Mr. Cooper and Whitey arrived a few minutes later. The Mexican who seem to be in charge stood up in the truck bed and greeted Mr. Cooper like lost family, held out his hands as if Mr. Cooper might have missed there was a tree laying across the fairway and half across his truck.
“Veinte y cinco, señor,”
he said.
“My ass,” Mr. Cooper said. “Look at this fucking mess.”
“Yes,
señor,
” the smiling Mexican said, “thees fucking mess.” And they all smiled, proud as a marching band. Then the Mexican said
“Veinte y cinco,”
again, politely, and offered to shake hands. Mr. Cooper turned away from him and spoke to Whitey.
“Get them off the property,” he said, “and then get this cleaned up.” He looked up the hill at the lots along the fairway, the house frames going up, probably trying to picture how the fallen tree would look from there. The man was nervous now, as if he suddenly come to realize that his time was almost up.
Whitey saw it too, and she turned on the Mexicans. “Get out of here,” she said, looking up into the truck. “Vamoose,
hasta luego
. . .”
The Mexicans checked with each other to see if anybody understood what this was about. “Vamoose,” she said, “shoo . . .”
“
Veinte y cinco, señorita,”
said the one who had smiled. Who wasn’t smiling now.
“No
veinte y cinco,
” she said, pointing at the tree. “You fucked it up.”
The Mexicans shrugged, wondering what did she expect tree cutters to do. Like it was none of their business now. Meantime, Mr. Cooper walked across the fairway to the far end of the tree to look at it from there. He got himself in a line between the tree and the lots up on the hill and studied it from there. “Good Christ,” he said. “How long is this going to take?”
“I’ll get on it right away,” Whitey said.
The Mexicans were now worried about getting paid. Train sat on the tractor, staring at the tree. It looked bigger laying down than it did standing up, and heavier. It had dented the roof of the Mexicans’ truck and tore off the gas cap. It looked like the ceiling was about a foot shorter inside the cab.
Train noticed that Mr. Cooper had gave up on Whitey now and was looking around in his direction for help.
“That friend of yours,” Mr. Cooper said, “can he saw?”
“You never know,” Train said, “he might.” He imagined Plural in the tangle of branches— strange new shapes all around him, closing him in— and was not necessarily sure about putting a saw in his hands.
“He’s built for it,” Mr. Cooper said. “He looks like he could saw forever.”
It took them two days— Train, Plural, and Lester— to cut the branches off the tree and then cut the trunk into pieces that they could tow off with the tractor. Another whole day to drag off the big branches and then rake up the pieces of wood scattered all over the fairway.
The three Mexicans was there every day, sitting in their dented truck, smoking joints, watching the claim jumpers. Waiting for their money. Mr. Cooper saw them whenever he come down to check on the cleanup, and once Train heard him say to Whitey that he handled these people before, that if you waited them out, they’d forget about what they were doing out here and leave. Train knew better, though. Mexicans were the best waiters in the world, and eventually Mr. Cooper would have to pay up or call the police.
Mr. Cooper been putting off paying Plural too. The money was drying up. Plural been on the saw two days, twelve hours a day, baking in the sun, cut up most of the tree by himself. He had insect bites and cuts and blisters everywhere you look. All Mr. Cooper said about settling up was that he’d put something extra in Train’s paycheck that Friday for his friend. Train seen the way things was going around Paradise Developments, though, and guessed it wouldn’t be but a dollar or two. Then Friday came and went, and there wasn’t nothing extra in his paycheck at all.
Plural knew when he was being cheated, but kept it to himself.
Monday morning, here come Whitey down early to tell Train the Mexicans had left too much stump, that Mr. Cooper wanted it took down level with the grass. Mr. Cooper had postponed the investors twice already, and now they were supposed to come in Friday, and he wanted everything just right.
Plural smiled at the sound of that, then made a sound of his own, like he just sat down for Sunday dinner. She turned on him and said for his information she was conducting business here with Train, and certainly not with him. Plural just kept smiling and shook his head.
“That man done confused me with his tools,” he said.
“What’s he saying now?” she said.
Train said, “He ain’t gone take down the stump.”
