The Last Picture Show

  “Uh, this here’s Jackie Lee French,” Abilene said. “Jackie Lee, this is Lois Farrow, my boss’s wife.”

  “Hello, Jackie,” Lois said.

  “I don’t have to talk to her,” Jackie Lee said, turning angrily to Abilene. “I think she’s just awful. What do you mean kissin’ her like that, I’m embarrassed to death. I ought to slap her face.”

  “You can’t even reach it, honey,” Lois said, smiling at her. “Is your name really French or is that just something you like to do?”

  Jackie Lee was absolutely stunned. Her mouth fell open. Nobody had ever talked like that to her before—she was the star barmaid in the tavern where she worked, and all the cowboys and airmen treated her very much like a lady.

  Abilene made an amused face and took Jackie Lee by the elbow. “I never come here to referee no fight,” he said, moving toward the dance floor. Jackie Lee went with him, holding her butt in indignantly.

  Lois snorted in amusement. “I know what I did wrong,” she said. “You’re supposed to have mistletoe.” When she noticed Jacy she snorted again and went into the coatroom. She had a flask of bourbon in her coat pocket and took a neat nip, fishing in her purse for some Kleenex. The dancing had made her sweaty.

  “My goodness, Mother,” Jacy said, “you oughtn’t to behave like that. What would Daddy say if he saw you?”

  “Nothing,” Lois replied. She took another nip and put the cap back on the flask. “He wouldn’t say a damn thing and there’s no reason he should. Kissing one another at Christmas time is a custom among civilized peoples. Besides, why are you lecturing me? What have you been doing back in that dark corner for the last hour, telling secrets?”

  Jacy was taken aback. For a moment she couldn’t think how to reply. “I was just coming to ask you something,” she said finally. “Lester wants me to go with him to a swimming party in Wichita Falls. Is it okay if I go?”

  “Sure,” Lois said. “Have a good time. And let’s you and me just leave one another alone so far as men are concerned, okay? We compete about enough things as it is.”

  After Lois went back to the dance floor Jacy decided her feelings were hurt and stayed in the coatroom, sniffling a little. It seemed to her her mother had no sense of responsibility at all, and it was very confusing. Then she grew angry, jerked the bourbon flask out of her mother’s coat and took a tiny sip of whiskey in defiance. Like mother, like daughter, people would say if they saw her. She put the flask back and hurried in to Duane before the tears could dry on her cheeks. “Oh I’m just sick,” she said. “Mother says I have to go to a swimming party with Lester. I can’t get out of it now. It’s all her fault and I could just kill her.”

  Ten minutes later she and Duane were in the front seat of the pickup, kissing. The pickup was parked in a darker place than the convertible. Duane had been furious and it had taken all Jacy’s coaxing to get him out of the Legion Hall without some kind of scene taking place. Even when they got to the pickup he kept wanting to go back in and drag Lester out and fight him. Jacy quickly saw that she would have to go to desperate lengths to keep him with her. She sprawled across his lap, kissing him, and she didn’t bother to cross her legs and trap his arms with her own, like she usually did. He could dimly make out her white, half-exposed legs in the dark cab. When he touched her lightly above the knee she didn’t stop him. Wildly encouraged, he at once forgot Lester and leapt to the attack: he put his hand right on the warm slick band of silk that passed between her legs. She still didn’t stop him! It was a miracle of generosity!

  Jacy thought so too. She had never left herself quite so wide open before and she hoped Duane appreciated it. After a few nervous minutes of tracing his fingers delicately along the edges of her panties he got up enough nerve to slip his hand inside a leghole and touch the real place, which was surprisingly slippery. He had not really expected to arrive at that destination that evening and he was not quite sure what to do next. Jacy gave no clues, She quit kissing him and pressed her face tightly against his neck, not exactly sure if she liked what was happening or not. She was determined to go on with it a few minutes, though: it would never do to go to a naked swimming party in total ignorance of such matters. Once in a while Duane hit on the right spot and she couldn’t help gasping and squirming a little, but most of the time he seemed to be fumbling around in a rather pointless way and that made her impatient. She went a little out of it for a few minutes, waiting for Duane to hit the right spot and quivering with pleasure when he did. It was not until he took his hand away and tried to lay her down on the seat that she realized she had pacified him quite enough. He was actually trying to get on top of her! It was terrible of him to try such a thing when her head wasn’t completely clear—it was hard enough for her to finish the evening in the proper tone without him doing that.

