The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  The river had become a place of comfort to me. My body got tuned to the temperature and the water took only a short while to show the very very nice side of such coolness in summer. Some waves jumped high, past the chin to the mouth, and I tasted the river and it tasted about right.

  Once I sat still, gang after gang of little fish stopped by to nibble, to pucker and nibble, on the vast white belly-skin I offered. They lined around my tummy. They pecked under my arms. They gathered like a pack to pucker and nibble at the fat rolls on my chest. I had the right flavor for them. The fish were small narrow things, some creamy with dark stripey parts, others pure yellow, and all moved fast. The fish made me feel like a special treat, like if I did float and laid myself in the current and drifted they’d come with, come along, a pack of fish traveling in the shadow beneath me as I floated and floated away.

  “Hey, pick up your shit,” he said. “We’re goin’.”

  She did not look at me straight. He wouldn’t wait for me to dry. Bent cans laid around. One burger had been chewed on but not finished and had fallen apart on the rocks. She wadded the brown sack. He put the ice chest in the truck.

  “Just forget ol’ Dave’s junk,” he said. “Shit didn’t work even a little.”

  We sat in the truck the same as before, her in the middle. He drove like his hands were sticky, slow to pull loose and move from steering wheel to gearshift, and his eyes had a bright sincere blur. It seemed she fell to sleep or close to sleep, her head drooping his way. The sun dropped behind the bluffs. We went down the skinny lane and the weeds scratched at the truck. When we came to the black skeleton bridge over the river he slowed the truck to a crawl, then leaned and looked my way. The blur of his eyes called for my total attention.

  He said, “Now, Basil—there’s a fella with no fuckin’ responsibilities. Huh-uh. Huh-uh. There ain’t nobody at all countin’ on him. No, sir. Nobody.”

  The bridge jittered plenty loud as we crossed.

  KIDS HAD held a party in the bone orchard near the black angel and busted beer bottles against the tombstones and littered. Most likely it was high school kids. Mr. Goynes found their mess first and fell by at noon to rag on Glenda and me for not hearing the kids in the night and chasing them away. That is what we’re here for he said four or five times. That is why we get to live in this house. That is what he must be able to trust us to do.

  The black angel was a special grave marker over across the way, inside a circle of pines, and probably only a champion hound dog or a old lady with sleep troubles could have heard the party sounds from there to our house. The black angel stood ten feet tall and stood over a mass grave of mostly teenagers who’d gone to a dancehall to dance years and years and years ago when dynamite or gas or who knows what exploded the dancehall and the teenagers became charcoal chunks nobody could recognize as any particular person. Twenty-eight of the dancers did lay beneath the black angel and there always were live kids who hoped maybe the black angel had taken on spooky powers from standing over such a large party of dead young. The kids sat candles at the angel’s feet. They sang things to her. They put lipstick on her lips. Drips of wax lined her cheeks like frozen tears. Cigarette stubs and chip bags and the like littered the plot. The beer bottles had been busted so beer would splash on the big grave and sink for those many thirsty dead dancers.

  After Mr. Goynes left, me and Glenda fetched a garbage can. The can was the burly gray metal kind, and she took one handle and me the other. We half dragged the can way over to the mess around the black angel.

  “So happy fuckin’ birthday,” I said, “to you.”

  “This will not spoil it, Shug.”

  The weather had gotten into a perfect mood. The heat felt just right in a T-shirt. The sky stretched pure blue from end to end. The grass smelled good.

  “This is sure ’nough a mess,” she said. Candles had melted into hard puddles on the stone base under the angel’s feet. Glass pieces had flown about for some distance and hid in the grass. “If we get it picked up fast we could still make ourselves that cake.”

  “The cake’s up to you, Glenda—how old are you?”

  “I was still a child when you were born.”

  I flicked my blade open to scrape candle wax off the angel. She started to collect trash and drop it in the can.

  “Are you twenty-nine?”

  “That’s a nice age. But huh-uh.”

