Texasville

by Larry McMurtry

  “Let’s hurry and get you taped up,” he said. “I have to get back in time for the doughboy skit.”

  Duane followed the doctor into the emergency room to be taped. There was still no sign of Jacy.

  “The cowboys and Indians had a good scuffle,” the doctor said. “The Alamo skit got pretty rough too. Some of the defenders didn’t want to lie down and play dead. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get an injury or two before all this is over.”

  He rushed off the second he finished the taping. Duane walked all through the empty hospital, but didn’t find Jacy.

  Stepping outside, he saw Shorty, who had ridden to the emergency room with them. Shorty was wiggling around on his back in the middle of the lawn, trying to bite his tail.

  Jacy sat on the hood of the Mercedes, wrapped in a towel.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” Duane said.

  “As you once pointed out, you never had me,” she said.

  “I meant just now,” he said.

  Jacy looked at him coldly.

  “I thought maybe my sweat was repelling you, so I took a shower,” she said. “You might be one of those men who gag if they have to smell a sweaty armpit or a bloody cunt.”

  “Nope,” Duane said. “I was gagging on myself.”

  Jacy held the towel around her with one hand and offered him the other, so he could help her off the car. She walked around and opened the car door. The light from the car’s interior shone on her white legs.

  “Why aren’t you in the market for love?” he asked.

  “Because of my child,” Jacy said, so sharply that Shorty immediately stopped wiggling on the lawn. He jumped to his feet and barked, as if he thought an invader might be attacking. Then he began to circle the hospital yard, his tail in the air.

  “Your dead child?” Duane asked.

  “His name was Benny,” Jacy said. “I’m glad you at least acknowledged that I have a dead child. Your wife confronted that issue about two minutes after I met her. It took you several months but at last you’ve done it. Not great timing, though, because I have to go sing that hymn and I can’t sing when I’m sad.”

  It was the second time that evening that the problem of sadness and singing had come up.

  “Would you like me to drive?” he asked.

  Jacy stood in silence for a moment, her face hidden in darkness, her legs white in the light. Her legs looked too thin. The sight of them made Duane suddenly sad.

  Then she got in the car and started it. She looked out at him, her pale face framed in the car window. Her look was one of deep disappointment. Duane felt that he had either done something very wrong or had failed to do the slightest thing right. He had not given her something that she needed. He wanted to stop her from leaving, afraid that if he didn’t he would be haunted by her disappointed look the rest of his life.

  But he couldn’t think of what to say.

  Jacy backed the car in a half circle on the gravel and drove away. Shorty chased the car a few steps, gave up, and came back to Duane.

  “I’m not doing too well tonight, Shorty,” Duane said.

  Shorty, thinking he had been complimented, began to try and climb his master’s leg.

  CHAPTER 74

  DUANE THOUGHT HE COULD PROBABLY CATCH A ride back to the pageant, but apparently all the cars in town were already there. Ordinarily he would have felt silly walking through town in a bathing suit with a floppy fig leaf sewn to it, but he was so depressed at having disappointed Jacy that he gave his appearance no thought.

  Passing the courthouse, he noticed Billie Anne and Junior. They sat on their mattress, smoking marijuana. The band that had been hired to play for the street dances was warming up. Over at the little carnival, a young woman was spinning sticks of cotton candy off a cotton-candy machine. A thin old man with tattoos on both arms tested the bumper cars.

  “We’re telling one another the story of our lives,” Billie Anne said, as Duane walked past. “I’m just up to the fifth grade.”

  “Are you two still fasting?” he asked.

  “No, we couldn’t resist the barbecue,” Junior said. “We may start over tomorrow.”

  Duane stopped at the Kwik-Sack and got himself beer on credit. Genevieve was watching a Mary Tyler Moore rerun on the tiny TV behind the counter.

  “Didn’t you want to see the pageant?” he asked.

  “Why? Life in this place has all been a pageant,” Genevieve said.

  Duane walked slowly down the street toward the arena, sipping his beer. Constant gunfire came over the loudspeaker—it was probably the Iwo Jima skit, he decided. That one had been hard to cast because no one in the county wanted to be Japs. Finally some junior high girls had been talked into it.

