“He spilt some syrup over there by the stove, probably about, oh, I don’t know, ten years ago would be my guess from the looks of it. But it’s still sweet. I know, cause flies gather in it and get stuck. Want to see?”
“No thanks.”
Clyde came back with a shotgun and a revolver. They looked much cleaner than anything else in the house.
“Is there anything you don’t save?” Sunset said.
“Money,” Clyde said. “I’m hungry. Had time I’d make me a little sandwich to take with me.”
“Well, you don’t have time,” Sunset said, “but we could probably manage a little backfire through this place before we leave, and by the time you get back, things would be cleaned up real good.”
“At least I know where everything is,” Clyde said.
“No, he don’t,” Hillbilly said.
“I knew where these guns were,” Clyde said, and gave the shotgun to Hillbilly. He handed him a fistful of shells as well.
“Where do you sleep?” Sunset asked Hillbilly.
“Not sure. Place never looks the same.”
“You didn’t ask where I sleep,” Clyde said.
“This is your house. I figure you have a place. I was wondering about the houseguest.”
As they climbed in the truck, Sunset said, “From now on, you boys need to be armed at all times. We can’t be stopping off at Clyde’s house for weapons when we need them.”
“Just don’t seem necessary most of the time,” Clyde said, shifting gears. “This slap jack,” he patted his shirt where it lay inside, “is usually enough.”
“Well, you’re full-time now, not part-time,” Sunset said. “We’re professionals and we got to act and look like professionals.”
“Is that what we are?” Clyde said. “Professionals?”
Hillbilly patted Sunset’s leg below the holster, said, “I see you’re armed.”
Sunset knew Hillbilly’s pat on the leg and remark were unnecessary and an excuse to touch her thigh, but she couldn’t bring herself to say anything against it.
She wished she could say, “Put your hand here, your mouth there, twist one of my legs behind my head and make me say calf rope,” but instead she said, “I got the gun, but I don’t have many bullets. Just what’s in it.”
“Things go well,” Clyde said, “maybe you won’t have to shoot any more people than you got shells. Some police officers, even in big cities, go a whole day without shooting anybody, including dogs with the hydrophobia. Hell, Pete didn’t never shoot but one man, and I think he hit him by accident. Course, he sure beat a lot of them up, and Three-Fingered Jack died from a whupping, so maybe that evens out the score.”
11
The road was muddy, the going slow. Ruts the tires fell into bounced them so hard Sunset thought her insides were going to jump out of her mouth.
Clyde said, “Hope all that wiring I’ve done to hold the engine don’t give… hey, right over there, down that little road, there’s an overhang. It ain’t real high, but it hangs over part of Holiday. Gal jumped off it once, tried to kill herself, but all she did was hit where it widens and roll all the way down. Ended up lying up against the back side of the drugstore. She had stripped off naked to jump. Friend of mine was out back of the store letting water out, seen her roll down the hill. Said he’d just gone to church that morning for the first time in ten years, thought maybe it was a gift from God. It wasn’t. She was mad as a hornet and cussing everything and everybody, including him. Said what he had out wasn’t big enough to drain water, let alone use for anything else. She come out of it with some grass stains and some sticker burrs in her ass. My friend Lonnie never did go to church again. But it’s good up there at night. Nice with all them lights shining up at you.”
As they neared Holiday, alongside the road they saw oil wells poking up, and through gaps in the woods they could see more. The closer they came to the town the more wells they saw, some of them right in the city limits, even in the midst of town. There were so many they made a kind of metal forest.
“It ain’t been no time that this here wasn’t nothing but a burg, now it’s got ten thousand people,” Clyde said. “Wildcatters, roughnecks, gamblers, thugs and whores. Oil makes people crazy, same way as gold- Damn. Ruts are near up to the axle. This ain’t so much a street as a goddamn mud hole.”
“See a hat on the ground,” Hillbilly said, “most likely you’ll find a man under it. Sitting on a horse.”
A few mules and cars were slogging through the mud-rutted street, but for the most part traffic had stopped, and a crowd, whites and coloreds, had gathered near the new picture show. The white folks were in front, the coloreds lingered back a ways, lest they somehow be considered part of the problem. Folks hid themselves behind cars or poked their heads around the edges of buildings. A number of them were armed.
“I don’t think you ought to drive up there,” Sunset said.
“Don’t know I can,” Clyde said. “Go much farther, we might never get out of the mud. Be hard enough just to turn it around.”
Clyde managed the truck onto a patch of solid ground, off the road, parked a pretty good distance away. They got out and walked along the wooden sidewalk opposite the picture show. Hillbilly was carrying the shotgun, and Clyde had the revolver in his hand, letting it dangle by his side.
The crowd turned to look at them.
“They’re trying to figure that badge on your shirt,” Hillbilly said. “Or in the case of the men, the hill on which it rests.”
“Just keep walking,” Sunset said.
They could see Morgan over there, and the other deputy. They were behind a parked truck. A dead mule lay halfway in the muddy street and halfway on the sidewalk. Its head was a mess and it had passed a pile of turds. They were still steaming.
“Shot the doodie out of him,” Clyde said.
At the mouth of the picture show, they could see a door was partly open, and what was keeping it that way was a man’s leg. There was blood all around the door and a white hat was upside down on the sidewalk. Sunset concluded the body was the sheriff.
When they got even with the picture show there wasn’t any way to get across other than to go through the mud.
“I can tote you if you want,” Clyde said.
Sunset considered this, concluded the constable being carried across mud like a child wasn’t the impression she wanted to make.
She said, “I’m the constable, I ought to act like one.”
“You ain’t the constable in this town,” Hillbilly said.
“They asked for me, so I got to look the part.”
“Who said the constable has to be muddy?” Clyde said.
Sunset hiked her dress to her thighs. Hillbilly grinned, said, “Damn. Reckon you’re right. Walk across on your own.”
As they crossed, she glanced repeatedly at the theater, but no one came out to take a shot at her. The sign on the theater said THE STRAND, and the marquee said “ANIMAL CRACKERS starring the Marx Brothers.”