Sunset and Sawdust

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “You just like me because you beat me every game.”

  “That helps.”

  “Naw. I reckon I gotta move on. I have someone to see, some things to fix, much as they’re fixable. I ain’t going real far, though, and I’ll be back. In the meantime, you should move Goose out of your bed and put him on a pallet. Giving up your bed to him like that was real Christian of you.”

  “When he heals up, what about him?” Uncle Riley said.

  Lee looked at Goose. He was ravenously finishing off his last piece of chicken.

  “I don’t know,” Lee said. He was thinking he’d told the boy he wasn’t going to go off, and now he was planning to do just that. He always meant to stay, but he always ran. Maybe where he went the boy had to come too. Maybe that was the way to be from now on. Not leaving people you cared about.

  As they were talking, Marilyn’s truck, still rattling the junk in the bed, pulled up. When she got out, Lee took note that she looked very nice and fresh and was wearing a bright green dress with white trim.

  Uncle Riley and Lee greeted her.

  “I come by to see how Goose is doing,” she said, “but I see he’s doing pretty good.”

  From the porch, Goose raised a hand in greeting.

  “That’s real nice of you, Marilyn,” Lee said.

  “I had another reason. I was going to give you a ride. You said you were going to see Sunset.”

  “Well, that’s good of you. I’d like that. But truth to tell, I thought I’d leave out tomorrow. I feel like I ought to spend another day here with Goose, and besides, I got to beat Riley in some more checkers.”

  “He ain’t won a game yet,” Uncle Riley said. “But you could join us for dinner, Goose ain’t ate all the fried chicken yet.”

  Marilyn smiled. “I think I will.”

  24

  Sunset and Hillbilly put the box with the maps in the trunk of the car along with Sunset’s gun and holster, and when they came out from behind it, they noted more colored men and one colored woman had been added to the trotline around the oak. Plug was outside now, under the tree, and he was giving the prisoners drinks of water from a wooden pail with a long metal dipper. The new deputy that had been there before was still there, cradling the shotgun in his arms, looking out at the street, watching women pass.

  She and Hillbilly went about town, bumping into people, finally making it to the bank to cash the checks Marilyn had given them.

  They went to the cafe and ate steaks and drank coffee and walked back and behind the courthouse where there was a fair going on and the street was closed off with blue and yellow sawhorses. There was a band playing, strong on fiddle and banjo and female voices. Hillbilly talked them into letting him sing, borrowed a guitar that lay idle against a chair, and went at it.

  And Sunset couldn’t believe it, because he was just as good as he thought he was, his voice sometimes deep as the bottom of an old Dutch oven, sometimes sharp as the prick of a pin, blending well with the sweet voices of the women. He sang about love and he sang about loss and he sang about sundown and the rise of the moon. Sunset felt his voice slide into her and bang around on the inside of her skin. He sang three numbers, gave the guitar back to the band to the sound of much clapping and cheering, and with what Sunset thought was a bit of reluctance, came down from the riser smiling.

  Sunset took off her badge, put it in the snap pocket of her shirt. “You’re good,” she said.

  “I know,” he said.

  They found a place where they could throw baseballs at bottles and Sunset hit one of them and Hillbilly hit four. Sunset won a free toss, which she missed, and Hillbilly won a little brown teddy bear with red button eyes, which he gave to her. They guessed a fat man’s weight, and when the fat man got on the scale, they were both wrong. They had pink cotton candy and drank root beer out of paper cups and had some greasy sausage on a stick and shared a bag of popcorn and shelled some hot peanuts. They tossed hoops at sticks stuck up in the ground, and this time Sunset was better than Hillbilly. She got her hoops on four sticks and won another bear, a big blue one with a white belly. She and Hillbilly walked around carrying the bears, stomachs churning with their lunch, the cotton candy, the root beer and the heat. Sunset laughed and made fun of the bear Hillbilly had won and said it was too short to be much of a bear, and he told her how her bear would eat too much, and pretty soon they were laughing and poking one another and walking close together. Their hands found each other and their fingers entwined. Night fell and it was cooler and they walked back to the car holding hands and Hillbilly said, “We’ll miss the fireworks,” and Sunset said, “I suppose we will,” and she drove them out of there, drove them on up to the place Clyde had told them about.