  Cars and pickups were parked everywhere, along the road, on lawns, in alleys. Hundreds filled the parking lot and slopped over onto the adjacent baseball diamond. Duane had been half drunk when he parked his pickup, and was not sure he could even find it. He did come upon the truck that carried his pulling machine—the one Turkey Clay drove—and stopped to take a leak behind it.

  While he was readjusting his fig leaf he heard Karla’s voice over the loudspeaker. She had been chosen to read the names of the county’s dead, from various wars. Twenty-six local boys had died in World War I, more than forty in World War II. Three had been killed in Korea, and thirteen in Viet Nam. Karla read the names carefully, pausing between each one.

  Duane leaned against the fender of a parked Oldsmobile, listening. Five of the boys lost in Viet Nam had roughnecked for him before they were drafted. He remembered each of them well.

  A gawky kid named Charlie Sears had worked hard, but was hopeless with wrenches. One hot summer night he had tried four different wrenches on a recalcitrant nut, and all had slipped. Duane finally loosened the nut himself.

  “I hope I get the hang of these wrenches before I die,” Charlie Sears said, embarrassed by his own ineptitude.

  Duane had forgotten the remark, but when Karla said “Charles Eugene Sears, Thalia,” he remembered it. Charlie’s people had been oilfied trash, but they didn’t buy bumper stickers saying they were proud of it. None of them could have imagined any other existence.

  Charlie had always had a shock of long, dirty hair hanging out from under his dozer cap. Duane had tried to keep him off the rig floor for fear his hair might somehow get caught in the pipestem. Despite his awkwardness, he had been a popular hand, often taking shifts for older roughnecks if they turned up too drunk to work.

  Charlie Sears’s name was the last Karla read. Duane noticed Shorty standing quizzically by a pickup, and realized the pickup was his. He limped over, let Shorty in, and climbed in himself. He felt like going home.

  Before he started the pickup, Jacy began the closing hymn. Her rich voice floated out over the dark town. When he heard it, Shorty put his paws on the dashboard and looked around alertly, hoping to spot Jacy.

  “Like the faint dawn of the morning,

  Like the sweet freshness of dew …”

  If sadness had threatened Jacy’s singing voice, she had overcome it. Her voice poured out, over the crowd, the cars, the town, the shadowed plain.

  The beauty of her voice gave Duane a feeling of great pride, but then he remembered her hurt look and the proud feeling gave way to one of deep forlornness.

  He started the pickup and began to weave his way through the lines of parked cars. He didn’t want to stay for the street dancing, the carnival, any of it. He wanted to leave.

  As he passed the entrance to the arena, he caught a glimpse of Jacy, standing on the dusty turf in a white dress, her hands on a microphone. A row of little junior high girls dressed as Japanese soldiers knelt on the goal line, listening to her sing.

  Duane drove slowly out of town, Jacy’s voice fading behind him:

  “Hope is an action to keep us …”

  He was almost two miles out before the hymn ended. The dust his wheels threw up was as white as the Milky Way. To the west, heat light
ning flickered, licking the horizon with its white snake’s tongue. He bumped over his cattle guard and parked beneath the twins’ basketball goal.

  Looking toward town, he could see the circle of lights above the arena, and the tiny colored arc of the Ferris wheel. Shorty whined to be let out. When the door was opened he scrambled across Duane’s lap and trotted off on a tour of inspection.

  Duane couldn’t stop thinking of Charlie Sears. The boy had never been to a dentist. One of his molars had come in crooked—it bulged over the gum line. His upper lip didn’t quite cover it. Except for the one bulging tooth, he was a good-looking boy, with a lazy, self-mocking grin. Duane had offered to advance him the money to get his teeth fixed, but Charlie never took him up on the offer, nor had he ever got the hang of wrenches, before he died.

  CHAPTER 75

  DUANE AWOKE TO A RAIN OF SOFT BLOWS. HE opened his eyes and discovered that his family had returned. The blows were the work of Little Mike, who was hitting him in the head with a stuffed dog.

