The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  CARL’S BAD leg looked like a sausage link that had got shoved to the back of the fridge and forgot about ’til it was no good. The leg had lost a chunk down low, in the calf part, and seemed withery above and below the crater left where the chunk belonged. The crater skin had a deep darkness. The withery skin looked to be a solid scar. The leg was withery with a chunk gone but did still move, it did move but not too good, so Carl hopped some when he walked.

  “Pogey bait,” he said, answering a kid question I had put to him. “Candy was called ‘pogey bait’?”

  “Huh. Like, ‘Let’s eat pogey bait’?”

  “Aye, aye.”

  Me and Glenda had drove out to see him at the Akins place and the heat chased us into the yard under the shade trees. The house there was tiny to where two or three the same size could be stuffed inside a real house. I do not know who built a house to be that tiny size. The roof was shingled by gray tar shingles and the walls were shingled the same. Several items that did not work anymore rusted or rotted here or there in the yard and five loose chickens murmured and pecked at the dirt. Bare dirt patches showed between grassy places in the yard and if wind came along the grass would ripple.

  Glenda said, “I am sure you’ll heal fine, just fine.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  Carl sat on a wood chair leaned against a mimosa tree, drinking beer, wearing green Marine Corps pants with the cloth of one leg cut away so the messed-up leg hung out in the open air. His skin had picked up a yellow tint from a bug he had caught that got in his blood and spread that color, especially to his face. The yellow tint made his eyes seem bluer. His hair was blond to the edge of white. He did not wear a shirt and had become thin. The dog tags for when you’re killed and they need to know the name of your body dangled shiny to his chest. He smoked many many no-filter cigarettes. On the dirt next to his chair he had started stacking empty beer cans, arranging them to stand just so, trying, I imagine, to build himself a tall welcome-home stack of empties.

  I asked, “What was it like?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “I will? When?”

  “When they send you.”

  Glenda and me sat there on the grass near him and she looked shook by his wounds, shook hard and made sad. The lump over her eye had sunk back flat but wrong colors showed yet along her brow. I could tell she might weep. She poured and poured from her silvery thermos. When she tossed back tea she turned her face sideways towards the woods. The woods squeezed close at the very edge of the yard on three sides and stood there glum like a crowd that had patience and more patience but was not so sure they ever would be entertained.

  Glenda said, “I’ll pitch in to help Granny with the food, I guess. It ought to be near ready.”

  The heat made eyes droop even in the shade. I fell back slow and looked up. The pink parts of the mimosa called out to hummingbirds, called out something good, and a pair of hummers went ffft! ffft! from one pink part to the next, stabbing their noses in, draining the juice. All the way up past the limbs through the tree and into the sky, far up into the blue, a hawk prowled on the hot breezes, wings held wide and stiff, prowling in a silent circle for creatures of the type it liked to kill.

  I heard Glenda and Granny fussing about salt.

  I sat up and Carl had a smoke going and was leaned sideways adding another empty to his stack. A pyramid, I think. His fingers worked calm and steady.

  “You reckon you’ll still like giggin’ frogs and all that stuff?”

  “If there’s a pond I can get to, I will.”

  “Hell, I know plenty, Carl.”

  “Do you? That’s bad fuckin’ news for frogs then, ain’t it?”

  The food came out of the house in a black kettle. Glenda carried the kettle. The food was what Carl favored and had missed: navy beans and ham over cornbread with a squirt of hot sauce. Granny followed along behind Glenda, bringing cornbread, bowls, and spoons. She walked in that very careful way she did walk when a little bit drunk. Both of them appeared to be softened and made moist by the heat in that tiny kitchen with the oven on.

  “Start shovelin’ it,” Granny said. Her words wobbled loose from her mouth with so few teeth to cut edges on them. Sometimes her words only came kind of close to sounding like what she wanted to say. “There’s gobs and gobs to eat, so y’all pull your spoons and start to shovelin’.”

