The Death of Sweet Mister

by Daniel Woodrell

  GLENDA STOPPED calling me Hon. She also stopped throwing hugs to mark any good moment in a day. She took to only calling me Shug. Twice she tried to shift to Morris, Morris this, Morris this, too, but something about the sound of my legal name said out loud right away shifted her back to Shug, plain Shug.

  Now and then she made promises about New Orleans: “You’ll know people there you can’t imagine now, Shug.”

  And: “Shug, there’s a good chance you’ll learn to sail a boat on the Gulf of Mexico.”

  And: “Why Shug, French doughnuts’ll make you forget about most kinds of pie.”

  On this night the heat buckled at dark and she and me watched TV while a sprinkle of breeze pattered in through the screens. The show was supposed to be funny but the funny wasn’t showing.

  She said, “Where’s the funny in that? What’s funny about a four-eyed bum in a raincoat holdin’ a flower? And that girl? That’s not a real blond, even, and she can’t tell a joke, or dance that great, either, but she’s on TV.”

  The kitchen door squeaked open during the show and uneven footsteps brought Carl into the TV room. His clothes were all-white but sloppy, streaked by dirt, and the beer smell puffed about when he talked.

  “Hey there,” he said. He looked at the show a minute but he laughed. He did not sit. For two seconds he tried to dance like the girl on the show. As he talked his words slowed and stretched into the shape dope makes words take. “Say, no sign of him yet?”

  I said, “Not a shadow.”

  “Well now, ol’ Ma’s gettin’ worried about her boy, you know.”

  “He’ll show when he feels like it.”

  Glenda didn’t say anything to him, and he stood there watching the show and laughing on his own. He saw jokes that slipped past her and me. During a commercial he grabbed my head hair and yanked so I had to look at him. He was most of the way boiled.

  “Thought we’d go giggin’.”

  “You did?”

  “Thought we’d gig a mess of frogs.”

  “Tonight?”

  “This minute. Lace up your sneakers.”

  All Glenda said was, “Are you good to drive?”

  “Yup. Yup.”

  “Okay—so go.”

  Carl drove Granny’s station wagon. One headlight was winked shut and old newspapers and empty beer cans rolled and tinkled in the bed. I could not see any frog gigs but did see a rifle laid on the backseat. I poked the barrel hole with a finger and it felt to be a small-bullet rifle.

  “Where’ll we go to gig ’em?”

  “This place.”

  As we reached the rock wall that edged the bone orchard he slammed the brakes, swatting up dust that swirled in the one headlight beam. The motor ticked.

  He said, “Get in the middle.”

  Basil squirted from between the shadows there, opened the door and shoved me over.

  “Scoot,” he said. “Slide over, fatso.”

  Out along the road Basil said, “Got you own clothes on tonight.” Just from his voice I knew his eyes were blurred by red streaks and his blood ran spiced with the ol’ doc’s dope. He made a point of slowly resting a pistol on the seat between his legs. I never before saw him to have a pistol. “Thought we’d powwow off in the woods, kid. Thought we’d powwow about stuff you might know and not be tellin’.”

  “I’m here to gig frogs.”

  “Could be you’ll gig some. Could be. But first you’ll answer up to us a little bit.”

  Shot frogs were tossed in the wagon bed. Nobody brought gigs so the frogs were shot. The wagon sat parked with the headlight pointed skimming across the pond water to make frog eyes glow. The small bullets of the rifle planted small perfect holes with no splattering. The frogs weren’t hard to see or hard to hit with the rifle. The pistol missed a lot more and threw squat burly bullets that ripped the frog bodies open and left shreds dangling. Their legs were all anybody wanted so which bullet hit their bodies made no big difference.

  Carl and Basil wouldn’t say much to me for a long while. Basil brought a little bottle holding a pale make of booze, and both of them were doped on pills. Even boiled Carl shot real good. Basil used the pistol like a drunk cowboy. When he saw frog eyes glow he strode towards the eyes blasting, making the water dance until a bullet chanced to catch a frog and ripped it open.

