The Last Picture Show

by Larry McMurtry

  Miss Mosey had taken the Storm Warning posters down and was gallantly trying to tack up the posters for Sunday’s show, which was Francis Goes to the Army. The wind whipped around the corners of the old building, making the posters flop. Miss Mosey’s fingers were so cold she could barely hold the tacks, so the boys helped her finish while the girls shivered on the curb. Marlene was shivering on the curb too, waiting for Sonny to drop her off at the Duggses. Duane walked Jacy to her convertible and kissed her good-night a time or two, then came gloomily to the pickup, depressed at the thought of how long it was until Saturday night came again.

  When they had taken Marlene home and dropped Duane at the rooming house, Sonny and Charlene drove back to town so they could find out what time it was from the clock in the jewelry store window. As usual, it was almost time for Charlene to go home.

  “Oh, let’s go on to the lake,” she said. “I guess I can be a few minutes late tonight, since it’s my anniversary.”

  “I never saw anything like that Jacy and Duane,” she said. “Kissing in the picture show after the lights go on. That’s pretty bad if you ask me. One of these days Mrs. Farrow’s gonna catch ’em an’ that’ll be the end of that romance.”

  Sonny drove on to the city lake without saying anything, but the remark depressed him. So far as he was concerned Jacy and Duane knew true love and would surely manage to get married and be happy. What depressed him was that it had just become clear to him that Charlene really wanted to go with Duane, just as he himself really wanted to go with Jacy.

  As soon as the pickup stopped Charlene moved over against him. “Crack your window and leave the heater on,” she said. “It’s still too cold in here for me.”

  Sonny tried to shrug off his depression by beginning the little routine they always went through when they parked: first he would kiss Charlene for about ten minutes; then she would let him take off her brassiere and play with her breasts; finally, when he tried to move on to other things she would quickly scoot back across the seat, put the bra back on, and make him take her home. Sometimes she indulged in an engulfing kiss or two on the doorstep, knowing that she could fling herself inside the house if a perilously high wave of passion threatened to sweep over her.

  After the proper amount of kissing Sonny deftly unhooked her bra. This was the signal for Charlene to draw her arms from the sleeves of her sweater and slip out of the straps. Sonny hung the bra on the rear-view mirror. So long as the proprieties were observed, Charlene liked being felt; she obligingly slipped her sweater up around her neck.

  “Eeh, your hands are like ice,” she said, sucking in her breath. Despite the heater the cab was cold enough to make her nipples crinkle. The wind had blown all the clouds away, but the moon was thin and dim and the choppy lake lay in darkness. When Sonny moved his hand the little dash-light threw patches of shadow over Charlene’s stocky torso.

  In a few minutes it became apparent that the cab was warming up faster than either Sonny or Charlene. He idly held one of her breasts in his hand, but it might have been an apple someone had given him just when he was least hungry.

  “Hey,” Charlene said suddenly, noticing. “What’s the matter with you? You act half asleep.”

  Sonny was disconcerted. He was not sure what was wrong. It did not occur to him that he was bored. After all, he had Charlene’s breast in his hand, and in Thalia it was generally agreed that the one thing that was never boring was feeling a girl’s breasts. Grasping for straws, Sonny tried moving his hand downward, but it soon got entangled in Charlene’s pudgy fingers.

  “Quit, quit,” she said, leaning her head back in expectation of a passionate kiss.

  “But this is our anniversary,” Sonny said. “Let’s do something different.”

  Charlene grimly kept his hand at navel level, infuriated that he should think he really had license to go lower. That was plainly unfair, because he hadn’t even given her a present. She scooted back toward her side of the cab and snatched her brassiere off the mirror.

  “What are you trying to do, Sonny, get me pregnant?” she asked indignantly.

  Sonny was stunned by the thought. “My lord,” he said. “It was just my hand.”

  “Yeah, and one thing leads to another,” she complained, struggling to catch the top hook of her bra. “Momma told me how that old stuff works.”

