“I’ve turned my whole oil business over to my son Dickie,” he said. “He fired all the office staff—his wife’s running the office by herself. He might want to hire you if you can type and file and help keep an office going.”
“Dickie?” the girl asked. “Dickie who?”
“Dickie Moore,” Duane said.
“Oh man,” she said, and started laughing. “You want me to work for Dickie Moore?”
She looked at Duane and saw that he was shocked.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’re trying to help me and all.”
“My mistake,” Duane said. “I didn’t realize you knew Dickie.”
“I knew him,” Gay-lee said simply. “Me and Dickie used to run around together when we was both wild—I mean, when we was really wild.”
She paused, lost for a moment in memory.
“There’s not many people out on this stretch of road who don’t know Dickie, because this is where the stuff is,” she said. “You’re so quiet and nice—I would never have taken you for Dickie’s dad.”
Duane was silent. He felt foolish. Who was he to presume that he could do better for Gay-lee than she could do for herself? She seemed like a nice girl. What was she doing, whoring on the Seymour highway? But then, what was he doing, sleeping in a room three doors down from hers? Why did he have on biking clothes in the middle of the night?
Gay-lee looked at him nervously—she seemed embarrassed.
“Oh my lord, now I’m ashamed of myself,” she said. “I would never have offered you no pussy that first day if I had known you were Dickie’s dad.”
“That’s over and done with—forget it,” he said. “If you’re all right I guess I’ll go back to bed.”
“Okay, Mr. Moore,” Gay-lee said. “If I can ever be of assistance please let me know.”
She said it rather formally, as if her whole relationship to him had changed now that she knew he was Dickie’s father.
“You can just call me Duane,” he said.
They continued to stand in the dark, empty parking lot, lit only by the early morning moon, as if there were more that needed to be said, although neither of them knew what.
“I don’t know about that Ricky,” Duane said finally, to break the silence.
“He’s a devil but I love him to pieces,” Gay-lee said. “He wouldn’t have slapped me if I hadn’t got in his face so bad about that slut he slept with while I was in jail.”
Then she gave a little laugh.
“You’re itching to reform me, ain’t you, Mr. Moore?” she said. “You’re aching to make me proper, like Dickie’s sisters. What’s their names?”
“Nellie and Julie.”
“That’s right—Nellie and Julie,” she said. “I met them once or twice when me and Dickie were doing drugs. They were trying to be wild themselves but they ain’t never going to be very wild. You don’t have to worry about them. Dickie, I don’t know. Did he do rehab, or what?”
“Three times,” Duane said.
“It’ll take more than rehab to take the wild out of Dickie—if you don’t mind my saying so,” Gay-lee said. “When Dickie’s on a tear he makes Ricky seem like a preacher. Where’s Jack now? I knew both your boys at one time. Little Jack’s got a few wild bones in him too.”
“He’s trapping wild pigs for a living,” Duane said. “We don’t see him for weeks at a stretch.”
Gay-lee laughed.
“Jack’s worst tendency is to go in bars and pick fights with people he can’t whip,” she said. “Maybe trapping pigs will take some of the steam out of him.”
“I hope so,” Duane said. He turned to go to his room but before he got there Gay-lee called out to him.
“Mr. Moore?” she said.
Duane turned back toward her.
“I just want you to know I was proper once,” Gay-lee said. “I’m a preacher’s daughter from Tyler, Texas. I was even a Rangerette for about half a season, till I got on drugs. I shook hands with President Clinton once, when he was in Texarkana giving a talk. I seen a good bit of the proper side of life.”
“Didn’t like it?” Duane asked.
“I guess I just had too much to live up to, my dad being a preacher and all,” she said. “People can only live up to so much—so here I am being a whore on the Seymour highway. But I’m really sorry I asked you what I asked you that first day. I should have known better.”
“Why? I was a total stranger,” he said.
“Because you don’t look like a man who would ever need to pay for pussy, that’s why,” Gay-lee said. “You look like the type of guy who can get it free.”
