Sunset and Sawdust by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online Page A

father-in-law, Mr. Jones, or the Captain, but she couldn’t make the words come out. He wasn’t her father-in-law now. She didn’t have anyone but Karen and Karen hated her. Well, maybe she had Marilyn. The whole thing with Marilyn hitting her, then hugging her, had not quite registered yet.
    “That girl,” he said, “she ain’t dead, is she? You didn’t shoot her? I seen you put that gun in your pocket. You ain’t gonna shoot me, are you?”
    “That’s my daughter. She’s sleeping. We had a storm come through. Tore up our home.”
    “Reckon I caught the tail end of that one. I was in a boxcar at the time. Kind of scared me. Thought the damn thing was gonna turn over. You hunting? A pistol ain’t the best for squirrels.”
    “No. I’m not hunting.”
    “Well, nice to meet you. If your daughter was awake I’d say nice to meet her. Storm bang you up like that?”
    “It was a storm, all right.”
    “My name’s Hillbilly.”
    “Mine’s Sunset. Daughter’s name is Karen.”
    “You sure got pretty hair. Your daughter’s got pretty hair too, but it ain’t the same as yours. Yours is fire, hers is a raven’s wing.”
    “She got her daddy’s hair,” Sunset said.
    “Reckon I’ll go on now, see if I can get that job.”
    “You don’t look like a sawmill hand.”
    “Ain’t. Just need work. I’m a musician. I sing and play guitar.”
    “Where’s your guitar?”
    “Got broken. I’m trying to make enough to buy me one.”
    “Good luck.”
    “Thanks. See you around?”
    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