The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell

Author:Daniel Woodrell [WOODRELL, DANIEL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / General
ISBN: 9780316206150
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2012-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

The Thunderbird had the feel of laying in a fine soft bed with whitewall tires that somebody was driving smooth and sure. This car had special qualities I wouldn’t have known about to ask for. Somehow the Thunderbird seemed to instantly comb the bumps from the road ahead to keep the ride always gentle. It was a fabulous make of car. I never had been so high in the world.

Glenda said, “I am so sorry. I truly am.”

“About what?”

“About us bein’ so drippin’ wet in your car. Wet all over your seats.”

“Don’t worry about the seats,” he said. “People come first.”

He had more size than I recalled. His hands on the wheel were big-knuckled and heavy and his wrists were stout and his shoulders burly. He showed many signs of being strong but not very young. His hairs were gray and had dwindled from his head a good deal. His face looked similar to lots of other faces in a crowd, but with deep creases from laughing and dark dark eyes. He dressed in the upright style, like a fella who always had managed to find a job.

I leaned in from the backseat and asked, “Now, who is it you said you are again?”

“Jimmy Vin Pearce.”

Glenda turned to me and said, “Got that now? It’s rude to not remember twice.”

He said, “And you’re Shuggie, while the lady here is Glenda. Which surely is a pretty name.”

“You think? I never have been all the way sold on it.”

“It’s a real pretty name.”

“Hmm.”

“A name that sounds like a song, even.”

The windshield wipers just whispered while wiping the rain from the glass. The drops had shrunk to the size of freckles and fewer fell. Kids had come outside to the gutters in yellow raincoats and set about floating stuff in the rapids along the curb, racing to the drains.

“I don’t know the streets here too well,” he said. “You’ll have to point the way for me.”

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“You mean lately? Or to start with?”

“Whichever.”

“Originally from Phenix City. That’s not Phoenix, Arizona. It’s Phenix City, Alabama. I came around here to cook at the Echo Club.”

“Since when are you the cook at the Echo Club?”

“A few months now. I had been at a hotel in St. Louis, but that went sour ’cause I got my own ideas about paprika, when it’s right and when it’s just plain wrong, and a customer there says to me if I’d come down to West Table I could cook at the Echo Club. So, what the hey, here I am.”

“Cook always seems a funny job for a man to me.”

“There’s nothing funny about it.”

“Is that what you always have been? A cook?”

“For twenty years or a little more. I’ve cooked all over. Seen lots of places. Plenty of cooks are men. I got started over in Kentucky. Covington, Kentucky, was Las Vegas before Vegas amounted to diddly, you know. It used to be real real lively. I cooked at the Lookout House there.”

Glenda squealed and clapped her hands.

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