Texasville (32 page)

“You don’t seem very convinced,” Duane commented.

“No,” Sonny said. “The pills make me feel like I have fuzz in my head. Sort of warm fuzz. It’s not a great feeling.”

“What’s supposed to be wrong with your head, anyway?” Duane asked.

Sonny chuckled. “I guess it’s just degenerating,” he said. “The neurologist wanted to try the fuzz pills before he did anything more drastic.

“I’d rather see movies in the sky,” he added.

“Seen any good ones lately?” Duane asked.

Sonny grinned. “I saw
To Kill a Mockingbird
last week,” he said. “Pretty good movie. I haven’t seen one since I started taking the fuzz pills.”

“Maybe you oughta lay off the pills until we get through the
centennial,” Duane said. “Once that starts we’re all gonna need our wits about us.”

“I think my wits live somewhere else now,” Sonny said.

Duane drove on home. Talking to Sonny was depressing. Once he thought about it, he realized it always had been. Even in high school, Sonny had been depressing. He seemed to have convinced himself at an early age that he would never really have what he wanted, though it seemed to Duane he could have most of the things he wanted if he had just made a little effort. Not Jacy, perhaps—but a world of other things to want did exist, including many other desirable and interesting women.

Yet Sonny had settled for a carwash, a Kwik-Sack, a laundry and a hotel that only operated three weeks a year. As for women, once Ruth left him, he had settled for nothing. He hadn’t even allowed himself to be tempted by Karla, and Karla tempted most men to distraction.

Sometimes Duane and Karla talked of trying to fix Sonny up with someone who would make him a good wife, or at least a friendly date, but they never quite got around to it.

“Luke’s not easy to help,” Karla said. “Maybe we better just mind our own business. If I can’t get him to fall in love with me I don’t see how I could get him to fall in love with anybody else.”

“You aren’t the only kind of woman there is to fall in love with,” Duane informed her.

“No, but I’m the best kind,” Karla said, laughing.

Duane secretly agreed. He himself had stayed fairly madly in love with her for at least fifteen years. Her energy alone was a constant marvel. He had rarely seen Karla tire. Until Ruth came to work for him she ran his office, was a substitute teacher in the high school, coached several Little League teams, was secretary of the Rodeo Association, and still danced all night whenever she could get him or anyone else to go with her to a dance hall.

Remembering the efficient way she had hitched up Bobby Lee’s pickup that morning, he suddenly felt an urge to see her, and stepped on the gas. There was no one quite like Karla.

When he got home he saw Bobby Lee’s pickup, still hitched
to the Supernova and still on its side. Karla had apparently been content just to drag it home. She hadn’t set it on fire, or rolled it down the hill with their little lawn tractor, or anything that drastic.

He didn’t see the BMW, though—only the Supernova, and Minerva’s Buick.

He let himself into the kitchen, where fortunately he found some smothered steak in the oven and a pot of pinto beans. Maybe everyone had gone to a dance hall. He sat at the kitchen table, idly leafing through a huge stack of bills, while he ate the steak and a large bowl of beans laced with jalapeño.

While he was eating, Minerva came in.

“Who told you to put on overalls and go to work?” she asked.

“I thought of it myself,” he said.

“You’ve been an executive too long,” Minerva said. “You just look silly wearing them overalls.”

“Is that what I am? An executive?” he said. “No wonder I’m so far in debt.”

Minerva studied the liquor stock for a minute or two, before choosing Cuervo Gold. She poured an iced-tea glassful.

“Some people put ice in tequila, but I don’t,” Minerva said. “Ice has them little amebas in it.”

“Where’s the gang?” Duane asked.

“They’re spending the night down at Jacy’s,” Minerva said.

Duane nearly choked on a bite of beans.

“All of them?” he asked.

“All of them but me,” Minerva said. “I thought I’d stay around because Karla wasn’t sure if Jacy gets the good cable.”

“Are they just gonna stay overnight?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t know,” Minerva said. “You can look on the calendar and see if it says anything about them coming back.”

Karla kept a massive calendar hanging on one wall of the kitchen. The spaces for each day were the size of post cards. She believed in writing down her plans, as well as things that were not exactly plans.

“Sometimes I think it’s things that are more like hopes,” she said.

