Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

“Oh, I’ll be by,” he said, “whenever I can risk it.”

  That was what finally made me cry. “Well, good-by then, damn you,” I said, “because you can’t ever risk it, not even if I am forty-three. I’ve liked it, even if you haven’t, and I ain’t ashamed of it, even if you are.”

  “What about Jimmy?” he said.

  “Jimmy’s dead. You quitting me won’t make nothing up to him.”

  “Molly, it ain’t quitting,” he said. “We got to do it. Don’t you know this is killing me? I never quit nothing in my life.”

  “If you can think of a prettier word for it, fine,” I said. “You’re the one that has clothes on.”

  Things were just a blur, but I reached out for him and he got up and put his shirt on. “I don’t have much pride where you’re concerned,” I said, but he left, and I laid on the bed and cried for a long time.

  Nine

  GID KEPT HIS WORD. I KNEW HE WOULD. HE NEVER LOOSENED the reins on himself agin. It was over ten years before he ever touched me, and then it was just a pat on the shoulder.

  Right after he quit me I couldn’t stand to think he would actually make it stick. I was determined I’d bring him back the next time I saw him, whatever it cost me, or him. I knew I could make him come back; I had ways I had never had to use.

  But I didn’t lay eyes on him for two months, and when he finally did come I knew in five minutes that I wouldn’t do what I had planned to do. It was October when he came; I was in the kitchen; and he knocked and came in with a coyote puppy. He had brought me one or two to raise before that.

  “Well, I killed his momma, Molly,” he said. “You want to raise him?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll get him a box.”

  And when we had the puppy fixed I walked to the gate with him. Only I stopped inside the fence and didn’t go to the car, the way I usually did.

  It would have been easy to have touched Gid, that day; he was just starving for somebody to. But it wouldn’t have been loving him much to have tricked him into doing something he had suffered so much to quit doing. And the two months had really told on Gid, I guess worse than they had on me. If he really wanted to quit that bad, I thought I would do better to help him keep his word. If he broke it, it would just be that much more agony for him. But I don’t know; never will know. The way he looked before he drove off, I think he was wanting me to help him break his word. Those things are awful complicated. Or more likely it was both he wanted: me, on the one hand, and to do what he thought was right on the other. I never will know which one he wanted the most. I don’t imagine he knew himself. But when he drove off and I went back in, I thought he had sure been right about the heartbreak.

  THAT LAST day, when he asked me why I married Eddie instead of him, I didn’t have no answer for him. I thought about it a lot after that—too much, I guess—but I never came up with an answer for myself either. Not one I could be sure was right. There may not have been no one answer, but if there was, I didn’t know it. I guess that said something pretty bad about me, that I didn’t know why I married who I did, I knew an awful lot of little things about myself, what I liked to eat and smell and do. And I knew some bigger things than that—about giving and taking, and the things Mr. Fry had talked about the one time we talked. But marrying Eddie may have been the most important thing, for all of us, that I ever did. I didn’t know why I done it, and I don’t know what good it would have done me if I had. Knowing wouldn’t have made it any less done.

  For a month or so after Gid quit me, I like to have run Johnny ragged. He came over a lot. Sometimes I wouldn’t let him in ten feet of me, and other times I went to the other extreme. I wasn’t in very good control of myself. Finally one night at the supper table he brought it up.

  “Well, I guess I better tell you off, Molly,” he said. “You been getting me mixed up with up with Gid, lately, and it’s about to get me down. You know me and him are different fellers. It ain’t fair to me for you to pretend I’m him.”

  I was so ashamed I couldn’t say a word. We sat for several minutes.

  “You’re right,” I said finally. “I’m sorry, Johnny. Don’t hold that against me, will you?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Now that you’ve quit. I couldn’t hold anything against such a good cook.”

  “Gid’s changed his way of thinking about me,” I said. “I guess you knew that. It made me pretty miserable.”

  “Not as miserable as it made him,” he said. “I’ve been thinking he’d probably kill himself. But since he’s made it this long, I guess he’ll probably survive.”

