“Fantasies. Want to help me index the Pound book? We haven’t done an index together in years.”
“I guess,” Lee said. “Ask me in the morning.”
3
JOE PERCY WAS GRIPING about how bad the movie was going to be, and Jim was listening to him without much interest. They were making the evening ride from the movie set to Amarillo, across the shimmering summer plains. Jim ordinarily rode in with Sonny Shanks and Catherine Dunne, a lithe blond starlet from Fargo, North Dakota, the home town of Casey Tibbs. In the film she was Sonny’s principal conquest, but whether he had managed to conquer her in real life was a matter for speculation. Almost everyone connected with the production speculated about it constantly. Catherine had left on Thursday to spend a weekend with her boy friend, but neither Jim nor Sonny was depressed about it. Eleanor Guthrie was flying in that evening and they were dining with her at the home of a wealthy lawyer. Jim was looking forward to the weekend—the thought of seeing Eleanor again excited him. Joe Percy had nothing to look forward to but a weekend of drinking in Amarillo and was depressed.
“We should have settled for a straight grade-C movie called The Sonny Shanks Story,” he said. “Everybody was willing except the producer. ‘I want something more resonant,’ he said.’ ‘Something a little more Conradian. It needs some moral ambiguity.’ He’s an idiot but he has a Harvard education and doesn’t want anybody to think he’s wasting it. I told him horseshit didn’t have resonance. Fragrance we might could have managed, but not resonance.”
“Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think,” Jim said. “I hate movies about the lives of athletes.”
“They’re okay if they’re clearly labeled,” Joe said. “What we’ve got is a movie about the life of an athlete. Only a dumb-ass like our producer could mistake it for The Heart of Darkness.”
Their car was at the head of a squadron of rental cars. Every morning at dawn the squadron sped out of Amarillo toward the location on the plains, and every afternoon the same squadron sped back to the huge motel in Amarillo and emptied its dusty cargo of actors and technicians into the greenish water of a large swimming pool. Jim jumped out as soon as the car stopped, hoping to get a quick swim before the mob filled the pool. A fat matron in a bright blue bathing suit was trying to teach her terrified son to float on his back. Hank Malory, his skin darkened by three months in the weathers of the plains, sat in a pool chair nearby. His surveying crew was working about sixty miles away and he had driven up to have a beer with Jim.
Instead, they had gin and tonics in Jim’s room. Jim made his light. He remembered that he had passed out the first time he had been in Eleanor’s company, and he didn’t intend for it to happen again. He showered and came out to find Hank leafing through a Playboy.
“I thought you had principles,” Hank said. “I knew I’d sink to this level once I was out of school, but I wouldn’t have thought it of you. Why aren’t you reading René Wellek and people like that?”
“It takes too much energy,” Jim said. “By the end of the day all I want to do is lie around and look at breasts.”
“How’s Patsy?”
“Fair,” Jim said, frowning. “I think the baby makes her a little claustrophobic.” His own memory of Davey had grown so vague that he felt guilty about it. “When are you going back?”
“Oh, pretty soon.”
“Good, go by and see her. Take her out to dinner or something. She must be bored out of her mind, with nothing to do but change diapers.”
They chatted amiably for a while, reminiscing about the graduate life, but Jim’s side of the chatter soon grew a little forced. It was not that he didn’t like Hank—he had been glad to see him—but he couldn’t quite get his mind off Eleanor Guthrie. He had spent the day thinking about the evening, and Hank’s presence broke into his visioning a little unpleasantly. Besides, it was almost time to go; when they finished their drinks they went out and stood by the pool a few minutes watching a pink blonde getting the make put on her by an intense young cameraman.
“You might like to meet Joe Percy,” Jim said. “He’s a wacky old screenwriter. Patsy’s fonder of him than I am, but he does tell good Hollywood stories. I’ll feel I’ve failed in my duty if I can’t introduce you to somebody.”
Joe was in the coffee shop, at a table by the plate-glass window, eating a honeydew melon. He rose politely and shook Hank’s hand. Just as he did, Sonny strode into the room; he had had a swim and his black hair was not quite dry. He wore a red shirt and a white sports coat and was in high spirits. When he heard Hank’s name he turned and studied him a minute.
