Texasville (18 page)

“Jacy, I’m Duane Moore,” he said. “We went together in high school for a while.”

“Duane?” she said, smiling. “My lord, what a place to run into an old boyfriend. Do you live in a boat now, or what?”

“No, I just hide out in one now and then when I’m depressed,” Duane said.

“I heard you got rich,” Jacy said. “What are you depressed about?”

“Nothing serious,” he said, remembering her loss.

“Did you get rich?”

“Yeah, pretty rich,” he said.

Duane had often wondered how Jacy might have changed, but with swim goggles on her forehead and her hair under a
cap, all he could be sure of was that she still had the large blue eyes that had once mesmerized him. His memories of the flirty girl she had been didn’t go far toward describing the woman who looked up at him from the brown lake. The swim goggles had left marks on her face. He remembered how vain she had once been, studying her face or body for the slightest blemish. She bruised easily, and though she liked wrestling and rough-housing, she always scolded him fiercely if a bruise resulted.

Looking at her made him feel a little foolish—through the years he had been imagining that she was still the most beautiful woman in the world, forgetting that those same years might have roughhoused with her more decisively and destructively than he ever had. Though amply good-looking, she was no longer the supreme beauty of his fantasy, and he felt silly for having held it so long.

“Were you going to swim all the way across the lake and back?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Jacy said. “I lived on the Mediterranean a long time and got used to swimming in open water. This is about the best I can do around here.”

“I drive by Los Dolores once in a while,” he said. “I’ve often thought of ringing the doorbell since I heard you were there.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked.

“I have to sit in a boat all night to get any privacy myself,” he said. “I’m shy about meddling with other people’s.”

“That’s mature of you,” Jacy said. “If you had rung my doorbell I’d probably have been rude.”

She seemed about to kick off for the muddy south shore, but then noticed the open jar of pickles he held in his hand. She reached in, took a pickle and ate it.

“An old girlfriend’s privilege,” she said, smiling. Then she lowered her goggles.

“I hope the Mediterranean don’t stink as bad as this frog pond,” Duane said. In the slight morning breeze the water smelled particularly froggy.

“Oh, the Mediterranean’s filthy,” Jacy said. “But it’s open water.”

She looked up at him through her goggles.

“Don’t you have a large family?” she asked.

“Yep,” Duane said. “It’s what’s driven me to spending my nights in a motorboat.”

Jacy kicked off and backstroked lazily a time or two.

“Was it you that I went skinny-dipping with?” she asked.

“No, that was Lester,” he said.

“But I was your Esther Williams anyway, wasn’t I?” she said. She straightened in the water, raised her arms to a point over her head and did an Esther Williams back somersault, her long white legs pointing straight toward the sky for a moment.

When she came up she was close to the boat again.

“Ring the doorbell sometime, Duane,” Jacy said. “I’d like to hear about your family.”

Then she turned and swam smoothly away.

CHAPTER 25

W
HEN
D
UANE DROVE HOME, FISHLESS, AT
six-thirty
A.M
., it was to find the house in an uproar. Karla was walking around the kitchen, a phone in each hand, trying to keep up with fast-breaking events.

Minerva had installed herself at the kitchen table and was reading the want ads with painstaking care.

Nellie sat across from her, sobbing, Barbette in her lap. Barbette was crying too.

A sound of screaming and banging came from the pantry—it could only be Little Mike. Duane picked up Barbette, who immediately hushed, and walked over to the pantry to liberate Little Mike, who had been banging on the closed door with a can of soup. The minute Duane released him he ran outside into the grass burs, sat down in them, and resumed his screaming. He was naked.

“Dickie didn’t go to Ruidoso,” Karla said, covering the receiver of one phone for a moment.

Duane had assumed that much, since the pickup he had loaned his son was parked in the driveway, looking as if it had
just returned from a trip across Mongolia. Dickie was the only person Duane knew who could take a perfectly new pickup and reduce it to rent-a-wreck status in only a few hours.

“Is he in jail, dead or what?” Duane asked, rocking Barbette in his arms.

“No, he’s married,” Karla said. “He and Billie Anne have been secretly married for three weeks and didn’t even tell us. Billie Anne’s mother is having a nervous breakdown at the news.”

