Karen’s head darted back inside, followed by Ben’s.
“Just had your way with my mother and took off?” Sunset said. “That was it, huh?”
He nodded. “Yes, that’s what I did. But I didn’t know about you, not until Marilyn told me.”
Sunset tossed a look at Marilyn.
Marilyn, standing by the oak, shrugged.
“After all these years you show up, and it’s supposed to matter to me?” Sunset said.
“It doesn’t have to matter. I understand why it might not matter. But I didn’t know about you, Sunset. I was young. Your mother was young. We made a mistake. Hell, I made a mistake. I seduced her, and me a preacher… back then anyway. Not now.”
“What do you want from me?”
“A few minutes.”
“You don’t owe him anything,” Marilyn said from the safety of the oak, “but it might be worth hearing.”
“You ran off,” Sunset said. “My mother ran off. Though at least she cared for me for a while and left me a nice pair of shoes. Long worn out, I might add. And now you show up. I’ve been beat and raped and I’ve shot my husband, found his girlfriend dead and dug up her baby, and now I got you. What the hell did you do, old man, put a curse on the entire family?”
“In a way, I have. That’s why I’m here. Was that my granddaughter?”
“I assume you’re referring to the girl with the black hair, not the dog?”
Lee sighed. “I know when I’m whipped. But listen to this, and nothing else. I want to know you. I don’t even know you and I love you-”
“Bull.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“You couldn’t.”
“But I do. You’re my own flesh and blood. Only flesh and blood I got-you and Karen, not the dog. And I love you because I think God brought me back here to make amends, to do right by you. To love you without condition.”
“That’s nice of you. And if God’s so smart, why did he let you run off in the first place? Answer me that.”
“It was me run off, not God.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m not that fond of either one of you.”
“Sunset,” Marilyn said, “when we’re young, we’re foolish. You and me, we should know something about that. Being foolish over certain men. Foolish in other ways.”
“I’ve been fooled by one man, and bad, and I don’t want to be fooled by another. Even if it’s my father.”
“We always get fooled,” Marilyn said. “Anybody can fool anybody, and for all kinds of reasons.”
Sunset studied Marilyn. Marilyn walked away. Sunset turned back to Lee, said, “Hell, I have your eyes.”
“Yes, you do,” Lee said. “And my hair. But you look like your mother.”
“I’m not a drunk, though.”
“She wasn’t a drunk when I knew her. She was young, like me, fresh and had hopes. Maybe I doused them.”
“Kids made fun of my hair when I was little. Better dead than red on the head, that kind of thing. Never got to go to school much. Never had much of anyone to help me do anything.”
“You seem to have turned out all right. And a constable. With a gun.”
“I wasn’t elected. Not really.”
“How many women do what you’re doing?”
“I don’t know of any-what’s your name again?”
“Lee. Last name Beck, same as yours. But I wish you’d call me Daddy.”
Lee and Sunset went for a drive. She drove where he suggested, trying to put it together, trying to decide how she felt and how she ought to feel.
She stopped where he said stop, near the creek, up beyond the sawmill at Camp Rapture. They got out and walked around, Lee going first this way, then that way, finally stopping at a spot on the edge of the creek.
“It wasn’t all washed away then. Used to be a piece stuck out over the creek here. Had some small trees on it. And it was private under them trees. Bushes and grass were grown up around it. There was red bugs, though. Plenty of them.”
“Storm took that piece of land away not long back. A storm I damn well remember. I shot my husband during it. I knew the place you’re talking about well. Used to come here to play.”
He smiled at her. “Did you?”
“I did.”
“You were conceived here, Sunset. Well, almost. You were conceived on that piece of land got washed away.”
“You and Mama… here?”
He nodded. “May not seem romantic to you, but it was to us. Came here often, and one time it was more than just holding hands. There was just that one time. I never knew that it took, so to speak. We used to lie here together and hear the water running below, and sleep in the heat of the day when we thought we wouldn’t be missed. You see, your mother, like you, was pretty much on her own. No family to speak of.”
“She might have been all right then. Later, she drank.”
“Let’s walk.”
Sunset and Lee strolled along the creek. Lee said, “It’s too late for me to find her. I know that now. But I’ve found a daughter, and that could be enough. That and a granddaughter. If you’ll let it be enough.”
“What about that boy? He a son of yours?”
“No. He’s a boy I met on the road. Got snakebit and your mother-in-law gave us a ride to Uncle Riley’s place. His wife saved him. He’s mostly well from it.”
“Karen says he stares at her.”
“Karen’s pretty, and Goose, well, he’s a little over developed. Or would like to be. He ain’t no real trouble, though.”
They were sitting now, on the edge of the creek, feet hanging over the bank.
Lee leaned back, looked at the sky, took in the trees, seemed to absorb it all through his skin.
“Marilyn-does she like you?” Sunset asked.
“Not the way you’re thinking. I guess it could be that way if we worked at it. I don’t know. She seems nice. But there’s a ghost in her smile.”
“What’s that mean?”
“She’s got her own burdens.”
“Reckon so,” Sunset said.
There was a smile on Lee’s face when he said, “I believe in God, Sunset, but to me, he’s not the God you were talking about, the one you don’t trust. And I don’t know he’s a he. Don’t know God’s anything. Not anymore. I don’t think God has to do with trust or lack of trust. Nothing we pray for or want. God just is. It all come to me in just this minute, sitting here on the bank, looking up at things, the sky so blue, the trees so green-”
“They look brown to me.”
“Yeah. You’re right. They’re dry. But you see the point?”
“No.”
“Way I was taught to believe, way I believed, it was all too simple, and in a way too complex.
