Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  2.

  When I turned off at the cattle guard, I noticed a pair of headlights coming up behind me as fast as ambulance. Before I had gone a half mile across the pasture the headlights were about a foot from my rear bumper, and I could see the Cadillac grille reflected in my rear-view mirror. Hud was right on my tail, and I started to pull to the right, so he could get by. But when I flashed my lights on bright I saw something. I saw somebody crawling and I was almost on him. Granddad! He was just in front of me, down on his hands and knees at the side of the road. I braked and swerved to the left and my car lights were right in his face and then they were on the empty road and the Cadillac jarred my rear end. Then I was bouncing over the left-hand bar ditch and into the pasture, the pickup almost spinning over, so I was thrown against the far door and hung to the wheel with one hand, all the time seeing Granddad crawling toward me in his nightshirt, with blood on his chin. The high weeds and little mesquite bushes slowed the pickup enough that I stomped the pedals and got it stopped. I jumped out and ran back, but I didn’t see Granddad. Hud was out in the road in front of his car, wiping blood off his nose. The grille of the Cadillac was caved in and one headlight broken, and Hud standing in the light of the other one slinging blood off his nose. For a minute I thought I had dreamed Granddad.

  “Goddamn you,” Hud said. “You little piss-ant. What the fuck did you stop for? You got your life’s work ahead, paying for this car.”

  “No, didn’t you see him?” I said. “He’s out here, Granddad. He was crawlin’ in the ditch.”

  “The hell he is,” Hud said, turning toward the bar ditch. He threw a bloody handkerchief down, and in the stillness we heard Granddad say, “Jericho,” real loud. He was in the ditch behind the car, still moving on his hands and knees. Hud knelt down and stopped him.

  “Hud, who is it, hon?” Lily said. She was in the back seat.

  “Oh, snakeshit,” Hud said. “Run get that pickup an’ point it this away, so we’ll have light. I can’t turn mine aroun’ in this road. I may a run over him.”

  I ran to the pickup and backed it around, paying no attention to stumps or bushes. In the dark Granddad didn’t look too bad hurt, and I wasn’t quite as scared as I had been. I just couldn’t figure it out. I turned off the pickup lights before I thought, but Hud yelled and I switched them back on. Hud was holding Granddad in his lap, trying to keep him from moving. All Granddad had on was his old nightshirt; he didn’t even have shoes. But he recognized Hud.

  “Don’t hold me back, Huddie,” he said. “I fell. I was going out to look at the cloud, see if it was time to get the men up.” His voice was hoarse and slow. “We got to get to work,” he said. “Turn me loose now. I’m okay.” I thought he was. I could see blood on his hands and knees, where the rocks and gravel had skinned him up, and there were grass burrs in his arms and in his nightshirt, but I thought he was all right. I thought he must have fallen off the porch or something and knocked himself silly, was all, like he might from a fall from a horse. But Hud wouldn’t turn him loose, and when he wouldn’t Granddad began to fight him, and to whine down in his throat.

  “Lily,” Hud yelled. “Lily, get up.” Blood was dripping from Hud’s smashed nose and dropping on Granddad and on his shirt.

  “Annie, you help me,” Granddad said. “Got to get up now and get these men started. Wake these men up. I can’t lay here no more. A man ain’t to crawl.”

  “Shit, this old man’s hurt bad,” Hud said. He lifted Granddad’s nightshirt, and I suddenly saw a jagged end of bone protruding from Granddad’s side above his hip. The sight made me turn weak.

  “Lily, goddamnit, get up an’ start that car,” Hud said. He yelled at her and cussed her as loud as he could. Instead of starting it the woman got out and came around to us. When she saw Granddad she grabbed onto the fender of the Cadillac. She didn’t have anything on from the waist up, nothing except a brown sweater she had pulled over her shoulders and buttoned in front. Her stomach was bare.

  “Huddie, won’t you let me up?” Granddad said. He was trying to get his hands loose; he was looking up at Hud, but he didn’t see me. “It ain’t no bad cloud,” he said. “We got to get these men up an’ get to work. Move stock.” His voice was cracking, and he was whining when he breathed in air. Hearing the whine and seeing his throat jerk the way it did made tears come in my eyes. It seemed all of a sudden like Granddad was someone I had forgotten about for a long time, and hearing the deep hurt sound of his whine brought back all he was to me.

