Duane's Depressed

by Larry McMurtry

  It looked, though, that if somebody didn’t get busy and prepare the ground they would miss their chance to grow much of anything. The thought troubled him sufficiently that he went back in the house. Karla was still where he had left her, smoking and flipping through the morning paper.

  “Dickie or Jack or somebody needs to get busy and plow that garden plot,” he said. “It’s planting time, you know.”

  Karla seemed cheered by the fact that he had noticed that they were behind on the garden.

  “I know it, but the tractor’s got a flat,” she said. “Dickie’s so busy now that you’ve made him the big boss that he doesn’t have time to tend to things like gardens.”

  “If I take the tire off and carry it to the filling station will you see that somebody picks it up and puts it back on?” he asked. “I hate to see you lose any more time on that garden.”

  “We didn’t raise very helpful boys,” Karla pointed out. “They’ve both got better things to do than fix the tractor when it breaks.”

  “It doesn’t take ten minutes to put a tire back on a tractor,” Duane said. “If the filling station can get the flat fixed in the next hour or so I’ll put it back on myself.”

  “Why thanks, Duane—that’d be nice,” Karla said.

  16

  ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, Duane regretted his offer to tend to the flat tractor tire. Gardening was something that must be done in a timely fashion, if it was to be done successfully. Once he got the tractor tire off it proved too heavy to be carried on the bicycle. He had to roll it to the handiest of the filling stations, a distance of twelve blocks. While he was rolling the tire along the street, aware that every motorist who passed was gawking at him because he was in his brand-new biking clothes, he began to feel discontent with himself. The kind of chore he was in the process of doing was just the kind of chore he had meant to walk away from when he left home to live in his cabin. The oil company employed twenty-three men, any one of whom could have quickly taken care of the flat tire on the garden tractor. Why employ twenty-three men plus a cook and an office staff if you still had to be the one to roll the tractor tire to the filling station, so that the family garden plot could be plowed on time? It was the long accumulation of such irritating chores that had caused him to park his pickup in the first place—and yet he was doing exactly the kind of thing he had gone away to avoid. The very thing Mr. Thoreau warned about had happened: he had become a slave to his machine.

  The Fina station where he took the tire was no particular favorite of his—it just happened to be the closest station. It was owned by three brothers: Joe Bond, Bill Bond, and Roy Bond, none of them quick workers. Though they had owned the station for more than forty years they had never arrived at a clear division of labor. The fact that there were three of them meant that the simplest tasks, such as putting gas in a car, or checking someone’s oil, became a matter for negotiation. The older brothers, Joe and Bill, thought that Roy ought to do most of the work, since he was the youngest, but Roy often refused to do any work at all. Roy owned a cheap calculator and liked to calculate with it. If left to himself he would sit in the sun on a pile of old tires for hours at a stretch, putting his calculator through its paces. Sometimes he made it add, sometimes he made it subtract; occasionally he even made it multiply and divide. While Roy calculated, Joe and Bill would sometimes take as much as fifteen minutes to service one car. Very often they would be unable to locate the gauge needed to check the air pressure in a customer’s tires. They had only one gauge and would pass it from hand to hand until someone mislaid it.

  Duane felt himself beginning to tense up, even before he reached the Fina station, just from the thought of having to interact with the Bond brothers. But the other stations were farther away and he was finding it awkward to roll the tire with one hand and his bike with the other. He knew already, from long experience, that none of the three brothers was going to want to snap to and fix the tire. To them their filling station was simply a convenient spot from which to view the world, or contemplate human folly, or something. They were quick to flare into argument, both with one another and with anyone who happened to stop at their station, hoping for services that they might well not be in the mood to render.

  Still, the tire needed to be fixed.

  Roy Bond, as usual, sat on the pile of tires with his calculator in his hand, involved in an act of pure calculation—that is, one that had no meaning to anyone but himself.

  “Why have you got on them funny clothes—is it time for the parade?” Roy asked, when he looked up from his calculating and saw Duane in his biking garb.

  “Those are biking clothes, you moron,” Joe Bond said. “There’s no parade, it’s March. The parade happens in July, when they have the rodeo.”

  “Don’t be calling Roy a moron,” Bill Bond said. “If you hurt his feelings this early he won’t do a lick of work all day.”

  “He won’t anyway—he never does,” Joe said. “I’ll hurt his feelings with a tire iron if he don’t snap to the next time a customer shows up.”

  “One just showed up,” Duane said. “I need this tractor tire fixed and I need it fixed now.”

  None of the Bond brothers said a word. They all stared into space. “Now” was not a concept they welcomed around their Fina station.

  “If you’re too busy to fix it I’ll do it myself,” Duane said, hoping the brothers would recognize that he spoke with heavy irony. The road was empty in both directions. Besides himself there were no customers in sight.

  There was more silence. The Bond brothers were as passive as possums.

  “If I can just borrow your tools I’ll fix it,” Duane said. His tensing continued. He couldn’t remember why he had come to town, or been foolish enough to eat breakfast at home. He felt like heaving the tire through the plate glass window just behind where Bill and Joe Bond were sitting.

  Bill Bond shook his head.

