Lester laughed. “Gloomy ideas,” he said. “If oil hits five dollars a barrel you’ll see some gloomy ideas, all right. When that happens I’ll take my chances in prison, because this place will be a total madhouse. Some bankrupt who’s lost everything he worked his whole life for will walk in and shoot me. People will start foaming at the mouth or having sex in the middle of the street. Every marriage in the town will break up. You should be glad your family’s moving to Europe.”
“My family’s not moving to Europe,” Duane said. “Karla and the twins are just going for a couple of weeks. Why would my family move to Europe? None of them has ever set foot in Europe.”
Lester shrugged. “You must not have heard the story I heard,” he said.
“What story did you hear?” Duane asked. He tried to sound casual, but in fact he was burning with curiosity. After all, it was quite possible that his family was moving to Europe. He might be the last to be informed.
“I heard Jacy and Karla were in love,” Lester said. “It didn’t particularly surprise me.”
“It didn’t?” Duane said.
“No,” Lester said. “They’re both advanced women. Any woman who’s advanced is going to get bored with men sooner or later.”
“I don’t see why,” Duane said. “We can be just as advanced as they can, I guess.”
“No, we can’t,” Lester said. “We’re not half as advanced as they are. It’s only logical that they’d come to prefer their own company, sooner or later.”
Lester sat up straighter and began to look more cheerful. The thought of how advanced women were seemed to cheer him a lot.
“It’s a good thing you came by and got me,” he said. “If you hadn’t I might be dead by now. This ride was just what I needed. Once in a while I just seem to lose my perspective.”
Duane was getting a bad headache. They were on a hardtop road and the sun glinted off it, sending arrows of pain straight into his head. The ride that had raised Lester’s spirits had sent his own plummeting. It was blindingly hot and Thalia seemed very distant, although it was only two miles away. He felt like getting out and lying down under the nearest shade tree. Lester could have the pickup—for that matter, he could have the town.
“Who told you Karla and Jacy were in love?” he asked.
It sounded like something Bobby Lee would make up. In his more demented moods Bobby Lee liked to tell wild lies involving Karla. The more far-fetched they were, the more convincing he made them seem, as in the case of the Libyan terrorists.
“I don’t know,” Lester said. “It’s been all over town for the last week or so now. I think Sonny told me.”
Duane kept driving grimly.
CHAPTER 68
BY THE TIME THEY GOT BACK TO THE BANK, LESTER was in a manic mood. He rushed into the bank, snapping his cap pistol and pretending to be Jesse James. His spirits had clearly risen. Duane sat and watched the spectacle through the bank’s huge plate-glass windows. The secretaries and tellers soon got into the frontier mood and began to snap their cap pistols back at Lester.
Duane’s headache was no better, and his perplexity was worse. He decided to go home and get straight in the hot tub. He might shoot at the doghouse a few times to see if it did anything for his perplexity. He doubted that it would. The fun had largely gone out of shooting at the doghouse.
Before he could get through the red light his pickup was suddenly engulfed by a cluster of depressed citizens, led by Buster Lickle and Jenny Marlow. Duane had seen them coming, but, like a fool, he had waited in a law-abiding way for the light to change. He should have broken the law, run the light and escaped the crowd.
It struck him, just as he was being engulfed, that the trafffic light had become a nuisance, even a danger. He decided that at the very next City Council meeting, if he lived to attend another one, he would advocate removing the light. Let people who wanted to pass through Thalia take their chances in the town’s second century. He knew it was not the light’s fault that he had accidentally had sex beneath it. His own intention had been to have sex in the comfortable darkness behind the post office, but the apprehensiveness he had felt before, during and after the act had not left him. He felt that just stopping at the light had probably helped intensify his current throbbing headache.
The crowd was oblivous to the fact that he had a splitting headache, felt terrible and just wanted to go home. He was their trouble-shooter, and it was clear there had been some trouble.
“Duane, the wagon train’s lost!” Jenny said. “It’s terrible. They won’t get here in time for the parade.”
