Texasville

  “I agree,” Duane said. “I can’t remember a tenth of these people.”

  “That’s not the point,” Jacy said.

  “Well, I’m drunk,” Duane said. “I can’t be expected to get the point.”

  “What we can’t expect anymore is the point,” Jacy said. “We can’t expect most of the things we once could have had, if we’d just been smarter, or had more guts.”

  Duane didn’t quite understand, but he liked it that Jacy was still resting her hands on his shoulder.

  “Do you read poetry?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Remember Keats?” she said. “John Cecil used to read him to us in class.”

  “I was too busy thinking about you in that class,” Duane said. “If I slumped down in my seat I could almost see up your skirt sometimes.”

  “It might have been better if you’d listened to the poems, instead of just trying to look at my cunt,” Jacy said. “In the long run it might have got you more.”

  “I never gave a thought to the long run,” Duane said.

  “But now you’ve almost run it and you don’t have the cunt, or the poem either,” Jacy said. “When old age shall this generation waste.”

  “What?” he asked, puzzled.

  “When old age shall this generation waste,” Jacy said again. “It’s a line from one of the poems you were too cunt-fixated to bother reading.”

  “It looks like middle age has pretty well wasted this one,” Duane said, looking around at their classmates. The most disappointed-looking were also the most raucous. Many faces seemed lumpy, like the faces of aging prizefighters.

  “We’re not even fifty yet,” he said.

  “We might as well be,” Jacy said.

  She took her hands off his shoulders and walked away.

  CHAPTER 72

  “IT WAS BLOWING A GALE THIS MORNING, WHY couldn’t there at least be a breeze tonight?” Jenny Marlow asked. She was wearing a red satin cowgirl shirt and looked sweaty and apprehensive. The first performance of the pageant was about to begin.

  “It doesn’t work that way around here,” Duane said, stating the obvious. The morning’s gale had given way to an intense sultriness. Though it was seven in the evening, the temperature was one hundred and six. The sun appeared to have stalled in its descent. It hung just above ground level, cooking the hundreds of people who had crammed themselves into the little grandstand, many of whom already looked well cooked.

  Duane was still a little hung over from the papaya punch. He didn’t feel like talking, or listening, either, a fact which deterred no one. Several people were talking to him at once, expecting him not only to listen but to produce sensible decisions as well.

  Old Man Balt was the immediate subject of controversy. He sat just behind Duane, atop a large sorrel horse named Dobbs. As Hardtop County’s oldest living pioneer, Mr. Balt was about to open the evening’s entertainment by riding around the arena carrying the American flag. It was the old man’s moment of glory, one hundred years in the making. Karla sat beside him, on Willie Nelson. She was to ride the colors with him, carrying the Texas flag.

  Old Man Balt sat impassively atop Dobbs, chewing tobacco. At the last minute Jenny had stuck a Buffalo Bill wig on his head. She had procured a gross or two of pioneer wigs from an outfitter in Old Tucson. Mr. Balt’s wig was held in place by a large cowboy hat.

  The old man looked ready, but he wasn’t saying much. Now and again he bent over and spat tobacco juice. It was the spitting that had everybody worried.

  “Daddy spits about every two minutes,” Beulah said. “He’s been chewin’ and spittin’ for ninety years now. He’s so in the habit of spittin’ I guess he’d spit ever’ two minutes even if he didn’t have any tobacco juice in his mouth.”

  “That’s what scares me,” Jenny said. “What if he leans over to spit and falls off? He’ll break into a million pieces.”

  “He fell out of a moving car and didn’t break a single bone,” Duane reminded her.

  “He don’t have much of a grip,” Buster Lickle pointed out. “He might drop the flag. If Old Glory gets besmirched on opening night we’re in for some bad publicity.”

  Bobby Lee, man of dark visions, had wandered over to listen. His mere presence irritated Duane.

  “He might drop the flag and spit on it too,” Bobby Lee said. “He’ll never get no letter from the President if word of that gets out.”

  “Shut up and go away,” Duane said. “I don’t want any unsolicited opinion right now.”

  “If you can’t stand the heat get off the pot,” Bobby Lee said, unimpressed.

