Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  “He ain’t much count,” he said. “But at least, by god, he’ll treat you like a wife ought to be treated. He won’t pussyfoot around with you, I’ll tell you that.”

  That may have been part of the reason I married Eddie. We hadn’t never been considered respectable, and he hadn’t either. Eddie and Dad were a lot alike; they never tried to get ahead like most men do. They spent their time trying to enjoy themselves, and a lot of the time they were miserable anyway. All Eddie’s folks were living in Arkansas, and he never had a soul to look after him or take up for him.

  I had liked Johnny ever since I knew him, but I never took marrying him serious. He wasn’t the marrying kind, and we both knew it. So it was between Gid and Eddie. I liked Gid better, and there were times when I stayed upset for days, trying to make up my mind to marry him. Sometimes I wanted to so bad I could taste it. But I thought Eddie needed a wife the worst—I was dead wrong about that. And then I thought I was too wild and bad ever to suit Gid; I was afraid if I married Gid everything I did would disgust him—and I was dead wrong about that. I married Eddie, and everything I did disgusted him, and nothing I did ever made Gid stop caring for me. I’m more like Gid, in the long run, than I am like Dad or Eddie, but I was years and years finding that out.

  I wasn’t just sorry for Eddie, either; I was crazy about him sometimes. I was just crazy about him, about the way his hair was always shaggy and curly on the back of his neck. That may have been what I liked best about Eddie; it may have been why I married him, silly as that is. He never got a haircut and I was always dying to put my hand on the back of his neck.

  BUT THINKING about old times never got no loft cleaned out. I finally stoppered the bottle and got up, and then I pushed the sitting bale out the loft door, so I wouldn’t be tempted to sit down and daydream no more. It was four-thirty or so, and cooling off, and by the time I got the west side of the loft raked it was six or after, and milking time. I stood in the loft door and wiped the sweat off my neck and face with my shirttail and watched the milk cow come up. When I got down I hung the jug on a nail in the saddle shed, with the whiskey still in it. It was good and aged, there wasn’t no use pouring it out. While I was milking Johnny drove up in his pickup and I talked him into staying for supper with me. He wasn’t very hard to persuade.

  Four

  I HADN’T GOT A CAR TILL 1941. BESIDES BEING EXPENSIVE and dangerous, I thought they was just plain ugly. I couldn’t understand why so many people took such an interest in them. Both the boys were big car-lovers, of course: the first hundred dollars Jimmy ever made he spent on an old rattletrap Hupmobile. He run it for three years and sold it to Joe for fifty. From that time on they were both on the road constantly, going somewhere. I just let them go. Them driving didn’t worry me like me driving. They grew up in a time when cars were the thing, and they knew enough about them to handle them okay.

  After I had driven two years I got so I could wrestle the car to town and back without any serious danger, unless the road was slick or I met somebody in a narrow place. Gid and Johnny had taken me to Wichita and advised me when I bought the car. It was a Ford, a black one. We looked at about fifty, and it was the one Gid said I ought to get. I was enjoying the company, and I didn’t care. Johnny was in a hi-larious mood that day.

  “I wisht you’d get that red convertible,” he said. “A widow like you needs a car like that to haul her boy friends in.”

  “I wouldn’t mind it,” I said. “I think I’d like one open, so I could climb out if I needed to.”

  “You’d need to if I was with you,” he said. We had stopped to drink coffee and Johnny had drunk beer instead. It was old watery café coffee, so I wisht I’d drunk beer too. I was feeling good that day. We all were.

  Gid was solemn as a judge though until we got the car bought. Spending that much money, even if it wasn’t his, always made Gid sober. Just to tease him I made them take me around to the Cadillac place, and I even got out and went in. They had the nicest salesman we met, too; I would have just as soon bought one of his cars. But Gid rushed me off.

  “Whew, I’m glad to get out of there,” he said. “He’d have sold you a limousine in another ten minutes.”

  “Well, I guess if I had wanted it I’d have bought it,” I said. “It’s my money, you know.”

  “I know,” he said. “But it won’t be long.”

