The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  “It’s okay, Neddie, Dick’s plowing,” Harmony reminded her. “Anyway, nothing’s happened, has it?”

  “Something’s happened,” Neddie said, glancing at the highway one more time before pushing open the door.

  “Uh-oh,” Harmony said. There could only be one thing, namely sex, that had happened.

  “It happened because I went away with you and realized when I came back that I can’t live with Dick anymore,” Neddie said. “When I realized that, I went over to tell Rusty. Melba—that’s Rusty’s wife—works in Tulsa and don’t never get home much before six. That leaves the whole afternoon wide open for something to happen.”

  “Well, if it’s what I think it was, it’s happened before in this world, Neddie,” Harmony said.

  Neddie still hadn’t entered the beer joint. She pushed the door halfway open and then stood in it to talk.

  “You know, when you travel it sort of rearranges things inside you,” Neddie said. “Then you come back and have to try to put things back where they were before they got rearranged, and sometimes it just don’t work. I think that’s what happened to me. I went away and it rearranged the furniture inside me and now I can’t get it to fit back where it used to be. It’s moved and that’s that. Now what do I do?”

  “Neddie, can’t we just go in?—I thought you wanted me to meet Rusty,” Harmony said.

  “I do and I don’t,” Neddie said, still blocking the doorway, not shutting the door but not going in either. “What I’m thinking is that this is gonna tear Dick up—the trouble with Davie and the cocaine has got him all torn open anyway. It’s gonna tear Dick up so bad I don’t know if he’ll make it.”

  She took a cigarette out of her purse—she still had her hand on the door.

  “But another thing I’m thinking is, I can’t help it,” she said. “The furniture got moved and I’m forty-nine and that’s that.”

  Harmony stepped around her and pulled her inside the beer joint, which was so dark she couldn’t see a thing. She had to stop immediately and continue her conversation with Neddie, but at least they were inside.

  “I’m your sister,” she reminded Neddie. “I’m no angel, either. I’ve had my furniture moved around fifty or sixty times. I don’t know how many times.”

  “Things with me and Dick look smooth on the surface, but underneath … well, there ain’t no underneath,” Neddie went on; she was more interested in talking than in listening.

  “Pretty much the whole family’s gonna be against me, when this comes out,” she said. “If you’re against me I don’t know if I can stand it.”

  “I’m not against you, can’t we just go meet him?” Harmony said. Her eyes had adjusted a little, enough to let her see that there was almost no one in the bar. At a table by the jukebox there was a lanky man with a dozer cap turned backward on his head. Another man was with him, a small man who seemed to have a flat nose. It was as if someone had banged his nose with a hammer a few times and flattened it against his face.

  “Hi, this is Rusty and this is Dill,” Neddie said, in a shaky voice. “This is my long-lost sister Harmony that everybody’s been wanting to meet.”

  “Howdy,” Rusty said, standing up. He had a nice smile sort of shy.

  “Hi,” Dill said. He stood up too. “I wish they’d turn the lights up in here, so I could see you. What’s the use of being with two beautiful women if it’s so dark you can’t even give ’em a thorough looking over.

  “All I can see of you two girls is an outline,” Dill went on.

  “Why do they call you Dill?” Harmony asked.

  “They call him Dill because he’s such a sour son of a bitch, most of the time,” Rusty said. “I work with him every day of my life, I ought to know.”

  “You don’t work with me, because you don’t work,” Dill said. “Chewing toothpicks ain’t work. I’ve been in your employ twenty years and you’ve only done about three solid days’ work that I can remember.”

  “He’s a liar,” Rusty said, smiling his shy smile at Harmony. “I admit I don’t work any harder than I have to, though. Why work harder than you have to?

  “Harmony, I’m in love with your sister,” he added, looking Harmony right in the eye.

  “That ain’t as big a secret as you think it is, Rusty,” Dill said, looking not at all embarrassed by the intimate turn the conversation had taken.

