All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers

  She was a little surprised to see me back so soon. The Aggies had left the young whores and were clustered around her again. They were dumfounded to see me. I held up my money again. Juanita smiled a little. She raised an eyebrow, not sure I was serious. I kept the money up. She shrugged and got off the bar stool.

  “Fucked any tractors yet?” I asked the Aggies.

  They didn’t say a word. Perhaps they thought I was a holy man.

  I asked Juanita how much for the night and she said fifty dollars. I gave it to her. She seemed surprised and friendly, but she kept her reserve. I didn’t care. I was not out to rob her of her reserve. Sex didn’t work, the second time. I was too tired, or too empty. I didn’t want to go on and on, trying. I hadn’t come back for sex, anyway. It worried Juanita a little. She wanted me to try harder. Instead, I withdrew.

  Juanita sat up. She looked at me and frowned.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “You got somebody you love?”

  “I love two or three people,” I said. “It just doesn’t seem to work out.”

  Juanita smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Pussy’s pussy, honey,” she said. “You might as well get it from me. Come on. We can do it. I’ll help you.”

  “No thank you,” I said. “I’m really too tired.”

  I had come back for company—sex was what Juanita had to sell. In another few minutes we weren’t going to know what to do with each other unless we quit being whore and customer. I told her I had a lot of money and asked her if she would like to come to America with me. She was smart enough to know I was serious and it flattered her slightly. But she shook her head. “Couldn’t get no papers,” she said. “Besides, my children. They live in Morelia. I go see them. I couldn’t go see them from the U.S.

  “You can come see me, when you get horny,” she said. “That’s easier. I make you a good price.” She lay back with a long easy yawn. She had a wonderful body. I decided to go on. She probably wanted to sleep. By morning I might be in love with her, if I didn’t go. I told her I had to go and refused to let her refund me any of the money. It bothered her a little. She didn’t think she’d given me anywhere near fifty dollars’ worth. I think she decided I was a little crazy, but it didn’t make her stop liking me. Naturally she got up and went in when I left, to whore some more. She was a practical woman, with children to think of, and she wasn’t lazy. She held my arm as we were walking across the courtyard. She knew she had a satisfied customer and I think she thought I’d probably be back tomorrow. I left her with the impression that I’d certainly be back sometime. It wasn’t insincere. I liked Juanita. I would have liked to see her again. It was just that the odds were against it. If I did ever get back to Reynosa, Juanita would be somewhere down the line. She was sitting in the bar when I left, a little reserved, a little melancholy, a little proud. The men around the room were getting up their nerve. Maybe she would escape them, finally. Maybe she would turn into a fat Mexican grandmother, with sleepy sons like Petey.

  In any case I wouldn’t see her again, probably.

  I got another taxi, rode to El Chevy, and this time made it through McAllen. I pointed up the river, toward Roma. El Chevy was rattling a bit. He was old. He had taken me more than a hundred thousand miles. Perhaps it was time I retired him, gave him his freedom, let him rest. I was so tired I was a little high. I had stopped feeling sorry for myself. No more feeling sorry for myself. Why should I? None of my models in life felt sorry for themselves. Not Emma, not Jenny, not Jill. Not Juanita. It was odd that all my models in life were women, but no odder than a lot of things. Wu was a sort of model. He didn’t feel sorry for himself.

  I saw two hitchhikers, standing at a little crossroads. A man and a woman. I stopped and backed up to them. They were an old couple. The man carried a large paper sack. When they got in the car it immediately filled with their smell, which was the smell of sweat and old clothes.

  “Where you folks headed?” I asked.

  “Del Rio,” the old man said. “We’re sure grateful to you. Ma’s momma’s taken sick. We ain’t had no car these last few years.”

  “Momma’s been porely for six months now,” the old woman said. “I’m afraid this time it’s apt to be the end. She’s eighty-five years old.”

  “Gentleman might not want to talk, Ma,” the old man said politely. “Some people just like to drive along quiet.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “I like to talk.”