  Sonny reached over and hooked the hook for her, but he was more depressed than ever. It was obvious to him that it was a disgrace not to be going with someone prettier than Charlene, or if not prettier, at least someone more likable. The problem was how to break up with her and get his football jacket back.

  “Well, you needn’t to get mad,” he said finally. “After so long a time I get tired of doing the same thing, and you do too. You wasn’t no livelier than me.”

  “That’s because you ain’t good lookin’ enough,” she said coldly. “You ain’t even got a ducktail. Why should I let you fiddle around and get me pregnant. We’ll have plenty of time for that old stuff when we decide to get engaged.”

  Sonny twirled the knob of his steering wheel and looked out at the cold scudding water. He kept wanting to say something really nasty to Charlene, but he restrained himself. Charlene tucked her sweater back into her skirt and combed angrily at her brownish blond hair. Her mother had given her a permanent the day before and her hair was as stiff as wire.

  “Let’s go home,” she said. “I’m done late anyway. Some anniversary.”

  Sonny backed the pickup around and started for the little cluster of yellow lights that was Thalia. The lake was only a couple of miles out.

  “Charlene, if you feel that way I’d just as soon break up,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil no more anniversaries for you.”

  Charlene was surprised, but she recovered quickly. “That’s the way nice girls get treated in this town,” she said, proud to be a martyr to virtue.

  “I knew you wasn’t dependable,” she added, taking the football jacket and laying it on the seat between them. “Boys that act like you do never are. That jacket’s got a hole in the pocket, but you needn’t ask me to sew it up. And you can give me back my pictures. I don’t want you showin’ ’em to a lot of other boys and tellin’ them how hot I am.”

  Sonny stopped the pickup in front of her house and fished in his billfold for the three or four snapshots Charlene had given him. One of them, taken at a swimming pool in Wichita Falls, had been taken the summer before. Charlene was in a bathing suit. When she gave Sonny the picture she had taken a ballpoint pen and written on the back of the snapshot, “Look What Legs!”, hoping he would show it to Duane. The photograph showed clearly that her legs were short and fat, but in spite of it she managed to think of herself as possessing gazellelike slimness. Sonny laid the pictures on top of the football jacket, and Charlene scooped them up.

  “Well, good-night,” Sonny said. “I ain’t got no hard feelings if you don’t.”

  Charlene got out, but then she bethought herself of something and held the pickup door open a moment. “Don’t you try to go with Marlene,” she said. “Marlene’s young, and she’s a good Christian girl. If you try to go with her I’ll tell my Daddy what a wolf you was with me and he’ll stomp the you-know-what out of you.”

  “You was pretty glad to let me do what little I did,” Sonny said, angered. “You just mind your own business and let Marlene mind hers.”

  Charlene gave him a last ill-tempered look. “If you’ve given me one of those diseases you’ll be sorry,” she said.

  She could cheerfully have stabbed Sonny with an ice pick, but instead, to impress Marlene, she went in the house, woke her up, and cried for half the night about her blighted romance. She told Marlene Sonny had forced her to fondle him indecently.

  “What in the world did it look like?” Marlene asked, bug-eyed with startled envy.

  “Oh, the awfulest thing you ever saw,” Charlene assured her, smearing a thick coating of beauty cream on her face. “Ouuee, he was nasty. I hope you don
’t ever get involved with a man like that, honey—they make you old before your time. I bet I’ve aged a year, just tonight.”

  Later, when the lights were out, Marlene tried to figure on her fingers what month it would be when Charlene would be sent away in disgrace to Kizer, Arkansas, to have her baby. They had an aunt who lived in Kizer. Marlene was not exactly clear in her mind about how one went about getting pregnant, but she assumed that with such goings on Charlene must have. It was conceivable that her mother would make Charlene leave the picture of Van Johnson behind when she was sent away, and that thought cheered Marlene very much. In any case, it would be nice to have the bedroom to herself.

  CHAPTER III

  AFTER HE LET CHARLENE out Sonny drove back to town. He was amazed that breaking up with her had been so easy: all he felt was a strong sense of relief at having his football jacket back. It was the jacket he had earned in his junior year when he and Duane had been cocaptains, and it had “Cocaptain” stitched across the front in green thread. He was proud of it, and glad to have it safely out of Charlene’s hands.