At that time, a year or two back, Duane had been staring apprehensively at an entry that read “Chew Duane’s ass out.”

“Why would chewing my ass out be a hope?” he asked.

“It might perk you up,” Karla said. “You used to get a hard-on every time I chewed you out. Remember?”

Duane did remember. Karla on the attack had once seemed incredibly sexy to him. He liked the way her eyes flashed and the way her mouth moved when she was delivering a rapid-fire rundown of all his shortcomings. He still liked it, but the years had passed and some of the better effects were wearing off.

Karla also encouraged the kids to scribble their plans on the calendar, on the theory that it might make it easier to find them in case of emergency. She had tried to start calendar training when Dickie and Nellie were teenagers, but it hadn’t worked well.

Dickie liked the idea of a calendar, but his entries had often alarmed his mother. His very first entry read “Go fuck girls.” Many of his plans seemed to involve criminal violence. Once he wrote “Go start a fire.” Or he might write “Go beat the shit out of Pinky.” Pinky had briefly been a friend. Karla was always having to tear pages off calendars and buy new ones for fear that Dickie’s entries might be used against him in criminal proceedings.

Nellie’s entries were safer but also duller. Her favorite entry was “Go to the dance,” but “Take a nap” ran it a close second.

Duane walked over to the calendar to see if it would tell him how long his family planned to stay at Jacy’s. He already missed little Barbette.

The entry for the present day was short. In the morning Karla had written in: “Make Bobby Lee wish he was dead.”

Later in the day, switching from blue Magic Marker to dark red lipstick, she had written “Adiós, sayonara, goodbye!”

Duane decided not to take it too seriously. “Adiós, sayonara, goodbye!” was a line from a hillbilly song, which might mean that Karla was getting in a good humor again.

“You’ll have to take them clothes off or I can’t wash them,” Minerva said.

“Were you planning to wash them right now?” he asked.

“Once that grease sets it’s hard to get out,” she said.

Duane found a piece of custard pie in the icebox.

“Could I just have time to eat this piece of pie before I have to undress?” he asked.

“Executives that go out and try to work are just fooling themselves,” Minerva said. “It won’t do you no good to pretend you’re still young. You ain’t young.”

Duane sat down and ate the pie. He was aware that he didn’t quite have Minerva’s blessings, but then if he waited to eat until he had a woman’s blessings, he would rapidly starve. When he finished he left his dirty clothes by the washer and went out to the hot tub. It was a beautiful night, the dark sky richly speckled with brilliant stars.

To his surprise, he found Bobby Lee stretched out on his back on the deck. A ring of empty beer cans had been meticulously placed around the rim of the hot tub. Duane had to step over them to get in. Bobby Lee’s eyes were open, but he gave no sign of being aware of Duane’s presence.

“Bobby, are you pretty drunk?” he asked.

“I’m nine sheets to the wind,” Bobby Lee said. “Hell, I might even be more sheets than that. I might be a hunnert sheets to the wind.”

Duane soaked for a while. Far off toward town, he saw the flicker of a headlight. Five minutes later a car turned onto the hill and drove up to the house.

“Karla’s trying to destroy our love, Nellie’s and mine, but she ain’t gonna make it,” Bobby Lee informed him. “I’m a hard dog to get out from under the porch.”

“I’ll say that for you,” Duane said, getting out of the tub.

“Don’t you roll off into one of these pools and drown,” he cautioned, before going into the house. “You’re so drunk you might not even realize you were swimming.”

“Nine sheets to the wind,” Bobby Lee said happily.

Duane checked Barbette’s baby bed, but she wasn’t in it.

He found Karla in bed. She had an old
Playgirl
in her lap, but she wasn’t reading it.

“Well, I guess now Jacy’s got my dog and our kids both,” he said. He smiled.

“Yeah, she just loves those kids,” Karla said. “I think it’s good for her to have some kids around.”

“What brought you back?” he asked.

Karla looked at him a little sadly. She seemed subdued again.

“I was gonna stay but I missed my husband,” she said.

Duane lay down beside her and took her in his arms.

“I missed you too, honey,” he said.

