Sunset thought a moment. She really wasn’t sure about anything, but she said, “Yeah. I’ll be around. See me again, hope I’ll look better than I look now. I’m not normally this ugly.”
“And I’m not normally this dirty. But I’m always this ugly.”
She thought: False modesty. He knows he looks good.
Hillbilly tipped his hat. “Well, you take care now.”
And away he went.
The sun grew large and yellow as the yolk of a fresh egg, turned the air hot as a gasoline fire. The heat stuck in the woods like glue, became gummy, and the gum got all over God and creation.
By ten in the morning every working man in the camp was exhausted, underarms dripping with sweat, crotches itching with it. Water barrels were sucked dry and the mules wanted to give it up. Even the oxen, normally steady as Job, were starting to wobble and froth.
That morning Jones had ice delivered to his house in washtubs, sent over a temporary basket coffin he borrowed from the camp store’s owner. The basket coffin was put on the sitting room floor by Zack and another colored man named Hently, and they poured ice from the tubs into it. They removed Pete’s clothes, and his smell filled the room. They placed him on the ice in the basket and put ice on top of him until the odor was quenched and he could not be seen, except for one finger that extended from the chipped ice and pointed up, as if the corpse were about to make a suggestion.
Over at the mill houses, unlike usual, no one was talking about the heat.
“I don’t think a woman ought to just be able to shoot a husband, she wants to,” Bill Martin said. “Get that started, things in ever kind of way will get turned over and sat on. Hell, get so I tell my wife to get my breakfast ready, she’ll want to pull out a gun.”
“Working with you,” said Don Walker, “makes me want to shoot you sometimes.”
“You’re a regular Fibber McGee. Except you ain’t funny.”
Bill and Don hooked their mules to a sled full of logs. Don called to the mules, Hank and Wank, and they started to pull the sled away. Don and Bill stood out to the side and Don held the long reins and they walked alongside the mules as they pulled.
“Haw, you sorry bastards,” Don said to the mules, and the mules turned left.
Bill said, “You ought not talk to the boys like that.”
“These boys are lazy if you let ’em be.”
They met Hillbilly coming toward them. He smiled and waved a hand at them. Don pulled the mules to a halt.
“Excuse me,” Hillbilly said, “but I’m looking for work.”
“We ain’t the ones to talk to,” Bill said.
“Do you know who to talk to?”
“The Captain,” Don said. “But now ain’t a good time.”
“When will be?”
“Ain’t certain. His boy, Pete, got killed yesterday.”
“Accident?”
“Not unless you call getting shot in the head an accident,” Bill said. “Boy’s wife shot him. Pete was the constable.”
“Why’d she do it?”
“I hear he was beating on her.”
“Can’t say I blame her then,” Hillbilly said. “I don’t like a hand laid on me in anger.”
“She was his wife,” Bill said.
“Don’t give him no call for that,” Hillbilly said.
“What I been saying,” Don said. “Been telling Bill just that.”
“This woman shot him,” Hillbilly said. “She wouldn’t be a redhead, would she?”
“Hair don’t get no redder than hers,” Bill said. “How’d you know?”
“Just a guess,” Hillbilly said. “Redheads are known for shooting husbands.”
“I know a redhead that was known for other things,” Bill said. “Talk about fire in the hole.”
“All your goats got black or white or gray fur,” Don said. “Ain’t seen no redheaded ones, so you don’t know nothing there.”
“Keep telling you,” Bill said, “you ought to get on radio you’re so funny.” Bill turned back to Hillbilly, said, “Good luck, young man. Maybe the Captain will talk to you. We did lose a man last week.”
“Tree fell on him,” Don said. “Me and Bill had bets on how long before that ignorant sonofabitch got a tree on him. He’d cut and kind of saunter away when the tree was coming down. He sauntered a little slow last time. Tree jumped back on him. They’ll do that. Jump back. Drove that fella into the ground. Said the stuffing popped out of him like a Christmas turkey.”
“You got to be quick working here,” Bill said. “Not get no vines or limbs caught under your feet. I think that fella got some berry vines wrapped around his ankles. Get hired and don’t mind your work, you’ll be dead as him.”
“Thanks for the advice, gentlemen,” Hillbilly said. “If I was to talk to this Captain, where would I find him?”
“He ain’t staying at his house no more,” Bill said. “His wife done run him off and took sides with the daughter-in-law. He was in the mill house this morning, wearing the same old nasty clothes he had on yesterday. I don’t know that he’s really working. When you’re one of the big men, you can coast, your boy’s dead or not. You might have to talk to someone else about a job, though. There’s others can hire.
“It’s all a crying shame. Captain with his boy dead, his wife putting him out. He’s a nice guy too. He loaned me considerable money I ain’t paid back-”
“And don’t intend to pay back,” Don said.
“You don’t know that,” Bill said.
“You ain’t paid me the dollar you owe me.”
“I’m gonna. But I tell you, I owed his old lady, I don’t know. She didn’t want him to loan it to me. Said I was a bad risk.”
“You are,” Don said. “I want my dollar. I know that.”
“She said that right in front of me. A bad risk. Tell you, with this Sunset killing her husband, and him a law too, we don’t put an end to it, every woman in the camp and hereabouts is gonna feel they got the right to tell their men what-for over most anything they take a mind to. If it’s loaning money or holding out with the hot wet kitty.”
“Sunset,” Hillbilly said. “That’s what they call her?”
“On account of her long red hair,” Don said. “Before Pete whacked on her, she was a pretty good looker. Now she looks like Three-Fingered Jack looked.”
“Who?”
“Man took a beating from Pete,” Bill said. “But he died from it. They called him that cause he had three fingers.”
Hillbilly thought: No shit.
“This time it was Pete done the dying,” Don said. “I ain’t one to feel sorry for him. Beating on a woman ain’t right. Unless, of course, it’s a whore. I had one take a couple dollars from me once, and when I got hold of her she got hers, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Her face looked like a speckled pup I got through whapping her.”
“What about a place to live?” Hillbilly asked. He had looked the camp over. All of the houses seemed occupied and close enough together a man wanted to fuck his next-door neighbor’s wife, all he had to do was hang his dick out the window, she hang her ass out of hers.
“There ain’t really no places near. You can rent a tent from the camp store, make you a spot down the road a piece in the pines there. They ain’t gonna cut them trees for a few years. Too damn small.”
“Thanks again,” Hillbilly said, and wandered toward the mill house.
Just before he got there, it occurred to him he had been curious but had forgotten to ask why this Pete had given Three-Fingered Jack a beating in the first place.
He thought too about the redhead by the creek, knew she was the one who shot this Pete.
It was odd to realize she and he were both killers.
Sunset lay back down after Hillbilly left. She did so with the intention of resting a moment, but surprised herself by falling asleep. She awoke from her nap with a hand stroking her cheek.
For a moment she thought it was Pete, in one of his rare sweet moods, but then she remembered it couldn’t be Pete.
It was Karen.
“I didn’t mean to say all them things, Mama.”