“Just a little.”
Ben barked, then Hillbilly appeared, pushing a hanging blanket aside. Sunset looked up at him. Clyde watched her face light up like a kerosene lamp in a dark, windowless house.
“Clyde burned his house down,” Sunset said. “On purpose.”
“Yeah,” Hillbilly said. “I heard.”
Karen slipped in beside Hillbilly. She said, “He did what?”
Sunset said what she had said before.
“Clyde,” Karen said, “why would you do such a thing?”
“Starting over, honey,” he said, “and burning out rats.”
“That’s funny,” Karen said, and she smiled big. “You burned your whole house down to get rid of rats.”
Clyde watched Sunset study Karen’s smile, and thought, Yeah, that rat thing isn’t that funny, is it? And that smile she’s got, it’s the first big one she’s had since before her daddy died. I know it, honey, and you know it. And I think I know why, and though it’s great she’s happy, and I can tell you want to be happy for her, if I’m right, it’s wrong why she’s happy, cause she’s just a kid, and Hillbilly, he’s such a liar. You big beautiful redheaded gal, do you even suspect? Have you got any idea?
Course not. You’re blind as Karen on account of that sonofabitch. Man, I can smell the heat coming off of you and her, coming off you for him. All hot and wet and willing, and here I am, wanting you, loving you, and you ain’t even seeing me.
And maybe I’m the one who’s full of it. Maybe he and Karen ain’t got nothing going, except maybe he’s like a daddy to her, and they were just walking in the dark part of the goddamn woods, and that’s all there is to it, and maybe I’m jealous of you and Hillbilly, how you feel about him. Yeah, that could be it or part of it.
Hell. Of course it is.
14
The big truck rumbled along and now and then coughed black smoke. The hood rattled where it was tied down with a strand of baling wire and the body listed to one side where the shocks were wore out. It had big side boards and inside the bed were five men and three women and a kid, a boy about thirteen. The man driving was a red-faced guy with a cigar growing out of his teeth. He didn’t have anyone sitting in the truck beside him, and wouldn’t let anyone ride there, not even one of the wore-out women.
He had picked them all up earlier that day at the cotton gin in Holiday. Folks gathered there regularly looking for work, usually not finding it, and he knew he could pick up day labor by just showing up and promising a dollar a day to work his fields, which were way out of town, out in the low, damp lands between the trees.
Now that his crew was finished working, were hot and sweaty and worn out, he was supposed to take them on into Camp Rapture so they could look for work at the sawmill, and it was time to pay up.
He let out the clutch as he shifted to a lower speed to take a hill, didn’t feed it any gas. The truck bunny-hopped and died. He pulled on the parking brake, got out, went around to the rear.
“I got some trouble,” he said.
There was a slight groan from the folks in the truck, and one of them, wearing an old suit coat that was so damn thin you could almost see the green stripes on his shirt through it, sat up, took hold of the side boards and looked through them.
He was a big fellow, strong-looking, gone a little to fat. His hair had that look red hair gets when it goes gray.
“You just worked the clutch wrong,” the man in the coat said.
“Well, it was that, but there’s something wrong with it. I’ve had it happen before. I want everyone to get out and give me a push and maybe I can jump the clutch and start it.”
“Get in and try it again. It’ll catch.”
“Naw, you’d think that, but it won’t. It don’t run right. I’ve had it happen before. Y’all get out now and push.”
“When are we going to get paid?”
“When we get to Camp Rapture.”
“Why don’t we do it right now? I don’t know why we got to go there to get paid. We want to go there to look for work. We don’t have to go there to get paid. You can pay us right now.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” said another of the men.
“I hear you,” said the driver, “but I want to get the truck going first. That’s not much to ask. I got to go there to get the money.”
“Why?” said the man in the suit coat.
“I don’t, you don’t get paid, cause that’s where I got my money.”
“A place like that got a bank?”
“No. But the store there, they keep some money for people. They ain’t like a bank. They’re better’n a bank. They hold it and you got to buy some things there for holding it, but they don’t bust like a bank and they don’t have interest, just something you got to buy now and then, something you’d buy anyway. Flour, maybe.”
“They’re not going to be open time we get there.”
“I think they will, and if they ain’t, I know the owner. It ain’t a problem.”
Slowly, everyone piled out. The red-faced man tongued his cigar to the other side of his mouth, said, “Now, y’all get at the back, and when I tell you, push. Stand kind of to the sides, so if it rolls back, it won’t run over you.”
“Let me give it a try,” said the big man with the suit coat.
“I don’t let no one drive my truck but me.”
“Maybe you ought to,” said the boy, “way you drive.”
The boy was feisty-looking, with a shock of hay-colored hair hanging out from under his tweed cap.
“You ought not talk to your elders like that. You do again, and I’ll backhand you.”
“No you won’t,” said the man in the suit coat.
“Look here,” said the red-faced man, “just help me get it going. We get into Camp Rapture and I can get you all paid.”
“Let’s just do it,” said one of the women. She was tired and pregnant and had put in a full day. There was dust in her hair from the fields, and she had teeth missing. She looked as if at any moment she would dry up and blow away, leaving only her plump belly and the kid inside of it.
“All right,” said the man in the suit coat.
They went to the rear of the truck, and the red-faced man got behind the wheel. He stuck his head out the window, said, “Get ready to push.”
They split into two groups, four on one side, five on the other, near the rear, ready to push. The red-faced man said, “Y’all ready?”
“We’re ready,” said one of the men.
“Here we go,” said the red-faced fellow. He started it up, worked the clutch and drove off a ways, began picking up speed.
“Hey! Hey!” yelled the boy, running after him. “Come back.”
An arm stuck out the window and waved.
“Come back,” the boy said again.
“I’ll be damned,” said the man in the suit coat. “I knew better than to let that happen.”
“No you didn’t,” said one of the men.