  “Lie still, Granddad,” I said. I couldn’t think of any way to help. But Hud seemed to be thinking, he seemed to be in his right mind, and I just set there, holding Granddad’s good leg still, waiting for Hud to decide what to do.

  “Lily, take this car an’ go to the house,” he said. “Telephone’s in the hall. Call for an ambulance and tell ’em to get here quick, the road through Bannon’s horse pasture. Tell ’em we got an awful sick man. We’ll try an’ keep him quiet.”

  “Goddamn you, now don’t hold a man down,” Granddad said. His throat swelled, and he strained to get up. For a minute it was all the two of us could do to hold him, but then he went weak all of a sudden and lay back. All we could hear was him harking and coughing, and the Cadillac motor turning over.

  “Knew it,” Hud said. “Sonofabitch won’t start no way. Five-thousand-dollar car, and it ain’t no more use than a wagon. Ain’t as much.” I was on my knees, trying to pull some of the burrs out of Granddad’s arms, but he wouldn’t hold still. Hud was looking more wild-eyed and desperate, and Granddad just lay there weak, harking, and Hud’s wrists were trembling as he held him still.

  “Honey, I can’t start it,” Lily called. “The goddamn thing, I can’t start it.”

  “Come on here,” Hud yelled. “Bring that whiskey. It’s in the seat.” She came wobbling out on her high heels, the heavy bottle in one hand.

  “See if we can get a little down him,” Hud said. “Might help.” I held Granddad’s leg still, and Hud held his hands, and the woman squatted down and leaned over Granddad. She tried to tilt his head back and make him take some whiskey; but Granddad was trying to talk again, he was mumbling and trying to talk to the old people, to Grandmother and to Jericho Green, and the brownish whiskey bubbled off his mouth and ran in a stream down his chin and neck. It made a sharp smell, sharper than the dust smell of the road.

  “Honey, I can’t make him drink this stuff,” the woman said. She had put her arms in the sleeves of the brown sweater, but it was loose in front and her breasts had fallen out. “I’m just wasting it, all I’m doin’,” she said, and she kept trying to pour with one hand and hold the sweater together with the other, and I didn’t like her for that.

  “Keep pourin’,” Hud said. “You’re doin’ all right.” Finally Granddad took a little and gagged it up.

  “You-all,” he said. “You-all, don’t make me drink that.” Lily took the bottle away then and pressed her hands to her jaws, like she had the toothache.

  “Look here,” Hud said. “Yonder’s a car coming out of Thalia. I just seen the lights up the road. Look now. Lonnie, he’s a long ways up there yet. You run out to the road and flag him down, you can beat him. Tell him we got a dyin’ man here. If he’s got a big car make him come over, if he ain’t make him telephone. Now hurry.”

  “I’m scared he’ll die,” I said. “He might while I’m gone. Can’t we take him in the pickup some way?”

  “Get on, or I’ll promise you he’ll die,” Hud said, frowning at me. Blood from his nose had dripped and smeared all over the lower part of his face, and he looked terrible.

  “He’s sufferin’ agony,” Hud said. “You stop that car.”

  3.

  I ran down the dark dirt road as fast as I could, fighting the darkness with my arms and legs. Hud had said Granddad was dying, and I could remember the bone tip protruding from his side. The darkness shut in around me, and two or three times I ran off in the brush and weeds, stumbling into the bar
ditch and out again on the soft, graded road. I began to give out in the legs, and I had to slow down, but anyway I got across the cattle guard and onto the pavement with the car still a good mile up the road toward Thalia. I stood at the edge of the pavement and waited, the longest wait, and the lights came on toward me. They disappeared beneath some little ridge, and then came in sight again and the car swept down the slope my way. I got in the middle of the road and waved my hands and hat, and the man hit his brakes. It was a big Olds, and I was thinking we could load Granddad into the back seat and take him to the hospital in it. The driver kept slowing down, and I stepped off the road so I could talk to him. But the minute I did the motor roared and the car went zooming by, the fender just under my elbow in the dark. The man who was driving wasn’t even looking at me. I yelled for help, but by that time he was gone, doing sixty or seventy miles an hour. I guess he was afraid I’d hijack him.