  After we bought the Ford he loosened up a lot and we went to a big cafeteria and ate lunch. Johnny cut up with all the waitresses; it’s a wonder they let us stay. Gid was just cutting up with me.

  “Well, we got that done, we can enjoy ourselves,” he said.

  After dinner they flipped a coin to see who would drive me home in the new car, and Gid won. Johnny didn’t care. He took off in Gid’s car, and I bet he went right to some beer joint and tanked up.

  Gid had on new boots and a new gray shirt that day, and he looked fine and handsome. He was just getting rich then; anyway he had a lot of confidence in himself. It was before Mabel made him move to town.

  “Well, since we’re here,” he said, “let’s just make a holiday of it. You want to go to a picture show?”

  “I guess so,” I said, “I’m just with you.”

  So we went and he bought some popcorn and we sat right in the middle of the theater, and Gid put his arm on the seat behind me, so that when I leaned back I could feel it against my shoulders and neck. It was such a comfortable feeling, and once in a while he would put his hand against my neck or my hair. Nobody else made me feel comfortable that way. I don’t remember what the picture was, or what it was about. I never can remember picture shows; most of them are so silly, anyway. When we came out of the dark show the sun was so bright I could hardly see, and he had to practically lead me down the street to the car. It was a shiny, new-smelling car then; after I’d hauled chicken feed in it for a month or two it smelled different.

  Gid drove, and we rode out of Wichita toward Scotland, into the open country. I took off my neck scarf and unpinned my hair; the bobby pins were hurting my head. It was nice to get out in the country agin; so far as I was concerned, Wichita Falls was the ugliest place on the earth.

  “Drives like a good car,” Gid said. “Just stiff. You bounce it over them old dirt roads awhile and it’ll get broke in.”

  “It better be good,” I said. “I intend for it to last me the rest of my life.”

  My hair itched from being pinned up all morning, and I combed it out while Gid drove home. It was early fall. The boys had both volunteered in August, and they were still in boot camp. After that Jimmy got sent to New Jersey and Joe to California. All the way across the country from one another.

  “Well, I guess the boys are doing okay,” I said. “The worst thing they’ve complained about is the cooking.”

  “Oh, have you heard from both of them?” Gid said.

  “No, just from Joe.” We were past Scotland, over in the dairy-farming country; I began to notice milk cows grazing in the pastures. “But he said Jimmy didn’t like the cooking either.”

  Gid was looking blue.

  “Don’t get depressed, honey,” I said. “We’ve had such a good day. There’s nothing we can do about him now.”

  “Well, I wish we could think of something,” he said. “I wish we could make it up to Jimmy someway, whatever we done wrong.”

  Gid’s little girl Sarah was six years old then, and Jimmy had been on his mind a lot longer than she had. She was a cute little girl, but you could sure see her mother in her.

  “You know we can’t,” I said. “We’d have to do over our whole lives. We just have to hope he’ll outgrow hating us for it.”

  “Oh, he don’t hate us, I don’t guess, does he?” Gid said. He couldn’t stand to think that. I had lived with Jimmy, and got so I could stand it long ago.

  “Oh yes,” I said. “He does. I’m just surprised he hasn’t killed us.”

  “The army might change him,” he said. “He might be a little more tolerant when he comes
back.”

  I was looking at my comb. There were some hairs stuck in it, and the sun through the windshield was turning them golden. I was wondering how I would have been if I had been a blond; even worse, I guess.

  “It won’t change Jimmy,” I said. “Any more than it would have changed you. We could have changed him if anybody could, and we didn’t.”

  I had begun to cry. He wanted me to scoot over by the wheel, but I wouldn’t do it. I sat by the door till after we turned off on the dirt road, and all Gid could do was pat me on the knee with his hand and try to watch the road.

  When we got about a mile off the highway, out with the pastures on both sides of us and no cars anywhere, he stopped and pulled on the emergency brake—it squeaked, and it still squeaks—and took out his handkerchief and moved over by me and wiped my face. I took his hat off and laid it in the back seat; he done had some gray in his temples.

