Sunset and Sawdust

by Joe R. Lansdale

“He got something and died. Polio, I think. My mama and daddy had nine kids, and I decided I could do all right on my own. Give them others, my sisters, a better chance.”

  “Some of them sisters had to be older than you.”

  “Yeah. But they ain’t got the adventure in them like me.”

  “You never did tell me why they call you Goose.”

  “Cause I run like one.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Draighton.”

  “I don’t know that’s so bad.”

  “I like Goose better.”

  “All right, Goose.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lee.”

  “Ain’t that coat hot?”

  “It is. I hang on to it because I got to have something when winter comes. I can take it off when I work, put it over me at night. It ain’t so bad to wear just walking, not if you’re used to it.”

  “All I got is these here clothes and this cap. My shoes got holes in the bottom. I had to stuff them with cardboard.”

  “I got mine fixed the same way, son.”

  “I got a stick of peppermint I stole from a store. It’s kind of busted up on account of it’s in my front pocket, but I could split it up with you, you want.”

  “All right.”

  The boy dug the peppermint out of his pocket. It was busted up good, but he collected the pieces and split them up, poured part of them into the man’s hand.

  The man put the pieces in his mouth all at once. They had bits of lint and dirt on them, but he was so hungry he thought of the lint and dirt as spice. The last meal he had eaten was two days ago and it was a boiled shoe that he and some bo’s fixed alongside the tracks. There was a tater cut up in the mix, but he didn’t get any of it, and the shoe, though cut up and boiled soft enough to eat, still had the taste of shoe dye about it, and it made him throw up later.

  Right now, he was so hungry his stomach felt like his throat was cut.

  “What you gonna do in Camp Rapture?” he asked the boy.

  “Try and get a job just like you.”

  “Boy your age shouldn’t have to work. Chores maybe, but not a man’s work.”

  “That’s what I keep saying, but it don’t seem to matter none. I’ve done every kind of work there is, except one that makes big money. I can plow, I can tote, I can paint and I can pick. I worked in a carnival some until the boss bent me over a wagon wheel and stuck his thing up my butt.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It hurt some, but least he got shit on his dick. Later on I set fire to the little wagon he was in, and he got caught on fire, but the carnies put him out. I run off then, before he got to feeling better and figured out I done it. He had this one pinhead worked there that was real mean when he wanted her to be. She’d jump on you and just whale with both hands fast as she could go, and she could go fast all right. I figured he’d sic her on me. He’d done it to others.”

  “You have been around.”

  “You name it, if it’s hard to do and hurts the back, I can do it.”

  “Wait till you’re my age.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I’m in my fifties. We’ll leave it at that. Clouds are parting. Moon’s coming out.”

  They walked on for a ways, then Lee reached out and stopped the boy. “Look there.”

  A huge black snake crawled across the road with a whipping motion, its head held up.

  “Goddamn,” the boy said. “That one’s longer than Satan’s dick.”

  “You really ought not talk like that.”

  “I like you, but you ain’t my daddy.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Was that a water moccasin?”

  “I think it was just a big old chicken snake. They don’t hurt nothing. Less it’s chickens, eggs, or rats. I don’t mind the rats, but you can sure get put out with them if they get in your chicken house and you was wanting eggs for breakfast.”

  When they were certain the snake was deep in the woods, they continued walking.

  “Chicken snake poisonous?” Goose asked.

  “Naw. But they still give me the creeps. I reckon they’re God’s creatures just like us, but I see one, and there’s a hoe handy, I’ll take to it and chop off its head, poisonous or not.”

  “Reckon old snake was lucky you didn’t have a hoe tonight.”

  “That’s right. One time when I was a kid a coachwhip snake chased me around my house a bunch of times, and when I went inside to hide, it rose up and looked in the window.”

  “Naw.”