  And then I was alone, standing on the edge of the pavement in the darkness, thinking of how Granddad was hurting, how he had whined. Hud said he was suffering agony. I walked up and down the highway, I don’t know how many minutes, trying to think of something I could do. I knew I ought to do something. I looked for another set of headlights, anywhere, in any direction, but none were in sight. It was between two and three o’clock, about the deadest hour of the night, and I knew there might not be another car along for half an hour. I wished I had run the other way, to the ranch house. It would have been farther, but there was a telephone there, at least. That hadn’t occurred to me in time, and it hadn’t occurred to Hud either. I wanted to start back. It seemed like I had been gone for an hour, and that Granddad might be a lot sicker, might even be dying. Or Hud might have decided to try and move him in the pickup after all. I was walking around on the pavement, my head down, and when I looked up I almost hollered. I saw another car, another set of lights coming from Thalia. It was a good ways off, but I got in the middle of the road and waited. If the car got by it would have to run right over me, or else go into the bar ditch, and I would have a chance to yell. The lights were only a few hills away, and I was hoping it would be another big car, big enough to move Granddad in. Then I looked up the road, and the lights weren’t coming. I walked a little ways up the road while I waited for them to come over the ridge, and they didn’t come. I walked and waited till I knew there wasn’t a chance. The car must have turned off; it must have been somebody from Thalia going home. Or else the driver just pulled off the road to go to sleep. I was almost sick at my stomach from waiting and walking the highway and worrying about Granddad. I looked toward the pastures, and I could see the faint light above the mesquites, the pickup lights. It seemed out of place, and I looked again and discovered I had walked nearly a half mile up the road from the cattle guard. Seeing the lights made me think of Hud and Granddad, there in the bar ditch all that time, Hud wild, and Granddad suffering and dying, and the butter-haired woman with her breasts hanging out of the sweater. I began to run back, to run down the pavement toward the cattle guard. When I got there I stopped just a minute, to take one last good look up and down the highway. But I didn’t see any lights, and I went on to the cattle guard. I was going across it when I heard a woman’s voice, pretty faint, but like a yell, and then a bang, a gun shot, and the long cracking echo off Idiot Ridge. It could have been the Cadillac starting; it could have been a backfire. But the sound and the echo had been too much like sounds I had heard before, and I remembered the coyote gun. After I saw the coyote, I hadn’t taken time to put it back behind the seat. I remembered trying to keep it from bouncing off when Hud had knocked the pickup across the road.

  I left the cattle guard and started back, but I went slow, like I had gone to Halmea’s cabin that last night. Before I got very far I could hear the roar of a big truck coming toward Thalia. It was far away, miles away maybe. I walked on toward the one shadowy spot of light in the mesquite. I didn’t know what to think at first. Then I thought Hud must of shot the woman; he must have killed her for some reason. That was why she screamed. And then I knew he wouldn’t shoot her, and I thought it must have been Truman Peters. Truman must have been waiting for Hud at the ranch. He must have seen the light and come down the road and found them, seen his wife with her naked teats and Hud had had to shoot him. I knew he couldn’t shoot Hud, I got scared and began to walk faster. I wanted to be out in the light. Then I heard the woman crying something at Hud, and I didn’t hear anything else.

  4.

  When I came into the light, Lily was bent over the turtleback of the big car, crying into her elbow. Hud stood by the fender of the pickup, talking to himself. The bottle of whiskey was sitting on the fender, and the rifle leaned against the pickup door. I saw the ejected shell laying in the dirt road, the brass shining in the light. Hud was talking, to himself, or to Lily, I never did know. Then he drank, his head jerking quickly back.

  My granddad lay in the bar ditch. He lay still. An old Levi’s jacket, the one we kept behind the pickup seat, it had been thrown over his face, so I couldn’t see what he looked like, or see his head at all. Lily’s dress, the fancy one all white and gold, was stretched over Granddad too; it covered up his side. Just his two bare legs struck out from under the dress, one straight, and one bent crooked, and scarred up besides from that rope tear years and years before. I knew it was before. I knew it was Granddad there dead, but I kept thinking it wasn’t. I saw some blood puddle in the gravel by the Levi’s jacket, and I choked and gagged. But I didn’t get sick. I went over and squatted down by Granddad, by the good leg I had tried to hold. Seeing the Levi’s jacket over his face made me remember all the things I had meant to buy him and give him, sometime or other. I had meant to buy him a blanket-lined jacket, for one thing.

