The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  “Eddie, he said a very rude thing to Laurie,” Harmony said. “I didn’t want him to go with us to Oklahoma.”

  “I didn’t either,” Eddie said. “I think he was fart, and fart makes bad smells in the bus.”

  Neddie and Pat came up and sat down across the aisle. They looked puzzled and depressed.

  “We’re trying again,” Neddie said. “Why’d Sonny jump off the bus so quick? Now we’ve lost the one person in this whole gang who was like a normal American.”

  “Neddie, he left because I was about to kill him,” Harmony said.

  “You were about to what?” Pat asked. She had Sonny’s little sack of T-shirts in her hand.

  “Kill him,” Harmony repeated. “He got out just in time.”

  “He said a rude thing to Laurie and he was fart,” Eddie informed them.

  “You mean you had a fight, or what?” Neddie asked. “I don’t understand. He seemed like a decent little fellow to me.”

  “Yeah, we were getting along with him fine,” Pat said. “Now we got a bunch of ugly T-shirts that nobody at home is gonna want to wear.”

  “Pat, are you saying it’s my fault?” Harmony asked; it was very annoying to her that her sisters were sitting there with long faces, defending Sonny Le Song just because he was male and looked like he might live in their part of the country. It was so annoying to her that she wondered why she was even going home. Obviously she and her sisters had different values: what was the point?

  “If it was just a spat he could have sat in the back with us, for a while,” Pat said.

  “What if I threw him off because he was a child molester, would it still be my fault?” Harmony asked. Some of the anger that had made her want to pull Sonny’s guts out of his body spilled into her tone when she looked at her sister Pat.

  “Uh-oh, I think we better let this one lie,” Neddie said. “Harmony might know something about him that we don’t know.”

  “Neddie, I know a million things about him that you don’t know!” Harmony pointed out. “Why would you think it was my fault because I threw a little jerk off the bus? Haven’t you ever met a jerk you wanted to throw off a bus?”

  “There’s a limited number of jerks in Tarwater, that’s how bleak the scene is,” Pat said.

  “You’re my sisters, you shouldn’t always think it’s my fault,” Harmony said—she was still upset. “Why can’t I even get support from my sisters?”

  Both sisters were a little taken aback by the anger in her voice.

  “Wow,” Pat said, a little defensively.

  “Shut up these loud words!” Eddie commanded. “I want to talk to my mom about men with elephant trunks, but I can’t talk to my mom when there’s loud words all the time.”

  “So do you two think it’s always the woman’s fault no matter how much of a scumbag the man is?” Harmony asked.

  “Pat always gives them the benefit of the doubt,” Neddie said.

  Harmony gave up and hugged Eddie, who was in a smiley mood and was so sweet to hold and look at that a little of her bad mood began to drain away. There was not much she could do about her sisters; mostly, they meant well. The sun came out and the white school bus went sailing along the freeway at top speed. But just as her spirits began to come back to normal another sorrow arrived; this time it was Sheba and Otis getting off the bus. Harmony looked out and saw the oil refineries she had seen from the window of the No-Tel Motel. They were back in Jersey City, not far from the Dumpster where Sheba and Otis lived.

  “I’m going quick, otherwise I be crying so hard I fall right on my ugly face,” Sheba said; she bent and gave Eddie a quick kiss. At first Eddie tried to keep his hands over his eyes; he refused to let his eyes see that Sheba was leaving. But then he gave up and gave her a big hug and a kiss. In only seconds Sheba and Otis were off the bus. At this departure everybody cried except G. He was impassive and kept his eyes on the road. Soon the bus was moving, sailing down the freeway again as if the two young people had not just severed themselves from the group, probably forever. Abdul cried and Salah and Laurie; Neddie and Pat looked bleak, and Harmony couldn’t look out the window at all; she didn’t want to see those two nice black kids standing by a freeway in New Jersey.

  Eddie buried his face in Harmony’s lap; he had always been supersensitive to departures and this one was particularly hard, the reason being that Eddie loved Sheba so much.

  6.

