Hillbilly stopped in the road for a minute, studied the fat woman lying there with the precision of a marine biologist studying a beached whale, then came walking toward Rooster. As Hillbilly passed him on the walk, he nodded.
Rooster said, “I thought you was constablin’.”
“Sometimes,” Hillbilly said. “Today I didn’t want to. I don’t know I’m gonna want to again. I’m actually a singer and picker. Did some singing last night, and I know that’s what I got to do. Got some pay, so I hitched in to look for a guitar to buy. You don’t know of any?”
Rooster shook his head.
“Your mouth’s all red. You got some kind of hives?”
“No. I do know this, though. That gal, Sunset, who I figure you like… you do like her, don’t you?”
“Well enough and in certain ways,” Hillbilly said.
“She’s in for some hell, friend. There’s a way maybe you can help her.”
When Rooster finished saying this, he felt stunned. It had just leaped from his mouth like a frog.
“I try to mind my own business,” Hillbilly said.
Rooster gave him a quizzical look. “You are the law.”
“Ain’t so sure I want to be any kind of law anymore. I never felt I fit good being the law. Ain’t you the law? This has something to do with the law, you’re the law. I’m retired.”
“I like that redhead,” Rooster said.
“Hell, any man likes that redhead,” Hillbilly said.
“That’s not what I mean. She’s got heart. She’s got more courage than I got. And she’s gonna need it.”
“How’s that?”
“McBride.”
“John McBride?”
“How’d you know?”
“Seen his name on a paper at the courthouse.”
Rooster nodded. He saw the fat woman lying in the street move, start to get up. She managed to roll over and get a knee under her.
“I think you’re a man that’ll play angles,” Rooster said. “I’m not sure Sunset is a woman that’ll do that.”
“What does that mean, I’m a man will play angles? What are you getting at, Rooster?”
“I think you can help her and maybe make some good money quick like.”
“Where does it come from, this quick money?”
“Me.”
“Tell you what, buddy. I got better things to do with my morning than play at riddles.”
“Henry Shelby over at the mill in Camp Rapture-”
“I know who he is.”
“-he come up with this idea, you see. He was hunting on land belonged to this colored, Zendo, and he found oil. Zendo don’t even know it’s his land. Or if he thought it was his land, Shelby fixed that. Day after he found the oil, he went and asked Zendo if he’d sell, telling him he wanted it for the lumber company, and Zendo said no, he didn’t want to sell, and Shelby asked him how big his land was, and Zendo didn’t know. Just bought him a patch and farms part of what he knows is his patch. A colored, he don’t ask a lot of questions when he gets something around here, even if he pays near double for it. Glad to have what he knows to be his, even if he has more and don’t know it. Course, he don’t know about the oil. That might change his thinking. Surveyors hadn’t even bothered to come and stake out the land he bought. Just drew it up on paper, and you got to really study them papers to know what they’re about. And Zendo, if he’s like a lot of the coloreds around here, he don’t even read. So, Henry Shelby, he says, ‘Tell you what, I’ll pay to have your land surveyed so you’ll know exactly what’s yours, cause since I can’t buy your land, I can buy land next to you.’ That’s no big thing to Zendo, a free survey, cause now he’ll know exactly what he owns.”
“And the land got cut up different than it was supposed to be,” Hillbilly said. “Yeah, me and Sunset sort of got that part.”
They watched as the woman from the street came stumbling by. Rooster thought she looked like one of the women from Dodge Street. She was lurching in that direction. When she passed them and was far enough away, Rooster continued.
“They cut Zendo a bigger piece than he thought he owned, to make him happy about things. But they kept the rest of it, a big chunk, the oil land. Shelby, to make this work, had to have the mayor in on it. He knew him pretty good, see.”
“I thought I heard he run off, or something,” Hillbilly said.
Rooster nodded. “Or something. Mayor and Henry were card-playing and whore-running buddies. Shelby tells him what he knows, cause he needs the mayor to mess with the papers at the courthouse. Make it official. So he has to cut him in. Then this McBride shows up, and the mayor, he isn’t around anymore. I reckon Henry wasn’t that big a buddy of the mayor after all.”
“Ain’t it kind of scary you knowing what you know?”
“They needed me, they cut me in. I don’t get a piece of the oil, just get paid, by them. McBride mostly, but I know it comes from Henry. Now I’m in deep. And I’m scared. I don’t want to do nothing really bad, and I’m figuring that’s what they’re gonna want. Something bad. Sometime soon.”
“You’re trying to keep those maps secret, might not hurt you put a better guard on things at the courthouse,” Hillbilly said. “You’re gonna be a thief or help out thieves, figure you ought to be smarter.”
“They never thought anyone would think to look, Pete dead and all. And if they did look, so what? The original papers were gone. Then Sunset comes up with them. I should have asked for them. She’d have given them to me, wouldn’t be no problem.”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
Rooster shook his head. “I don’t never make good choices. I got to get them papers back. For her. And for me. I thought maybe you could do it, for her. It’s worth a hundred dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money right now.”
Rooster nodded.
“But you still haven’t laid it all out for me,” Hillbilly said.
“What you need to know is this: Get the papers back and she won’t get hurt, cause there’s someone will hurt her for those papers.”
“McBride?”
“Yeah, McBride. He may not do it himself, but it’ll get done. Get the papers, the maps, she’s got nothing, maybe there’s no problem.”
“Just make up some new maps.”
“The old ones show up, that’ll make a mess.”
“Tell you what,” Hillbilly said. “Hundred dollars sounds good, but that part about you being scared and the mayor missing, that don’t sound good. Thing best for me to do is to forget we talked and stay away from Sunset. I’ve had my moment there, and it was a good one, but I’m moving on.”
“Maybe you’re a lot smarter than I thought.”
“Comes to watching out for me, I’m plenty smart.”
“What about Sunset?”
“Haven’t a thing against her. She’s a woman can make a man happy. I just don’t want to be that happy, having the same woman around all the time. It’s not the way I am. I got to have bigger stakes than any hundred dollars. My rules for me is take the path where there ain’t nothing in it, and if there is, go around. See you, Rooster.”
Hillbilly went down the street. Rooster watched him for a while, then a shadow fled over Main Street.
Rooster glanced up.
At first he thought it was a flock of birds. But they were close down and he could hear the buzz of their wings.
Insects. A large swarm of them. They turned suddenly as one, darted to the top of the overhang behind the red apartment, disappeared into the woods.
It was the day of the town meeting. Sunset thought about it all morning. She also thought about Hillbilly. She sent Clyde to search for him. It wasn’t a thing Clyde wanted to do, but she knew he’d do it, knew she had that power over him, and felt like an ass because of it. But not enough of an ass not to do it.
Walking toward her car, Sunset noticed there was a lot of space between the limbs of the trees, letting in more sunlight than usual, and for a moment this confused her. Then she realized it was because lately it had been so hot and dry the trees were thirsty. Their limbs sagged, the leaves shriveled, turned brown and let loose, crunched beneath her feet like crackers.