  I let him know I appreciated his patience, and his finally speaking up. It made me feel a lot better after he had. I felt calm for the first time since Gid left the bedroom that day.

  “Now see,” Johnny said. “Me and you may not kill nobody over one another, but we’re comfortable. We’ve always been comfortable, and I want us to keep on being that way.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I might kill a person or two for you. It would depend on who.” That made him feel good. He knew I probably meant it.

  But I guess Gid was still heavy on my mind, because I had to talk about it.

  “Johnny,” I said. “What do you think about this we do? Is it right or is it wrong?”

  “Well, it’s enjoyable,” he said. “I ain’t gonna bother to look no farther than that.”

  But that wasn’t answer enough, just then.

  “You quit worrying,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing Gid has to worry about. There’s no need in you worrying about it too.”

  “But you know I’ve done it with him, too,” I said. “Do you think it’s wrong for me to do it with both of you all these years?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Gid’s even more crazy about you than I am, and he deserves a little enjoyment too. Only he’s so crazy he reasons himself out of it.

  “After all, we raised a son,” he said. “And a good one. You and Gid had bad luck with yours, but that’s life. The stars were just set wrong for Jim. I never lost a night’s sleep in my life from being ashamed, and I don’t intend to start.”

  “You’re right about it,” I said. “In a way, you are. I never lost much sleep over it, either, not till lately. I just wish Gid agreed with us.”

  “Oh no,” he said. “That wouldn’t be Gid. Somebody’s got to take an interest in the right and wrong of things.”

  All the same I would always miss Gid, even if Johnny was right.

  About nine o’clock I woke up and he was pulling on his boots.

  “You ain’t leaving tonight, are you?” I said.

  “Oh, of all the stupid things,” he said. “I left my damn milk cows in the lot; I just now remembered. If I don’t go turn them out, there’s no telling what they’ll get into. I hate to leave.”

  “Oh, it’s all right if that’s all it is,” I said. I got up and put on my nightgown and got a flashlight and walked out to his pickup with him.

  “I guess you’ll be barefooted the day you die,” he said.

  He had just half-thrown his clothes on; one of his sleeves was flopping, and I made him wait till I buttoned it at the wrist.

  “You come back when you can,” I said. “Now that I’m straightened out on who you are.”

  “Don’t you worry,” he said. “You won’t hardly know I ain’t living here.”

  It was a beautiful warm night and I walked around to the porch and sat on the glider awhile, in just my nightgown. I didn’t feel very sleepy; I heard a coyote, back off toward the Ridge. The moon was just rising; it was full, and I sat and watched it, a big old gold harvest moon, barely up above the pastures. My hair was down, but I didn’t have no comb, and I didn’t feel like going in the house. While I sat there my menfolk begin rising with the moon, moving over the pastures, over the porch, over the yard. Dad and Eddie, they was drunk, had whiskey on their breath. Jimmy was looking away from me, thinking of school. Joe, he was laughing, and Johnny was lazing along, gr
inning about something. But Gid was looking at my face, and wishing he could put his hands on my hair.

  III

  GO TURN MY HORSES FREE

  But, Lord Christ! when that it remembreth me

  Upon my yowthe, and on me jolitee,

  It tickleth me aboute myn herte roote.

  Unto this day it dooth myn herte boote

  That I have had my world as in my tyme.

  But age, allas! that al wole envenyme

  Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith.

  Lat go, farewell! the devel go therewith!

  The flour is goon, ther is namoore to telle;

  The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle. . . .

  The Wife of Bath

  Oh lay spurs upon my breast, my rope and old saddle tree,

  And while the boys are lowering me to rest, go turn my horses free.

