Moving On

by Larry McMurtry

  “Well, ask your little sister,” Stone said oversweetly. “Just ask your little sister.” And with a scowling glance at Melissa he turned and went quickly out the door. He didn’t look at Miri at all.

  “He left,” she said vaguely. “Why did you make him go?”

  She got up suddenly and began to rummage in the pile of clothes near the mattress. Melissa quickly came to Patsy and began to whisper.

  “That bastard left just to panic her,” she said. “She’s high as the hills. We better just go with her and not try to stop her from looking for him. She might really tear loose if we try to stop her. Maybe we can ease her off a little if we walk.”

  Miri was muttering to herself as she searched in the clothes. She pulled a thick black sweater on over her sweatshirt and dropped her skirt and struggled into a pair of jeans, but she stopped before she got them buttoned and ran to the window to look out. The terror in her face and the bulge of her abdomen over the cheap cotton panties shook Patsy and she tried to talk to Miri calmly.

  “We’ll go with you to find him,” she said, but Miri had become oblivious to them. She rummaged in the clothes until she found a heavy chain with a medallion on it and she put that on her neck and then hastened to the door, wearing no shoes.

  “She’s barefoot,” Patsy said. Melissa looked around quickly, but she didn’t spot any shoes, and shrugged. “Won’t hurt,” she said.

  Miri was two or three doors ahead of them when they got to the street. They could hear her, still muttering.

  “I just didn’t want us to lose her,” Melissa said. “If she got away from us and ran into Stone she’d really be gone. He’d hide her but good. As long as we stay with her we’re all right.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Patsy said.

  Miri stopped at the first corner and looked around indecisively. They caught up with her and she seemed quite friendly toward them, but Patsy saw that she was without a sense of who they were. Her sense of who they were had grown dimmer and dimmer since the moment of the slap. She had hit her sister as hard as she could and then ceased to notice that she was her sister. Patsy was aware that she didn’t know how to talk to Miri and was content to let Melissa do it.

  “You two been eating lately?” Melissa asked. “Maybe Stone went off to eat a meal.”

  Miri shrugged, as if it were irrelevant. “We had a pizza,” she said but didn’t say when. Once or twice they met hippies as they approached the park. Miri stopped and asked them if they’d seen Stone. Both looked as if they had either just got up or else were looking for a good place to lie down. Neither had seen Stone.

  Soon they angled into the park, Miri walking ahead. Patsy worried about what they would do if they found Stone. She had called earlier to give Joe the address, and was wondering what would happen if he and Stone arrived at the same time. She also wondered what had happened to all the things Miri had taken to college with her, clothes, phonograph, records, and such. There had been practically nothing in the tiny apartment. She had on heels, because of the St. Francis, and once they got in the park was hard put to keep up with Melissa and Miri. The grass was damp and in spots fairly long. Then they bumped into a couple of guys the girls knew. One had a serape and the other a sheepskin jacket and both had shoulder length hair and mustaches. Melissa, by a few snaps of her fingers, enlisted them in the cause, and they reversed their directions and joined the troupe.

  One whose name was Frank dropped back and walked with Patsy. “Hi,” he said conspiratorially. “I understand we’re chasing Stone but why do we want to find him? I’d just as soon lose him.”

  “I’m with you,” Patsy said. “We’re just trying to hold Miri together, actually. She was threatening to fly apart.”

  “Yeah,” Frank said sagely, as if he knew all about it.

  Then, as they were almost across the park, they passed a scene which for a time took Patsy’s mind off her sister. Fifteen or twenty motorcycles were there, and their riders were there too, and their riders’ women. Patsy glanced at them without much curiosity, for she had seen motocycle gangs before. But what she saw hit her almost as hard as the slap Miri had given her. Most of the cyclists were drinking beer and talking with what seemed to be the instrument man of a rock band; at least he was uncoiling wires and fiddling with a large pile of electronic gear. He seemed nervous and apprehensive and straightened up occasionally to whip his hair out of his eyes. But it was three cyclists somewhat to the side that gave Patsy the start. They were no hairier or dirtier or more disagreeable-looking than the others, but they had their pants down and were quite exposed. One thin one was leaning back against his cycle, a can of beer in one hand, while his woman, a hefty-looking creature in a black shirt and jeans leaned across the cycle and languidly pumped his penis with one hand. Another woman, whose back was to Patsy, was kneeling on the grass in front of a large cyclist who had a hairy stomach and a penis that was half erect. As Patsy looked, the woman reached up and grasped it, pulling it down. Patsy stumbled and looked away, dreadfully shocked, so stunned she felt weak for a moment. Neither Miri nor Melissa seemed to take more than glancing notice of the scene, or to think it unusual, but both the boys looked over cautiously.

