"I understand. I'm going to look around."

Zendo walked away, and Clyde strolled down the road. He hadn't gone far when the trees disappeared and there was just a stretch of land where sickly saw grass and a lot of pathetic yellow weeds grew.

Clyde saw sunlight gleaming off something on the ground, walked over there, found the saw grass was mushy beneath his feet. He thought at first it was water running under his shoes, but it was too dark for water, even stagnant water.

He bent over, stuck his fingers in the stuff, rubbed them smoothly together. He smelled his fingers, knew then what was under him.

Moving forward a bit, the ground became softer and the grass disappeared. Seeping up through the ground was something dark and slimy-looking and the sunlight striking it made it look blue. Dead dragonflies and frogs and even a bird were in the seep and they were slicked over with it.

Oil.

In that moment, Clyde knew why the pond behind him was so filthy and dead-looking. The water was mixed with oil.

"Goddamn," Clyde said.

He walked wide of the seep, careful not to step in any deep place. He strolled around and studied the oil seep from all sides. It was fairly wide, and if it was finding its way to the surface like this, then there was a lot of it down deep.

He had seen an oil well go off in Holiday, and it had been something. The earth rumbled like it was coming apart. Men put their hands over their ears or stuffed them with mud. Oil exploded out of the ground, through the derrick, sprayed high and wide in one black rush, tossing hot drops all around. It took them a long time to tap it, and that well was still pumping. A place like this, it could do that. Down below was enough oil to make a man filthy rich with just one carbon-black ejaculation.

Clyde thought of the baby and how it was dark with oil, thought about what Sunset had said about the body of Jimmie Jo, how it too was oiled down.

Clyde took off his hat, wiped his face with it, was about to leave when he saw a flash of light through the trees. The light held, so he started walking toward it.

Pretty soon he was in the trees, and after that he came to a clearing in their center. In the clearing was a house. It wasn't a large house, but it was a good one. It had been built simply and had a tin roof and Clyde could see a bit of tar paper poking out under the tin.

The flash he had seen was sunlight hitting the roof. A good distance to the side, in the trees, he could see an outhouse. It too had a tin roof with projecting tar paper.

There wasn't any porch on the house, and the door was close to the ground, but there were rocks under the door, and all around the edge of the house. Since this wasn't a rocky area, they'd have to have been hauled in. It had been tedious work. Someone had cared about this little house and wanted it to be good and sound.

Clyde called out, "Hello, the house."

No one answered and he didn't hear anyone stirring.

Clyde touched the door, and it swung open. He checked and found the lock wasn't broken, just unlocked.

Inside it was musty and hot, but the place, though simple, was nice. It was one big room with a cookstove, bed, table, a few chairs, a cedar chest. There were some nice curtains and on the table was a pretty fancy kerosene lamp with a big brass shield for throwing light. There were shelves with dishes on them and a half-full bottle of hooch.

Clyde found some matches on the table next to the lamp, and lit it. The room filled with light. There wasn't really anything special to see. He opened the cedar chest. It was full of women's clothes, some of them a little on the garish side. He recognized one of the dresses. He'd seen Jimmie Jo wear it.

Clyde closed the chest, put out the lamp, and started back to Zendo's property. When he got there, Zendo offered him water from a wooden barrel. Clyde took the dipper and drank. He didn't say anything to Zendo about what he had found. He wasn't sure what to make of it, and he thought he ought to discuss it with Sunset before anyone else.

He drove into Camp Rapture, went by the general store and bought a soft drink. Driving out, he saw a funeral going on up on the hill. A massive tool crate was being lowered by mules, rope, pulley and tripod, into a hole big enough to bury a baby hippo. He recognized Henry up there, next to the hole, along with Willie Fixx, the preacher. There was a colored man working the mules and two other coloreds standing on either side of the hole, managing the lowering of the box.

Clyde recognized the colored man in control of the mules as Zack Washington. He didn't know the other two. No one else was there. He wouldn't have known it was a funeral if it hadn't been for Fixx's pickup with the black cloth over the side boards.

He wasn't sure whose funeral it was, but he figured it was someone had to do with Henry. Considering it was a crate and not a coffin going down, he made the jump to Henry's wife. It was rumored she'd gotten strange and fat, scary and pickled, and now Clyde figured she had gotten dead.