  Sunset didn’t say a word, just drove off the road, down the narrow trail Clyde had pointed out, going slow because it was rough, and Hillbilly, he didn’t say anything either, and the trail wound up amongst the dark trees and finally it widened and they came upon the overlook.

  Sunset parked close to the edge, killed the lights and engine. Through the windshield, as Clyde had said, they could see out and down, though not too far down, and they could view the whole of Holiday lit up like Christmas because of the festival. The lights were so pretty it made you want to jump down and get them. Even the oil derricks had been festooned with lights, and the lights on the derricks seemed to float high up above the others like gigantic fireflies.

  With the windows down it was crisp and comfortable and the music drifted up from the town and an echoing voice sang “Take a Whiff on Me,” or at least that’s what Sunset thought it was, but she couldn’t really hear it that well. Without saying a word Hillbilly slid next to her.

  She turned her face to his, and when their lips met she felt a lot less cool than before, but it was a good heat, and it came from deep down and spread over her like a soft blanket on a dark fall morning, and pretty soon her hands and his hands began to probe and the view was forgotten.

  In the front seat, legs parted, she took him in and he went to work on her; it was a moment as fine as any she’d ever had, and when it ended, it didn’t end, but started up immediately again, and they changed positions, and moved every which way two people could move, and when she was near this time she felt as if all the bright hopes of the world were rising up inside of her, then the top of her head blew off, and down in the town below the fireworks were set off, and they burst high in the sky and brightened the windshield, and she laughed and couldn’t stop laughing for a long, long time, then Hillbilly made a sound she liked and pulled out and she felt a hot wet spray, then he collapsed on top of her, heavy and warm and smooth to touch, his breath and hers going fast, their chests rising, gradually slowing, finally calm, and for a considerable time neither of them spoke nor wanted to.

  25

  Morning after the Oil Festival, when Rooster pulled up at the sheriff’s office, Main Street was a sun-bright mud hole full of debris, piles of dung (human and animal), and three passed-out drunks, one of them a fat, pale woman without drawers, her skirt over her head. Rooster started walking up the street, paused long enough to reach over and pull the woman’s skirt down without looking directly at her.

  The coloreds who had been picked up for drunk and disorderly were still on the trotline around the oak tree, sleeping. Plug had fallen asleep guarding them, his back against the sheriff’s office, his shotgun across his lap. His helper, Tootie, who had half the brains Plug had and was ashamed of that half, was nearby, asleep in the grass. Rooster figured he was as drunk as those on the trotline.

  Rooster decided not to wake them. Wasn’t like the men on the trotline were going anywhere, and he didn’t want to stir Plug or Tootie, especially that asshole Tootie. He didn’t want their company, not with what he had to do, who he had to see above the drugstore. About noon he’d let all the drunks go home, anyway.

  He looked up the street where he had to go, thought, Sheriff Knowles wouldn’t have let him get into this kind of business.


  “Rooster, you’re a good man,” Sheriff Knowles used to say. “You just need some direction.”

  But Sheriff Knowles was gone now, and the only direction he was going now was up the street to see that man. And he didn’t want to see him. Ought to arrest him. But wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Didn’t have the guts. And he was in too deep.

  Above the drugstore the whole top floor was an apartment. Rooster hated when he had to go up there, taking the wobbly stairs.