  Carl said, “This is ol’ Tribble’s land. You know Tribble?”

  Basil said, “The one with the eye?”

  “The one with the house settin’ on the far side of this ridge.”

  “He got both eyes?”

  “This is a different Tribble from the one you think.”

  “I guess I don’t, then.”

  The pond was a bowl in shape and shallow. Water lay in it the color of weak pea soup. Green stalks with thin leaves grew up around the rim of the pond. All I did was wade out between the green stalks and retrieve dead frogs until a nice mess of them had got shot and harvested. A long long stick helped me rake the frogs from the pond water to near the bank, where I fetched and tossed them in the wagon bed.

  “When is it my shot?”

  They both looked my way. They both held guns and looked my way with no helpful expressions showing from their faces. Neither stood too solid, but shuffled about like the world under their feet rippled and rolled.

  Carl said, “I want you to know this. Over there I killed me two, or six, or maybe even eight motherfuckers who never did diddly to me. All they done was get their asses born where I was told to shoot. Read me? That’s it. That’s all. But still, I plumb blew their shit up! Shot their guts right out of ’em. So now, Shug, if it turns out to be somebody here at home greased my brother, then I want you to know I got somethin’ special for the fuckers who done it.”

  “Wouldn’t that make you a murderer?”

  “So?”

  “I’d hate to see you be a murderer.”

  “That ain’t your choice to make.”

  Basil slipped over to me, pistol in his left hand so his right hand could grab me by the throat and choke. His eyes had that blur. His choke did not pack the oomph of Red’s chokes.

  “Tell me, fat boy. Who’s the sport in the T-bird?”

  He eased his grip on my throat.

  “The what in the what?”

  “Does your momma got her a new boyfriend that drives a Thunderbird?”

  “Thunder-bird! I wish!”

  He gave me a shaking by the throat, but it wasn’t much of a shaking compared to others.

  “Don’t lie to me, kid. Don’t do that.”

  I raised my hands and gave Basil a hard shove and stood back a step with my fists balled.

  “You forgettin’ who my daddy is?”

  “You pushed me. See that? He pushed me. Tubby fuckin’ punk.”

  I suppose I slid a step nearer to Carl.

  “Don’t try’n hog me down, Basil. Just ’cause you done a little time it don’t mean you scare me.”

  Right then Carl laughed, which I know helped. His laugh helped let steam off. The laugh changed the tune. Basil sort of laughed, too.

  “Dig the mouth on this punk, would you?”

  “I heard him. I heard him. Sounds about like somebody else we know, don’t he?”

  After that they let me shoot the pistol twice. No frogs glowed for targets so I could only shoot the heart of the pond.

  “Can’t I shoot a few more?”

  “Out of bullets,” Basil said. “Next time, ol’ son, we’ll bring more.”

  The three of us had gone to sit in the wagon, and the engine ran, when shot frogs started hopping. Three or four frogs were shot but not dead. Their croaks wheezed. They hopped at the window glass and came down making wet slap sounds. The hops were duds, low and lame. The frogs landed strange, lurching like they had no balance left. We each sat watching silently as frogs we’d figured for good and dead kept trying to hop away.

  “Je-sus,” Carl said. “Grab ’em up. Bring ’em to me in the light.”

  Wounded fr
ogs with no balance were simple to catch. I snatched them by their feet and carried them into the headlight beam. Carl held a hunting knife. Basil just sucked on his bottle and watched. Carl bent the legs over the blade and snapped the leg bones as the blade cut at the joint. He tossed the bodies into the pond. The bodies still made frog noises. The cutting and cracking only took a minute. The bodies croaked in the air and went thunk when they hit the pond water.

  He said, “With no legs they’ll drown.”