  “It did. Window wasn’t high off the ground, but it scared me bad. Mama got the hoe and chopped off its head. Later, I learned a coachwhip will chase you, but if you stop, it’ll stop, and you can chase it. You stop chasing, it’ll turn and come after you. They’re kind of playing. I think it was looking through that window for me to come out and play some more. Wanted me to take a turn chasing it. And my mama went out there and chopped off its head. Always made me feel kind of guilty.”

  “You look kind of like a preacher.”

  “Don’t confuse me with one. Though I have done some preaching in my time.”

  “Just to make money, work the rubes? Do some of that healing stuff?”

  “No, son. I meant it and I didn’t heal nothing, cause ain’t nobody can heal but the Lord God hisself.”

  “Why ain’t you still preaching?”

  “Sort of fell off the wagon. I could still hear the call but I couldn’t tell no more what the Lord was calling. I felt like a man going deaf. Still good enough ears to hear the sound, but not enough hearing to understand it.”

  “What was it knocked you off the wagon? Booze? Gambling? Pussy?”

  “I know I’m not your daddy, but you really are too young to talk like that.”

  “I don’t know no other way to talk. As for booze, gambling and pussy, I’ve had me some of all three, so I guess I can talk about it, and I can tell you straight out that I like pussy the best. Which was it with you?”

  “All of them. Including some you didn’t name. Fact is, I ain’t just here for a job. I’ve come here to set some things I done here right as they can be set. Gonna try and give a lady an apology, if she’s here and willing to take it.”

  “And if she ain’t willing to take it?”

  “I wouldn’t blame her.”

  “What if she isn’t in Camp Rapture?”

  “I try not to think about that. It makes me feel bad to think that, so I don’t think about it, and won’t, unless she ain’t here. Then I got to start up with a new set of worries.”

  “It happen a long time ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So let it go. My pappy always said, you already done something, ain’t no use noodling on it. It ain’t gonna get better if you do.”

  “He may be right. But I’m not doing it just for her. Doing it for me.”

  “Hell, I don’t feel guilty about nothing I’ve done.”

  “Maybe it’s because you haven’t done anything really bad.”

  “I stole that peppermint. I’ve stole other stuff.”

  “That’s bad, but it could be worse.”

  “It wasn’t so bad you didn’t eat that peppermint.”

  “I was hungry.”

  “Why I stole it and about four others. That was just the last one left. Got a cigarette, Lee?”

  “No. Don’t smoke. And you’re too young to smoke.”

  “There you go with that young stuff again,” Goose said. “What about a chaw, or some snuff?”

  “Same answer,” Lee said.

  After an hour or so, Lee and Goose discovered they were farther from Camp Rapture than they thought and that it looked unlikely they would make it before morning.

  This was all surmise on their part, as neither had any exact idea how far it was. Lee had been there before, but it was many years past, and much had changed since then.

  Goose said, “I’m so damn tired, I think I’m gonna fall over
.”

  “Me too,” Lee said. “I can tell by the hang of the stars there. Look right there through them trees—”

  “I see em.”

  “I can tell by where they’re hanging it’s getting pretty late on, and I’m as tuckered out as a tick in a tar bucket.”

  “Me too. But I can go on a bit if you can.”

  They walked on a little ways more until they decided they just couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Ain’t like when we get to Camp Rapture they’re gonna be waiting on us with open arms and a hot meal,” Goose said. “Reckon dirt out here is good as dirt around there. Won’t be the first time I’ve laid in dirt.”

  “You’re right,” Lee said. “Let’s cash it in.”

  They veered off the road, into the woods, looking for a place to lie down. Just a few yards off the road they found where leaves were mounded up under a tree, and in that moment that pile looked like a featherbed. Then Lee saw that the tree, a massive oak, had a large low limb that had been split, possibly by lightning. It was wide enough to hold a body and split deep enough to serve as a kind of natural hammock. Lee put leaves in the limb and said, “Now you got you a bed, Goose.”

  “Not me. I can take care of myself. I don’t need no help to lay down somewhere. Besides, I don’t climb no trees I don’t have to. I don’t climb nothing I don’t have to.”