  “Well, we don’t need to be talkin’ about death and such, nohow,” the old woman said. She had false teeth, not fitted too well. Her cheeks pooched a little.

  They were silent for a while. Their faces were grave, but in different ways. The old man’s was thin, the old woman’s fat. The paper sack held their funeral clothes. The old woman held it in her lap and from time to time smoothed the collar of a dress that was uppermost in the sack. The old man reached in the pocket of his worn coat and brought out a bottle.

  “Mind if I nip oncet or twicet?” he asked. “I’ve had the nerves these last few days.”

  “Put that up, Haskell,” the old woman said. “Don’t be a-drinking in front of this young boy, you’re apt to get him started.”

  The old man took one nip anyway and then obediently screwed the cap back on the bottle.

  “I was always opposed to alcohol,” the old woman said. “Three of my brothers went to the bad and alcohol was what started it—ever’ single one of them drank.”

  “Aw, peedoodle,” the old man said. “They’d have been sorry even if they hadn’t drank, and you know it. I’ve been nipping all my life and I ain’t gone to the bad.”

  “No, but you’d be a better man if you was to stop it,” she said. “Course I don’t expect you ever will.”

  “Son, this Valley’s a fine place to live,” the old man said, to change the subject.

  In Roma, to their great surprise, I gave them El Chevy. I had decided to do it almost as soon as I picked them up. I didn’t want to drive on to Del Rio that night. I was too tired. I didn’t want to put the old couple out on the road again, either. It was late and there was no traffic. The thought of them standing there with their sack was too sad. They might have to stand all night. The old woman’s name was Merle Lou.

  I didn’t feel like driving any farther anyway. Despite the pills I had taken, and the shot they had given me, and the tequila I had drunk, and all the miles I had driven, my head was very clear. I felt almost light. I was tired of driving. It had stopped being fun. I wanted to walk for a while. El Chevy could carry the old couple to the dying woman, and then he could be free. I wouldn’t need him again.

  On the outskirts of Roma I stopped. It was as good a place as any to start walking. The back seat was a jumble of possessions. Everything I owned was in it—typewriter, clothes, blankets. The old couple were a little surprised at my stopping, but they politely said nothing. I let El Chevy idle, trying to decide if I wanted to take anything with me. I didn’t—not really. I never liked to walk and carry things. I got my novel, in case I ever wanted to rewrite it, and my parka, in case I ran into cold weather, somewhere along the way. That was enough.

  “You folks listen,” I said, turning to the old couple. “I won’t be needing my car for a day or two. You folks just take it on to Del Rio and leave it where I can find it. Park it down by the bridge somewhere and throw the keys in the trunk. I’ve got an extra trunk key. I have a friend here in town I’m going to visit. He’ll drive me up when I get ready.”

  They were very surprised. They had thought I was stopping to put them out. Instead, I got out, my novel in one hand and my parka in the other. The old woman accepted it at once. She was too grateful even to make a token protest.

  “Why that’s mighty nice of you,” she said. “Haskell, you’ll have to drive.”

  The old man got out, a little puzzled, and came around the car. There was a good moon. We could see far back down the pale pavement.

  “You sure you ain’t scared I’ll wreck it up?” he
asked.

  “I’m sure you won’t wreck it,” I said. He shook my hand and said they were much obliged and got under the wheel and drove slowly off, El Chevy rattling just a little. For a time I heard the motor, for a time I saw the lights, then my faithful car was gone.

  I walked into Roma on the pale pavement. It was a tiny town, but beautiful. The buildings were old, and most of them Spanish. It was on a bluff. The river was very near. Mexico was very near. No one was stirring in Roma. Even the dogs were asleep. My neck was sore, from Luther having swung me by the hair, but as long as I looked straight ahead I was all right. I walked right down the middle of the highway, past the low silent houses. Most of the few streetlights were burned out.

  But the all-night gas station was there. I saw it long before I came to it. It was on the other side of Roma and was much the brightest place in town. Two strings of naked bulbs were strung around it.