  “Are you thirty?”

  “My age isn’t for the public to know, hon.”

  “Thirty-one?”

  “Stop—you’re one guess from makin’ me lie to you, and I’d rather not.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  She had both hands cupped around a load of glass bits which she let fall into the can.

  “You smarty-pants, hush.”

  We got busy finding the mess and dumping it in the can. I could not reach the angel’s face so the frozen tears and lipstick would have to be cleaned away by time. Glenda was up and down, up and down, stretching her legs to spring about, working herself like gym class, dropping trash into the can.

  “Look,” she said. I did look and she stood sideways to me, presenting a view of herself all pulled in and scenic. “No more pooch. See?”

  “Uh-huh.” I was parched of a sudden. Thirsty for cola or water or whatever, and cotton-mouthed. “If you did pooch it’d sure ’nough show in them shorts. And it don’t.”

  “Thank you, sweet mister.”

  I guess the mess took most of an hour to clean. We kept busy bending and scraping and kneeling and standing. She slid looks my way pretty often and seemed to be wondering something but did not say much. Dragging the can back to the house was hard and we paused for breath a few times, and during one of the pauses she asked, “Shug, have you, you know—don’t be embarrassed—but do you have hair comin’ in yet?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you have hair on your privates yet?”

  “For chrissake, Glenda!”

  “I guess you do, don’t you?”

  “I’m thir-teen! That ain’t a baby, you know.”

  “No, no, of course it’s not.”

  “I got hair, too. I got hair the same as any man does.”

  She grinned and pouted her lips out. She rubbed my head. She laughed a gentle laugh.

  “But you’re not the same as any man, Shug. You’re not. You’re my sweet mister, see, and that’s special.”

  “Only to you,” I said. “Far as I can tell.”

  “And don’t you think that’s just about perfect, hon? Don’t you?”

  I could not look at her and answered by moving. I moved to the gray trashcan and grabbed it in a hug, my arms around to both handles, and lifted it from the ground and hefted it alone towards the shed, straining and groaning, kicking and grunting, and she did not say another thing but I did see she smiled.

  The cake she most went for had icing that went on pink, with cherry halves stuck in it. She cooked the cake parts. She mixed the icing in my bowl and dripped in cherry juice that caused the pinkness. She spread the icing on the cake stack. I plunked the red red cherries into the pink in a design I did not recognize myself until halfway round the cake.

  “I need more sweet cherries.”

  “You used the whole bottle. That’s plenty. What is it you’re tryin’ to make?”

  “Like domino numbers on the side, a big star on top.”

  “You’re sort of close, hon.”

  “If I had more cherries…”

  “It’s perfect now.”

  “It’s not perfect.”

  “It’s done, I mean.”

  She gave me the icing bowl so I could lick the smears clean. I used a finger and made a quick job of it. She smoked staring out the screen door. Her eyes aimed up so I guess it was the sky that had caught her attention. When she blew out, a sound was let loose with the smoke, a not-so-happy sigh, I guess, but short of a moan.

  I said, “What would you dream for if you could get it?”

  “
Too many things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, Shug, I don’t know. Anyhow, most of what we call dreams are really wants. A want’s real different from a dream. I’m not sure which is most likely to have an answer show up.”

  I stood by her looking out the screen door and she held her cigarette to my lips for one puff. I let the smoke slip from my mouth in thin trickles.

  “Okay, then—what do you want?”

  “What I truly want I wouldn’t say out loud.”

  “Say it silent, then.”

  “Already did.”

  She walked to the john and I heard the cigarette hiss when it hit the tiny pond. She came straight back to the kitchen. She laid her arms around me completely, snuggled me close in a warm standing hug. She kissed light kisses at my hair. Her hands cradled my neck.

  “No need to wait,” she said. “Let’s eat cake.”