“Used to know some Malorys,” he said. “Any kin to Marie?”
“She’s my aunt.”
“Thought so. You got the same build, all things considered. Wish I had time to sit and visit. Ain’t heard from Marie in years. We better go, though, Jimbo. Eleanor’s at the airfield.”
Jim apologized for having to run off, and they left hurriedly. Hank felt a little awkward. “Nice to have met you,” he said to Joe. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your supper.”
“Not at all,” Joe said. “You’re welcome to sit a spell, as they say in the South. Who are you?”
“Just a friend of the Carpenters,” Hank said. “I went to school in Houston for a while.”
“Oh, yes, the town where they rot fish. Compared to this place it’s delightful. Amarillo is the skin-cancer capital of the world, I find. Judging from your complexion you must live around here. What was that about Sonny and your aunt?”
“I’ve never known. They may have had a romance.”
Joe took a box of medicinal toothpicks out of his pocket and thoughtfully picked his teeth while Hank ordered and received a steak sandwich. They looked out the window at the skyline of Amarillo, the few tall buildings as blocklike as if they had been set there by a child. Behind the buildings was the wide beautifully colored evening sky.
“You’re not a young writer, I take it?” Joe asked.
“No.”
“Good. It’s nice to meet a young man who’s not a writer. Know any good places to drink around here?”
“Just a few honky-tonks,” Hank said. “They’re pretty ordinary.”
Joe stood up and reached in his pocket for some change. “If you’ve got nothing better to do let’s go to an ordinary honky-tonk,” he said. “I’ll tell you my philosophy of history or something while we drink. If I can find the Tatums we’ll take them along. He’s a rodeo clown. They know the Carpenters too.
“He likes to drink and his wife likes to dance,” he added. “So she and I dance while he drinks. A sociable arrangement.”
“Small world,” Hank said. Jim had made him feel a little out of place and he had been sorry he came, but he stopped feeling sorry. “Did you know Pete Tatum was once married to the aunt of mine who knew Sonny Shanks? It’s amazing that they both know the Carpenters.”
“That’s not so amazing,” Joe said. “I’m always meeting people who’ve met or been in love with or married or screwed or divorced someone I’ve met or been in love with or gone to bed with or something. It’s bound to happen, even in a place as big as Texas.”
Outside, the huge pool was empty. All the movie people had gone off to their dinners. The evening shadows covered the pool, making the green water dark. The Tatums proved easy to find and easy to entice. They were sitting in their messy motel room watching television. Boots was glad to see them, and happy to be going out. Joe’s love of dancing had been a great boon to her, for she had had nothing to do for two weeks except sit around the motel. Pete was tired and would just as soon have watched television, but he got up and put on a clean shirt and came along, quiet but willing. They went to a nearby dance hall called Elmer’s Lounge, a very dark place. The only strong light came from the jukebox.
“The waitresses here must learn to count their steps,” Joe said, but soon he and Boots were on the sawdusty square of dance floor, laughing and dancing, while two or three melancholy roughnec
ks peered at Boots through the gloom.
Hank had diplomatically waited until Boots was out of hearing to mention that he was Marie Malory’s nephew. Pete looked up from his beer in surprise. “My god,” he said. “You’re Monroe’s boy?”
“I’m Monroe’s boy.”
Pete was silent for a minute. “I never met your dad but once,” he said. “That was just after the war. I think we meant to get him to fiddle at our wedding, but then we run off and got married and did without the fiddling.”
Then, instead of talking, they both fell silent, Hank thinking of his father, Pete of his first wife—of Monroe and Marie, people from another time. The jukebox was turned up loud and one song followed another as quickly as the record arm could shift. Joe Percy barely had time to wipe the sweat from his forehead before the music started again. From the booth, Hank could see Boots’s white blond hair moving in the gloom. The music that filled the bar was so familiar to Hank and to Pete and to Boots that they scarcely heard it consciously. It was merely one of the sounds behind their lives. Someone played a war song about a veteran whose balls had been blown away in Vietnam—“that old crazy Asian war,” as the song put it. The soldier’s wife was named Ruby and the song was a raw plea that Ruby not leave him, despite his sad condition:
Oh Ruuuuuby, Ruuuby,
Don’t take your love to town . . .
