a crumpling quality at the edge, like his breaths were wadded first, then choked down. The breaths sounded at a steady slow pace and pulled me straight to the sick kid, who was a bald teenager, I imagine, with skin the color of fog, taking breaths he had to crumple and wad to swallow. His bed had got rich with pillows but he did use just two, both plumped behind him with the others tossed around the bed.

  The pills, and the other stuff, the liquid stuff, sat on a side table in plain sight. I went directly to them and stood between the dope and the sick kid. He had an airplane on a string dangling from the ceiling near a corner, the two-winged style of plane. He had his own TV over on top of a chest of drawers. A trio of ribbons that are given out as awards for various good activities hung from tacks or some such beside a wall mirror that
had photos wedged into the frame.

  The sick kid I think knew I stood there. His bald head, way bald, would move a little, and his eyes would roll open and point at me, see me and stay on me, then the awakeness would sink away from his eyes and they would be on me still but not seeing me, then fall shut. I picked up the pills and gave the bottle a shake and here came those eyes again, those big sick eyes set in that way bald head, then the awakeness sinking and the eyes falling shut and those breaths he fought so hard to swallow.

  I tapped four pills from the bottle and laid them in clear view on the side table, but I had to be sure Red got plenty. I guess I did then take the rest of the doctor-ordered dope, did take it all, pill and liquid, and stuffed the Grit satchel.

  After I walked most of the paces down the drive that yellow car pulled in and rolled up to me and paused. The mother, I suppose, with a bottle of milk and whatnot in a grocery sack beside her. Her window was down and I spoke first, “Grit, ma’am?”

  “We don’t take Grit.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve sold quite a few.”

  “Your day is made,” she said, and let up on the brake and rolled to near the side door.

  I don’t know if she looked or did not look, but I know I ran. My legs made the choice more than my head and I did beat feet and beat hard out into the street, past the creek and those kids in the weeds at war, racing to the tan Impala.

  “Don’t run!” Red said. He said that as I jumped inside the car. “Don’t run—unless somebody’s right behind you. Is somebody right behind you?”

  “Might be,” I said. I was in a stage of melting down, sweat gushing. “The mother came home.”

  Basil gunned the engine and took us away from there at a welcome rate of speed. He raced us down the hard road with tires squealing, then ducked us away on a dirt backroad nobody looking would look for us on.

  “Now, if somebody’s right behind you, then of course you run, dig?”

  “Run like hell, too.”

  “Otherwise, don’t run.”

  “I ain’t feelin’ too good.”

  “Don’t be a puss. It’s just the jitters nippin’ at you, fat boy. Grab you a beer there and kick on back. We done got the goodies, and we done got gone, too.”

  The sheet of paper Red carried said the next errand should be run at this house in West Table, a scrunched small white place with many vines clung to the walls, over near the city park. When I walked up the footpath to the house I could smell full ashtrays through a screen window. I could hear the noise of somebody sleeping a sleep that was not smooth, but a sleep that contained hemming and hawing and sputters.

  The second door to this house set clear around to the back. I toted the Grit satchel and walked in like I had heard a voice invite me inside to make a sale. The first room was the mud room, a tight area where garden tools and muddy galoshes were kept. Then came the kitchen. This kitchen was of the sort I had experienced and the implements and foods and odors there did not stump me as to what was what. A block of frozen meat sat on the sideboard thawing, pork, I believe.

  The sleeping sounds guided me. The sick person at this house had been laid down in the parlor. A bed looked wrong in that room but that is where it had been put. This sick person seemed to be a very very old man who I’d guess was shrinking fast. His skin wrapped loose around him. The hair had also been culled from his head, and the skin lay pale and thin on his skull so that I could see the veins clear as cracks in a windshield.

  A table near his head had a lamp on it and tissues, and all kinds of medical dope assembled there.

  My thought then went: Tough in the morning, tough ’til lights-out.

  His eyes opened sudden, and he said, “No game today, Bill?”

  “Uh—we won,” I said. “Purty easy.”

  “It’s good of you to leave harvest and be here.”

  “No sweat.”

  “I’ve somehow got on the wrong ship.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “I’m on the wrong ship. The wrong ship. No game, Bill?”

  A voice behind me shocked me silly, saying, “Go on and speak up to him, boy. Speak up.”

  The voice went with a tiny delicate old white-haired lady.

  “I heard him through the window, and thought he called me, ma’am,” I said. “He thinks I’m somebody else, that must be why he called me.”

  “It ain’t the first time,” she said. “It ain’t the second or third, neither. Bill was his brother.”

  “Just like in Japan,” the man said. “Get a stout ’un, Bill.”

  “Tell him you’re Bill—he’s been callin’ for Bill all day.”

