Texasville (29 page)

“Let him alone,” Duane said. “He doesn’t realize he’s done anything wrong.”

“He deserves about a hundred spankings,” Karla said, though she herself seemed to regret having dispensed one.

Little Mike buried his face in Duane’s shirt and sobbed. Then Karla began to sob, out of guilt. Billie Anne was still sobbing in the pool, and no doubt Junior Nolan was sobbing somewhere in the dark pastures below, if he wasn’t already hanging dead from a mesquite tree. Duane wanted to cry himself, but felt too tired. The emotion was there, but such muscle as it took to cry seemed to have atrophied.

Little Mike recovered first. The sight of his grandmother crying astonished him so that he forgot his grievances and pointed a finger at her.

“Ball?” he said inquiringly.

Duane passed him over to Karla so the two could make up.

“I talked to Jacy,” Karla said. “She says Shorty’s a wonderful companion. I guess she was really lonely and didn’t know it.”

“I guess so,” Duane said.

“Duane, it was sweet of you to let her have your dog,” Karla said, drying her eyes.

Touched by the way she said it, and lonesome for Shorty, Duane began to cry.

CHAPTER 42

N
EITHER
D
UANE NOR
K
ARLA COULD SLEEP FOR
worrying about Junior.

“I ought to go look for him,” Duane said several times, as they bobbed, wide-awake, on the waterbed.

“He’s probably just asleep under a tree,” Karla said. “I bet he shows up at breakfast. He likes Minerva’s biscuits.”

“Why doesn’t Nellie want to marry Joe?” he asked.

“She might have met somebody she likes better,” Karla said. “That’s the only reason Nellie ever has for not marrying somebody.”

After staring sleepless at the ceiling for an hour Duane got up and dressed.

“I’m going to go look for him,” he said. “It won’t hurt to look.”

Karla got up too.

“You don’t have to go,” he said.

“I’m going, though,” Karla said. “I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts.”

They got in his pickup and drove through the pasture below
the house. Numerous small pumpers’ roads wound through the mesquite. Neither of them felt the least bit hopeful about finding Junior. The pasture contained three thousand acres. Unless Junior happened to be sleeping in one of the roads, their venture had little chance of success.

“What thoughts didn’t you want to be alone with?” Duane asked.

“I haven’t got a thought left in my head that I’d care to be alone with for five minutes,” Karla said.

“Nobody’s dead yet, that we know of,” Duane said. “Where there’s life there’s hope.”

“No, things are too fucked up now,” Karla said. “I doubt my life will ever be unfucked again.

“It takes longer for things to straighten out than it does for them to get tangled,” she added.

“Maybe the twins will grow up perfect,” he said.

Karla laughed. “You’ve finally gone round the bend, Duane,” she said.

“They might make respectable marriages and become lawyers and do fine,” he said. “If they’ll just do that we’ll be batting five hundred as parents, which ain’t bad.”

“They won’t though,” Karla said. “They’ll become criminals and we’ll be batting zero. We don’t know where either one of them are right now. We should be looking for them instead of Junior. He’s a grown man.”

Duane could not convince himself that the twins were in any danger, wherever they were.

“I have to do something about Dickie,” he said. “He can’t be allowed to smash furniture and stuff.”

“He’s got a jealous temperament, like me,” Karla said.

“You don’t smash furniture,” Duane said, looking at his wife. Since seeing Sonny Crawford in the balcony she had seemed far too subdued.

“The big smash might be coming, any day,” Karla said, but the remark was made without energy.

After two fruitless tours of the pasture, they gave up. Junior was not in the road. On the way back to the house they had to stop while two possums ambled across the road. The sight seemed to cheer Karla up.

“I like the way their rear ends wobble,” she said. “Now that Shorty’s gone, could we have a possum for a pet?”

“Let’s give it a few days,” Duane said. “Jacy might not like some of Shorty’s bad habits.”

Karla laughed. “You can’t believe he just walked off and left you, can you?” she said. “You better face it, Duane. Your faithful dog wasn’t faithful at all.”

They crawled back in bed and Duane had a terrible dream in which Shorty was found hanging from the goal posts at the football field. He staggered up, to discover that it was dawn. He decided to go nap for a bit in the hot tub, but smelled biscuits and went to the kitchen first.

