It was true that Bobby Lee often went all the way into Wichita Falls to sit in a Dairy Queen and drink coffee, so embarrassed was he by the intense scrutiny his fellow townspeople brought to bear on his condition.
“He needs to get over that; any one of us would be glad to drink coffee with the man,” Dan Connor said. Then he wandered off, looking slightly crestfallen.
“Now you see why I get tense when I’m in town,” Duane said. “You don’t really give people a chance to be friendly.”
“I do unless they’re fat ugly slobs like Dan,” Karla said.
“He’s not that fat,” Duane said. He had begun to regret his decision to sit back down.
“Will you tell me what you talk to your shrink about?” Karla asked.
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to,” Duane said. “I’ve never been to a psychiatrist before. I never expected to go to one and I don’t really know why I’m going now—it’s mainly curiosity, I guess. I don’t feel disturbed—at least I don’t if I’m left alone.”
Karla thought that over for a while. She looked out the window. A small convoy of cattle trucks was just going by. That was one thing you could count on in Thalia. Cattle trucks would always be going by.
“It’s times like this when I wish I hadn’t quit smoking,” she said. “At least I can still drink. This Dairy Queen would be a lot livelier place if they could serve tequila.”
“Honey, if they served tequila half the people who come here would be killed in car wrecks before they could get back to the courthouse,” he said. “If you could buy drinks at the Dairy Queen it would soon depopulate the town.”
“I feel like crying,” Karla said. “It’s because I don’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. You’re usually normal, and you’re usually more decisive than this. Right now I can’t even tell if you want to stay married or would rather get divorced.”
“I want to live in my own little house—that’s the main change I feel,” Duane told her. “But people can live in different houses and still be married. I have no interest in getting divorced.”
“Well, I might want to,” Karla said. “If you want to be a bachelor and live by yourself, then you don’t really want to be married much. That fact is plain as mud.”
“It’s not plain as mud,” Duane said. “Will you just keep calm until I’ve tried this for a while? We’ve been married forty years. Why is it such a big deal if I want to try something different for a few months?”
“A few months?” Karla said. “You want to live out there in that ratty little cabin for a few months?”
Duane edged the ten-dollar bill under his coffee cup, where the waitress could find it.
“I’ll see you later,” he said. “Please don’t forget to leave a tip.”
“I’m still gonna want to know what your new shrink thinks of all this,” Karla said, as he was leaving.
2
ON THE WAY OUT OF TOWN Duane met Bobby Lee, who didn’t see the two of them until the last minute and almost ran over Shorty before he could get his pickup stopped. He had been at the rig all night and looked stubbly and depressed.
“I guess that little blue son-of-a-bitch follows you everywhere, don’t he?” he said, looking down at the dog.
“Well yes—he has no other occupation,” Duane said.
“What did you say to Dickie? He come out there yesterday and practically drilled us all new assholes, the asshole,” Bobby Lee said.
“I told him he was the boss now—that’s all,” Duane said.
“He believed you, too,” Bobby Lee said. “He ran me ragged yesterday. What’s going on in town?”
Duane shrugged.
“I take back the question,” Bobby Lee said. “What’s going on in town is that everybody’s sitting around the Dairy Queen talking about what a little freak I am for having only one ball.”
Duane neither confirmed nor denied this analysis. He leaned on the window of the pickup for a minute. The floorboard on the passenger’s side was filled with empty beer cans almost to the level of the seat.
“I’m saving those cans for old man Billinger,” Bobby Lee said. “Scavenging cans is his only means of livelihood, poor old soul.”
“It’s good of you to drink beer constantly so old man Billinger will have a way to make a living,” Duane said.
“Well, you know me—I’ve always gone out of my way to help my fellowman,” Bobby Lee said. “If there was any justice I’d have the Nobel Peace Prize by now, but I don’t have the motherfucker. If you don’t have any words of wisdom for me I’m going home and shave.”
He revved his motor a little, but he didn’t drive off.
“So, what’s new in your life?” he asked.
