The house in the woods that had been Pete and Jimmie Jo’s was small but much nicer than the one Zendo and his family had lived in.
“You trying to tell me this is our house,” Zendo said to Sunset.
“I’m saying when it all works out, it will be,” Sunset said. “Ain’t no one else using it now, and no one would expect you to be here, so it’s safer than your place. And I’d stay out of the fields for a couple days. You can afford that, can’t you?”
“I suppose.”
“Just a couple of days,” Lee said.
“And Bull will be with you,” Sunset said. “Right, Bull?”
“Right,” Bull said, and he found a chair and sat, the ten-gauge across his lap.
“I just feel funny being in someone else’s house,” Zendo said.
“Your dog’s on the front porch and he’s happy,” Lee said. “He knows it’s home. And the pig, he’s here in the room with you.”
The pig lay on its back on the floor, its feet in the air, happy because it didn’t know what its future was, couldn’t foresee itself as bacon.
“Look here,” Sunset said, “they built this place on land that’s yours. All that oil under the ground on this land, it’s yours, Zendo. You’re rich.”
“I’ll be dead, that’s what I’ll be,” Zendo said. “Rich don’t do a man no good if he’s dead.”
“That’s what we’re going to change,” Sunset said. “You getting dead and this land not being yours. We’ve got Henry arrested, and when I figure how to go from there, we’ll do the rest. In the meantime, I think you’re safer here. And it’s built on your land, and that makes it yours as far as I’m concerned.”
“And she’s the constable,” Bull said.
Zendo’s wife, the toddler clinging to her leg, said, “We didn’t know about all this, we wouldn’t 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.
Sunset drove, Clyde beside her; in the backseat were Bull and Lee. Daylight was coming and the black sky was lightening, and as they drove the windshield became so littered with bugs Sunset had to stop and get a stick and scrape them off. She used a rag she had in the glove box to wipe the glass, but all it did was smear. As she cleaned the windshield, bugs hit her, stinging her flesh. They had to stop three times so they could clean the windshield, taking turns, Clyde next, then Lee.
When the sky became lighter they saw an amazing sight.
The landscape had changed and the world was void of greenery. The trees were like the skeletons of giants that had fallen from heaven, poking bones every which way. Low down was the same. Green had gone to gray and brown and the song of the hoppers ebbed and flowed as they ate their way through the dry summer morning and the bugs struck the car so hard Sunset could see paint chip off.
They fought the road and fought the bugs and drove on slowly into Holiday, where the first strong light of morning showed the streets and buildings were entwined with waves of insects, and up on the hill, the overhang above the drugstore, even as they watched, the greenery disappeared, like some kind of conjurer’s trick.
They drove past the apartment, over to the sheriff’s office, jumped out. They ran a gauntlet of bugs that was like an ocean wave. The wave knocked Sunset down and staggered the others, except for Bull. They went in the front door of the sheriff’s office, one at a time, guns ready.
Plug sat behind his desk, as if waiting on them. His hands were in plain sight, resting on the desktop. Sunset yelled and stuck the shotgun under his chin.
Plug said, “Go on. Do it. I didn’t hurt nobody, but do it.”
“I saw you,” Clyde said.
“But I didn’t want no part of it. I got away from them when we got back to town. But I didn’t know nowhere to come but here. I don’t got nowhere to go. And I didn’t shoot nobody. Nobody at all.”
“Consider yourself under arrest,” Sunset said. “I’m the law now. And be damn glad of it.”
Plug got up, lifted by the shotgun barrel at his throat. Sunset pushed him backward toward the cells.
“Where are the keys?” she asked.
“In the drawer,” he said.
Lee got them. They put Plug inside and locked the cell door. Sunset said, “I want to just cut down on you. I want to kill you, Plug. Goose, he wasn’t nothing but a boy.”
“I didn’t kill nobody and didn’t want to,” Plug said, sitting down heavily on a bunk. “I thought I did, but I couldn’t. I didn’t shoot nobody. The nigger done it. He done it all. That Hillbilly, he would have, but he never got the chance. The nigger, he’s crazy. He blew Tootie’s head off. Almost blew mine off. No money’s worth that. But I couldn’t get away from them. I had to stay with them. They threatened to kill me.”
“So did I,” Sunset said.