  “It may not be no big secret to you, but that don’t mean it’s been said aloud in public, like Rusty just said it,” Neddie pointed out. Though she was still a little nervous, her face lit up when Rusty said that he was in love with her. Even in the dim bar, Harmony could see a look on her sister’s face that she had never seen before.

  “Well, Neddie, it’s been said in public ever since I’ve been working for Rusty, because I’ve said it in public,” Dill said. “Unless you don’t consider Rusty the public.”

  Neddie had no comment on that point.

  “The truth will out, they say,” Rusty said. “I guess me and Ned are just tired of hiding our feelings—wouldn’t you be?”

  He looked at Harmony when he asked the question. Harmony got the feeling that Neddie and Rusty were relying on her to help them with their life. They were in a situation and needed her wisdom to help them get through it—only why did they think she had any wisdom? Wise was not a quality she would ever assign herself. But she liked the way her sister looked when Rusty said he was in love with her. Also, she liked Rusty—he was definitely cute, in his lanky way, with his dozer cap turned backward. He had big eyes, direct and a little sad, but now and then they twinkled when he saw the humor in something. On some level it seemed to amuse him that he had fallen in love with his brother’s wife.

  “Well, if you love Neddie, that’s good,” Harmony said. She felt they needed to know that they had her approval.

  “Good from Ned and Rusty’s point of view, maybe,” Dill said. “What about Dick’s point of view—and what about Melba’s?”

  “Dill’s always been a good one for asking awkward questions,” Rusty commented. “He couldn’t fix a broken-down tractor if he had a year, but he can ask those awkward questions a mile a minute.”

  “What’s Melba like—she’s not from Tarwater, is she?” Harmony asked. She was pretty sure she didn’t remember any Melbas from her high school years.

  “Oh, Melba’s from Ardmore—she’s practically a Texan,” Dill said.

  “I ain’t gonna be losing much sleep over Melba,” Neddie said. “If she’d ever been halfway good to Rusty I doubt this would ever have happened.”

  Rusty looked a little pained when Neddie said what she said. “Neddie, it would have happened even if she’d been an angel,” he said, with a note of sadness in his voice. “You can’t say it’s Melba’s fault or Dick’s fault—hell, I was in love with you even before you and Dick married, and I hadn’t even met Melba yet, when that happened.”

  “If you was in love with me that long ago, I wish you’d spoke up,” Neddie said—she sounded a little put out. “If you had maybe I would have married the right person in the first place.”

  “Honey, I was just a brat when you married Dick,” Rusty said. “I was six years younger. You would have laughed in my face if I’d even asked you for a date.”

  Just then the owner of the bar, a large, red-faced man wearing a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt and a cowboy hat, came over, without being asked, and sat down right by Harmony, close enough that she could smell his armpits, which could have used a squirt or two of deodorant. Harmony felt like scooting her chair over about a foot. She had been intent on her sister’s situation and didn’t want to have to smell some big smelly guy’s armpits, just then.

  “Neddie, ain’t you even gonna introduce me to your famous sister?” he asked, looking at Harmony in a not too nice way.

  “Fuck off, Tommy, we’re having a private conversation,” Rusty said, getting a cold glint in his eye.

  “Mind your damn manners,” the man said, ignoring Rusty and continuing to look
at Harmony in the not too nice way. “This is my bar and there ain’t no discussions gonna take place in it too private for me to sit in on.”

  “Then we’ll find another bar—let’s go, girls,” Rusty said, standing up.

  “I just asked to be introduced to Harmony, that’s all,” Tommy said. “This woman’s got the most famous pair of tits ever to come out of Tarwater, why wouldn’t I want to sit by them for a while?”

  “Don’t pay no attention to Tommy,” Dill said, looking at Harmony. “Tits are his main interest in life, along with beer.”

  Tommy was still looking at Harmony.

  “Honey, I got a fine bar in Tulsa and you ain’t too old to bring your floor show home,” he said. “We’ll give you an hour or two on stage anytime you want.”

  “No thank you,” Harmony said. “I’m retired.”

  Before she even finished saying it Rusty grabbed her hand—in a moment all four of them were out in the bright sunlight.

