The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  There was a yard light, a big white globe on a pole. A bunch of vehicles parked near the light. There were pickup trucks, one with a wood pigpen on back, and another loaded with sacks of feed. The other vehicles were all cars splotched with dust.

  Red parked among the others.

  I could see folks in the house holding cards under a cloud of smoke. I could see hands shaking dice. I could see drinks raised and dollar bills tossed down.

  He said, “Back in a flash. And y’all don’t need to hear no music—this battery won’t take it.”

  She and me did sit there no better than bumps on a log as dark fell over us and nothing did get spoken between us until the dark became full black and the bug chants loud.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I should’ve got a lot smarter to his tricks by now. I guess I’m stupid.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I should’ve got smarter to his tricks.”

  “You are, Glenda. You are smarter to his tricks.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. I mean, you knew he’d do something to us, didn’t you? You knew he’d pull some shit.”

  “I had a hunch.”

  I could see him inside, track his oiled bump of hair as he worked through the crowd to a table and slid to a seat.

  “Glenda, he said to me that he loved you.”

  “Did he? Oh, hon.” She laid her head back and closed her eyes. She reached over and squeezed my knee. “Think what I think about that.”

  He came back to us broke and wanted her shirt for a new start. He did not come alone. She and me had fallen asleep, nudged together in the cab of the truck, and the words he spoke were slow in making sense to us.

  “Shake a leg, Glenda. Get your ass out here.”

  The man with him made a stout shape in the dark, standing beside Red between the truck and the yard light. A cigarette glowed at his mouth. A hat with a cowboy brim rode the top of him.

  Red said, “I’m tellin’ you it’s worth somethin’.”

  “You said that. You keep sayin’ it.”

  “ ’Cause it’s so.”

  “Says you.”

  “I bet you dig it. I bet you will.”

  “You ain’t hardly won a bet since you showed your face.”

  “Luck turns, don’t it? Mine’s turnin’ now.”

  Me and Glenda fell from the truck, sleepy yet and dizzy from missing supper. She pushed me back with her hand, halted me, and stepped forward.

  “What is it you want?”

  “See?” Red said. “Nice, huh?”

  The man said, “I reckon.”

  “So why don’t you give me a ten-spot on it?”

  “Ten? Naw.”

  “Glenda, raise your arms and do a little spin. It’s real silk, man. Guaranteed. Did you hear me? I said do a little spin.”

  The man said, “I can see it. I can see it fine.”

  “I need me a ten-spot, dig?”

  “Nope.” The man stepped over and rubbed his fingers on the collar of Glenda’s shirt. She would not look at him. “I’ll go seven.”

  “That’s gettin’ near on to ten—why don’t you go ten?”

  “I’ll go seven. That’s the end of hagglin’.”

  Red put his arm around Glenda and walked her behind the truck to where I stood. He held her clamped in close under his arm, almost a headlock. “You gotta give it,” he said. “I gotta have it.”

  She turned white. She could not have turned whiter even with disease to rinse her down, but she kept her chin raised. I could see she trembled.

  “You… will not… do this to me.”

  “Wrong.” He slapped a claw at her neck, pushing her head back, pinching her windpipe. A rattling noise came from her, the rattle of words that did not live past her throat to be heard. His free claw unbuttoned the silk. “I ain’t askin’, witch. Did it sound like I was askin’?” As he pulled the shirt open he bent to her bra, pulled one half low and smooched her nipple. His tongue licked a circle. He smooched twice. “Titty suck for luck.”

  She spun away with her arms crossed over her chest and hunkered behind the truck. Her bare skin seemed to glow. I followed Red as he carried the silk to the stout man. When he passed the silk over I tried to snatch it back. The man pulled it away from me and held it over my head.

  “Best put a leash on your pup.”

  “Fat boy,” Red muttered, and grabbed me by the chest of my striped shirt and lifted, lifted with power, popping all the buttons free. “Go sit your ass in the truck with your witch. Got that? Sit. And don’t start lookin’ for me ’til you see me comin’.”