  “This is Bill,” I said, sort of loud. “I think we’re on the right ship now.”

  “I felt I’d got on the wrong ship.”

  “Naw, listen, this is Bill—it’s the right ship.”

  I don’t know what he thought of what I told him but his eyes closed.

  “He might sleep,” she said. She looked me up and down, then smiled. “Would you eat a cookie?”

  “I could.”

  “Come to the kitchen.”

  She led away from the parlor, and I spun to the dope there on the table, then did a swift rake of all the bottles and such, a swift rake of dope into the Grit satchel. The satchel tinkled.

  The cookies were oatmeal with raisins and I stuffed down three or four in a short time. She offered more.

  “I’ve got to get,” I said. “Papers to sell.”

  “I’d take a Grit from you, boy. You’re such a nice boy to play along with him.”

  The sick man began then to call for Caleb, asking if Caleb was here, where is Caleb, oh, Caleb.

  She said, “I don’t know who that Caleb is he calls for. That one’s a puzzle. I don’t recall any Caleb.”

  “I could be Caleb, too,” I said. “I’ll step back there just a minute.”

  “That’d be nice if you would.”

  I returned to stand beside the sick person.

  “Caleb got here,” I said. “He’s on the right ship with you.”

  “It’s the wrong ship, wrong, wrong.”

  I opened a couple of the pill bottles and shook piles of the pills onto the table. They rattled a good deal.

  “Who is that?” he said.

  “Caleb and Bill are on the ship.” I looked at the other bottles in the satchel and could not say what they were, but I made a guess and set one down and left it there and hoped it was the bottle he would need most.

  “Is it you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  As I passed through the kitchen the old lady reached for my arm and said, “I’d take that Grit now.”

  “Oh. Geez. I’ll have to run to the boss’s stack and fetch more. I ran out. Wait for me, would you? I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  My heart took to hopping so it bounced against my teeth. I waited to be found out. By the sun it was time to eat, but Basil kept driving in circles to nowhere special, and Red kept looking into the Grit satchel. I waited to be beat when I was found out. The dope I had snatched from the old man amounted to a letdown for Red. Him and Basil were high on tastes of the dope from the brick house, plus beer they pulled from a sack, and kept looking at me, baffled.

  “They don’t seem to pack these bottles full as they should,” Red said. “There’s lots of air in there.”

  Basil said, “That’s how them doctors can go skiing and good stuff like that. Visit Hawaii.”

  “Heaven help that old man,” Red said, “ ’cause he’s been kickin’ the gong around real heavy in there. Dig this, Basil—there ain’t but nine reds, here, and half a bottle of punch.”

  “No shit? Whew, but would I like to be as fucked up as he must be about now.”

  “I took what was there,” I said. “An old woman was home, too, you know.”

  “Think she’s been poppin’ some?”

  “No!”

  “What’re you drivin’ at, then?”

  “May
be she hides some. From him.”

  “Huh. I guess that could be.”

  My gut gave out wiry, boing-boing noises by the time Basil pulled into a driveway a block from the town square. The house there was a shotgun shack, but not run down to junk yet. Paint hadn’t chipped too bad, and the porch did not sag. There were lawn chairs on the dirt yard, and a Ford Fairlane was parked in front of us. A woman in a white uniform and soft white shoes came to the door, then waved to us.

  “She’s home,” said Red. “Let’s visit.”

  She came out to meet us, and her and Red kissed. On the mouth. Kissed on the mouth, and he patted her butt, and she clung to his neck and I saw their tongues touch.

  “I’ll bet you’ve been busy,” she said. She stood taller than Red. Her hair was plain ol’ everyday brown and wrapped in a knot. “I’ll bet you’ve brung over somethin’ good.”

  “Yes, ma’am, the wingding may now start.”

  “By y’all’s eyes I’d say the wingding started a while ago.”

  “Just layin’ a base, Patty,” Basil said. He wore a grin that did not seem to be grinned over any certain thing. “Somethin’ to build on.”

  Other people were inside the house. A radio was turned on, news, or something that was just talk. Basil sat on a lawn chair and popped a beer. Red and her went at it some more, mewing and grabbing.

  All I did was stand there.

  Patty looked like a bug bite compared to Glenda.

  They got awful familiar in front of me. When they broke from their clinch Red called me to him with a hand wave.

  “Here’s a couple of bucks, boy.” I took the money he gave and it was as he said, exactly a couple of bucks. “You need to scoot yourself on home. Grown-up shit’s liable to happen.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah, and listen here—what is it we done today?”

  “Men stuff?”

  “Good for you, you got it.” He patted my back as if he did not know I hated him. “Now beat it, boy. Scoot back to the house.”