Texasville (34 page)

“Didn’t say,” Lester said. “Momma works quick. She had only been home twenty minutes when she called to tell me Jenny was pregnant.”

“Well, you’re married to her,” Duane said. “Maybe she’s pregnant by you.”

“Not likely,” Lester said.

Duane waited. Even that statement was an improvement on Jenny’s many comments on the subject.

“It’s very unlikely,” Lester said. “It would be almost a miracle if it’s mine.”

“Why would it be a miracle if you slept with your own wife?” Duane asked, glimpsing an unlooked-for ray of hope.

“We rarely find the time,” Lester said, craning his neck to watch the highway. He seemed to expect hundreds of cars to arrive at any minute.

“You don’t have to make excuses, my wife usually won’t sleep with me either,” Duane said, feeling slightly guilty for saying it. In the case of himself and Karla, nothing was so clear-cut. Hesitancies arose on both sides and then vanished and then reappeared again.

“I think we had sex once or twice a few months back,” Lester said. “Sundays are interminable around here.

“Millions of women probably get knocked up on Sunday afternoon,” he added. “Does Dickie want to marry Jenny or what?”

“Dickie’s just trying to survive his own marriage,” Duane said.

Lester kept wiping his face with his handkerchief although the handkerchief was wet as a dishrag.

“Nobody cares who anybody’s pregnant by anymore,” he said. “All people think about is ways to get out of paying their banker.”

“Don’t get cynical,” Duane said.

“Cynical’s not the word,” Lester said. “Desperate is the word.”

At that point Jenny raced up and parked. She was out of the car in a flash. The sight of the two men sitting in the shade seemed to annoy her tremendously.

“Don’t you two talk about me,” she said, dragging a shoulder bag containing her script out of the car. Virtually everyone in the county had contributed a pet scene or two to the script, which had swollen enormously.

“You should have helped me cut this script,” Jenny said to Duane. “It’s a hundred times too long. This pageant is going to be a disaster.”

Duane had made one or two stabs at reading the scripts, but had quickly been defeated each time. He never managed to get past the Gettysburg Address, which had somehow found its way into the historic story of Hardtop County. Sonny Crawford was playing Lincoln.

To his dismay and Lester’s, Jenny suddenly burst into tears. She stood under the grandstand and sobbed.

“It might not be a disaster,” Duane said soothingly.

Lester seemed touched by the sight of his wife’s tears. He quickly got up and put his arm around her.

“Don’t touch me, you’re sweaty as a pig,” Jenny said, but when Lester started to move away she clutched him tightly and sobbed more loudly.

Thirty seconds later she stopped sobbing and began to look cheerful.

“I’m very vulnerable right now,” she said. “You two should remember that.”

“We’ll remember, honey,” Lester said. “Let’s go. Are you okay?”

“Let’s go hook up the P.A. system,” Jenny said. A tear dripped off her lip but she was all business again.

As Duane stood in front of the microphone on the arena floor, feeling silly and saying “Testing, testing” over and over again, raising or lowering the volume dials in response to hand signals waved to him by Jenny and Lester, who were in opposite bleachers, cars began to pour into the parking lot. The cars were soon emptied of about half the citizenry of the county. In no time a couple of hundred people were milling around in the arena, eager to begin their acting careers. They stood in clumps in the bright late-afternoon sunlight, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

Duane was soon engulfed and forgotten, though he still stood manfully at the microphone and even occasionally said “Testing,” in order to convince himself he was doing something useful.

While he was saying “Testing” he saw Jacy’s Mercedes and Karla’s BMW pull up together and disgorge his entire family, all the way down to Little Mike, Barbette and Shorty. Dickie made a beeline for a group of young married women who were only in the pageant to take part in a frontier dance sequence. Their husbands were all cowboys, there for the cowboys-and-Indians sequence. The cowboys were shy in crowds. They hung back by the bucking chutes, coiling and uncoiling their ropes.

Karla and Jacy looked as if they had just been shopping. They both wore cool-looking white slacks and black sleeveless T-shirts. Jacy, who was carrying Barbette, also wore a large white visor. She strolled over and handed the baby to Duane.

“You can stop saying ‘Testing’ now, Duane,” she said. “The mike is obviously working fine.”

“Hi, Duane,” Karla said. “How’s life without a single soul to come home to?”

“I had two souls to come home to, Bobby Lee and Dickie,” Duane said.

Karla laughed. “I don’t think Bobby Lee has a whole soul,” she said.

