be hiding. We wouldn’t have no oil, but we wouldn’t be hiding.”
“Eventually, they would come for you,” Sunset said, “you knew about it or not.”
“I don’t like it none,” Zendo said.
“I’m sorry it’s this way,” Sunset said. “But that’s how it is. Me and Daddy, we got to go back now. I got to figure what to do with Henry, who to go to so I can be backed up. Bull, you need anything?”
“Outside of being twenty years younger,” Bull said, “I don’t reckon so.”
The first thing Sunset saw through her bug-splattered window were roaring flames licking high at the sky and the shapes of high-flying grasshoppers. Then she saw Clyde’s truck, or the blazing skeleton of it; the windows had blown out, the doors had been knocked open by the blast, and the truck bed was torn off; the remains of the bed lay nearby, the ass end of it pointed toward the sky.
“Jesus,” Sunset said. “Karen.”
She drove faster and would have driven right up on the blaze had Lee not yelled at her to stop. She slammed on the brake, leaped out of the car and started running, screaming Karen’s name. Lee slid over and took the rolling car out of gear and pulled the hand brake, got out.
He began to call. First for Karen, then for Clyde. He saw Sunset bent over something on the ground. When he got close, he saw it was Ben and where Sunset had put her hands on the dog, they came away red.
They found Henry. The blaze had gotten to him and burned off one of his legs and it was working its way up. Lee stamped on him until the flames went out. They walked around the blaze that was the tent, and Sunset, seeing there was nothing left of it but fire, lost the strength in her legs. She sagged and Lee caught her.
“It don’t mean she was in there,” Lee said.
There was movement, shapes seen through the fire. Then the shapes came around the fire, one carrying a syrup bucket, the other a large pan.
Karen and Clyde.
“It was Hillbilly,” Clyde said.
They all went to Sunset’s car and she drove it away from there, down the road a piece, and pulled over on a narrow logging road.
“I knew he was a piece of shit,” Sunset said. “But this-Jesus. It’s all my fault. Everything is all my fault.”
“It’s that sonofabitch’s fault,” Clyde said. “He brought Plug here, and that big colored man. Big as Bull. The one you told me about.”
“Two,” Sunset said.
“Poor Goose,” Lee said. “I was more than fond of him.”
“Me too,” Karen said. “Oh, Mama, I can hardly breathe.”
“I’ve got to go back and bury him,” Lee said. “I got to do that now. I got to see him.”
“No,” Sunset said.
“What do you mean, no?” Lee said.
“I’ve tried to go about this slow,” Sunset said, staring into the fire. “Tried to put all my ducks in a row. Like arresting Henry. But they killed him. And they killed Goose and Ben and they tried to kill Clyde. That’s my fault. I shouldn’t have thought we were safe. It’s time we end this. It’s time we arrest them. You saw them, Clyde. You’re not only a witness, you’re a deputy constable. And you saw them, Karen. We know who they are, and what they did. I have to arrest them. I got the right. They were in my jurisdiction.”
“This colored fella,” Clyde said. “He don’t look like no pushover. And Hillbilly, I found out he wasn’t neither.”
“Daddy whipped his ass,” Sunset said.
“He certainly did,” Clyde said.
“We’re going to get Bull, and we’re going to go into town and we’re going to arrest them.”
“Goose?” Lee said.
“He’d understand a bit of a wait,” Sunset said. “He’d want us to get them. And McBride, his bunch, they won’t expect us to come so soon. We go get Bull, make them open up the company store, and get some guns and ammunition, go get McBride and Two and Plug, and especially Hillbilly.”
“All those guns,” Clyde said. “That doesn’t much sound like an arrest.”
“We got to persuade them,” Sunset said. “Way they are, they might need a lot of persuading. But we’ll arrest them if we can. We ain’t like them. First, we got to try and make sure this fire don’t spread.”
The fire burned itself out and they damped all around it using pans filled with water from the well. Then they drove to Camp Rapture first, to the sawmill store. Sunset didn’t bother with finding the store manager to open it. She took a tire tool out of the trunk of her car and jimmied the back door and they went in. By flashlight, they got what they needed- ammunition, guns, all shotguns. They went over and got Marilyn out of bed, then they all stuffed into the car. They drove over to where Bull and Zendo’s family were.
“But you said Bull would be with us,” Zendo said.
“I know what I said,” Sunset said. “But things have changed.”
She told them what happened, said, “They won’t be thinking about you. They do, they don’t know you’re here. If you want, you can hide out in the woods. But I got to have Bull. Some reason you don’t hear from us, say by tonight, you ought to leave.”
“And go where?” Zendo’s wife asked.
“I don’t know,” Sunset said.
Bull stood up, said, “Keep the ten-gauge, Zendo. That’ll be good company. I think the constable’s right. We take it to them. It was me, I’d have done that from the start. Then again, I ain’t no law.”
“They’ll be so busy with us,” Lee said, “they won’t be thinking about you, Zendo.”
“If I didn’t feel you were safe, I wouldn’t ask you to keep Karen with you,” Sunset said. “But again, we don’t come back, go, and take Karen away from here too.”
“Oh, Mama,” Karen said.
“We’ll be back,” Sunset said. “I’m just saying.”
“Goose, he ain’t gonna be back, now, is he?” Karen said.
“You got to be strong,” Sunset said.
“I’m scared,” Zendo said. “I won’t lie to you none.”
“We’re all scared,” Sunset said. “And I’m tired of being scared and confused, accused of things I didn’t do. Tired of bigwigs and tough guys cheating and stealing and killing, and I’m tired of my not knowing one of my own constables was a liar and a bastard. They killed a boy, Goose. A good boy. They killed one of their own, shot him while he was chained to a post. And they killed my dog.”
They gathered round and passed out guns. All of them took twelve-gauge pumps and a box of shells. They took some of the shells and loaded the guns and put spare shells in their pockets.
Sunset made sure her.38 had six shells in it. She and Bull were the only ones with handguns. Sunset gave hers to Karen, said, “Don’t shoot yourself.”
Sunset turned to Bull and Lee, said, “Bull, Daddy, by the power invested in me, you are now deputy constables.”
“Damn, that count for a colored?” Bull asked.
“Does today,” Sunset said.
The pig grunted. Clyde said, “That is one swell pig. I was you, I wouldn’t eat it.”
When they came out of the little house to get in the car, there was a sound in the air like a great sigh. Looking up, they could see the moon was hidden by a flow of grasshoppers, and the sound of them grew louder, from a sigh to a buzz to a hum that reminded them of the great saw up on the hill in Camp Rapture. They couldn’t know it at the time, but the grasshoppers had already descended on Zendo’s field. There would be no need for him to work it again this summer, for in a matter of minutes, the dark wave of insects had come down with the moonlight and eaten out the field, leaving nothing but roots and dirt. Then they had moved on, filling the sky above Sunset and her posse.