  Inside, during the day, the dark curtains were pulled back from the many tall windows at the back, but it was never lit up good. Way the great overhang was, behind and above the drugstore, with all the pines and oaks at the top, it blocked a lot of sunlight and there were no electric lights in the entrance room, just a couple of lanterns and they were seldom lit, so there were always shadows. There was an unnecessary wooden divider halfway down the middle of the big room and it split so you could go right or left. The divider didn’t go to the ceiling, and if you were tall enough you could see over it. Rooster had never gone to the right, near the windows and the light, only left, along the dark hall where the floorboards made a sound like ice cracking and led into the dim rooms beyond where McBride liked to stay. Then there were the other rooms behind those, the ones he hadn’t been in. But he had seen the Beetle Man come from back there, and he didn’t like the Beetle Man. He called him that because of the long coat he wore and the little black bowler. Somehow, in his mind, they made him look like a big bug.

  Rooster went up the stairs, adjusted his gun belt, squared his shoulders, knocked on the door.

  There was a long pause, then the door was opened by a woman wearing only black silk hose and a red garter at the top of one of them. The rest of her was bare. She had one hand over her crotch like that hid something. Her breasts flopped and her blond hair was pulled up and pinned back and there were loose strands of it falling all over her face, as if the sun were running over her head. Her nose had a little white scar along the side of it.

  Rooster took off his hat and held it, almost in reverence at what was before him. It sure beat having the Beetle Man answer the door.

  “Come on in, sugar,” she said, moved her hand away from what it hid, like having made the effort was enough.

  He had seen her before (though he was seeing a part of her now he hadn’t seen), but he didn’t know her name. When the blonde turned away, leading, her naked ass moved from side to side like a couple of happy babies rolling about.

  They went left of the wall, where a row of decorative silver platters hung. He looked and saw himself in one of the platters, squashed and twisted by the silver and the light. They went alongside the polished bar, into a room full of couches and a bed, and in the center, a table with a white tablecloth on which sat a silver coffeepot, silver cups and plates. Above the table was an electric light on a string. The bulb was dusty and the light was poor. A ceiling fan cranked the air around and the air smelled of garlic and tobacco, a whiff of sulphur from struck matches.

  McBride was lying on the couch directly across the way and the smoke from his cigar filled that side of the room and hung above him in a blue-black cloud. He was wearing a gray as ash silk robe. It was half open. The hair on his chest and forearms was gray and his mustache was too black. Rooster figured him for sixty, even if he looked a tough fifty.

  He had on the stupid wig he wore when he was in the apartment. A big black thing that didn’t go with his Irish red skin. When McBride went out he wore a black bowler hat without the wig, and the hat fit tight, worn that way to battle the wind and hide his head, which Rooster assumed was bald or near it.

  “Rooster,” McBride said, and stood.

  The robe fell wide open and Rooster saw more of McBride than he wanted to see. McBride went over to the table, sat down in one of the chairs. As he sat, his wig shifted, and Rooster tried not to look. It was hard to figure where to look. High you had the hair, low you had, well, you had all of McBride.

  “Sit, Rooster. Have a cup of coffee?”

  Rooster sat. “Suppose,” he said.

  “Good,” McBride said. “Hey, bitch, get us some coffee.”

  “I ain’t no maid,” said the blonde.

  “Fresh. And don’t make me ask again.”

  The blonde went away. McBride smiled at Rooster from under his mustache.

  “Sometimes you have to slap them a bit, high and low, but they come around, that’s for sure. What do you think of that ass?”

  Rooster felt himself turning red. All he could say was, “It’s nice.”

  McBride laughed.

  “Nice. That’s some first-rate pokadope. Whatcha got? It’s early for me, and I was busy, as you can see. I don’t think you came over here to drink a cup of coffee.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Oil Festival go well?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Good. And your business here is?”

  “The constable over at Camp Rapture.”

  “How could a constable concern me—wait a minute. Ain’t it Pete’s bitch? Yeah. Heard about that. She’s the one when that old fart of a sheriff got killed, came over and pulled that nigger out while you stood around with your thumb up your ass. Hit Macavee with her gun, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How is old Macavee?”

  “He left town.”

  McBride grinned. “Gal sounds like some kind of punkin. Hear she’s good-looking too. That right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose. Is she, or isn’t she? She look as good as the tail I got here?”