  “This is the Jersey Turnpike,” Laurie said, after a while. Once again she took her seat beside Harmony. She reached over and smoothed Eddie’s curls, but he kept his face in his mother’s lap.

  “I don’t blame him for being upset,” Laurie said. “This is all so odd. You can’t blame two black kids from New Jersey for freaking out and wanting to go home.”

  “Laurie, I’m sorry Sonny called you a dyke,” Harmony said. “It’s just too bad we met him on the street.”

  “Forget it,” Laurie said. “What I was really worried about was that you might be going to get involved with him again.”

  Harmony didn’t answer. Probably the truth was that if Sonny had taken the trouble to be even halfway nice it could have happened, not right away, not on the bus trip, but someday. He would just have had to be patient and wait for the soft spot to grow. But it was hard to know: maybe the soft spot she had had when Sonny was singing at the Chevron station was gone anyway; maybe all she had left was the memory of a soft spot.

  “I know I’m not strong, Laurie,” Harmony said. “I never have been strong, where guys are concerned. I just don’t know how to be. But I can be pretty strong where Eddie is concerned.”

  The question of Pepper and Sonny was hanging in the air. Harmony wanted to ask if Laurie had an opinion, but the question never came out; she let it be a question there would never be an answer to.

  While she was letting the question die away, Eddie sat up.

  “We’ll see Sheba and Otis again someday,” he said. “We can go to the Shop and Sack and find them when we come back to Jersey City, or we can ask Beth at the No-Tel Motel and we can find them and have doughnuts and bagels.”

  Neither Harmony nor Laurie could bring themselves to answer—it was a bit of self-reassurance on Eddie’s part. He didn’t like it that his friends Sheba and Otis were gone forever. After all, only the day before, they had been shepherding him around New York, seeing that he got good treatment on the TV shows. Now he was just a little boy on the bus with his family again, traveling along toward Oklahoma.

  A little later Eddie asked Laurie if she would go to the back of the bus and read him a few stories.

  “Why, I’d be glad to, Eddie,” Laurie said. She gave Harmony a little kiss before she left. Neddie and Pat were both asleep. Probably the strain of not being in Oklahoma had worn them out.

  After Laurie moved to the back of the bus Omar stood up and asked politely if he could sit by Harmony for a few minutes.

  “I am sorry you lose daughter,” Omar said, once he sat down. “I have lost three children, but I have many more—tens more.

  “You have fine little son, though,” he added.

  “My daughter died of AIDS,” Harmony said—she had an urge to pour it all out to somebody, preferably somebody she didn’t know very well.

  “Your daughter is at peace, no suffering,” Omar said, patting Harmony’s leg.

  “Children have own fates,” he added. “My boys all marry bad womens, French womens, have no respect. I throw them out, with their French womens.”

  Then Omar got up and went back to his own seat, looking very sad. He had a strange look in his eye, as if he had gone into his own space; maybe the space was memory, and maybe he was remembering his earlier life, before his children died and his sons took up with French women.

  Harmony looked around. Eddie was sprawled on the back seat, his head in Laurie’s lap. Laurie was reading him Beauty and the Beast. Eddie was listening closely. Eddie always gave stories his full attention, even if they were stories he had had read to h
im many times before.

  She felt guilty for having made Omar feel sad. She hadn’t asked him any questions, but even one question could be the wrong question if you asked it at a bad time, or if memories were there that could open beneath you like a trapdoor.

  The problem was, once a tragedy had happened, or not even a tragedy, just the troubles that went with being alive, memories were always there, they could always open beneath you like a trapdoor; you could just be riding along on a bus and suddenly the trapdoor would open and plunge you downward, into the depth of your regrets. It was a fact that could make you fearful, if you let yourself think about it very much.

  Harmony decided she wanted to be with Eddie and Laurie.

  “The beast isn’t really bad, Mom,” Eddie said, once she sat down by him. “He only looks a little bad.”

  “Well, he can’t help that,” Laurie said. “None of us can help how we look. I think that thought every morning, when I get up and look in the mirror.”

  “But that’s a good thought because you look nice, Laurie,” Eddie said, giving her a pat.