  “What in the world?” Patsy said, unable to keep from looking once more to be sure she had seen it. Several more of the cyclists had wandered over and partially blocked her view of the kneeling woman, but there was no doubt that she had seen it. The thin cyclist was still leaning against his cycle and the hefty girl still held his penis.

  Frank noticed her confusion and seemed to have some sympathy for it. “New scene?” he asked, smiling pleasantly at her. “It’s the Angels. I think, I don’t know, they’re warming up for some birthday party or something. They won’t bother us if we go on. Those guys over there are taking their lives in their hands.” He nodded at a straggle of younger hippies, four boys and a girl, who were standing near a tree staring at the Angels.

  “You don’t want to just stand and watch them,” Frank said. “It makes them want to do their thing, which is to beat the shit out of people.”

  “But how can they get away with that?” Patsy asked, confused. “In the middle of the day. In public?”

  “Well, it’s the park,” Frank said, shrugging. “Nobody bugs you in the park, much.”

  Soon they crossed out of the park into a section of old houses and small grocery stores. Most of the houses were iron gray, but on some the paint was peeling. Some had psychedelic posters in the windows and a few of the cars parked along the street were weirdly painted. At the first corner a teenager of fifteen or sixteen asked Frank if he could spare some change. The boy wore a good corduroy coat and black new-looking knee boots. Frank turned him down. “Fifty-dollar boots and he’s scrounging change,” he said disgustedly.

  The day had clouded over again, at least in the part of the city they were in. Once in a while Patsy caught a distant glimpse of white buildings with the sun on them, but the clouds over the Haight-Ashbury were as gray as the houses. Miri had slowed a little. Whenever she passed a cluster of hippies she stopped to ask about Stone, always with negative results. She stopped and went into a little poster shop. Patsy and Frank caught up with Melissa and the other boy, whose name was George. They had a consultation. George wore the serape and had not perceived that the true object of their quest was to avoid Stone, not to find him.

  “Why are we looking here?” he said. “He’s no head. He’s probably down Fillmore somewhere.”

  “What do you think?” Patsy asked Melissa.

  “She’s awfully zingy,” Melissa said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. I don’t think she even knows where she is. She knows Stone doesn’t like this part of town. He hates hippies. You really going to take her to Texas?”

  “I sure am.”

  “Why?” George asked. “Isn’t it a bad place? Half the heads I know come from there. They all say it’s a bad place.”

  “It may be a bad place for heads but it’s a nice pla
ce for expectant mothers,” Patsy said. “I’m taking her back. The only question is how to go about it.”

  “I’m glad I’m not you,” Melissa said. “If you’re going to do it, I guess you ought to do it quick. Once you get her on a plane there’s not much she or Stone can do about it. We can stick with you until you get her to the airport, if you want us to.”

  “I want you to,” Patsy said.

  When Miri came out of the store she noticed Patsy again and they walked together back through the park, the other three behind them.

  “Did you see Momma and Daddy?” Miri asked. “When are they going to send me some money? We can’t even buy grass. We’re going to have a party when we get some more money.”

  “You should have called me. I’d have sent you money.”

  But Miri seemed not really concerned about that or about anything. She walked along looking restlessly one way and another. The thought that she was going to have to bear a child when she was only a thin bewildered child herself hurt Patsy and made her all the angrier at her parents. When they got back to Miri’s street Joe Percy was there, sitting under the wheel of the Morgan. He was wearing a sports jacket and a tweed cap and was looking worried. “Is Stone here?” Miri asked him quickly.

  “Well, somebody’s in apartment five. All I got was his attitude.”

  Miri ran in and up the stairs and the five of them stood on the sidewalk looking downcast and indecisive.