“Go on ahead. I don’t mind if you do it. I just didn’t want that nigger sucking on me. He shoots you, then he sucks on you. He thinks he’s taking your soul out of your mouth,” Plug said. “He got kicked in the head by a horse. He’s got the mark. It made him crazy. He thinks he’s two people. Maybe he is. Jesus, he’s one crazy nigger.”
“Where’s Hillbilly?” Sunset said.
“I think he’s up at the red place,” Plug said. “I think he’s with the nigger and McBride. They got a whore over there. I was gonna run off, but the bugs came. I thought they passed on, I’d run off. But I don’t know what I’d have done, where I’d have gone.”
“You aren’t going anywhere, Plug,” Sunset said. “What’s the red place?”
“Apartment over the drugstore. Just across the street there.”
“All right, then,” Sunset said. “We go get them. The whore, we don’t want to hurt her. She’s not in on this.”
“There’s a front way and a little back stairs,” Plug said. “Remember I tried to help you. Remember that.”
They fought bugs and got in the car and sat. They could see the apartment across the way. Close enough to walk to, but in this storm of bugs, not a good idea.
Sunset said, “I’m gonna drive right up close. Daddy, you and Bull, you take the front. Me and Clyde, we’ll take the back. We surprise them, away from their guns, we got a good chance. Much as I know you’d like to, don’t shoot you don’t have to. Try to arrest them. But they try and hurt you, then shoot to kill.”
“What do we do?” Clyde said. “Knock?”
“That’s one way,” Sunset said.
Sunset drove across the street. The insects were rising and falling in waves. The grasshoppers were so close together they looked like a great speckled ribbon of green and brown and gray and black. They wound around the town, the buildings, the cars, the oil derricks that poked up willy-nilly here and there.
No one was on the streets except them and the bugs.
Sunset drove them right up to the front stairs, then she took a ribbon from her shirt pocket and tied her hair back.
“I don’t know what more to say,” she said. “You’re through the front, we’re through the back.”
“That’s all I need,” Bull said.
“Personally,” Lee said, “I’d like something a little more specific.”
“Sorry, Daddy. I’m not Robert E. Lee on the war plans.”
“It’ll do, then,” Lee said.
“Everyone, please come back,” Sunset said.
She and Clyde got out of the car and ran around to the side of the drugstore. The insects were less there. They went along the side until they got to the back of the drugstore, the smaller set of stairs there. The bugs were thick again. They got low and went forward. Sunset had to raise the shotgun stock to cover as much of her face as possible and she could feel the little legs of the bugs working in her hair, in the long tail of it tied back behind her.
Pretty soon they were at the stairs and going up, Clyde pushing to try and get in front of her, but she didn’t let him, kept the lead, and finally they came to the back door.
Bull and Lee went up the front way, quick and ready, shotguns pumped full of a load, ready to cut down if need be, or simply ready to knock on the door, arrest all volunteers.
The insects were so thick they could hardly climb the stairs, and just as they were about to reach the top, a smear of insects splattered on the top stair caused Lee’s shoe to slip, and he slid and one leg went through the railing, and he did a kind of drop, as if the ground opened up below him, and there was a cracking sound like hot fire eating a dry stick, and Lee just sat, his one good leg poking through the railing, the other coiled under him like it had no bones. He let out a yell so loud it almost drowned out the plague of locusts.
“My leg. Goddamn it! It’s gone, Bull. It’s gone.”
Bull knelt down, said, “Sunset, she’s gonna be going through that back door. She’s gonna need right smart help. You gonna have to wait.”
“Oh, Jesus, it hurts. Go on. Do it, Bull.”
And as Bull went away from him, Lee jerked off his belt and stuck it in his mouth and bit down, trying not to scream again.
Bull went up and didn’t knock. Knocking was out. He went at the door with his foot and hit it hard and it flapped back like a nag’s tongue. He went in and it was dark in there as the door swung back in place, and there was nothing to see, but suddenly he felt something, something hot and at his spine, low down, and it took him a piece of a second to realize there was a knife sliding into him from behind.
Clyde hit the door with his body, but it was a good door, and it knocked Clyde back and almost made him fall down the stairs.
“Damn,” Clyde said, and he went at it again.
This time the door frame gave, but not completely, and Clyde hit it again, and Sunset hit it with him, and it went back, throwing splinters, and they went in, pushing the door closed to keep out the rush of grasshoppers.
