“Miss Sunset, I haul you around like this, they gonna kill me,” Uncle Riley said.
“Not with me with you they won’t.”
Sunset heard her mouth say the right things, but she felt as if it were all a dream. She scratched a place behind her ear with the barrel of the.38.
“Missy, they ain’t gonna believe me. They ain’t gonna believe you.”
“They’ll believe me.”
“My cousin Jim, he just seen a white woman bending over in her yard, taking hanging clothes from a basket, and though there wasn’t nothing to see cause she had her clothes on and he was up on the road, a white man seen him look at her, and for that, the word got around and them Kluxers took Jim out and castrated him, poured turpentine on the cuts.”
“I tell you, it’ll be okay.”
“What’s your husband, Mr. Pete, gonna say?”
“He ain’t gonna say nothing, Uncle Riley. I blew his brains out.”
“Oh, my goodness.”
“Take me to my mother-in-law’s.”
“Sure you want to go to your mama-in-law’s?” Uncle Riley said.
“My daughter’s there. Ain’t got nowhere else to go.”
“Don’t know Miss Marilyn gonna take kindly to you shooting her boy.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Oh, God, what is Karen going to think?”
“She surely loves her daddy.”
“She does.”
“They gonna castrate me and my boy.”
“No, they’re not. I’ll see to it. For heaven’s sake, Uncle Riley, I’ve known you all my life. Your wife helped deliver my baby.”
“White folks forget them things when they want to. And with this Depression on, people just meaner anyhow.”
The storm had come so fast and furious, it was hard to accept all the sunlight and heat, but already the fish in the back of the wagon were beginning to smell.
The leather harnesses creaked and the oat-and-hay-stoked bellies of the mules made strange gurgling and trumpeting sounds. From time to time the mules lifted their tails and farted or did their business, jerked their heads and snatched at greenery, and there was plenty of it, because the trail was narrow and the limbs of trees poked out over it, tempting the mules with their leaves.
The wagon squeaked and jostled along the muddy road and the steam from the mud drying rose up in thin wisps and there was a smell like pottery firing in a kiln. The sun burned and gnawed at Sunset’s wounds and bruises.
“I feel like I’m gonna pass out,” Sunset said.
“Don’t do that, now, Miss Sunset. It bad enough you near naked riding along with a nigger, you don’t need to have your head on my shoulder.”
Sunset dipped her head and the feeling passed. When she sat back up and started to wipe her forehead with the back of her hand, she realized the gun was still in it.
“Maybe I ought to leave this with you?”
“No, ma’am. You don’t want to leave that gun with me. Next thing I know, I’m the one done shot him.”
“I’ll explain.”
“White folks find him dead, then see me, they gonna want a nigger anyhow. They see Mr. Pete’s gun in my wagon, and him being a lawman and all, me and this boy be strung up faster than you can say, ‘Let’s get us a nigger.’ ”
“All right,” Sunset said. “I thank you and Tommy, I truly do.”
“Besides, you might need that gun when you tell Miss Marilyn what you done did. And you don’t need it for her, you might need it for her husband, Mr. Jones.”
“When I tell my daughter, I might want to use it on myself.”
“Don’t talk like that now.”
“I can’t believe I did it.”
“He beat on you like that, Miss Sunset, he deserved killing. I ain’t got no truck with a man beats on a woman. You done what you had to do.”
“I could have just shot him in the leg or the foot, I guess.”
“You done what you had to do.” Uncle Riley studied her face. “Damn, Miss Sunset, ain’t seen a beating that bad since he whupped up on Three-Fingered Jack. You remember that?”
“I do.”
“Boy, he beat that man like he stole something.”
“He did. My husband’s girlfriend.”
“Guess I ought not to have brought that up.”
“He taught me how to shoot, Uncle Riley. Can you believe that? Taught me how to shoot a pistol, shotgun and rifle. Taught me until he thought maybe I was getting too good. After we married, he didn’t want me to do nothing… I can’t believe I shot him. I could have just got hit and he’d have got what he wanted and it’d been over. Wouldn’t have been the first time. Karen would have a daddy. Thing is, though, he could have had what he wanted without all that, Uncle Riley. I’d have given in without all that. All he’d have to have done was talk sweet. But he liked it rough, even if he didn’t have to. I think he was sweet to his girlfriends, but me, he beat.”
“Don’t talk to me about that, girl. I don’t need to hear about it.”
“He was bad enough about such, but when he drank, he was mean as a cottonmouth.”
“Your hair sure is red,” Tommy said.
“Damn, boy,” Uncle Riley said. “Miss Sunset don’t need you talking about her hair right now. Get on back there and sort them fish out or something.”
“They all the same.”
“Well, count them, boy.”
“It’s all right, Uncle Riley. Yeah, Tommy. It’s red. My mama used to say red as sunset, so that’s what people call me.”
“That ain’t your name?” Tommy asked.
“It is now. In the Bible they wrote Carrie Lynn Beck. But everyone called me Sunset. Got married I became Jones.”
Sunset burst into tears.
“Go on back there now and sit down,” Uncle Riley told Tommy.
“I didn’t do nothing,” Tommy said.
“Boy, you want your ass shined? Go back there.”
Tommy moved back a ways, sat down amidst the fish. They were still damp and wet against his pants and he didn’t like it, but he sat. He knew he had pushed about as far as he could push, and the next push the wagon would stop and he’d have his daddy’s hand across the seat of his pants, or worse, he’d have to go break off his own switch for his daddy to use.
As they went the day died, the woods thinned on either side and you could hear the scream of the saw from the mill, could hear movement of men and mules and oxen and dragged trees, the rattle and gunning of lumber trucks.
“They see me and you, it gonna be bad,” Uncle Riley said.
“It’ll be all right,” Sunset said.
“Tommy, you get on out of the wagon, go off in them trees. I’ll come back for you.”
Tommy dropped over the side, wandered into the woods.
“I ain’t gonna let nothing happen to you,” Sunset said. “They’ll hang me and you both, they bother you. I still got five rounds in this gun.”
“Hanging you with me don’t make me feel no better, Miss Sunset. Dead is dead.”
“All right. Let me off here. I can walk the rest of the way.”
Uncle Riley shook his head. “That might look worse, someone see you get off the wagon, they might get me before you can make sure word gets around good. ’Sides, you can hardly sit up.”
Sunset lifted her head, saw the pine trees on either side of them had been chopped off evenly at the tops by the storm. It was like the Grim Reaper of Trees had taken their heads with his scythe.
Rolling into the lumber camp, Sunset saw sweaty men working and mud-splattered mules jangling their harnesses, dragging logs toward the mill. And there were long log wagons coming from deep in the woods drawn by rows of great plodding oxen.
The great round saw in the mill screeched as it chewed trees, and there was the sound of the planing saw as it shaped lumber. The air was full of the sweet sap smell of fresh sawed East Texas pine. Out of a long chute connected to the mill houses came puffs of gnawed wood that floated down on top of a mound of sawdust made dark by time and weather.
All about were broken limbs and trees twisted up by the storm. A log wagon was turned over and men were busy righting it. A dead ox lay nearby, half covered in fallen logs.