  The chickens bounced up from the dirt when we pegged beans at them. Their heads jerked and their feathers fluffed as they bounced and their claws paddled frantic in the air. Spoons worked nice to flip the beans. Carl would say, “Incoming!” and me and him would pull back on our spoons loaded with beans and peg the chickens. We kept them bouncing. The chickens bounced and seemed to become things of a different shape in the air, suddenly puffy and fattened scared things, and they came down with their legs running hard before they hit ground and their heads spun like their necks were rubber bands, but they did not cluck off out of range. They acted the way cartoons act. Cartoons you could smell, and peg with beans.

  “Glad you’ns’re enjoyin’ them beans,” Granny said. She had stretched out on a white blanket in shade next to Glenda, and did seem drunk. “Does good for my heart seein’ how you ’preciate them beans, son.”

  “Yup,” Carl said. He held his bowl in his lap, and for a spell stared down at the leavings, the few white beans and dried juice. Then he spoke, the words coming with spaces between them. “Funny… what you… think… you miss.”

  “I don’t expect I’d miss beans,” I said. “Ice cream—I could see missin’ that. Winkeyes.”

  “You don’t know what you’d miss, Shug.” An airplane, the passenger kind, passed overhead, a silver dot high in the blue, and made that sad sound in the sky, that sort of sad hum from a thing far away and going farther that makes your chest leak air and feel hollow. “It might be candy corn, or maybe matchbooks from the pancake house that you’d have in your head all the time. Some silly thing your head decides is important and misses. A picture of your dog. Your old baseball mitt. There’s no knowin’ which silly thing, neither. Not before it happens.”

  The sun had gone out west, and sunlight came back our way at a slant and threw shadows that stretched longer. Slanted light and long shadows and the gurgle of a beer can draining. Little poot-poot sounds did also occur, poot-poot sounds Glenda made dozing on the white blanket in the long shadows.

  Glenda wore jeans washed pale and her legs flopped apart in a V as she dozed, and the pale jeans rode up her ankles some, laying her white white skin out open to the air.

  In sleep she had often shoved her way into my dreams and got in there and set me dreaming weird pictures during plenty of nighttimes. The weird dreams happened elsewhere, elsewhere from places I knew. I guess most dreams happened near the equator because Glenda was dressed for heat in each and every one. She loped across acres of sand wearing little pieces of cloth and got girly-girl in the short water, kicking her feet the way she did, tossing off big grins and wild laughs. I was somewhere behind her, usually. Somewhere behind but close behind. Coconuts and bananas and foods such as that were littered about and easy to get. She jumped around and cut up on the sand, kicking in the short water, dressed for heat, giving me impressions that saddled good feelings on me that rode my thoughts past the end of the dreams and on into the true bullshit of the next day.

  Sometimes she swam in the waves naked but never would leave the water.

  “Say, listen here, Shug—why don’t you throw your feet thataway towards the house there, then fetch ’em back this-away carryin’ me a couple more beers, huh? In fact, let’s make that a order.”

  I did do the order. Not so many beers were left if his thirst hung on. I fetched back the two cold beers he ordered me after, and while I did that Basil spun from the rock road and into the drive. This was some other car he drove. A Mercury of such size people called them battleships. They often would waddle like an ocean rolled under them. This one was a wore-out black color. Red
’s cowboy boots dangled from a back window, and Basil wheeled on past the Dodge and Granny’s rattly Ford wagon in the drive and onto the yard, coming to where we sat. The tires crunching across the yard and the bellowing engine flushed the chickens towards the woods, then the Mercury skidded to a stop a foot or two shy of the mimosa tree.

  Basil came springing from the battleship grinning, his fine white teeth on parade, and came quick over to Carl and kissed the crown of his head. Carl’s hair was short and limp, and Basil roughed the hair up after the kiss. Then he did clamp Carl’s head in a headlock, but a softish headlock, and said, “You had us worried, stud.”

  “Glad to know it.”

  “You really had us worried.”

  “Worried’s not so bad to be.”

  “There’s worse, I reckon. I really did miss your silly ass, studly. Really did.”

  “That so? Missed my ass, huh? Now, what is your name again?”