Bull swung his shotgun butt back and around and caught something. The pressure on the knife went away. But the knife stayed with him, and he thought: Goddamn, taken from behind, that’s not right, not me, I’m always ready, but goddamn, I feel it, a knife in my back, tight as a bull’s dick in a chicken’s ass.
Now he turned toward his attacker and was grabbed by the front of his legs, and he knew, there in the dark, he had hit someone with the shotgun stock, knocked them down and they had hold of his legs and he was going to fall on the knife.
Bull twisted his body as he went down, tried to hit on his side, and did. Mostly. But the hilt of the knife caught some of it, and he felt it go in, like John Henry driving a railroad spike. Inside of him was all the fire of the world, then someone… or something… was crawling up him like a cockroach. And now with his eyes adjusted, light from outside coming in through the edges of the door where it had not quite closed, the light of morning filtered through the bodies of millions of locusts, he saw a black face, a head wearing a bowler hat. Then powerful hands were at his throat. He tried to bring the shotgun around, but the cockroach slapped at it so hard it was knocked from his hands, and the cockroach dropped all its body weight on him (one big roach) and it drove him down and onto the hilt of the knife and he let out a scream and there were black dots swimming in front of him and the light from the doorway went dim, then he was back, but not fully, seeing everything now as if through a piece of gauze. He tried to reach out and grab the cockroach by the throat, but all he did was knock the bowler hat off. He grabbed at the man’s head, trying to push him back. His thumb ran over something there. A scar. And now he was going weak, and he could feel something warm beneath him, his blood, running all over the floor, and he felt as if it were a great pond and he was falling back into it. He slipped his thumb around and caught the big roach in the eye, and the man twisted away, but it wasn’t good enough. Then the big man, the giant roach, wide as him, was pushing down again, making that knife really work. The face came close and Bull could see the man’s teeth as he opened his mouth and laid it over his own, began to suck, and he thought: This, this will make me mind my own goddamn business from here on out. Then he felt a wave of laughter, but couldn’t laugh. From now on. Yeah. I will mind my business. I won’t have any more business, mine or anybody else’s. And with the last of his will, Bull clamped down on Two’s bottom lip with his teeth and bit so hard he could feel his back molars crack.
Two leaped back and Bull reached at his belt, pulled his pistol and fired. The pistol kicked and flew out of Bull’s weak hand, but the shot hit Two in the stomach.
Two stood up.
Bull thought: Goddamn, and I thought I was tough. He had lifted his head a bit, but now he let it lie down, closed his eyes, thought: What’s gonna come is gonna come, cause I’m done.
Two put one hand on his stomach, stepped over Bull, toward the door, shoved it open. Insects hummed into the room. He stepped out on the stairway landing, and closed the door behind him, did it softly, like there was nothing the matter with him. He saw Lee on the top steps, his leg twisted up under him as if it were rubber, a belt in his mouth.
“We’ve been shot,” Two said.
Lee lifted his shotgun and let off a round. It hit Two and knocked him back and Two slammed against the railing and the boards cracked and went away and he went through, fell the long drop to the ground. Using one hand, Lee flicked another load into the shotgun, crawled over to look down, the belt clamped in his mouth like a hawk with a snake.
Two wasn’t there.
Lee wheeled as best he could, the pain in his leg making his vision waver, saw from his new vantage point that Two was up and walking down there, staggering up against Sunset’s car, holding his bowler in his hand. He opened the door, put on his bowler, got in behind the wheel.
Lee worked at getting turned better, so he could get off another shot. He could feel the bone in his leg jamming against the inside of his skin. He heard the car start. He got turned around, but the doing of it was so painful, he spat out the belt, screamed, blacked out for a moment.
When he came to, he had dropped the shotgun to the ground below, and the car was driving off with Two at the wheel. Lee ducked his head, passed out.
Just inside the back door, Sunset and Clyde heard Bull’s pistol bark, then the shotgun blast. Sunset’s whole body was shaking. She said, “Go left, I’ll go right.”
“I’ll go where the shot was,” Clyde said.
“I’m the constable, you’re the deputy. You do as I say.”
Clyde nodded, went left, down the long room. As he passed the windows, the light from them wavered and heaved with the blocking and unblocking of the morning sun by waves of grasshoppers.
When he got to the end of the hall there was a door there, and he went through it, the back of his neck feeling as if someone had laid an ice-cold towel there.
