The Last Picture Show

  In a minute or two he got over it, though, and threw the wet towel at Sonny. “No more goddamn towel fightin’,” he said and went over and looked closely at Bobby Logan’s hip. The freshmen were scared almost to death—one was so nervous he put his shoes on the wrong feet and wore them home that way, too scared to stop and change. The older boys had seen the coach flare up before and knew it was just a matter of surviving until he cooled off. The time he shot at Sonny it was because he thought Sonny had scared away a dove he was sneaking up on. Fortunately, Sonny was a hundred yards away and wasn’t hit.

  “I don’t understand how Mrs. Popper’s lasted,” Duane said, as he was dressing.

  “She ain’t the healthiest looking woman in town,” Sonny reminded him. Mrs. Popper’s name was Ruth; she was a small woman, pretty but tired and nervous looking. No one saw much of her. At Christmastime she sometimes made Sonny and Duane cookies and brought them around. Sam the Lion had known her all her life and said that she had been lovely when she was young.

  Jacy was waiting for the boys when they came out. “My folks are gone to Wichita,” she said. “Let’s go get a hamburger.”

  They got in the convertible and drove to the drive-in, a place called The Rat-Hole. The boys were starved and ordered two hamburgers apiece; while they were cooking, Jacy and Duane smooched a little and Sonny cleaned his fingernails and looked out the back window. About the time their order came Abilene drove up in his Mercury and parked beside them. They all waved at him and he nodded in reply, barely moving his head. He was drinking a can of beer.

  “You need a haircut,” Jacy said, putting her hand lightly on the back of Duane’s neck. They were sitting very close together, and were feeding one another French fries when the Farrows’ big blue Cadillac pulled in and parked beside them. Lois Farrow was driving. She had her sunglasses on, even though it was a cloudy day. Duane scooted back to his side of the car as quickly as he could, but the Farrows gave no indication that they even noticed him. In a minute Mrs. Farrow got out and walked around to Jacy’s window.

  “We’re having supper at home tonight,” she said. “As soon as the boys get through with their hamburgers you take them to town and get yourself home, you hear?”

  Mrs. Farrow looked bored, even with her sunglasses on. For some reason Sonny felt scared of her, and so did Jacy and Duane. All three were nervous. Mrs. Farrow noticed Abilene sitting there and she calmly thumbed her nose at him. He gave her a finger in return and took another swallow of his beer. Lois went back to the Cadillac and the three kids hastily finished their meal, Jacy dripping tears of annoyance into her strawberry milk shake.

  “She didn’t have to look so hateful,” Jacy said, sniffling. “I just wish my grandmother was alive. She’d see we got married even if we had to run away and do it.”

  CHAPTER V

  AT THE FARROW supper table an hour later, Lois and Jacy politely ignored one another, while Gene made conversation with desperate good cheer. After supper, though, he gave up, watched Groucho Marx, and then got in bed and quickly drank himself to sleep. He just wasn’t built to withstand the quality of tension Lois and Jacy could generate.

  The one thing Lois envied Gene was his ability to drink himself to sleep quickly. He went to sleep on so little alcohol that he was never bothered with hangovers the next day, whereas Lois had to drink for hours before the liquor would turn her off. If she just had to sleep, she took pills.

  When it was almost Jacy’s bedtime Lois stopped at her door for a minute, knocked, and went in. Jacy had already showered and was sitting on the bed in pink pajamas, rubbing cleansing cream into her face. Occasionally, despite her precautions, Jacy got what she called a blemish, but she took great pains with her complexion and didn’t have many.

  “Go on, don’t let me interrupt your facial,” Lois said. She walked around the room, frowning. Almost every object in the room annoyed her; she couldn’t decide whether Jacy simply had bad taste or had deliberately chosen ugly objects as a means of affronting her. There were five or six stuffed animals, all of which Duane had won for her at ball-throwing booths in the State Fair; they were grouped in one corner, around a large Mortimer Snerd doll, also a gift from Duane. One wall was mostly bulletin board, and every picture of Jacy or Duane that had ever appeared in the Thalia Times was tacked on it. In addition to the pictures there were football programs, photographs of Jacy as cheerleader (sophomore year) and as Football Queen (junior year), the menu of the junior dinner dance, the program of the junior play, and many other mementos. On the bedside table there was a framed picture of Duane, and on the wall, a framed picture of Jesus. Next to the picture of Duane was an alarm clock and a white zipper Bible, and on the other side of the bed was Jacy’s pile of movie magazines, most of them with Debbie Reynolds on the cover. Debbie Reynolds was Jacy’s ideal.

  “Well, I guess you hate me tonight, right?” Lois said.

  “Oh, Momma you know I love you,” Jacy said, wiping the cream off. “But I love Duane too, even if you don’t like it.”

  “Like it? Liking it or disliking it hasn’t entered my head, because I don’t believe it. Who you love is your own pretty self and what you really love is knowing you’re pretty—I’m sure he tells you how pretty you are all the time so I don’t doubt you’re fond of him. Even your grandmother learned that much about you. And you are pretty, you ought to enjoy it. I’d just sort of hate to see you marry Duane, though, because in about two months he’d quit flattering you and you wouldn’t be rich anymore and life wouldn’t be near as much fun for you as it is right now.”

