Uncle Riley put the shirt over Sunset’s shoulders. She dropped the curtain and pulled the shirt shut and buttoned it with her free hand. All this from where she knelt on one knee. She tried again to get up, but couldn’t. Uncle Riley lifted her into his arms easy as a child. She clung to the pistol as if it were a part of her hand.
He carried her to the wagon and set her on the seat, climbed up beside her. “Now I ain’t touching on you, Miss Sunset.”
“It’s okay, Uncle Riley. You’ve been a real gentleman.”
Tommy, who was standing beside the wagon with a fish stuck on the end of his pointed stick, had yet to close his mouth.
“Get on up here,” Uncle Riley said.
Tommy climbed in the back of the wagon with the fish they had been collecting. They were scattered from one end of the wagon bed to the other, and in places they were ankle deep. Uncle Riley had seen the rain of fish as a bonus from God. Fish to eat, fish to salt and smoke for later. They had even gathered a few frogs because Tommy’s mama, the midwife, Cary, liked frog legs.
Now Tommy wondered if the fish would keep because it was turning hot again and they were having to haul around this beat-up, big-tittied white woman. What in heaven’s name were they going to do with her?
Tommy thought: Her hair is so long and red and wild it looks like tumbling fire. He smiled to himself. Good Lord, he had seen fish rain from the skies and he had seen a white woman’s tits. It had been a special day.
“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.
