Sunset and Sawdust

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I’m saying how it seems to me.”

  “People here, a lot of them, they see it that way. That a colored ain’t supposed to make too many decisions. I try and treat Zendo like he’s not colored, and he thinks he can make some choices like everyone else, I could get him killed.”

  “You could treat him like a man, go to him, tell him the truth, say, hey, I don’t know what I can do for you. There’s just me, and Clyde, and my run-down old man, and these guys, they’re professionals and serious. Cheating and killing, that’s what they do. So you’re on your own. Then you’ve warned him. It’s up to him to take care of himself. You could do that.”

  “And my center wouldn’t have shifted?”

  “You have to decide that. I can’t tell you that. You got to feel you’ve done the right thing, what you could.”

  “Or?”

  “You do the job you signed on for. Most of the time this job isn’t anything much, but sometimes it might be. And when it is, do you decide then to not do it because it’s hard? Could be you’re not up to it, and if you’re not, that’s no shame, that’s just the way it is. But if you’re up to it and not willing, that’s a whole different thing.”

  “How do you know you’re up to it?”

  “You don’t. But you got to want to be up to it.”

  “And if I decide I want to be?”

  “Plan. And count me in.”

  “Howdy.”

  Sunset and Lee jumped.

  Ben sat up, looked embarrassed, like, man, I’m the goddamn dog here, and I didn’t hear this fella, didn’t see him.

  Standing behind them, one hand on the back of Sunset’s chair, was Bull. The air seemed charged with electricity, and it was full of an earthy smell that bit at their nostrils.

  “Don’t you ever come up normal?” Sunset said.

  “I don’t know normal,” Bull said.

  “Daddy, this is Bull.”

  “Hello, Bull,” Lee said. “You damn near made me load my pants.”

  Bull grinned, gestured at the white strip hanging from the limb. “See you done hung the rag out. Need me?”

  “I do,” Sunset said.

  “What way?”

  “Zendo, a colored fella. He needs a protector.”

  “You mean the farmer?” Bull asked.

  “Yeah. You know him?”

  “Know who he is. Everyone knows who he is, cause of the way he farms, way his soil is, like it’s magic or something. He can grow big old tomatoes in the hottest of weather, corn higher than two of me. He’s the best there is. He’s got a name for it.”

  “That’s right,” Sunset said. “Even while we’re talking, it could have already happened, someone getting to him, hurting him and his family.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Bull asked.

  Sunset explained. When she finished, Bull went over and sat down with his back against the oak, considering. After a moment he said, “So you waited on me for this? Ain’t there plenty of white men around? Your daddy looks ready enough. Little long in the tooth, like me, but them’s the ones you got to watch, ain’t that right, dad?”

  “That’s right,” Lee said.

  “You kind of waited a while to decide maybe Zendo needs help, didn’t you?” Bull said.

  “I don’t think I really knew what I wanted until tonight,” Sunset said. “I don’t think he was in any real trouble till just lately, after I talked with Henry and McBride. But even then, I didn’t really know what to do. Then tonight, I talked to Daddy, and well, he said some things, and it come together. I think. And frankly, this watching Zendo, I think you’re better able to do it than me, or Clyde or Dad.”

  “Say you do?” Bull said.

  “Don’t you?” Sunset said.

  “Maybe. But I do this. Zendo wants the help. You got to do something else. You got to stop these men want his land. Ain’t that your law job?”

  “It is.”

  “It would please me big to see a colored make big money, and that oil could do it.”

  “And it could make him a target,” Lee said. “You can’t spend money in the grave.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s that,” Bull said. “White folks can’t hardly stand a nigger if he’s gonna have money, especially if he might get more than them.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Sunset said.

  “Lady,” Bull said, “you can trust me to do what you want, but I got to trust you to do what I’m saying. You got to go after them bad men and take them down. Arrest them, whatever it is needs doing, you got to do it.”

  “All right,” Sunset said.