“She won’t be the only one,” Duane said, thinking of Suzie and Jenny. “Psychiatrists will make plenty off this one.”

“You have to go get the twins,” Karla said. “I’m talking to the camp director now. They got kicked out, just like you predicted.”

“What are
you
crying about?” Duane asked Nellie. It was almost a relief to think of Dickie married, however briefly, and he had never in his wildest dreams imagined the twins lasting a full term at church camp.

“Her fiancé disappointed her,” Minerva said. “I’m looking for a new job. A household like this is no place for an old lady with stomach cancer.”

“I thought you had a brain tumor,” Duane said. “It was last year that you had stomach cancer.”

“Anyway, it’s no place for a lady as sick as I am, whatever I got,” Minerva said testily. She took her illnesses with dead seriousness and did not like to be twitted about them just because she hadn’t died of any of them yet.

Karla hung up both phones and immediately disconnected them.

“Will you hush that crying?” she said to Nellie. “Joe Coombs never meant to be unfaithful to you. It’s just that after the twenty-fifth beer he goes blind and can’t tell one woman from another.”

“What’d he do?” Duane inquired.

“He tried to kiss Billie Anne, my own sister-in-law,” Nellie wailed.

“He’s told you a million times he thought it was you,” Karla said. “He’s real contrite, but if you want to break off the engagement, that’s your business.”

Little Mike came waddling back in, a picture of misery, seven or eight grass burs stuck to each fat little leg. He tried to climb up on his mother’s lap, but Nellie stiff-armed him and he went reeling over to Minerva, who caught him by the arm and swiftly extracted the grass burs before going back to her scrutiny of the want ads.

“What’d the twins do?” Duane asked.

“Julie posed for naked Polaroids and Jack climbed up into the rafters of the shithouse and dropped a brick into one of the toilets,” Karla said. “I guess the toilet broke and pretty much flooded things. They said they’d appreciate it if you’d come and get them before lunch.”

“Who took the Polaroids?” Duane asked.

“A sixth-grader from Nocona,” Karla said. “Where were you all night while I was going crazy?”

“I told Minerva to tell you I was going fishing,” Duane said.

Karla turned a stern eye on Minerva, who ignored it.

“When people interrupt my movies I’m apt to forget their alibis,” Minerva said.

“Joe could have told it was Billie Anne if he’d looked ’cause she’s a lot taller than me,” Nellie sobbed.

“What became of Junior?” Duane asked. “Did he ever calm down?”

“He’s asleep in one of the guest rooms,” Karla said. “He got so calm his legs stopped working. We had to carry him in the house.”

“He wasn’t so much calm as glassy-eyed drunk,” Minerva observed.

“I think he wants to room here for a while until he can straighten things out at home,” Karla said.

“Where’s the newly weds?” Duane asked.

“They went to Bowie on a honeymoon,” Nellie said, still morose. “I’ll never get a honeymoon.”

“Bowie?” Duane said. It was a small town of no distinction about fifty miles away. As a honeymoon spot it seemed an unlikely choice.

“You’ve had plenty of honeymoons,” Karla reminded Nellie. “You have one every time you meet a boy.”

“I caught TB on my honeymoon,” Minerva said. That surprised
everyone. It was the first indication they had had that Minerva had ever been married.

Having revealed that much, Minerva clammed up and refused to provide any more details.

“Just tell us what color eyes he had,” Karla asked, as Duane left the room.

He put Barbette in her crib and looked in on Junior Nolan, who was lying with his head hanging off the bed in one of the many guest rooms. Karla had thoughtfully put a bucket under his head, in case he woke up feeling puky.

Duane shaved and went out to the garden to have a word with Karla, who was now hard at work on her tomatoes. Just as he walked outdoors Bobby Lee drove up—summoned, no doubt, by Nellie. Bobby Lee’s was the shoulder of choice when she needed one to cry on.

“Poor little Nellie, she sounds distraught,” Bobby Lee said, coming over for a minute. Duane and Karla maintained a hardhearted front.

“Did you get that bit out of the hole?” Duane asked.

Bobby Lee looked blank, as if he had forgotten the meaning of words such as “bit” and “hole.”

“Oh, that thing,” he said, and went into the house without further explanation.

