“But a woman?”
“Woman’s okay with me,” Hillbilly said, pushing off from the wall. “I’m new here, and I know you don’t know me, but why not? She doesn’t do the job, get rid of her. That’s fair enough, ain’t it? Give her a month to get a handle on things, and give her some help. She can’t do it, boot her out. Get you whoever. Hell, she’s got her own damn gun.”
Clyde said, “Sounds right to me.”
“It’s a tough job,” Henry said. “She could get hurt. She’ll have to deal with thugs and niggers and no telling what all.”
“That’s what the help’s for,” Clyde said. “Pay me and I’ll help her. I ain’t all that crazy about mill work. I still got all my fingers and arms, and I’d like to keep it that way. I been looking for a career, and I done said more than I usually say in a week.”
“You take the job,” Henry said to Clyde.
Clyde shook his head. “Nope. Rather work for the constable than be the constable.”
Clyde glanced at Sunset. She smiled at him, and he sat down.
“I’ll help too,” Hillbilly said.
“We don’t know you,” Henry said.
“I don’t know you either. I don’t know this here community. But I’m willing to learn about it. I may not be here a long time, but I’ll be here long enough to get her started.”
“We’d have to pay you,” Henry said.
“That’s right,” Hillbilly said. “I want the job because it’s like this fella just said. Still got all my fingers and arms and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“We haven’t got that kind of money,” Henry said. “There’s only so much in the account for things like this. You’d make more at the mill.”
“I’ll take less on account of not having to be at the mill,” Hillbilly said.
“We couldn’t manage half of what you’d make at the mill.”
“I’ll help pay the first month for all of them,” Marilyn said. “Out of my own pocket. After that, community fund takes over. Doesn’t work out, we can get rid of her. Give her a month with Clyde and… what’s your name, son?”
“Hillbilly. That’s what I’m called, anyway.”
“All right, Hillbilly. She works out, let her finish Pete’s term. That’s okay with you, isn’t it, Henry? A month’s trial.”
Henry looked at Marilyn and his stomach turned sour. He could tell she didn’t give a flying damn if it was all right with him or not. Jones had always been his buffer between Marilyn and himself. He knew she never liked him. After her daddy died, she got the idea that he had pocketed some of her father’s money through fancy bookkeeping.
She was right. But she didn’t know it for a fact and Jones hadn’t believed it. But now with Jones gone, he knew his dick was in the wringer. And he knew her hand was on the wringer handle.
“We don’t even know she wants the job,” Henry said.
Marilyn turned her attention to Sunset, said, “Well, dear?”
Sunset was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “I’d like to give it a try.”
There was a murmur in the crowd.
“We should put it to a vote,” Henry said. “We only do things here at Camp Rapture the democratic way.”
Marilyn smiled at Henry. “You’re about as much a democrat as Genghis Khan.”
There was laughter.
“Let’s do it this way,” Marilyn said. “Who here is against Sunset being constable? But first, I ought to make a little announcement. Depression or no Depression. I’m going to instate a nickel an hour raise across the board for everyone. Except Henry. He makes enough money.”
Marilyn grinned at Henry.
Henry tried to grin back, but the inside of his mouth hung on his teeth and he couldn’t make his lips do what he wanted. All he could think was Marilyn had never before had any say in the mill. She had never bothered to say anything. It was as if, with Jones’ death, she had been given a dose of some kind of tonic. One thing he hated was a woman trying to grow balls. He wished now he had held the meeting in the church. Maybe she wouldn’t have attended.
Then he thought: No, she’s thought this one through. She wants Sunset for constable. People are going to laugh because I wasn’t able to control this woman and her murdering daughter-in-law. If Holiday and Camp Rapture unite, no one is going to want to elect me to any position, not even street sweeper, not if I can’t control these women.
“Marilyn,” Henry said, “this isn’t really a good idea, and you know it. Let’s get serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious,” Marilyn said. “Show of hands for those who do not want Sunset as constable and a nickel raise. Stick them up there.”
“When’s that nickel an hour go into effect?” Bill Martin asked.
“As of next workday,” Marilyn said.
“Gal’s got my vote,” Bill said.
There was a bit of foot shuffling. Some of the men looked off as if something exciting might be happening in a corner of the room, or somewhere near the ceiling.
A few hands went up, came down quickly, like they had merely been swatting at an annoying bug. Henry felt as if he had swallowed a bug.
“Good,” Marilyn said. “Few against, so that means them that remain are for Sunset as constable. So, Sunset, you’re the constable.”
8
Clyde called her Constable Sunset, and the name stuck. Most men called her that around Camp Rapture as a joke, often said it within Sunset’s hearing.
“There’s ole Constable Sunset. Give her trouble, she’ll make you put your nose in a circle in the corner.”
“Or shoot you when you ain’t looking and your pants is down.”
The women weren’t any nicer.
“She don’t come from much, and she killed her husband, but look at her now. Thinks she’s some kind of police. Ain’t that precious?”
“She could put her hair up too. Looks like a floozy, all that red hair hanging down. I was her I’d dye it some more natural color.”
After a few days of that, Sunset decided to move back home, such as it was, and to take her constable practice with her. She might have to see and deal with these people, but she didn’t need to live right next to them.
Her mother-in-law made her a couple of skirts of khaki and tightened up a few men’s shirts to go with them. Sunset wore Pete’s star made of tin with the word CONSTABLE on it and a pair of lumberjack boots. She wore Pete’s old gun holster too, and along with it, the.38 she had used to pop him.
She rode home in Clyde’s rattling, wheezing pickup, along with Hillbilly. There was a hole in the floorboard where you could see the road go by.
Clyde sat on one side of her, Hillbilly on the other. Karen rode in the back of the pickup with supplies. Food. Incidentals. Some lumber, several large tarps, and a tent. This had been paid for by Marilyn, and Sunset made a note of the price, planning to pay her back soon as she could afford it.
As they bounced along the dusty road, Sunset noted that Clyde’s clothes smelled of the sawmill. Clean, but with that faint aroma of sawdust and resin. The brim of his big black cowboy hat was curled up tight and the hat had a film of dust on it and the feather in the band was ragged, like a fish skeleton that had been picked clean by cats.
Hillbilly didn’t have a drop of dust on him. He wore his cap at a jaunty angle. No feathers. Unlike Clyde, the collar on Hillbilly’s shirt was well arranged and the shirt wasn’t missing any buttons. He smelled like something sweet, and maybe even edible.
Clyde and Hillbilly helped Sunset remove Pete’s file cabinet from the wrecked car and place it on the flooring that had been their house. Sunset took the loose files and put them on top of the damaged cabinet, determined to fix the cabinet and organize the files in the near future.