  She and me did take off from the gambling house but not towards anyplace we knew of for certain. She and me walked back the way we thought we came. She carried her heels in her hands and went barefoot to feel our way along that skinny streak of dirt in such deep darkness. She took small steps forward and tapped the ground ahead with her toes and the feel of dirt on her toes meant the path laid under us yet and we would shuffle that much further.

  “Be careful of ruts,” she said. “Don’t twist an ankle.”

  I gave up my shirt to Glenda though the buttons had been burst from the cloth and none were left to button. I had seen her nipple good when Red had him a smooch for luck, and she used my shirt to cover that section of herself. She wore my shirt over her front, her arms through the sleeves backwards, covering her to the throat, though her back was entirely bare skin but for the bra strap. The clearest thing I did see in such dark was the shine of her back.

  “Stay close.”

  “Let’s hold hands.”

  “Yes, let’s, hon.”

  We were going our own way from Red but very slow. On the straight stretch past the fields our pace became faster, some, though not much. She felt ahead with her toes and pulled me along behind her and often we both sucked loud breaths together when we heard the same alarming noise. So many creatures make noise in the country at night. They made noises that meant something among themselves and could be they meant something about us. We both were town-raised and many many of the noises in the weeds or high limbs or near distance made us pause and stand very very still like standing still hid us from things that could hunt in woods at night.

  “Keep a tight hold on my hand.”

  The noise we made was slaps. Mosquitoes had us slapping at our skins the way dust gets beat from a rug. Slap slap slap we went but still the bugs found bare skin and drilled on us for blood wherever no slaps hit. A few times Glenda also leaked out a noise like a sob had jumped up inside her but she straightaway swallowed it silent.

  “Mom, are we sure where this goes?”

  “Not really. Stay close.”

  The path curved and went down to the smelly boggy woods. That area smelled like the musty basement to a building that was not there. The trees there grew bigger and closer to the path. It seemed to me that such a path might contain ambushes and a good place to set some would be in the boggy stretch.

  “Let me in front—I got a blade.”

  “Sold. Don’t try to go too fast.”

  No light from anywhere showed to help in the bog. It was pure dark all over down there but I did imagine I could kind of see the shape of my blade poking the space ahead of us to clear the path. I might have stabbed anything. Glenda kept close behind by linking a finger through a belt loop on my jeans. Further along the bog smell became like a smell grown so sweet it had turned yucky. The path felt thicker under my feet, mushy, and tree limbs had reached across the path to make a low ceiling.

  She tugged at my belt loop.

  “Stomp your feet now and then.”

  “What for?”

  “For snakes to hear.”

  Step step stomp.

  Step step stomp.

  The path rose from the bog and turned and became regular dirt again. The normal woods smelled so fresh. We did walk on and on in the same order, her finger hooked to me, my blade in my hand, feeling our way along the path the way blind folks cross
a new street.

  I heard the paws thudding and something tinkled but the dogs were invisible until they stopped to snarl just one jump from our ankles. I could see a light on in a house set back from the road. The dogs barked angry bullying barks. Their snorts of breath puffed over my ankles.

  She got right up against my back and clung.

  The dogs made practice moves for attacking.

  I was ready to stab but there were two.

  I said, “Why don’t they call their goddamn dogs?”

  “Country folks seem to want them this way.”

  “I’ll kill one for sure.”

  We shuffled backwards, her behind me clinging, the shoes in her hands tapping my shoulders. We kept the dogs to my front and eased forward on the path and the dogs followed, hungry hungry hungry to make a meal of us to hear them tell it. Nobody stirred from the farmhouse. I kept the blade pointed down ready to plunge and thought fast thoughts about big white teeth tearing the meat of me and enjoying the taste.

  “Don’t kick—they’ll get your foot.”