“Tomatoes are considered a fruit in some countries,” Karla said in the tone she was likely to take when furious.

“What’d I do now?” Duane asked.

“You’ll know when you get the divorce papers,” Karla said—a favorite line. She threw a green tomato at him. It missed and rolled toward Shorty, who regarded it with grave attention.

“Let’s take a trip before you get in worse trouble than you’re in,” Karla said.

“Okay, as long as it ain’t to Bowie,” Duane said agreeably.

“They just went to Bowie because there’s a café there that makes gravy Dickie likes,” Karla said.

Duane decided Karla was operating solely on intuition, with no real knowledge to back it up. In any case he was in a mood to live dangerously.

“Guess who came swimming across Lake Kickapoo this morning, while I was fishing,” he said.

“Probably Priscilla Presley, with your luck,” Karla said.

“No, Jacy,” he said. “She’s kind of a long-distance swimmer. She was swimming across the lake.”

“They say she’s aged a lot,” Karla said. “I’d like to meet her. I think she’s interesting.”

They saw another pickup approaching. This one belonged to Joe Coombs, who was coming to try and make up with Nellie.

“Oh, no,” Karla said. “What if Joe and Bobby Lee get in a fight?”

“Joe will win,” Duane said. “Bobby Lee couldn’t whip Little Mike, unless he surprised him.”

Joe, scrubbed to an unusual state of cleanliness, parked his pickup, waved stiffly at them and hurried into the house. He had had the forethought to provide himself with a box of chocolate-covered cherries, Nellie’s favorite candy.

“Maybe we oughta start going to church again,” Karla said.

“Again?” Duane said. “I can’t remember that we ever went to church.”

“We didn’t, but we made the kids go to Sunday school a few times,” Karla said.

“I thought you said religion was just for cowards,” Duane said.

Karla looked thoughtful. “It is for cowards,” she said. “Maybe I’m feeling cowardly. I’m about ready to resort to magic.”

“I’m not,” Duane said.

“Just make them give you all those dirty Polaroids when you get down to that camp,” Karla said. “And I want you to lecture the twins all the way home.”

“I’ve been lecturing them since the minute they were born,” Duane reminded her, but Karla, obviously dying to know what Bobby Lee and Joe Coombs were finding to say to one another, was already walking toward the house.

CHAPTER 26

D
UANE WHISTLED FOR
S
HORTY AND TWENTY MINUTES
later was lying in bed with Suzie Nolan, feeling only slightly let down. It had taken at least fifteen of the twenty minutes to drive to Suzie’s house. She had been in the laundry room doing a washing when Duane walked in. The washing machine made a sound that seemed sexual as it thumped the clothes inside it.

What occurred between him and Suzie was in the nature of a gulp, and didn’t seem quite as thrilling as it might have if they had got to gulp it in the car outside the hospital. The gulp had been far from boring, but when it was over Duane found that he could not entirely banish from his mind thoughts of consequences.

Suzie liked to play with her own nipples, and continued to play with them while he contemplated the various possible consequences of their action.

“It’s all over town that Dickie married Billie Anne,” Suzie said, the blush of pleasure still coloring her cheeks. “The little rat, he told me he was going to break up with that girl.”

Then she rolled into his arms, a sad droop to her mouth, and began to sob. In his rush to her bed Duane had briefly forgotten that she was in love with his son.

While she cried herself out he thought of Jacy. Instead of coming to Suzie’s he could have just driven down to Los Dolores and rung the doorbell. It wouldn’t have resulted in an instant gulp of sex, but he would have at least had the chance to look at and talk to the woman he had wondered about for so long.

Bad timing, he thought, remembering the hungry way Suzie had uttered the phrase the night before, when he was trying to wiggle out of the car. Suzie had awakened his need only a few hours before Jacy swam back into his life.

It had seemed an imperative need, too. The fact that its consummation had been slightly anticlimactic didn’t mean much. He and Suzie were not through.

In his minute or two with Jacy, no real need had been awakened—just sympathy and a certain curiosity. The image of her that he had nourished through the years had been the image of a girl—a girl of whom little trace remained. Flirtation had been a way of life with Jacy—he had caught an echo of it that morning when she had asked if she had been his Esther Williams. But it had been a faint echo—a habit from which the force had gone.