  I walked all the way through Roma, to get to it. It was the town of Zapata, all right. Walking through it was ghostly. It seemed to me I could hear Mexican laughter, and the sound of goat bells. I imagined a ghost cantina, full of Zapatistas. I imagined Jean Peters, walking to the church with her duenna. I remembered watching the movie with Jill, the first night we were together. Now I was there, in the place we had watched. Nobody else was there, though, only the old, low buildings and the pale street. All I had was in my head—images, and the memory of images. That was really what I needed not to have to carry any farther, so many images of people who were lost to me.

  I was glad when I got to the station. It was tiny, but well lit. The naked light bulbs drew a nimbus of bugs. It was a nice little station, though. A couple of potted cactus sat by the gas pumps. The pumps were clean, and the driveway too. Two bushel baskets sat outside the door to the office, one full of peppers, one full of yellow squash. There was a washtub full of pink grapefruit sitting by the air hose. The door of the office was open and a man with a black beard sat in it, reading a newspaper. He wore a plaid shirt and Levi’s and high-top motorcycle boots. He looked up at me, obviously friendly. His beard was very black and bushy. A bottle of Cabin Stills sat on the step beside him, but he didn’t seem to be drinking.

  “Hi, son,” he said. “How far’d you have to walk?”

  “Not far,” I said.

  “You ought to get you a Honda,” he said. “I haven’t walked eight steps since I got mine. Do you drink whiskey?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He picked up the bottle and immediately broke the seal on it.

  “A friend of mine who grew up here told me about you,” I said. “Didn’t you used to be in the movies?”

  “Sure,” he said. He went in the office and came out with two clean whiskey glasses. He poured each one of them half full.

  “Hope you don’t take ice,” he said. “If you take water just get you some out of the hose.”

  He folded up his newspaper, which was the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Then he reached inside the door and flipped a switch. All the filling station lights went off.

  “I’d rather drink by moonlight,” he said.

  We drank by moonlight. The man’s name was Peter Paul Neville. He talked while we drank. He had quit the movies in 1933. He had known Clark Gable, and many other stars. When he quit the movies he went in the oil business. He quit the oil business in 1945. He had enough money to last him. St. Louis was his home town. The Post-Dispatch took three days getting to him. Peter Paul didn’t care. He was a slow reader. He wasn’t a slow drinker, though. Neither was I. When I emptied my glass he filled it right up to the brim. He said the Texas Rangers were mean sonsofbitches. I agreed, though I only knew two. He had a deep voice and a deep laugh. When he paused in his talk the town was very quiet. I kept hearing ghostly goat bells. I asked Peter Paul about them.

  “The river’s just a hundred yards away,” he said. “Little Mexican town right on the other side. They don’t never go to sleep in Mexico. Even if the people do, the animals don’t.”

  We listened to the goat bells. Dogs howled. The sounds seemed louder, once I knew they were real. Peter Paul liked my parka. He had been in Alaska. He had been all over the world. I was feeling strange, and getting very drunk. Peter Paul found some mushrooms in the pocket of my parka—they were the ones the New Americans had given me.

  “They induce visions,” I said.

  “Aw,” he said.

  “They really do,” I said.

  “You sure it ain’t a toadstool? I’d hate to die of eating a toadstool.”

  “They aren’t toadstools,” I said.

  Peter Paul ate a mushroom or two. There were only five or six in the sack. I ate three. I was a little hungry. I needed something in my stomach besides whiskey. I also ate two Peanut Planks, from Peter Paul’s candy machine. He asked me what I did and I told him I was a writer. I gave him my novel, by way of proof. He went in the office and got a flashlight and another bottle of Cabin Stills. I heard the crackle the seal made when he broke it. I was swirling drunk again—tired and drunk. I saw Peter Paul reading my novel by flashlight. I rested. He kept drinking. I don’t think he read much. After a while he handed me the box. I took the flashlight from him and looked at a page or two myself.

