“I don’t see no fish,” she said, when Duane tied up his boat.
“I wasn’t fishing,” Duane said. “I was just boating.”
Genevieve looked at him a little disapprovingly, it seemed to him. He didn’t dislike her, but they had never been friends. She had doted on Sonny from as far back as he could remember, and perhaps had never forgiven him for the fight that cost Sonny his eye. She had never said so in so many words, but Duane felt she would have liked for Sonny to be a big success, and somehow held it against him that Sonny wasn’t.
“I wish I could boat,” she said. “I never could afford one. Dan and I were saving up to buy a boat when he was killed. I guess his coffin was our boat.”
Duane felt a little ashamed of himself. So many people in the county had boats that it had slipped his mind that there might be those who wanted them but couldn’t have them.
“You can borrow this one any time, Genevieve,” he said. “I rarely use it. Just stick the key under the seat.”
“Oh, I couldn’t run a boat,” she said. “I’ve fished off this bank all these years.”
She looked across the long brown lake.
“I guess it’s like anything else,” she said. “You think there might be greener pastures. I’ve looked across this lake a million times and wondered if I’d be catching the big ones if I just had a boat and could get out in the middle, or across to the other side.”
“Well, you might,” Duane said. “Some fishermen think the west side’s better.”
Genevieve slugged down a swallow of vodka and grapefruit juice.
“If I caught a big fish I’d be so excited I’d probably fall in and drown,” she said. “I’m better off just sticking to little ones.”
“You’re still welcome to the boat,” Duane said.
“That’s nice of you, Duane,” she said.
“Want me to show you how to run it?”
“No, thanks, honey,” Genevieve said. “I’d rather keep my dreams.”
“How’s Sonny?” he asked. “Do you think that medicine’s working?”
Genevieve shook her head. She didn’t say anything more. Duane started to get in his pickup.
“Duane,” Genevieve said, “see if you can get them just to let him alone. I think Ruth and I can take care of him unless he gets a lot worse. He’s just forgetful. He’s not going to hurt anybody. It would be terrible if somebody decided to send him to a hospital.”
Duane had not given such a possibility any thought. It startled him that Genevieve supposed Sonny might get that bad. Certainly no one in Thalia had raised the possibility. Sonny was still mayor, for that matter.
“It don’t really matter if he forgets how to work the cash register,” Genevieve said. “Just let him stay in town. He’d die in a hospital.”
“I doubt it will come to anything like that,” Duane said.
He waited a moment, in case she knew something else about Sonny that she needed to tell him. Probably she was as close to Sonny as anyone could get.
But Genevieve had no more to say. She just sat looking at him.
“What dreams do you want to keep, Genevieve?” he asked, finally, feeling awkward. It was the most personal conversation he had ever had with the woman.
“Just the dream that there’s a big fish out there in the lake somewhere that I could catch,” she said. “I’d drag it up into the station wagon and haul it to town and park. All the men would stop standing around the filling station and come over and look at it.”
Duane drove back toward town. On the way five pickups passed him. All were traveling at such high speeds that they made him feel like he wasn’t moving, and all had HARDTOP COUNTY CENTENNIAL bumper stickers.
It seemed to him that it had only taken the county one hundred years to become completely crazy and also completely sad.
CHAPTER 56
WHEN HE WALKED IN THE HOUSE HE WAS IMMEDIATELY confronted with an unwelcome sight: Jeanette Burr, his mother-in-law. She was sitting at the kitchen table glaring at Casey, her elderly boyfriend. Jeanette, in her mid-seventies, was only less elderly by a few months, but she referred to Casey as elderly and spoke of herself as being in late middle age.
Casey, a retired postmaster, was glaring back. He and Jeanette gave one another little quarter. A .22 pistol and a deck of cards lay on the table in front of them.
“Hello, folks,” Duane said, trying to bring a note of enthusiasm to his voice.
Jeanette didn’t turn her head to look at him.
“You don’t sound very glad to see us,” she remarked.