“Did Junior ever come in?” he asked.

“No, and I hope he don’t,” Minerva said. “He’s just another mouth to feed.”

“You ought to show a little sympathy,” Duane chided. “The man’s just lost everything he’s worked forty-five years to get.”

Minerva curled a scornful lip.

“He’s down the hill trying to rope an oil well right now,” she said. “There’s nothing to stop him from making another fortune. Nothing to stop you, either. My own daddy went bankrupt three times. Junior’s not going to get nowhere sitting around whistling at coyotes all day.”

Duane went outside and saw Junior staggering around the nearest oil pump, which he did appear to be trying to rope.

Taking four or five biscuits, in case Junior was starving, Duane walked down the hill. Junior had managed to rope the top of the pump. He dug his heels in the earth as if he had roped a steer, but the pump was stronger than a steer. It promptly jerked him off his feet.

“I used to be a pretty good team roper,” he said, when Duane handed him the biscuits. “I might hit a few rodeos. Make a new start.”

“Now don’t do that,” Duane said. “You’re too old to rodeo. You’ll just get all busted up.”

Junior thought it over. His face looked terrible. Various levels of sunburn were peeling at different speeds. He looked as if he were molting.

“I guess I ought to go home,” he said. “I can’t mooch off you
and Karla forever. Besides, Minerva don’t like me. She says I’m just another mouth to feed.”

“Minerva’s not too tolerant,” Duane said.

“Did you ever know a tolerant woman?” Junior asked. “If you did you’re luckier than me. I ain’t met one yet.”

Duane thought Junior’s wife, Suzie, was tolerant, but he didn’t mention it. They started climbing the hill. Junior gave out halfway up and sat down on a rock.

“This is a cruel place to live,” he said. “Cruel and ugly. I was in the Navy. I should have gone AWOL in the South Pacific and not come back.”

Junior looked to be at the end of his tether. Duane thought there was cause to be alarmed about him. When they got to the house he took Karla aside and made her promise to keep a watch on the man.

“I think I can talk Suzie into taking him back,” he said. “I think I better try—otherwise we might lose Junior.”

“They’re having a longhorn sale in Fort Worth,” Karla said. “I might take him to that.”

“Take him but don’t let him start bidding,” Duane said. “He don’t have anything to bid with.”

He drove to his office and sat by himself for an hour. Ruth was off on her run. When she returned she noticed him sitting in the dark office. She stuck her head in the door and gave him a sharp look. Sometimes she reminded him of Briscoe, a road-runner that lived around the office—thin and irascible. In fact, Briscoe had been there earlier, pecking at the glass window. He was like a determined transient. He wasn’t going to be satisfied until he broke in and stole something.

“It’s not like you to brood,” Ruth said.

“I haven’t done anything but brood for the last six months,” he pointed out. “There isn’t anything to do around here but brood.”

“You’re not equipped to brood,” Ruth said. “Go run one of the rigs. Make yourself useful to the company. That fourth rig’s just sitting there.”

“Why?” Duane asked. “What happened to Abilene?”

Abilene was the old driller in charge of the fourth rig. He had once worked for Jacy’s father and been in love with her
mother—Duane had even roughnecked on his crew when he was in high school. Abilene had always been hard to get along with. He was vain, humorless and quick to quarrel.

“Abilene didn’t show up,” Ruth said. “He’s probably found a new girlfriend. You better stop brooding and go to work or this business will sink like a stone.”

“It can’t sink, it’s resting on the bottom now,” Duane said.

“Where’s Shorty?” Ruth asked.

“He went to live with Jacy,” Duane said, not eager to talk about it.

“I wouldn’t have a dog, they’re too much like humans,” Ruth said. “How’s Jacy doing?”

“I think she’s doing pretty well,” Duane said.

“You might not be the best judge,” Ruth said. “You’ve lived with Karla most of your life. Karla’s buoyant. Not too many are that buoyant.

“I like Karla,” she added. “You’re lucky she married you.”

“It must be the one thing I’ve done that you approve of,” Duane said.

“No, I think it’s nice of you to let Jacy have your dog,” she said.

She walked over and raised the blinds. The sunlight that flooded the office was so bright that Duane put on his dark glasses.

“You keep this office too dark,” Ruth said. “No wonder you brood. Sunlight helps you to keep a cheerful disposition.”