Sunset went right, and as she came to the end of the short wall, there was enough light from the windows she could see Bull lying there, not moving, and she could see to the left of that a shelf, and on the shelf all manner of things, but among them a silver platter next to a kerosene lantern, and in that platter, which was tilted slightly, she could see a shape coming down the hall, on the other side of the wall. Even seen in the platter, from that distance and with the bad light, she knew it was McBride. He was wearing what at first she thought was a dress, then decided was an apron. Clyde moved through the dining room with its chandelier and well-set table, and there was plenty of light in there, but it was a funny kind of light, like he was looking at it from the inside of an egg yoke. Clyde slipped along, listening. He heard the floor creak.
Clyde stopped.
The blond whore stumbled into view, out from an open doorway in the back. She was half dressed.
“Don’t shoot,” she said. “He’s behind the wall. He don’t want a shoot-out.”
“Who?” Clyde said.
“Hillbilly.”
“You sent a woman out, Hillbilly?”
“You ain’t got no cause to shoot her,” Hillbilly said from behind the wall. “You’d have come right in on me and I didn’t want her shot.”
“He don’t care about me,” said the whore. “He’s just buying time… Hillbilly, it’s one of those men whipped your ass.”
Clyde motioned her over to him. “Get behind me,” he said, then to Hillbilly, “Throw out your gun.”
“Ain’t got one.”
The blonde shook her head.
Clyde nodded.
“I ain’t wanting to get killed over all this,” Hillbilly said.
“You go on out the back way,” Clyde said to the whore.
“McBride, he went through that door there, down the hall,” she said.
“Go on out the back way,” Clyde said again. “And thanks.”
She went away and Clyde said, “I know you got a gun, Hillbilly. Throw it out.”
“Naw. I do that, you might shoot me.”
“I’m gonna shoot you for sure, you don’t.”
“Let me think on it.”
Clyde slid forward, stood near the wall, Hillbilly on the other side.
“Last chance,” Clyde said.
“Or what?” Hillbilly said. “I watch myself pretty good. You come get me.”
Clyde lifted the shotgun and pointed at the wall, where he thought he heard Hillbilly, and fired, pumped another round into the chamber, dropped low, waited.
“Goddamn,” Hillbilly said.
Clyde slid around to the doorway, staying low, poked his head and gun around on the other side. Hillbilly lay on his back, a pistol nearby. He wasn’t hurt bad, but the shot had surprised him and he had been peppered with pellets. A piece of the wall, a splinter, had gone back and into Hillbilly’s shoulder.
“You ain’t bad off,” Clyde said, picking up Hillbilly’s pistol, sticking it in his belt.
Hillbilly took hold of the splinter and pulled it out of his shoulder, took a breath, turned his head toward Clyde. “Guess you can get even now.”
Sunset heard the shotgun blast to her left, in the rooms beyond. The blonde came through a door stepping lively, saw her, waved at her, went out the back way, into the grasshoppers, closed the battered door.
Sunset turned, looked back at the wall where McBride was. She could see him in the platter, still easing forward. She slipped backward until she was between the windows, her back against the wall. She let her ass slide to the floor, pulled her knees together, propped the shotgun on them, braced the stock against her shoulder.
McBride poked his head around the corner, poked it so fast the stupid black wig he was wearing shifted dramatically.
Sunset cut down on him.
Most of the shot hit the wall, but stray pellets lit into McBride’s face and he let out a yell, disappeared back behind the barrier.
Sunset pumped up another load, braced herself again. Thought: He hasn’t figured I can see him in the platter. She could see him leaning against the wall, picking at the pellets in his face.
“You damn bitch,” he said. “You hit me some.”
“I was trying to hit you a lot,” Sunset said. “Surrender, and it’ll go better.”
“Ha.”
“You always wear an apron?”
“You messed up my breakfast, bitch. I’m gonna shoot you until you can’t be made out for a person.”
Sunset was trying to decide what to do, like maybe break and run, because here she was, just sitting, nothing to protect her but hopefully being quicker than McBride, and she was thinking this when McBride stepped out quickly from behind the wall, took hold of the lantern and stepped back.
She fired.
But it was too late. Her shot hit the far wall and the silver platter fell, hit on its edge, came rolling toward her, whirled and fell flat.
Goddamn, Sunset thought. I was looking at him in the platter, and he still beat me to the punch.