“Well, you’re armed and I’m not,” Duane said. “I don’t know if I’m glad to see you or not.”
“You must be laying down on the job,” Jeanette informed him. “If you aren’t, how come my daughter and all my grand-kids have moved off somewhere else?”
“They’ve got a restless nature,” Duane said.
Junior Nolan straddled a kitchen chair, watching the action with a bemused expression.
“What’s the pistol for?” Duane inquired.
“We’re gonna cut the cards,” Jeanette said. “The person that draws the high card gets to shoot the other one.”
“Why?” Duane asked.
“Because we hate one another’s guts,” Jeanette said.
“I don’t hate her guts,” Casey said. “I just despise her.”
Duane took the pistol, stepped outside, and threw it as far as he could, which was far enough that it disappeared over the edge of the bluff.
“If you wanted to shoot Casey you should have stayed home,” he informed Jeanette. “I won’t have shooting in this house.”
“That was my Saturday night special,” Jeanette said. She was clearly shocked by his action. “Now somebody can just walk in and rape me any time they want to.”
“If they do they’ll wish they hadn’t,” Casey said.
“Shut your ugly mouth,” Jeanette said.
Duane felt a bad headache coming on. He heard the sound of a pickup and looked around hopefully, thinking Bobby Lee might be coming. Jeanette had an inexplicable soft spot for Bobby Lee.
Instead he saw Billie Anne wheel up. The sight made his temper flare, and his headache worse. He went out the door, walked around the pickup, and without formality yanked Billie Anne out of the car.
Billie Anne looked startled.
“I came to apologize for all my lies and stuff,” she said.
“Good, we all need to do the right thing once in a while,” Duane said. There were three pistols in the seat and another in the glove compartment. He took them all to the edge of the bluff and threw them over.
Billie Anne started to weep.
“That’s over a thousand dollars’ worth of collectible guns you threw away, and I said I was going to apologize,” she said.
“You might have changed your mind,” Duane said. “You might shoot first and apologize later. I’ve already had to break up one gunfight here this morning and I’m not in the mood to take chances.”
He took the clip out of the rifle in Billie Anne’s gun rack and threw it off the cliff too. Then he went in, shaved, and lay in the bathtub for an hour, holding an ice pack to his temples. His head felt as if it were full of sand, with the sand packed so tightly that his heart could barely pump blood through it. When the hot water in the tub cooled he ran in more hot water, vaguely listening for gunshots. Billie Anne could have had another clip, or Jeanette could have bullied Junior out of his Winchester, which was still around the house somewhere.
His head finally got a little better, so he dressed and went to the kitchen to have a bowl of cereal. Jeanette, Casey, Junior and Billie Anne were playing poker for toothpicks. They were laughing and joking, happy as larks. Duane felt almost as irritated with them as he had when they were about to shoot one another. Couldn’t they even stay mad for an hour? Their jollity almost revived his headache. He felt like going out and shooting at the doghouse awhile, but even that pleasure was denied him because, having
thrown away five guns, he couldn’t afford to be caught enjoying himself with one.
Jeanette, a deadly poker player, was winning all the toothpicks, but Junior, Casey and Billie Anne didn’t seem to mind.
“Who’s that girl my daughter and all my grandkids have gone to live with?” Jeanette asked. “Is she some old girlfriend of yours, or what?”
“It’s none of your cheesy business,” Duane said. He was not in the mood for Jeanette and felt very annoyed with Karla for having hauled her in and dumped her on him.
“Bite my head off, I just asked,” Jeanette said. “No wonder none of your family can stand to live with you.”
“Now hush, be nice to Duane,” Casey said, looking nervous.
“You hush, it wasn’t you he insulted,” Jeanette said.
“No, but it’s his house,” Casey pointed out. “He’ll deport us if we don’t behave.”
“I don’t take orders from an elderly senior citizen,” Jeanette informed him. “Do you want a card or not?”
“Four cards,” Casey said, looking resigned.