  When he got back to the square it was midnight and the town looked just as deserted as it had looked that morning. The night watchman’s old white Nash was parked where it always was, and the night watchman, a man named Andy Fanner, was asleep in the front seat, his heels propped on the dash. As usual, he had his motor running and his windows rolled up; the town thought Andy a very likely candidate for monoxide poisoning and expected any morning to find him a purplish corpse, but he slept comfortably through hundreds of winter nights with no apparent ill effects. Sonny didn’t share the general worry: he had ridden in the Nash and knew there were holes enough in the floorboard to provide ample ventilation.

  He drove to the all-night café and started in, but when he looked through the window he saw that his father, Frank Crawford, was sitting at the counter, sipping defensively at a cup of coffee and talking to Genevieve Morgan, the night waitress. His father liked Genevieve and Sonny liked her too, but they couldn’t both talk to her at the same time so Sonny returned to the pickup and backed down the street to the square to wait for his father to come out. Waiting made him a little uneasy; somehow he couldn’t help begrudging his father the nightly conversations with Genevieve. She was a shapely black-headed woman in her mid-thirties whose husband had been busted up in a rig accident almost a year before. He was not yet well enough to go back to the oil fields, and since they had two boys and were paying on a house, Genevieve had to go to work. The waitressing job was ten at night to six in the morning, and she didn’t like it, but in Thalia there were not many jobs open at any hour. When she took over the night shift Sam’s business had improved enormously: half the truckers and roughnecks and cowboys in that part of the country would hit the café at night, hoping to make out with Genevieve. She was beginning to thicken a bit at the waist, but she was still pretty, high-breasted, and long-legged; men accustomed to the droopy-hipped plod of most small town waitresses liked the way Genevieve carried herself. Sonny liked it himself and had as many fantasies about Genevieve as he had about Jacy Farrow.

  He hadn’t been parked long when he saw his father leave the café and come walking up the empty street toward the square, shivering and shaking. All he ever wore was summer slacks and a thin cotton jacket, too short at the wrists. Sonny felt briefly guilty for not offering him a ride to the hotel. He would have, but his father would only try to give him ten dollars and that would make them both nervous. It would not be worth it to either of them to get in a money argument that late at night. Money arguments often upset them for hours. Frank couldn’t help offering it and Sonny couldn’t help refusing to take it. Sonny did not want it, nor could he see how his father could possibly do without it, as high as his prescriptions were. Frank Crawford was not the town’s only drug addict, but he was the one with the best excuse: he had been high-school principal in Thalia, until his car wreck. One night he was coming home from a high-school football game and sideswiped a cattle truck. Sonny’s mother was killed and Frank was injured so badly that six operations failed to restore him to health. He couldn’t stand the strain of teaching, tried to learn pharmacy and failed, and finally had to settle for the job at the domino hall. He got through life on prescriptions, but the prescriptions didn’t make him feel any better about the fact that his son was living in a rooming house rather than in a proper home.

  Sonny was a little afraid his father might spot the pickup, but Frank Crawford had his chin tucked down and the cold wind made his eyes water so badly that he hardly even saw the street. He passed under the blinking traffic light and went into the hotel, and Sonny quickly started the pickup and drove back to the café. Five soldiers had just come out and were standing around their car flipping quarters to see who drove the next stint. Their car had Kansas license plates and the boy who lost the toss looked depressed at the thought of how far there was to go.

  When Sonny went in Genevieve was back in the kitchen cleaning off the grill. He sat down at the counter and tapped the countertop with a fifty-cent piece until she came out of the kitchen to see who the customer was.

  “Surprise,” he said. “I guess I’ll have a cheeseburger to go to bed on.”

  “You would,” Genevieve said, far from surprised. She went back to the kitchen and slapped a hamburger patty on her clean grill. When the burger was ready she carried it right past Sonny and set it down at one of the red leatherette booths. Then she got a glass of milk for him and a cup of coffee for herself.