The lantern, lit, appeared on McBride’s arm from behind the wall and was tossed at her. Sunset leaped away. The lantern hit behind her. A burst of flame ran up the wall, ate the wallpaper like cotton candy. Sunset felt its heat, felt her hair crinkle. She rolled away from it as McBride stepped out from behind the wall. He had a double-barrel shotgun, and when he cut loose, Sunset, already rolling, threw herself flat. The shot tore above her. She felt some of it nip at her heels and heard the window behind her blow. Then there was a sound like something growling from beyond the grave.
Sunset lifted her head, tried to put McBride in her sights, but what she saw was his amazed face. He had broken the gun open, having fired both barrels, was ready to reload, but his expression caused Sunset to turn her head, look over her shoulder.
The flames on the wall were licking out to taste the air and the grasshoppers flooding in were catching fire. They washed in a burning wave toward McBride.
McBride dropped the shotgun, covered his face as they hit him, a mass of bugs aflame. His wig burst alight, and he tried to dive to the floor, but the grasshoppers followed him down, were all over him. He rose up screaming, batting at the air, his apron on fire, and Sunset thought: You dumb sonofabitch, just roll. You ain’t on fire, it’s your apron, that stupid wig.
But he didn’t roll. The wig had become a fool’s cap of fire. He snatched it off his shiny bald head, tossed it and ran. Ran straight at Sunset. Sunset was so amazed, she didn’t shoot, and he kept going, running hard, went right past her and through what was left of the window, flames flapping behind him like a cape, insects on fire, whizzing around his head like a halo. Then the cape of fire dropped through the window and was gone and the air crackled with flames and exploding grasshoppers.
Clyde appeared to her left. He had Hillbilly with his hands tied behind his back with a twisted pillowcase. Hillbilly looked bloody and bowed, but not too bad off.
“You okay?” Clyde called.
“Almost,” she said. “He hurt bad?”
“Got some pieces in him, mostly wood from the wall. He’ll live.”
The entire wall behind Sunset was on fire and the fire was spreading. She said, “Out the front.”
“Is that all of them?” Clyde said. “Did we get them all?”
“God, I hope so.”
Sunset stood, slapped flames off her skirt where the kerosene had splattered and caught. Clyde kicked Hillbilly in the ass, said, “Move it, songbird.”
When Sunset got to the doorway, she stopped and bent over Bull. She said, “Bull?”
“Is he gone?” Bull said.
“Who?”
“That big nigger in the bowler?”
“I don’t see him anywhere.”
“That’s good.”
“I’m sorry, Bull.”
“Don’t let the peckerwoods have my body.”
“You’re gonna be all right.”
“Got a knife in my back. My legs, everything from my pickle down, gone cold, won’t move no more. We on fire? I smell smoke.”
Clyde was there with Hillbilly now. He said, “Yeah. There’s fire, Bull.”
“Let me burn,” Bull said.
“You ain’t gonna burn. Clyde, go down and put Hillbilly in the car. There’s rope in the trunk, you need it. Use it to tie his legs to his arms, throw him in the backseat, better yet, the trunk. Come back and help me with Bull-Jesus, where’s Daddy? Bull, can you hear me? Where’s Daddy?”
But Bull didn’t answer.
A moment later, Clyde came back in with Hillbilly. “There ain’t no car. Your daddy, he’s hurt.”
“Hurt?”
“Yeah. Leg is broke.” Clyde looked down at Bull. He wasn’t moving and his eyes were closed. “Bull?”
“Bull’s gone,” Sunset said, coughing at the smoke.
“Yeah, and so is this place,” Hillbilly said.
The far wall was fire, and the fire, fed by kerosene on the floor, was creeping toward them.
“Leave him,” Clyde said.
Sunset thought about that, about how he lived and what he told her, said, “Reckon so.”
Sunset took Hillbilly down, her shotgun in his back, and Clyde picked up Lee, carried him.
When they were at the bottom of the steps, Hillbilly said, “I didn’t mean for it to go this way, Sunset.”
“I have a feeling you don’t never mean for nothing to happen, but it always does.”
“I’m kind of cursed.”
“Hell, you are the curse.”
The flames were licking at the apartment and smoke was pouring out the open door and the drugstore below was starting to catch fire. The flames were so hot and bright, the grasshoppers had finally started to recede. Sunset looked up, saw them like a dark rainbow against the sky, going south, and fast, dimming the sun.
When Clyde came down the steps carrying Lee like a baby, Sunset said, “Watch this piece of dung a minute,” and left him with Hillbilly. She went around back, looking for McBride, still cautious, the shotgun at the ready.
