Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  Granddad laid the stick on the steps and folded up his knife. “What time’re you an’ your mother plannin’ to get off in the morning?” he asked.

  Hud shrugged lazily. “Early enough,” he said. “About four-thirty or five.”

  “I just wondered,” Granddad said. “The doctors wanted Jewel to be in the hospital by dinnertime. If I was gonna make that long a drive I’d want all the sleep I could get.”

  “Hell,” Hud said. “I ain’t a hunnerd years old, like you. I don’t need a week of sleep to be fresh.”

  Granddad didn’t answer. The pickup rattled across the cattle guard to the south of the house, and Jesse waved at us as he drove on toward the barn.

  “Say,” Hud said. “Why don’t you call the hide-and-rendering plant and have ’em come an’ get that heifer. She just died this evenin’; she’s still fresh enough to make soap.” Hud and Lonzo had found the carcass on their way in that afternoon. Neither one of them knew what killed her, and Granddad hadn’t gone out to take a look.

  “Oh, I don’t believe I will,” Granddad said. “Fore I go to bed I’ll call Newt Garrett and get him to come out and take a look at her in the morning. I’m kinda curious about what killed her. Lonzo’s out there now keepin’ off the buzzards.”

  “That’s the stuff,” Hud said, swelling up. “Call in some horse’s ass to take your money. Don’t never bother asking me what I think about anything.”

  “Well,” Granddad said, “Newt ain’t no what-you-say, and you ain’t no authority on cattle diseases. I ain’t either. This may be something I need to know about.”

  “Why, sure it will,” Hud said, laughing his hard sharp laugh. “It’ll be just bad enough he’ll have you vaccinate ever head you own. And Newt’s a vaccine salesman.” He spit again, into the flower beds.

  “That don’t automatically make him dishonest,” Granddad said, giving Hud a steady look. “You just concentrate on getting your mother to the hospital all in one piece, and I’ll tend to my cattle.”

  “Sure, boss,” Hud said, grinning down at Granddad. He swung himself off the rail and stood up, stretching his long arms above his head. Just then the dogs began to bark, and Jesse came around the corner of the house. The three of them hadn’t quite got used to him, and they sniffed around his pants legs. Jesse was dragging his game leg a little, looking dead tired.

  “Why, hello, wild horse,” Hud said. “Lose your crutch?”

  Jesse gave him a tired, uneasy grin, and didn’t try to say anything. Hud’s style was strange to him, and around Hud he never knew quite what to say.

  “You might get you a roller skate . . .” Hud started, but Granddad cut him off.

  “Get ’em turned out all right?” he asked. “I hated to work you so late, but I didn’t see no other way to do it.”

  Jesse took off his mashed-up straw hat and fingered the shaggy black hair on the back of his neck. “Why, yes,” he said. “I got ’em unloaded all right.” Actually, Hud exaggerated about Jesse’s gimpy leg. As cowboys go, he was in good shape.

  “Son, go in and get Halmea to scare Jesse up some supper,” Granddad said. “He looks like he needs to graze a little.”

  “I could sure eat a bite,” Jesse said. “I believe I’ll go get me a drink of your well water to warm up on.”

  “Well, where’s your manners?” Grandma snapped, her loud old voice surprising us all. “You ain’t even got the politeness to say hello to me,” she said. “I been sittin’ here waitin’.”

  “Why, excuse me,” Jesse said. “My goodness, I didn’t even notice you, Miz Bannon.”

  “Go on an’ get your drink,” Granddad said. “It don’t make no difference.” I could tell he was about to get out of snuff with her and her son. Jesse ducked his head toward her as politely as he could and stepped back around the house.

  “Good riddance,” Grandma said. She had gone to fanning herself with an old Sunday-school fan she kept under the cushion of the rocker. “Help me back in the house, Lonnie,” she said. “This night air’s gettin’ too cool.”

  “Let the boy alone, Jewel,” Granddad said. “If you can’t get in an’ out under your own power just stay where you are awhile.”

  That made her fan a little faster. “I ought to know better than to ask a Bannon,” she said. “Help me in, Huddie.”