  “Hellzapoppin!” Old Man Balt said. It was evidently an expression he had learned long ago.

  “Nobody’s ever got hurt riding Dobbs,” Duane pointed out.

  Dobbs, a retired kid pony, had been chosen after much research as the horse most likely to carry Old Man Balt safely around the arena. His reputation for stability was countywide. Often as many as five children had ridden him in parades, all safely. Dobbs, nearly thirty, had been Dickie’s kid pony, and Nellie’s as well.

  “There’s no better horse for the job,” Duane said.

  Various members of the committee still looked irritatingly dubious.

  “Okay, then I’ll wire him on!” Duane said. He found some baling wire in the back of a pickup and wired Old Man Balt’s feet securely in the stirrups. The old man seemed to be napping.

  “I never heard of anybody being wired to a horse,” Bobby Lee said. “What if the horse falls down and squashes the poor old soul?”

  “Fuck you,” Duane said. “Start the show.”

  To stifle further debate he climbed quickly up into the announcer’s booth. Sonny was there, testing the sound system. The stands on both sides of the arena were packed, and hundreds of people lined the fences or sat on the hoods of pickups. The sun had finally dropped, though its departure had not made the evening much cooler.

  Across the calm encircling plain, Duane could see the lights beginning to wink on in little oilpatch communities fifteen and twenty miles away.

  “Look at this crowd,” Sonny said. “There’s never been this many people in town at one time before.”

  For once he seemed genuinely cheerful. At the reunion he had been the one person who really seemed to be enjoying himself. He remembered everyone, and had even laughed out loud a time or two. It had been so long since anyone had heard Sonny laugh out loud that Duane had even mentioned it to Karla.

  “It wasn’t a natural laugh, Duane,” Karla said. “It was the kind of laugh that makes you feel like crying, if you know the person real well.”

  “I don’t think you know Sonny real well,” Duane said. “I don’t think anybody does.”

  “Don’t talk to me about it right now or I won’t sing good in the show,” Karla said. “It makes me feel like crying and I can’t sing good when I’m about to cry.”

  “There they go,” Sonny said.

  Sure enough, the colors were riding. Karla tried to set the pace, holding Willie Nelson to a sedate trot, but Old Man Balt wasn’t interested in sedate trots. He had been equipped with a quirt, in case the lethargic Dobbs refused to move at all, and he began to beat Dobbs with it vigorously, kicking him at the same time.

  Dobbs commenced a ponderous jog, which didn’t satisfy Old Man Balt in the least. He began to try and hit Dobbs with the American flag. Dobbs ignored his efforts, trotting slowly along.

  But Old Man Balt wasn’t going to spend his moment of glory in a slow trot. He twisted around and managed to jab Dobbs in the flank with the little golden eagle on top of the American flag.

  “Uh-oh,” Duane said.

  The jab was too much, even for Dobbs. He lifted his tail, farted loudly, and broke into a kind of run—perhaps the first he had indulged in for ten or fifteen years. The novelty of rapid motion seemed to inspire him—he ran even faster. Old Man Balt’s big hat and Buffalo Bill wig at once blew off. Their loss made him appear to be headl
ess, for the high pioneer collar with which he had been outfitted completely hid his small wizened head.

  Karla, taken unawares, had to spur Willie Nelson in order to stay even with Dobbs’s wild charge. The two riders crossed at the far end of the arena, flags fluttering. Old Man Balt was waving his flag about above his head, as if leading a cavalry charge.

  “This is great,” Sonny said. “Look at that old man go.”

  The crowd was equally impressed. Horns honked and people leaped to their feet, cheering. Dobbs thundered down the north side of the arena, directly under the announcer’s booth. Several cowboys, lounging around the bucking chutes, looked up, saw him coming and automatically began climbing the fence, as surprised as if they had seen a rhino charging at them.

  At the last second, just as the two horses were about to pass out of the arena, the excited Dobbs decided to go around again. Karla had to fling the Appaloosa back on its haunches to keep from being hit broadside.

  “Oh, no, he’s tilting,” Duane said, as Old Man Balt started up the far side of the arena for a second time.

