“There’s plenty tried,” Hillbilly said, rolling out of bed, his tent peg turning into a limp little hose.
“I think you’re a little too proud, son. I’m going to take some pride out of you. By the handfuls.”
“Old man, I’m warning you. You don’t know what you’re stepping into. You look way past it.”
Lee went for him. The whore screamed.
Hillbilly moved. He really moved. It was so fast he hardly seemed to move. One moment he was in front of Lee, the next he was gone.
Hillbilly knew he was fast, damn fast, knew too he had the old man, and when he slid to the side, twisted to come around and hit the old man in the back of the head, he was already grinning.
But the old man wasn’t there. The old man leaned, and Hillbilly’s fist went past and the old man snapped out a right and hit Hillbilly and took the grin away. It was a good shot. A damn good shot. Hillbilly hadn’t felt one like that in a long time. But he took it. Took it good. He was still standing.
He ducked, went for the old man’s knees, but the old man did a kind of backward hop, the grab missed, and the next thing Hillbilly knew, the old man had a forearm under his neck, had latched on like a dog tick in a hound’s ear, and now the old man was falling onto his back, bringing his leg up between Hillbilly’s bare legs, kicking him in the plums, carrying him over.
Hillbilly hit the floor on his back, so hard the lamp on the table jumped. He twisted around and came up, tried to come back on the old man, but the old man rolled to his feet and was facing him. Then Hillbilly felt the delayed pain in his balls, like someone had put them in a vise and tightened the crank. He bent forward, sick.
The old man came at him then, and it was fast. Real fast. As fast as Hillbilly thought he was. Faster. And the old man brought with him friends from hell. A left and a right. Followed it with a left hook that shook the inside of Hillbilly’s mouth and something came loose in there, then the old man had him by the waist, was lifting him up, rushing him backwards to the window, slamming him through it.
The whore bellowed throughout the whole thing, but she screamed loudest when Hillbilly went through the window, glass flying, blood drops spraying.
“You killed him,” the blonde yelled.
“Well, I was trying,” Lee said.
Clyde heard the racket, thought, I better go up, and was about to, when out the busted window came Hillbilly, hair, dick and balls flapping in the wind. It was a damn good drop, and Hillbilly hit hard. Still, the sonofabitch was trying to get up.
Clyde thought: Well, I guess that’s the goddamn signal.
Clyde went over there, and Hillbilly, spotted with glass cuts, his mouth dripping blood, on his hands and knees, looked up.
“You,” Hillbilly said.
“Howdy,” Clyde said, and swung the slap jack as hard as he could. The first blow caught Hillbilly on the side of the face, and he dropped, tried to rise again. The second blow caught him on the back of the head, and Clyde laughed as he delivered it. This time Hillbilly went down, stayed there.
Clyde turned, saw Lee coming down the stairs. He looked fine, his hair a little ruffled, his suit coat twisted. He was carrying a guitar. There was a woman at the top of the stairs wearing a sheet, cussing and yelling. Some lights in the downstairs apartment went on.
Lee walked over to where Hillbilly lay face down, studied him a moment, put the base of the guitar on the ground, rested one hand on the neck, leaned on it like it was a crutch. With his other hand he unfastened his pants, got out his Johnson, let piss fly. He wetted up Hillbilly’s head and the side of his face real good.
He said, “Here’s a message from the big dog.”
Hillbilly stirred, raised his head slightly.
“Sonofabitch,” Hillbilly said.
“Here’s a good-night tune,” Lee said, took the guitar by the neck and swung it. It was a beautiful swing. It whistled in the night, and when it struck Hillbilly, it made a sound like a rifle shot, then there was a ping and a sad throb of strings.
Hillbilly was down again, not out, just lying there, fragments of guitar all around, strings wobbling in the air like insect antennae. He got to his knees, cocked his ass in the air, as if ready to take it from the rear, froze there, not able to move, blacked out.