  “No, no Duane, I’ve got to go,” she said. “Lester will be coming any minute.”

  She struggled up, gave Duane a quick kiss to show she wasn’t mad at him, and then got herself out of the pickup and into Lester’s Oldsmobile. She wanted a minute or two to calm down before Lester came out—the dancing and the courting had left her wet with sweat, and she wasn’t even sure but what she smelled.

  To her great annoyance, Duane got out of the pickup, his hair all tousled, and stood right on the porch of the Legion Hall, obviously waiting for Lester. After all she had given him, it was infuriating! When Lester came out he bumped right into Duane and Duane grabbed him. They had words, that was clear, but Lester managed to shake loose and came on to the Olds. The sleeve of his sports coat was torn.

  “What’d he say?” Jacy asked.

  “God he’s mad,” Lester said, panting. He was visibly scared, but he did his best to make light of it. “He called me names, hoping I’d hit him.”

  “Oh, he’s so silly,” Jacy said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about him. He’s just so crazy about me he doesn’t have good sense.”

  “I’m not saying anything against Duane, but that’s a roughneck for you,” Lester said. “They never are very sophisticated about these things.”

  The farther he got from the scene the easier it was for Lester to believe he would have come out well in a fight with Duane. His emotions became mixed, and so did Jacy’s. It occurred to her belatedly that it wouldn’t have been so bad if Lester and Duane had fought over her. At the very least it would have taken a few people’s minds off her mother.

  They rode to Wichita in silence, each of them thinking out the kind of fight scene they wished had taken place. Lester imagined that he had fought to a standstill, contemptuous of pain, while Jacy saw it differently: Lester would win by dishonorable means, like kicking Duane in the groin, and she would weep on the sidelines. Then she would go and comfort Duane and drive away with him, contemptuous alike of money and parental displeasure, content to be ruined for love.

  It seemed a pity to her that Lester hadn’t had the guts to start the fight.

  . . .

  The Sheen home, where the party took place, was a two-story, twenty-room mansion near the Wichita Falls country club. When they drove up several sports cars were parked in the long curved drive.

  “This may be the wildest thing yet,” Lester said, smiling at Jacy a little nervously.

  No one answered the doorbell, so they went on in. Lights were on and there were girls’ coats and boys’ coats and glasses and liquor bottles all around, but no people. A Dave Brubeck album was lying next to the phonograph.

  Once they opened the basement area it was obvious from the yelling and splashing where everyone was.

  “Yep, they’re naked,” Lester said when they arrived downstairs. He left Jacy in the ping-pong room a minute and peeked into the pool. She found the prospect of walking into a room full of naked city kids somewhat frightening, but she determined to do it and look delighted, whatever she might feel. She let Lester hold her hand when they walked in, and that was something she didn’t permit very often.

  At first it was not
especially startling, because all the Wichita kids were in the water, having water fights and cutting up. You couldn’t see what ordinarily you were not supposed to see. There were about six boys and six girls, most of them kids Jacy knew slightly from dances at the country club. One rather famous rich girl was there—her name was Annie-Annie and she was black-headed and notoriously wild. She was only seventeen and had been sleeping with boys for years. Her boy friend was Bobby Sheen, the kid whose parents owned the house. He was a very good-looking boy and had owned the first Ford Thunderbird in that part of the country.

  “Hey, look,” he yelled, when he saw Lester and Jacy. “New victims.”

  To Jacy’s embarrassment all the kids immediately stopped their water fights and swam right over to the side of the pool where she and Lester were standing. Bobby Sheen made a big show of jumping out of the water and shaking Lester’s hand, just as if he had been properly dressed.

  “Hi, Jacy,” he said, grinning and sluicing the water off his hair with one hand. “Glad you made it to the party. We’re dressed informally, as you see.”

  That brought a big laugh from the kids in the pool, and Bobby cocked his leg in acknowledgment. Jacy laughed too, though a little thinly. She was trying not to look at Bobby’s penis, or at anybody’s penis.