“Dickie didn’t smash up any furniture,” he informed her.

“I know, he just married a lying slut,” Karla said.

“One that’s shot two people, too,” Duane said.

Before they could discuss that situation, Jenny hurried over. Her nervousness was gone. The sight of people to be organized had activated some sense of command—the same sense that had led her to organize thousands of concession stands, bake sales, charity drives, softball tournaments, overnight hikes, half-time shows, senior trips and community picnics, over the years.

“Hi, Jacy, I’m Jenny,” she said, giving Jacy a quick handshake. “We’re real glad you decided to play Eve, and I even thought how nice it would be if we could persuade you to sing a hymn at the end of the show.”

“Why not?” Jacy said tolerantly. “A hymn never hurt anybody.”

Duane sat down with his back against the fence and let Barbette amuse herself by dipping her bare feet into the tickly grass. She giggled, pleased to see her grandfather. Jacy and Karla sat on either side of him. Both were in excellent spirits. They all watched in amazement as Jenny, with easy efficiency, organized the ever-growing crowd of roughnecks, farmers, cowboys, merchants, wives, retirees and kids. She had acquired a blue megaphone and she didn’t hesitate to use it. She only had to glance at a person to decide which skits or groups the person would fit into.

“Okay, now you boys are the redcoats,” she said, splitting a lounging group of high school boys down the middle. “You stand over by the bucking chutes. The rest of you are revolutionary patriots, get over by the calf pens.”

She quickly carved the cowboys into a group of cowboys and a group of Indians. A little clique of roughnecks were assigned to be Mexicans, led by Bobby Lee, whereas another group, led by Eddie Belt, were cast as the heroic defenders of the Alamo.

A bunch of senior citizens were sent to the shady side of the arena to practice being a wagon train. G. G. Rawley was a
member of that group. He was not happy to be taking orders from Jenny Marlow, a stray from his own flock.

“How are we supposed to be a wagon train when there ain’t no wagons?” he asked.

“Oh, G.G., just use a pickup, or pretend you’re building a campfire or looking for a water hole or something,” Jenny said.

“Duane, are you playing Adam?” Karla asked.

Duane had finally agreed to play Adam under Jenny’s relentless pleading, but now he was having second thoughts.

“I don’t think I should,” he said.

“Why not?” Jacy asked.

Duane didn’t have a reason. He just felt reluctant to play Adam.

“I’d look silly in a bathing suit,” he said.

“Who said you get a bathing suit?” Jacy asked. “Adam just had a fig leaf.”

“A bathing suit is the least I’d have to have,” Duane said.

“He probably wants to wear his bathrobe,” Karla said. “He’s such an old prude he even undresses behind the door.”

Jacy laughed. “He wasn’t a prude when I knew him,” she said.

Karla laughed too. “I guess you got his best years,” she said.

Duane felt slightly uncomfortable. He knew the women were just teasing him. He didn’t usually mind being teased, but it felt different when Karla and Jacy did it. They were both wearing shades—he could tell they were watching him, from behind their shades. They were enigmas, the two women. Powerful enigmas. It was hard to sit between them and feel very relaxed. Too many currents surged through him when they were both around.

Meanwhile Jenny Marlow was yelling through her megaphone, repositioning various groups.

“That way! That way!” she yelled at the wagon train of senior citizens. “You were born in Missouri and Kentucky, you wouldn’t be coming from the west.”

Bobby Lee straggled over and squatted in the shade of his sombrero.

“Get over there where you belong, you’re Santa Anna,” Karla said.

“It’s too hot where I belong,” Bobby Lee said.

“Jacy, this is General Santa Anna,” Duane said.

“Hi, General,” Jacy said. “You’re kinda cute.”

The compliment cheered Bobby Lee immediately.

“I didn’t wanta be Santa Anna,” he assured her. “I’m already unpopular enough. I wanted to be Daniel Boone.”

He cast envious looks at Dickie, who was still flirting with the cowboys’ wives.

“I wish I was lucky like Dickie,” Bobby Lee said. “That kid can get away with anything, and I never got away with nothing in my life.”

“If you was as lucky as Dickie you’d be so pussy-whipped you’d die,” Karla informed him.

It was the night of the full moon. It rose in the east, where the band of wagoneers were moping about listlessly, pretending to build campfires. The moon was orange as it rose, but soon became golden, then white. Duane pointed it out to Barbette—he could not remember that he had ever shown the child the moon before. Barbette was transfixed. She watched the moon in silence, lying in Duane’s lap.

