The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  “Great dough. Good dough for these days, even.”

  “The Beverly Club—didn’t Baron Ambers run that joint?”

  “Sure did,” she said. “The Baron was a great man.”

  “He was nobody to mess with. I used to see him around, in different spots. He was part of the Cleveland bunch.”

  “He sure was.”

  “That was the right bunch to be with in that town.”

  “Mostly. Mostly that was so. You need to turn this way.”

  About here they each lit cigarettes and ran off into the past and talked different memories at each other. I listened some, but not too close. Somebody they’d both heard of was dead, and so was somebody else, and there were things said about big spenders and girls who’d hooked live ones and how things change.

  I kept silent hoping people I knew would see me riding in such a car.

  At a stop sign the man said, “Is he named after the Baron for a reason? Or just ’cause he’s lucky?” He had a little smile on when he turned to look at me. His little smile flattened. “Ah.”

  A street later he said, “He had his trouble in—what?—what year?”

  “ ’Fifty-five.”

  “Oh, yeah. I was on my way out by then.”

  “The whole town was on its way out by then.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The good days were done.”

  “You follow everybody else to Vegas?”

  “No. No. I tried Cuba for a month, but I’m not that great with seafood. Besides, gamblin’s more fun when it’s illegal. At least to me. When it’s legal it gets to be about like goin’ to a church that’s gotten just a little teensy-bit mixed up about a couple of things, but is still a church.”

  “I came home,” Glenda said. “Here. Back to this.”

  “Which way now?”

  “Stop anywhere, I guess. We live up in that house in the cemetery. You’ll sink in the drive if you pull in.”

  I got out and stood there touching the car.

  She had one foot in the car and one foot in the mud.

  “Thank you so much, Jimmy Vin.”

  “No problem, ma’am.”

  He gave her a piece of white paper.

  “If you ever need a free steak dinner, folks, I’ll do you up proud at the Echo Club. Call me at that number there, anytime. Kitchen closes at nine, so try to come before.”

  “Okay,” she said, “we might do it.”

  He waved so long and drove on down the road. The wonder of that T-bird made the wet road sit up straight and wipe its face and wink.

  “Goodness, but there goes one nice, nice man,” she said. “Don’t you think? Notice his watch?”

  I said, “He was nice enough. But Glenda—that man shouldn’t ever ever show his face around here again.”

  She stamped her feet in the mud several times and splashed brown drops. For a minute she dismissed that I was there. She stared towards the house. She stared towards the house and stomped several splatters of mud that only dirtied her own legs.

  She said, “He is so goddamn hateful.”

  THE SUN came around, the grass grew fast, I had work to do. The sun shined steady for days and with all the storm water poured on it the grass seemed practically to bubble up foamy like the head on a root beer. The color of this foamy head, though, was a healthy summer green.

  Glenda did help, or did try to help in the ways she thought helped. She picked up twigs and tossed them into a pile. She somewhat snipped the thin edges of grass the mower missed, scooting about on her knees in the clean sunlight, humming and snipping. She found three lost coins worth eleven cents. Now and then she fetched drinks from the house.

  At times she went adrift on her thoughts in the tractor’s path and had to be hollered at to move.

  “Glenda, I can do this by myself.”

  “No, no, hon—I want to help.”

  “But I have my own certain order I get this done.”

  “Well, I could use the exercise. I want to work off this li’l pooch on my tummy. See this pooch?”

  “Your tummy don’t pooch.”

  “Not as much since I’ve been helping you, hon. The work in this heat trims that pooch away. All that crouching and standing. Bending. I do want to start lookin’ my best again.”

  The first of the sick people I robbed came to be buried on one of those fine bright days. The teenager who had skin that looked fogged and a way bald head. He was buried in a plot in the olden part, in a big family plot where the dates went back a century. I’d spaded crabgrass from that section plenty of times. The stone they put over him was a shiny sort of brown, with a curly scrolled part at the top. The numbers hammered into his stone showed him to be almost nineteen. The crowd spread from the bald teenager’s grave in a packed circle that went partway up the hill and into the shade thrown by a line of pine trees. Funeral crowds always did smell like the perfumes old ladies favor, the smells of fancy flowers, which were then joined by the smells from the many bunches of typical flowers folks held in their hands until time to lay the bunches atop the heap of fresh-turned dirt. As the flowers were laid down, somebody sang something in a churchy mood I did not care to hear.

