Texasville (45 page)

“Those marathoners won’t be setting any world records today,” Duane said. Unfortunately the route of the marathon led directly into the wind.

“I’m going up to the second floor,” he said. There was a little balcony there. He could look up the road and see how far away the marathoners were.

Sonny followed him up. From the balcony they could see twenty miles to the north, and at least that far to the south. It took only a little height to reveal Thalia for what it was—a tiny spot of town in the midst of a vast, scrubby plain.

Duane easily spotted the marathoners. The road to the north was speckled with them.

Two runners were far ahead of the pack.

“I guess this wind’s weeded out the men from the boys,” Sonny said.

“No,” Duane said, “it’s weeded out the runners from the walkers, and one of the runners isn’t a man or a boy. One of them’s Ruth.”

“It was just a figure of speech,” Sonny said quickly.

Duane happened to glance to the south and immediately forgot all about figures of speech. The road to the south was also speckled with racers—and not just the road, either. These racers spread across the pastures and fields as well. Several
hundred were already in the streets of Thalia, blowing across lawns and crashing into fences and parked automobiles.

The racers from the south were tumbleweeds, thousands and thousands of them. The extraordinary wind had broken them loose from the thin soil—they were rumbling into Thalia like a herd of migrating beasts. They bounced, they skidded, they rolled over cars, now and then soaring for a few yards like great thorny birds.

“My God,” Duane said, “it’s a tumbleweed stampede.”

Sonny seemed dumbfounded, and Duane couldn’t blame him. A spiky parade of tumbleweeds was bouncing down the main street, and tributary parades down all the other streets. They came tumbling across the courthouse lawn so rapidly that Junior and Billie Anne didn’t have time to run for their pickup—all they could do was cower behind the mattress that had aroused G.G.’s ire.

“They’ll wipe out the marathoners,” Duane said. To the south, as far as he could see, more tumbleweeds were coming. From horizon to horizon they came, covering the whole plain solidly, as the herds of buffalo had once been said to cover it.

The tumbleweeds rolled in, bouncing and leaping like live things. A startled Bobby Lee, returning exhausted from the successful pursuit of his sombrero, took refuge behind the gas pumps in the filling station. The people on the north side of the courthouse watched in amazement as the tumbleweeds swept past. Weeds began to smash into parked cars, entangling themselves. Barricades of tumbleweeds began to grow—fences of weeds, stretching beyond the lines of cars. Small tumbleweeds the size of Shorty raced on through town. Larger ones, the size of cows, hit the barricades and stuck.

To the north the marathoners were still coming, jogging relentlessly, perhaps not yet aware of what was sweeping down on them. The two in the lead were almost to the city limits sign; they matched one another stride for stride.

“It might just be temporary,” Sonny said. “The wind might die.”

Duane looked south. The wind was not dying, and the tumbleweeds in their tens of thousands were still racing into Thalia. He heard a droning noise. A speck that could have been
a bird but sounded more like a helicopter hovered over the marathoners.

“Here comes the Governor,” Duane said. “We gotta get down there.”

They raced down the stairs and out into the street. The marathon was to finish right under the red light. Duane remembered his moment of bliss in that spot but had no time for pleasant reminiscence—stretching a finish line with tumble-weeds the size of Volkswagens bearing down on one was no simple feat. The little scurrying tumbleweeds they could jump, but the larger ones presented problems.

Just as they were about to get the line stretched, a tumble-weed of modest size bounced right between them and yanked the line out of Sonny’s hands. Duane hung on to his end, but the tumbleweed, unwilling to stop, bucked and cracked around like a roped animal. The line was soon hopelessly snarled. Sonny tried to get it loose but merely lost his twelve-dollar hat in the process. Duane, seeing that it was hopeless, turned his end loose. The tumbleweed immediately carried the finish line down the street toward the marathoners.

“Let’s just line up,” Duane said. “Whoever goes between us first is the winner.”

“I don’t think they’re gonna make it,” Sonny said. “They seem to be slowing down.”

Indeed, both the marathoners and the helicopter were tiring. The adverse wind factors seemed to be holding them in suspended animation. The marathoners’ legs still went up and down, the helicopter’s blades went round and round, but neither were making more than minimal forward progress.

