The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  “We’ll wait up around the corner, there. Be quick.”

  “Ain’t it still rainin’ too hard?”

  “No, it ain’t.”

  “Is so! I mean—look.”

  “It’s just fuckin’ water, tub. Just water, and we ain’t got forever, dig? We can’t wait and wait ’til it suits your candy-ass just per-fect.”

  “And look closer this time, Shug. I do believe that last ol’ boy somehow tricked you out of some mighty good dope. Just ’cause they’re sick don’t mean they ain’t sneaky. They can be sneaky. So look closer.”

  The car door opened and Red held it wide with a booted foot while rain blew in and slapped him and me both. He turned to look me full and hard in the face while drops blew in and busted on us rat-a-tat-tat, and this look between us held a spell.

  “Get.”

  It seems this victim saw me coming. I came up the creek running down the drive, the water deeper than that knob-bone in the ankle, then splashed sideways to the yard, which was a mud pond my feet sank into fast. The Grit satchel hung off my shoulder and flopped in the wind and the rain whipped on me with no sign of quit. I guess the sick person watched the whole time. I guess he saw my feet pull from the pond, sneakers hauling tracts of mud, then watched me kick and wiggle to shed the mud while that rain whipped and whipped on me. There would then be the next steps taken and more of the same.

  Instead I was in a hurricane hunting survivors from the shipwreck.

  Stuff floated away in all that water. Toys of two or three lightweight types and bright colors swept away along the street. Trees had bent low to hide from the beating. Flowers were trying to fall out of that wood wagon in the yard, their frazzled heads and long necks bent over the side crying uncle.

  Instead I was walking up the Mississippi River to stomp Mike Fink’s ass bloody and become his best friend.

  Around back the steps to the door were slick. The door was down the steps in a small square spot that seemed like a concrete sink. The door came right open and I guess the phone upstairs started dialing. Water lapped up to the heel of the door frame and tried to lap inside with me.

  When I moved, my feet squeaked. There was nothing dry on me and dripping drops hit the floor sounding like applause that came during the wrong part of the song. The room was plenty gloomy and smelled of the wet. There were puffy chairs and a couch and a thing that looked to be a bar made of barrels. A bar for leaning on to drink booze. The room lay quiet but for my drips and squeaks.

  I walked on tiptoes to stunt the squeaks. Across the floor three or four stairs rose to the next part of the house. Carpet had been spread on the steps. The carpet was the type that resembled shaggy mussed hair, but orange in color. When I paused standing on the carpet the applause of drops sounded faraway.

  A short hall went past a small kitchen. Voices could be heard but they had that perfect sound of voices on TV. The only light came from a room ahead of me and in such a dark storm shadows thrashed all around. I went towards the voices on TV. The carpet ended of a sudden, which I did not note in time. Drops from me hit the hardwood and the man heard the applause and looked up from his chair in front of the TV.

  “Grit, is it?” he said. He had on a plaid robe where most of the plaid was blue, and pale slippers. His hair laid close to his skull, short and fuzzy silver hair, and he wore black glasses. The TV show was a soap and he had a smoke going. “So you’re the Grit boy.”

  “I’m a Grit boy.”

  “Have it your way, kid. Tell me everything about Grit.”

  “What? You never seen a Grit, mister?”

  “I want to hear how you sell it. Your pitch. For instance, describe the journalistic merits of your publication.”

  There were several windows to the street but nothing to see besides the storm. Some medicine had been gathered on a stand clear on the far side of the man. Several bottles of the sort pills came in, or maybe a powder. Rain beat on the windows and shadows thrashed and the room seemed tight. Too tight to edge past him and grab the dope and edge past him again to get out and away.

  “You aren’t selling me, kid.”

  “Mister, you know Grit. Farmer things. Farmer jokes, stuff like that.”

  He wagged his head to make me think he was thinking about it. He held the cigarette raised to just beside his glasses so the smoke looked to be leaking from his ear.

