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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.