“How can they be lost?” he asked. “They were just going fifteen miles along a road.”
“That was the plan,” Buster Lickle said. “But then somebody had the bright idea of cutting across a pasture like wagon trains did in olden times. They got down in the brush along Onion Creek and couldn’t find their way back to the highway. I think a wagon or two may have turned over. I don’t know what we’re gonna do.”
“Maybe they’ll find their way to town by tomorrow night,” Duane said.
“But the parade’s tonight!” Jenny said. “It’ll ruin the whole parade if the wagon train isn’t here to lead it.”
She was at the point of tears.
“The first settlers came in wagons,” Buster pointed out. “Wagons are a historical part of our county heritage.”
“How come a bunch of cowboys can’t find their way across a pasture?” Duane asked. He had a feeling he wasn’t getting the whole story.
“Because they’re sot drunk and your own wife hauled them the liquor,” G.G. said. He was looking more and more cheerful.
“The way I heard it, all those wagons were upside down in Onion Creek and half the people have drowned,” he added happily. “God’s punishment is swift.”
“Onion Creek is as dry as this pavement, G.G.,” Duane said. “They might have all broken their necks but I doubt anybody drowned.”
“Sin carries a high tariff,” G.G. said to the crowd at large.
“Do something, Duane!” Jenny pleaded. “A lot of these people have come a long way to see the wagon train be in the parade.”
“It’s four-thirty,” Duane pointed out. “The parade starts in two hours. If the wagons are still out at Onion Creek they aren’t going to make it in time. A wagon only travels so fast.”
“One that was on a flatbed truck could travel faster, though,” Buster Lickle said. “We was hoping you could haul the wagons to the city limits on some of your trucks. It might save the day.”
“I thought this celebration was supposed to be sort of authentic,” Duane said. “The pioneers didn’t haul their wagons around on flatbed trucks.”
He thought that argument might at least shame Buster Lickle. Buster was such an apostle of authenticity that he had wanted to have the old boards he found carbon-dated.
“Can’t you just go get ’em, Duane?” Jenny said. “We don’t have time to argue.”
Duane drove through the light, which was red again, and pulled up at the curb in front of the courthouse. Bobby Lee and Eddie Belt, authentically drunk at least, were sitting in front of Old Texasville, surrounded by empty beer cups. They seemed to be doing a fine job of impersonating the founders of the county.
Duane poured four Excedrin tablets out of a bottle he kept in the glove compartment and got himself a beer to wash them down with.
“I guess we better go rescue the wagon train,” he said. “They say it’s lost.”
“You know why, don’t you?” Bobby Lee said.
“No, I don’t know why,” Duane said. “I thought those cowboys could at least find their way to town.”
“Dickie traded some LSD for a quarter horse,” Bobby Lee said. “It was just some old LSD he’s had laying around for a year or two. I guess it hadn’t lost its punch though.”
“Those cowboys are higher than kites,” Eddie said.
“They think they’re in Colorado, having Rocky Mountain highs.”
>
“Why would Dickie want a quarter horse?” Duane asked. That was the puzzling part of the news. Dickie had never had any interest in horses.
“Jacy wanted a horse so she and Karla could take rides together,” Bobby Lee said. “Dickie thought the LSD was worthless so he traded and gave her the horse.”
Shorty came trotting around the courthouse carrying a beer bottle in his mouth. He dropped it at Duane’s feet and began to try and climb up his leg.
“The twins ran off and left him,” Bobby Lee said.
Duane scratched Shorty between the ears. Despite himself, he was glad to see him.
“Let’s go get the wagon train,” he said.
CHAPTER 69
TO BE ON THE SAFE SIDE THEY TOOK TWO FLATBED trucks. Bobby Lee and Shorty rode with Duane. Normally Bobby Lee refused to ride in any vehicle containing Shorty, but centennial fervor plus around forty beers had rendered him less cautious.
They were scarcely out of town before a red Porsche whizzed by them. Dickie was at the wheel and Suzie Nolan was with him. The Porsche, going at least a hundred, was soon out of sight.