“Then how come there’s so many sad people around here?” Duane asked. “There’s certainly no shortage of sunlight.”

Ruth looked out the window at the dusty tennis courts.

“Sometimes sadness is just in people,” she said. “Look at Sonny. He was sad when he was a teenager, and he just never got rid of it.”

“I don’t know what he found out at the head doctor,” Duane said. “Sonny avoids me. I only see him at meetings.”

“I’d avoid you too, if I were Sonny,” Ruth said. “You’re successful and he isn’t.”

“What do you mean? I’m stone broke and he owns four or five solvent businesses,” Duane said. “They may not be Exxon or Mobil, but they’re solvent. I’m the one who ought to be sad.”

“Some people can only see defeat,” Ruth said. “You’re not that way, Duane.”

They were silent for a while. It sometimes annoyed Duane that no one seemed to perceive the slightest change in his own circumstances. They calmly continued to regard him as the most successful man in town, although his personal life was bizarre, his children uncontrollable and his business on the verge of ruin.

“I might be looking right at defeat myself,” he said, in an effort to force Ruth to recognize that he wasn’t indestructible.

Ruth ignored his effort. She went to shower, and he soon heard her typing away at her mysterious letters.

Duane got a sheet of yellow paper out of his desk, meaning to make a list of all the things he ought to do that day. Karla had read somewhere that it was good to make lists of things one needed to accomplish in the course of a day. She herself constantly made lists on little pieces of yellow paper. Some she stuck on the deck of the hot tub. The sun quickly melted the little piece of adhesive the note paper had on it—those lists blew off into the yard, to become prizes for ants and beetles. Others she stuck on the icebox, and still others on the dashboard of the BMW. It was not apparent to Duane that she ever did any of the things on the lists, but it created an impression of efficiency that he envied.

He studied his piece of paper and wrote: (1) Check on Abilene’s rig. (2) Suzie Nolan.
(3)
Dickie.

After scrutinizing that promising list of responsibilities for a while, he crossed off “Dickie” and wrote in “Jacy.” He couldn’t think of anything to add to the list, and it seemed silly to be carrying around a list of only three things to do, so he wadded it up and threw it in the wastebasket. He got up and started to leave—in fact, got all the way to his pickup before the existence of the list began to bother him. Ruth and Karla were both pesky. It would be just like either or both of them to discover a wadded-up piece of paper in the wastebasket and unwad it. Of course, both of them already knew that he was becoming friendly with Jacy, and both seemed to approve. What they knew about his relations with Suzie Nolan was more ambiguous—he had not exactly admitted to anything, but neither
had he been precise in his denials. He had left it shadowy, or at least liked to suppose that he had. But if either Karla or Ruth fished the piece of paper out of the wastebasket and saw the names of the two women they might jump to conclusions. They would probably be the right conclusions, too.

After hesitating at his pickup for a minute, he went back in and retrieved the list. “Forgot something,” he said awkwardly, to explain his sudden reappearance to Ruth.

“That’s all right, Duane,” Ruth said. “Nobody’s gonna be mad at you if you want to play safe.”

When he went back outside, he noticed Briscoe, the roadrunner, on the tennis courts. Briscoe sailed over the net, raced around the far court and then sailed back over. It was as if he had served himself into one court and then returned himself to the other. Then he began to peck irritably at the bottom of the net. When he noticed that Duane was watching him he raced to the service line, cocked his head and looked annoyed.

Duane felt better just watching him. A roadrunner capable of being his own tennis ball had possibilities. Perhaps he could be trained to sit in a pickup and peck people who tried to steal tools. He was taciturn and wouldn’t always be yipping like a Queensland blue heeler.

“Briscoe, you can have Shorty’s job any time you want it,” he said, as he drove off.

CHAPTER 43

D
RIVING THROUGH TOWN, HE NOTICED TWO FAMILIAR
-looking bicycles outside the Kwik-Sack. He stopped and went in. Genevieve was mopping the floor.

“You haven’t seen any twins around here, have you?” he asked.

Genevieve grinned. She had always had a capacity for seeing the funny side of life, which was fortunate, since hers had largely been grim.

“I just now saw a pair, watching videos in the storeroom,” she said. “They’re having Fudgsicles for breakfast.”