  “I wish they’d shut up that singin’.”

  “It’s gospel, Shug.” Glenda tapped loose cigarettes for us both and lit the lighter. The breeze made the flame bend, stand, bend, stand. “Spiritual.”

  “I wish they’d shut up.”

  “Oh, hon—can’t you imagine how they must feel? Burying a boy?”

  I blew out a gray cloud that didn’t last much past my nose.

  “Glenda, that boy was one of the sick folks I robbed dope from.”

  She flashed me a stunned look, cigarette at her mouth, then her face fell in on itself, sort of, and she made a choked noise louder than the gospel from where we stood, and pitched her smoke to the ground. She moved off towards the house in a hangdog posture, hands over her ears, cuss words and oaths spitting piecemeal from her lips.

  The screen door whacked shut.

  There was another song.

  RED STAYED gone a good long while, until the afternoon he drove to the house in a two-tone pickup truck, yellow and cream, drove clear to the back stoop, and said, “I believe I’ll take the boy fishin’.”

  He spoke from inside the truck to where we sat on the concrete stoop. We’d squatted where the shade fell. He dangled one arm from the window and with the other arm raised a fist his chin rested on. He wore a store-bought sleeveless white T-shirt with a V-notched neck. His little bump of hair was combed good and oily. His eyes had that blur.

  “No, huh-uh,” said Glenda. “I reckon he doesn’t care to go fishing.”

  “I’ve come to take the boy fishin’.”

  “He doesn’t fish. He doesn’t care to eat fish.”

  “He don’t gotta eat ’em, you witch.”

  Red gave me that steady steady look of his that left me feeling already the worms underground spiraling into my eyeballs and brain and the soft meat of me. That look he had that warned of swift death which lasts so long.

  “Red,” she said, “please. Please, Red.”

  “What the fuck’s the deal? I’m his daddy, ain’t I? Ain’t a daddy s’posed to teach his boy how to fish and shit? Ain’t he? Ain’t he s’posed to? And since I’m daddy to Morris there, I reckon it falls to me to teach him. Don’t it? You see it different?”

  “This is baloney,” she said. “I’ve never known you to ever bother with fish, neither—why now?”

  “Would you quit, huh? Quit tryin’ to come between a daddy and his boy.”

  I could only wonder where the truck came from. It had a gruff rumbling engine, four on the floor, and a thin spread of smelly straw lay in the bed around a plywood dog-box that did not contain a dog. A white ice chest sat on the straw.

  “It’s easier if I just go.”

  “Why’re we pickin’ her up?”

  “She’s comin’ along.”

  “What do we want her for?”
/>   “She’s got the rods, dig?”

  Full summer heat was in play that day. Folks moved slower. Dogs crawled under porches and would not fetch. People got cranky about other people blocking the fan wind. Tar patches on the road bubbled up like black pancakes almost ready to flip. Anything around that did not smell too good normally smelled awful.

  “When’s your juvie court?”

  “I don’t know. Not so far off, though.”

  Patty did not wave when we pulled in. She dropped a cigarette and stepped on it, then she spun about and picked up a brown sack. She had her hair down and it was down nearly to her butt. Her clothes were jeans and an orange shirt with green leaves from a beach-type tree on it and sneakers that couldn’t be hurt any worse.

  Red went over and kissed at her. His kiss only hit her cheek because she turned her mouth away.

  “Go on and pout, princess. Comin’ or not?”

  “You’re late.”

  “Now why in hell do you bother tellin’ me that?”

  I got out to let her in. He tossed an armload of stuff that clattered into the truck bed. The sack she carried smelled like food. She sat in the middle of the cab, her legs apart around the shifter on the floor. By the time we reached the city limits her left hand had creeped up to Red’s neck and her fingers went to tickling around his little ducktail of hair.