  “I told you we ought to find a nicer place,” Neddie said, looking at Rusty a little critically.

  “How’d I know Tommy would be there—this is usually his day off,” Rusty said. “Besides, there ain’t no nice places to meet in, in this whole county—you know that. All this would have come to a head years ago if we’d had a halfway decent place to meet.”

  “Well, you lovebirds can yak all you want to, I’m going to work,” Dill said. “Pleased to meet you, Harmony.”

  He got in one of the battered white pickups and immediately gunned it straight across the highway, right in front of two trucks, both of which honked at him angrily.

  “It’s a wonder Dill is still alive, he has no instinct for traffic,” Rusty said, reaching up to rub the head of the big black dog, who looked at them with his tongue lolled out.

  “Do you want to come to the Best Western, so we can talk?” Harmony asked. “It’s not very far.”

  “Okay,” Neddie and Rusty said, at once. They were a little overwhelmed by their situation and seemed willing to obey anyone who might make a suggestion or give them a little help.

  “You ride with Rusty, it’ll give you a chance to get to know him,” Neddie said. “I’ll drive Rusty’s pickup.”

  “Remember about the clutch slipping,” Rusty said, as he got in with Harmony. The big dog jumped from the back of one pickup into the back of the other when he saw Rusty get in with Harmony.

  “That’s Clyde, he’s obsessed with me,” Rusty said, grinning. “He’s got the notion that the world might end if he lets me out of his sight.”

  “Rusty, maybe he’s just loyal,” Harmony said. “Iggy’s that way—Eddie’s dog. He gets annoyed if we go into the waffle house or someplace and he gets left in the car.”

  “I hear you saw Dick,” Rusty said—maybe he was just trying to get some sense of how Harmony felt about the situation.

  “He got upset,” Harmony said. “He mentioned the brother who got drowned.”

  “Dick’s been blaming himself for that accident for thirty-five years,” Rusty said. “Accidents like that just happen. Dick mainly brings it up when he wants sympathy.”

  “I guess we all want sympathy once in a while,” Harmony said.

  Rusty was silent while Harmony steered the pickup carefully across the highway and headed back toward the Best Western. She didn’t want to make any trucks honk at her, if she could help it.

  “Will you tell Dick for us?” Rusty asked then. “Tell him Neddie wants a divorce? I know it’s a big thing to ask, but I got no one else to appeal to. If Neddie has to do it herself she’ll put it off till we’ve lost another five years—we’ve already lost the better part of twenty.

  “I know it’s Neddie’s place to do it,” he went on. “I know it’s a lot to put on you, when you just lost your little girl. But I got no one else to appeal to, and this is mine and Ned’s last chance.”

  “Maybe Dick knows it already—I mean, inside maybe he does know,” Harmony said. She wasn’t sure she believed it, she was just stalling, really. The thought of having to tell that large man she scarcely knew that his wife wanted a divorce so she could marry his brother was a scary thought.

  “I used to think that, but Neddie says no,” Rusty said. “Ned don’t think he has a clue. Dick don’t look ahead, unless it has to do with the farming. He thinks about planting and harvesting, when he thinks at all. He don’t think about people—that’s one big reason this is happening.”

  Then Rusty stopped talking and looked out the window at the weedy plains.

  “No, it would have happened anyway, no matter what Dick thought or didn’t think,” Rusty said. “Me and Ned, we’re just meant to be together. That’s how I feel and that’s how I always felt.”

  “I guess I can tell him, if it will help you and my sister,” Harmony said. “I’m sure it will be a shock.”

  Rusty looked out the window some more.

  “The thing is, Dick, he’s all work,” Rusty said. “He can be pretty happy just working that place. He don’t need a woman—not like I need Neddie. I need Neddie in the worst way, Harmony.”

  Harmony was remembering the look on Neddie’s face, when Rusty said he loved her. It was the first look of real happiness she could ever remember seeing on her sister’s face. She was also trying to remember when a man had said those words to her, with true feeling, as Rusty had said it to Neddie.