  “Isn’t more than five feet off the ground,” Lee said.

  “Still, ain’t for me.”

  “You ain’t much of a boy, not wanting to climb trees.”

  “It ain’t the climbing worries me. It’s the falling.”

  Lee took the limb and Goose lay down on the leaves. “These leaves piled up like this, my daddy used to tell me that there was ape-men did it at night. Piled them up, I mean.”

  “You think they did?”

  “I don’t know. I guess not. It was a good story.”

  “What were your people like, Goose?”

  “Just like other people, I reckon. Poor. But they was poor before the Depression. My mama was part Cherokee, and my papa was half Choctaw. When the dust come I left so they wouldn’t be in such a bad way with all us kids. I went down here to East Texas, and they carried on out to California.”

  “Why didn’t you go with them?”

  “Didn’t want to go no place where the weather stays the same. Can’t stand it when summer drags on. I like it when I don’t know it’s going to rain or storm, be clear or hot. Course, I liked it better before I didn’t have a roof to get under and some regular food. Maybe I’d have been better to have gone out there to California, now that I noodle on it.”

  “I been. It’s nothing special. Just more of the same, only with a steady climate and oranges. Like you, Goose, I don’t like it steady all the time. Changeable weather teaches a man how to be changeable hisself. He can move with events. You can’t learn character when everything is smooth.”

  “Maybe I don’t need no character. Maybe what I need is three meals a day and a bed and some kind of something over my head so I don’t get rained on.”

  “Could be, Goose.”

  Pretty soon Lee heard Goose snoring, and was surprised that now he couldn’t sleep. His mind was racing, and Goose’s snoring wasn’t helping.

  He lay there and looked up into the limbs of the tree. At first it was just dark up there, but in time his eyes adjusted and he could make out limbs, and finally, through gaps he could see a few stars.

  He felt an old urge. The one he had when he was preaching. The urge to reach out with his thoughts to God, who surely must lie behind that veil of night and stars, and maybe wasn’t as mean as he seemed to act. Sometimes he thought God was just mean to him.

  Maybe he deserved it.

  He didn’t know what he deserved anymore, and didn’t reckon it mattered. Deserving had nothing to do with it.

  There once was a time when he had felt close to God, had thought himself God’s servant.

  But that was many sins ago.

  He lay there and looked and thought and finally the sky lightened, and finally he closed his eyes.

  16

  Marilyn drove out to Sunset’s tent early the next morning. Found her and Clyde there. Clyde was sitting out front in a wooden folding chair drinking coffee. Sunset was feeding Ben from a big metal pan, some bread soaked in grease and yesterday’s gravy. Beside the food pan was a larger pan full of water.

  Marilyn pulled the truck up close to the tent. The dog turned to look at her.

  “He gonna bite me?” Marilyn asked through the open truck window.

  “He minds pretty good,” Sunset said. “But I’ll come over and walk you to the tent.”

  “That’s all right, we can talk while we ride,” Marilyn said. “Get in. Howdy, Clyde.”

  Clyde lifted his coffee cup.

  “Don’t look you’re hurting yourself none,” Marilyn said.

  “I don’t know. I think I might have strained a little bit a while ago. The elbow, you know, when I was lifting my cup.”

  Sunset gave Ben a pat, climbed in the truck beside Marilyn. Marilyn cranked up and drove off.

  Marilyn said, “Where’s that other one?”

  “Hillbilly? I don’t know. He was supposed to come in, but he ain’t done it so far. We keep pretty loose hours. We ain’t exactly solving a bunch of crimes, but still, he was supposed to have been in. Clyde took his truck home last night, and Hillbilly had to walk to wherever he’s going. He ain’t staying with Clyde no more. I think they ain’t getting along for some reason, and then Clyde burned his own house down.”

  “What?”

  “Burned it down. It was his way of cleaning it, or so he said. That’s one crime we solved. Who burned down Clyde’s house. He did it. Now he’s got to sleep under a tarp.”