Goose was sitting in a rocking chair on the shack's weathered porch. He had a plate of fried chicken balanced on his lap. He was eating a piece of it greedily and greasily. A yellow cat was sitting on the ground near the porch watching Goose eat and the cat had a look that made you think seeing Goose eat that chicken was tearing its heart out.

Lee was in the yard with Uncle Riley, placing sawed logs on a chopping block for Uncle Riley to split with an axe. Uncle Riley was in his undershirt and it was covered in dark bursts of sweat. When he swung the axe it came down hard and he gave out a grunt and the wood went in half and grasshoppers jumped. The yard seemed full of them.

"I ain't never seen so many grasshoppers around," Uncle Riley said.

"I have," Lee said, "but it was more than this, thousand times more. They come out of the sky like a buzzing cloud and ate every damn green thing there was, including shirts."

"For real?"

"If it was green, they went at it. It was the dust bowl, and them bugs was starving like everyone else."

"Now that's a story."

"It's true."

"I wouldn't think a bug knew one color from another."

"I'm just telling what I seen."

After a few more pieces were chopped, Uncle Riley said, "That's enough. We got stove wood for supper, breakfast and tomorrow noon, and besides, my back hurts."

"I can chop some," Lee said.

"Naw. That'll hold us."

Uncle Riley slammed the axe into the chopping block, took a bandanna out of his back pocket, used it to wipe sweat from his face and the back of his neck. He looked where Goose was eating.

"Boy's healing up good."

"Yes, he is. Thanks to you and Aunt Cary."

"She knows her business."

"I've never seen anything like it. Tell you another thing, way he's been fed here, I think it's the most food he's had in a week. I appreciate it."

"He is a scrawny thing. You his daddy?"

Lee shook his head. "He told me a story about his family and him going off on his own so things would be easier at home, but I think they abandoned him somewhere. I don't think he could go home if he wanted to. Me and him, we worked together at a farm, got cheated out of our money, and we were on the road together, then he got snakebit and Marilyn came along. We ended up here. Thank goodness."

"You better leave him here another day or two."

"I like the idea of him staying, because he needs to. Me, I don't want to impose on you."

"You ain't imposing. You the first man I've had to play checkers with in a long time."

"You just like me because you beat me every game."

"That helps."

"Naw. I reckon I gotta move on. I have someone to see, some things to fix, much as they're fixable. I ain't going real far, though, and I'll be back. In the meantime, you should move Goose out of your bed and put him on a pallet. Giving up your bed to him like that was real Christian of you."

"When he heals up, what about him?" Uncle Riley said.

Lee looked at Goose. He was ravenously finishing off his last piece of chicken.

"I don't know," Lee said. He was thinking he'd told the boy he wasn't going to go off, and now he was planning to do just that. He always meant to stay, but he always ran. Maybe where he went the boy had to come too. Maybe that was the way to be from now on. Not leaving people you cared about.

As they were talking, Marilyn's truck, still rattling the junk in the bed, pulled up. When she got out, Lee took note that she looked very nice and fresh and was wearing a bright green dress with white trim.

Uncle Riley and Lee greeted her.

"I come by to see how Goose is doing," she said, "but I see he's doing pretty good."

From the porch, Goose raised a hand in greeting.

"That's real nice of you, Marilyn," Lee said.

"I had another reason. I was going to give you a ride. You said you were going to see Sunset."

"Well, that's good of you. I'd like that. But truth to tell, I thought I'd leave out tomorrow. I feel like I ought to spend another day here with Goose, and besides, I got to beat Riley in some more checkers."

"He ain't won a game yet," Uncle Riley said. "But you could join us for dinner, Goose ain't ate all the fried chicken yet."

Marilyn smiled. "I think I will."

24.

Sunset and Hillbilly put the box with the maps in the trunk of the car along with Sunset's gun and holster, and when they came out from behind it, they noted more colored men and one colored woman had been added to the trotline around the oak. Plug was outside now, under the tree, and he was giving the prisoners drinks of water from a wooden pail with a long metal dipper. The new deputy that had been there before was still there, cradling the shotgun in his arms, looking out at the street, watching women pass.