  “Hmm. I’d say I already know plenty of farmer jokes.”

  “These are fresh.”

  “All farmer jokes are ancient, kid.”

  “These are printed fresh—okay? Okay? I’m goin’ to have to get along. I think I gotta get.”

  “In this downpour? There’s soup on the stove—would you bring me a bowl?”

  “What’s wrong with you that you can’t get it? Huh?”

  He mashed one butt and lit another. The ashtray was made in a horseshoe shape and held plenty of mashed butts. A tall white coffee cup sat on the side table next to his cigarette pack.

  “Cancer, kid. Cancer of the bone.”

  “Which bone?”

  “Jesus, kid—all of them. It gets all of them.”

  “Oh.”

  “With crackers. Crackers are in the cupboard above the toaster.”

  I had to get at that dope and get it to Red. I had to get this batch to keep from being beat. I couldn’t deal him another letdown. Even Basil had gotten cranky at me. This dope would have to be taken on the sly in some way I hadn’t thought of yet.

  “Is the soup hot?”

  “I prefer it just warm. A nice big bowl, kid.”

  Pictures of people who must have mattered to the man stood all over a shelf along the wall. A picture from a war hung above the shelf and showed soldiers atop a hill wrestling with a flag on a pole, trying to stand the pole so it stood straight in the mud. Down the wall there hung a cloth swatch inside glass and a frame, and on the cloth words had been sewn—“We Shall Gather on the Golden Shore.”

  “Where would the bowls be?”

  “The cupboard left of the sink. I like the yellow bowls best. Grab a bowl for yourself, kid.”

  “I didn’t get much lunch.”

  “Have some soup and crackers.”

  “It was practically nothin’ of a lunch.”

  “So have a big bowl of soup and crackers.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Bring mine first.”

  The soup was in a bright shiny pan on the stove. Just a thin streak of fat floated over the broth. I turned on the gas burner. The soup was chicken and noodles. Lots of chunks of chicken showed amidst the noodles. The fat started to blend. It seemed plenty warm in only a minute. I pulled the crackers down, scooped the man a bowl of soup and carried it back to him.

  “Now I’ll get mine.”

  “Get the door first. I just heard a car pull up.”

  “In this rain?”

  “You might as well get the door. It’s for you.”

  “For me?”

  “It’s the cops, kid.”

  “How?”

  “You are exactly like your description in The Scroll—don’t you read? I called them soon as I saw you.” He wiggled sideways in the chair and a pistol butt came into view. A hefty shiny pistol. “I thought I might have to shoot you, and I didn’t really want to. I wouldn’t say you need shooting—but you are in a mess of trouble.”

  I tried to flee by running out the way I snuck in. My feet thundered through the house and I splashed up the concrete steps and a heavy cop in a rain slicker stood there holding a billy club.

  He said, “You make me chase you in all this mud and shit and I’ll smack you silly. You hear me?”

  I just about did run anyhow, but stopped instead.

  “Call my mom.”

  “Don’t worry, boy, your mom’ll get called.” He grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me down the creek in the drive to the cop car. Another cop stood there and the one that had me said, “He didn’t run, at least.”

  “He didn’t, huh?” This other
cop was the one named Herren, but this time he was wet and not so kindly-seeming. The drops caught on his mustache and made it sag further so his mouth moved out of sight. “Ah, I know who this dumpling is, anyhow. Red Akins’s boy, ain’t you? Where is that rotten bum Red?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “You never have made no trouble before on your own, have you?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “So where’s Red?”

  I looked around at the rain that gushed over us all, and the sudden ponds and creeks, the acres of mud.

  “Playin’ golf, I reckon.”

  “Ain’t he cute?”

  “He’s real cute.”

  “See if he’s cute in cuffs.”

  The victim in blue plaid had come out on his front porch and stood where the roof covered him. He waved his cigarette at me. He shouted through the storm, “Thanks for the soup, kid!”

  Herren said, “Cuff the cute dumpling and throw him in the back.”

