“There’s a little house on the land too. Nobody lives there, but I went inside and found a dress I’ve seen Jimmie Jo wear. It was the kind of dress you seen on her once, you don’t never forget it.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“There’s a big oil pool not far from the house, and the grass is all dead around there, and the oil is seeping up from the ground. It’s even run into a pond over there. I figure the place is worth a fortune.”

“Can I suppose that’s the oil Jimmie Jo was soaked in?” Sunset said.

“Fits. Someone shot her, put her in it to send a kind of message, her and the baby, I think.”

“I think Jimmie Jo and Pete knew about the oil and were trying to run some kind of scam or something. I don’t know what, but something.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The maps. And me and Hillbilly found some other things at the courthouse. Come inside.”

In the tent, at the table, by lantern light, Clyde looked at what was in the box-the original maps and the ones Sunset had stolen.

“So some white men are trying to take Zendo’s land because it has oil on it,” Clyde said.

“Yes, and him being colored, they can do it easy.”

“Maybe Zendo sold them the land.”

“I don’t think so. But I’m not going to ask Zendo. Right now, less Zendo knows, better off he is.”

“Why ain’t they started drilling?”

“Just haven’t had time, I guess. It takes some work to get it all together. Maybe they need seed money.”

Clyde pondered that, said, “Maybe- I know the names on that paper, except for McBride. You know him?”

Sunset shook her head.

Clyde slid down in his chair. “You been all business tonight, Sunset?”

“No.”

Clyde nodded. “Go to the festival?”

“I did.”

“With Hillbilly?”

“I did.”

“You like him?”

“I do.”

“Anything else go on besides the festival?”

“Nothing that’s your business. You ought to be ashamed, asking a lady that kind of thing.”

“Karen at Marilyn’s, ain’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t bring him back with you, so maybe it didn’t go so well.”

“It went well enough,” Sunset said. “And it ain’t none of your business.”

“You look kind of light on your feet.”

“I’m not on my feet.”

“It’s a saying. You know, like you’re on a cloud.”

“Don’t think too far ahead, Clyde. I think I’ll go to bed now, and you can go to hell.”

“Okay with you I skip hell and just sleep in the truck here? I ain’t really got nothing better back at my place. A tarp and skeeters.”

“Got mosquitoes here.”

“I ain’t been bit once tonight.”

“Suit yourself, Clyde.”

“Good night, Sunset.”

“Good night, Clyde, and it still ain’t none of your business.”

When Karen awoke the next morning, for a moment she didn’t know where she was, then remembered she was in bed in her grandmother’s spare bedroom. In the moment of awakening, she recalled the movie she had seen the day before in Holiday, her grandmother at her side, and it was a good memory, because the movie had been funny (her first movie), but it wasn’t a memory she had long to relish.

She sat up quickly, swung her legs over the side, and wearing only her slip, leaped out of bed, sprinted through the house, across the screened-in porch. She made it through the screen door and down the steps in time to spill vomit on the ground. It just kept coming, and she thought after a while she was going to throw her stomach up through her mouth, but finally she stopped heaving.

She sat down heavily on the porch step. The inside of her mouth tasted like someone had put peed-on mildewed socks in there, tamped them down with a shitty stick. The awful stench of the sawmill didn’t help any, and the color of the sky, yellow-green, was the color of the steaming vomit soaking into the ground.

She thought maybe she had a cold, or flu, but she didn’t feel bad all the time. Just in the mornings. Queasy. Like her insides were being boiled in hell’s kitchen. Then she would explode, get rid of it. Usually after lying down for five or ten minutes, she was good as new. It had been that way for several days now, and her appetite had at first been dull, then suddenly ravenous. She found herself craving fried and peppered pig skins, which she hadn’t had since she was a child. That and mustard. She hadn’t found any pig skins, but last night she’d made herself a mustard sandwich, thick with the stuff, on two slices of bread, and when she finished it, she ate another, and even now, after vomiting, the smell of mustard in the puke, she was craving it again.

She held her head in her hands until it quit trying to spin around, was about to get up, go back in the house, when Marilyn came out on the porch and sat down beside her.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I threw up.”

“I heard that.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Oh, girl, I been up for hours. I was in the kitchen. Maybe you should take some tonic.”

“I’m all right now.”

“Something you ate?”

“Probably… I don’t know… Grandma… Can you get pregnant… doing it the first time. I thought the first time didn’t take.”

“Oh, God. You didn’t?”

Karen turned to look at Marilyn, her face looking as if someone had sucked all the juice out with a straw.

“I did.”

“Hillbilly?”

Karen nodded. “How’d you know?”

“Figured immaculate conception was out. You been sick mornings, besides this one?”

“Couple, three days now. Mama didn’t even notice.”

“She’s got a few things on her mind these days. I don’t suppose you told her?”

Karen shook her head.

“I’m such a tramp.”

“No. No. You’re just a girl. He’s a grown man. He knew how to play you. Some men, they don’t care about anything but the feeling they get.”

“I liked it too.”

“Well, least you got that out of it, and you don’t always get that.”

“I love him so much.”

“You’re in love with love, baby, not him. He’s a man thinks he’s a play-boy. I knew soon as I saw him. And I think that’s good of me. I don’t know I pick men so good, and even if Pete was my son and your father, I don’t know Sunset picked so good either, or is picking good now.”

“What am I gonna do? I can’t tell Mama.”

“You have to tell her.”

“Then what?”

“Have the baby, or get Aunt Cary to take care of it.”

“Take care of it?”

“Get rid of it before it’s born.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Then you’ll have it. And you’ll raise it.”

“Won’t nothing ever be the same again.”

“No. But you can live with change. Me and your mama can live through what we’re living through, you can live through what’s gonna happen to you. And we can help you.”

“I did a bad thing.”

“I’ve done a bad thing or two in my time, honey. Some things I don’t even talk about. Sometimes, you get like a fever, and it just happens. All kinds of things can happen, and then you got to live with regrets. Some are easier to live with than others.”

“I can tell you things I can’t tell Mama.”

“That’s what grandmas are for. Hell, girl. You ain’t done so bad. Just followed the path all us animals want to follow. At your age, girl goes into heat, it don’t take a lot of persuading. Unlike a dog, we people stay in heat, and it’s at its hottest when we’re young. Get some pretty fella like Hillbilly saying the right things, it’s easy to do something you ought not. Ain’t a thing wrong with loving, girl, it’s who you love and what they want from you that matters.”

“He said I was pretty.”

“He didn’t lie. You got your father’s coloring, your mother’s bones. Did he tell you he’d marry you?”

“No. I thought about all that, and he didn’t ever make me any kind of promise. Just told me good things about myself, and he touched me, and when he did, I felt like I had to have him.”

“Like you wanted to be burned up by him.”

“That’s right. How’d you know?”