shot of whisky, drank it, drank another. It had no effect on him.
He was giddier than whisky could make him. He couldn’t have been happier than if a fairy godmother had granted him six more inches on his dick.
In the bedroom he got a quilt, brought it back and tossed it over her.
She moaned.
It wasn’t much, but it was a noise.
Henry stopped, listened, looked. Hoped he had heard nothing more than the growling of his own stomach, an unexpected passing of gas. But no, she was moaning again.
Henry went over, lifted up the quilt. Her eyes fluttered weakly, closed. Her hand with the glass still in it flapped away from her mouth and slapped against the floor.
He had been wrong about God.
He bent down and pulled the quilt back over her face, then he took hold of the quilt and pressed it down so that it fit tight over her nose, and he leaned forward, so that he was putting all his weight on her, and weak as she was, she didn’t struggle much. Her foot sticking over the couch waved a few times like a flag of surrender, then went still.
Henry kept pressing. He used his free hand to take out his pocket watch and flip it open. He looked at it and kept the pressure on with his other hand, adding his knee to the side of her head as he pressed. He watched the hands on his watch carefully. Her rolls of fat jiggled, but she didn’t get up and didn’t lift a hand to struggle, just jiggled.
After a moment even the fat had ceased to move, and checking his watch, he saw that he had been holding the quilt over her nose for about four minutes.
Tired, he let go and stood up. Finally, he bent over and lifted the quilt. She looked dead. He got the poker again and prodded her a few more times with it, this time harder than before, but against the quilt so as not to leave marks.
This time God was on his side, even if he had had to help.
He poured another drink, sipped it slowly, then went to get Willie. He could have called, he and Willie had phones, but this was a message he wanted to deliver in person. He hadn’t felt this giddy since he was twelve and got a.22 for his birthday and shot his neighbor’s cat out of a tree.
As he drove over he wondered if Willie had a box big enough for the old bitch. She had to be about the size of a goddamn bear. It would take a bunch of men to haul her out. Maybe even a well-fed ox.
Okay. Not an ox. But he had visions of an ox at the door, long chains fastened to it, then to her foot, and the ox being driven forward with brutal swipes of a whip, pulling her old dead fat ass over the couch and out the door.
Then he thought: Maybe I should dress her first?
No. Too much trouble.
What clothes would he bury her in?
Well, he could cut a hole in a quilt, pull that over her head. That was an option.
Thing was, not to look too happy. It might all double back on him he looked too happy. They might think he, instead of bright and shining fortune, had done her in.
And, of course, he had.
As he drove along, he decided things were good. First the stuff on Sunset, now his wife, dead by drink and gravity and the clutch of his hand.
God love fermentation.
God love Isaac Newton.
God love the muscles in his hand.
Without realizing it, he began to sing.
19
The woods were stuffy with heat and dense with mosquitoes and the sunlight was split by trees. The light hit the cross on the grave and made a shadow and speckled out on the leaf-covered mound on the ground.
Clyde and Hillbilly leaned on their shovels and looked to Sunset for instructions. Hillbilly and Clyde weren’t talking to each other any more than they had to.
Sunset noted that though Hillbilly was not drunk, he had buzzed himself this morning with the hair of the dog, and it made her mad. He had a job and she was his boss and she thought she ought to say something, but decided to let it go.
She wasn’t sure why she let it go, but she had some idea. And she didn’t like that idea. That wasn’t the way to do things. If it had been Clyde she would have said something to him. But it wouldn’t be Clyde. Clyde would show up ready to go and on time. That’s the way Clyde did things.
And today, this morning, she actually decided there was something to do. Thought of it shortly after she drove the car home.
“Y’all just gonna lean on them things?” Sunset said.
“You ain’t got a shovel,” Hillbilly said.
“I’m the boss, so I’ll just fight mosquitoes.”
“I don’t get it,” Clyde said. “What we doing this for? I don’t want to look at no dead babies. Besides, won’t be nothing left but a bone or two if there’s that. And what’s it gonna prove anyhow?”
Sunset slapped at a mosquito, turned it into a little dark wad on her cheek. “I got to know there’s a baby here.”
“Zendo saw it,” Clyde said.
“I know,” Sunset said. “I believe him. But I want to see if the baby ended up here.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” Hillbilly said.
“I don’t know,” Sunset said. “I guess it would. But what I’m wondering is why was Jimmie Jo and the baby killed?”
“Pete could have done it,” Clyde said. “Got pissed off at the woman over most anything, and done it, just the way he might have done it to you, you hadn’t killed him first.”
“That’s been considered,” Sunset said. “He was mean and capable of killing, but I don’t think he’d have done it like this. He would have just raped her and shot her in the head and been done with it.”
“Someone did shoot her in the head,” Clyde said. “And with Pete’s caliber of gun. One you’re wearing. Way I see it, you just solved who killed who, and that’s what I’d tell that damn council. Pete got mad at his girlfriend, killed her and her baby, and if he was drunk enough to rape and kill that woman, like he might have done you, I think he was drunk enough to cut a baby out of her. After he done it, he got drunk or drunker and got to thinking on it, took it out on you and damn near killed you. End of story. Let’s go to the house. It’s too damn hot to dig.”
“Lots of people got a thirty-eight,” Sunset said. “Course, I wouldn’t have thought Pete would hit me when we married. I wouldn’t have thought he could give anyone a beating like he gave Three-Fingered Jack.”
“What was that all about, anyway?” Hillbilly said. “It must have been some beating. I hear about it all the time.”
“Pete was fighting over Jimmie Jo,” Sunset said, “so I ain’t partial to the memory. And he done it in front of me. He seen Jack, told him to leave Jimmie Jo alone, with me standing right there, then started in on him. Pete didn’t care I knew he was pulling her panties down. He cared Jack wanted to. I figure Jimmie Jo told him about Jack, to get something started. She was like that. It might have been Jack didn’t have nothing to do with her and she was disappointed he didn’t want it.”
“I’m starting to wish I’d seen that fight,” Hillbilly said.
“Other thing I’m thinking,” Sunset said, “is Pete may have known she was carrying his baby, and that’s what made him so mad at Jack.”