“Where’d he get a Porsche?” Bobby Lee asked.
“I don’t know,” Duane said. He felt a stab of jealousy, soon smothered by his headache, which was no better. He realized that he liked Suzie Nolan more than was likely to be convenient for either of them.
“I wanted to marry Suzie when I was in high school but I was two grades below her and she wouldn’t even give me a date,” Bobby Lee said.
“I think the whole county’s waited till now to go crazy,” Duane said.
“Speak for yourself,” Bobby said. “I’m not a bit crazier than I was fifteen years ago.”
“I admit you got an early start,” Duane said. “Did you spread that lie about my family moving to Italy?”
“It ain’t a lie,” Bobby Lee said. “Karla says Jacy needs her worse than you do.”
“Who told you that?” Duane asked.
“Karla,” Bobby Lee said.
“Oh,” Duane said.
“I didn’t ask her to tell me,” Bobby Lee said. “I know too much about your life already.”
“I didn’t say I blamed you, did I?” Duane said. In fact, he didn’t blame him. Karla had always made a practice of confiding whatever she had to confide in anyone who happened to be handy when she felt like confiding. Bobby Lee had apparently just happened to be handy.
“How does she know how much I need her?” Duane asked. “She hasn’t been home in a week.”
“No, but she’s been home for twenty-two years,” Bobby Lee pointed out.
“I can’t tell whose side you’re on,” Duane said.
“I’m not on Shorty’s,” Bobby Lee assured him. He clutched a heavy pair of pliers, in case Shorty tried anything, though Shorty had spent most of the trip trying to give Duane dog-kisses.
They found the wagon train by following a trail of beer cans and other debris a couple of hundred yards into a pasture. Sure enough, two wagons had turned over, though neither was anywhere near the creek. Two or three cowboys stood by, looking dejected, and the rest were wandering around looking stoned. A group of happy cowgirls sat under a post oak tree painting their fingernails. Karla sat on the wheel of one of the overturned wagons, talking to her Appaloosa, named Willie Nelson in honor of her favorite singer. She was drinking vodka and grapefruit juice from a Neiman Marcus thermos. Duane knew it was vodka and grapefruit juice because she offered him some and he took a swallow.
“Pretty slow wagon train, isn’t it?” she said.
“I wish people would quit telling me you’re moving to Italy because I don’t need you anymore,” Duane said.
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Duane,” Karla said, grinning. She seemed in high spirits, and was more beautiful than all the other cowgirls put together.
“I don’t, but I’d like to believe something,” Duane said.
“Duane, I think you better just wait till after the centennial to start believing things again,” Karla said. “It’s gonna take enough energy just getting through the centennial.”
That was undeniable. No one was quite sure how the wagons happened to turn over. When questioned about the accident the cowboys who had driven the wagons turned sullen. One of them, a large cowboy named Mossy White, offered to whip Bobby Lee’s ass on the spot.
“Why mine?” Bobby Lee asked.
“Why not yours?” Mossy said.
“Let’s not scuffle, now,” Duane said.
“Scuffle?” Mossy said. “I might pound this little son-of-a-bitch into a juicy pulp. You call that scuffling?”
Eddie Belt, who had just arrived with the second truck, grabbed Bobby Lee and persuaded him not to fling himself into battle.
“There’s three of us and fifteen of them,” he pointed out.
Duane ignored the potential hostilities and set about winching the wagons back upright. That took forty-five minutes. Then he winched two of them up on one truck and two more up on the other truck. He got little help from anyone. Bobby Lee considered that his honor had been besmirched. He puffed up like a toad and tried to get Eddie to stand aside so he could attack the cowboys. Eddie, not wanting to be beaten to a pulp for someone else’s remark, held Bobby off. The two of them scuffled around in the underbrush, talking it over in loud whispers. The fact that Karla kept laughing at them didn’t improve matters.
Finally the cowboys got on their horses and rode off toward town. The cowgirls finished their nails and prepared to leave too. Duane persuaded them to drive the horses that had once been hitched to the wagons, since without the horses the wagons would have to ride in the parade on the back of his trucks, a spectacle too unauthentic to contemplate.