Lee put a foot on him and pushed and Hillbilly rolled over on his side and didn’t move. Lee fastened his pants, took Clyde by the elbow, said, “Let’s go. I need a drink. I don’t drink nothing alcohol, but a big bracer of cold milk will do me.”
Goose and Karen were out behind the oak, sitting on the ground with a pan of water and some knives, a kerosene lamp on the ground. Goose was skinning and gutting the four squirrels he had shot. Karen put them in the pan of water and used her hands to rub any loose hair off of them.
“Four squirrel, four shots,” Goose said.
“You were using a shotgun.”
“They weren’t sitting on the end of it.”
“Did you know them and rats is kin?” Karen said.
“Naw, they ain’t.”
“They are. They’re like in the same family or something.”
“They don’t look like rats—well, maybe they do a bit. Suppose they could be kinfolks. I got kinfolks might be rats, the way they look, so I guess any family can have rats in it.”
“Maybe we ought not think on that too much.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me. I ain’t much on thinking I’m eating a rat’s cousin.”
“All four of them are nice and fat,” Karen said.
“I love squirrel. Ain’t had one in ages.”
“Well, you shot them, so you get the first pick of the meat.”
“How do you like them fixed?”
“Fried. Squirrel and dumplings. I like them all kind of ways.”
“Me too . . . you sure are pretty.”
Karen smiled at him.
“You sure are blunt.”
“Just think you ought to tell a girl something like that.”
“You’re pretty young, aren’t you, Goose?”
“You’re young too.”
“I ain’t as young as you.”
“Well, I ain’t so young I don’t know a pretty girl when I see one. A girl like you, you was my girl, I’d take care of you. Anything you needed or wanted, I’d get it.”
“How about a million dollars?”
“It might take some time, but I’d get it. I’d rob somebody I had to.”
“That’s not what a girl wants to hear. Least it ain’t what I want to hear.”
“What do you want to hear? I’ll say it.”
“That ain’t the way either, Goose. Like that, it don’t have no meaning.”
“I can’t say nothing right, can I?”
“Not much.”
“I still think you’re pretty.”
“Thanks.”
“That was my baby in you, I wouldn’t run off. I’d make sure it had a home.”
Karen teared up. Goose said, “I didn’t mean to mention that. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“That’s how it is, ain’t it? Got myself knocked up, didn’t I? Listened to Hillbilly. Told me I was pretty, just like you did. Told me lots of things. I ought to known he was just talking. Just wanted under my dress. I’m just a chippie.”
“Naw, you ain’t. You just got tricked, that’s all. Anyone can get tricked.”
Ben came up, sat down, tried to look polite. Goose gave him the squirrel innards to eat.
“You finished, Goose?”
“Got them all done.”
“Why don’t we take them to the tent and I’ll fry them. You can help me.”
“I’m for that.”
When Lee and Clyde drove up, got out of the pickup, Sunset came out of the tent wiping her face with a napkin, wiping away the grease left from the squirrel she had been eating. She watched as Lee and Clyde came toward the tent. They looked happy.
“You two fellas look like you just ate the canary,” she said.
> “Naw,” Clyde said, “but we busted his ass. He tried to fly like a canary, but the ground got in the way.”
“Yeah,” Lee said. “He was lucky the ground stopped his fall.”
Clyde let out a hoot.
Sunset studied them for a long moment, thought maybe they were drunk after all.
Lee said, “I don’t know how you’ll feel about it, Sunset. Maybe it wasn’t the thing to do. Childish, perhaps, but we went to see Hillbilly.”
“Had a come-to-Jesus meeting with him,” Clyde said. “Well, Lee here, he was the preacher, I was just in the amen corner.”
“You both jumped on him?”
“Not exactly,” Clyde said. “Not that I’d have cared if we had, and had some help. I wouldn’t have felt bad the army helped us.”
“Tell me.”