  “She wears more clothes.”

  McBride guffawed.

  “Reckon she does.”

  “She come by the office the other day with one of her deputy constables,” Rooster said. “They call him Hillbilly. Anyway, she showed me something. It was land maps. Maps of a colored fella’s land. Zendo. Only it was the maps before they was sliced up. You know what I mean.”

  McBride leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, which caused his massive hairy forearms to flex.

  “How did she come by them?”

  “They got to be the ones Pete and that whore Jimmie Jo had. I don’t know how she got them.”

  “The maps Pete stole? The ones you told me about.”

  Rooster nodded.

  “You told Henry?”

  “You told me anything like this came up, I should come to you first.”

  “You did right, Sheriff. And I’ll tell Henry, not you. You look nervous, Rooster. I hate a nervous man. Makes me think they’re trying to sneak around and put a finger up my ass.”

  “Sorry, Mr. McBride,” Rooster said, and looked up as the blonde came back into the room. She had let down her hair and put on some clothes and had a fresh pot of coffee and a ceramic cup. She poured some into McBride’s silver cup, then set the ceramic cup in front of Rooster and poured his coffee.

  “You want to feel her a little, go ahead. She’s on my tab, ain’t you, honey?”

  “I’m okay,” Rooster said.

  McBride laughed. “You’re anything but okay. Go on out of here, kid, you’re making Rooster sweat.”

  Rooster tried not to watch her go.

  “You’d like to have that swing on your front porch, wouldn’t you, Rooster?” When Rooster didn’t answer, McBride said, “Did you get the maps back?”

  “They didn’t offer to give them back.”

  McBride shifted, uncrossed his legs, put both feet under the table.

  “You didn’t ask for them?”

  “I wasn’t sure what to say.”

  “Cause it was a good-looking woman had them? Am I right?”

  Rooster drank from his cup, almost sloshing the coffee. He said, “Something like that.”

  “So, what did they do?”

  “I told them to go to the courthouse.”

  “You told them to go to the courthouse? Now, that’s dumb, Rooster. That means you gave them a chance to put things together.”
>
  “Yes, sir.”

  “The maps don’t mean nothing without you put them one to the other. Not smart, Rooster. They go to the courthouse, look at records, they’re gonna see what’s been changed. That was Pete and his whore’s game, pulling the records as a threat, gonna tell some big law unless they were dealt in, and not in a little way, like you, but in a big way. Big as me. Big as Henry. Nope. That old dog ain’t gonna hunt. That’s why I was called in, to fix things. And I did. All you had to do was say, ‘Those maps are city property. Don’t know how they come into your possession, but I’ll need to put them in their proper place, and I want to thank you for bringing them by.’ Wouldn’t that have been simple, Rooster?”

  “It would have. Knew it soon as they left.”

  “Then it was too late, wasn’t it, Rooster?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Things been going good here. Earned my money here and there, but I haven’t had to do much. I got people to do it for me, and I like that. I’ve moved up in the world. I think it and it gets done, but not by me. I don’t like to do what I don’t have to do, bother with a thing I don’t have to. And now you make me bother. The woman . . . What’s her name?”

  “Sunset.”

  “Now that’s a snapper of a name. That a nickname?”

  “She’s got red hair. I don’t know her real name.”

  “Ain’t nothing nicer than to peel one down and see that red hair fanned out between her legs. Shakes her hips, it’s like a red flag waving at a bull. But that’s not our concern here, is it? Now, we got a bump in the road and you’ve run us over it. Know what happens when you hit a bump, Rooster?”

  Rooster shook his head.

  “A bump can knock shit out of the back of your wagon. Knock shit all over the goddamn place. Hear me, now?”

  Rooster nodded.

  McBride reached under his ugly wig and scratched his head.

  “Shit gets knocked out, then I got to go in and do more work than needs to be done, and mind you, I don’t dislike the work, but I don’t like to undo what don’t need undoing or fix what shouldn’t have to be fixed. You following me here, Rooster?”