  Annie-Annie got out of the pool too and walked over to them. She was a tall, willowy girl, very graceful. Having her out of the water embarrassed Jacy almost as much as having Bobby out. Streams of water dripped off Annie-Annie’s breasts and ran down her stomach into her black pubic hair. She didn’t even bother to dry herself, and Jacy thought that most indecent. Letting drops of water shine in one’s pubic hair was certainly not a ladylike thing to do.

  “You two will have to join the club,” Annie-Annie said. “We’re the Senior Nudists, and we’ll let you join if you want to.”

  “Sure,” Lester said. “How much does it cost? I’ll pay for both of us.”

  “Oh it doesn’t cost money,” Annie-Annie said, grinning and still dripping. “You just have to be initiated. You walk out on the diving board and take all your clothes off, while we watch. You all willing?”

  “Sure,” Lester said, not looking at Jacy. “We were just fixing to get undressed anyway.”

  When he asked Jacy if it was okay, she nodded. She didn’t know what else to do. She certainly wasn’t anxious to go out on the board and take her clothes off, but she couldn’t very well stand around with them on while everybody else was naked.

  “I’ll go first,” Lester said.

  All the kids got out of the pool and sat on the edge, kicking their feet in the water. One little kid surprised Jacy no end. He was by far the youngest, littlest kid there; he had freckles and a burr haircut and looked about thirteen, and he had on a green diving mask. While they were all waiting for Lester to untie his shoes the kid walked right past Jacy to get a towel. What surprised Jacy was his penis, which stuck straight out. It wasn’t very big or anything but it certainly was sticking out and Jacy thought it was just awful that he would walk around with it like that. A couple of the other girls giggled.

  “That’s my little brother Sandy,” Bobby Sheen said. “Don’t pay any attention to him—he’s not in the club. He just likes to swim under water with his mask on and look at girls while he fiddles with himself. If he gooses you or anything tell me and I’ll make him go to bed.”

  When Lester got out on the diving board, Jacy expected everybody to yell and whistle, but instead they just sat quietly on the side of the pool, watching. The room was so quiet that they could hear the gentle slap of water against the tile poolside. Lester had expected yelling too, and the silence unnerved him. He decided that speed was of the essence, and his disrobing was incredibly speedy. He peeled off his shirt, yanked down his pants and underwear at the same time, and in a second was in the water. Jacy was amazed at how quickly he did it. He swam over and pulled himself up on the side with the others, no longer the least embarrassed.

  When Jacy saw how unselfconscious he had become she grew terribly annoyed with him for having gone first. If he had offered to let her be first, like a gentleman should have, she would be sitting calmly on the side and it would be over with. But everybody in the room was watching her and there was simply nothing to do but bluff it out.

  “Goodness, I hope I don’t fall off this thing,” she said, when she got on the diving board. Diving boards always looked a lot higher up when you were on them.

  “Sandy will fish you out if you do,” Annie-Annie said.

  Sure enough, that hideous little Sandy had slipped into the pool again and was swimming around like a frog about ten feet from the diving board. He had his mask on. Jacy decided she was with the most brazen bunch of kids she had ever seen, and she didn’t like one of them.

  She took her shoes off first, and then pulled her sweater off over her head. It was not as easy for her to undress fast as it had been for Lester. Once the sweater was off the question was whether she should take her skirt off first and then her bra and panties, or her bra off first and then her skirt and panties. She decided the skirt should come off first and she got out of it without looking up. It was embarrassing to have to reach back and unhook a bra in front of so many kids, but she had so much off already that she couldn’t afford to dawdle. It seemed as though she had been out on the board about thirty minutes, as compared to five seconds for Lester. Once she got the bra off she started to yank her panties down and jump, but just as she bent over to slide them down Sandy frogged right under the board and peered up at her through his goggles. Jacy lost her balance and had to sit down very quickly to keep from falling in. At that all the kids burst out laughing and whistling and pointing at Sandy, who was becalmed just beneath her, his tiny little mast sticking up out of the water. It was plainly degrading. Angrily Jacy jerked the panties off her ankles and dropped them right on Sandy’s mask.

  Instantly the crowd became hers: they all began to laugh at Sandy, who frog kicked off toward the shallow end of the pool. Jacy let herself off the board and swam to the poolside to much acclaim—two boys helped her up on the side.