She and Hillbilly went about town, bumping into people, finally making it to the bank to cash the checks Marilyn had given them.

They went to the cafe and ate steaks and drank coffee and walked back and behind the courthouse where there was a fair going on and the street was closed off with blue and yellow sawhorses. There was a band playing, strong on fiddle and banjo and female voices. Hillbilly talked them into letting him sing, borrowed a guitar that lay idle against a chair, and went at it.

And Sunset couldn't believe it, because he was just as good as he thought he was, his voice sometimes deep as the bottom of an old Dutch oven, sometimes sharp as the prick of a pin, blending well with the sweet voices of the women. He sang about love and he sang about loss and he sang about sundown and the rise of the moon. Sunset felt his voice slide into her and bang around on the inside of her skin. He sang three numbers, gave the guitar back to the band to the sound of much clapping and cheering, and with what Sunset thought was a bit of reluctance, came down from the riser smiling.

Sunset took off her badge, put it in the snap pocket of her shirt. "You're good," she said.

"I know," he said.

They found a place where they could throw baseballs at bottles and Sunset hit one of them and Hillbilly hit four. Sunset won a free toss, which she missed, and Hillbilly won a little brown teddy bear with red button eyes, which he gave to her. They guessed a fat man's weight, and when the fat man got on the scale, they were both wrong. They had pink cotton candy and drank root beer out of paper cups and had some greasy sausage on a stick and shared a bag of popcorn and shelled some hot peanuts. They tossed hoops at sticks stuck up in the ground, and this time Sunset was better than Hillbilly. She got her hoops on four sticks and won another bear, a big blue one with a white belly. She and Hillbilly walked around carrying the bears, stomachs churning with their lunch, the cotton candy, the root beer and the heat. Sunset laughed and made fun of the bear Hillbilly had won and said it was too short to be much of a bear, and he told her how her bear would eat too much, and pretty soon they were laughing and poking one another and walking close together. Their hands found each other and their fingers entwined. Night fell and it was cooler and they walked back to the car holding hands and Hillbilly said, "We'll miss the fireworks," and Sunset said, "I suppose we will," and she drove them out of there, drove them on up to the place Clyde had told them about.

Sunset didn't say a word, just drove off the road, down the narrow trail Clyde had pointed out, going slow because it was rough, and Hillbilly, he didn't say anything either, and the trail wound up amongst the dark trees and finally it widened and they came upon the overlook.

Sunset parked close to the edge, killed the lights and engine. Through the windshield, as Clyde had said, they could see out and down, though not too far down, and they could view the whole of Holiday lit up like Christmas because of the festival. The lights were so pretty it made you want to jump down and get them. Even the oil derricks had been festooned with lights, and the lights on the derricks seemed to float high up above the others like gigantic fireflies.

With the windows down it was crisp and comfortable and the music drifted up from the town and an echoing voice sang "Take a Whiff on Me," or at least that's what Sunset thought it was, but she couldn't really hear it that well. Without saying a word Hillbilly slid next to her.

She turned her face to his, and when their lips met she felt a lot less cool than before, but it was a good heat, and it came from deep down and spread over her like a soft blanket on a dark fall morning, and pretty soon her hands and his hands began to probe and the view was forgotten.

In the front seat, legs parted, she took him in and he went to work on her; it was a moment as fine as any she'd ever had, and when it ended, it didn't end, but started up immediately again, and they changed positions, and moved every which way two people could move, and when she was near this time she felt as if all the bright hopes of the world were rising up inside of her, then the top of her head blew off, and down in the town below the fireworks were set off, and they burst high in the sky and brightened the windshield, and she laughed and couldn't stop laughing for a long, long time, then Hillbilly made a sound she liked and pulled out and she felt a hot wet spray, then he collapsed on top of her, heavy and warm and smooth to touch, his breath and hers going fast, their chests rising, gradually slowing, finally calm, and for a considerable time neither of them spoke nor wanted to.

25.

Morning after the Oil Festival, when Rooster pulled up at the sheriff's office, Main Street was a sun-bright mud hole full of debris, piles of dung (human and animal), and three passed-out drunks, one of them a fat, pale woman without drawers, her skirt over her head. Rooster started walking up the street, paused long enough to reach over and pull the woman's skirt down without looking directly at her.