  Sure enough, the saddle was slipping. Old Man Balt was leaning left, roughly in the ten o’clock position.

  “Where’s the pickup men?” Sonny asked. “They’ll have to get him.”

  “This isn’t a rodeo,” Duane said. “There aren’t any pickup men. Besides, he’s wired to the saddle.”

  Karla had handed her flag to a cowboy. She loped alongside Dobbs, trying to decide how to proceed. Old Man Balt had already slipped to the nine o’clock position. He was sticking straight off the left side of the horse, parallel to the ground.

  Duane dashed out of the announcer’s booth and began to run down the grandstand steps. Just as he was approaching the ground a child carrying a Sno-Cone appeared, directly in front of him. Duane jumped over the child but fell hard against the arena fence. He got up and tried to climb the fence but felt a sharp stab of pain in his side. Looking through the wire he saw that Old Man Balt had slipped to eight o’clock. If he slipped to six he would undoubtedly be pulverized by Dobbs’s huge hoofs.

  Duane made another try and got over the fence, but when he landed he was in too much pain to move. It didn’t matter, though; while he was getting over the fence Dickie had stopped flirting with his little group of cowboys’ wives long enough to run out, catch his old kid pony and ease him to a stop. Old Man Balt slipped to six o’clock just as the horse stopped. Duane limped over and helped Karla unwire him. Dickie had even managed to catch the American flag and keep it from falling in the dirt. He stood patting Dobbs’s neck, apparently not even particularly impressed with himself for having rescued the county’s oldest living citizen.

  “I’m in adrenaline shock from nearly being run over,” Karla said. “Is that why you’re so pale, Duane? Was you worried I’d be killed?”

  “That, plus I think I might have broken one or two ribs when I jumped that kid with the Sno-Cone,” Duane said.

  CHAPTER 73

  “IT’S IRONIC THAT YOU BROKE ALL YOUR RIBS JUST before we did the Adam and Eve skit,” Jacy said. “I wonder what a psychiatrist would make of that.”

  “He’d probably just empty his wastebasket on his desk,” Duane said.

  Jacy gave him a tolerant smile. In general, she seemed to find him amusing.

  “The psychiatrist wouldn’t necessarily be a male,” Jacy said. “There are women psychiatrists—good ones, too.”

  “Anyway, I didn’t break all my ribs,” Duane said. “I just broke three.”

  “That doesn’t affect the irony, honey pie,” Jacy said.

  Duane had never been totally sure that he knew what irony was, but he didn’t say so. The two of them sat in the little waiting room of the Thalia hospital, waiting for the doctor to come back and bandage Duane’s ribs. The doctor had rushed up from the pageant and taken X-rays, but then he had to dash back and drive a horse and buggy around the arena in a skit honoring pioneer doctors.

  Jacy still wore the body stocking she had worn as Eve. She had driven Duane to the hospital instead of Karla because Karla had to be in the square-dance exhibition. Jacy had nothing to do until it was time for her to sing the closing hymn.

  “I wish we could go swimming,” Jacy said. “This body stocking is hot.”

  Duane had on the bathing suit he had worn to play Adam, with a shirt thrown over his shoulders. The bathing suit sported a sewn-on fig leaf that flopped when he walked. The air conditioning in the waiting room seemed to have faltered—it was almost as sultry as it had been outdoors. Jacy had piled her long hair on top of her head but there were still beads of sweat on her neck. The body stocking was sweat-stained at the armpits and also between her breasts.

  The crowd had loved the Garden of Eden skit, though. Duane had to do little more than hold his side and look surprised, while Jacy lounged under a small tree in her body stocking, pretending to get instructions from a rubber snake. Then she persuaded Adam to eat a bite of apple, at which point the sound system produced a crackling sound that was meant to signify God’s displeasure. Then Adam and Eve walked hand in hand out of Eden, toward the bucking chutes.

  The crowd had screamed and yelled for more, although groups of patriots and redcoats were already mustered behind the calf pens, ready to fight the American Revolution.

  “You don’t really have to wait around in this heat,” Duane said. “You could go on back. The doctor can bring me when he gets me bandaged up.”