  For an hour she swam and giggled, and the longer she stayed with them the more she came to like the crowd. They seemed like the wildest, most intelligent kids she had ever seen, and she determined then and there to throw in her lot with them. Before the night was over she could stand by the pool talking to some boy or other and feel perfectly at ease—the drops of water shining in her pubic hair soon ceased to disconcert her and began to seem rather becoming. At last she could even look at boys’ penises without embarrassment.

  Only one thing upset her: her new wristwatch, Duane’s Christmas present. She had forgotten to take it off when she jumped into the pool. The kids all pooh-poohed her and told her not to worry so much about a fifty-dollar watch and she saw that they were right. It was just a wristwatch, and she could always make it up to Duane some other way.

  CHAPTER X

  JACY AND LESTER had not been gone from the dance ten minutes before word got around that they were going to a swimming party where everyone would be naked. The reason word got around so fast was that Lester told several of the younger kids about it just before he left. He told them he and Jacy were going to swim naked, just like everybody else. It was almost past belief, but when the kids saw him actually drive away with Jacy they instantly believed it and began to talk about it. Nothing wilder had ever been heard of in Thalia—it was even wilder than actually making out, because that was customarily done in the dark and nothing much could be seen.

  In no time there were groups of excited boys standing around, speculating about the look of Jacy’s breasts. They even had a hot argument over whether or not blond girls really had blond hair underneath their panties. Some of the younger, illiterate kids thought that all women had black hair in that particular place, but the better-read youths soon convinced them otherwise by reference to the panty-dropping scene in I the Jury, a book the local drugstore could never keep in stock
.

  The news about Lester and Jacy did not surprise Sonny much. He knew that any time Lester came to Thalia he was likely to end up taking Jacy somewhere, and since he had heard for years that Wichita kids were always having orgies it was only natural that sooner or later Lester would take Jacy to one. The worst thing about it was that it would depress Duane something fierce.

  While he was waiting for Duane to get the news, Sonny wandered into the refreshment room. There had been a big table full of plates of cookies, with a huge bowl of punch for the kids and the grown-ups who didn’t drink. All the punch was gone and the only cookies left were a few rubbery, inedible brownies. Empty paper cups were strewn all around and a lady in a black dress was bent over picking them up and putting them in a big wastebasket. It was Mrs. Popper. The school teachers’ wives always fixed the refreshments for the Christmas dance, but somehow Sonny was surprised to bump into Mrs. Popper just then. Coach Popper never came to dances, and especially not to Saturday night dances. He would not have missed Gunsmoke for all the dances in Texas.

  “Hello, Sonny,” Mrs. Popper said. “Want to help me pick up these cups, since you’re not dancing? I’m tired.”

  She looked tired, too—at least her face did. She was not wearing any makeup and had apparently just come down to do her part with the refreshments.

  “Sure, be glad to,” Sonny said, picking up a cup. The punch had been a sweet, grape mixture and the rims of the cups were sticky. Sonny gathered about twenty and went to drop them in the wastebasket.

  “I guess you still haven’t found a new girl friend, have you?” Mrs. Popper asked quietly. Sonny was very startled. He had forgotten she knew about his old girl friend.

  “No ma’am, but I’m looking hard,” he said.

  “Are you?” Ruth said, even more quietly. “It seems to me that if you were really looking hard you might look at me.”

  Surprised, Sonny did look at her, and remembered that they had become a little fond of one another the after noon he had driven her to the hospital. He remembered wishing they had kissed, and when he looked at her mouth he wished it again, a very strange wish to be having in the refreshment room of the Legion Hall, during the Christmas dance. But there was something fresh about Mrs. Popper’s mouth, as if what was left of the softness and beauty she was said to have had as a girl still lingered there. Sonny was mute. Suddenly he wanted Mrs. Popper and he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do about it. He was simply mute, and his silence filled Ruth with despair. She waited a moment, hoping he would say something; when he didn’t she felt something slip out of line inside of her and she turned away, holding the wastebasket full of dirty cups. She was afraid she might cry. Sonny saw the look of sadness come in her face and realized he had to say something if he wanted anything to happen between them.