  “I wrote a couple of novels when I was young,” he said. “I guess pretty near everybody writes a novel or two. Nobody would publish mine.”

  I looked at my pages under the flashlight. They looked odd. Pages. Words. Black marks on paper. They didn’t have eyes, or bodies. They weren’t people. I didn’t know why I put marks on paper. It was a dull thing to do. There must be livelier things to do. I remembered the river books I had read. There must be thousands of rivers to see. Seeing the flowing of rivers would be more interesting than making black marks on paper. The marks didn’t have faces, and I had forgotten the faces that had been in my mind when I wrote them. Jill had a face. Emma had a face. My words didn’t. They didn’t flow like rivers, either. They had no little towns on their banks—little towns full of whores, people, goats. I didn’t know what I was doing, spending so much time with paper. Looking at my novel by flashlight made me unhappy. Undoubtedly it was no good. It didn’t look at all good. Probably I had just written it to take my mind off my various problems. I remembered Jill’s anger when she said I had been doing what I really wanted to do, when I wrote. Writing instead of coping. Maybe she was right. It was an awful thought. On the other hand, she was wrong. I would rather have had her with me than to write all the books I would ever write if I lived to be as old as Uncle L and won every prize there was to win and became even more serious than Thomas Mann, if such a thing were possible. I would rather have Jill.

  She had won, anyway. Her little sketch of people fucking under the baby bed had had more life in it than my words. It was her story. I had been a fool to think I could steal it. I shined the flashlight on fifteen or twenty pages and didn’t like any of them. What a waste of me. Jill was gone, too. Who could blame her?

  I felt terrible, and I was swirling drunk. I saw Peter Paul get up. I had almost forgotten him. He went over to the washtub and came back with two grapefruit.

  “Here. Eat some citrus fruit,” he said. “It’s good for what ails you.”

  “Nothing ails me,” I said. “This is just the way I am.”

  “Did you run away from the woman or did the woman run away from you?” he asked.

  “Both,” I said. “Everything.” I didn’t feel like talking to him, really. He gave me a grapefruit but I didn’t peel it. I felt like I had several of them crammed inside me. All my insides seemed to be bunched in my chest. The rest of me was light but my chest felt like it was packed with sandbags.

  “There’s always a woman in the story,” Peter Paul said.

  I really wanted to go away. Peter Paul, charming as he probably was, had begun to pall on me. He was just a smoother version of Henry. If he happened to write screenplays about the Seventh Cavalry they would be better than Henry’s, but not so hilarious. Henry was pure. Pet
er Paul was just charming. He knew he was eccentric. Also, he sounded like a sage. I didn’t need a sage. I was just looking for a friend.

  “I’ve lost five women myself,” he said, peeling his grapefruit.

  “It don’t really kill you,” he said, a little later.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Oh, after you’ve done it two or three times you get some style,” he said. “A little style helps, my boy.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Sure. Losing women ain’t the worst thing in life. You’ll learn to handle it.”

  “No thank you,” I said. “How far is the river?”

  “Here, son,” he said. “None of that talk. Get you some pride. You’re too young to drown yourself.”

  “I’m not going to drown myself,” I said. “I’m just going.”

  I stood up and got my parka and my manuscript. Peter Paul wasn’t going to help me. He was a happy man. He liked to keep an all-night gas station. He liked to read the Post-Dispatch. He liked having been in the movies. That was all right. He was very good-looking. He had beautiful even white teeth. He had probably looked good in movies. I had nothing against him. I just didn’t want his advice.

  “Now don’t go off feeling sorry for yourself,” he said, standing up. “That won’t do no good.”

  “Thank you, I won’t,” I said.

  My head was swirling, but I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I had no grounds for being mad at life. Everything that had happened had served me right. I knew that a lot better than Peter Paul would ever know it. I just wanted to be away from all the people who didn’t know the things I knew.

  “Thank you for the drinks, sir,” I said. “I think I’m going to visit Mexico.”

  Peter Paul was a little shaken up. He didn’t know what to make of me, really.