Duane glanced around and saw a phalanx of at least fifty tumbleweeds bearing down on them. Dodging one only brought one into the path of another. Sonny did just that, and a middle-sized tumbleweed smacked into him with such force that he was caught, his legs entangled, as if he had jumped into the weed. As Sonny tried to pull the weed off his legs, another struck and stuck. A barricade began to form around Sonny as more weeds quickly added themselves to the pile.

Duane started to run for the shelter of the bank but decided that would be cowardly—he concentrated on dodging. He felt
like laughing at Sonny’s plight. Sonny could be the victim of a horror movie—the man attacked by killer weeds. Soon the weeds would cover him completely, and when they were finally pulled off him he would be found to be a bloodless corpse. Or perhaps the weeds would incorporate him into their species, and he would stalk the town on windy days, the dread Tumbleweed Man, a huge hulk of weeds ensnaring beautiful women in his thorny clasp.

Sonny was trying to drag his heap of weeds over to the courthouse before so many piled on that he couldn’t move.

Duane found that by facing the oncoming weeds he could dodge them if he stayed nimble. It reminded him of a football drill—sometimes he had to dart right, sometimes left.

Meanwhile the runners and the helicopter had inched a block closer to the intersection. They were only three blocks away. The runners, Ruth Popper and John Cecil, were tired but game. So many tumbleweeds rolled down the street that they too had to keep dodging left and right, making only lateral progress. Both looked determined, though.

The helicopter was only a few yards ahead of them. Duane could see three men in it, one of them undoubtedly the Governor. Trying to be hospitable, he waved. He felt a little awkward, being the sole welcomer of the Governor of the state. The helicopter inched closer and came lower. Duane, still dodging weeds, could not give it his full attention, but when the noise of its motors began to drown out the wind he glanced up again. The helicopter had come level with the hardware store. It was only thirty feet off the ground. Two men in suits seemd perplexed as they looked down upon the huddled crowd and the wilderness of tumbleweeds. Wherever cars were parked, walls of tumbleweeds had formed, and the walls were rising higher.

Duane recognized the helicopter pilot, too. It was Karla’s old friend Randy, who had a knack for turning up just when no one wanted him. He looked as cocky as ever, but the Governor’s aide, sitting beside him, didn’t look cocky. The aide turned to the Governor and gestured hopelessly. The Governor looked dazed, and with some reason. From where he sat he must have been seeing a strange sight—a town buried by an eruption, not of lava, but of tumbleweeds.

Ruth and John were only fifty yards away. Duane tried to concentrate on his duties as an official finish line. He pretended he was holding up a tape. It looked as if John might win. He had a step on Ruth, but John had never been lucky, and the bad luck that had dogged him all his life smacked right into him in the form of four tumbleweeds that were traveling as a pack. Two veered slightly toward Ruth, but she managed to hurdle them. When her feet left the ground the wind blew her back a step. John Cecil tried to slip between the two that were headed for him, and miscalculated. A tumbleweed hit each leg. He didn’t fall, but it was all he could do to lift his feet. Game to the end, he tried dragging the tumbleweeds over the finish line, but other tumbleweeds, as if sensing a victim, began to pile on. Ruth crossed the finish line and ran for shelter. Duane went to help John, who was making no forward progress at all. Together they reached the bank building. John was too winded to speak.

Above them, the helicopter hovered. Duane waved, trying to indicate to Randy that he could land in the shelter of the bank building. Randy, with his usual insolence, ignored him. The helicopter hung just over the red light. The Governor and his aide were whispering to one another. Tumbleweeds continued to bounce down the street. They were piling up against the front of every building that faced south. Some buildings were covered almost to their roofs. The gas pumps behind which Bobby Lee cowered were completely covered. He could barely be seen, crouched with his sombrero in an igloo of tumbleweeds.

The Governor looked down at Duane and made a gesture of helplessness. He waved vigorously at the people beside the courthouse. Then the helicopter banked sharply and headed back north. Soon it was just a speck in the distance.