Duane munched his cereal. He watched Billie Anne, who was behaving circumspectly. She didn’t look like a girl who would just drive up and start shooting, yet she was the only person he knew whom Dickie would admit being afraid of. This morning she merely looked mousy and depressed. Duane felt he might have overreacted in throwing all four guns off the bluff. On the other hand, the presence of four handguns and an automatic rifle in one pickup certainly suggested a penchant for violence.
“Tell Dickie I really am sorry I told all those lies about him smashing furniture and stuff,” Billie Anne said, when she came to the counter to replenish her coffee.
“I wish he’d just move on back in,” she added.
The phone rang. Duane was hoping it was Karla, for whom he had been rehearsing a few choice words. But it proved to be Bobby Lee.
“Duane?” Bobby Lee asked. He moved into phone calls cautiously.
“Yes, I’m Duane,” Duane said. “Who might you be?”
He instantly regretted his mild attempt at wit, because Bobby Lee took it as a rebuff and fell silent. Bobby Lee was prone to drastic losses of confidence, at which times he required careful handling.
“I’m sorry,” Duane said. “I know who you are. What’s going on?”
“I think we hit that Mississippi,” Bobby Lee said.
“We did?” Duane said.
“I think we hit that sucker,” Bobby Lee said.
The news, if true, was electrifying. A Mississippi was a rich oil sand. Even better, the well Bobby Lee had been sent to drill was on a lease Duane owned. He had drilled four wells on it over the years, hoping to hit the Mississippi. All had been dry. Once in a while, when he had a rig idle, he tried again. If they actually had hit the Mississippi it might affect his survival. A good well in such a sand might produce a hundred barrels a day, perhaps even more.
“I hope you aren’t having one of your little fantasies,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for anybody’s fantasies today.”
“I think we hit that sucker,” Bobby Lee repeated, in the same confident tone with which he had announced the likelihood of Libyan terrorists’ having hit Thalia.
“I’ll be right there,” Duane said.
CHAPTER 57
BOBBY LEE HAD NOT LIED. BY MID-AFTERNOON Duane was convinced he had hit one of the best wells of his life. All he could think about was setting pipe and getting the well on pump. Although Bobby Lee remained his usual melancholy self, Duane felt almost giddy.
He was the one who began to have fantasies—fantasies of not having to go bankrupt, of being out of debt, even affluent again. What if the well pumped two hundred barrels a day, as it seemed it might? What if he could quickly punch two or three more wells into the Mississippi, now that he knew where it was? His brain spun out figures like a cash register all afternoon, multiplying two hundred, four hundred, six hundred by the current price of a barrel of oil. Then he multiplied that by three hundred sixty-five, the number of days in a year, to convince himself he had a rough estimate of when he might be out of danger.
He completely forgot about the pageant rehearsal, about Jacy and Karla, Jeanette and Casey, everyone. He sent Bobby Lee to pull part of the crew off another well, so they could work faster.
All the while he told himself to calm down. He reminded himself of all the good wells he had brought in which had looked like millionaire-makers for a week or two, only to dry up within a month. He told himself that the pessimistic attitude was the only realistic attitude. Oil was unpredictable. The new well looked great, but it might yet disappoint him. Many wells had.
His efforts to restrain his own hopes didn’t help at all. His months of idleness, depression, hopelessness just made the new well more seductive. He couldn’t help believing that it would solve all his problems, although he knew that hope was wildly unrealistic.
He was still at the well at midnight, waiting for the midnight crew to arrive, when he saw a set of headlights flickering through the brushy mesquite. Bobby Lee was sitting around. Though he could claim credit for having brought in the wonderful new well, he seemed more morose than usual.
“Here comes your wife, to drag you home by the ears,” Bobby Lee said.
“Or it could be your wife,” Duane said. “You’ve been known to get your ear pulled once in a while, haven’t you?”
“It’s a wonder I’ve even got an ear left,” Bobby said.