  “Eve’s not supposed to run off and leave Adam just because it’s summertime in the garden,” Jacy said.

  Duane wished the doctor would hurry. Being alone with Jacy made him slightly apprehensive. He often felt a similar apprehension when he was alone with Karla, but at least he knew why he was apprehensive: either Karla was mad at him already or she was likely to become mad if he made the slightest wrong move.

  But Jacy was not mad, or very likely to become mad. Her behavior was friendly and considerate—loyal, even. She had already been waiting with him in the muggy room for forty-five minutes and had displayed neither impatience nor pique.

  “I guess we’re the only ones in the hospital,” he said, thinking out loud.

  “Yeah, and it’s full of beds, too,” Jacy said.

  She smiled at him again, and then leaned back against the vinyl couch and yawned. She closed her eyes for a moment. She seemed to be about to doze, but then she opened her eyes again and looked at him.

  “I don’t want you to try and fuck me, Duane,” she said.

  “I wasn’t going to,” he protested quickly.

  “No, you weren’t, but you were going to tie yourself in knots thinking about it every time we’re together,” she said. “I can’t enjoy you if you’re sitting there mind-fucking, and you can’t enjoy me either. If you’d just relax about it we could have a certain amount of fun.”

  “Okay,” Duane said.

  “Can’t you do a little better than okay?” she asked. “I don’t guess I know what you would consider better,” he said.

  “Conversation, for starters,” Jacy said, with some vehemence. “I get tired of starting every one we have. You start one for a change. When I had lovers I usually had to tell them every single thing I wanted done. Having to beg men to talk is just about as depressing, let me tell you.”

  “I guess I get scared I’ll say something wrong,” Duane said.

  “You talk to every other woman within a fifty-mile radius,” Jacy said. “But you won’t talk to me because you’re afraid you’ll say something wrong. What if you did say something wrong? Do you think I’d banish you forever for some small conversational lapse?”

  “I guess I must think that,” Duane said.

  Jacy chuckled.

  “You sure do a lot of guessing,” she said. “But not very bold guessing. At least not where I’m concerned. Why are you so timid with me, Duane?”

  “I’m scared in some way,” he said. “I don’t know why, exactly.”

  “And you’re not scared of Karl
a in the same way.”

  “Oh, I’m plenty scared of Karla,” Duane said.

  “But not scared in exactly the way you are with me,” Jacy said.

  “Karla and I have survived a lot of mistakes,” he said. “I imagine we’ll survive a lot more.”

  “Uh-huh, and you could probably even survive a few with me,” Jacy said. “You have survived a few with me, in fact.”

  Duane felt painfully confused. When he wasn’t with Jacy he sometimes imagined approaching her sexually, but in her company he immediately knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t. The timidity she complained of overcame him, blocking his desire.

  And yet the moment she left him he felt filled with yearning and troubled by a sense that he had mishandled an opportunity, missing a chance to draw close to the woman he had once supposed he would spend his life being close to.

  Now the timidity seemed to be increasing. His silly injury had presented him with a fine chance to talk to her, but he wasn’t talking. He was just sort of mumbling. Even his desire to talk seemed to be blocked.

  “I don’t think my ribs need bandaging all that bad,” he said, feeling at a loss. “Maybe we should just go on back to the pageant.”

  Jacy had been looking rather cheerful. The minute he spoke her face fell.

  “Okay,” she said, in a subdued voice.

  Duane felt terrible. He knew he was doing virtually everything wrong.

  “Why’d you take my family away?” he asked—it was the one thing he could think of to ask.

  “They’re fearless,” Jacy said. “I need that. I thought some of it must have come from you, but now I don’t know. Maybe it all came from Karla. You’re sure not fearless. You’re afraid to sit here with me. You’re scared to death you might feel something you can’t control.”

  She stood up, but instead of walking out of the hospital she went down the hall and turned a corner. Duane assumed she might have needed to use the bathroom, but several minutes passed and she didn’t reappear.

  Then the doctor popped in, dressed in a black frock coat, a stovepipe hat and fake side whiskers.