  Hud laughed his quick, crow-caw laugh. “Hell, Momma, I can’t,” he said. “I’m just aworkin’ from the shoulders down. If Homer Bannon says for you to get in by yourself, that’s the way you better get in.” His open-top Ford sat in front of the yard gate, and he stepped off the porch and strode lazily across the darkening yard. “Don’t you folks lock the storm cellar,” he said. “I may come aswimmin’ in.” He kicked one of the dogs back through the gate, shut it, and slipped under the wheel of his car. The Ford had a special horn, a cattle-caller, and Hud gave it a long scary blow as he gunned away. He kept the car in second for a mile or more, the rough, blasting sound of his mufflers loud in the evening stillness.

  Grandma got up without saying a word and went into the house. In a minute there was a loud blast of static, and then the moany sound of a gospel song seeped out through the open screen door. Granddad looked like he’d just as soon be by himself, so I went around the house, meaning to see about Jesse’s supper.

  He was standing under the windmill, his Levi’s unbuttoned. He had taken his soaked shirttail out of his pants and was letting the cool night air dry the sweat on his stomach. We could still hear the fading sound of Hud’s mufflers as he squealed onto the highway and off toward Thalia.

  “He drives that thing, don’t he?” Jesse said. “Is the old lady still pretty mad?”

  “Not at you,” I said.

  He ran his fingers through his thick black hair. “I never could get along with old women,” he said. “My own grandma give me hell as long as she lived. So did Ma. I had one aunt I could kinda be easy with, but I lost track a her.”

  “You ready to eat?” I asked him.

  “Let me get my shirttail in,” he said. “Your grandma might come in the kitchen and catch me.” He quickly lowered his pants and smoothed down the wet tails of his heavy khaki shirt, then buttoned the Levi’s again. “Lord, I need a haircut,” he said. “Been a month or more since I had one.”

  When we got in the kitchen, Halmea was back with True Romances, but the ice-cream freezer was gone from the sink, and the dishes had at least been stacked in the red dishpan. She laid the magazine down when she saw Jesse, but he just grinned at her. I snatched the magazine before she could pick it up again, and began to thumb through it myself.

  “Weak readin’,” I said. “How about gettin’ Jesse some supper?”

  “Just Mistah Jesse?” she said, “Nothin’ fo’ you?”

  “Might set me a plate,” I said. “I can eat a few beans.”

  She got up, grinning timidly at Jesse, and went to the cabinet. Jesse was someone Halmea hadn’t felt out very well, and she walked easy when he was in the kitchen. I plopped down at the table and opened the magazine, while Jesse went down the hall to wash. Through the open door to the dining room I could hear Grandma’s radio blaring—when she listened to preaching the whole household got a sermon. “Keep on,” the preacher said. “Keep on adrinkin’ your liquor, apitchin’ your parties. . . .” I got up and kicked the dining room door shut. Halmea was standing all spraddle-legged, reaching in the icebox for a jar of pickles, and I tried to give her the hip when I went by. But she straightened up too quick. “Go on,” she said, “befo’ you wets you didy.” She had heard Granddad tell me that one time, and she thought I’d be real insulted to hear it from her. “Don’t tear up my storybook,” she said. “I ain’t done with it yet.”

  Jesse came in then, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, his thin neck red from the scrubbing he had given it. He sat down across the table from me and began to fiddle with his fork, a little impatiently. Halmea put a platter of cold roast beef on the table first, then a bowl of red beans in thick, brownish gravy,
a little plate of fresh-washed radishes and carrots, some plum-sized tomatoes, and a few sliced onions in a bowl of vinegar. Jesse took some of everything and went to eating, not waiting for his tea. I just dished out a few beans, and an onion slice or two.

  “Light bread’s all gone,” Halmea said. “Kin you-all make out on carn bread tonight?”

  “That’ll hit the spot,” Jesse said, looking up from his plate. “Could you spare me a glass of buttermilk to go with it?”

  “Spare you a gallon of it,” she said. She fished a slab of coarse yellow corn bread out of the oven and set it where we could help ourselves, then got the big pottery crock of buttermilk out of the icebox and poured us each a glassful.

  “I believe I’ll have a glass a dat myself,” she said. “If you gentlemens don’t mind.”

  Jesse had his mouth full, but he nodded for her to sit down, and she went to the cabinet to get a glass. He was almost through eating already, and I had barely finished a small plate of beans. He ate as if he expected someone to snatch his plate out from under him before he got enough.