  “You oughtn’t to cry,” he said. His handkerchief was plumb damp; I took it and put it in my purse, so I could wash and iron it for him. I looked out the window when he hugged me. I had my knees up in the seat, and he pulled back my skirt a little and rubbed his hand down the calf of my leg.

  “If it was Mabel, she’d have on stockings,” was all he said. In a little while he drove on and I scooted over by him and finished combing out my hair. It was such a pretty afternoon, so cool and sharp and clear.

  When we got home I let Gid know I wanted him to come in with me, but he was ashamed from thinking about Jimmy, and wouldn’t do it. Gid’s car was there and Johnny’s pickup was gone, so he had beat us home.

  “You don’t have to go,” I said. “Nobody will come.”

  But he stood on the back porch and kissed me and wouldn’t come in the house. It was me he was ashamed of, someway. He wasn’t very often, but when he was it hurt me like a nail.

  “You can stay,” I said.

  “I know I can,” he said. “But, Molly, I better not.”

  I turned and walked off from him, into the cold house; one of the few times in my life I walked away from Gid like that. I guess he left; when I came out to milk he was gone. It made me feel terrible, because I knew he was mad at himself and in the awfulest misery, but there was nothing I could do about it but wait till he came to see me again. It was two months, two of the worst ones I ever spent. But he came back, and I made it up to him. Then for maybe six months he came every day or two.

  THE NIGHT we got the car, though, Johnny came, and for once in his life he wished he’d stayed away. I was sick of myself and sick of ever body that night, and it was a lot more than Johnny could handle. I would wake him up and say terrible things to him. Finally he got his clothes and left. In three or four days I went over and found him and apologized, and it was all right.

  Who needed to have been there that night was Eddie. He would have really thought I was nasty if he could have spent that one with me. I would have run him off too, or else he would have laid me out with a poker. Maybe that was what I tried to provoke Johnny into doing. Eddie might have done it; he wasn’t scared of being mean.

  OF ALL the boys and men I loved, Jimmy was the one I completely lost. His eyes and the way he went about things was Gid to a T; everybody knew it, and that made it worse. Eddie was dead before Jimmy got big enough for it to show, so it never bothered him. Actually it didn’t bother Gid too much; he was proud of Jimmy, and couldn’t help showing it. Mabel thought I was so trashy anyway, she was probably glad to have Jimmy and Joe for proof.

  But it broke Jimmy. He was too smart to try and fool. Maybe the boys made fun of him—he and Joe both had lots of fights. Joe never minded them. Jimmy did. Jimmy was crazy about me till he was eight years old. Then he wasn’t sure about me from then till he was thirteen. When he was thirteen I told him Gid was his daddy; then he was sure about me, and he hated me. He had been the most loving little boy; for eight years I couldn’t turn around without him being around my neck, and when the coin turned he was just that hard a hater.

  When he was ten or eleven his teachers at school started him going to church. There was a man teacher that liked Jimmy a lot—his name was Mr. Bracey—and for a long time he drove out ever Sunday and got Jimmy and took him to church and Sunday school, and then brought him home. He never even asked to take Joe—it was always Jimmy—but Joe didn’t care. He probably wasn’t in a church five times his entire life. And in the long run, Mr. Bracey done Jimmy more good than harm. I never was mad at him, even after Jimmy told me what he done. I never told Gid about it.

  But it was the church people that really turned Jimmy into a hater; the more he took to religion, the more he turned against me.

  When I told him Gid was his daddy, he didn’t bat an eye. We were sitting at the table.

  “I’m never going to call him Daddy, though,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean for you to. I just wanted to tell you.”

  “I’m not ever going to call him anything,” he said, and he didn’t. Gid tried his best to get Jimmy friendly with him; he offered to take him cowboying and fishing and lots of places, but Jimmy wouldn’t go. When he was real little he idolized Gid, but after he found out, Mr. Bracey was the only daddy he had.

  Jimmy was the only person I ever saw I couldn’t have a little effect on. Even Dad I could help a little, and even Eddie. But I might have been a stone so far as Jimmy was concerned.

