“Will he bite?”
“Any dog will bite sometimes.”
“Will he bite me?”
“Not if you’re nice. Don’t scare him.”
“He don’t look scared to me.”
Sunset smiled. “Didn’t have no butter. But the syrup is warm. It’ll be on the table in a minute.”
“Are we gonna keep him?”
“Yeah. I promised him. Reckon he’s had enough promises broken.”
“What’s his name?”
“I think it’s Ben. Think Clyde said Ben. I’m gonna call him Ben, anyway. Your daddy never would let me have a dog.”
“I always wanted one too.”
“He’s a big old pretty thing, ain’t he?”
Karen nodded, got up slowly, eased out of bed.
Sunset said, “Stick out your hand, easy like, and come toward him slowly.”
Karen did that.
The dog stood up and licked her hand.
“He likes me,” Karen said.
“There’s a lot to like.”
Karen bent down and hugged the dog. The dog licked her ear.
“Hello, Ben,” Karen said.
“Wash your hands before you eat,” Sunset said.
12
After about a week on the job, which was mostly sitting around Sunset’s tent, delivering one foreclosure paper and making a drunk leave the Camp Rapture store after a fight, Clyde awoke in his broken-down bed thinking of Sunset. He had dreamed about her, and in the dream she was his, but the truth was he wasn’t ever going to have her. Not with Hillbilly around.
He even had one dream where he killed Hillbilly by beating him to death with a chicken, then buried him in the yard, with the bird. He liked that dream almost as much as the one where Sunset loved him.
Clyde sat up on the edge of the bed and looked around the room. Newspapers, all manner of junk. Just a path from the bed to the door. And all the rest of the house the same way. Worse.
How did he think he could attract a woman when his house was a pile of shit. Hell, he was a pile of shit. You could stack shit any way you wanted, arrange it any way you wanted, but in the end, no matter how you worked it, a pile of shit was a pile of shit.
It never occurred to him to be any other way.
And then, when Sunset killed her husband, he felt the wind from a door being opened-a door he wanted to walk through. One that led to a room with him and Sunset. The possibility had not been there before, but now…
He wanted her. He wanted her to want him. And for the first time in years, he was worried about the way his house looked, the way he looked. And he was damn worried about Hillbilly. The sonofabitch could roll in dirt and come up looking good. He looked as if he had been created for the girls. All lean and handsome, thick hair, no nose, ear or back hair. Hell, his balls were probably smooth.
Clyde pulled on his pants, went through the newspaper path to the room where Hillbilly slept. It was a large room, but it seemed small, as all manner of junk was collected there. Clyde no longer knew what junk it was or why he kept it.
Hillbilly was asleep on a mattress on the floor. Nearby, a big pot was still full of water from the last rain that had leaked through the ceiling. Bugs had died in the pot. It looked real nasty. Clyde hadn’t thought about it looking nasty before. But now he could see it. It was nasty.
“You might ought to go on and get up,” Clyde said.
Hillbilly turned over slowly, blinked his eyes open. “Time already?”
“You go in today. Tell Sunset I got to take some time off, but I’ll be back. I ain’t quitting or nothing. And if she needs me bad, come get me. Take the truck.”
After Hillbilly left, Clyde stood outside and studied the old worn-out house. Finally he went inside and dragged out a tarp he had saved. It was rotten in spots, but mostly sound, and he tied it between trees, moved some other items out of the house he thought he might need, like his guns, ammunition, pots and pans, lanterns, and such, tucked them under the tarp.
He spent half the day doing this, and pretty soon realized he was merely taking what was in the house outside, and therefore solving little to nothing.
He thought on it a while, put some of the items back in the house, came out and wet his finger by poking it in his mouth, held it up. There was no wind to speak of.
Back inside he got some matches, lit one to a pile of newspapers. The papers were so mildewed and stuck together, the fire went out. He got some kerosene and spread it throughout the house in a winding trail. On his way out the door he struck a match to it.
Outside, Clyde watched, hoping the wind wouldn’t change and carry it to the woods. He was amazed at how fast the house caught. Pretty soon flames were licking out of the open door and broken windowpanes. He could hear things popping and crackling inside. All the printed news that was news for the last ten years was on its way to the gods, via a trail of smoke.
Fire licked up through the gaps in the roof and pretty soon the roof caught and the flames made a wavy hat and black smoke poured out of the holes in the roof and out of the fireplace. Glass in the windows popped to pieces. In less than an hour the house was consumed, except for the chimney, but with nothing to hold it up, it fell to the ground with a thunderous crash, tossing bricks in all directions. From the time of starting the fire to the time of flames licking at blackened lumber, broken glass and shattered bricks, about two hours passed.
After a while, Clyde took the shovel he had saved from under the tarp and went over and started stirring things with it, spreading the last of the fire out so it would die. He took water from the well and poured buckets of it on what he deemed trouble spots, places that might flare up again if left alone.
He had spared the chairs, placed them under the tarp, and now he picked one and sat and drank from something else he had spared. A bottle of whisky. It was cheap stuff and it tasted like it, all bite and no sugar. By late afternoon he decided it tasted pretty good and drank it all, fell asleep in his chair.
He did so with new plans in his head for a place to live. He would build a new house. One without newspapers and junk, mold and mildew, a leaky roof and a smell like chicken shit. This one would be fresh and it would be painted white and the roof would be fine, with a brand-new chimney made of red bricks and plaster.
He slept, wishing he could burn himself down and rebuild, maybe in Hillbilly’s image.
Was there a blueprint for that?
The smoke had gone from black to white and from rolls to puffs, and pretty soon there wasn’t even that, and by late afternoon, while Clyde slept, a soft rain came and stirred the ashes and made fresh smoke.
Lightning flashed and thunder crashed, but Clyde never knew it.
About the time Clyde was snoozing under the tarp and the rain was falling on what remained of his smoldering house, Zendo drove up in his pickup and parked in front of Sunset’s tent.