“Oh, not much,” Duane said. “I’m thinking of building another room on the cabin, but it’s just in the planning stage so far.”
“That place is a little confining,” Bobby Lee said. “If you’re interested in taking in a boarder I’d like to apply for the position.”
“Why?” Duane asked. “You don’t seem like the rural type, to me.”
“I wasn’t, till I lost my testicle,” Bobby Lee said. “But I lost that sucker and I’m tired of being the subject of ridicule. I’d rather sit out on a hill and just be weird, like you.”
“Then we’d both be the subject of ridicule,” Duane pointed out. “Me for being weird and you for having one ball.”
“You didn’t say whether I could be a boarder or not,” Bobby Lee said.
“I wasn’t planning to build on a bedroom,” Duane said. “What I had in mind was more a workroom. I’m thinking of doing a little woodwork.”
“Woodwork?” Bobby Lee asked. “You mean carpentry?”
“No, I mean woodwork,” Duane said. “You know, building cabinets, or maybe carving animals.”
“Shit, you are weird,” Bobby Lee said, and drove off.
3
THAT NIGHT DUANE DREAMED the calf-roping dream for the fourth time—each time he dreamed it, it seemed to get sharper, more intense, more vivid; and each time he dreamed it, the ache inside him when the dream was over seemed to get worse. This time he saw the calf so clearly that he could almost have counted its hairs. He felt the dash of the well-trained roping horse and saw the loop he threw with perfect clarity. The horse was correctly positioned, the throw was perfect, the rope settled loosely over the calf’s head—but instead of the calf hitting the end of the rope and flipping over backward so that it could be quickly tied with the piggin string Duane held between his teeth, something odd happened. The calf’s head became Jacy Farrow’s head—and then the rope dissolved, Jacy faded, and the calf trotted on across the arena, unroped. Shortly afterward, even as the trotting calf was still visible in his mind, Duane began to wake up, with a deep ache inside him. He felt he had rather not go to sleep again if it meant that he might dream the calf-roping dream another time. The fact that Jacy’s face had come into it right at the end of the dream was a new element that he could not account for. He would not even have tried to account for it had it not occurred to him in conjunction with the calf-roping dream, which he had now dreamed four times. He and Jacy had been high school sweethearts, then friends again in their middle age. Though very beautiful, Jacy had not had a very happy life, and now she was dead and frozen, somewhere in the ice of the Arctic. Of course, it was normal enough for dead people to appear in dreams—it was just the fact that Jacy’s head had taken the place of the calf’s head that had seemed odd.
Beyond that, the thing that was even more odd was that he had kept appearing in his dream as a roper, when he had never roped in his life. So why the dreams, and the ache after the dreams? And why, when he was in excellent position to catch the calf, did he always miss?
Duane didn’t know much about psychiatry, but he did know, or had heard, that dream interpretation was one of the things psychiatrists did. Probably the woman he was going to see on Friday could come up with a reasonable explanation for his dream, if there wa
s one. Dreams didn’t have to be reasonable—he understood that.
Even so, throughout the day that ensued after his painful dream, Duane wavered about keeping his appointment with Honor Carmichael. Four or five times in the course of the day he decided he would walk over to Jody’s and ask him to cancel the appointment. The only thing that stopped him was the fear that such a cancellation would embarrass Jody with his daughter. If he canceled now it was undoubtedly going to seem lame to both Carmichaels. They would probably consider it hick behavior—and it probably would be hick behavior. He had no reason to be the least bit nervous about going in and talking to Jody Carmichael’s daughter for an hour. She was a trained doctor—highly trained, evidently. Also, he did not consider himself to be in dire straits. He was not going to be examined for cancer, or some life-threatening illness. He just sometimes felt a little gloomy and, sometimes, grew more angry than the occasion warranted. It might be that all he really needed was a change of scene.
Nonetheless, as Friday approached, Duane grew more and more nervous. He put off walking to Jody’s until it was too late to call. On Wednesday night he went to bed early thinking that if he woke up early he could hoof it over to the Corners and cancel the appointment in time for Honor Carmichael to slip someone else into his slot. Some suffering soul could then benefit from his dereliction.