Shorty was dancing around Gay-lee, standing on his hind legs and trying to get her to pet him, which she did.
“How many children did you say Sis has?” he asked.
“Thirteen. She’s had a real hard life,” Gay-lee said. “Fourteen, if you count me. My mom’s dead. Sis is about the nearest thing to a mother that I have.”
“Do you really want this dog?” Duane asked. “I been thinking of going to Egypt and I wouldn’t be able to take him if I do.”
“You bet, we’d love to have him, me and Sis.”
“What if you’re busy?” Duane asked. “Wouldn’t it be a little awkward to have a dog?”
Gay-lee giggled. “Oh, if I’m busy I’ll just stick the puppy in my car,” she said. “It’s that Toyota sitting over there. It don’t run worth a shit but it would make a fine doghouse.”
“Then he’s yours,” Duane said. “You don’t even have to take him to a vet. He’s had all his shots.”
“Oh, Mr. Moore, thanks,” Gay-lee said. “Me and Sis will take real good care of him. It’ll just sort of pick our spirits up, to have a pet of our own. You know what I mean?”
Then she looked at Duane with concern.
“But what about you, Mr. Moore?” she asked. “You’re sure about this? You don’t think you’ll miss him too much?”
“Shorty and I have had a kind of off-again, on-again relationship, most of the time,” Duane said. “I think we can get by without one another and not suffer too much.”
He looked down at the dog. Shorty, focused on Gay-lee, was not paying him the slightest attention.
“Shorty, have a happy life,” he said.
Shorty, who had parked himself by Gay-lee’s side as if he had been her dog forever, didn’t respond.
Later, when he was finally in his room again, Duane felt a little strange. There was no Shorty snoring in the corner. He had grown used to sleeping with the snores—now he would have to get used to sleeping without them.
In a way it seemed that he had just cut his very last tie.
19
DUANE TURNED THE TELEVISION SET to the Weather Channel and stared at it for three hours, until it began to grow light outside. He remembered that his daughter Nellie had been accepted as a Weather Channel trainee and tried to imagine Nellie pointing with a little pointer and talking earnestly and brightly about high pressure systems and the Gulf Stream or the jet stream and such. He knew Nellie was bright enough to comprehend such meteorological details and she was also prettier than any of the weather girls who had appeared while he was watching, but he still had difficulty imagining Nellie doing what the other girls were doing. It just didn’t seem Nellie-like.
He had intended to get up at first light and bicycle out to the cabin, have some soup, and stare off the hill, resting in his spirit, until it was time to bicycle back in to his appointment with Dr. Carmichael, his last appointment before the yawning chasm of the weekend.
But when he tired of weather and began to surf through the channels he suddenly struck a commercial in which a number of neatly dressed tourists were looking down on the pyramids from a spacious jetliner. There were the pyramids, there was the Sphinx, there was the Nile. He had just mentioned to Gay-lee that he might go there—but before he could he had to get his passport renewed. He immediately took it out and stared at it. He had had longer hair when his last
passport picture had been made. He and Karla had been drinking a lot—they had gone to Mexico several times and Canada twice. But they had never seen the pyramids.
Then he remembered Dr. Carmichael, with whom he had just begun a course of therapy. If he told her he wanted to go see the pyramids she might not approve. It would be a serious interruption, just as the treatment itself was getting serious.
Nonetheless, as soon as it came time for the post office to be open, he got on his bike and pedaled to the main post office in downtown Wichita Falls. He wanted to fill out the required forms immediately, get his passport renewed as soon as possible. He didn’t know that he really wanted to stop therapy and go away, but he wanted the possibility there in his hand, in the form of a valid passport. He wanted to be able to bike to the airport, chain his bike to a tree, put on his normal clothes, and go to the other side of the world, as far as he could get from where he had spent his life.