  “You got a gun, Bull?” Lee said. “Cause I figure you might need it.”

  Bull pulled up his shirt. A little pistol was in his waistband. “This just for close up. Leaning against a gum tree in the woods there, got me a pump ten-gauge. Thought maybe you’d take better to me I didn’t stroll in with it in my hand.”

  “Ten-gauge will do,” Lee said.

  “You’re telling me,” Bull said.

  “Sunset, is there anyone else you can go to for help?” Lee said. “More the merrier, something like this.”

  “Problem is,” Sunset said, “I don’t know who’s in Henry’s pocket, and who isn’t. Don’t know all who’s Klan. I could take a chance here and there, but I’m thinking more people know about this, bigger we might make the problem. I could be lining up people I think are on my side, and they could be on Henry’s.”

  Lee nodded. “That sounds right.”

  “What about you, girl?” Bull said. “Your family? You think on that?”

  “All the time. I thought about sending Karen to her grandmother’s, but that would just put Marilyn into it too. Wouldn’t be any safer. Goose, course he don’t know. Guess he ought to, so he’ll have a choice to leave or stay. And Clyde, he knows everything, except he don’t know about you.”

  “That him over there with his foot on the dash of that truck?” Bull asked, pointing to Clyde’s old battered truck in the drive.

  “That’s him,” Sunset said.

  “All right, then,” Bull said, “I know what needs to be. I’m gonna see Zendo, talk to him.”

  “When?” Sunset asked.

  “Figure since I don’t sleep much nohow, I’ll go over there now, stay near till morning, watching. Zendo comes out tomorrow for work, I’ll talk to him.”

  “Is Zendo’s place close by?” Lee asked.

  “No,” Bull said. “But I can go through the woods, cut down on some distance.”

  “Better yet, I can drive you there, drop you off near the place,” Lee said. “That is, if Sunset will loan me her car, and you’ll show me the way.”

  After Bull recovered his ten-gauge and Lee drove off with him, Sunset walked by the truck where Clyde lay, peeked in. A flashlight shone in her face. She flinched, put her hand to her eyes.

  “Sorry,” Clyde said sitting up, turning off the light.

  “I thought you were asleep,” Sunset said.

  “No. Just lying here. Listening to you and Lee and Bull talk.”

  “That’s eavesdropping.”

  “It wasn’t on purpose. I was sleeping here.”

  Sunset opened the truck door and slid in beside him as he sat up behind the steering wheel.

  “You got a place of your own,” she said.

  “Sort of. If you count burned-up lumber.”

  “You saw Bull?”

  “I rose up for a peek. He’s large.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Do you think you can trust him?”

  “He came to me. He told me to put a strip of cloth on that tree when I needed him, and he came. So, yeah. Clyde?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I been pretty stupid—about Hillbilly, I mean.”

  “I agree.”

  “Sometimes, well . . . you can have something beautiful right in front of you, not see it because you’re looking around it, trying to see so
mething else.”

  “You’re not talking about me, are you?”

  “I am.”

  “Listen, Sunset . . . if I thought you meant that . . . I mean, I know you don’t mean it . . . that way. But if you meant something good by it. Anything. It would make me happy. But I don’t want pity.”

  “Don’t make me mad, Clyde. I’ll borrow that slap jack of yours and hit you with it. I’m an idiot. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not proposing or anything. I’m not saying I’m in love. But I’m saying I was an idiot and you tried to tell me. You’re a good friend.”

  “Again,” Clyde said, “I got to agree with you.”

  “Be all right if I give you a kiss?”

  “Just friendly, you mean?”

  “Sure.”

  Sunset leaned over and kissed Clyde on the cheek.

  “That kiss wasn’t pity, was it?” Clyde asked.

  “Don’t be silly, Clyde. There’s nothing to pity about you.”

  “You’re not just saying that?”

  “I’m not. It was what it was.”

  “Whatever it was, it was good enough. Good night,” Clyde said.