  “Yuck. Yuck. Let’s get a good look-see at your boo-boo.”

  I handed them each a can of beer. Granny and Glenda startled up on the white blanket and scooted closer to the tree. They put fire to cigarettes. The chickens calmed down fast and went back to mumbling and pecking the dirt nearby. Red’s boots began to stir some, hanging from the Mercury window.

  “He has to hop,” I said. “But not that much.”

  “Jesus,” went Basil. He knelt before the bad leg. He held his hand above the crater but did not touch. “Je-sus! Oh, baby—what the fuck was it that got you?”

  There came a noise from the battleship where Red cleared his throat. Yonder in the woods but close some crows got excited cawing the sundown news to other crows who did then caw back with more versions. A heavy glob of spit flew from the back window and landed loud. The long shadow laid down by the tiny house had fell in amongst other shadows and got lost in the crowd, now just part of the overall darkening.

  Carl said, “Here’s your chance, Ma—tell ’em.”

  When Carl said Ma, Ma meant Granny. Granny swelled, satisfied and pleased that he left the telling to her. She inflated a bit. She got bigger. She held a long cigarette and used it to point to parts of Carl’s bad leg while she spoke.

  She said, “This was in a bushy area. They was in bushes low down on some mountain that was numbered, and the heat they have over there is mighty mean and had got to kickin’ ass on the boys purty awful. Carl had turned to this other boy—what was his name?”

  “Detratto.”

  “That’s it. Detratto. I-talian boy. So Carl turned to him and asked, ‘Detratto, got any salt tablets?’ Then here come a whoosh, but he just barely heard it comin’. Or maybe he never did hear it, only he decided he must have later on. He still ain’t sure about hearin’ the whoosh, but the heat and the bush are fact, and also there was bugs and other crap. So he turned and asked the I-talian boy the question about salt, and the answer he got was he woke up on a boat in the ocean. A boat that has got a hospital on it. A hospital just like one on land. But on a boat. What is that name you called your britches?”

  “Utilities.”

  Glenda raised her thermos and poured a full cup. Red’s face came to the window and leaned out to listen.

  “I’ll stick with ‘britches.’ His britches had got set on fire when the whoosh-bomb landed. The fire caused all this mess—here—and this mess here. He was knocked out cold so he didn’t feel the fire, not then. The exploding part of the bomb tore the meat out of the leg, here, and left him this hole. See how deep it is? Touch a finger to it. They never found none of the meat—right, son?”

  “I don’t expect nobody looked, Ma.”

  “Oh, baby,” went Basil. “But you can walk, can’t you?”

  “He walks okay,” I said, “but with a hop. Doctor says he’ll hop less over time.”

  The car door opened and out came Red slapping at his face to bring himself all the way awake. He edged behind Carl and stood there. Him joining the group changed the feel of it the way one lit match does suddenly change the feel in a hay barn.

  He said, “So what happened to the dago? How’d he come out?”

  “Worse.”

  “Uh-huh. I always knew you was the lucky dog.” Red then by God squatted and grabbed on to Carl and did give him a longer hug than I thought he had it in him to give anybody, ever. His big arms added quite a bit of crush in with the hug. “What kind of dope they got you on?”

  “Pills.”

  “What kind?”

  “Three kinds.”

  “They give you plenty?”

  “They give me plenty, but not enough.”

  “I hear that,” Basil said.

  Red rubbed Carl’s hair until it laid flat.

  “You need to get out of this shithole. You need to hoot’n holler. Feel like you could run around some?”

  “Might could, I guess.”

  “No orders against it?”

  “No orders I listen to.”

  “Well then, we could run on out to Murl’s, at the junction. Or mosey on down to the Echo Club.”

  “Hold it, man,” said Basil. “Hold it.” He turned to Carl. “Both those joints feature dancin’, stud. You gonna feel okay watchin’ folks dancin’ and shit? In your shape, I mean?”

  Carl lifted his dog tags to his mouth and nipped at them with his teeth like he was checking if they were gold and they weren’t so he let them fall back to his chest.

  “I never did dance.”

