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.”
When they got to the other side, mud was caked on Sunset’s calves. She hated to lower her skirt into the mud, but decided she wouldn’t be as handy if she had to walk around holding it up. She also noted that men who had been worried about the man in the theater had stopped to pay attention to her. As had some women, who looked on, disapproving from the sidelines.
At least, she thought, it takes them away from looking at my bruised face.
Driven up on the sidewalk was one of the city’s two police cars. The other they had passed coming into town, parked behind a pickup where Morgan had left it.
Behind the car was Morgan and a badged man she assumed was Rooster. Rooster was long and lanky and wore a tall brown hat with a wide brim. His clothes hung on him like he was made of sticks, and his pants were stuffed into boots with big red eagles stitched on the toes. His ears looked as if they could flap and carry him away. His face was blushed all over, like he had just been scalded.
“He told me you was a woman,” Rooster said.
“Was a woman when he saw me, still am now,” Sunset said.
“I ain’t complaining. Need all the help I can get.”
“What happened?” Hillbilly said.
“Don’t rightly know it all,” Rooster said. “Lillian, she’s the one takes the tickets, said this here colored fella, everyone calls him Smoky, come up to the window, said he wanted to buy a ticket. She wouldn’t sell him one, of course.”
“You got day features?” Clyde asked.
“Now and then,” Rooster said. “With so many loafers around town now, they can bring in the day trade.”
“Damn,” Clyde said. “Going to a movie in the middle of the day. Ain’t that something?”
“Forget the day features,” Sunset said. “Go on. Tell it.”
Rooster nodded. “Lillian told him this wasn’t no colored theater. He said something about didn’t it have a colored section, and she said no, and he went home and got a shotgun. She seen him coming and she ducked down in the ticket booth. He went inside and Lillian run for it. She come and got us. Smoky run everybody out of the show, and when we come over with the sheriff, and the sheriff went up there to talk to him, he got as far as the door, as you can see, and Smoky cut down on him.”
“Sheriff knew Smoky,” Morgan said. “Thought he’d be okay. I told him you can’t tell nothing about a nigger. They can turn on you like a cottonmouth. I knew of one once got mad at his wife and cut his own throat with a butter knife. Had to saw through for about five minutes before it killed him. But he did it.”
“Still,” Rooster said, “I ain’t never heard of nobody wanting to see a picture show that bad, have you?”
“Can’t say I have,” Sunset said. “But I guess now that picture show has a colored section.”
“Reckon so.”
“He might have really wanted to win them dishes,” Clyde said.
“Thing is,” Rooster said, “if Smoky ain’t a big enough problem, couple times the crowd has threatened to burn down the picture show. I ain’t been to the show yet. And neither have a lot of folks in this town, and we don’t want to see it burned. And there’s the colored fella. They want to lynch him. I reckon he’s got it coming, but I’m the law, and the law is supposed to do these things-the arresting-not a bunch of thugs, and a judge and a jury are supposed to do the killing if he needs it. And he needs it.”
“What about the grocer?” Sunset asked.
“Tried to go in there like a bad man, got his leg shot off. Didn’t get as far as the sheriff. Wasn’t six feet from the car here when Smoky poked that shotgun out and cut down on him. Told him not to try it, but did he listen? No. Ain’t no one listens to me. He got toted off to the doctor over in Tyler. One we got here’s all right if you got a cold. But don’t get shot. Dumb bastard, going in like that. From now on he’s gonna have to hop to work.”
“What happened to the mule?” Hillbilly asked.
“Smoky took a second shot at the grocer, who was crawling behind the car here, mule got frightened from all the noise, broke from its owner, run up here and Smoky shot it.”
“Why?”
“Beats me.”
“What kind of shotgun he got?” Clyde asked. “A pump?”