“If this well gets me out of debt I’ll give you such a big bonus you can buy an airplane and fly off to Louisiana to the race track ever’ Friday,” Duane promised.
“I’d crash,” Bobby Lee said. “I’d crash and that’d be that. Then everybody’d be sorry they was so mean to me all my life—especially Karla and Carolyn.”
A minute later Karla drove up, with Jacy in the car. Duane walked off the rig floor and over to the ladies. Bobby Lee shuffled along behind him, unable to stay away from any drama.
“From the way you’re strutting around it must be a good well,” Karla said. “Momma didn’t like the way you bawled her out today. She’ll hold a grudge for the rest of her life, you know.”
“I didn’t bawl her out,” Duane said. “I just told her to mind her own cheesy business.”
“This is my momma you’re talking about,” Karla said. “She said you treated her like a war criminal.”
“Well, she was about to shoot Casey when I walked in,” Duane said.
“Momma’s real sensitive,” Karla said, in the relentless manner she adopted when she intended to extract an apology.
“All girls are sensitive, old and young,” Bobby Lee said in a tone of quiet sagacity.
Jacy had one leg cocked up against the dashboard. She was listening to a Walkman, but after a moment got out of the car and dropped the Walkman in the seat. She was wearing a T-shirt, running shorts and flip-flops. She wandered over and climbed up on the rig floor. The roughnecks all stopped as if turned to stone.
“Hey, put on a hard hat,” Duane said.
Jacy walked into the toolshed and found one.
“I knew to do that,” she said. “I was raised in the oil business.”
“Momma’s not going to go away until you apologize, Duane,” Karla said.
” I’ll go away then,” Duane said.
“Tell her you were stressed out from being bankrupt,” Karla said. “That might do it.”
“I’m not going to tell her a fucking thing,” he said. “I’m not going to apologize to Jeanette for keeping her from shooting her own boyfriend.”
“I think she just planned to scare him,” Karla said.
Jacy was sitting on the edge of the rig platform, dangling her feet. Though she had her back to them, the roughnecks were still frozen in place. Rather than continue the argument with Karla, Duane walked over and looked up at Jacy.
“Pretty night,” Jacy said. “My daddy used to take me out to his rigs sometimes. He was a nice man.”
“
I know, I worked for him,” Duane said. “He didn’t want me to marry you, though.”
“That’s right, and I didn’t,” Jacy said. “I was an obedient daughter in some respects. Anyway, I was far too big a snob to marry you.”
Duane felt Karla looking at him. She was directing a steady wave of pressure at the back of his neck. He decided to ignore it.
“You didn’t show up at the pageant rehearsal,” Jacy said. “I didn’t have my Adam to practice with, and all your women decided you’d found a new girl and run off with her. They’re pretty dependent on you.”
“I guess,” Duane said.
“Did you find a new girl?” Jacy asked.
“Nope,” he said.
“Are you looking?” she asked.
“No,” Duane said.
Jacy got up, returned the hard hat to the toolshed, waved at the roughnecks and strolled down the steps.
“You’re cute with one of those hats on,” Duane said.
Jacy stopped and looked at him a moment.
“I haven’t been cute in a long time, Duane,” she said. “I’m something but I’m not cute. Don’t let your new oil well warp your judgment.”
She strolled past him and got back in the BMW.
Duane was a little deflated. He felt that he had said a silly thing and been immediately slapped down for it. Karla slapped him down for similar remarks all the time, but it felt worse when Jacy did it.
He walked over and stood by Bobby Lee, who was looking distrustfully at the women in the car. The women had fallen silent, each of them thinking her own thoughts.
“What am I gonna tell Momma?” Karla asked, looking at him pointedly.
“If you’re afraid of your own momma, why’d you bring her home?” Duane asked.
“I don’t want to have an argument in front of all these people,” Karla said. “Why can’t we just have a civil discussion for once?”
“We are having a civil discussion,” he said. “I haven’t yelled. I haven’t raised my voice.”
“Did you know he was this stubborn when you married him?” Jacy asked.