  “You know why they ain’t getting along, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You. I don’t know nothing about it, and I can tell you why. They both like you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re breaking hearts, and don’t even know it, Sunset. Understand you got some real crimes, though.”

  “So, Willie’s been to talk to you,” Sunset said.

  “Henry.”

  “I can’t figure which one of them is the ass end of the snake, and which is the teeth,” Sunset said, “but they’re just one long snake far as I’m concerned.”

  “They told me what they think.”

  “They can think all kinds of things.”

  “I think they’re gonna try to have you removed at the next camp meeting. They may even try to bring charges against you, about killing Pete, Jimmie Jo, and killing and burying that baby in the colored graveyard.”

  “Why in hell would I go on a killing spree? All of a sudden I go out and kill Jimmie Jo and her baby and then shoot Pete. Why would I do that?”

  “Jealousy. It answers a lot.”

  “I wasn’t that jealous, and I wasn’t that mad. I ain’t resigning. I didn’t kill that woman, and I’m trying to find out who killed her. It just takes time. Hell, I’m a constable, not a detective, and I’m learning the job. Even Pete had to learn the job.”

  “I heard how you handled that situation in Holiday. Sounded like you done good.”

  “I think so.”

  “Fella got lynched anyhow.”

  “Do what?”

  “A crowd broke in and got him out of jail and cut his things off and set him on fire. They even took pictures. They were selling them over at the general store as postcards.”

  “That’s horrible. I didn’t do no good at all.”

  “You brought a murderer to justice.”

  “No, I brought a murderer to a lynching, which was what they were trying to do in Holiday. They done to him just what he said they’d do to him. It’s like I didn’t do nothing but put off what was gonna happen.”

  “They were gonna kill him anyway. Had it coming.”

  “Maybe so. But not burned to death with postcard pictures made of
it. Jesus Christ. The law would have at least been quick and there wouldn’t have been no pictures to sell—I guess it’s quick. Damn.”

  “They say it was the law there let them have him.”

  “I hope that ain’t true.”

  “Sorry, Sunset.”

  “Me too. More than sorry. Hell, maybe they’re right. I ain’t much of a constable. I’ve had a dead baby and dead woman and I don’t have a clue who done it or why, and the one thing I thought I done pretty good worked out just like it would have if I’d stayed at the house. And now there’s folks think I did the crimes I’m supposed to be solving, and when Henry and Willie get through, more folks will know.”

  They drove along for a bit in silence. Marilyn broke it with: “I’m gonna do what I can to keep you constable. But I can’t make no promises. It was one thing when it was thought you killed someone beating on you, and there was a nickel raise, but if Henry adds this to it, convinces folks you might have killed Jimmie Jo, and a baby, or at least talks them into believing you ain’t doing enough to solve it . . .”

  “When’s the meeting?”

  “Couple of weeks. Thursday, noonish. And it’s just gonna be the camp bigwigs, not the whole camp.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “You might not want to do that,” Marilyn said. “It could turn ugly as the ass end of a bulldog.”

  “I know.”

  “Got any idea at all who done this, or why?”

  Sunset shook her head. “None. But there’s some things that have occurred to me, and I’m gonna try and run that around in my head a little more today, then go and do something about it.”

  “Darling, sure would be good if you could figure this out before that meeting.”

  “Frankly, that ain’t likely. But I’ll work on it. And Marilyn . . .”

  “What, hon?”

  “Things like they are, you’ve done right by me. I really am sorry about Pete.”

  “I ain’t gonna lie to you, Sunset. Some mornings I wake up and I want to kill you. I know better, but I want to kill you, and I can’t understand why Pete’s gone or why you done it. Then a few minutes later, I know exactly why you done it. But I still don’t like it. I also miss Jones. I wouldn’t have taken him back or nothing, but I miss him sometimes.”

  “I hurt about it a lot,” Sunset said. “I ain’t proud of it, but I thought he was gonna kill me. I ain’t never gonna put up with that kind of thing again.”