  But she couldn’t pull up a name, a face, or a moment when a man had said that to her. Many men had said they loved her, and some of them must have meant it, but none that she could remember had made it sound as special as Rusty made it sound, when he said it to Neddie. Rusty didn’t have too good a complexion, either, but his face lit up when he told Neddie he loved her.

  “What about Melba?” she asked, remembering that Rusty did have a wife.

  “I think Melba may have figured this out,” he said with a sigh. “I guess I’ll find out when I break the news.”

  “Rusty, will she be real upset?” Harmony asked.

  Rusty sighed again. “Our family’s all Melba cares about,” he said. “It will just about kill her, I expect.”

  “I think I better talk to my friend Gary,” Harmony said. “Gary understands things like this.”

  “He’s smarter than me, if he understands this,” Rusty said. “I sure don’t understand it. I like my brother Dick. I don’t know why in hell I had to fall in love with his wife.”

  “I don’t understand it either, Rusty,” Harmony said. “I guess things just don’t wait for people to understand them. They just happen anyway.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Rusty said.

  13.

  When they got back to the motel there were complications waiting, in the form of Eddie and Iggy and Laurie and Sty and Ethel, all waiting in the blue Buick that Ethel used for going to church in. Ethel didn’t like anyone else to touch her Buick, much less drive it, for any reason.

  “Uh-oh,” Rusty said, when he saw the Buick. “How are we going to explain this?”

  “We’ll just say we had lunch,” Harmony said. “That’s normal, isn’t it?”

  “It’s normal, but it won’t fool your mother,” Rusty said. “She’s going to want to know why you’re with me and not Dick.”

  “Besides that she knows we didn’t have lunch, because she was at the barbecue,” Harmony remembered. “I don’t know what we’ll say.”

  “Where’s Dick?” Ethel asked immediately. Fortunately she was so upset about having to use her personal car for a social occasion that she didn’t pursue the other complications very thoroughly.

  “It makes the oil dirty to drive this car on weekdays,” she pointed out at once. “You were supposed to bring the pickup home early, and here it is the afternoon. Sty’s been afoot all day and I don’t know where Pat is and it’s just luck that Eddie didn’t drown.”

  “Why? Was there an accident while he was swimming?” Harmony asked, apprehensively.

  “No accident,” Eddie and Laurie said, simultan
eously. Laurie was still smiling; evidently she hadn’t found a whole morning with the family too much of a burden.

  “Well, that boy was in the deep water, he could have drowned,” Ethel insisted.

  “You’re cracked,” Sty said. He looked a little weary—probably he had been having to cope with a lot of complaints.

  “I can swim, Grandma,” Eddie said, a little testily. “Why would I drown when I can swim?”

  “You could get cramps and sink like a rock,” Ethel said. “When people get cramps they drown before anyone even notices.”

  “She’s cracked,” Sty said, again.

  As soon as Neddie got out of his white pickup, Rusty got in it. The big dog jumped back across, into his master’s pickup. As soon as he did, Rusty waved and drove away.

  “I’d like to know what that lazy no-good was doing alone with you?” Ethel asked, loudly, looking at Harmony. “Everybody knows he runs around on his wife. You don’t need to be stirring him up.”

  “Everybody does not know any such thing, Momma,” Neddie said. “That’s just idle gossip and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for repeating it.”

  “Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” Ethel said. “That’s a true saying if there ever was a true saying.”

  “Don’t argue with her,” Sty said, getting out of the Buick. “Just leave her alone and maybe she’ll drive off down the road and get lost for a month or two—then we could all have some peace.”

  “This car’s got dirty oil in it now,” Ethel informed them. “I’m going up to the filling station and see if I can get them to change it—they better not charge me for it, either. It’s just oil.”

  “Why shouldn’t they charge you for it, Momma?” Neddie asked—Harmony could tell she was incensed with her mother because of the remark about Rusty running around on his wife.

  “Because I’m a good customer, why should they charge just for changing the oil?” Ethel said.

  “I have to get Eli out of this blue car,” Eddie said. “Grandma’s too cranky and she doesn’t like Eli anyway.”