  “Where’s old Lonzo?” he asked, wiping his mouth. Before I could tell him, we all heard the loud moaning whistle of the train, coming across the plains from the south.

  “He’s out watching that carcass,” I said. “Granddad wants the vet to look at it before it gets scattered.”

  Halmea had pulled up a chair, and was busy crumbling the cold yellow corn bread into her buttermilk. When she had enough crumbled up, she stirred it around with her spoon. “You-all hollah when you need somethin’,” she said.

  “I went by and seen Hank Hutch for a minute,” Jesse said. He reached in his frayed shirt pocket for a package of cigarettes. “That feller’s working himself to death.”

  Hank was our neighbor, a young cowboy about thirty years old who lived just across the highway. He worked for Granddad when there was a lot of work to do. When there wasn’t, he cowboyed for other people, pumped a little oil lease the other side of Thalia, and picked up whatever work he could shoeing horses for the ranchers. He had a wife and three little girls, and was just barely keeping his head above water. He and I got along fine what little we were together.

  Jesse wadded up his napkin and dropped it in his plate. “That’s a hell of a way to live,” he said. “I hate to see an old boy scratchin’ at two or three jobs thataway, never knowin’ nothin’ but work and want. I believe I’d just as soon throw a life away as work it out like he’s doing. Hard on him an’ hard on his kids and womenfolk. Makes me glad I ain’t married. Least there’s one worry I ain’t got.”

  Halmea snorted, her mouth half-full of corn bread and milk. A few drops of milk worked out of the corner of her mouth and trickled down her brown chin, but she wiped the stream away with her wrist.

  “Dat’s one worry you need,” she said, giving him one of her slow, half-sassy looks. I saw she had gotten over being uneasy of Jesse in a hurry. I was so surprised by what she said I almost had to leave the table. She was always coming out with something strange in front of strangers. But I guess it embarrassed me more than it did Jesse, because he just drug on his cigarette and shook his head. He even gave her a tired grin. I saw them sit there looking at each other, beginning to get friendly, and in a way that made me feel alone and restless and let out. It’s a way older people have: without even meaning to they let people younger than them know they aren’t in the same club. Halmea leaned her elbows on the table and drank her buttermilk, halfway ready to laugh at me and Jesse both; there were beads of sweat on her face, and her heavy nigger breasts pouched out her gray dress. She chuckled to herself about something, a quick chuckle I always got a kick out of hearing. Jesse had tilted his chair back against the way, and was looking at Halmea through the smoke of his cigarette. There was something sad about Jesse, it was just on him, like his washed-out Levi’s and frazzled khakis. All the time I knew him, I never really saw him look comfortable. Something in him would need to brood, like something in Halmea would chuckle.

  For a minute, nobody said a word. Then Halmea raised her glass to take a big swallow of buttermilk, and I saw the dark, sweaty wad of hair under her arm, and part of her stretched white brassière. While the two of them sat there looking so relaxed, I had to sip my buttermilk and squirm, thinking about Halmea. Once when I had the dogs up in the barn loft looking for rats, she had walked out in the weeds below me to a hen nest. I barely looked her way, but the minute I did she hiked her dress and squatted in the green broom-weeds to pee. She went on gathering her eggs and never saw me, but I never did forget that glimpse, and if I happened to pass behind her while she was working at the sink, and saw one of her dark loose breasts when she raised her arm for something, it got to me worse than if all the girls in high school had shown up in the study hall naked.

  Finally Jesse looked up and stamped out his cigarette. “I don’t see it,” he said. “A poor boy like me’s got to be lucky to get along, just like it is, and if he’s got a family he needs to be two or three times as lucky. So far I ain’t even been lucky enough for myself.”

  Halmea was getting surer of Jesse by the minute, and when she got surer she just got more audacious. “Sheew,” she said, “don’t tell me. A man by himself just like de fishline without de hook. He ain’t gonna snag on nothin’, dat away.”

  Jesse smiled, but he didn’t laugh. He looked like he just didn’t have the energy for more than a smile.

  “Go on,” Halmea said. “I knows about menfolks, or I ain’t know anything.”

