“When are we going to get paid?”
“When we get to Camp Rapture.”
“Why don’t we do it right now? I don’t know why we got to go there to get paid. We want to go there to look for work. We don’t have to go there to get paid. You can pay us right now.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” said another of the men.
“I hear you,” said the driver, “but I want to get the truck going first. That’s not much to ask. I got to go there to get the money.”
“Why?” said the man in the suit coat.
“I don’t, you don’t get paid, cause that’s where I got my money.”
“A place like that got a bank?”
“No. But the store there, they keep some money for people. They ain’t like a bank. They’re better’n a bank. They hold it and you got to buy some things there for holding it, but they don’t bust like a bank and they don’t have interest, just something you got to buy now and then, something you’d buy anyway. Flour, maybe.”
“They’re not going to be open time we get there.”
“I think they will, and if they ain’t, I know the owner. It ain’t a problem.”
Slowly, everyone piled out. The red-faced man tongued his cigar to the other side of his mouth, said, “Now, y’all get at the back, and when I tell you, push. Stand kind of to the sides, so if it rolls back, it won’t run over you.”
“Let me give it a try,” said the big man with the suit coat.
“I don’t let no one drive my truck but me.”
“Maybe you ought to,” said the boy, “way you drive.”
The boy was feisty-looking, with a shock of hay-colored hair hanging out from under his tweed cap.
“You ought not talk to your elders like that. You do again, and I’ll backhand you.”
“No you won’t,” said the man in the suit coat.
“Look here,” said the red-faced man, “just help me get it going. We get into Camp Rapture and I can get you all paid.”
“Let’s just do it,” said one of the women. She was tired and pregnant and had put in a full day. There was dust in her hair from the fields, and she had teeth missing. She looked as if at any moment she would dry up and blow away, leaving only her plump belly and the kid inside of it.
“All right,” said the man in the suit coat.
They went to the rear of the truck, and the red-faced man got behind the wheel. He stuck his head out the window, said, “Get ready to push.”
They split into two groups, four on one side, five on the other, near the rear, ready to push. The red-faced man said, “Y’all ready?”
“We’re ready,” said one of the men.
“Here we go,” said the red-faced fellow. He started it up, worked the clutch and drove off a ways, began picking up speed.
“Hey! Hey!” yelled the boy, running after him. “Come back.”
An arm stuck out the window and waved.
“Come back,” the boy said again.
“I’ll be damned,” said the man in the suit coat. “I knew better than to let that happen.”
“No you didn’t,” said one of the men.
Suit Coat looked at him. The man was thin and as tired and worn-out-looking as the pregnant woman, who was his wife.
“Goddamn it, we worked all day for nothing,” said the boy.
“Reckon so,” said Suit Coat, and they all started walking.
“Maybe we can catch him in Camp Rapture,” said the pregnant woman. “Make him pay up.”
“I catch him,” said the thin man, “he’ll lose more than his money. He’ll lose some teeth, maybe some other parts of him.”
“I doubt he’s going to Camp Rapture,” said another of the men. “That’s just something he said.”
“I guess we could go out to his field and look him up,” said another man.
“It’s a lot closer to Camp Rapture than his fields,” said Suit Coat. “Figure I’ll take the loss, just hope me and him cross paths.”
“I’m kind of getting used to getting the shitty end of the stick,” said the thin man. “I’m starting to kind of like it, think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Don’t say no more,” said his wife. “Just don’t mention it.”
It was night, and cloudy and dark as the inside of an intestine when a car drove up in front of the tent. Hillbilly had walked off on his own and Clyde had walked back to the remains of his home. When Sunset heard the car, for some reason it struck her as an omen.
Ben growled furiously. Sunset, who was never far from her gun, though maybe not quite as welded to it as before, adjusted the holster on her hip, got up and went outside in time to see the lights of the car go dead. Ben ran up to the driver’s side of the car barking. A man was sitting on the passenger side, but there was too much shadow for her to tell right off who it was.
Sunset called the dog a couple of times, and he surprised her by complying. He came and sat down beside her and went silent.
She remembered Pete had once said the scariest kind of dog is the one that stops barking and just goes to watching. She reached down and scratched Ben’s head.
A man got out of the car, putting on his hat. He came around in front of the car, stepping lightly. He looked ready at any moment to jump up on the hood.
“Dog won’t bite, will he?”
It was Preacher Willie.
“He don’t bite me.”
“I’ll just talk from here.”
“Go ahead.”
Karen came out of the tent then. She still smelled sweet and her dark clothes and long black hair hung around her shoulders and blended with the night in such a way that she seemed to be little more than a white face floating in the void.
“It’s that body you brought in,” Preacher Willie said.
“Figured as much. Who you got with you?”
The man on the passenger side stuck his arm out the window, then his head. She still couldn’t see him well. He said, “It’s Henry, Sunset.”
Sunset felt a sinking sensation. She had never really known Henry, but that day at the meeting, she had certainly seen where his thinking was. She also knew he was a man of power in Camp Rapture. His being there meant the preacher hadn’t kept the discovery of the body quiet. She wasn’t surprised. Hillbilly’s little blowup had probably hurt his pride. And her, a woman in a position of power, asking him to be quiet probably hadn’t helped either. And frankly, he was an asshole and might have done it anyway.
“Hello, Henry,” Sunset said. “And, Willie, I see you did just what I told you not to do.”
“I think I know why you didn’t want to spread the news around,” Willie said.
“That so.”
“I know who it is.”
“Tell me.”
“She was wearing a necklace. You couldn’t see it cause it had fallen inside of her, where she had rotted. And it was buried in her neck where it had gone to bad meat. It had her name on it.”
“And?”
“Jimmie Jo French.”
“My God. I knew her.”
“Guess so. You knocked her around.”
“I was upset about her and Pete.”
“Her being dead would have made a difference for you and Pete, wouldn’t it?” Henry said.
“Pete’s dead too, so what difference would it make?”
“You might have thought of a difference then,” Henry said.
“Then?”
“She’s been dead a while. Most likely she’s been soaking in oil, then she was buried. You do that, bury her in that field?”
“I was mad. Not crazy.”
“Just talking here, Sunset.”
“Sure you are.”
“Mama,” Karen said, “what are they talking about?”
“I’ll explain later, hon,” Sunset said, patting Karen on the arm.
“Jimmie Jo had a baby inside her,” Willie said. “Baby had been cut out of her. Not in a doctor way. Someone slashed her open and jerked it out of her. I could tell that way she was cut.”
“Jesus,” Sunset said.
“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain.”
“I said Jesus, Willie. Not to hell with Jesus.”
“Now that’s enough.”
“Keep talking, Willie. You come to me, so keep talking. You and Henry, say what you got to say.”