  34

  Next morning, when Zendo got his mules out of the shed out back of his house, fed them, dressed them in harness and took them to the field, he found Bull sitting under his oak where he stopped for lunch every day. He had seen Bull only a few times before, but now, up close, he was frightened by him. He was huge and his hair was wild and he had a kind of dead look in his eye, way a fish does when it’s laid out of water too long.

  Zendo had been leading the mules with their lines, ready to hook them to the plow he had left in the field, but when he saw Bull he stopped by calling “Whoa” to the mules.

  “You Zendo?” Bull asked.

  Zendo nodded.

  “How you doing, Mr. Bull?” Zendo said, walking around from behind the mules, standing to the side of one, holding the long lines.

  “Oh, I’m making it. Ain’t no reason to complain, I reckon, as it don’t change much if I do.”

  “Well, me too, I reckon.”

  “Naw,” Bull said, “you ain’t doing so good.”

  Zendo felt a sensation akin to someone suddenly poking a stick up his ass. If there was one thing he didn’t want, it was having the legendary Bull Stackerlee mad at him. It amazed him Bull even knew who he was.

  “How’s that, Mr. Bull?” Zendo said, surprised at how high his voice sounded.

  “Well, now, let me say on that different,” Bull said, standing up from the tree. “In one way, you doing so good the angels would sing, and you don’t even know it, and in another, you got your dick in a wringer and whitey, he’s got his hand on the crank.”

  “That’s quite some difference, one from the other,” Zendo said.

  “It is,” Bull said. “You want the good news first, or you want the shit?”

  Zendo, as confused as if he had awakened in another town and found himself naked, said, “Well, Mr. Bull, I think it would be best to get the bad news out of the way, then have the sugar.”

  Hillbilly half filled a cup with water from a pitcher, held the cup under his balls, and by spreading his legs and bending his knees, lowered them into it. It helped ease the pain a mite. He stood like that, as if riding an invisible horse, his left hand holding the cup of water and his balls, and with his other hand, he drank directly from a bottle of whisky.

  Last night he had been drunk, and he awakened this morning feeling terrible, had to have enough of the hair of the dog to take the edge off the buzz, but he wasn’t drunk now and he wasn’t going to get drunk today. What he was going to do was get dressed, go over to see this McBride fella.

  It took him a while to scrape his life into a heap, but he finally got dressed and went out. It was a hot day and the sky, though blue, looked heavy, as if it might fall and crush him. There were a few strands of clouds, like strips of cotton torn from a blue mattress, stretched out across the sky.

  The street was full of dust and grasshoppers. Hillbilly had never seen that many on a street before. In a field maybe, but not like this, leaping all over and in the middle of town.

  Hillbilly, walking slightly bowlegged, grasshoppers jumping about as he went, waddled to Main Street, over to the red apartment above the drugstore. It took him a while to get there, and when he went up the stairs it was sheer pain. He hurt everywhere, but the small of his back, from the fall, and his balls, from the kick, were the worst. Every step, those two places felt as if they were being struck with an iron rod.

  When he reached the landing he knocked on the door, and after a while it was answered by the blond whore he had had with him when Sunset’s old man broke in.

  “Well,” he said, “you get around.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, said, “I am a whore, you know.”

  “Oh, I know,” Hillbilly said.

  “How are you?”

  “Never better.”

  “You looking for me?”

  “I wouldn’t have known where to look. And no. I wasn’t.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “At least that’s a question I don’t have to ask you, is it?”

  “No,” she said, “I suppose not. I still owe you a finish.”

  “Sure,” Hillbilly said. “McBride, he in?”

  She nodded. “Go now, and I’ll tell him you were a salesman.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I got some ideas about what you want to do,” she said. “I don’t know all of it, but I know enough from hearing things here, know what happened to you, and I can put some of it together. Like maybe you want to get back at that woman constable, her father through these men. But these people, they’re bad, Hillbilly.”