  TEDDY BLUE, from We Pointed Them North

  One

  I HAD JUST DROPPED A POST IN A HOLE AND WAS TAMPING the dirt around it with my shovel handle when I looked up and seen Gid hot-footin’ it for the lots. He never said a word to me—he just struck out. Well sir, I thought, we’ll both go. I knew he had some cold beer on ice in the water can, and I thought I’d help him siphon off a little. When I got there he was plopped down in the shade of his new GMC pickup, swigging on the first can. I opened me one and sat down and rested my back against the rear wheel and settled in to listen. Gid had pitched his hat on the running board and set his beer can down between his legs, so he’d have both hands free to wave. I seen the sun had blistered his old bald noggin agin, right through the straw hat. He had the hailstorm on his mind. Molly had come out that morning and argued with us a little about the fence line, and for some reason arguments with Molly always made Gid think of that hail.

  “I’d been over at Antelope, getting the mail,” he said. “Old Dirtdobber thought the cloud was just threatening, but I knew better. You can’t fool me when it comes to hail.”

  “Hell no,” I said. “Nothing simple as weather could fool you.”

  “The Montgomery Ward catalogue had come that day,” he said. “I yanked it out of my saddle pouch, and then I took down my lariat rope. ‘Run, you old bastard,’ I said, and I keewawed him between the ears with that rope. It broke him into a lope he was so surprised.”

  “Watch out, Gid,” I said. “You’re going to knock that can of beer over if you don’t.”

  But he didn’t give a shit for beer when he got to talking. Gid never started talking till he was sixty years old, and then he never stopped. That hailstorm hit Thalia in the spring of 1924, and Gid hadn’t forgotten it yet. None of the old-timers had—in the long run it done more damage to the people than it done to the windowlights or the wheat crops. I guess the worst was Old Man Hurshel Monroe getting his skull cracked outside the door of the bank. They say Beulah Monroe found the hailstone that conked him and kept it home in the icebox for nearly ten years, till one of her grandkids ate it for an all-day sucker. I’ve heard that so many times I probably even believe it myself.

  “We made it to a little mesquite tree,” he said. “Old Dirt was slowing down.”

  “I guess so,” I said. “What a man gets for riding a twenty-two-year-old horse.”

  “So I got down and yanked the saddle off. Uuuups . . . !”

  “I knew you’d spill it sooner or later,” I said. “Half a can of good beer nobody gets to drink.”

  “You wasn’t gonna get to drink it nohow,” he said. “What difference does it make to you?”

  “Your beer all right,” I admitted. “Why open it if you ain’t gonna drink it?”

  “Why buy it if I ain’t gonna open it?” he said, reaching in the water can for another one.

  “Here,” I said. “Let me pour this one out for you so it won’t interrupt your story.”

  “Just shut up,” he said. “I’ve emptied two cans of beer to your one.”

  “Why sure,” I said. “In the first place you’re older than me. And in the second place, I’ve always had to drink my cans. I never been able to afford just to pour them out.”

  He stopped and swigged beer till there wasn’t much left in the new can. “If you worked as smart as you talked, you’d have something to show for your long life,” he said. That was Gid—he thought my working for wages was a disgrace. But I got my pleasure out of doing what I wanted to, not out of owning no damn mesquite and prickly pear. I told him that a hundred times, but he never did understand it.

  “I figured old Dirt would stand,” he said. “So I crawled under him and scrunched up under the saddle.” He kept wiping his face with his shirt sleeve, and I knew the sweat was stinging his old nose, where it had blistered and peeled. “Shore hot,” he said.

  “Finish your story. It’ll be sundown before we get back to work.”

  “About the time I got under the saddle I heard water falling on it. I thought it must have quit hailing and gone to raining, and then I smelled it, and it didn’t smell like no rain water I ever smelled. I peeped out to one side and saw some of it trickling along the ground, and it didn’t look like no rain water I ever saw. It was still hailing to beat the dickens, and all I could do was sit there thinking about it. Finally I raised up and jobbed him in the stomach with the saddle horn. ‘Damn you,’ I said. ‘You could have waited a minute.’”

  “Haw,” I said. “That’s pretty good. I’d have paid money to have seen that.”

  “I wouldn’t laugh, if I was you,” he said. “It wasn’t nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “No, but it ain’t much to brag about, either,” I said.