  “Not to myself,” Laurie said. “I think I look really blah. Sort of like how a pancake would taste without real maple syrup.”

  “I’m glad the beast isn’t really bad,” Eddie said again. “He looks really scary but he isn’t really bad.”

  “Well, not too many things in this world are really bad,” Laurie commented. “Although a lot of things are a little bad.”

  “Yeah, shots are a little bad,” Eddie said. “My school bus driver was a little bad because he yelled at Eli because Eli stood up in the seat.”

  “Eddie, he was just thinking of safety,” Harmony said.

  “Harmony, are you nervous about going home?” Laurie asked.

  “But the beast’s paw is hurt, you have to keep reading,” Eddie said. “My Mom can listen too.”

  “Can’t I get the answer to one question before I have to read?” Laurie asked. “After all, you were talking about Eli just a moment ago.”

  “I was, but now I need to know about the beast because his paw is hurt—it’s a very important part,” Eddie said.

  “Laurie, it’s not just about going home, I’m nervous about everything,” Harmony said. “Do you ever get the feeling that you just don’t know how to live? That’s how I feel. I just don’t know how to live.”

  “Yes you do know how to live, don’t say silly words,” Eddie protested. “How to live is you fix my breakfast and help me get ready for school, and then you go to your job at the recycling plant and when your job is over I’ll come home and we’ll eat macaroni and cheese and we’ll watch some TV shows and if Gary comes over we’ll play cards and then I’ll take my bath and you can read me a story and I’ll go to sleep and that’s how to live.”

  “Wow, no wonder this young man was on TV,” Laurie said, grinning. “He’s only five and he actually understands how to live.”

  “Five and a half, my birthday is in October,” Eddie said.

  7.

  Eddie got his way about the White House. He kept harping on the First Family’s impending trip to China until Laurie finally got off the bus in Baltimore and called the White House number. She did it mainly to convince Eddie that an effort was being made to be polite to the First Family, but, to everyone’s bewilderment, the call went through and a meeting was arranged.

  “I guess the President isn’t doing much today,” Laurie said, when she got back on the bus. “Now if we can just get over to Washington and find the White House, Eddie and Iggy are in business.”

  “I don’t have to go in, do I?” Harmony asked, horrified at the thought that she’d have to meet a dignitary looking the way she looked.

  “Nobody has to go in but Eddie and Iggy,” Laurie said. “A Marine will take Eddie in and a Marine will bring him back.”

  “Why can’t my aunts go in?” Eddie asked. “They don’t have much to do.”

  “Forget it, Eddie,” Pat said. “I feel like I fell off the Statue of Liberty myself. I don’t want to meet nobody, much less two people from Arkansas.”

  “What’s wrong with Arkansas?” Neddie asked. “There’s good fishing over there in Arkansas.”

  “I’ve had my share of bad experiences in Arkansas,” Pat said, without elaborating.

  “It ain’t the state’s fault that you pick assholes for boyfriends,” Neddie said. “At one point me and Dick thought we might move over to Arkansas and try life over there but we never got around to it.”

  “I still don’t see why my aunts can’t come in,” Eddie said. “It would be a good experience for the President and Mrs. President to meet my family.”

  “Well, that’s one good experience they’ll just have to do without—end of conversation,” Pat said.

  “Pat, why do you have to be so negative?” Harmony asked. “Eddie was just asking a simple question.”

  “He wasn’t, either, he was trying to pressure me and Neddie into going into the White House with him, when all our clothes are wrinkled and we wouldn’t know what to say anyway.”

  “Be quiet with these words, I don’t want to hear any more of these words right now,” Eddie said.

  “Well, but we don’t take orders from you, Eddie,” Pat said. “We’re grown-ups and there’s free speech in this country. That means people get to say whatever words they want to say.”

  “Pat, it was just a suggestion,” Harmony said.

  Eddie put his fingers in his ears and went back to where Laurie sat, at the back of the bus.

  “I think you hurt his feelings,” Harmony said.

  “I did not hurt his feelings,” Pat insisted. “I love Eddie but I’m not taking any more lip from him. I’m beginning to wish I’d gone on and married Rog.”