Once the cowboys were gone, Bobby Lee and Eddie Belt settled down and helped him chain the wagons securely to the truckbeds.
“Shoot, I didn’t bring near enough vodka and grapefruit juice,” Karla said, as she mounted her beloved Appaloosa, Willie Nelson.
“Duane, I hope you’re not going to go around looking gloomy during the whole centennial,” she added.
“I might,” Duane said.
“If you do, it’ll just make Italy look that much better,” Karla said, before riding off.
CHAPTER 70
DRIVING BACK TO TOWN WITH THE WAGONS ON HIS truck, Duane’s headache began to get worse. His headaches always got worse when he was nervous, and he felt extremely nervous. He had so many things to be nervous about that he had given up trying to separate them, but one major thing he was becoming more nervous about, as the time approached, was having to appear in his bathing suit in front of the whole county. He bitterly regretted having agreed to play Adam. The dress rehearsal hadn’t been so bad, because he had kept his shirt on, but the real show was only hours away.
“Have you got butterflies in your stomach, or what?” Bobby Lee asked.
“What makes you ask?” Duane said.
“You drive funny when you’re nervous,” Bobby Lee said. “Kinda jerky.”
Duane abruptly stopped the truck and got out.
“You drive,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” Bobby Lee said, once he was under the wheel and they were on their way to town.
“I’ll give you five hundred dollars if you’ll play Adam,” Duane said.
“I don’t look like Adam,” Bobby Lee said.
“How in the hell do you know what he looked like?” Duane asked. “Did you ever meet him?”
“No, but I’ve seen pictures of him in Sunday school,” Bobby Lee said. “Adam was taller than me. He was about your height.”
“Five hundred quick dollars,” Duane said, exasperated. “Just think of the money.”
Bobby Lee refused to discuss it further. Duane thought of asking Dickie, who loved money and had no shame, but Dickie had just been seen going south in a new Porsche at a high rate of speed. He was not available to be asked.
They got the wagons off the trucks and the teams h
itched up again just in time for the parade to start. The cowboys had become jumpy and paranoid. The ones who got to remain cowboys in the pageant stayed as far away as possible from the ones who were due to become Indians.
“Maybe that LSD was spoilt after all,” Eddie Belt theorized. “Some of those old boys look like they’re having bad trips.”
Karla, who had the prettiest horse, and Old Man Balt, the oldest citizen, led the parade. Mr. Balt carried Old Glory, Karla the Lone Star flag. Riding clubs from many neighboring towns had come to assist Hardtop County in its centennial effort—the parade strung out down the Wichita highway for more than two miles. Riding clubs alternated with floats. Jenny and a team of volunteers had stayed up all night putting the finishing touches on the courthouse float. Janine, Charlene and Lavelle rode on the float dressed in crinolines and bonnets—they represented pioneer filing clerks, and waved merrily to the large crowd.
As soon as the covered wagons were off the flatbed trucks a second replica of Texasville, this one made of papier-mâché, was hoisted up on one of them. Bobby Lee and Eddie Belt continued to perform as the two Mr. Browns, assisted by Nellie as Belle Brown.
Nellie looked so beautiful that people all along the route clapped for her as the float went by. Several cowboys interrupted their bad trips long enough to pay her compliments from horseback. Bobby Lee gazed at Nellie with lovesick eyes and made threatening gestures at any cowboy who came too close to the float.
Duane decided to sit out the parade. He walked down to the Kwik-Sack and bought some more Excedrin from Genevieve, who was watching the parade from a lawn chair in front of the store.
“There’s another chair in the back,” Genevieve said. “Sit down and watch a minute, Duane. You look tired.”
Duane got a chair and sat beside her. Karla and Old Man Balt had already passed, but he was in time to see his own company’s float go by. It was a float of a drilling rig, on the back of yet another of his trucks. Turkey Clay and a little roustabout named Squirrel stood beside the papier-mâché rig, representing the career roustabouts of the area.