“I suppose we got what we got,” Sunset said.

They used the lumber and canvas to put up a large tent over the flooring. It took them most of the day.

Inside, they marked off half the floor with a series of blankets and quilts hung from a rope that went from the front of the tent to the back and fastened to the tent poles. On one side of the tent was Sunset and Karen’s living quarters, on the other, the constable’s office.

Sunset’s half had a mattress on the floor for her and Karen to sleep on, a washbasin, a couple of chairs, a table, four kerosene lamps, a stack of food and supplies, and a book on police work that had been Pete’s. She had found it in the back of the file cabinet. It looked as if it had never been opened.

The office side consisted of the filing cabinet, four chairs and a long wooden table that had been donated by the sawmill. The top of it was pocked and marked from years of abuse, and on the edge of it someone had written: “Hannah Jenkins is a whore and she ain’t no good at it.”

First day they got the table, Sunset sandpapered the remark away and painted the table a dark green. The same green that was used to paint most of the houses in the camp, as well as the mill houses. It gave everything a kind of military look.

Clyde and Hillbilly repaired the wooden file cabinet and built a temporary outhouse of boards and the remaining piece of tarp.

“If a high wind don’t come,” Clyde said, “nobody will show their ass in the shitter. It comes a blow, all bets are off. Maybe tomorrow I can fix up a real outhouse and put some catalogues in there.”

“He’s got plenty of them,” Hillbilly said. “Fact is, he’s got more paper and catalogues and junk than the law allows. His house looks like it got blown away by that tornado come through here, and it all got put back willy-nilly in a pile by a flash flood.”

“It’s my pile,” Clyde said.

That night, after Hillbilly and Clyde left, Sunset and Karen sat on their mattress on the home side of the tent. Karen still wasn’t talkative. Sunset missed her old chatter. Karen went to bed early. Sunset read the one book she had on law enforcement.

Nothing in the book reminded her of anything Pete had done, besides wear a badge-the one she had on, in fact-and carry a gun. There wasn’t a section on how to beat the hell out of people or how to cheat on your wife either. She got through about a quarter of the book before becoming bored.

She got a mirror and looked in it. Her face had lost most of the swelling, but her eyes were still black, and the left side of her lower lip looked like a tire with a heat bubble on it.

Sunset blew out the lamp and tried to sleep, but only dozed a bit. She dreamed off and on. Thought of her mother, who had been knocked up by the good Reverend Beck, the one who had inspired the log camp to call itself Camp Rapture. “Yeah,” Sunset’s mother used to say, “the Reverend Beck put more in me than the spirit of Jesus.

“Man will lie to you to get what he wants, kid. Even a man of God. Especially a man of God. Remember that, darling. Keep your legs crossed until you’re about thirty if you can do it. You won’t be able to, but work at it. And remember, it takes more than a poke to make you happy. Have him work that little button down there. You don’t know what I mean, but I guarantee you, in time you’ll find it.”

Sunset hadn’t understood the extent of the message then, except for the button part, which she had already discovered. By the time she understood the rest of it, she was too much in love with Pete to care about it. At least he married her after he knocked her up. That was something. It was better than her mother got.

Her mother had not only gotten knocked up and lost her man when Sunset was thirteen, she soon took up with a traveling shoe salesman who played the banjo, wandered away with him and his shoes, probably to the sound of a banjo breakdown, up and out of there, leaving a note that read: “Sorry, Sunset. I got to go. Mama loves you. I left you a good pair of shoes in there on the kitchen table. They shine up easy.”

Sunset stayed with a farm couple for a couple of years, but they primarily wanted a farmhand. She wore out on that. Dug and picked up so many potatoes she had more dirt under her fingernails than a mole had in its fur. The man who owned the farm had also taken a liking to her. He never touched her, but she felt the way he was looking at her would lead to trouble. Anytime she was bent in the potato field, she had a sense that an arrow was pointed at her ass. But when she turned, instead of an arrow, it was the farmer’s eyes.

She moved out. Or to be more precise, ran off. Got up in the middle of the night, threw what little she had in a canvas tote bag, and hit the road, way her mama had, but without the banjo and the shoe salesman.

Got a job in the cotton gin just outside of Holiday. Lived in the back of a dress shop for a month, sleeping on a pallet next to a widow woman and her three kids. Then she took up with Pete, who was tall and lean with coils of muscles knotting under his dark skin, shiny black hair, and a smile that made her heart melt like candle wax. One day he filled her belly with Karen.

She and Pete were married right away. He was twenty, and at that time working in the cotton gin. His beatings didn’t start until after marriage. It must have been a Jones tradition. No beating your woman until the wedding vows were taken.

She lay there thinking about all this until she was as lonesome as an adolescent’s first pubic hair.

She sighed, got out of bed, went outside barefoot and in her night-gown, strapping on her holster.

It wasn’t a full moon, but it was pretty bright and the air was clean and a little cool. The night was full of fireflies. It looked as if all the stars had fallen to earth and were bouncing about.

As she stood there watching the fireflies circle her head, she heard a growl. She pulled the revolver and looked, saw a big black-and-white dog with one ear that stood up and one that hung down, squatting in the road, dropping a pile.

“Easy, boy,” she said. “I’m not going to shoot you.”

But the dog growled and ran away, leaving the faint aroma of fresh dog shit behind.

“My reputation gets around,” Sunset said. She decided one of the first things she wanted was a box of ammunition. She felt safer with the gun than without it. She wanted enough bullets to shoot up the world.

She stood outside for a while, but the mosquitoes began to flock. She swatted a few of them, went inside, strapped down the tent flap, went to bed.

But she couldn’t sleep. She thought about how she and Karen were just a few feet from where she had put the gun to Pete’s head.

Boy, was he surprised.

The sonofabitch.

Still, having Karen here, near where her father had been shot, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. Wasn’t really good mothering. Another place might have been better.

But where?

She couldn’t stay with her mother-in-law. Forgiven or not, it just didn’t feel right.

Sunset sat on the edge of the mattress, went over to the business side of the tent, seated herself at the table, pushed a pencil and a blank notebook around. Bored of that, she lit a lantern and carried it to the file cabinet, pulled up a chair for herself and one for the lantern.

There was a pile of loose files on top of the cabinet. She took the first folder and prepared to file it.

On the front was written: MURDERS.

Sunset turned up the wick on the lantern and opened the file. There was a list of murders that had happened over the years Pete had been constable.

She thought it would be a good idea to familiarize herself with what had gone before. If she was going to play constable, she might as well know how to play.

One file said COLORED MURDERS.

She opened the file and read a bit. What it mostly amounted to was so-and-so shot so-and-so and so what?