  “But I don’t care about money,” Jacy said solemnly. “I don’t care about it at all.”

  Lois sighed. “You’re pretty stupid then,” she said. “If you’re that stupid you ought to go and marry him—it would be the cheapest way to educate you.”

  Jacy was so shocked at being called stupid that she didn’t even cry. Her mother knew she made straight-A report cards!

  “You married Daddy when he was poor,” she said weakly. “He got rich so I don’t see why Duane couldn’t.”

  “I’ll tell you why, beautiful,” Lois said. “I scared your daddy into getting rich. He’s so scared of me that for twenty years he’s done nothing but run around trying to find things to please me. He’s never found the right things but he made a million dollars looking.”

  “If Daddy could do it Duane could too,” Jacy insisted, pouting.

  “Not married to you, he couldn’t,” Lois said. “You’re not scary enough. You’d be miserable poor but as long as you had somebody to hold your hand and tell you how pretty you are you’d make out.”

  “Well you’re miserable and you’re rich,” Jacy countered. “I sure don’t want to be like you.”

  “You sound exactly like your grandmother,” Lois said, looking absently out the window. “There’s not much danger you’ll be like me. Have you ever slept with Duane?”

  It was undoubtedly the most surprising conversation Jacy had ever had!

  “Me?” she said. “You know I wouldn’t do that, Momma.”

  “Well, you just as well,” Lois said quietly, a little amused at herself and at life. She never had been able to resist shocking her mother; apparently it was going to be almost as difficult to resist shocking her daughter.

  “Seriously,” she added. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t have as much fun as you’re capable of having. You can come with me to the doctor sometime and we’ll arrange something so you won’t have to worry about babies. You do have to be careful about that.”

  To Jacy what she was hearing was almost beyond belief.

  “But Momma,” she said. “It’s a sin unless you’re married, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “Oh, don’t be so mealymouthed,” Lois shouted. “Why am I even talking to you? I just thought if you slept with Duane a few times you’d find out there really isn’t anything magic about him, and have yourself some fun to boot. Maybe then you’d realize that pretty things and
pretty people are what you like in life and we can send you to a good school where you’ll marry some good-looking kid with the wherewithal to give you a pleasant life.”

  “But I don’t want to leave,” Jacy said plaintively. “Why can’t I just stay here and go to college in Wichita?”

  “Because life’s too damn hard here,” Lois said. “The land’s got too much power over you. Being rich here is a good way to go insane. Everything’s flat and empty and there’s nothing to do but spend money.”

  She walked over to Jacy’s dresser and picked up the big fifty-dollar bottle of Chanel No. 5 that Gene had given his daughter the Christmas before.

  “May I have some of your perfume?” she asked. “I suddenly feel like smelling good.”

  “Help yourself,” Jacy said, suddenly wishing her mother were gone. “Don’t you have any?”

  “Yes, but this is right here, and I feel like smelling good right now. Do you ever feel like doing anything right now?”

  She wet her palms and fingertips with perfume and placed her hands against her throat, then touched her fingers behind her ears. The cool scent was delicious. She dampened her hands again, touched her shoulders, and then stooped and ran her palms down the calves of her legs.

  “That’s lovely,” she said. Almost at once the perfume made her feel less depressed, and when she looked at Jacy again she noticed how young she was. Jacy’s hair was pulled back by a headband, and her face, clean of makeup, was so clearly a girl’s face that Lois ceased to feel angry with her.

  “This is the first time in months I’ve seen your eyelids,” she said. “You should leave your face just like that—it would win you more. Makeup is just sort of a custom you’ve adopted. All you really need right now is an eyebrow pencil.”

  Jacy looked blank and sleepy and Lois knew her advice was wasted.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll let you alone. I probably confused you tonight and I do hope so. If I could just confuse you it would be a start. The only really important thing I came in to tell you was that life is very monotonous. Things happen the same way over and over again. I think it’s more monotonous in this part of the country than it is in other places, but I don’t really know that—it may be monotonous everywhere. I’m sick of it, myself. Everything gets old if you do it often enough. I don’t particularly care who you marry, but if you want to find out about monotony real quick just marry Duane.”

  With that she left and walked down the thickly carpeted hall to her bedroom. As she walked through the door she heard her husband snoring; the only light in the room was the tiny orange glow of the electric blanket control. Lois sat down on the bed and rubbed her calves wearily. To kill the morning she had gone to Wichita Falls and spent $150; to kill the afternoon she had had three drinks and several rubbers of bridge at the country club. It seemed unjust that after all that work she should still have the problem of how to kill the night. She got up and went out in the hall, where she could see her wristwatch. It was only a little after ten.

  After considering a moment she went to the kitchen and got a whiskey glass out of the cabinet. Bourbon was her night drink. She picked up the wall phone and dialed the poolhall and Sam the Lion answered.

  “Hi, friend,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Hi, honey,” Sam said. “I’m winterin’ fairly well. How about you?”