Thursday morning, though still strongly in the mood to cancel the appointment, he didn’t spring up and start walking to Jody’s, or to Thalia either. There was a pay phone outside the Kwik-Sack he could have used.
But he didn’t go anywhere. He spent almost the whole day sitting in his lawn chair, covered by his poncho. Though he could move his arms and legs he felt in some sense paralyzed. All action seemed equally difficult to him. Though he didn’t know what was wrong, he did know that he had been lying to himself to think that all he needed was a change of scene. The fact was, he felt awful. The day was neither really sunny nor fully overcast; it was neither really cold nor comfortably warm. Duane felt just as mixed as the weather, just as ambivalent. He was neither desperate nor comfortable, neither at war nor at peace. All appetites seemed to have left him. Lunchtime came and went—it was not until the sun finally dipped down in orange brilliance out of the gray skies to the west that he got up and went in to heat up a bowl of soup—and then he only ate half of it. He felt so listless that he doubted he could walk seventeen or eighteen miles to his appointment.
At three in the morning, though, Duane came wide awake, with no anxiety or dream ache to slow him down. He shaved and put on his last clean change of clothes—the matter of how laundry was to get done was one he had not really addressed since starting his new life. By three-thirty he was out the door, though not out of it as fast as Shorty, who shot out into the darkness barking fiercely. Probably a coon or a skunk was wandering somewhere nearby.
Duane felt that a day had come that he had long been waiting for, without quite knowing that he was waiting. He felt purposeful again and walked at a good clip, so good that he had gone over three miles before Shorty caught up with him, and ten miles before he stopped to take a leak. It was a sunny day, just chill enough that he didn’t overheat. As he approached the city he began to pass defunct oil business establishments, old pipe yards, old machine shops, disused oil pumps, old trucks, abandoned storage tanks, all rusting away in weedy ugliness.
By midmorning he was walking east along the Seymour highway, with the few squatty buildings of downtown Wichita Falls dead ahead. A steady stream of traffic flowed by them but nobody stopped to ask him if he needed a ride. Evidently the fact that he had a dog with him convinced them he was on a social amble of some kind.
By 10:30 A.M. he was already so close to his destination that he sat down on a bus bench to contemplate his next move. He was so early that he felt at loose ends, with four and a half hours to kill before his appointment. He was still more or less in the country, but not by much. Another half mile and he would be in the suburbs proper. Two miles more and he would be at Dr. Carmichael’s door.
Just down the road from where he sat he noticed a dilapidated motel called the Stingaree Courts. He had passed the place many times in his pickup without really giving it a glance. The neon Vacancy sign, which was not lit, had come loose from its wiring and was dangling straight down—a passerby would have to tilt his head to read it. Shorty had his tongue hanging out. He looked bedraggled and thirsty.
“That motel looks like it’s about our speed,” he said to the dog. “Let’s proceed over there and see if they’ll rent us a room.”
When he entered the motel office he left Shorty nosing around in the parking lot. Duane was hoping the people in the motel wouldn’t associate him with the dog, but that hope was soon dashed. The skinny, sharp-eyed old woman behind the counter had no trouble making the connection.
“Is that your dog out there eating gravel?” she asked.
“Yes,” Duane admitted. He couldn’t come up with a ready lie.
“Does it bite niggers?” the woman asked.
“No, it just bites babies,” Duane assured her.
“The reason I ask, our maid’s a nigger,” the old woman said. “Did you want a room?”
“I sure do,” he said. “I’ll be staying in town overnight.”
She shoved a registration card toward him, which he promptly filled out. There was a space on the card which read, Auto: Make, License Plate, State. Duane left that part blank.
The old woman took the card and frowned.
“You didn’t put down your car information,” she said. “We have to have it so the police can identify you quick if they have to come and grab you.”
“I didn’t come in a car, I came on foot,” Duane said.
