Sunset and Sawdust

When Clyde came down the steps carrying Lee like a baby, Sunset said, “Watch this piece of dung a minute,” and left him with Hillbilly. She went around back, looking for McBride, still cautious, the shotgun at the ready.

She found McBride face forward against the overhang. There were burn marks on the ground where he had dragged himself. He was a blackened shape now, his hands like claws where he had scooped out some clay as if trying to climb up the overhang to God knows where, or maybe burrow through it.

They went across the street to the jail, Sunset with her gun at Hillbilly’s back, prodding, and Clyde carrying Lee. They put Hillbilly in the cell with Plug, and Clyde laid Lee on the bunk in the other cell, called up the town doctor, who came and looked at Lee and said he was bad.

“He’s go

“I got use for this leg,” Lee said, his face covered in sweat.

The doctor, who was a short fat man wearing a plaid shirt and pants that looked as if they could use a wash, said, “Yeah, but it might not have any use for you anymore. I’m go

“We’ll get you to the doctor, Daddy,” Sunset said. “He don’t know that’s what will happen for sure.”

“If I mess with it much, it is,” the doctor said.

“Can you take him to Tyler?” Sunset said.

“I can,” said the doctor, “but it’ll cost.”

“He’s a deputy constable.”

“He’s your daddy.”

“And he’s still a deputy constable. You see he gets there. You bill Camp Rapture-better yet, you bill Holiday. And give him something for pain.”

“For Christ sakes, yes,” Lee said. “Knock me out. Give me some dope. Something.”

“Daddy,” Sunset said, liking the sound of calling him that better and better, “still believe what you said, about the union of everything in the universe, us and everything in it all being part of one big thing?”

“Not so much,” Lee said.

“What about these two?” Clyde said, nodding toward Hillbilly and Plug.

“They’re for the law,” Sunset said.

“There ain’t no law,” Clyde said.

“Today there is. And you’re it. Stay till we figure something out. I’m go

“What then?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

When it was done and Lee was on his way to Tyler, courtesy of the doctor and his car, Sunset got the keys to the sheriff’s car, went out and cleaned the windshield free of bugs and got in. She sat there and thought about the fact that she and Clyde were unhurt, her dad was the worst off and he hadn’t even gotten inside the apartment. And Bull. Poor Bull. He was dead, and all she had was a few bangs and cuts and some little shotgun pellets in the back of her heels, pellets she could pick out with tweezers.

She sat and looked at what was left of the fire across the way. The fire department, such as it was, was trying to put it away, but mostly they were ru

She thought about Bull, burned up in there, and it made her think of the story she’d heard about Greek heroes, how they put them on piles of lumber and burned them up and sent their souls up in smoke and flames.

On the way home, Sunset saw the sky had cleared and it was full of nothing but a crow. The trees, grass, anything that had been green, was gone. It was as if green had been a dream. Now that the storm of wings and legs had departed, there was only desolation. Even the bark had been stripped off the hardwoods. All about were dead grasshoppers, victims of collisions and fights with their hungry partners.

She drove along until she came upon her car. It was beside the road, the driver’s door open. Sunset stopped near it, took the shotgun lying on the seat and got out. The morning had come in full now, and it was hot, but she felt more cold than hot as she moved alongside her car, looked inside. Nothing but dried black blood on the front seat.

She walked along the road slowly, crunching dead grasshoppers under her feet, looking right and left. Then she saw him. He was sitting with his back against a great pine tree that was stripped of its needles. He had his hands on his thighs and he was looking at her. His bowler hat was on the ground, the crown touching the earth. Flies were so thick on the front of his shirt they looked like a vest. His coat was pushed back over his shoulders, as if he had tried to give himself a little breeze. The scar on his head looked raw and stood out, like an actual horseshoe was inside his skull, working its way to the surface.

Sunset kept the shotgun pointed at Two, moved toward him slowly. When she was standing over him his vest startled and flew away. She saw part of his bottom lip was bit off, and she thought: Good for you, Bull. His green eyes were filmed over and still and a fly was on one of them.

“I guess the both of you are dead,” Sunset said.

37

They buried Goose in the same graveyard where Pete and Jones and Henry’s wife lay. They didn’t know Goose’s last name, and since he hadn’t liked his first name, they put on the wooden cross GOOSE. A GOOD BOY.

Lee couldn’t attend, but from his hospital bed he wrote out some words and Sunset read them. They were simple and nice and there were Bible quotes.

Ben was buried at Sunset’s place, near the big oak where he liked to lie. Sunset said her own words over that grave. “You’re home, boy.”

Two weeks later, in her bug-scarred car, Sunset drove over to see Marilyn. She drove past Bill and Don working their mules, other men working oxen, driving trucks, doing this and that.

There were a lot of trees to work. The grasshoppers’ short reign had caused a large number of them to die and they were being cut fast and furious, hauled in, put on the belt, run through the saw.

Bill looked up from his work as Sunset drove by. “She ain’t treated that car right. See how it’s all cut up.”

Don nodded. “She looks all right herself, though, don’t she?”

“I got to go with that,” Bill said. “I don’t like her none, but me not liking her ain’t hurt her looks. And she’s got some guts, things she did, her and that Clyde. I knowed that Hillbilly wasn’t worth the steam off shit when I first seen him.”

“You didn’t know no such thing,” Don said.

“I did. Just didn’t say so.”

“Watch them mules,” Don said.

Sunset drove past the mill, on up into Marilyn’s yard. She went up on the porch and knocked. While she waited she looked at the haze of sawdust over the mill, listened to the sound of the great saw.

Marilyn opened the door with a smile. She looked splendid and young in a white housedress with blue designs.

“Good to see you, Sunset. After all that business I haven’t seen you much. And you’re all dressed up. That’s a nice dress.”

“I bought it in Holiday. I wanted something green, there not being much green left.”

“I ain’t never heard of such a thing as them grasshoppers acting that way. Not here. North and West Texas, Oklahoma maybe, but I ain’t never heard of them here, not doing like that.”

“They ate all there was up there, so they came down here.”

“Here now,” Marilyn said, pushing back the screen. “Don’t stand on the porch, sweetie. Come on in.”

Inside Sunset took a chair. It was the same chair Marilyn had slapped her out of some weeks ago. She could hear the big clock ticking away.

“Where’s Karen?” Marilyn asked.