  “That’s the stuff,” Karla said. “Wake up Grandpa. He’s been sleeping long enough.”

  Karla sat on the edge of the bed in an Elvis T-shirt. She poured a big glob of expensive cream into one hand and rubbed it up and down her calf. Barbette lay on the bed beside Karla, sucking a pacifier and looking solemn.

  “Other women’s makeup always seems more interesting,” Jacy said. She was at Karla’s big dressing table, experimenting with some of Karla’s innumerable shades of eye shadow.

  Duane caught the stuffed dog and threw it across the bedroom. Little Mike looked surprised. He decided it must be a game, slid off the bed and went to retrieve the dog.

  “Hello, Duane,” Karla said. “I hope you weren’t having a nice dream.”

  Duane realized he was almost naked. Fortunately the bedsheet had wadded itself more or less around his middle. Little Mike, stuffed dog in hand, climbed back on the bed and began to hit him with the dog again. Once Little Mike started a game, he was reluctant to stop. Duane threw the dog across the room again and held Little Mike by both ankles, hoping he would realize that the game was over. Little Mike began to struggle and squeal.

  “Why’d you stay away from the dance, Duane?” Karla asked.

  “Probably because I gave him a hard time at the hospital,” Jacy said. “He probably spent the evening feeling guilty and wishing he knew how to treat women.”

  Minerva walked in and abruptly whacked Little Mike on the behind with the morning paper. He had stopped struggling and was practicing spitting off the bed.

  “Them Mexican eggs are ready,” she announced.

  “It’s a good thing Dickie stayed,” Jacy said. “He’s far and away the best dancer in town.”

  “Yeah, but it don’t do me no good,” Karla said. “The little fucker won’t dance with his own mother.”

  She had finished rubbing cream onto her calves, and wiped her hands on Duane’s stomach.

  “Are you grumpy this morning, Duane?” she asked. “We thought you’d be glad to see a little life around here for a change.”

  “Let’s eat, I’m starving,” Jacy said.

  “Eye shadow can cause brain tumors,” Minerva pointed out.

  “Bullshit,” Jacy said.

  “I guess Duane enjoys sulking around by himself,” Karla said. “I don’t think he’s very glad to see us.”

  She stood up and began doing little dance steps around the bedroom, humming to herself.

  “Let him alone, he’s still sensitive because of the hard time I gave him,” Jacy said. She picked up Barbette and left the room. Minerva left too. Little Mike grabbed the newspaper and ran over and hit the stuffed dog with it.

  “What did happen at the dance?” Duane asked.

  He was very glad to have them back—Karla, especially. The sound of her voice, familiar, energetic, uncompromising, made him feel that living another day might be interesting.

  “Jacy danced all night with Dickie and I made do with whatever drunken slobs I could get,” Karla said. She had stripped off her T-shirt and was riffling rapidly through the hundreds that hung in her walk-in closet.

  “I gotta get me some more Elvis T-shirts,” she said. “That one’s about faded out.”

  “I’ve about faded out too,” Duane said, hoping for sympathy.

  “Oh, you always liked to stay home and hide from the world, Duane,” Karla said. “You’d have been a recluse long ago if it hadn’t been for me.”

  She took a plain black T-shirt out of the closet and put it on.

  “Aren’t you ever going to wear any of the T-shirts with words on them again?” he asked.

  “Not until I stop being depressed, if I stop being depressed,” Karla said.

  “You don’t look depressed,” Duane said.

  “Maybe you don’t know me very well anymore,” Karla said. “Sometimes husbands and wives just grow apart.”

  She danced out of the bedroom but immediately popped back in.

  “If you want any huevos rancheros you better shake a leg,” she said. “I brought a few people home so the house wouldn’t seem so gloomy.”

  “Like who, for example?” he asked.

  “Oh, just people who didn’t want the dance to be over,” Karla said. “Bobby Lee, for one.”

  “I could have guessed Bobby Lee,” Duane said. “He’s never wanted any dance to be over.”

  Karla sat down on the bed.

  “I could have probably married Bobby Lee,” she remarked.

  “Every woman he’s ever met can say that,” Duane said.