“We went over where Hillbilly told me he was,” Clyde said, “and he was with some whore, and your daddy went up there and beat Hillbilly’s ass like he was nailed to the floor, threw him out a window. I hit him with the slap jack then. Twice.”
Sunset brought her hand to her mouth. “Did it . . . hurt him?”
“Hell, yeah,” Clyde said. “He didn’t bounce worth a damn. You hit a guy with a slap jack, it’s gonna hurt. But that slap jack, it wasn’t nothing to what he got upstairs, way he came out that window, butt naked.”
“Is he . . . dead?”
“Naw,” Clyde said. “Wasn’t that big a fall. But he ain’t pretty no more. I don’t know it’s permanent, but he looks like he went through some kind of grater and got put back together by a drunk.”
“I’m sorry, Sunset,” Lee said. “I know you had feelings for him.”
“Should have seen it when Lee hit that sonofabitch with his new guitar,” Clyde said. “That was an ace moment, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
Sunset slowly smiled. “Wish I had been there to see it.”
“Especially that part when he come naked out that window,” Clyde said, “flapping his arms. Fallen from five feet higher, they’d be digging his ass out of the ground with some kind of machinery.”
Sunset laughed, got between them, put her arms around them, “You boys ought to be arrested, but hell, that ain’t my jurisdiction, now is it?”
“No, it ain’t,” Clyde said.
“There you are,” Sunset said. “I’m gonna have to let it go. Come on inside. We got fried squirrel to eat.”
32
Back in bed, upstairs, the whore nursed him, but Hillbilly didn’t like it none, because she had seen him get his ass beat. And handily. And by an old man. And he wasn’t looking so good right now. When he checked himself in the mirror, he saw a guy he didn’t know. Guy with glass cuts all over him, like some kind of pox, a broken nose, fat lips, swollen right eye and a cheek that looked like something a chipmunk ought to have, all stuffed up with nuts. But it was just a swelling where a back tooth had come out. His balls weren’t peachy either. All black from being kicked, like rotten plums about to drop off. The fall made him hurt all over. His knees were banged and so were his elbows. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t broken something. He felt a little shook up inside, like something big and fast had run through him, gut to gill.
The blonde pulled a glass sliver out of his penis with her fingernails, put it on a handkerchief on the end table by the bed.
“You can go,” Hillbilly said, as she placed a damp cloth on his business, making him wince.
“Honey, you sure?”
“Yeah. I want you to.”
“That fall was bad. You could be broke up inside. Maybe you ought not be alone.”
“No. You can go.”
“You gonna come see me?”
“Sure.”
“It won’t cost you nothing. You didn’t finish, you know.”
“I know. You go on, now.”
She got up, put on her clothes. When she was at the door, she said, “I’m sorry about your guitar.”
“Okay.”
“You still got the harmonica.”
Hillbilly snatched the damp rag off his crotch and threw it at her. “I said get out.”
The rag struck her on the shoulder. She opened the door and went out quickly.
Hillbilly lay there and thought about what he would do next. Besides move slowly.
Then it came to him. Rooster had given him an idea. It wasn’t the one Rooster had, the one he wanted him to do, it was another.
He thought about the red apartment over the drugstore, where McBride stayed. He had to go over there, talk to the man, see was there a place for him in this operation McBride and Henry had going.
One thing he prided himself on was he took the easy path on everything, unless it had to do with getting even. The easy path wasn’t necessary then. He’d crawl over sharp rocks and kiss a mule’s shitty ass to get back at someone did him wrong, especially some old man made him look and feel foolish in front of a goddamn whore.
He thought he’d get up right then, get dressed, go over and see McBride, but his body thought different.
It said: Lay down, boy. You ain’t doing so good.
Hillbilly listened. Let his body have its way. But his mind raced, and his mind had ideas, and his mind was mean.
After they finished eating, and the ass whipping Lee had given Hillbilly was told another time, and everyone was sitting around inside the tent drinking coffee, Sunset slipped outside with a strip of white cloth she had torn from an old towel. She tied it to a limb on the back of the big oak tree.