  He showed up with silk. He showed up with other swag, also, but the silk was what mattered. He arrived in the battleship with Basil, who helped him tote the swag inside. They arranged a short column of boxes that held toasters, and a pile of men’s suit coats they then flanked with two bulging shopping bags. Basil had received a new cut on his chin that made a sloppy scab that did not seem dry. Red moved around like his ribs hurt, sort of hunched and slow when turning. Once the swag was in the kitchen they opened beer bottles from the fridge and looked at their take laid out on the floor. Red soon squatted slow and easy beside a shopping bag. He said, “Happy birthday, girl. Got somethin’ for you.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Wait ’til you see it.” He sent a claw into a black bag that had a store name printed in white on the side, then pulled up a yellow girl’s shirt. “This ’un here’d be my pick.”

  “Umm, is… is that silk?”

  “You bet,” went Basil. “We didn’t go out huntin’ silk, you know, but when we run across it, Red there, Red thought of you. So we glommed some.”

  She put one hand down on a hip while the other hand was held up alongside a cheek. She seemed to go wandering in her head for a bit. The color in her face shifted. She hummed one small part of a song two or three times, then said, “Real silk? All silk? Or some part-silk baloney?”

  Red said, “It’s as much silk as silk gets. Total pure Oriental silk from somewhere over there. Plus, I always dig this color on you.”

  “You do?”

  “It makes your eyes shine better’n most jewelry does.”

  Her hands slid up and down and all across that silk. She stroked the Oriental shirt like it might purr or grant three wishes. She raised the silk and nuzzled it with her nose.

  “Good Lord, but this stuff feels fine. I always have craved silk. I guess you know that. Silk, silk means something.”

  “Go slip it on, girl. Give us a good peek at you dressed in fresh yaller silk. Go on. It’s yours now, dig?”

  “I guess I will.”

  Glenda took her birthday gift and left the kitchen for the bedroom and shut the door.

  “She’s tickled,” Basil said. “Good thing you remembered.”

  “I don’t know why I did.”

  “Nice you did.”

  Basil bent over the sink and splashed his face and gave his teeth a few strokes with his brush. Red looked at me and looked like I had suddenly improved in his eyes or he had suddenly reached just the right degree of stoned. His expression surely did confuse me. Glenda’s smokes sat on the table and I pulled one and lit it as his claws came down on my shoulders and tightened.

  “So tell me, boy, what’s that witch got up to lately?”

  “Only what she oughta be up to.”

  “Which would be what?”

  “House stuff. Cemetery stuff.”

  His claws clenched tighter on me.

  “You know, boy, we don’t get on so well, her and me, but I just plain love that witch.”

  I looked down once he said that and his claws quickly fell away from me and I moved to the screen door. Three squirrels chased each other in circles on the roof of the shed. The trees in the yard rustled in an easygoing breeze and the breeze rolled on through the screen and fanned my face. The back window of the Mercury on the passenger side had been busted out. There was another armload of silk things on the backseat, silk things intended, I do imagine, for somebody else.

  Basil said, “Where’d you get the cig, Shug?”

  “Glenda’s pack. On the table.”

  “Think she’d mind if I mooched one?”

  Red said, “You don’t even gotta ask that.”

  Both of them took her cigarettes and raised their beer bottles and leaned against the sink.

  Glenda returned dressed different from top to bottom. She’d put on black slacks that clung on her snug, clung mighty snug, and shoes with high heels and the yellow silk shirt. Her hair had been brushed beautiful. The silk laid on her great, wonderful, and she posed, sort of, to show us.

  Red went, “My, my.”

  “You like?” she asked. I’d say she looked to where I stood. “It suits me?”

  “Yup,” I said. “Yup.”

  “My, my.” He got to her and put her in a big hug. “You’re lookin’ hot, girl.” The hug kept her stuck in his arms, then his claws began to roam and he felt of her in different places, then grabbed her butt with both claws and lifted. “Happy birthday.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Paw me in front of everybody.”

  “Then they better get, and get now, ’cause I’m fixin’ to unwrap this package and enjoy.”