  “If you’ll sit in that booth I’ll keep you company,” she said.

  Sonny was quick to obey. The steam from her coffee rose between them as he ate his cheeseburger. The window by the booth was all fogged over, but the misted glass was cold to the touch, and the knowledge that the freezing wind was just outside made the booth seem all the cozier. Genevieve sat quietly, her hands on the coffee cup; the warmth against her palms was lovely, but it made her a little too nostalgic for all the winter nights she had spent at home, sleeping against her husband. Then her whole body had felt as warm and comfortable as her palms felt against the cup.

  “Your dad was in a few minutes ago,” she said, raising her arm to tuck a strand of black hair back in place.

  “Guess I just missed him,” Sonny said quickly.

  “Where’d you hide?” she asked, giving him a perceptive grin. Her teeth were a little uneven, but strong. Sonny pretended he hadn’t understood her and tried to think of a way to change the subject. Charlene was the only thing that occurred to him.

  “I guess you’ll have to be my girl friend now,” he said. “Me and Charlene broke up tonight.”

  “It was about time. I better take advantage of the situation while I can. Come on back in the kitchen and have a piece of pie while I do some dishwashing.”

  Sonny gladly went with her, but he was painfully aware that she was only joking about being his girl friend. He sat in a chair and ate a big piece of apricot pie while Genevieve attended to a sinkful of dishes. For a minute, lost in her work, she forgot Sonny completely and he felt free to watch her. Gallons of hot water poured into the sink and working over it soon had her sweating. Her cheeks and forehead shone with it; there were beads on her upper lip, and the armpits of her green uniform darkened. The errant strand of hair hung over her forehead when she bent to fish the knives and forks out of the water. As always, Sonny found himself strongly affected by her. Sweat, if it was Genevieve’s, seemed a very intimate and feminine moisture. Even Jacy didn’t affect him quite as strongly; beside Genevieve, Jacy seemed strangely diminished, and apparently Jacy knew it. She always made Duane take her to the drive-in rather than the café when they ate together.

  When Genevieve finished her dishes she glanced over at Sonny and saw that he seemed rather melancholy.

  “Honey, you shouldn’t be down in the mouth about Charlene,” she said. “You put up with her long enough. She didn’t even have a good disposition.”

  “I ain’t blue about h
er,” Sonny said, handing her the pie dish.

  When she asked him why he was blue, he shrugged, not knowing what to say. He was blue because he wanted her and knew he would never have her, but that wasn’t something he could talk about. “There ain’t nobody to go with in this town,” he said finally. “Jacy’s the only pretty girl in high school, and Duane’s got her.”

  Genevieve squeezed out her gray dishrag. “I’d call that his tough luck,” she said. “She’ll bring him more misery than she’ll ever be worth. She’s just like her grandmother. Besides, I doubt Lois and Gene want her marrying a poor boy.”

  “What’s the matter with them?” Sonny asked. “Why do they think everybody has to be rich?”

  “Oh, I don’t guess they do,” Genevieve said. “I oughtn’t to even talk about them. We were all good friends once. Gene and Dan roughnecked together when we first moved here and we all went to dances together. Lois’ mother had disowned her and she and Gene were livin’ in a little one-room place over the newspaper office. She couldn’t even afford a flour-sack apron, much less a mink coat.”

  Genevieve untied her own apron, which was damp from having been pressed against the sink. She stared at the floor a moment, her look full of memory.

  “I’ll always have a soft spot for Lois,” she said. “Lois is some woman. Gene just never could handle her. Since he started making his strikes we haven’t seen much of one another. When folks get rich all of a sudden it makes them feel sort of guilty to be around folks who’ve stayed poor.”

  “I hate people like that,” Sonny said.

  Genevieve sighed and got herself a fresh apron. “You oughtn’t to,” she said. “It’s perfectly natural. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if Dan had bought the rig and made the strikes. They offered that rig to Dan first. In fact, Gene Farrow tried to get Dan to go partners with him on it, but when it comes to money Dan Morgan never took a chance in his life. If we had made the money we might be just as touchy about it now as they are. It can change people, you know.”