  The dogs never became clear. Fair-sized from their sounds, the scraping of claws, the huffing. We eased away on the path the way pissdrops ease down your leg after a punch to the tummy. She clung but good. I’d become ready to know the feel of that thin bright blade slicing into something that breathed and bothered us. Feel how it cut towards the heart of something alive.

  “They’re stopping, hon. They’re pulling back.”

  “Must be this is the end of their land.”

  “I don’t hear anybody callin’ them.”

  “Let’s go faster.”

  We then hustled along the path with our pace picked up, taking big blind steps in the dark, but acting like we could see.

  At the filling station she peeked in the window on the back door, then said, “We need a phone, Shug.”

  “Who’ll you call?”

  “You know who.”

  “Reckon he’ll come?”

  She pointed at that old back door on that sagging filling station.

  “Phone.”

  I swiped us a pack of smokes, also, and we hunkered in the blackest shadows outdoors to wait. The smokes were the wrong make but okay in a pinch.

  “Shug, don’t you think he’s sort of cute?”

  My striped shirt kept sliding from her white white shoulders and she kept raising it back. The shadows we sat in were against the west wall of the station. This sort of smoke did actually taste more to my liking than the brand she trained me on but I never did say that.

  “No.”

  “He’s not cute?”

  “I sure wouldn’t say so.”

  “In his way, I mean.”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “But he looks, like, distinguished. Right?”

  “The best thing about him I can see is his car.”

  “I think he is, in his own way, real dashing.”

  I lit me a smoke from the butt of the first.

  “I know you do.”

  He thought to bring sandwiches. Steak sandwiches that had sweet onion strands cooked limp and brown and laid on top. The sauce I could not see and did not know but tasted near wonderful. He had spruced to fetch us, shaped his wisps of hair, shaved and splashed his face with that sailor smell. He looked at me, who had no shirt, and her, who had only mine to wear backwards. He glanced several times before he spoke: “Just tell me what you want me to know.”

  “Oh,” she went, “could we just leave it alone?”

  “Yes’m. That’s ofttimes the best course.”

  My body felt tired from gooseflesh outside to the bone inside, but also starved to where my brain staggered. I tore away at the sandwich before I got it all unwrapped, chomped teeth into the steak, and liked it. I liked it so much. I liked it so loud they both turned and grinned at me. I liked the sandwich down to crumbs in no time, and I liked the crumbs for a minute or so.

  She said, “This is awful good of you.”

  “I’m glad you called.”

  “Glad?”

  “Well… see… I’ve had your smile in my mind for days and days now, and it wouldn’t get out.”

  Her answer was not a word, only a sound, a murmur, a pleased murmur. Her next words were, “Is that bourbon I smell?”

  “Yup. Bottle on the floorboard, there.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Mind?”

  “It’s meant to be drunk, ma’am.”

  The Thunderbird moved along at a calm pace. The windows all were down before long and the scents of the thickets beside the road blew in on us, blew out, then more blew in. Crickets had their racket going, their loud one-two noise, sounding like a giant squeaky seesaw. Now and then the lights skimmed a dark spot and eyes reflected.

  I guess eating slid me towards sleep, there, in the backseat, but I heard certain things: “Gamblin’ turns him noodles in the head.”

  And: “I was married when I went there. He had a legal scrape to pay for, and I had a aunt in Covington.”

  And: “The Baron—he had one of those kind of wives who don’t much cotton to havin’ me around.”

  When the T-bird stopped, the stopping moved me and eased me mostly awake. The T-bird was in the cemetery, parked in the drive by our house. My bare gut was chilled from the late-night air. I laid still.

  She said, “I know he knows. He always has known, but we stayed married. He knows, but he never says it, not exactly.”

  “So the man just broods on it.”

  “Since I came home I felt way way in debt to him.”

  “A debt paid in full, I’d say. A couple of times over.”

  I opened my eyes then, and saw they sat close together.

  “Glenda, I’m chilly. Time to go in.”