  “We ain’t insured for customers to use our tools,” he said. “A nut could fly up and hit you in the eye and blind you and then you’d sue the shit out of us.”

  “What nut?” Duane asked. “I’m just trying to fix a flat. The nuts are already off the wheel. They’re back at the house.”

  Bill Bond was unmoved.

  “Well, but there’s nuts laying around here that could fly up and blind you,” he said. “If one did we’d be in a pickle.”

  “Okay then, how soon could you fix it for me? I’m in a hurry,” Duane asked. He attempted to stare them down, but it was hard, since their three gazes wandered willy-nilly over the landscape.

  “What do you think, Joe? How soon could we get to it?” Bill asked his brother.

  “I guess we can get to it after while,” Joe said. “Of course we’re at the beck and call. We might get busy pumping gas. Anyone could drive up needing gas.”

  “Yes, but I’m here now and none of you are doing a damn thing except sitting on your asses,” Duane said. “I’m a cash customer and this is a job you can do in twenty minutes if you hustle. So what’s the holdup?”

  The Bond brothers looked shocked, perhaps at the thought of hustling. No one alive had ever seen them hustle.

  “I don’t see what the hurry of it is,” Bill Bond said, finally. “You ain’t a farmer.”

  “I didn’t come here to debate you, Bill,” Duane said. “When can you fix this fuckin’ tire?”

  “Roy, get to it,” Joe Bond said, without much force.

  “No, you called me a moron,” Roy said. “Anyway I’m trying to add up the years since the Big Bang and it’s a lot of years.”

  “Here’s a big bang for you, you lazy farts,” Duane said. Then he did what he had wanted to do earlier. He heaved the tractor tire through the plate glass window just behind Joe and Bill Bond, who, for once, hustled out of the way. The window exploded with a very satisfying sound, and the tire landed on a messy desk, knocking several ashtrays up in the air. A cat that had been dozing dashed out and ran into the weeds. Ash from the ashtrays b
lew up to the ceiling of the small office and then filtered slowly down through the rays of sunlight.

  “Fix this goddamn tire and then take it up to my house and put it on the tractor,” Duane said in a tone meant to be threatening. “And send the bill to my office.”

  The Bond brothers were all staring dully at what had once been a plate glass window when Duane got on his bicycle and pedaled away.

  17

  WHEN, ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON, Duane told Dr. Carmichael what he had done she put her long fingers together and tapped them a few times against her lips, looking directly at him as she did it.

  “The interesting thing is the garden,” she said. “You left your family. You’ve intimated to me that you think it’s unlikely you’ll ever go back to your wife. You’ve changed directions—that’s all we know right now.”

  She paused and looked out the window. Two blue jays were flitting around on her lawn.

  “So why is the state of your family’s garden that important to you?” she asked. “So important that you’d throw a tire through a plate glass window?”

  Duane was startled. Dr. Carmichael had never questioned him so directly.

  “Well, I mainly threw the tire because I was aggravated at not getting any service,” he said.

  “Yes, and you still sound aggravated,” she said. “But it was concern for the garden that prompted you to take the tire to the station. You claim to feel no connection with your family, and you have little curiosity about your children. But when you saw that the garden plot hadn’t been prepared you were troubled. If you’re so through with family life why do you care so much about the garden?”

  Dr. Carmichael was looking directly at him, in her grave way. Duane began to feel a little tense. The thing that seemed worrisome to him was that he had lost his temper and thrown a tire through a plate glass window, a very unusual thing for him to do. Even in his wild youth he had never done anything destructive of anyone else’s property. He would have to go back to the Bond brothers at some point and apologize. What he had done seemed foolish to him. He should just have taken the tire to another station, where someone might have been more energetic about tending to customers’ needs.

  It puzzled him that the doctor had chosen to focus on the garden aspect of it all, rather than on the tire throwing. Everyone recognized the importance of growing a garden—or at least everyone had recognized it when he was younger. Growing a good garden meant not having to spend all your money at the grocery store, where the produce was not likely to be as good. Of course there had always been people who didn’t garden, but they were usually people who were either too shiftless or too rich. Taking good care of one’s garden was only common sense, especially in a country that was prone to drought.

  “It was just my upbringing, I guess,” he told her. “I was brought up not to neglect the garden. Maybe it was because of the Depression. My mother always gardened, although she was never much good at it. But at least we always had beans and potatoes and corn to fall back on.”

  “But the Depression was sixty years back and your family is now rather affluent,” Dr. Carmichael said. “They no longer need to grow their food. Most people don’t need to grow food these days. They buy food at the supermarket.”

  “You can’t buy a tomato with any taste to it at a supermarket,” Duane said.

  “Oh, granted,” the doctor said. “But let’s consider what happened. You went home and had breakfast with your family. Then you noticed that the garden hadn’t been planted, and that upset you.”

  “Not only not planted—it hadn’t even been plowed, and it’s past time,” Duane said. “It’s way past time, in fact.”

  “This is something you would have tended to yourself, if you’d been home, correct?” the doctor asked.

  “You bet,” Duane said.

  “It’s a duty, in your mind, then?” she asked.

