Marathon Cowboys (4 page)

another, well…. Okay, he’s your grandson.”

“Granddad, I think Mary and I can share the studio, if

you can stand to have us both in the house. Since I’m the

one crowding in there, I’ll buy the groceries. We can take

turns cooking.” He gave me a gentle elbow. “We talked about

it last night on our way down here. We think we can share

the space and work together.”

“As long as the septic tank holds out and the well don’t

run dry, I’d say we’re good, then. You take Lorenzo back and

show him the studio. He gets first dibs on the side of the

studio he wants, Jesse. Maybe give him the side with the

phone line so he can hook his computer up.”

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25

Jesse dragged me around the back of the house. The

studio was a long white clapboard building with high

windows. “Lucky you, you get the dial-up connection!” We

stepped inside, and I could see why Jesse wanted to paint

here. Windows on every wall, light and shadow flooding the

space, and the ceiling must have been twenty feet high.

There were ceiling fans in a line down the rafters, spinning

the dust, and a concrete floor.

“No AC out here,” Jesse said. “If you close the blinds

and open the windows by about nine, it stays pretty cool.

Otherwise you’ve got to work early and late, and take a long,

sweet nap in the afternoon. That’s the Texas way.” There was

a desk built into the wall, with a long worktable attached

with an integral bookcase. “That’s your space down there.

We got a little bathroom out here too.”

I walked over and looked at the desk. I just needed to

give it a wipe down and I’d be ready to start work. “Jesse, I’m

going to get set up, okay? You don’t need me for anything?”

“I’ll stay out of the bars so you can work.” I looked at

him over my shoulder. He had shed his San Francisco

clothes, was in a pair of baggy Levi’s and a blue T-shirt the

color of his eyes. Still had the red sneakers on. “I know

where there’s a good lamp for the desk. I’ll bring it out here.”

“You got any of your painting stuff? What do you need,

canvas?”

“I shipped it. It’s coming.”

I hauled my gear out of the back of my pickup. It felt

strange, unwrapping the whiteboard I used for sketches, the

computer and file boxes. It felt like a year had passed since I

had wrapped these things so carefully in Quantico. I was a

different person, so much time had passed. Jesse brought a

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26

lamp, a good gooseneck, asked me if I was up for a Wasabi

Dog.

“What’s in it?”

“It actually sounds pretty good to me. It’s got cucumber

and green onion and apple, and the dressing is sour cream,

cilantro, lime juice, and wasabi. On sliced, seared tuna.”

“Um, what else?”

“I think the Javelina Dog is smoked pork of some kind.

The Umami relish has capers and green onions, I’m not sure

what else.”

“I think I’ll go with that.”

“The Original’s getting the Big Bear Dog, with seared

jalapeno relish. And with that one I think we swept the

menu.”

The quiet settled over the studio, felt like it was falling

like the tiny dust motes in the air, falling like that shooting

star we’d seen on the way down from Alpine. I had a picture

in my mind, that silly bar fight. I had never seen a bar fight

where so many people did so little damage to each other. It

all seemed to be about the noise, the shouting, and big

gestures. I could have leaned back against the bar and

finished my beer, and the end result wouldn’t have been any

different. I scratched a bit at the stitches on my cheek.

The whiteboard was propped up against the desk, and I

moved it around until I could work on it standing up. I

sketched out the long line of the bar, an edge of the pool

table in the corner. My doppelganger cartoon character,

Devil Dog, was leaning against the bar, drinking a beer. The

fight raged all around. There was Jesse, riding the bully’s

back like a monkey, his hands full of hair. There was a pool

cue about to descend on a cowboy with a particularly

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27

clueless look on his face. Another good old boy was sliding to

the ground, beer dripping off his hair. I put a look of

boredom on my own face, and only the reader could see the

beer bottle descending on my head, just out of my line of

vision. I wrote along the bottom,
Friday Night in Alpine,

Texas.

When I looked up, Mr. Clayton was watching me.

“You’ve got this thing I’ve noticed that’s real popular, this sly

humor at yourself. You don’t mind making yourself look like

a fool.”

“I’ve had lots of practice looking like a fool.”

“That’s a technique that will serve you well. How do you

go from your board to putting your cartoons on the

Internet?” He pulled up a stool.

“Depends where I am. I used to draw them on paper,

then do a photograph. Now they’ve got these computers you

can draw right on, tablets. I don’t know, though. Seems like

that’s an easy way to publish crap. Sometimes, something

that seems real funny to me at night isn’t all that funny in

the morning. I need to find a way to let things hold for a bit.”

“I think that’s a good idea. When I first started, I used to

publish one in three. My last year, it was more like one in

ten. The others weren’t bad, they just weren’t great. And

once you get a reputation, you can’t count on editors telling

you when your quality is slipping.” He gestured toward the

cartoon. “So what happened?”

He was cool about it, but I got the feeling he was worried

about Jesse. “It wasn’t his fault. He came in, and everybody

turned around and looked at him. These two stupid

rednecks decided to play with him a little bit. He didn’t do

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28

anything but lean up against the bar and try to drink a

beer.”

“Did you know who he was when you stepped in?”