  I was spun around rough, my arms pulled behind me, the cuffs put on, and as they snapped shut, making that click that means it’s no use to fight, I knew I had been caught, and caught good, and at that exact second I felt my bones wilt and the meat and muscles of me go limp and sag.

  “Not here,” I said. “Red’s not here.”

  THEY ASKED me questions they knew I could not answer. Two of them did sit with me, one beside me on both sides. We sat that way in the front main room of the station. Windows in there reached from the floor to the roof and the roof was up a ways, so rain had a long spread of glass to break across and pour down. We sat along the wall on a wood bench that had been picked at and gouged by many many people passing time in rocky moods.

  “Does Red sell this stuff off to other assholes, too, or do him and Basil Powney hog it all for their own dumbshit sort of fun?”

  “I just wonder, how many of them pills is it a wild feller like you might swoller at one time?”

  “Where do they go to loaf these days?”

  All I ever did answer to either of them was, “Just get my mom.”

  She came into the station wet. She’d had to walk. Her raven hair was plastered by rain to her neck and face, and she was carrying an umbrella that had been ripped to start with and in the storm had become just a polished stick with some tatters on one end. Her feet were soaked and the weather had made a mess of makeup on her cheeks.

  She came straight to the bench where they had left me, shaking herself as she came, then slid close beside me.

  “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You know better than to say anything, right?”

  “I didn’t tell ’em nothin’.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. She pulled up her shirt showing her belly and wiped her face plain. “You’ve got to stand tough, sweet mister.”

  “I didn’t tell ’em nothin’.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t. Need a smoke?”

  “I guess.”

  She tapped one loose for herself also, and found a dry match and lit us up. She puffed and I puffed beside her until a small shared cloud was born over our heads and started to grow. The rain kept flying against the tall windows, making splat-splat sounds.

  “Aw, I guess I probably better go talk to the law about you and get it over with.”

  “Yeah, probably better.”

  She left the umbrella stick laying on the bench beside me. I sat next to the stick and smoked alone. I thought being hunched over smoking a cigarette might make me look to be seriously thinking some useful thought about my situation. I tried several times to truly puff up some useful thought but none did rise clear to me. I dropped the butt into the puddle at my feet.

  The rain began to lay down and quiet. The sidewalks had been flooded kind of clean. The rush of storm water raised the loose trash from the sidewalk and carried it whatever distance, and when the water drained the litter came to rest in the street in a whole new layout of trash. Worms had gushed up from the dirt alongside the curb and plenty fled from the soaked dirt onto the paved walk and laid there beached and gasping.

  Glenda and me walked away from the station in this quieter mood of rain. We walked together in the open like no rain fell at all. Already both soaked, there was no point trying to avoid the drops.

  She said, “I should’ve known whatever he had you out doin’ would surely be one wrong goddamn thing or other.”

  Every minute or two her hands raised to her head and raked all her fingers through her hair, raking it back from her face into a slick raven pile. Rain dripped from her long eyelashes. The blue of her eyes showed great against those long damp lashes.

  I said, “Wrong as hell.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I told you, ‘Men stuff.’ ”

  “That’s not tellin’ me, Shug.”

  “You knew what it meant.”

  “I certainly did not.”

  “Maybe not exactly. But, more or less, you knew.”

  A pickup truck splashed beside us with a sopping old hound dog standing in the bed. The dog and me caught each other’s eyes and the hound looked like he reckoned that at some other time him and me could be friends and yell at squirrels together. Even when the truck splashed off a good ways down the road he looked back at me.

  “You can’t ever let Red even wonder if you might rat on him, sweet mister. Not ever.”

  “I don’t rat.”

  “Please, please, listen—don’t let it flit across his brain that you might even think of rattin’ on him.”

  Robins had spotted the gasping worms on the sidewalks, and dived onto them to feast. Birds suddenly were whirling around in the air, diving and shoving each other out of the way on the paved walk, choking down lengths of big fat worms.

