Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  About that time, it was funny as hell: we both drank so much beer we got so we couldn’t taste it. I don’t know whether it was being tired or what, but it got so it didn’t taste like beer, it tasted like real good water. And we were both awful thirsty, so we just kept pouring it down and ever now and then peeing some of it out.

  “This is the best damn beerwater I ever drank,” Johnny said. “How’s yours taste?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Just fine. It goes down like twelve hundred dollars.”

  “Quit that damn brooding,” he said, standing up all of a sudden. “Let’s go to the whorehouse so you won’t brood. Let old Sam sleep, we can find it. He don’t need no pussy anyhow.”

  “Let him sleep,” I said. “He don’t need none.”

  I got up too, but then I fell down. I guess I stepped on a damn beer bottle; anyway, down I went. I fell right in about a hundred bottles, and Johnny he reached down meaning to help me and he fell too and there we were, rolling around in the bottles. At first I wanted to cuss, but then we both got tickled; it was kind of fun to lay there knocking empty bottles over, and we just sort of rolled and laughed and knocked the bottles every which way till I happened to notice we wasn’t inside no more. It was colder and there wasn’t any bottles and we were laying behind somebody’s damn automobile.

  “Hell, they threw us out,” I said. “Did they throw you out too?”

  He was up on his hands and knees laughing like mad. “Hell yes, can’t you see me? They threw us both out.”

  “Want to go attack them?” I said. “Get back in the bottles?”

  “Naw. Let’s find the whorehouse.”

  I had forgot about that. Then the next thing this fat streetcar man was shaking me. “You boys need to sleep, go to a damn hotel,” he said. “I’ve carried you far enough.”

  We were standing on a brick street, not very far from the courthouse, and the norther was blowing right down the street at us. Brother, it was cold.

  “There’s the courthouse,” Johnny said. “Want to go there?”

  “No,” I said. “There ain’t no whores in the courthouse, you damn fool.”

  “Might be some in jail,” he said.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  Then we ran into a damn drunk and he took us right to the whorehouse. He was so drunk he couldn’t walk straight; he walked all over the street.

  In the house there was a nice-looking redhead and I was going to be friendliest with her, only when we come in she said, “Here come two cowshits,” and that made us so mad we didn’t go near her. The carpet was so deep it confused me; my boots didn’t make no noise; I thought I was barefoot.

  Johnny just about fell over the banister going up stairs.

  The girl in my room was blond-headed and I seen her turning back the counterpane on a big white bed. I watched her do that awhile and then I noticed we were laying on the bed and I didn’t have my pants with me, just my socks and shirt. But she didn’t have nothing on at all and she was getting out of the bed instead of in it; I seen her big floppy fanny going across the room and then she hiked up one leg and washed herself at a little dishpan of a thing.

  “That was real nice, sweetheart,” she said. “Now be a darling and help me make up this bed.”

  “We ain’t through already, are we?” I said.

  “Why sure, sugar,” she said. “Can’t you tell by your equipment?”

  I wished then I hadn’t drunk all that beer. Johnny was done downstairs when I got there and we went out.

  “How do you feel?” I said.

  “Horny,” he said.

  “Let’s catch that streetcar, I’m about to freeze.”

  OF COURSE we missed the train we was supposed to catch, so the new cattle got to Henrietta about twelve hours earlier than we did. That shrunk them a little. It was dark when we got there; we spent all night and till nine-thirty the next morning driving them home. We kept getting in thickets all night and like to froze to death, too; both of us looked like Ned when we finally got the cattle home and penned. Dad was in the barn loft when we penned them, and he come down and looked them over.

  “Well, they ain’t the worst cattle I ever seen,” he said. “How’d the other cattle sell?”

  “Good,” I said. “Only I never got home with all the money. I got to cattle-trading and made a little money and let a damn feller skin me and lost all that and twelve hundred dollars besides. Maybe I can work it out in a few years.”

  I expected him to blow up, but he just kept walking around, inspecting the cattle.

  “Got you in a little trading practice, did you?” he said. “Good. You may learn yet.”