  “Well, yes . . . it’s a duty,” Duane said. “We have a good garden plot and all the equipment we need to plow it and plant it. It’s just laziness to neglect a garden.”

  “It seems as if you want your family to assume the same duties you assumed,” the doctor said. “But they aren’t you—and you’ve left them. What if they want to live in a different way? What if they never plant that garden?”

  For a moment Duane regretted ever coming to see Dr. Carmichael. It was all just talk—he couldn’t see that it mattered. There had been some relief in talking to her the first few times he had come, but this visit was just making him feel muddled. Here she was, boring in on the question of his unplanted garden. It made him feel tired.

  “Do you plan to plant a garden out at your cabin?” she asked.

  “I thought I might have a little pea patch, and some tomatoes,” he said. “Maybe grow some turnips. I like turnip greens.”

  “What interests me is that, where your family is concerned, you’ve taken away your help but you haven’t taken away many of your expectations,” the doctor said. “You want them to be as responsible as you have been.”

  She paused.

  “You want them to be a credit to their raising, which is a normal thing for a parent to feel,” she added.

  Duane looked at the long couch along the west wall of the room. He thought it would be a relief to lie on it for a while: just lie on the couch and not think. But there were only ten minutes left in the visit, and if he were on the couch he feared he would just embarrass himself by going right to sleep. He remembered that the doctor had wanted him on the couch for this visit—probably he had been so agitated about throwing the tire through the window that she had just let him sit in the chair and babble.

  Dr. Carmichael saw where he was looking.

  “That’s okay, we’ll get you on the couch next time,” she said. “It’s rather a different experience, being on the couch.”

  “I guess I’m just tired,” Duane said. “I biked in.”

  “Are you glad you have the bike?” she asked. “Is it better than walking?”

  “Well, I can get to someplace I need to get to on the bike,” Duane said. “I can come in and out in a day. But it’s not better than walking.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s just not,” he said. “I like walking.”

  “We’ll talk about that a little, next time,” the doctor said.

  18

  DUANE HAD MEANT TO BIKE right on back to his cabin, but there was the vexed question of Shorty, who had been the sole inhabitant of a semiexpensive room at the Stingaree Courts for two days. When he arrived at the motel and opened the door to number 141 Shorty was so glad to see him that he hopped around in a frenzy for a while.

  “If anybody knew I was paying forty-eight dollars a day for a dog to stay in a motel they’d really think I was crazy,” Duane said. Shorty dashed off across the parking lot to chase a tomcat that was lurking around, but the tomcat easily faced him down and Shorty soon returned.

  Duane had meant to check out and drag Shorty back to the cabin by one means or another, but he made the mistake of lying down on the water bed for a few minutes. The longing he had felt in the doctor’s office—a desire just to lie down and doze peacefully—came over him again, and he nodded off. He had not even fully closed the door to his room.

  He awoke, deep in the night, to the sound of a loud argument in the parking lot. Sleep dragging at his muscles, he got up and went to the door just in time to see a tall, skinny young man slap Gay-lee twice.

  “Ricky, don’t—Ricky, don’t!” Gay-lee said.

  Before Duane could move to intervene, the young man jumped in a pickup and drove off. Gay-lee stood where she was, sobbing. Shorty barked and barked.

  Duane walked over to the girl.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “In my feelings I am, because Ricky’s a two-timing bastard,” she said.

  “I thought I saw him hit you,” Duane said.

  “Just slaps, he didn’t hurt me,” Gay-lee said. “Ricky don’t know what to do with a woman
that’s fussing at him other than to slap her and drive off.”

  “I guess it’s none of my business,” Duane said. “Thanks for looking after my dog.”

  Gay-lee was staring down the road, at the taillights of the departing pickup, still visible a long way down the road.

  “You’re not going to take our puppy away, are you? My girls love him,” Gay-lee asked.

  “Well, I was considering it,” Duane admitted.

  Gay-lee looked at him with fresh distress, more distress than she had exhibited over the slapping.

  “Me and Sis depend on the puppy to keep us happy,” Gaylee said. “Sis has got thirteen children and all her boys are in jail.

  “Plus I just got out of jail myself,” she added. “I been writing bad checks. They will put you in jail for that sooner or later. But it’s the only way I have to get new clothes. If I can’t get new clothes once in a while I’d go crazy. I get over there to Dillard’s and I pick up some of them Ralph Lauren clothes and it’s almost like I get a religious feeling. So I scribble out a bad check. Shoot, I’d rather sit in jail a day or two than never have nothing pretty to wear.”

  Duane had an impulse to help the girl—she was about the age of his youngest daughter, who couldn’t resist pretty clothes either. Julie wrote bad checks galore but she never had to go to jail because he or Karla always covered them.

  “It’s while I was sitting in the slammer that Ricky took up with that slut from Iowa Park,” Gay-lee said. “I was only in jail two days. You’d think it wouldn’t kill him to be faithful for just two days, but oh no, Ricky couldn’t do it. I get home and there’s a slut from Iowa Park sleeping in my own bed. How’s that for ugly?”

  “Do you have any education?” Duane asked.

  “You bet, I only like nine hours from having a college degree,” Gay-Lee said.