  He waved his beercan in my face. “You better not talk,” he said. “Where was you when we had that storm? At least I was home where I belonged. I wasn’t off in New Mexico living with no Indian woman.”

  “Neither was I,” I said. “I knew you’d drag that in. I can tell what you’re going to say before you even say it. For the nine hundredth time, I wasn’t off in no New Mexico. I was right near Baileyboro, Texas. And I wasn’t where no horse could weewee on me, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Not on me! On the saddle!” Gid was very particular about that point.

  “It’s too hot to listen to you explain,” Actually, when they had that storm, I had done been busted up in my horsewreck and was in the hospital. I wasn’t even living with Jelly.

  “When I jobbed him, he kicked me,” Gid said, and he looked kinda sad, remembering. Contrary as he was, I could feel sorry for Gid sometimes. He was getting old, and he wouldn’t admit it. Middle of July, hot as a firecracker, and the old fart wouldn’t stretch out and rest for love nor money. Telling them old stories, getting himself in a stir, remembering them. I wish I could have talked some sense into him, sat him down and told him, “Now goddamnit, Gid, you’re getting about old enough to slow down. It won’t hurt you to take a little rest in the afternoons.” But when it come right down to saying it, I just let him go. Making him mad would have done more damage than the advice was worth. Besides, I kinda got a kick out of hearing the stories agin myself.

  “Put your hat on, Gid,” I said. “You’ll go off and forget it and take a sunstroke.”

  “That was the first time Dirt had kicked in ten years,” he said.

  “It surprised me. And then he run off.”

  “Did you cuss him?” I said.

  “Yeah, but it didn’t do no good.”

  “Why no, that don’t surprise me,” I said. “It don’t do no good when you yell at me, either.”

  “Yeah, but you ain’t a horse,” he said.

  “That’s all right. Neither one of us can understand you when you yell. You don’t talk plain.”

  “Bullshit,” he said. “If you’d just get you one of them little invisible hearing aids, you could hear fine. Nobody’s going to blame you for getting old.”

  Gid was the worst about that kind of remark I ever saw. “Who said anything about old?” I said. “You splutter when you yell; maybe it’s them false teeth, I do
n’t know. And the next time I wish you’d buy Pearl if you’re going to buy beer. You let this get a little warm and it tastes like horsepiss.”

  He threw his beer can on the pile we were building up by the loading chute. “You know, Johnny, we’re going to have to haul them cans off, one of these days,” he said. “Cattle will get to where they won’t load with all them tin cans shining at them.”

  I chunked one on the pile myself. It’s nice to have a pile to throw a beercan at. A man can see he’s been accomplishing something. “Leave them cans where they are,” I said. “The pile’s just now getting big enough it’s easy to hit. Besides, we ain’t gonna load no cattle recently.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” he said. And that can pile is still right where it was. We never got around to hauling it off, and I’m glad. It’s kind of a monument.

  “When are we going to get to work?” I said.

  He had to strike five matches to get his stogie lit, and then it went right out. He just bought them to chew, anyway.

  “Looks like you’d be willing to rest,” he said. “I try to ease up on you in the heat of the day and you go to rearing and tearing. You have to sit on an old bugger like you to keep him from killing himself. I guess you just want to prove you can still work.”

  “Blame it on me,” I said. “I’m handy.”

  “Now if you were able to work in weather like this, it’d be different. I seen you get the weak trembles yesterday, digging that corner posthole.”

  “It was hot yesterday,” I had to admit. “Anybody that works hard can get too hot.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said.

  “Don’t be sure, suring me,” I said. “You had the weaves yourself a dozen times. You just had the crowbar to prop up on or you’d have gone down fifteen times.”

  “Aw,” he said, “that’s just your imagination. The sweat drips on my bifocals and I stumble once in a while, that’s all.”

  “Of course,” I said. “That must be it. That’s why you’re going to have that operation next month. Sweat’s what does it.”

  “Making fun of a sick man,” he said. “Let me finish my story.”