The coloreds who had been picked up for drunk and disorderly were still on the trotline around the oak tree, sleeping. Plug had fallen asleep guarding them, his back against the sheriff's office, his shotgun across his lap. His helper, Tootie, who had half the brains Plug had and was ashamed of that half, was nearby, asleep in the grass. Rooster figured he was as drunk as those on the trotline.

Rooster decided not to wake them. Wasn't like the men on the trotline were going anywhere, and he didn't want to stir Plug or Tootie, especially that asshole Tootie. He didn't want their company, not with what he had to do, who he had to see above the drugstore. About noon he'd let all the drunks go home, anyway.

He looked up the street where he had to go, thought, Sheriff Knowles wouldn't have let him get into this kind of business.

"Rooster, you're a good man," Sheriff Knowles used to say. "You just need some direction."

But Sheriff Knowles was gone now, and the only direction he was going now was up the street to see that man. And he didn't want to see him. Ought to arrest him. But wouldn't. Couldn't. Didn't have the guts. And he was in too deep.

Above the drugstore the whole top floor was an apartment. Rooster hated when he had to go up there, taking the wobbly stairs.

Inside, during the day, the dark curtains were pulled back from the many tall windows at the back, but it was never lit up good. Way the great overhang was, behind and above the drugstore, with all the pines and oaks at the top, it blocked a lot of sunlight and there were no electric lights in the entrance room, just a couple of lanterns and they were seldom lit, so there were always shadows. There was an unnecessary wooden divider halfway down the middle of the big room and it split so you could go right or left. The divider didn't go to the ceiling, and if you were tall enough you could see over it. Rooster had never gone to the right, near the windows and the light, only left, along the dark hall where the floorboards made a sound like ice cracking and led into the dim rooms beyond where McBride liked to stay. Then there were the other rooms behind those, the ones he hadn't been in. But he had seen the Beetle Man come from back there, and he didn't like the Beetle Man. He called him that because of the long coat he wore and the little black bowler. Somehow, in his mind, they made him look like a big bug.

Rooster went up the stairs, adjusted his gun belt, squared his shoulders, knocked on the door.

There was a long pause, then the door was opened by a woman wearing only black silk hose and a red garter at the top of one of them. The rest of her was bare. She had one hand over her crotch like that hid something. Her breasts flopped and her blond hair was pulled up and pinned back and there were loose strands of it falling all over her face, as if the sun were running over her head. Her nose had a little white scar along the side of it.

Rooster took off his hat and held it, almost in reverence at what was before him. It sure beat having the Beetle Man answer the door.

"Come on in, sugar," she said, moved her hand away from what it hid, like having made the effort was enough.

He had seen her before (though he was seeing a part of her now he hadn't seen), but he didn't know her name. When the blonde turned away, leading, her naked ass moved from side to side like a couple of happy babies rolling about.

They went left of the wall, where a row of decorative silver platters hung. He looked and saw himself in one of the platters, squashed and twisted by the silver and the light. They went alongside the polished bar, into a room full of couches and a bed, and in the center, a table with a white tablecloth on which sat a silver coffeepot, silver cups and plates. Above the table was an electric light on a string. The bulb was dusty and the light was poor. A ceiling fan cranked the air around and the air smelled of garlic and tobacco, a whiff of sulphur from struck matches.

McBride was lying on the couch directly across the way and the smoke from his cigar filled that side of the room and hung above him in a blue-black cloud. He was wearing a gray as ash silk robe. It was half open. The hair on his chest and forearms was gray and his mustache was too black. Rooster figured him for sixty, even if he looked a tough fifty.

He had on the stupid wig he wore when he was in the apartment. A big black thing that didn't go with his Irish red skin. When McBride went out he wore a black bowler hat without the wig, and the hat fit tight, worn that way to battle the wind and hide his head, which Rooster assumed was bald or near it.

"Rooster," McBride said, and stood.

The robe fell wide open and Rooster saw more of McBride than he wanted to see. McBride went over to the table, sat down in one of the chairs. As he sat, his wig shifted, and Rooster tried not to look. It was hard to figure where to look. High you had the hair, low you had, well, you had all of McBride.