It offended Joe Percy; he tried not to listen. Pete and Hank were drinking beer. Pete had danced to such songs with Marie, in the days when he danced more. Then it had been “Dear John”; it had been “Fräulein.” A decade earlier Monroe Malory had danced to such songs with Hank’s mother—to “The Soldier’s Last Letter” and the war songs of World War II. They had danced in the same darkness, on the same sawdust dance floors, with the same onlookers looking on—roughnecks and truck drivers, cowhands and mechanics—all of them sitting in their booths musing of women. George Jones or Johnny Cash, Hank Williams or Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff or Kitty Wells—only the shape of the beer bottle had changed over the years. When Pete spoke, idly spinning a fifty-cent piece between his fingers, it was not of Marie at all.
“Seen Patsy since she had her baby?” he asked.
Hank said no. Joe and Boots came over, sweaty and out of breath. Joe drank whiskey from a bottle he had brought along, and the rest of them drank beer. Eventually it was midnight. Boots had been asleep for an hour, her head against Pete’s shoulder.
“We got to quit drinking with you, Joe,” Pete said. “You wear her out and then I have to carry her all the way to bed. Wake up, honey, we better go.”
“I’m awake,” Boots said sleepily.
Back at the motel the Tatums said good night and staggered in to bed, Boots with both arms around her husband’s waist. Hank had had eight beers and felt a little fuzzy himself. His motel was in Clarendon, sixty miles away, and he was wondering if he could make it without getting sleepy. Joe seemed fresh and clear-headed. He stood by the swimming pool looking up at the high, clear Panhandle moon.
“Do you know Dixie, by any chance?” he asked. “Patsy’s aunt.”
“No.”
“Your mentioning that it was a small world made me think of her. She’s one of Sonny’s old girls. One of my old girls too, I guess. So in theory at least, both your aunt and Patsy’s aunt have been had by Sonny. Dixie’s supposed to come up here one of these days. If she were to elope with Pete—god forbid—that would really close the circle.”
He sat on the diving board and smoked a small cigar, enjoying the quietness of the night, and Hank drove sixty miles across the still, moonlit plains to his motel. When he got there he tried to write Patsy a letter telling her he was coming back to Houston, but he found that he was too fuzzy. He wrote it the next morning as soon as he awoke.
4
HANK’S LETTER WAS SHORT—only a note, really—but it took Patsy’s breath. It came on one of those mornings when she had not felt like dressing; she felt cheerfully sloppy and lazy and on the whole calm, and when she heard the postman’s steps going down the driveway she left Davey undiapered for a moment and stepped out on the landing, where the mailbox was, hoping some magazines had come. She was in her gown and a blue summer robe. The boards of the landing were hot against her bare feet and the noon sun warm on her face and her calves.
There were no magazines, just some bills, a letter from her mother, who was in Colorado Springs, and the envelope with Hank’s name on it. When she saw his name she had a moment of shock and immediately tore it open and read it, standing in the hot sun:
Dear Patsy,
Rice has renewed my scholarship, so I will be back soon. I have enough money to last until school starts. I saw Jim last night, but he had a dinner engagement and we didn’t get to talk much. I don’t know exactly when I’ll get to Houston but I want to see you very badly. I thought I ought to warn you. I’ll come by when I get in.