  “I didn’t tell ’em nothin’.”

  “Shug, these ex-cons, they really got a bad opinion on anybody that talks.”

  “I know that.”

  “Rats come in for awful rough treatment from them.”

  A couple of robins did get so lost in gorging on beached worms that they sat there feasting yet when I walked up, so I took the worms’ side and kicked at them, and when they popped into the air flapping I swung, too, but did not land with either the kicks or the punches.

  “I ain’t got no fuckin’ rat in me, Glenda. So drop it.”

  “I know you don’t,” she said. “I know. Just, we can’t ever let Red wonder if maybe you do.”

  “God, I hate him.”

  A car slowed in the street beside us. It was that Thunderbird, green, from the legendary era. The driver leaned to the passenger door and opened it. The car interior was a beautiful bright perfect white. The man called to us, “Lord Almighty, folks, come in from the rain. You’ll catch your deaths walkin’ out there.”

  The Thunderbird had the feel of laying in a fine soft bed with whitewall tires that somebody was driving smooth and sure. This car had special qualities I wouldn’t have known about to ask for. Somehow the Thunderbird seemed to instantly comb the bumps from the road ahead to keep the ride always gentle. It was a fabulous make of car. I never had been so high in the world.

  Glenda said, “I am so sorry. I truly am.”

  “About what?”

  “About us bein’ so drippin’ wet in your car. Wet all over your seats.”

  “Don’t worry about the seats,” he said. “People come first.”

  He had more size than I recalled. His hands on the wheel were big-knuckled and heavy and his wrists were stout and his shoulders burly. He showed many signs of being strong but not very young. His hairs were gray and had dwindled from his head a good deal. His face looked similar to lots of other faces in a crowd, but with deep creases from laughing and dark dark eyes. He dressed in the upright style, like a fella who always had managed to find a job.

  I leaned in from the backseat and asked, “Now, who is it you said you are again?”

  “Jimmy Vin Pearce.”r />
  Glenda turned to me and said, “Got that now? It’s rude to not remember twice.”

  He said, “And you’re Shuggie, while the lady here is Glenda. Which surely is a pretty name.”

  “You think? I never have been all the way sold on it.”

  “It’s a real pretty name.”

  “Hmm.”

  “A name that sounds like a song, even.”

  The windshield wipers just whispered while wiping the rain from the glass. The drops had shrunk to the size of freckles and fewer fell. Kids had come outside to the gutters in yellow raincoats and set about floating stuff in the rapids along the curb, racing to the drains.

  “I don’t know the streets here too well,” he said. “You’ll have to point the way for me.”

  “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “You mean lately? Or to start with?”

  “Whichever.”

  “Originally from Phenix City. That’s not Phoenix, Arizona. It’s Phenix City, Alabama. I came around here to cook at the Echo Club.”

  “Since when are you the cook at the Echo Club?”

  “A few months now. I had been at a hotel in St. Louis, but that went sour ’cause I got my own ideas about paprika, when it’s right and when it’s just plain wrong, and a customer there says to me if I’d come down to West Table I could cook at the Echo Club. So, what the hey, here I am.”

  “Cook always seems a funny job for a man to me.”

  “There’s nothing funny about it.”

  “Is that what you always have been? A cook?”

  “For twenty years or a little more. I’ve cooked all over. Seen lots of places. Plenty of cooks are men. I got started over in Kentucky. Covington, Kentucky, was Las Vegas before Vegas amounted to diddly, you know. It used to be real real lively. I cooked at the Lookout House there.”

  Glenda squealed and clapped her hands.

  “Sleepout Louie’s?” she said.

  “Ho-ho,” he went, and looked at her sharp, “you know Covington?”

  “Uh-huh.” Her eyes lit up and her posture came alive. She twisted on the white seat until she’d twisted facing him flush. “When I was a kid girl I waited tables at the Beverly Club.”

  “Holy cow, the casino? Good money for those days, I’ll bet.”