  Some miles into the drive she said, “I’ve never been introduced to you, young man.”

  “You don’t gotta be.”

  Red said, “You want a bloody nose, tub? You tell her howdy, and tell her your name.”

  The woods had tightened around the road. The woods would not let you see anything much that wasn’t right next to the road, and only a little ways ahead and a little ways back.

  “Howdy. Shuggie.”

  “Okay. That’s okay, Red. He said it. Just call me Patty.”

  The road was gray but seemed polished by the sun and weaved us along between thick broody woods and up the long hills and along the crestline where way way below lay a river cut between rock bluffs. The river caught the sunlight and reflected it in a dull shade of golden. Then the woods closed in again like a tunnel until we rolled downhill and came to a black skeleton bridge with a floor of wide pale lumber planks that jittered as we drove across. A sign read “Twin Forks River.”

  She said, “I don’t guess I’ve seen this river in three years, or more.”

  “Has it changed any?”

  “Why, no. No.”

  “Then you didn’t miss nothin’.”

  After the bridge the road became a dirt road. The woods in this stretch had been thinned and the grass mowed. There were a few picnic tables, a water pump, and an outhouse. Red spit at this civilized spot and drove beyond it along a skinny road with deep ruts. This path was one vehicle wide and tall weeds leaned into it to scratch at the truck when we went by. Finally the path opened onto a flat riverbank of small rocks on this side facing high watchful rock bluffs across the water.

  A large blackish bird with a pale neck the length of three or four necks flapped up real gawky from the water’s edge and winged away down the river gulch.

  Red parked there, on the rocks, facing the bluffs.

  “Get in the glove box, babe, and hunt me up a yellow-jacket.”

  “Just one?”

  “For now.”

  The river flowing past at my feet sounded like nice women close by whispering friendly together and made me feel welcome. I tossed broken limbs into the water and watched them flow happy downstream and disappear. The water moved along pretty brisk, with waves like the waves in cake frosting, and the rocks I threw did not skip across too great. The smell was similar to how well-water smells, only with a mess of weeds and fish adding their flavors to the scent.

  The fishing gear was jumbled and hard to ready. Red and Patty hunkered on the rocks, fussing with the tangle, smokes stuck to their lips.

  “This stuff was all Dave’s,” she said. “He didn’t take it when he left.”

  “I believe I’m gonna need a beer to figure out the mess ol’ Dave made of this shit.”

  “Comin’ up.”

  Fish heads laid scattered on the small rocks. Their eyes had been picked clean and their skin swallowed too. The sun had baked the skull parts to a dainty creepy whiteness. They felt very light and did not fly far when pitched.

  She said, “Red, honey, I don’t believe you use bobbers on a river.”

  “I dig bobbers.”

  “But on a river, you know, they’re bobbin’ all the time. From the current. If they bob all the time, well, then the bobbin’ don’t tell you a thing.”

  “Bobbers and worms is about all I know about this shit. Fishin’. I never had nobody to show me. I pulled my first bit at fourteen. They didn’t teach fishin’ there. Anyhow, fuckin’ fish, who cares?”

  She bent, rubbed his neck, and said, “I like ’em pan-fried. With hash browns.”

  “You know what I like? I like yellowjackets—get me another.”

  The next thing was bait.

  Red said, “Give me your knife, boy. We’ll just rustle us some worms right quick.”

  I brought my knife out and flicked the blade open. I held it firm. This knife used to be his, years back. The blade was thin and shined. I held it about a foot from his belly and he grinned at me, a slow shallow grin, then took the knife from my hand.

  “Nice ol’ blade,” he said. “Course the deal with blades is, you gotta have the balls to use ’em.”

  Back from the river, where the beach of small rocks ended, the woods began again. A short ridge of dirt lay like a rumple between the rock beach and the treeline. The glinting sunlight had those rocks looking valuable. The ridge of dirt was a washed-down brown color. The ridge was soft and the dirt lip would crumble away if you stood there.