“Well, I’m Marcie Meeks and I never heard of such,” the old woman said. She came out from behind the counter and scanned the parking lot carefully.
“On foot from where?” she asked.
“On foot from my home,” Duane told her. “It’s a few miles away. I’m supposed to walk for my health, when the distance isn’t too great. Doctor’s orders.”
Marcie Meeks looked him up and down.
“No luggage, I see,” she said, suspicion in her eyes.
“Well, I brought a toothbrush,” Duane said. “I’m here for a doctor’s appointment. I intend to walk back home tomorrow.
“There’s no law against walking,” he added, seeing that the woman was still suspicious.
“No, but there’s a law against not putting in no car information when you check into a motel,” she said. “I’ll have to ask Daddy if it’s okay to let you have a room. We’re not looking for no trouble with the law.”
“Why would there be?” Duane asked. “I told you, I’m just walking for my health.”
“I better ask Daddy anyway,” the woman said. “I’m not too sure about that dog, either. He looks like the kind of dog who would bite a nigger.”
Duane waited patiently, and the wait was not brief. He was about to give up and look for another motel when Marcie Meeks came back, trailed by a large old man in a dirty bathrobe and ancient house slippers. His hair wasn’t combed and he had the stub of a cigar stuck in his mouth.
“What’s this about walking?” he asked.
Duane took the patient approach, though he considered that he had already expended about enough patience on a place as run down as the Stingaree Courts.
“I live a few miles away,” he said. “I’ve been advised by my doctor to exercise regularly and walking was the exercise he recommended. I’m here for a doctor’s appointment. I thought I’d stay overnight and walk home tomorrow.”
The old man did not have a friendly expression. But the motel was on the wild side of town—the two Meekses, if indeed they were husband and wife, had no doubt seen some things that might induce an attitude of suspicion.
“You could be an illegal alien or from some place like Byeloruss, for all we know,” the old man said. “A lot of the criminal element has been sneaking in late
ly from Byeloruss.”
“No, I’m from Thalia, Texas, I’m not an illegal alien,” Duane said. “I own five or six cars and several trucks. If you don’t want to give me a room that’s fine, but I don’t intend to put up with an interrogation just because I’m out walking for my health.”
“It’s not that we’re suspicious of you personally, Mr. Moore,” the old woman said. “But a man walking along a public highway with a dog is not a common sight. This is pickup country, mostly.”
“You’re right, but I’m a free citizen, and I have a right to walk if I want to—am I correct?” he said.
“It’s mainly bums and hippies that walk, or else old folks that have had their licenses taken away because of the Alzheimer’s,” the man said. “You don’t fit that description, so you can have a room.”
“I’m not from Byeloruss, either,” Duane added. “I’m an American citizen, exercising my right to travel in whatever manner I please.”
Though it had not been much of a confrontation, he found that he was shaking.
“The rooms are thirty-two dollars,” the old woman said.
Duane laid the money on the counter.
“That’s in case I leave before you’re up,” he said.
The old man looked surprised.
“I’d like to see somebody leave before Marcie’s up,” he said. “We’ve been out here on this godforsaken highway for thirty-eight years and nobody’s ever left before Marcie was up.”
“There’s always a first time,” Duane said, taking his key. The Meekses watched him without hostility, but without friendliness, either.
“The ice machine’s broken, you’ll have to do without ice,” Marcie Meeks told him, as he left.
“I won’t need ice,” Duane said, a statement that turned out not to be true. His room was even more squalid than he had expected, and he hadn’t been expecting much. The mattress was so sunken in that it seemed more like a hammock, and there was no handle on the cold water faucet in the small cramped shower. He turned on the TV, which seemed to be stuck on the porno channel. Two not very attractive people were having sex in vivid color. Duane, embarrassed, tried to change channels but the channel changer didn’t work and neither did the volume control. The only way to avoid the sight of loud and vivid sex was to turn off the TV, which he did. He had left the door open, to air out the hot little room—immediately, as if summoned by the sounds of sex, a young whore appeared in the doorway, a girl with a stringy, East Texas look about her.
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