CHAPTER 47

T
HE NEXT MORNING
D
UANE DECIDED TO HAVE A
talk with Dickie. He sat on the deck and discussed it with Karla. Bobby Lee had disappeared into one of the many guest rooms and nobody had the energy to look for him.

“If he finds his way out, talk him out of leaving Carolyn,” Duane said. “I like Carolyn.”

“I like her too,” Karla said. “All the more reason she shouldn’t have to live her whole life with Bobby Lee.”

“Somebody has to stay with somebody they’re married to,” Duane said.

“Why?” Karla asked.

“I don’t know why,” Duane admitted. “It just seems like it would be appropriate.”

“Okay, you can stay your whole life with me,” Karla said, blowing on her coffee.

“Jacy says Dickie is one of the sweetest boys she’s ever met,” she added.

“How’d she happen to meet him?”

“He sells her marijuana,” Karla said. “He started the week
she got back and never said a word to us about knowing her, the little rat.”

Karla wore an unhappy little frown. Duane felt sad. Last night they had been happy for an hour—back in love, almost. They had both awakened feeling cheerful. Yet already cheerfulness was proving hard to sustain.

“How come you’re depressed?” he asked.

Karla shrugged. “Because I just figured out the bottom line,” she said.

“What is the bottom line?”

“Men are scared of me,” Karla said. “That’s the bottom line. They don’t like it that I’m smart.”

She paused, still frowning.

“Shit, they don’t even like it that I’m pretty,” she said. “They think they do but it scares them. I don’t know which scares them most, that I’m pretty or that I’m smart.”

“Well, you’re both,” he said.

“I know, but so the bottom line is that men act like they want me but then they run,” Karla said.

Duane reached over and began to massage the back of her neck. The muscles were as tight as a drum.

“I’m not scared that you’re smart and pretty,” he said. “I like it that you’re smart and pretty.”

Karla tilted her head back against his hand.

“That’s right, Duane,” she said. “You’re the only one who isn’t. That’s why I married you and that’s why I’m still around.”

He massaged her neck until the muscles loosened a little and then got dressed and drove to Wichita Falls to see Dickie.

Dickie was lying on the couch with his shirt off, reading a volume of the
World Book Encyclopedia.

“What are you reading about?” Duane asked.

“I’m reading about Italy,” Dickie said. “I might move there.”

“Why, ain’t there enough dope around here to suit you?” Duane asked. He felt his anger rise. It was unreasonable and he tried to control himself. It was not a crime to read about Italy, or even to move there, and yet he felt an urge to grab the boy and shake him.

“It has nothing to do with dope, I just need to get away from Billie Anne,” Dickie said, without looking up.

“You just married her,” Duane reminded him.

“Stupidest thing I ever did, too,” Dickie said.

Duane felt his anger rise more rapidly. It was as if he had poured beer in a glass too quickly. Unless he acted instantly it was going to overflow the glass. He had to suck it off quick.

A second later he knocked the book out of Dickie’s hand and yanked him off the couch. The boy looked surprised, but he rose quickly, so quickly it caught Duane off balance. He threw a punch but then found himself on the floor. Dickie had thrown one first. When Duane got up, Dickie grappled with him and managed to shove him out the screen door. In the yard Duane realized that he was in a fight with his son—and not only that, he was losing. He threw two punches and they both missed. Dickie was too quick. Duane felt tired, although the fight had not been happening for more than a minute. He looked at Dickie and saw that the boy was crying, although he still had his fists clenched.

“Stop it, Daddy,” Dickie said. “Please stop it.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Duane said, breathing hard. “I think I better stop it.”

His anger had passed and he felt a deep, crushing sense of shame. He had attacked his own son, and for no reason—or at least for no reason that was clear.

“Dickie, I’m sorry,” he said. “There was absolutely no reason for me to behave that way. I’m real sorry.”

He went back in the house and sat down on the couch. Apologizing had not helped much. He felt that he could no longer trust himself. Never in his life had he done anything so troubling. He had never before attacked one of his own children. He was trembling, and felt that he might be sick at his stomach.

“You’re white as a sheet, Daddy,” Dickie said. “Are you sick or something?”

Duane couldn’t think of what to say. What
was
the matter with him?

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Dickie asked.

“No, I just feel a little queasy,” Duane said.