  She just went poof, deflated in his arms, fell limp in his hug.

  Basil touched a hand to my neck and steered me towards the door.

  “Come on, kid, what say we stags go out back of the shed and talk about baseball matters?”

  All the windows in the house were open to the screens. Sounds carried to the yard. For a brief moment me and Basil stood beside the battleship, hearing things, staring at our toes, rubbing our faces, then he slapped the car.

  “Shit, Shug, I can’t hang around and listen to Red tomcat in there. I’m gonna have to get gone, and this minute, too. You’re on your own, ol’ son.”

  I could not stand there too long alone.

  I walked clean to the black angel.

  “Bud’s Smoke Stak,” Red said. The three of us sat at the kitchen table, those two with cigarettes burning. “Remember Bud’s Smoke Stak?”

  “Down at the lake,” she said. “What about it?”

  “Let’s eat there. I got a nice payday in my pocket, girl. A nice choker of green. So let’s us cruise over to the lake and chow down on a big ol’ pile of ribs.”

  “That’s a pretty fair drive, Red.”

  “So?”

  “It’s a ways to go. It’s already late for supper.”

  “Ain’t tonight special? I’d say it is. Don’t you? Ain’t it? Huh?”

  He put us in the truck with her in the middle.

  She said, “I hate sittin’ like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know—my legs split around the shifter.”

  “You’ll come to like it okay, I bet.”

  The sun was low and pointed in our eyes for some miles. Outside of town he turned onto roads that were new to me. I did not recognize anyplace. The truck muttered deep mutters and carried us past ponds and hog pens and barking dogs and over rock ridges and trim quiet creeks and into darkening woods. He took a gravel road that went sideways from the paved road and pushed on along it at a fast speed.

  Here and there he tried to talk as if we all were fond of each other.

  “So now, boy, what is it you’re gonna tell to the juvie judge?”

  “ ‘Just goofin’ around, Your Honor. Sorry.’ ”

  “And who’s your crime partners?”

  “ ‘Nobody. Solo lobo, Your Honor.’ ”

  The gravel road ran into a concrete road and Red turned right onto the pavement. This road had once
been the main highway to somewhere and now was nothing much except the slow back way to still get there. It was the olden style of slab highway. The concrete was poured in chalk-white slabs and the slabs were joined together but they never fit together perfect. This meant tires went thump at the seams, thump at each new slab, thump ’cause hardly any slabs laid together smooth. Some of the seams had split to where things grew up between the slabs.

  “Red,” she said, “we’re awful hungry.”

  “You’ll get fed.”

  “We were hungry when we started.”

  “Just think about Bud’s ribs and cold beer.”

  “But… I don’t recall this bein’ the way to the lake.”

  “I gotta see a fella first.”

  “Aw, no. No.”

  “Don’t start whinin’ ’til you been hurt.”

  At a crossroads there stood a filling station that had been put there when this road was the main route. There was a faded horse with wings on the sign. The sign showed splashes of rust. The wood of the building had aged and lost its paint. The place stood cocked some to the side and the roof had a swayback. Out front there were two whitish gas pumps and an old man sitting on a bench by the door.

  The old man waved and we each waved back.

  “There it is,” Red said. He said that about a dirt road, more of a cow path, just beyond the filling station. “This is where we turn.”

  The road was a skinny streak of dirt that carried us past a few farmhouses and around a set of sharp curves down into a bog of musty old woods and up again to a straight stretch beside fields of weeds turned golden in the sunset and beyond the fields stood the house.

  “Where is this?” Glenda asked. “Where have we got to?”

  “A friend’s place.”

  “What friend?”

  “Nobody you know, girl. Nobody you need to know.”

  The house stood close to the road but lower. The road set even with the porch light. The house was a mussed white color and had numerous levels. At the top level there were those attic windows that fit onto the house like eye-balls squinting to keep a close unfriendly watch on all things. The roof was groomed into points in three or four spots with black metal items perched on the points. Many many lights were on inside.