“Tell him to,” she said. “Tell him Mr. Cooper and me been putting up with this blind business all along, and now he’s got to do something useful for us.”
“Tell her the man forgot to pay me,” Plural said to Train. Sound like he was making fun of Whitey, but you could never be sure of exactly what his intentions was. “Been forgettin’ for the whole time I been out here, lettin’ you take care of it for him, got me confused with his tools.”
She looked at Train, who had no idea how Plural figured that out.
“A man do me like that, I ain’t taking down his stump,” Plural said, talking to her now. “More politely, he better stay up to watch his chickens.”
“Well, how much do you want?” Whitey said. “Just to take down the stump— how much do you want me to say that you want?”
Plural thought it over, seemed to be adding and subtracting in his head. “Six hundred dollars,” he said.
The next morning, Whitey drove down to the barn in the pickup and told Train to fill one of the big cans with gasoline and put it in the back. They rode out to the fifteenth and she parked near the stump. It was eight feet wide, two feet high all the way around, except at the spike. “Mr. Cooper decided to burn it down,” she said.
It seemed reckless to Train, lighting up a stump with gasoline. She saw the look on his face. “No arguments,” she said. “We don’t have time to explain every damn thing we tell you to do.”
The Mexicans were back again, sitting in their truck, watching. Train got out and lifted the gas can over the tailgate. Whitey lit a cigarette and stayed where she was. The Mexicans sat up when they saw the gas. Whitey crossed her forearms on the open window and leaned out, her chin resting on her wrist. Looking younger and something like a woman.
Train carried the gas to the stump and set it down. He thought of how this all looked a few days ago, what it would come to after it was burnt. It seemed ignorant to be part of it, like he somehow stepped into the middle of a golfing joke.
And then the nigger pours gas all over the tree. . . .
“How long you think it might take to get this done?” Whitey said from the truck. He unscrewed the cap and gave himself another minute, not wanting anything to do with it, and then he turned the ten-gallon can upside down and walked around the stump twice, watching the gas soak into the ground. Some of it leaked onto his hands, cold and dry. He could see fumes in the air, and then heard Whitey start the truck, and when he turned, she was backing away to a safer distance. “Light it,” she said from the window. “We got other things to do today.”
Train took matches from his front pocket, lit one, and tossed it onto the stump. There was a noise like shaking out a rug, and then smoke and heat, but he couldn’t see the flame itself; in the sunlight, he could not see the flame.
The fire burned all day and all night, and there was still smoke coming out of the stump the next morning. Mr. Cooper come down to see for himself that the job was done right. “Once that’s gone out,” he said to Train, “I want you to pull out the stump with the tractor.”
The fire didn’t go out, though. Not that day or the next. On Thursday morning, the smoke was still coming up, and on Friday, the fourth day, Mr. Cooper told Whitey to have Train run a hose in from the irrigation system and soak it down.
Train did what he was told, but the smoke was there again on Saturday. And Sunday and Monday. By then, you could smell it all over the course. Mr. Cooper put off his investors again, and meantime, the bulldozers stopped leveling out ten staked lots along number seventeen. Five on the course, five across the road. The name of the road was Bobby Jones Drive.
Train took the John Deere out to the stump, but it was like trying to pull a tooth with your fingers. When he reported back to Whitey, she threw a pencil into the wall and yelled, “Do I have to do everything around here myself? I can’t stand this anymore.” She’d be wetting herself next.
He thought he might wait till she was feeling steadier to tell her that early in the morning he’d seen smoke laying on the ground a hundred yards farther up the fairway, near the green. Then he thought he might just as well let her find that out for herself. He’d got off the tractor and put his hands flat on the ground and felt the heat. Somehow they’d caught the earth itself on fire.
Mr. Cooper got on one of the dozers off seventeen, drove it down Bobby Jones Drive and then over the drainage ditch to get to the stump. He put the blade down, and the stump and ten feet of thick roots rolled out underneath it.
The stump come out black and smoking, a huge ball of roots and dirt and tentacles. Left enough hole to bury a pony. Mr. Cooper got off the dozer, seemed like he just won an argument, but then he stood in the smoke at the edge of the hole a long time, just staring down into hell. He heard the Mexicans talking to each other in the cab of their truck.