  He had friends, though. Him and Joe were always close brothers, in spite of being so different, and Jimmy had plenty of other friends, too. He went out for all the teams, mostly just to keep from coming home and doing chores, but he made them all. They tell me he was an awful good player; the whole town bragged on him. He was twice as good as Joe; he went out too, but he never took it seriously, and was just medium. I never went to any of the games Jimmy was in, because I knew he didn’t want me too. I did see Joe play a few times.

  Jimmy and me only talked about things once. He had been off to a religious camp one summer and they convinced him he was going to be a preacher. I didn’t have much to say about it—I kept thinking about how much his granddaddy would have said. Gid didn’t like it, but he never said a word about it. Johnny kidded Jim a little, but it was all right. Jimmy liked Johnny in spite of himself, and Johnny’s kidding never made him mad.

  But one Sunday night Jim come in from church. I guess he was eighteen or nineteen then, and I was sitting in the kitchen shelling peas. It was summertime, and I got up and fixed him a glass of iced tea. He tolerated me enough to drink it. I guess his resistance was down that night; he started asking me questions.

  “Have you ever been to church in your life?” he said. “I just want to know.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “I used to go to camp meetings.”

  “Don’t you like it in the Lord’s house?” he said, looking at me through Gid’s very eyes.

  I didn’t know what to say, except no, because I didn’t, really.

  He kinda looked down his nose.

  “The minister says I ought to bring you to church so he could try and save you,” he said. “But I don’t think I will. You wouldn’t go anyway.”

  I tried to grin, but it was hard. “No, I wouldn’t go,” I said.

  “Molly, you don’t believe in salvation, do you?” he said. Once in a while he called me just by my name, I guess to hurt me. He didn’t like to call me Mother. But I couldn’t stand him calling me Molly, as if he were just my friend.

  “Jimmy, if you can’t call me Mother don’t call me anything,” I said. “I mean that. Honor your father and mother, ain’t that in the Bible?”

  He didn’t say a word; looked at the sugar in the bottom of his tea glass. His forelock fell down in his eyes and I kept wanting to reach out with my hand and brush it back out of his face.

  “I don’t guess I do believe in church salvation,” I said.

  I went on snapping the little peas and shelling the big ones, and he sat across from me a long time without saying a word. When I looked up from my fingers he looked me
in the eye. He was like Gid; he always looked you in the eye when he hurt you.

  “You committed adultery and fornication,” he said. “That’s about as bad as a woman can get.” When he said it, though, he sucked at the corner of his mouth, and looked like a little boy trying not to cry.

  “You don’t know how ashamed I am of you, Momma,” he said. “I’m so ashamed of you I can’t tell you.”

  I let the peas alone. “You’re telling me, Jim,” I said. I would have given the best touches of my life to have been able to hold Jimmy then. I probably would have died right there if it would have taken what was bothering him away, but I knew nothing that easy would happen. He couldn’t say any more, and I was choked up so I couldn’t talk. We just sat.

  “Fornication and adultery is what you did, Momma,” he said.

  I guess what he wanted was for me to deny it, to tell him I hadn’t really done neither one, and that everything the preacher said about me was wrong. I sat the peas on the table.

  “Jimmy, those are just two words to me,” I said. “Even if they do come out of the Bible.”

  “But you did them,” he said. “In this house we’re living in, too.”

  “I wasn’t saying I didn’t,” I said. “And I wasn’t saying I’m good. I guess I’m terrible. But words is one thing and loving a man is another thing; that’s all I can say about it.” And that was true. The words didn’t describe what I had lived with Gid, or with Johnny, at all; they didn’t describe what we had felt. But Jimmy hadn’t felt it, so I couldn’t tell him that and make him understand.

  “There’s such a thing as right and wrong,” he said. Like his daddy used to say.

  “I guess so,” I said. He wanted me to argue, and I just couldn’t. I felt too bad and worn out. I wanted to cry and never shed a tear.

  He finally got up and went to the door. “Yes, but there is,” he said. “And if you live unrighteous, you’ll end up turning on a spit in hell.” He sounded like a little hurt boy trying to convince himself. It was silly to think of turning on a spit the way I felt; I couldn’t be seared no worse than I was. In a little while I went on and shelled the peas.