The big post office had only been open a minute or two when Duane walked in. There were as yet no customers other than himself, and only one clerk at the window where they took mail and sold stamps. The clerk was an elderly man who kept glancing over his shoulder nervously as he got the cash drawer ready for the day’s business.
“I need a form,” Duane said. “My passport’s expired.”
“Well, in that case I advise you not to go abroad,” the clerk said. Then he turned around and stared into the still-dark spaces of the cavernous old post office.
Duane was annoyed. He didn’t want advice from a postal clerk. He just wanted the form he had to fill out before he could get his passport renewed.
“Could I just have the form, please?” he asked. “I have to make a trip abroad.”
“What’s wrong with America? Love it or leave it,” the man said testily.
Duane was beginning to feel a little testy himself. He had hurried into the post office at the earliest possible hour. He was the first customer of the day; he was also a tax-paying citizen who needed assistance. At home in Thalia the postal workers were courteous and prompt, eager to keep the tax-paying citizenry happy. But a different ethic seemed to prevail in Wichita Falls.
“Sir, there’s nothing wrong with America but I still need to go abroad,” Duane said.
“Why, people are the same everywhere,” the clerk said. He turned back to Duane, but kept glancing around. He seemed to be nearly desperate, although Duane could not even guess at the source of desperation.
“Wherever you go you take yourself with you,” the man added. “You may think things will be different if you could just get over to some foreign country, but believe me, they won’t. Even if you went to Egypt you’d still be your same old self.”
Duane was beginning to be angry.
“This is silly,” he said. “All I asked for was a simple passport form. My reasons for going abroad are none of your business. I just made a simple, legitimate request. Why can’t you just give me the goddamn form?”
The elderly clerk turned around again, carefully scrutinizing the space behind him. Then he turned back to Duane.
“It may seem simple to you, oh sure,” he said. “Just hand over the passport renewal form. But I assure you it’s not as easy as you think. I have to be very careful about this. One false move could mean my life.”
“Why would handing me a form cost you your life?” Duane asked. “Is there a bomb in your drawer?”
The elderly clerk leaned across the counter and whispered.
“That’s right,” he said. “Bombs. Human bombs. Those passport forms are in the supply room, and the man who runs the supply room is about to blow. Post-office-massacre syndrome—you’ve heard of that, haven’t you? It’s what happens when someone who works in a post office finally gets enough and comes in with several handguns or an AK-forty-seven and shoots everyone in the building. It happened right up the road in Oklahoma City, and it could happen here. All it takes is some little thing like asking for a passport form. Then out comes the assault rifle and rata-tat-tat, ten or twelve people are dead. Happens in post offices all the time.”
Duane decided the man was crazy. He would probably be the disgruntled worker that started the massacre, if one occurred in that post office.
“If you’re that worried, then I’d say you’re in the wrong job,” Duane said. “I still need the form. If you’re scared to go get it could you ask someone else to do it?”
In the distance, behind the clerk, he saw a couple of young women come in. The sight of them gave him hope, although both of them went to computer terminals and began to get their computers revved up.
“Oh well, if you’re just going to insist and insist,” the clerk said. “Mine not to reason why, mine just to do or die.”
He hurried away. In thirty seconds he was back with the passport form.
“Thanks,” Duane said. “I’m glad it didn’t cost you your life. That would have spoiled my trip.”
“You joke, but you don’t know,” the man said. “There are forty-two employees in this post office and forty-one of them are ticking bombs.”
“Who’s the sane one?” Duane asked.
“Oh, that’s me,” the man said. “Do you see anyone else who looks sane around here?”
“Those women don’t look too crazy,” Duane said. “You’re sure you’re not a ticking bomb yourself?”
“Oh no, not me,” the man said. “I’m the ticking bomb’s victim. It’s always been that way. Some people are born to be bombs and others are born to be victims. I expect to be splattered all over this post office any day now.”
Duane felt something of the same immobility he had experienced the night before, while talking to Gay-lee in the parking lot. He had his form. It was time to leave, and yet he didn’t go. He didn’t really like the nervous postal clerk and yet he found it hard to turn and go.