  Red kneeled by the ridge and started to stab at it. He sank the blade all the way. This part of fishing he enjoyed. He twisted the blade, went in and out, scaling dirt from the ridge, stabbing over and over. He sank the blade and pulled sideways like he was gutting a nightwatchman but expected buckets of worms to tumble out instead of guts.

  There were no worms.

  I could see my blade had got twisted.

  No worms would live on the edge of a crumbling ridge.

  “Screw this noise,” Red said. He tossed the knife onto the rocks for me to fetch. “Piss on it—too much like work for me.”

  Patty said, “They live under things. Back a ways, in the good dirt.”

  “You want to go dig ’em?” Red went to the brown sack of picnic food. He dropped a claw in and felt around the sack. “What’s to eat in here?”

  “Burgers. Just homemade burgers.”

  When his claw rose from the bag it held a pinch of burger. The burger pinch was near the size of an unshelled walnut. He grabbed a fishing line and tracked along it to the fish hook, then stuck the hook into the entire pinch of burger.

  Patty went, “I don’t care to ever meet the fish that would eat that.”

  “If you’re fixin’ to laugh at me you best make damn sure I don’t hear.”

  Neither of the reels on the rods worked. Red carried the hook to where the bobber clung to the line. He held the hook and bobber together, stepped to the river’s edge, then pitched the bobber and the burger out on the stream and they carried the line between them. The stuff landed near the middle of the water. The bobber seemed to rattle away on the fast flow. The flow soon swung the bobber in towards the riverbank only maybe twenty feet from where Red and me stood.

  He said, “They brung me in and kept me eight hours, boy. They’d love to hang that rap on me. They’d love that.” We watched the bobber stray to the very very shallow water a yard or so from the rock beach and it bobbed gentler there, but was pointless. “Now Shug, you wouldn’t never, you know, snitch on your ol’ da… Red. You wouldn’t snitch on ol’ Red, would you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I mean ever.”

  “Don’
t I know better?”

  “You should.”

  The bobber stayed where it first landed, butting slow and easy against the rocks in the shallows. We ate and drank and the bobber never went any farther. She talked about people she did not like who worked at the hospital and he said, Yeah. Oh, yeah? The fuckers. The burgers were okay, with cheese. I had a beer from the ice chest, a kind with a fox face on the can, and they each did drink a few to my one. They soon began to hug and lick back and forth.

  Red said, “Hey, tub, why don’t you get your ass in the water some? Probably feels good, I bet.”

  The river was not so wide but I could not see bottom all the way across. In the deep parts the water rippled less. The water seemed clear but in a hurry.

  “I can’t swim.”

  “You can’t? You can’t swim? Not a lick?”

  “I can’t even float.”

  He leaned sideways as if in thought, which maybe he was. He then nodded his head.

  “So don’t go out too far—it can’t be very deep.”

  “Plus I just ate.”

  “I’ll keep a eye on you.”

  “Don’t they say if you just ate…”

  “Aw, go on and get in the river, fat boy. Jesus. Show some fuckin’ sand.” She started to say something but he hit her with a swift look that snapped her mouth shut fast. “Go on! Go on, would you?”

  The rock bluffs had laid down shadow that colored the far part of the river darker. A few times a fish or something went past rooting for eats along the rock bottom. The water had that sound of women who wouldn’t hurt me. That sound of voices in talk that I could join. I shuffled towards the voices, up to my knees, and a little farther, and more.

  Springs from inside the earth caused this river. It was made of old old water and ran cold. The cold at first seemed too much, but soon it was not so bad, later great. I sat on the rocky bottom cross-legged where the water leveled just under my chin.

  When I looked back to the picnic, him and her were not there. They stood beside the truck clutched together nasty. A door hung open. She backed inside the door and all the while he was getting at her. He hefted her onto the seat and she settled on her back. The door blocked most of the nasty clutching from me. But her feet dangled below the open door and her jeans soon puddled around her old sneakers. One foot then kicked free and the jeans slid to the rocks. His britches fell and wadded around his boots. His head dipped below the door frame and he went up on his toes and lunged out of sight.