I shook my head. “What I thought was a man should be

able to get off the bus and grab a beer without getting

jumped because of what he’s wearing.”

“He got targeted because he’s gay. And he’s never been

one to hide his light under a bushel basket. It doesn’t

happen very much in Alpine, to tell you the truth. We don’t

really tolerate that sort of bigotry. You know he’s gay?”

I nodded again, but I didn’t say anything else. I’d never

come out to a soul in my life. I wasn’t about to start with an

old man I’d met the night before.

He gestured to the cartoon again. “What you lose, when

you have to copy a drawing to another medium, is the

spontaneous line.” He gestured to a couple of places to show

me what he meant. “Natural tendency is to clean up a bit,

but the lines give you a lot of mood. I don’t know. We ought

to study up on some of the new technology, see how
Garfield

does it.”

“Hold the door! No, I got it. Oh, my God, Mary, you are

going to love this!” Jesse came through the door, dragging

one end of a massive old Victorian couch, the back all carved

birds and curlicues, the upholstery pale-green velvet. “Is this

gorgeous? Wait for it—I got two, one for me and one for you.

So we can lay down and stare at the fans and think brilliant

artistic thoughts. Like Paris, on the Rio Grande.”

I went over and picked up his end. The kid who had the

other end was rolling his eyes, his straw Stetson pushed to

the back of his head, but he straightened up when I frowned

at him. “Let’s put it against the eastern wall, okay?”

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29

After we settled it in place, I followed him back out to

the truck. Painted on the side was “Marathon Art and

Antiques” in fancy script. I settled on a stoic, fierce USMC

warrior look, which stopped the kid’s comments in their

tracks. I got the feeling JC3 had been laying on the charm a

bit thick, trying to agitate the kid. We carried the other

couch into the studio, set it against the western wall. Jesse

pulled out his wallet, gave the kid a twenty, and thanked

him very prettily. He glanced at me, and I looked back, gave

him a subtle message that if he made one fag joke anywhere

in West Texas for the rest of his days, I would find out, and I

would find him.

The Original sighed, watched Jesse plop down on one of

the couches. “I can see how it’s gonna be with you two. He’s

gonna piss all over the floor, and you’re gonna mop it up.

Jesse, I’ll call you when Sadie gets here with the dogs.”

I moved to the other couch. It was surprisingly

comfortable. “I think it’s been re-upholstered,” I said. “Not

bad. That kid say something to you? Looked like he was

getting a bit of an attitude.”

“It’s always like that for me when I come down here.

When I run into people who don’t know me. I can either

ignore it and be myself, or use up a lot of concentration,

trying to blend in. I forget about it sometimes, when I’m not

here.” He gestured toward the house. “Don’t worry about

cleaning up my messes, Mary. I can take care of it myself.

I’ve had lots of practice.”

“Thanks for getting the couches.”

“You’re welcome. My friend Miguel did the fancy work. I

want you to know that you are really welcome here. The

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30

Original looks happy. I think he’s been looking forward to

you getting here.”

“So what’s your life like in San Francisco?”

“I’ve got a loft downtown, very rough red brick walls,

good light. I use it as a studio and an apartment. I’ve got

friends there, crazy, creative people with massive self-

destructive streaks. They are always in crisis, and I mean,

always
. But I like to work. I mean, I get into my work, and I

can paint for sixteen, eighteen hours. Then I have to unplug

the phone and lock the door and just block everything else

out.”

“How many paintings have you sold?”

Jesse stretched, propped one foot up along the back of

the couch. “Almost all of them. Maybe thirty-five, forty. I do a

lot of preliminary work, sketches and drawings, while I’m

getting the idea down. I don’t improvise once I start painting,

not usually. Once I’ve got the painting in my mind, I just put

it down on canvas. Most of the creative work comes before.

How do you work?”

“Mine’s different. I get an idea, very unfinished, and

then I let it grow around some central image. I may not know

what I was going to say until the cartoon’s done.”

“What are some of the themes you want to explore?”

I thought about that for a while. I hadn’t really thought

about what I was doing enough to think about themes. Did

cartoons have deeper ideas? The good ones did. I wanted to

be one of the good ones. “I don’t know, Jesse. I haven’t spent

much time thinking about what I was doing. That’ll be

something to do down here, I guess. What about you?”

“I’m not sure how to describe it—maybe American

culture and communication.”

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31

I was surprised. I would have thought he would have

done some work that said something about being gay. He

must have read my mind. “The entire gay world is working

hard on art that says,
look at
wonderful me!
But it’s bigger

than that. We’re all part of a bigger culture, and I’m really

interested in how our cultural icons, and the way they’re

made, communicate to us our place in the world. I suspect

even those of us who think we’re free birds are being

carefully manipulated into our cultural roles.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what he was talking about. “Did

you study art?”

“Yeah. It was helpful for me. I went to school at

Berkeley, so I was already plugged into the Bay art scene

when I graduated. What about you?”

“I went into the Marine Corps a couple of years after I

graduated high school. I did two years at Dine College first.

Then I went to war. Then I went to war again. I’ve been

soaking in it for six years now.”