Duane watched it go with mixed feelings. It was too bad to lose the Governor, but who could regret losing Randy? The wind had reached its height—they could scarcely see ten feet in the dust. John Cecil had stopped trying to get the tumble-weeds off his legs and stood quietly, catching his breath. Another Volkswagen-sized tumbleweed rumbled beneath the red light, followed by a host of little ones as a mother hen would be followed by her chicks.

Duane felt a sudden, inexplicable pride of place. The same land that had broken the two Mr. Browns had lost none of its power or its capacity for surprise. It had shown its strength once again, driving away a Governor and temporarily stopping the Hardtop County centennial dead in its tracks.

“I guess the Governor doesn’t like our weather,” he said.

“I didn’t vote for him anyway,” John Cecil said.

CHAPTER 67

I
N ANOTHER FORTY-FIVE MINUTES THE WIND BLEW
itself out and the tumbleweeds stopped tumbling. The people stepped out from behind the courthouse and looked in awe at their town. Walls of tumbleweeds covered every store front, every fence, every line of cars.

People with cameras took pictures. The tiny TV crew, sent from Wichita Falls to cover the Governor’s visit, covered the tumbleweeds instead. The barbecue team went to John Cecil’s grocery store and Sonny’s Kwik-Sack and bought every paper plate in town. Pitchforks were secured from the feed store, tumbleweeds were raked off doorways, and the centennial was soon proceeding merrily. People wandered around with plates of barbecue, staring at the tumbleweeds with pride.

Everyone was in a remarkably good humor. Any county could have a centennial, but how many had had a tumbleweed stampede? Junior Nolan and Billie Anne, who had survived it with only a mattress for cover, felt that their fast for an oil embargo and no-fault divorce was off to a good start.

G. G. Rawley was equally cheered. In his view the Lord had
given the town a mild but unequivocal warning. Always a big eater, he consumed several plates of barbecue, assuring people, between bites, that unless they kept the celebration sober they were sure to reap the real whirlwind next time.

Almost everyone was outraged that the Governor had not cared to wait out the little storm. Bobby Lee, who had to be cut out of his igloo of tumbleweeds with a chain saw, was the most indignant. He favored taking a delegation to Austin to picket the Capitol with signs declaring the Governor a cowardly chicken-shit.

A report, relayed through Toots Burns, that the Governor had merely rushed back to Austin so he could immediately recommend the county for disaster aid, fooled no one.

“What disaster?” Eddie Belt asked. “The only bad thing that’s happened is that a woman won the marathon.”

Duane ate a little barbecue and then walked over to the bank. He had about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of production checks to deposit. The sight of even modest deposits usually cheered Lester Marlow up, but this one didn’t. He sat in his office staring blankly at some computer read-outs. His hair looked wilder than ever and he was still in his running clothes. He took the deposit listlessly and put it on his desk.

“That’s twenty thousand dollars,” Duane said. “Don’t forget I gave it to you.”

“Somebody will find it after I’m gone,” Lester said.

“Gone where?”

“After I’ve committed suicide,” Lester said. “The centennial’s off to a good start now, I don’t see any reason to wait.”

“Ride out to the well with me,” Duane suggested. “It might cheer you up.”

Lester agreed, but decided to change clothes first. While he was changing, Duane reclaimed his deposit and gave it to a teller. The tellers were all wearing cowboy hats in honor of the centennial. Some wore cap pistols too. When Lester came back he wore a shirt and tie but also a cowboy hat and a cap pistol.

“You won’t need a tie out at the well,” Duane remarked.

“It makes me feel more confident that I’ve made the right choice,” Lester said.

Over the last two years, Lester had often talked of suicide,
but had never attempted it. The town had grown complacent, and Duane with it, but looking at Lester’s wild hair, cap pistol and dull eyes, he decided complacency might be a mistake. Lester might really do it. He might just be taking slow aim at himself.

They drove past the square, Duane rehearsing antisuicide arguments. On the square they saw a struggling knot of men. For a moment Duane thought a fight had broken out between the Byelo-Baptists and the drinkers, but then he spotted Joe Coombs at the center of the knot and revised his opinion. It was just a group of celebrants trying to duck the beardless little Joe. There seemed to be about ten men trying to duck him, but so far little Joe Coombs was holding his own.

“That little Joe Coombs has got a low center of gravity,” Duane remarked.