  WHAT SHE came to say set loose my screams. The Thunderbird stopped near the screen door and she stepped out to come inside. The Thunderbird left and she came in carrying a sack from the ice cream store.

  “You eat?”

  “Supper—that dessert?”

  “Banana split, Shug. Get it before it melts.”

  The table tilted this way and that while we sat. She smoked like always. I spooned and swallowed. The table tilted this way when I leaned over to spoon and that way when I sat up to swallow. I ate fast and the table tilted both ways.

  “Call came from Tino’s today. Jimmy Vin got the wrong answer.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Not really, it’s not. We’ve got to get out of here, I feel sure of that. We can’t stay, the way things are. He just now tried another call and this one answered right.”

  “So where to?”

  “He’ll be cookin’ on a boat. The kind of boat that’s as big as a grade school. So big you hardly feel the waves. Cookin’ breakfast and tendin’ bar at night. An ocean liner.”

  “When does this happen?”

  “Once he gets his check tomorrow, it’s, ‘So long little ol’ West Table, hello big ocean.’ ”

  “That’s awful fast. Ain’t that awful fast?”

  “The boat’s got to leave on a certain schedule. It leaves out of Miami, then sails on to South America, that type of place. The boat goes down there and back, puttin’ in at all the vacation islands spotted around in between.”

  “That sounds good. That sounds great.”

  “I think it will be. I’m sure it will. You can’t go.”

  “Huh?”

  “You can’t go. That’s their rules.”

  “Don’t. Don’t.”

  “I almost couldn’t go, but Jimmy Vin claimed we’d got married and I’d be useful in the galley, which is where he’ll be. But there’s no other room, Shug. You’ll have to move in on Granny.”

  “Glenda? Glenda, you’ll leave me easy as that? You’ll just up and leave me alone?”

  “No. No. Listen—you can move in on Granny.”

  I did not want to have feelings in front of anybody, nobody, which meant her.

  “Is it because of in the kitchen? That time in the kitchen?”

  “Don’t work it around to where I’m mean. I’m not mean. Don’t think that. But I need to start packin’—there’s a lot to do.”

  “Is it because of in the kitchen? Is it?”

  “You toughen up. Toughen up, and hush.”

  “Everybody else does was why I done it.”

  “That’s not why. You just can’t go. Hush.”

  The bottle where I hid my lifelong screams busted wide. The screams flew loose where nobody could hear. The road I walked along was sunburnt dirt and dust lifted with each step. I walked alone and felt my screams break free. I screamed over things that happened I thought I’d forgot. I screamed past fence rows and cows along the sunburnt road. Parts of me I did not understand broke loose inside and clogged my throat. The cows laid listening to my screams as if they knew all about them and didn’t need to hear more. They looked towards me but did not stir. I climbed the fence going their way and let screams run among them. They laid near a creek bed dried white and cracked, a dry creek cut between banks of summer-white weeds. I screamed walking on the creek. It was a dry creek but the cracked bed had to lead somewhere. I sounded along the hard dry bed and around rocks and under trees that lisped and out again to bare pasture.

  I screamed until my throat was whipped raw and the sun settled and set.

  Then I walked home in the night, empty of feelings.

  I climbed to the farthest dark corner of the tractor shed, in amongst the cobwebs and bat shit, and found the boot. I carried the boot under my arm like a loaf of bread and made my way along the town sidewalks past the town people doing all those things people did that do not matter. I went past them feeling raw and unknown.

  At the shotgun shack where the Patty person lived I knocked hard on the door. Basil answered, shirt off, a can of beer in his hand.

  “What, kid?”

  There wasn’t a bottle for my screams anymore.

  I raised the boot and held it stretched between both hands so the eagle wings showed plain, and he began to cry.

  ALL DAY I let her keep packing. She packed her things in cardboard boxes. I liked the way her hands moved folding clean clothes fresh from the line. I liked the way she hummed as her hands moved.

  “Be sure and take those dresses he thinks you’re so pretty in. Such a doll.”