  “We can’t all go up,” Melissa said. “I don’t know which of us would make him the least mad.”

  “I’m going up,” Patsy said after a moment. “She’s my sister and if it makes him mad that’s tough. If I need any help I guess I can yell.”

  Joe and Melissa looked uneasy, but neither of them said anything and Patsy went in and up the stairs. She was very scared, as scared as she had been the night Sonny abducted her in his hearse, but in a different way. She was afraid of Stone on the one hand and afraid too that if she mismanaged things her sister might have a serious breakdown, something far beyond her power to cope with. But going away without Miri had become unthinkable. She went up despite her fear and knocked on the door of apartment five.

  “Yeah,” Stone said.

  “I’m Mrs. Carpenter,” she said. “I’d like to come in.”

  The door didn’t open. “What for?” he asked.

  “To get my sister and her things,” Patsy said.

  “You are fucking crazy,” he said. “You think I’m gonna let you come in here and walk off with my piece?”

  The way he said it angered her uncontrollably and she kicked the door as hard as she could. It was a thin door and rattled loudly. “Open that goddamn door,” she said.

  He did, immediately, with a little sardonic smile. “Is that the way you kick niggers down in Texas?” he asked. Miri had taken off the black sweater and the jeans and was fumbling in the clothes as if she were trying to put them in some sort of order. She didn’t look around when Patsy came in.

  Patsy was quivering with tension and anger. She let the remark about niggers pass. “I’m trying not to hate your guts,” she said, “but you do make it hard.”

  “Well, don’t try,” he said softly. “Just go at it.”

  “I’m going to take my sister to Texas,” she said. “We’re leaving as soon as I can get her things together, if she has any things left. If you want to make a fight out of it, okay. I’ll get my friends and lawyers and policemen and the marines if I have to, and if that’s what you want, okay.”

  But Stone had turned sullen again. He shrugged and resumed his stance at the window. Miri was pulling on a gray skirt. Stone was silent, closed up. Patsy did not believe she had ever seen a human being as hard to handle. It was incredible to her that Miri, who had always been completely open, should have taken as her lover a man who seemed completely closed.

  She went over and knelt by Miri to see what should be salvaged of the garments there. They were mostly sweaters and jeans, with a few skirts and no bras and a pair or two of panties. Miri sat on the couch and looked at Stone. Patsy could find no shoes at all.

  “My god,” Patsy said. “You must have some shoes. Where are her shoes?”

  “She left ’em someplace,” Stone said. “We been living light.”

  To Patsy’s great relief he seemed to have turned off his hostility. He suddenly looked totally apathetic. Miri, again reflecting him, seemed apathetic too. But in a way it confused the scene even more. She had come up the stairs prepared for any sort of wildness—blows, screams, curses, and police. She expected to have to drag Miri away inch by inch. But Stone stood at the window and Miri sat on the couch and they both looked as if they had forgotten what was happening and had no interest in it. Patsy was at a loss. There was nothing to gather up, no suitcases to pack, nothing. The few garments by the mattress were simply not worth bothering about. There seemed literally nothing else to do but take Miri by the hand and lead her out. Stone had shrugged it off and Miri, once she was in his company, seemed to be completely passive. Patsy didn’t know what to do. She sat down beside her sister.

  “Is it your child?” she asked, looking at Stone. The problem had just occurred to her.

  “Might be.”

  “Oh, shit,” Patsy said. “What an incredible goddamn mess. I have a genius for screwing up and even I couldn’t screw up this bad.”

  “No mess,” Stone said. “You just takin’ her away. I knew somebody would, sometime. It’s always happenin’. You get mixed up with some chick with redneck kinfolks ’n’ sooner or later some redneck gonna come and take her away.”

  Patsy didn’t want to argue. She wanted to leave. “You think anything you want of me and I’ll think anything I want of you,” she said. “Since we don’t know one another, that’s what we’ll have to do. Could you at least tell me what my sister’s been taking to make her like she is? I might need to tell a doctor.”

  He looked at Miri wearily, as if he wished they were both gone. “She takes this and that,” he said. “Little speed, little acid, smoke some grass, few pills—whatever we run into.”