Ben trotted up, watched her tie it. When she finished, she knelt down and gave him a pat.
All she could do now was see if Bull showed.
She hoped he would.
She needed him.
And she was pretty sure, Zendo, though he didn’t know it, needed him as well.
33
Couple of days went by and the white strip hung from the oak limb and the weather turned deadly hot and the trees sagged as if the sky were leaning its weight on them. Grasshoppers were everywhere, nibbling at what greenery they could find.
Walking about was like trudging through invisible bread dough and breathing was like sucking up dried leaves. At night, Sunset came out and sat by the oak. Clyde had taken to sleeping in his truck in the yard, and Lee was sleeping on the business side of the tent, with Goose, and she and Karen were sharing the other side.
But when everyone was sleeping, Sunset went out, found Ben, pulled a chair next to the oak, waited for Bull to show up. Sat there petting the dog until he tired of that business and lay down at her feet.
After a couple of nights, she was starting to have doubts Bull would show. He didn’t really owe her anything, and what goodwill he felt for her may have passed. He might never come this way again, never even know a rag was hanging.
She thought about Hillbilly, remembered how he had touched her and cooed to her and made her feel. She thought about Karen, what he must have said to her to have his way. Maybe he said the same things to Karen he said to her. Though, now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember him making her a promise at all. Not with words, anyway, but his hands and lips and eyes spoke volumes, and those were all lies.
She was glad her daddy had kicked his ass.
And yet she hoped he wasn’t hurt bad.
Hoped his looks weren’t spoiled.
She didn’t like him, but didn’t like to think of him messed up, ruined. The kind of beauty he had ought not be ruined. Fact was, it shouldn’t age, never change one teeny bit.
And what about Henry and McBride and the one called Two? What of them? What should she do?
She was thinking on this when Lee came out holding a cup of coffee in either hand. She looked up as he came over. “I thought you were asleep.”
“You think I’m asleep every night when you come out here. Besides, Goose snores.” He handed her a cup of coffee. “Thought you might want this.”
She smiled at him. “Sure.”
Lee had her hold both cups
while he dragged the other chair over, sat down, took a cup and sipped it.
“Daddy, I’m in kind of a mess. I ain’t sure what to do about things.”
“You saying you want to tell me?”
“Yes.”
And she did. Told him all of it, about Zendo and Zendo’s land, about Henry Shelby and McBride and Two, about her talk with them in the church. And for the first time she told someone about Bull, about the rag she had tied to the oak.
She ended saying, “I think maybe they’ll take it out on Zendo. I decided just now I’m going to have Clyde go there, maybe be a lookout, in case they send someone around. Have him go over there with a shotgun. And then there’s Bull. He said he’d help.”
“People say lots of things.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“I’ve said some things myself, but there’s not a thing I say now I don’t mean. Do you believe that?”
“I’m trying. I want to believe. But that’s the story of my life, believing the wrong people.”
“All right then, for what it’s worth. You can look at this two ways. It ain’t really your problem. You didn’t cheat Zendo. It’s not your fault someone might want him killed. You could just warn him, move on, let it go.
“Course, if he’s out of the way, a little nifty work with a pen, that land could end up theirs. With him alive, they could do it anyway, but he might could make enough of a stink to prove it’s his. So either way, you’re taking a chance with his life.”
“I want answers, not choices.”
“I might have been able to give you some years ago, during my preacher days, cause I thought I knew everything. What I do know is you got to have a kind of center, Sunset. You follow me? You got to work out of that center, and you don’t let that center shift. You may fail it, but you don’t let it shift.”
“All right, that’s all well and good. But what do I do? I thought about telling Zendo, but I’ve been afraid to tell him. Thought that might be worse for him. He might say or do something he shouldn’t.”
Lee sipped coffee slowly, said, “In other words, you’re not treating him like a man. You’re treating him like a slave that needs tending, and you’re his massa.”