“Ever think of changing jobs?” he asked. “You could even leave the country, like I’m about to do.”
“I could, but there’s the Islamic fundamentalists to consider,” the man said. “They’re everywhere and they’re even more dangerous than postal workers. If I have to get splattered all over it might as well be in Wichita Falls and not in Lebanon or Algeria or somewhere.”
“Well, thanks for taking such a big risk for me.”
“You joke, but it was a big risk,” the man said. “If that fellow in the supply room hadn’t been on the potty I doubt I would have made it back alive.”
20
DUANE BICYCLED to a nearby park to fill out his passport renewal form. Sure enough, he saw that he would have to present a certified copy of his birth certificate, which would probably mean calling his office. He considered just cycling home and getting the form, but that meant cycling forty miles before his doctor’s appointment, which was a trip he wasn’t sure he wanted to undertake.
While he was pondering his options he heard some loud squealings from the north side of the little park. The park had a little hill in it, so he couldn’t see the animals producing the squeals, but they sounded very much like a herd of wild pigs. Though known to be bold in their behavior, it seemed unlikely that a herd of wild pigs would have wandered into downtown Wichita Falls.
Curious as to what was going on, Duane crossed the park and discovered his son Jack, in the process of transferring eight large wild pigs, with snouts like Russian boars, from his horse trailer to a cattle truck. The truck was parked downhill from the trailer, making it simple for the pigs to walk up a loading ramp into the truck; but, simple or not, the pigs weren’t loading. They squealed and balked. Jack wore shorts, a Grateful Dead T-shirt, wading boots, and a dozer cap turned backward. Either he was growing a beard or had neglected to shave for at least a week. He was poking at the pigs with a cattle prod, and held a beer in the other hand.
Two silent Mexicans stood by the cattle truck, keeping a close eye on the hogs. They did not seem eager to take possession of such wild beasts, but Jack was clearly eager to be rid of them. When poking at them with t
he cattle prod failed to do the trick, he set his beer down, climbed into the trailer, yelled “Sooey!” at the top of his lungs, and dropped right down among the pigs, using his prod to good effect—scrambling and slipping, the pigs raced up the ramp into the truck. The Mexicans quickly slammed the gates on them.
Duane was amused. Karla had tried to push Jack into either law school or medical school, but Jack, looking nothing like a lawyer or a doctor, was clearly in his element as a professional pig trapper.
“You need to be careful about jumping into the pigs like that,” Duane said. “Any one of those boars could have made mincemeat of you.”
Jack jumped out of the trailer and gave his father a bone-crunching handshake. Jack belonged to almost every health club in the greater Southwest. When he wasn’t trapping pigs he was working out with weights. Duane had shaken many strong hands in his time, but none whose grip seemed to weld his fingers together, as Jack’s did.
Whenever he ran into Jack after an absence, Duane always experienced a moment of wonder. Could he and Karla have really produced a creature with such absolute confidence? It was a quality Jack had possessed virtually from the time he could walk. Nothing—not drugs, not drink, not financial setbacks, not women—had ever shaken Jack’s confidence for long.
“Aw, pigs will never hurt me,” Jack said. “My karma’s stronger than theirs.”
“Yes, but your head isn’t as hard and you don’t have tusks,” Duane reminded him, feeling silly even as he said it. Jack was probably right. His karma probably was stronger.
“Once in a while I just like to jump in and whale the shit out of them,” Jack said. “It’s just to remind them that they’re ugly.”
“What’s wild pig worth now?” Duane asked. He knew somebody must be willing to pay well for the pigs, else Jack couldn’t have afforded to belong to so many health clubs. He even belonged to one in New York City, where he went to party from time to time.
“Five dollars a pound on the hoof,” Jack said. “That’s nearly ten thousand dollars’ worth right there and I’ve got eight more waiting in my pigpen that I need to rush back and get—be close to twenty thousand before I’m through for the day.