  “Oh, I won’t complain,” Lois said. “I wish you’d come and see me sometime. Has your number one customer left for the night?”

  “No, he’s here shootin’,” Sam said. “I’ll let you talk to him as soon as he finishes his run. You come and see me, you got a car.”

  In a minute or so Abilene took the phone. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Hey. Feel like a night off?”

  “Depends on the salary,” he replied.

  “Well, drill hard,” she said. “You’re better at oil wells anyway.”

  She took her bourbon into the den and switched the TV on. A Claudette Colbert movie was just starting. She pulled her bathrobe around her and settled back in Gene’s big leather chair to watch. From time to time she rubbed her calves. When the third commercial came on she went back to the kitchen and refilled her whiskey glass.

  CHAPTER VI

  AFTER CIVICS CLASS Tuesday morning Coach Popper stopped Sonny in the hall. There had been an assembly that morning and the coach had on a necktie, an article of dress he seldom wore.

  “Like your tie, Coach,” Sonny said jokingly. It was a bright orange necktie and it stuck out from under the coach’s shirt collar in the back.

  “Purty, ain’t it,” the coach said distractedly. “Need you to do somethin’ for me. Ruth’s been sick the last couple of days and needs somebody to drive her to Olney to the doctor. She’s afraid they might drug her or something so she wouldn’t be able to drive home. If you’ll drive her down and back I’ll get you out of your afternoon classes.”

  Sonny immediately accepted the offer. He was for anything that would get him out of algebra class. The Poppers’ house was only a couple of blocks from school and as soon as he finished lunch he walked over. He looked through the doorpanes before he knocked and saw that Mrs. Popper was ready to go. She was sitting in the living room, her purse in her lap.

  “Oh hello, Sonny, what do you want?” she asked, when she came to the door.

  “Coach said you needed a driver,” he said. “I thought he told you I was coming.”

  Mrs. Popper looked disappointed but she tried hard to hide it. “No, he didn’t mention it,” she said. “I thought he was going to drive me himself. I guess he just couldn’t get off.”

  She handed Sonny the keychain and he went and got the car out of their garage. It was a black ’53 Chevy. When Mrs. Popper got in she had a Kleenex in her hand and was daubing at her eyes with it. Sonny felt like he ought to say something to cheer her up, but he couldn’t think of anything. The Chevy didn’t have much pickup but it ran smoothly once they got on the road. The wind was rustling dust in the dry bar ditches beside the highway.

  “I’m sorry to be all this trouble,” Mrs. Popper said. “You’re very nice to drive me.”

  “It sure beats sittin’ through algebra,” he said.

  Mrs. Popper smiled, but neither of them spoke again, all the way to Olney. Sonny watched the road, only glancing at her occasionally; she was looking out the window at the gray pastures. Her hair was brown with just a few traces of gray, and she wore it long, almost shoulder length. There was something about her that was really pretty. She was a little too thin, and her skin was too fair for the country she lived in: wind and sun freckled her on her cheekbones and beneath her eyes. Just before they got to the clinic she opened her purse and got out her lipstick, but she just held it a minute and put it back in her purse without using any.

  While she was with the doctor Sonny sat in the waiting room of the clinic, reading magazines. There were lots of copies of Outdoor Life around, with good hunting stories in them. The only trouble was that the people in the waiting room made him so gloomy he could hardly read. A shaky old man sat next to him on the green waiting-room couch. He had had his voicebox taken out and had a little screen where it ought to be; every third breath he wheezed so loud that Sonny couldn’t concentrate on his reading. Then a little boy came over and spat his bubble gum in the pot of a rubber plant next to Sonny. It was a pink, wet hunk of bubble gum and Sonny kept wanting to cover it with dirt. Across the room from him there was a farmer and his wife with an old old lady between them. They were very nervous, and Sonny knew why because he had seen them there several times before: if they had to wait too long the old lady would start going to the bathroom right in her chair. It was very embarrassing, but then something about the waiting room was always embarrassing. When his father had still been getting regular shots Sonny had had to wait there often, and it hadn’t changed a bit.

  Finally the wheezing and the bubble gum and the old old lady got on his nerves so much that he went out and waited in the car. The coach was to
o tight to have a radio put in the car, so there was nothing to do but sit and look out the long empty street toward the west. Someone in a passing car threw out an empty ice-cream carton and the wind skittered it across the street to the far curb.

  When Mrs. Popper finally came out she was walking so stiffly that Sonny thought they must have given her the drug after all; then when she got close he saw that she walked that way because she was crying. The wind blew her hair across her face and a few strands stuck to her wet cheek. She tried awkwardly to brush them back. Sonny got out and opened the door for her, wondering what he ought to do. He knew nothing at all about crying women.

  He got in and drove back through Olney, thinking surely she would quit, but she didn’t. She was not crying loudly, but she was crying.

  “Would you like for me to take you to the hospital?” he asked. “I don’t have to be back to school by any special time.”

  “Oh no,” Mrs. Popper said, straightening up. She shook the tears out of her eyes so hard that two or three drops splattered on the dashboard. “I’m just scared,” she said. “I have to have an operation tomorrow for a tumor in my breast.”