She found McBride face forward against the overhang. There were burn marks on the ground where he had dragged himself. He was a blackened shape now, his hands like claws where he had scooped out some clay as if trying to climb up the overhang to God knows where, or maybe burrow through it.
They went across the street to the jail, Sunset with her gun at Hillbilly’s back, prodding, and Clyde carrying Lee. They put Hillbilly in the cell with Plug, and Clyde laid Lee on the bunk in the other cell, called up the town doctor, who came and looked at Lee and said he was bad.
“He’s gonna need a hospital,” the doctor said. “That leg. It might have to come off. I ain’t up for that kind of thing.”
“I got use for this leg,” Lee said, his face covered in sweat.
The doctor, who was a short fat man wearing a plaid shirt and pants that looked as if they could use a wash, said, “Yeah, but it might not have any use for you anymore. I’m gonna do my best to set it, but we got to get you over to Tyler. There’s people there better at this kind of thing than me. This ain’t no simple break. This one’s all twisted up.”
“We’ll get you to the doctor, Daddy,” Sunset said. “He don’t know that’s what will happen for sure.”
“If I mess with it much, it is,” the doctor said.
“Can you take him to Tyler?” Sunset said.
“I can,” said the doctor, “but it’ll cost.”
“He’s a deputy constable.”
“He’s your daddy.”
“And he’s still a deputy constable. You see he gets there. You bill Camp Rapture-better yet, you bill Holiday. And give him something for pain.”
“For Christ sakes, yes,” Lee said. “Knock me out. Give me some dope. Something.”
“Daddy,” Sunset said, liking the sound of calling him that better and better, “still believe what you said, about the union of everything in the universe, us and everything in it all being part of one big thing?”
“Not so much,” Lee said.
“What about these two?” Clyde said, nodding toward Hillbilly and Plug.
“They’re for the law,” Sunset said.
“There ain’t no law,” Clyde said.
“Today there is. And you’re it. Stay till we figure something out. I’m gonna check on Karen.”
“What then?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
When it was done and Lee was on his way to Tyler, courtesy of the doctor and his car, Sunset got the keys to the sheriff’s car, went out and cleaned the windshield free of bugs and got in. She sat there and thought about the fact that she and Clyde were unhurt, her dad was the worst off and he hadn’t even gotten inside the apartment. And Bull. Poor Bull. He was dead, and all she had was a few bangs and cuts and some little shotgun pellets in the back of her heels, pellets she could pick out with tweezers.
She sat and looked at what was left of the fire across the way. The fire department, such as it was, was trying to put it away, but mostly they were running around the fire truck and cursing. They had succeeded in flushing the building with a lot of water from their big red engine, and what was left of the apartment and the drugstore was nothing but some charred timbers you could stir with a stick.
She thought about Bull, burned up in there, and it made her think of the story she’d heard about Greek heroes, how they put them on piles of lumber and burned them up and sent their souls up in smoke and flames.
On the way home, Sunset saw the sky had cleared and it was full of nothing but a crow. The trees, grass, anything that had been green, was gone. It was as if green had been a dream. Now that the storm of wings and legs had departed, there was only desolation. Even the bark had been stripped off the hardwoods. All about were dead grasshoppers, victims of collisions and fights with their hungry partners.
She drove along until she came upon her car. It was beside the road, the driver’s door open. Sunset stopped near it, took the shotgun lying on the seat and got out. The morning had come in full now, and it was hot, but she felt more cold than hot as she moved alongside her car, looked inside. Nothing but dried black blood on the front seat.
She walked along the road slowly, crunching dead grasshoppers under her feet, looking right and left. Then she saw him. He was sitting with his back against a great pine tree that was stripped of its needles. He had his hands on his thighs and he was looking at her. His bowler hat was on the ground, the crown touching the earth. Flies were so thick on the front of his shirt they looked like a vest. His coat was pushed back over his shoulders, as if he had tried to give himself a little breeze. The scar on his head looked raw and stood out, like an actual horseshoe was inside his skull, working its way to the surface.
Sunset kept the shotgun pointed at Two, moved toward him slowly. When she was standing over him his vest startled and flew away. She saw part of his bottom lip was bit off, and she thought: Good for you, Bull. His green eyes were filmed over and still and a fly was on one of them.
“I guess the both of you are dead,” Sunset said.