To start the rehearsal, Willis Ray, the smartest kid in high school, demonstrated the light show that was going to represent Creation. Whirling disco lights flashed rainbow colors into the darkening sky.

A brisk walk-through followed. Duane rose reluctantly when Jenny called for Adam and Eve. He still felt reluctant, but didn’t want to make a scene. Karla and Jacy pushed him over to the spot Jenny had chosen to be the Garden of Eden.

“Okay, we’ll put the tree with the forbidden fruit on it right between you,” Jenny said. “When you wake up, Duane, hold your side, so everybody will know you’re missing a rib.”

“I’m missing a brain or I wouldn’t be doing this,” Duane said, but Jenny had already hurried off to start positioning the revolutionary patriots.

“Don’t you put this down, this is going to be great,” Jacy said. She looked happier and more beautiful than he had seen her look since her return. Duane was a little startled by how lovely she looked. He had thought her beauty was gone, something to be recalled only in his deep-held memories; and yet,
before his eyes, it was returning, fitting itself once again to the contours of his fantasy.

She linked her arm in his.

“Remember when I was homecoming queen, Duane?” she asked, in a softened voice.

“I sure do,” he said.

“I bet you never thought we’d be standing here thirty years later as Adam and Eve,” she said.

“I never would have thought it, Jacy,” he said.

“I feel like we are, in a way,” Jacy said. “I feel like we’re the Adam and Eve of this town.”

Before they could say more, Jenny came back. He had no further chance to talk to Jacy. He watched most of the proceedings from his spot by the fence, Barbette asleep in his arms.

Janine, Charlene Duggs and Lavelle had been chosen to sing the national anthem. As they were clearing their throats and trying a few high notes, Karla collared Jenny.

“Why don’t all the women sing it?” Karla asked. “All the women in the whole pageant.”

“It might be too feminist,” Jenny said. “The men might start throwing rocks at us, or something.”

“I’m sick of the national anthem,” Ruth Popper said. She had arrived in her running clothes.

“I’m sick of it too,” Jacy said. “Let’s sing the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ That’s patriotic, and it’s a better song.”

“Okay, okay, as long as it’s patriotic,” Jenny said, grabbing her megaphone. “All the women and girls get over here. Let’s have all the women and girls.”

The women straggled toward the microphone. Some plodded, a few young girls ran. The cowboys’ wives tore themselves away from Dickie. Nellie, who had been receiving the homage of several young roughnecks, drifted over. Even Minerva, who had been sitting skeptically in the bleachers, wandered into the arena, liberating Little Mike in the process. He raced over and began to climb the gate to one of the bucking chutes.

Jenny strung the women all across the arena, with Jacy, Karla and the three women from the courthouse in the center. The high school band, which hadn’t been taking the proceedings
very seriously, swung into the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” The women of the county, short and tall, young and old, weak and strong, pretty and plain, began to sing.

Duane had felt surprisingly emotional all evening. When Jacy linked her arm in his, he had felt a swelling of feeling, and he had felt it also while showing Barbette the new moon.

As he sat on the ground listening to the women sing, the emotion that had been moving through him in a light current suddenly surged into his chest. Something dripped onto his hand and he realized he was crying. It was the second time in two days that he had cried. It embarrassed him, though Barbette was asleep and no one was watching. Despite all the problems, past, present and to come, he felt deeply happy to be where he was.

The singing of the women touched him. He wanted them to sing on and on. Their singing brought him a rare feeling of peace, and he wanted it to last.

Then, while lost to emotion, he felt something cold touch his hand. It proved to be Shorty’s nose. Shorty thrust his head under Duane’s arm, trying to get as close to him as possible. Duane scratched his head.

The singing ended, and the lengthy rehearsal dragged on. Sonny, as Abraham Lincoln, read the Gettysburg Address. The rival armies of the Alamo mimicked an exchange of shots. The make-believe Indians raced after buffalo, in this case Shorty, who could never stay out of any race. The wagon train of senior citizens plodded across the arena. Doughboys marched off to World War I, oil boomers drilled holes, cowboys swung ropes, and, finally, the class of ’65 reenacted its great victory in the Class A state finals, the last significant event to occur in the county except the oil glut, which it had been decided to ignore. Then it only remained for Jacy to sing the closing hymn, but the hymn had not been selected, and was not rehearsed. People began to wander off to their cars, though many stood around chatting in the arena, enjoying the coolness of the evening.