  “You do pick up a lot of information.”

  “I get around.”

  “I bet you do,” he said. “But, darling, I’m bad too.”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Hillbilly said. “Really.”

  She took a deep breath, let it out.

  “You answer the door along with selling ass?” he asked.

  “I do pretty much what I’m told to do.”

  “I’m telling you, get the man.”

  “You aren’t paying me. I do it for money, Hillbilly. You, you haven’t given me a dime.”

  “But I gave you a good time.”

  “You and everyone else. I thought, you and me . . .”

  Hillbilly grinned. “Every woman I know thinks that.”

  The blonde’s face got tough. She said, “Wait here.”

  It was a great patch of land and once it had been covered in trees, but they had long since been cut, gone to the mill, except for three. The three were two oaks and a sweet gum, and the oaks were at the front of the house, and the sweet gum was to one side. The house was two-story and it had a porch around the bottom that went all the way around, and it had the same on the second floor. It was painted white as hope and the grass that had been planted had been cut close to the ground by enough negroes with push mowers to form a tribe. Dry as it was, the short grass was well watered and pretty green.

  Sunset noted that it was more of a house than Marilyn had and she owned a chunk of the mill. But here Henry’s house was, bold as a tick on a patrician’s ass, not caring if the look of it made you wonder where the money came from.

  Sunset, Clyde with her, parked her car in front of the place, sat and looked.

  Clyde said, “That bottom porch is big enough to live on.”

  Sunset got out of the car and went across the lawn, Clyde hustling to catch up. They went up to the door and she knocked. The door was opened by a big fat colored woman with a bandanna on her head and enough pattern in her floor-length dress to confuse and make you dizzy. There was a noise inside, a kind of snapping sound. It came and went, but it was pretty steady.

  “Yes, ma’am, what you be wanting?” the colored woman said.

  “Henry,” Sunset said. “I want to see He
nry.”

  “I go ask him.”

  “No,” Sunset said. “That’s all right. We’ll just come in.”

  “I got to have you invited,” the maid said. “I just got this job.”

  “It may not be a job long,” Sunset said. “Sorry.”

  “She’s the constable,” Clyde said.

  The maid studied the badge on Sunset’s shirt. “She sure is. I ain’t gonna be stopping no law.”

  The maid stepped aside and Sunset and Clyde went in.

  “Where is he?” Sunset said. The maid pointed, and at the same time Sunset saw him. He was in front of a large fireplace mantel, a couch between them and himself, taking ceramic knickknacks off of the mantel, throwing them down as hard as he could. He had hold of a pink cat when they came up. He threw it down and smashed it and its pieces mixed with the stuff already there.

  Henry looked up as they came into view.

  “Hate these things,” he said. “Wife had them all over.”

  “Nice way to treasure her memory,” Clyde said, “smashing her knickknacks.”

  Henry smirked. “What you want, girl? Think over what I told you the other day?”

  “I did.”

  “I take it, him here, you decided not to go with what I suggested.”

  Sunset nodded.

  “That’s your choice, girl. Now, thanks for coming to tell me. Leave.”

  “We’re leaving all right,” Sunset said. “Leaving with you.”

  Henry’s mouth opened slightly. “You ain’t gonna arrest me?”

  “I am.”

  “What for?”

  “All the things you told me the other day.”

  “I didn’t tell you nothing. I was just talking. It’s just my word against yours.”

  “I’m the law. You shouldn’t have told the law.”

  Henry’s face looked as if he had just been given a mouthful of alum.

  “Thought I could talk to you,” he said, “reason with you. I said some things that were tough, but I thought you’d listen. Thought you were smart.”

  “Guess you were wrong,” Sunset said. “Clyde. Bring him along. He resists, knock the hell out of him.”

  Clyde went over, said, “Resist, Henry. Make me a happy man.”

  As they went out the door, Clyde holding Henry by the arm, the maid said to Henry, “Want me to sweep up that mess you made back there?”