Sunset looked up. A man was standing nearby. Sunset stood, felt like wires were being pulled inside of her and the wires had hooks and the hooks were hitched to her vitals.
She studied him. He didn’t look like trouble. They never look like trouble, she thought. Pete hadn’t looked like trouble when he started courting her when she was sixteen. He seemed fine enough and a good choice when they first married, until two weeks later, the night she had a cold and didn’t want to bed him and he made her, and made her many times thereafter.
She put her hand in her pocket. She was glad she had the gun.
“You two hoboing?” the man said. “Don’t see many women on the road.”
Sunset said, “We’re not on the road.”
“That’s good. You’re a good bit away from the rails.”
“So are you,” she said.
“Guess I am.”
The man wore a crumpled wool hat. It looked too big for him. He took it off and smiled at her. She noted he was nice-looking and maybe not as young as he first appeared. He had a little sack tied to his belt. Over one eye was a small black bruise.
“I’m looking for work. Some bo’s told me there was a sawmill hiring.”
“I don’t know if they’re hiring,” Sunset said, “but you follow the creek west a ways, and you’ll see it.”
She started to say he would have to talk to her 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 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.”