  “Then throw some clothes on,” Red said, laughing. “Get spruced and we’ll roll.”

  When Carl stood I went to help him. The beer had added up and that made him need to hop more. He leaned on me heavy. At the door, he said, “That’ll do, pardner.”

  Nightbugs had started scratching out their nightbug songs. Red and Glenda stood by the tree and he had a claw on her butt. She held her silvery cup while looking to the woods, which were black. Granny laid flat on the white blanket smoking. Basil had sat on the dirt with his toothbrush in his mouth and was trying to build Carl’s pyramid of empties into a new design, something lower that swayed less and stood stronger. I sat to help him.

  Glenda said, “I better nap a bit, Shug, don’t you think?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Then we’ll get along on home.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  When Carl came out from the tiny house he was wearing regular clothes. Red went over and gave him a shoulder to lean on. He thumped his one claw on Carl’s gut, thumping out a little peppy drum music.

  “Bring your pills?”

  “A few.”

  “All right! Ma, you best start roundin’ up bail money, ’cause your boys’re goin’ tonkin’ tonight!” He gave a tug on Carl and shouldered him over to the Mercury and helped him inside. “Come on, Basil, let’s ride.”

  Basil flung an arm around me and wrestled me close. The thing he had made of Carl’s tower of empties stood firm, okay, but stood only two levels tall and not much worth noticing. He yanked my head to his mouth. The toothbrush poked at my cheek when his lips moved. He whispered, “Don’t be hard to find tomorrow.”

  WHEN I got caught it was in the rain. Rain had built sudden little ponds in people’s yards and fresh shallow creeks to race along driveways and sidewalks. The rain fell and fell feeling warm, big loose drops falling warm, raising fingerlings of mist from paved streets. The drops busted heavy and plentiful on everything and kept up a constant racket. The sudden ponds and creeks the rain built were new problems for me to deal with, problems to leap over or slog through, to get at the next house with dope, which was a tidy average house on a street below the square.

  This errand was run in the Mercury.

  Basil said, “I’ll bet ol’ studly won’t even remember her name once he comes to.”

  The racket from the rain had him shouting.

  “If he’s lucky,” said Red, “her face’ll be the same as her name—forgot.”

  The streets ran deep and the car drove feeling now and then like a rock skip
ping across a stream. The glass fogged right away and all I could see was a droopy gray color rolling by outside the windows. I sopped with water yet only from running to the car. We each did leak some on the car seats and make puddles on the floor.

  “She’s a gal whose name don’t matter much, anyways. Not even to her own self.”

  “That’s why we put them together.”

  “He ain’t even gonna remember, ol’ son.”

  “So? So listen, we’ll tell him all about it! Dig? And baby, the way we run it down to him’ll be way way better’n what did happen.”

  “Sure! Sure. Like, she was a Mexican beauty!”

  “Man, oh man, the gal had big ol’ tits with tasty pink nipples!”

  “Of course, all she wore was only a pearl necklace and bikini britches and God damn if she didn’t look a twin to Raquel fuckin’ Welch.”

  “There you are, daddy-o. Like that. We’ll feed the hero a memory along those lines. Feed him one he’ll want to keep.”

  “Uh-huh. Instead of one that’ll always make him shiver and shake if it comes to mind.”

  “Nope,” said Red. “Nope. He don’t need no more of those.”

  The battleship wobbled from all the water running against the tires. In the backseat I had a deviled ham sandwich. Glenda had trimmed the crust away so this was a soft easy sandwich to eat. The deviled ham was lunch and a lunch that went down fast and was not enough but was all I had. I got a slug of Basil’s beer to rinse my throat.

  “What was that number?” Red said. He looked at his sheet of paper, all wrinkled and spotted, then out the windshield. “Whoa, daddy-o. We just went past the fuckin’ place.”

  I wiped a hole in the fog to look out from. The houses were okay houses and looked to have each been built by the same person in the same way.

  “Which house?”

  “The house right there, fat boy. The one with the li’l wood wagon full of flowers and shit in the yard. See the wagon?”

  “Uh-huh.”