  I heard a whiz. Hud’s arm swung. There was a whistle, and the whiskey bottle hit the ground somewhere in the pasture. “Whiskey, ain’t it,” Hud said. His voice wasn’t loud. I saw there were still grass burrs in Granddad’s legs. In a minute I felt Hud come and stand behind me. I couldn’t feel any of Granddad there with us; it was just Hud and me. I looked up at him and he was looking off into the dark. I felt like I would gag again, but inside I was all dry and hot, like I had fever. Hud was looking into the pickup headlights, stretching his hands out toward them like the lights were a fire and it was winter.

  “Lonnie,” he said. “No shit, it was the best thing. The pore old worn-out bastard.”

  “But he woulda been,” I said. “It woulda been all right, he woulda got well. I needed him.” I started to pull the jacket off and look at Granddad’s face, but I didn’t. Hud came around in front of me and squatted down. I knew he wanted me to listen to him. He looked right at me, and didn’t do it to scare. I saw sweat on his cheeks, but his voice seemed easy for once, not mean or rough.

  “You listen to me,” he said. “No shit, it was best. I ain’t lyin’ now. Homer wanted it.”

  “But he wasn’t so bad,” I said. That was all I could say. If I could have felt Granddad was there, I could have felt something to say. But it was just Hud and me.

  “Hell, I had to,” he said. “He was bad off, Lonnie. You wasn’t here. You wasn’t acoming, and he got to spittin’ blood and tryin’ to get up, an’ hurtin’ himself. Tryin’ to get to them goddamn dead people a his. I thought if he wanted to get to ’em so bad I’d just let him go. He always liked them better than us that was alive, anyhow.”

  “But he was Granddad.” I said.

  “He was all fucked up,” Hud said. “He was throwin’ up blood, and that leg like it was. Worse than it was the first time he hurt it. He was just an old worn-out bastard. He couldn’t a made it up no way in the world. He couldn’t a made it another hour.”

  Then Lily come over an’ hung on Hud’s shoulders, mumbling something about Truman in his ear. But he didn’t even look around at her; he was still talking to me.

  “But what will I do?” I said. “Granddad was always . . .”

  “You’ll do without, like the rest of us
,” he said. “Lonnie, no shit now, he was ruined. He wasn’t ever gonna be no good agin, he was just gonna lay somewhere an’ rot. I took an’ shot him cause he needed me to.”

  “Honey, don’t just squat there talkin’,” Lily said. She was trying to get Hud to stand up. “Hud, put him in the car,” she said. “Let’s go let people know. Somebody’s gonna come along.”

  I just squatted there, looking at the Levi’s jacket and the stickers in his legs, and trying to feel something of Granddad, so I’d know something to do. I saw Hud looking down at Granddad too. Only Hud looked easy and peaceful someway, like he was finally satisfied for the first time in his life.

  “You don’t know the story,” he said. “Me and him fought many and many a round, me and Homer Bannon. It’s hard to say, though. I helped him as much as he ever helped me, I believe that.”

  I dried up then. I felt like I didn’t have anything else to say, to Hud or anybody, ever. I wasn’t down on Hud. I didn’t even think about him. I was just pushed back in myself like a two-bit variety-store telescope.

  Finally Hud stood up and told the woman to get in the pickup. Then he went over and put the gun behind the seat, where it belonged.

  “You take his feet,” he said, when he came back. “Let’s lay him on the wagon sheet. It ain’t gonna hurt him none now. We can take him on to the hospital; maybe they’ll clean him up a little.”

  “Don’t they have to see it?” I said. “The sheriff and the law?”

  Hud kinda smiled, and shook his head. “If they won’t take it the way we tell ’em, let ’em do without,” he said. “Ain’t nobody gonna lie.” He grinned his old, strange grin, and I didn’t know at all. I had believed him. I thought at first that he shot Granddad to stop the hurting. But seeing that wild blood-smeared grin, I didn’t know. It could have been for kindness or for meanness either, whichever mood was on Hud when he held Granddad in the ditch.