  And he put us right to work, branding the new stock. I was so surprised at Dad that I never even minded the work. Dad was one man I never learned to predict.

  Eight

  IT TOOK US TILL PAST THE MIDDLE OF NOVEMBER TO RECUPERATE from the trip to Fort Worth. Johnny, he swore off beer drinking forever, but his forever usually just lasted about a week, and this one wasn’t no exception. I couldn’t enjoy myself much for worrying about when Dad was going to come down on me about the twelve hundred dollars. He just seemed to forget it, and Dad wasn’t the kind to forget that much money.

  One pretty warm fall day we worked like hell dipping cattle and hadn’t much more than got to bed when somebody come riding up to the back gate just a-screaming. I jumped up and grabbed my pants and run out; Dad was done there. It was one of Mabel Peters’ little brothers.

  “Daddy says come tell you our house is on fire,” he said. “Grandma burned it up.”

  We took his word for it. Dad yanked the kid off the horse and told me to take it and get on over there, he would follow and bring the kid in the wagon. So I grabbed a Levi’s jacket off the back porch and went.

  When I got there it was just a nice campfire left; an old chickenhouse don’t take long to burn. The Peterses were all out in the yard, squatting around patting the dogs and crying: it was the only time in my life I ever saw that family all in one place, and I was surprised at how many of them there was. Six kids younger than Mabel, her momma and dad, and her grandma.

  “Well, she’s gone, Momma,” the old man said. “Now we’ll just have to trust in the Lord.”

  The grandma was taking on the worst; she had started the fire. She was about ninety-five. One of the boys said she had sloshed some kerosene out of a lamp onto the tablecloth. Mabel’s mother was hysterical because she missed the boy they had sent to our place and thought he was burned up in the fire. There wasn’t any fire fighting to do at all, and it was pretty miserable standing there watching the Peterses try to figure out what they had to go on living with. The old man had run out on the back porch and took out the milk strainer; it probably wouldn’t have burned anyway. One of the boys had grabbed a Montgomery Ward catalogue and let the Bible burn, and Mabel had brought out a dish of pecans that was sitting on the new chair. The chair was the only new thing in the house, but nobody ever thought of grabbing it, and the two littlest boys had already eaten about half the pecans.

  “Well, son,” the old man said, coming over to me, “we’re burned out.”

  “Dad’s coming,” I said. Then I went over and got Mabel and made her squat down close enough to the fire that she could at least keep warm. She was barefoot and never had on very warm clothes.

  Pretty soon people that had seen the fire began to come. Dad was the last one there, but he had filled the wagon up with quilts, coffeepots and stuff to eat, so he done the most good once he come. We raked off a little of the fire and made some coffee, and gave each of the Peterses a quilt.

  “Ain’t it a mess, Gid?” Mabel said. Her teeth were chattering. “Now’s when I wish I was married,” she said, looking at me; the fire lit up her thin little face. She was pretty as could be in the face.

  “If I was married,” she said, “it wouldn’t be so bad. We could all go over to my husband’s house and live.”

  That about made my teeth chatter. I felt sorry f
or the Peterses, but nobody would have wanted all them kids and old folks swarming into their house.

  “I wisht I’d got the chair,” she said, starring to cry agin. “Why didn’t I get the chair? Instead of the pecans.”

  Dad told Mr. Peters that if his family would all get in the wagon and wrap up real good in the quilts, I would drive them to Thalia. Mrs. Peters had a sister there, and they could stay with her a day or two, whether they liked it or not.

  Everybody went home and Dad caught one of the Peterses’ mules and went home himself, and I started down the road to Thalia with the biggest wagonload of sad people you ever saw. A norther had come up; I didn’t have on a shirt under my jacket, and like to froze. All the Peterses went to sleep, but about halfway into town Mabel woke up and came up on the seat by me. She let me have a little of her quilt.

  “We’re much obliged to you, Gid,” she said. “You’re the nicest one that came tonight.

  “Some of these days I’ll marry you and make it all up to you,” she said. “You see if I don’t.”

