Sunset and Sawdust

“At Uncle Riley’s.”

Marilyn considered this for a moment.

“She there because of the baby?”

“Aunt Cary helped her on that.”

“She… she got rid of the baby?”

“She didn’t want his child. Not after all that.”

Marilyn nodded, sat silent for a time.

“I suppose that’s right. I don’t think God would judge a girl on that.”

“No,” Sunset said. “I don’t think he would.”

“And Clyde?” Marilyn said, trying to change the subject.

“Holiday. He’s still being the sheriff. Think they’re go

“And your daddy?”

“Still in the hospital. Go

“I’m sorry to hear about his leg, but it could have been worse.”

“Could have. Though Bull might disagree.”

“I didn’t even know he was real.”

“He was real all right.”

“There was a deputy involved-”

“Plug. He’ll see trial. He tried to help me some, so that might make it a little easier for him. I don’t care if it does, really.”

“After all that,” Marilyn said, “I heard Zendo moved off, and him owning all that oil. All that happened, and he moved off.”

“He moved up North, and he still owns the oil. Clyde manages the place for him. People around here will leave Clyde alone, but they wouldn’t like a colored man owning all that oil. Zendo can be rich up North easier than he can be rich here, and he gives Clyde a little cut to manage it. The house, the one Zendo lived in, the one on the oil land, Clyde’s got them both. He’s go

“Clyde sure is sweet on you. He’d be a catch. Especially now.”

“I suppose he would. I wanted it to go that way, but when it all settled out, going through what we all went through-I just don’t feel like that about Clyde. I don’t have that feeling, you know? Something missing. After all the killing, nearly being killed, I don’t feel like wasting a moment, making a mistake that’ll hurt me or him.”

Marilyn smiled. She had taken a chair herself. “I know. You got to have that. That feeling. Jones, when he was young, like Pete with you, he made me feel that way.”

“Hillbilly made me feel that way. I guess, in the end, it isn’t enough. Clyde didn’t like me telling him, but I think he understood. Best he could. In the end, I think he’s more of a bachelor anyway.”

“There’s some fellas in prison go

“Not yet,” Sunset said. “And I don’t know if he’ll heal up so pretty. Daddy sure gave him a beating. Thing is, he got loose. In Tyler, where they took him for the trial. The jailer had a daughter.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“They caught the daughter. Hillbilly run off, left her in an unpaid room in Texarkana. They figure he’s in Arkansas somewhere.”

“He is one dog,” Marilyn said.

Sunset nodded.

“You act like something is on your mind,” Marilyn said.

“Didn’t know I was go

“What in the world do you mean?”

“How did you know Jimmie Jo had a baby?”

“What?”

“You told me she had a baby, but I didn’t tell you.”

“I guess it was around the camp. Preacher Willie.”

“That she was shot with a thirty-eight.”

“It was around-Sunset, what are you getting at? I’m sure everyone knew about that business.”

“That’s what I thought, it was just around. But there were other things. You showing me how to use posthole diggers, saying how you could dig with those better than a shovel, even straight down. That’s how Jimmie Jo was buried. Straight down. And the baby-where’s the flowerpot that used to be on the porch, Marilyn?”

“It broke.”

“Yeah. I saw pieces of it out at the baby’s grave.”

“You’re going wrong here, Sunset.”

“I’d like to be, but I don’t think so. McBride, he knew about the oil on Jimmie Jo, but he didn’t know about the thirty-eight. I think he had, he’d have told me. He didn’t care. He didn’t know what I was talking about. Pete, when he came to you, crying, did he come to you and tell you about Jimmie Jo?”

“He didn’t kill her, if that’s what you mean.”

“It isn’t. You let me think he might have, but he didn’t.”

“It didn’t matter. Not right then. Jimmie Jo was dead, so was Pete.”

“Just tell me, Marilyn. Why?”

Marilyn was silent for a long time. The grandfather clock chimed noon.

“I didn’t do what you think I did,” she said.

“What did you do?”

“Pete was upset about you. He cried about you. He didn’t think you were the kind of wife you could be, and he’d met that woman, that whore, Jimmie Jo-I was protecting you. And him. But I didn’t-it isn’t what it seems.”

“What is it, then?”

“My plant, the one that was in the pot on the back porch. It died. Everyone knows Zendo has the best soil around. I thought I’d take the back road, the one that’s on the oil land, the one I thought was someone else’s. Just forgotten land. Thought I’d go out there, see if I could get some of that dirt. I meant to ask Zendo, but if he wasn’t around, figured I’d just take some. I got out there, saw the house, the one Pete built for his whore. He told me about it, but when I seen it, I was sick. It was better than the one you lived in, Sunset. I was mad, and I went up there to see her, but she wasn’t there. And when I left, driving home-I’d forgot about the soil, you see-well, I seen her. There was an oil pool and she was lying out there beside it. She had on an orange and green dress. A gaudy whore’s dress. I could see it good, the part wasn’t covered in oil. You couldn’t miss her lying there. I pulled over for a look. She was lying there, and she was just the same as dead. She had drowned, like. Her brain was dead, but her body was still moving. She had been drowned but wasn’t all of her dead. Whoever done it, they’d left her for dead, but she wasn’t. And she was having the baby, Sunset. Even after she was by all reason dead, her body was giving that baby life.

“I had seen Aunt Cary deliver a baby, and I knew whose baby that was. My grandchild. And I delivered it, cutting it out of her cause she wasn’t alive enough to worry about doing it the right way, did it best I could remember how, but it was born dead, Sunset. Dead baby from a dead mother. I just made sure she was all dead. I didn’t do her any harm wasn’t already done. Shooting her like that, it was merciful.

“I took the baby then, put it in the jar. I had posthole diggers with me to get dirt at Zendo’s, and I stuck the baby in the jar and buried it over there on his land.”

“Why, Marilyn?”

“The child was gone. Wasn’t anything go

“You did,” Sunset said. “When you shot her, you killed her. Figure that’s why Pete wrote out the file the way he did, buried the baby as a colored. To protect you.”