  “No wonder she doesn’t know where she is,” Patsy said. “Look, I’m not trying to banish you from her life forever. I don’t know what I think about the future. I just know she’s in wretched shape and needs to be healthier. I assume you had your chance to take care of her and now I’m going to have mine. But I’ll give you my address and phone number and you might give me an address where I could reach you. I don’t know what might come up.”

  Stone shook his head, as if talk of addresses was completely senseless. “You leavin’, Miri?” he asked in the gentlest voice he had used, but the way he said it was ambiguous. Patsy could not tell if it was a question or a statement.

  “Isn’t there going to be a party somewhere?” Miri asked.

  “Come on, honey,” Patsy said, taking her arm. Miri stood up and looked at Stone briefly, but whatever impulse had caused him to speak gently had been only momentary and he was looking at both of them with clear hostility again, the same hostility that had been in his face when he first came to the door that morning.

  “Goodbye,” Patsy said. Stone turned away and said nothing.

  When they were in the hall, on the stairs, Miri looked at Patsy hostilely and said, “Why didn’t you invite him too?”

  “Not now,” Patsy said.

  Joe and Melissa were relieved to see them. The two young men were looking at the Morgan as if it were a beautiful piece of sculpture. But the Morgan was a problem. There were six of them. Since Stone had been no trouble, Melissa decided the young men were dispensable, but that still left four. Finally Patsy and Miri and Melissa took a taxi and Joe followed in the Morgan as a kind of rear guard. Miri was silent, but quite passive. They decided to go to Melissa’s house, where Miri could clean up a bit. Once in the taxi, Patsy relaxed—a little too soon, as it happened. Miri was sitting on the outside, and when the taxi stopped for a light on California Street she simply opened the door and got
out. She was out before Patsy could move. It was very awkward, for the light changed just then. Miri got across ahead of it, and it was hard to pursue. Fortunately, though, she was not running, nor even trying to lose them. She wandered into a big grocery store, where they caught her, and once caught she was quite passive and went back with them to the taxi, talking about the grapefruit in the store.

  Barry was gone when they got to Melissa’s. Miri seemed to recognize the house and did not seem frantic. Melissa showed her the bathtub and she immediately wanted to take a bath. While it was running Melissa offered to run out and buy Miri some shoes and a decent sweater and skirt and Patsy gave her some money. Joe made plane reservations and went back to the hotel to check the two of them out. They were a well-functioning team; only Patsy had nothing to do. There was a plane to Dallas in four hours.

  Once Joe and Melissa were gone, Patsy kept hearing the water running in the bathroom and became worried. Perhaps Miri was drowning herself. She peeked, very cautiously. Miri had filled the tub to the very top, and was sitting in it. All her clothes were stuffed in the bathroom wastebasket. Her hair was wet and she was fingering the medallion around her neck and humming softly. It was an old deep 1920s tub; the water covered Miri’s breasts.

  Patsy was relieved and went and sat in Melissa’s quiet, bright room, in the rope chair by the bay window. She could see a corner of the little park where they had walked. She heard the tub draining, in the silence, and then heard it begin to fill again. She was puzzled, and peeked a second time. Miri was standing with her back to the door, her feet on a towel, waiting for the tub to fill again. Her hips seemed very slim.

  She was still bathing when Melissa returned with the clothes. In the end she emptied and filled the tub four times. Melissa said let her, it was harmless enough. They put the clothes inside the door. Then they dropped their guard again and Miri almost got away. Patsy wanted to see the view from the bedroom again, and while she looked Melissa sat on the mattress sewing up a hole in one of Barry’s sweaters. They were chatting, not worried about Miri at all, when they heard the living room door shut. “Barry?” Melissa asked, surprised. But it was Miri leaving. She had slipped quietly out. They rushed out and caught her before she had gone a block, but it gave Patsy the jitters. She was glad when Joe returned. Miri sat in the living room plunking softly on Barry’s guitar, her black hair still damp from the several washings she had given it. Joe Percy sat down by her and began to talk to her as if they were old friends, and Miri warmed to him and began to chatter, still playing the guitar. They talked about Simon and Garfunkel, and about the Jefferson Airplane. Then Miri got up and began to walk restlessly around the room, carrying the guitar.