  I started to tell her that I didn’t want her to get her hopes up, but she squirmed over and kissed me and was like that all the rest of the way to Thalia. I could barely drive. It livened up the ride a whole lot.

  “You remember what I said,” she said, when we were coming into town. Her face was all white and excited, and neither one of us was particularly cold any more.

  I got the job of going in and waking up Mrs. Peters’ sister. Everybody else was afraid of the dog, but I beat him off with the wagon whip. When the lights came on all the Peterses climbed out and clobbered into the living room, looking like some Indian nation in all their quilts. The lady took them in, and I got ahold of two quilts and started back. Before I could get off, Mabel ran out and wrapped around me for about ten minutes. “Come and see me,” she said. “I’ll get awful lonesome in here.”

  AFTER THAT, the Peterses had a real hard time of it. The sister kept them a week, and then they moved into the firehouse, and finally ended up back at the place living in their barn. People scraped up for them and gave them preserves and bacon and old clothes and a little money to get started on. But the old man never had the energy to start, and the boy had the energy but not enough sense. They were the poorest folks in the country, and Mabel felt disgraced. Finally they all left but her and went to some little town in Arkansas, where they had kinfolks. Mabel got a job in a grocery store and a room in a widow’s house and stayed and tried to make herself well thought of. But she was still the poorest of the poor, and it was a long time before she got over it enough to have any prosperous boy friends.

  Nine

  AS MUCH AS I WORKED AROUND DAD, IT LOOKED LIKE I would have been able to figure him out. A man as set in his ways as he was ought to have been more predictable. But he could always keep about a jump ahead of me.

  We had three fair rains in October and a damn good slow three-inch rain the second week in November, and all our country looked good. We had more grass than we had cattle for, and it didn’t look like it would be too hard a winter. I figured Dad would stock some more calves; that would have been the logical thing for a cattleman to do. One morning he sent Johnny off to check the water gaps, and told me to hitch up the wagon, we were going to Thalia. That was okay with me.

  “Well,” he said, once we were started, “I think I’ll let you plant a little wheat this year. See what kind of a wheat farmer you are. Thought we’d buy some seed today.

  “And don’t go getting red in the face,” he said. I was. “You ain’t got no say-so about it, so just keep your mouth shut. I got the damn toothache this morning anyway.”

  “A toothache ain’t got a damn thing to do with it,” I said. “If you ask me.”

  “I never asked you. What I mean is, I can’t stand no long conversation with my tooth hurting this way.”

  I got all nervous. It’s terrible to be in a wagon when you get mad; you can’t make it go no faster or anything. You just have to poke along when you feel like whipping and spurring.

  “Well, I don’t intend to do no farming,” I said. “Your tooth can stand that much. You’re crazy anyway. We ought to be buying cattle.”

  “Knock hell out of that mule,” he said. “Keep him out of the ditch. He don’t need to graze all the time.

  “I figure it’s gonna get dry,” he said. “We’ve got some dry years coming. We might need this grass next summer more than we need it now, so I ain’t gonna stock very heavy. It won’t hurt you to try a little farming.”

  I began to get the Panhandle on my mind when he said that. It would take something drastic to bring Dad to his senses about me. Maybe if I run off for a little while it would do it.

  We got to Thalia and got the wheat seed, and while I was loading it and fooling around the feed store trying to bargain with the feller for half a load of cottonseed hulls, Dad went up and got the doctor to pull his tooth for him. It must have had roots plumb down to the collarbone, because Dad spit blood all the way home.

  “That was three dollars throwed away,” he said. “Next time one wears out you can pull it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it for two and a half and save you the trip besides.”

  “I wish it would quit coming these damn cold northers,” he said. “My blood’s getting thin.”

  We didn’t say much going home till we got to the place where the road went over Idiot Ridge. When we got there we could see the Taylor place across the long flat on the other hill, and off to the west of us we could see the Peterses’ barn.

  “Which one of them damn girls do you reckon you’ll marry?” Dad said. “We may as well thrash that out while we’re thrashing.”