  Then we heard the tap of Granddad’s boots as he came down the hall toward his bedroom. The sound of the radio had stopped, so Grandma had already gone to roost. Granddad stopped by the kitchen door and looked in at us, his coffee-can spittoon in one hand. “It’s bedtime for us old folks,” he said. “Jesse, that vet won’t be here very early, I don’t imagine. We don’t need to get up till six or so.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said, reaching under the chair for his hat. “If I’m awake I may get up and work that colt a little. I couldn’t sleep late if you paid me to.”

  “Do what you want,” Granddad said. “If the vet gets through in time we may try to fix a little fence. Good night.” He started to go to his bedroom, then turned back. “You-all might keep an eye on the clouds,” he said. “Jewel thinks it’s goin’ to storm.”

  When he had gone on and shut his bedroom door, Halmea got up and went quickly down the hall. I finished my buttermilk, and got up to walk Jesse to the bunkhouse. Halmea caught us about the back door and handed Jesse an armload of sheets and towels. “I fo’got dis mornin’,” she said.

  “Much obliged,” Jesse said. “That bunkhouse gets pretty dusty. Enjoyed the supper.”

  “You welcome,” she said. “Now you-all shoo.” We were going anyway, but it was a good thing. Sooner or later every night Halmea would decide it was cleaning-up time, and when she did it was a good policy to stay out of her way. I had picked up her magazine as I went out, just to devil her, and before I got off the porch steps she hollered at me to bring it back. I took it back in and pitched it on the table, to tempt her. On the cover it had a picture of a bride crying into her veil, and under it it said MAMA, SET ME FREE.

  “When you gonna be a bride, Halmea?” I said as I went out. I knew she had already been one a time or two, and I liked to tease her about it. I heard her deep bubbly chuckle after I slammed the door.

  Jesse was waiting for me in the yard. He had just been on the ranch a week, but I was already in the habit of trailing him down to the bunkhouse every night. He stopped by the storm cellar to light a cigarette, and in the flicker of the match I saw his thin, hungry-looking face. The dogs were giving his pants legs another sniffing.

  “Ain’t that a fine old sycamore tree,” he said, nodding toward it. The big tree stood just a few feet from the back door, and some of its longest limbs waved over the house. When I was at the Tarzan age I had practically lived in it.

  “Lord I wish I had me a place with a few trees like
that ’un on it,” Jesse said regretfully. He started down the thin foot trail toward the bunkhouse, and I tagged along for the conversation. “It’d be an accomplishment,” he said. I got around him and opened the bunkhouse door for him, then switched on the lights. He set the bedclothes down on an empty cot. The house was just one long bare room, with five or six steel cots in it, and a little partitioned-off lavatory and shower bath down at one end. There were a card table or two, a few chairs, and a couple of shaving mirrors on the wall. Lonzo and Jesse had taken about three mattresses apiece and piled them on their cots to make the sleeping a little softer. Their beds were rumpled, and the sheets on them gritty with the blown-in sand. What few clothes they had hung on the ten-penny nails that Granddad had driven into the wall years before. Neither Jesse nor Lonzo stayed in the bunkhouse any longer than they had to, and neither bothered to clean it up. Spider webs hung in the ceiling corners, and the floors were as gritty as the sheets.

  Jesse sat down on his cot and began to pull off his tight-fitting dusty boots. “And you’re just seventeen,” he said, surprising me.

  “Not for long,” I said. “My birthday’s in September.”

  But I don’t think Jesse was even thinking of me when he spoke. “My God,” he said. “When I was seventeen I never got enough of anything.” He set his boots carefully under the cot and began to unbutton his khaki shirt. “Summer I was that age, I was workin’ on a hayin’ crew around Chillicothe,” he said, looking regretful, like he would. “You’d think pitchin’ them big old bales of alfalfa up and down all day woulda been enough exercise, but not then it wasn’t. I had an old boy named DeWayne working on the same crew with me, and we bought us a ’27 Chevy and kept it tied together with bailin’ wire all that summer. We made ever square dance and rodeo and honky-tonk in the country, and I don’t know which we run the hardest, that car or the country girls that showed up at the dances.” He hung his dirty shirt over the back of the chair. “Boy, boy,” he said. “I do-ce-doed and chased them girlish butts around many a circle that summer.”