Hank
Davey had begun to yell for her, but she scarcely heard him. All the terrible strange feelings that had possessed her when Hank was there came back for a moment, and it was hard to get her breath. She stepped inside, into the shade. Everything was complicated again. With him gone, life had simplicity—a drab simplicity, perhaps, but at least it wasn’t complicated or scary. The flush of feeling that passed through her became a kind of anger. Who was he, to write her such a letter? What was he presuming? So they had felt romantic, months before. So they had kissed. That was all past; he had no right even to write her a letter, much less to assume that he was still a factor in her life. It was very rude of him. Miffed, she dropped the note into the bathroom wastebasket. She shook her hair free on her neck and straightened her robe over her breast and looked in the mirror to see if she looked like the kind of woman he apparently thought she was. Her image reassured her. She looked formidably domestic—a mother. Actually she had never looked better, and she knew it; the way she looked would be a fitting torment for him if he came by. She felt completely inaccessible and hurried in to Davey, who was crying lustily, lying on his back undiapered. The minute Patsy went to the bed he stopped crying, looked up at her through his tears, and began to pee, wetting his stomach and the new diaper she had laid out. “Oh, you’re always doing that,” she said, swabbing him efficiently. She abandoned her matriarchal expression long enough to nuzzle his stomach. Davey grinned in response. When he was diapered she carried him over and plopped him on her unmade bed amid the morning paper.
Then she went and got the letter out of the wastebasket and came back to the bed to reread it. Davey had managed to bite off a piece of the newspaper and she dug it out of his mouth with one finger and patted his back until he stopped yelling. He caught a strand of her hair in his fist and mouthed it; he could tug hard enough to hurt her scalp. She read the letter and folded it again and pressed the thin edge of the paper against her lips. There was a sag inside her, a kind of softening. She remembered how pleasant it had been to come into the drugstore and find him there eating. It had made her feel better all day. She disentangled Davey’s fist from her hair and took him in her arms and jiggled him a little, hoping he would lift her mood. He was in a merry mood himself, but she began to cry. “I’ll stop,” she said, feeling silly. She said it again, as if Davey might be worried about her, but he wasn’t. When she got tense and stiff he sometimes got stiff too, but she was the opposite of stiff, she felt as if she had suddenly gone all soft and muscleless. She got up and with Davey on her shoulder went to the kitchen and fixed herself some iced tea; she sat at the table by the kitchen window letting him play with the buttons on her robe. Her cheeks dried and she found herself smiling. She put her forehead against Davey’s, something that always amazed him. Then her hair fell between them and tickled his nose and he rubbed it with his fist. It was funny; her lips curved happily. Things were not so bad, after all. She suddenly felt like getting out and popped Davey into his bed and dressed. As soon as Juanita came she went out and spent a happy afternoon poking in antique stores. She never bought real antiques,
but she liked to poke in antique stores. She spent a pleasant hour going through a huge stack of old sheet music, reading the songs. All she bought was a tortoise-shell comb and a shabby book by Ouida that cost a quarter.
That night in bed she was trying unsuccessfully to read the book when Jim called. He sounded even more cheerful than usual.
“I was just reading Ouida,” she said. “I’m thinking of going to graduate school and doing a dissertation on her. Are you really as happy as you sound? You never sound that happy when you’re around me.”
There was a pause. “Please quit that,” he said. “You’re always on the attack.”
“I just asked a question. Is a question an attack?”
“Some questions are.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“It always sounds like you mean something,” he said angrily. “You have a great memory for everything except the fact that I love you. You act as if I’m deserting you, just because I want to make decent money for once in our marriage.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, chastened. “Please don’t go on about it. I really didn’t mean to pick at you. I don’t want to have an argument with you. I always just cry after you hang up.”
“I knew you’d say something like that,” he said. “Every time I criticize you, you tell me to stop or you’ll cry. Aren’t you tired of being a crybaby?”
“I’m tired of it, I’m tired of it,” she said, dispirited. “Couldn’t we forget I ever said anything wrong and start the whole conversation over. I really didn’t mean to sound bitchy.”
“I don’t know what we can do,” Jim said. “How’s Davey?”
They managed, by talking of Davey, to be pleasant and chatty for the remainder of the call. Patsy was hoping he would say something nice, something gentler, before he hung up, so she could go to sleep feeling in rapport with him. Jim was hoping she would do the same. Both of them concentrated on not saying anything wrong; neither said anything very positive, or loving, or even spontaneous, and the rapport was not achieved. Jim felt guilty for having flared up, but it was a slight feeling of guilt that had made him flare up. He had yet to tell Patsy that Eleanor was in Amarillo, but she was there and he was infatuated with her and what Patsy had said about him sounding unusually happy was no more than true. It had been so true that he had had to attack it, but he felt even guiltier after he hung up.