  “Marry him—you don’t even know if he’s alive,” Neddie reminded her.

  Harmony enjoyed looking at Baltimore, as they passed through it; as a town, it definitely had a funky look. She was thinking that her family had a habit of simply forgetting people. Pat had forgotten Rog and she had forgotten Ross, among others.

  “Neddie, have you ever forgotten anybody—I mean a person who was important to you for a while but then became forgotten?” she asked.

  “Well, there’s Dick, I forgot him years ago, even though I’m still married to him,” Neddie said.

  “That’s why you’re still married to him,” Pat said. “If you remembered him for ten minutes you’d probably get divorced.”

  “I couldn’t live up here where it’s so old,” Neddie said. “They don’t even have yards back here in Baltimore. I didn’t see none in New York either.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you, you make rude comments,” Eddie said, to Pat.

  “You don’t believe in free speech, that’s your problem,” Pat said.

  Nonetheless they all got tears in their eyes when Eddie went marching across the south lawn of the White House, with Iggy on his leash. Two Marines led the way. G. had found the White House on the first try, not long after they entered Washington. The guards behind it were friendly and let them park in a little space off the street that was mostly filled with black limousines. Evidently the staff had been fully informed of their arrival; there was not the slightest problem about parking, even though two security men did come on the bus with little portable metal detectors, to sweep them all down and make sure they were not armed.

  “Eddie looks so tiny, it breaks my heart,” Laurie said, as they watched Eddie and Iggy being led into the White House by the two tall Marines in their blue uniforms.

  Harmony was having a hard time believing in the reality of what was happening. It didn’t seem possible that they could really be in Washington, D.C., parked beside the White House, so that her own son, aged five and a half, could have a few words with the President and the First Lady. Yet there they were, and her sisters and Laurie and the turban men were all watching.

  As for Eddie himself, he could hardly wait to get out of the bus and go meet the First Family.
He loved telling the story of Iggy’s famous, foolhardy pursuit of the sea gull, and his miraculous fall from the Statue of Liberty. His only problem with the visit had involved his clip-on bow tie, which really wasn’t all that easy to clip on. Eddie tried, but grew so frustrated that he was about to cry. Finally he let Laurie do it.

  “Eddie, be polite,” Harmony had said, giving him a kiss as he got off the bus; then some television people showed up, and the Marines; she didn’t get to say much more.

  “Why don’t we never have a camera at a time like this?” Neddie asked. “I’ve bought at least twenty cameras in my life, but I never have one when I need one and if I do either the flash doesn’t work or I don’t have no film.”

  “It’ll be on TV, we can get it on tape,” Laurie assured them.

  All of a sudden everyone on the bus got hyper at the same time; it was probably the excitement of being at the White House. They all had been what Laurie would call blah on the trip from Baltimore. Harmony was wondering why they were bothering at all, it all seemed sort of pointless. Neddie was still griping because there didn’t seem to be any lawns in the part of the country they were driving through.

  There was a lawn at the White House, though, and the sight of Eddie and Iggy walking across it sort of made everyone feel keyed up. While they were feeling keyed up an even more exciting thing happened: the President and the First Lady and several aides suddenly appeared on the lawn with Eddie and Iggy. Although they were a good distance from the bus it was easy to see that it was the President and the First Lady.

  “My God, it’s them,” Laurie said.

  “I’m glad it’s Eddie out there, and not me,” Neddie said.

  Then Eddie disappeared amid the aides and Marines—in a minute or two, though, he came in sight again, dashing after Iggy, who had been turned loose to scamper on the green lawn behind the White House. Eddie and Iggy scampered around for a while, watched over by the President and the First Lady.

  There was a helicopter parked on the White House lawn, not far from where the group was. Eddie ran back to the President and pointed at it. Evidently the President was about to go somewhere not too formal, he just had on a windbreaker and khakis. When Eddie pointed at the helicopter the President started waving and pretty soon he and the First Lady and some of the aides and Eddie and Iggy got in the helicopter. The helicopter immediately took off.