  “I know, but it’s interesting to think about what your life would have been like if you’d married another person instead of the one you did marry,” Karla said. “Don’t you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d married Jacy?”

  “It would have been about the same, except for the month or two before we got divorced,” Duane said. “Then I would have married you and we’d have still ended up sitting on this bed wondering what to do next.”

  “Let’s sell the house,” Karla said. “We don’t really need this two-million-dollar son-of-a-bitch. Do you think there’s anyone around still rich enough to buy it?”

  “Some lawyers, maybe,” Duane said. “Bankruptcy lawyers. If they’re not rich enough now, they soon will be.”

  He suddenly remembered his debt. It seemed to him a big note was due. Maybe it had even been due yesterday. For at least a year he had thought about the debt several times a day, every day. Nothing had been able to distract him from it until the past few days. But in the past few days he had almost forgotten about it. The debt—the only thing in his life that had seemed crucial—had abruptly stopped seeming crucial.

  “I forgot how in debt we are,” he said, surprised that he had been able to forget the one thing that had dominated his thinking for a year.

  “Maybe it’s because you’re falling in love with Jacy,” Karla suggested. “Love’s the one thing that’ll take money troubles off your mind.”

  “I’m not falling in love with her,” Duane said.

  “She don’t think so either, but I’m the one who’s lived with you twenty-two years,” Karla said. “I know better. You do too. You’re just too scared to admit it.”

  Duane thought it might be true that Jacy had helped distract him from the debt. Suzie Nolan had helped distract him too. But a capacity to be distracted was not quite the same as falling in love.

  “I stop myself from falling in love before I start,” he said. “One minute I wish I could fall in love and the next minute I’m glad I don’t have to. I get scared.”

  Karla was looking at him thoughtfully.

  “I’m too middle-aged to be in love,” Duane said. “I’m lucky I have you to keep me moving.”

  Karla grinned. “You hit that one on the button,” she said. “You’re real lucky you have me to keep you moving.”

  “Only now you’re keeping Jacy moving,” he said. “You’ve left me to grind to a halt.” />
  “That’s right,” Karla said. She got up and slid open the big sliding glass doors. Duane looked out and saw a surprising sight. Toots Burns, the sheriff, was on the deck trying to boogie with his bride, the teenage runaway.

  The phone rang and Karla picked it up.

  “Hi, Ruth,” she said.

  Duane got up and started for the bathroom. Before he got there he heard Karla say, “Uh-oh.”

  She motioned him to her side. Duane could tell from the alarm on her face that something bad had happened.

  “Okay,” Karla said. “Let’s look on the bright side. At least the little girls weren’t hurt. We’ll come right on in.”

  She hung up, looking older and more tired than she had only moments earlier.

  “What’d Dickie do now?” he asked.

  “It wasn’t Dickie, it was Sonny,” Karla said. “He just drove his car right through the front wall of the Stauffers’ house.”

  CHAPTER 76

  “I HAD TWO HUSBANDS WHO WERE CRAZY,” JACY said, on the ride into town. “I didn’t want to admit that they were crazy and neither did they. We kept changing shrinks and trying to pretend they were just temporarily a little abnormal. Big mistake. I spent about twelve years being worried every minute. I lied to my kids, trying to come up with normal explanations for the things their fathers did.”

  “What kinds of things did they do?” Karla asked.

  Jacy shrugged. “Self-destructive things,” she said. “Sometimes very inventive, but always self-destructive. I used to hope that I’d just meet one man in my life who wasn’t out to do himself in.”

  “Maybe Sonny was just tired from dancing all night,” Duane said.

  “He didn’t dance all night,” Karla said. “I don’t think he danced at all.”

  “Maybe he was drunk,” Duane said. “His hand could have slipped off the wheel.”

  “He’s crazy,” Jacy said. “You better just face it. His timing gear’s broken, or something. He thinks it’s 1954.”

  The house Sonny crashed into had once been Ruth Popper’s house. She had lived in it for over fifteen years with her husband, the late coach. In those years the house—an ordinary small frame house—had had a carport at the back, opening into the kitchen.