  She packed six boxes of things she had to have.

  She said to me once, “We’ll be back this way in around a year. Maybe less.”

  I let her keep packing.

  When she first noted he was late she said, “It’s still early yet. He probably stayed for a goodbye drink with folks at the Echo. I’m sure that’s where he is. It’s not late yet.”

  She said to me once, “It won’t be so bad at Granny’s. You’ll be off to the marines in a few years.”

  The sun turned away like it was laughing at her. Sunset shoved her hope downhill. She kept her eyes on the lane through the bone orchard and watched and worried and sighed while nobody came.

  I said, “Be sure’n comb your hair nice for him, now.”

  “The car must’ve broke down.”

  “That’s gotta be it.”

  The more she was torn up the sweeter she got. I mixed her a thermos of tea. She kept her eyes on the lane as the night got darker.

  “Johnny’s on,” I said. “Want to watch Johnny?”

  I mixed her another thermos of tea when Johnny ended.

  She said, “I don’t know what the hell’s goin’ on. Maybe I don’t want to know.”

  “You know what you need to know—he ain’t comin’. He ain’t comin’ for you.”

  “You don’t have to say it like that.”

  “You got dumped. Glenda, you got dumped. Jimmy Vin ain’t goin’ to show.”

  She was crushed. She was stomped flat. Her hope had gone under. She sat at the table with her head on her arms and let loose tears until they puddled beside her hands.

  I pulled her raven hair back with my fingers to look her in the face as she wept.

  “You ain’t alone.”

  We went that way all night.

  She said, “But you won’t dump me, will you, hon?”

  “Naw.”

  “You’re different, hon. Aren’t you? Aren’t you different from the rest?”

  “You raised me.”

  “But what’ll we do for money?”

  “I can get money.”

  “How is that, hon?”

  “Never you mind how.”

  Through the night she got drunker and more attached to me. She hugged me plenty. We danced with no music until dawn was close. She rested her head on my shoulder. The smell of her was fine. Her lips brushed my neck.

  I said, “I like the way you look best in that long-legged green thing you wear.”

  “Oh, baby, that thing is packed.”

  “I said I like it best.”

  I pushed through the screen door and out to the stoop. I sat to face the sun. She soon came to the screen and whispered to me. I turned to look at what she wore.

  She’d heard me.

  I raised my eyes to the sun and she came to stand behind me. I felt her knees in my back. There was something off about the sun. Not as round as normal but shining hard. All that sunshine coming my way and n
othing I cared to see. I stared into the sun until I couldn’t see a thing. I felt her fingers in my hair. I raised my hands, reached behind and stroked her long legs in the smooth smooth green thing. I stroked her legs all up and down. She did not move. I couldn’t see a thing except a total blur of light. She did not move as my hands stroked higher.

  I’d say no dawns ever did break right over her and me again.

  Reading Group Guide

  THE DEATH OF SWEET MISTER

  a novel by

  Daniel Woodrell

  HOW MUCH OF THE OZARKS IS IN ME?

  TWO HOURS before beginning this essay we had yet another encounter with residents of the meth house on the corner, our nearest neighbor to the west. The lead male over there is a cutter; dozens of little slashes have made risen scars on his arms. He has a ponytail, is known well by all cops in town, and never wears a shirt. He accused us of “eyeballing” him as we passed his house, something we have no choice but to do many times a day. The derelict shack has in the past been home to sex criminals, rapists, and pedophiles, other meth users, and some criminals who would have to be called general practitioners—whatever crime looks easiest tonight is what they will be arrested for tomorrow. Meth-heads are the worst to deal with. They are unpredictable and frequently violent after they’ve been sleepless for a few days. We are dedicated to minding our own business about most things, legal or not so much, but cooking meth releases toxins and is a peril to the whole neighborhood. A decade ago there were several houses much like this operating nearby, but they’ve been weeded down to this, the last one, and these tweakers should start packing.