  “You go on, hon.”

  “You come, too.”

  “We’re talkin’, Shug. You go on.”

  “You come, too.”

  “Huh-uh, hon.”

  “Listen, if he touches you, I’ll knock fire from his ass.”

  “You hush. Hush up. This man has been so nice to us. Go.”

  I went. It was late and I went because I was sleepy and she sent me. Once inside I stared out the screen. They rolled the windows up against the cool. I could not go to bed, go to bed with her out there, out there with him, so I laid over the kitchen table, the tilting table, my head on my arms.

  Later I looked and the T-bird windows had clouded.

  When the daybreak birds started their regular loud sing-along I looked again and could not see their heads.

  I fell asleep, facedown on the table, and the sun was up when I woke to her sitting across from me. My shirt was barely on her and her bra was in her hands.

  “Honey? Shuggie, honey. Just forget what you think you saw me do, and keep this in mind—I love you.”

  DAMNED FOOL thing of them to set a sign there.” Granny said that standing in the afternoon heat smoking a long cigarette she’d lit to the side of the tip. She stood there not moving her feet but waving like horseweed in a breeze. She had the slit-eyed look of a cowpoke scanning a hot prairie. Her cigarette burned along at an angle.

  Carl said, “It’s a stop sign, Ma.”

  Him and me and her looked down at the sign. She had knocked the sign flat. We had been throwing newspapers and she for some reason wanted to go in reverse but the refreshments had got to her and she ran the station wagon over the curb and square into the sign.

  “I ain’t about to mess my bloomers over it,” she said. She let loose with the sound called cackling. She slapped at her knee. When she spoke her lips sucked into her mouth and blew out with the words. “Damned fools set a sign there, they got to take what they get.”

  “It’s a corner, Ma. Stop signs go at corners.”

  Granny told the road to obey her wishes when she was drunk and seemed to think it would. She wished the road would turn now or add another lane now or raise up and shake itself clean of other traffic. Strangers weren’t sure she was drunk, but I knew. Granny got braggish when
drunk. She got swole up about herself. When she took to bragging on her thoughts and notions it was time to jump from the station wagon and walk or brace for a crash.

  Carl said, “We best stick it back up. Those folks over there saw it happen.”

  “Might be I’ll just prance over there and whup the lot of ’em ’til they mind their own damn business.”

  “No, no ass-whuppin’, Ma.”

  She stood beside the station wagon that was loaded with rolled papers, and the engine still ran so the wagon wobbled behind her and spit smoke from the tailpipe.

  “I b’lieve I could do it.”

  “I believe you’re goin’ to jail if we don’t fix this sign pretty quick.”

  “There ain’t no jail gonna hold me, son.”

  “Just stay there!” Carl wore regular tan-type pants with two full legs of cloth. He wanted his crater hidden in public. His walk had plenty of hop yet in it as he walked over to the sign. “Give me a hand, Shug.”

  I did then tell him what I had noted already.

  “The sign’s bent all to hell, Carl.”

  “It is, is it?”

  “It’s bent bad as a horseshoe. Down low there. A horseshoe ain’t goin’ to stand up straight.”

  Carl leaned on me a little and I smelled his usual daylong smell of beer and cigarettes. His head hair had grown to touch his ears and he was trying for a mustache but still had a ways to go. His weight was not bad leaning on me and we both looked at the sign. He said, “I don’t reckon we can fix that.”

  “No way.”

  “Then di di mau, baby. Di di mau. I’ll drive.”

  To make the paper-throwing fun we invented a contest. Carl drove sitting slouched at an angle, his bad leg raised partly onto the front seat so he could twist about and work the pedals with his good leg, the left. He kept a can of beer on his lap and kept the radio playing loud. Granny leaned from the passenger-side front window and I did lean from the window behind her, and we flung papers at the right addresses, aiming for the front porches or sidewalks. A porch hit meant five points and a sidewalk two.