“You’re saying he was in love with her?” Clyde said. “Not just catting around?”
“I think he gave me a beating over knowing she was dead. He wanted her and couldn’t have her, so he took it out on me. He loved her, not me.”
“Well, he didn’t have no taste,” Clyde said. “And I still think he killed her. He might have done it because the baby wasn’t his. You think about that? It might not have nothing to do with love. He could have beat Jack up because he was jealous all right, but not because he was so in love. Just didn’t want some other man pawing over what he thought was his. It’s something to consider, ain’t it?”
“It is,” Sunset said.
“That’s how it could have been,” Clyde said. “Could have made him mad enough to cut the baby out of her, hide her and the baby out there by Zendo’s field. Zendo found the baby, so Pete come and looked it over and didn’t try to blame it on Zendo, not because he was nice but because maybe he felt a little guilty about it and didn’t want to nail someone he knew didn’t do it. So he took and buried the baby, hoping the woman wouldn’t be found.”
“That’s another thing I don’t get,” Sunset said. “He killed her, why did he bury the baby here and leave her in the field?”
“Maybe he wanted her found for some reason,” Clyde said. “Didn’t mind her being found, but maybe didn’t want folks to know he’d rip a baby out of her.”
“That was figured out pretty quick by Willie,” Sunset said.
“He might not have known it could be figured that easy,” Clyde said. “I ain’t got that part figured out. But he could have done it, then got killed, and now all his bad work is showing up. Damn, that sounds pretty smart for me.”
“Maybe,” Sunset said. “Guess I don’t want to believe it was Pete. Don’t want it to be that. He’s still Karen’s father. And it just shows my judgment in men was worse than I thought.”
Clyde looked at Hillbilly, said, “A woman can make some bad judgments in men.”
“Let’s dig,” Sunset said.
“Still don’t see the point,” Hillbilly said. “There’s a baby, so what? Still won’t know any more than you did, baby or not.”
“Humor me,” Sunset said.
They dug deep before they found a little wooden box. Sunset said, “I think we ought to crack it open.”
“Don’t feel right about this, Sunset,” Clyde said. “Dead baby and all, disturbing its eternal rest.”
“Because it’s eternal,” Hillbilly said, “you aren’t disturbing anything.” Sunset took the shovel from Clyde, stuck the point of the shovel between lid and container, levered the lid off.
There was an object wrapped in a small blanket that had become damp and dark and was starting to rot. Sunset reached down, unwrapped a small, dark, leathery-looking skull.
“It’s a baby all right,” Hillbilly said.
“Poor little Snooks,” Clyde said.
Sunset touched the skull. “Oil on it is what preserved it,” she said. “Darkened it and made it leathery.”
“Is it a colored?” Hillbilly asked.
“I don’t know,” Sunset said. “I don’t think anyone could know now.”
Sunset peeled aside the blanket. The rest of the body was small and wiry-looking and a lot of it was rotted away. Clyde said, “Guess the head got the main dose of oil.”
“Yeah,” Sunset said.
“What’s that?” Hillbilly said.
Sunset rewrapped the baby and looked at what Hillbilly saw. It was a metal box. It nearly filled the casket and there had been some kind of cloth over it, but the cloth had almost rotted away and was the texture of an old spiderweb.
When the baby was wrapped again, Sunset gently lifted it and placed it on the ground and pulled the long rectangular box out of the casket. “It’s padlocked,” she said.
“Stand back,” Hillbilly said, and when Sunset moved away he struck the lock with the point of the shovel and there was a spark and the lock snapped open.
Sunset opened the box. Inside was an oilskin bundle wrapped in rotten twine. She snapped the twine and took out what was in the wrapping.
A ledger.
Sunset opened it. The pages had maps drawn on them and bits of arithmetic worked out in the margins, and there were a couple of pages folded up inside the ledger. She opened one of them and looked at it. It was a page with a land description on it. The other was more of the same.
“Looks like a surveyor’s map,” Hillbilly said. “See that stamp on it. It was registered in Holiday. My guess is it’s supposed to be there, in the courthouse.”
“I don’t reckon Pete put this here for nothing,” Clyde said. “Still, that’s pretty awful, hiding it that way with poor Snooks, for whatever reason.”
“Why don’t we try and figure on it where there aren’t so many skeeters?” Hillbilly said.
“All right,” Sunset said. She folded up the papers, put them back in the ledger, laid it on the ground, put the baby back in the box and they reburied it.
“Clyde,” she said. “You’re religious some. Say a prayer over it. I haven’t got a damn thing to say to God, if there is one.”
Clyde studied Sunset for a moment, said a few words. Sunset returned the ledger to the strongbox and let Hillbilly carry it back to the truck for her.
She sat between Clyde and Hillbilly and Clyde drove. While they drove Hillbilly played a harmonica, and he was good at it.
“I thought you was a guitar man?” Sunset said.
He stopped playing. “Am. But what I got is this harmonica. I got a Jew’s harp too, but I’m not too good at it.”
“I can agree with that,” Clyde said. “I’ve heard him play.”
“Clyde,” Hillbilly said, “you wouldn’t know good music if it stuck its finger up your ass.”
“Maybe it ain’t good the way you play it.”
“Boys,” Sunset said. “What about a guitar, Hillbilly?”
“Got to get some money first. Thought we got paid for this.”
“End of the month, I think.”
“I’ve done a lot of work along the road I didn’t get paid for,” Hillbilly said. “Lot of people kind of faded when it was time to put the money down.”
“There’s nowhere for them to fade,” Sunset said. “Marilyn is good for it.”
“I got to buy a little lumber and start building on a house,” Clyde said. “It comes winter, my young ass is gonna be pretty damn frosty I don’t get a roof and walls… Sunset, what do you think all this stuff with the book and the baby means?”
“I’ll have to study on it,” Sunset said.
20
Lee and Marilyn sat on the edge of Uncle Riley’s porch, sweated, dangled their feet and drank lemonade Aunt Cary had made. Aunt Cary had gone back to the woods to gather roots and such, and Uncle Riley was plucking a chicken in the backyard while Tommy climbed a tree.
“Reckon he’s gonna be all right now,” Marilyn said.
“I think so. Glad you came along.”
“Me too. You looking for work?”