  He beat all. “Why, I may not marry at all,” I said. “I can’t see that it’s too much of your business, anyway.”

  “Oh, I guess it is. I was just curious as to which kind of trouble you mean to get yourself into.”

  “Well, if I marry either one it will damn sure be Molly,” I said. “You couldn’t get me to marry Mabel with a thirty-thirty.”

  “That’s so,” he said, spitting. “He said not to, but I think I’ll chew a little tobacco. I’m bleeding to death through the head.”

  So the rest of the way he split blood and tobacco juice, instead of just blood.

  “Okay,” he said. “Mabel ain’t the kind of girl you want; she’s just the kind of girl that wants you. Molly, she don’t want you.”

  “She damn sure does,” I said. It made me mad. “What makes you think you know so much about her? Me and her get along real well.”

  “Oh, of course,” he said. “I never meant to say you didn’t. But you ain't gonna catch her, and your buddy Johnny ain’t either, that’s plain as day. And it’s a damn good thing. She’d run you ragged if you did.”

  “How’d we get to talking about this, anyway?” I said. “I may not even marry. But if I do, it’ll be Molly.”

  “Don’t make no bets,” he said. “And don’t be sorry if you don’t. If you stay loose from her, she’ll make you the best kind of friend you can have. If you do marry her, you’ll have ninety-nine kinds of misery. And you remember I told you that. A woman is a wonderful thing, goddamn them, but a man oughtn’t to marry one unless he just absolutely has to have some kids. There’s no other excuse.”

  “Well, you married, didn’t you? You survived it, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but your mother didn’t . And I’m surprised I did. It like to done for us both.”

  “Anyhow, you’re wrong about Molly,” I said. “I can tell you that.”

  He kinda grinned at me. “You might tell me the time of day,” he said, “if you had a better watch than mine. That’s about all you can tell me. Of course if you marry the Peters girl, that’ll be hell too, but at least you won’t lose no friend.”

  “I swear I can’t talk to you,” I said. “You don’t no more know me than the man in the moon. You think you know everything about me and you don’t really know a damn
thing.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “Maybe I’ll improve.” He got tickled at something and set there popping the reins on the mules and laughing to himself for the next mile or two.

  “Did you mean you think I ought to marry Mabel instead of Molly?” I said. “I’m just curious.”

  “Oh no,” he said. “I told you already I didn’t want you to marry till you were forty or fifty years old. By then you might have enough judgment to marry right. Only I can see already you ain’t gonna have enough judgment to last that long. I just mentioned it to see how much you knew about yourself.”

  “I’m sure you know more about me than I do,” I said.

  Dad sighed. “People are the hardest animals in the world to raise,” he said. “And it’s because nobody ever got them to breeding right in the first place.”

  “You don’t breed people,” I said.

  “No, and it’s a damn pity,” he said. “I can take me a bull and get him with just the right cows at just the right time, and I won’t have to worry much about the calf crop. But the chances of anybody getting the right man anywhere near the right woman are as slim as chances get. That’s why I don’t mind so bad being old. If I was young agin, I’d probably mess up even worse than I did.”

  Dad said that in a pretty sad way. It bothered me to hear him.

  “That’s a pessimistic damn thing to say,” I said. “Why, I think life’s a damn sight more fun than that.”

  “You ain’t lived one,” he said. Then he told me how much work we were going to get done that winter.

  Ten

  DAD KEPT ME SO BUSY WITH ONE THING AND ANOTHER that it was after the first of December before I got over to Molly’s to ask her to go to the Christmas dance with me. One afternoon I got off early, though. Dad decided it was going to come a storm, and he wanted to leave the cattle alone till it was over. Johnny never come to work that day anyway; his old man had kept him home to help him kill their hogs. Dad said he didn’t need me, so I saddled up and got my sheepskin coat and rode over to the Taylors’. It was cloudy and cold and looked sleety back in the northwest. I seen a big flock of geese going over. I hated the wintertime; it sure made the cow-work mean.