Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  I knew that story like a good preacher knows the Bible, but I listened anyway. I liked to hear what new lies Gid would put in.

  “What happened,” he said, “was old Dirt squashed my hip when he ran over me.”

  “No wonder you’re so bunged up nowadays,” I said. “You ought to have taken better care of yourself when you were young.”

  “There’s a blister bug on your hat,” he said. “You better get him before he gets you. What do you mean bunged up? I’ve got a crick or two, but I ain’t feeble.”

  I caught the brim of my hat and flipped the blister bug halfway across the lot. “Them sonofabitches are going to take this country,” I said.

  “Yeah, them and the mesquite. And the government. I hope I ain’t alive to see it.”

  “You won’t be,” I said. “The country ain’t that far gone.”

  “Then it don’t like much,” he said. “Ten more years like this and it will strain a man to make an honest living in this country. He flipped about four inches of stogie over toward the can pile.

  “It strains the ones that make an honest living now,” I said, “but that don’t affect the majority. What was the matter with that cigar?”

  “Nothing. Good cigar. That little piece I threw away wasn’t worth lighting.”

  “Kiss my butt,” I said. “I guess if you laid down a dollar and they give you two bits change, you’d let it lay, like it wasn’t worth keeping.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “It ain’t worth keeping. Won’t buy nothing.”

  “Now, Gid,” I said. “Think a minute. That’s a hamburger you’d be throwing away. That’s five Peanut Patties.”

  “Think yourself,” he said. “Who wants a goddamn Peanut Pattie anyway, much less five of them? You’d think a man your age would get over craving candy.”

  “Nothing wrong with Peanut Patties. They stick to your ribs.” Everybody hurrahed me about my sweet tooth. But I’ve craved candy all my life, and I don’t believe in doing without something just because a bunch of idiots thinks it’s silly. Delaware Punch is another thing I like.

  “And anyway we’re letting the cool part of the day go to waste,” I said. “I guess it’ll be a hundred and ten tomorrow.”

  “We ain’t gonna work tomorrow,” he said. “I promised Susie I’d take her to see Snow White.” Then he went back to his story. “I don’t know how I survived,” he said. “Finally the hail was piled up around me and the saddle like it was an igloo, I remember that.”

  I reached in and got my pocketknife and slipped the boot off my right foot. “You’re gonna talk till suppertime I might as well trim my corns,” I said.

  “Poor bastard,” he said. “I guess a man’s feet give out first.”

  “Not mine,” I said. “I’ve had sense enough not to use mine much. I just got a few corns.”

  “Mabel talked me into having Susie a pair of little boots made,” he said. “Made outa javelina skin. Shore purty.”

  “I bet,” I said. “And probably didn’t cost over five times what they were worth. What’d you want to spend money on that javelina skin for?”

  “Soft. Don’t hurt a kid’s feet so much.”

  “That’s the way the whip pops,” I said. “The first pair of shoes I ever bought felt like they was made out of tin.”

  “Mine did too,” he said. “No wonder we’re both cripples.”

  “What’d you do when it quit hailing?”

  “Stood up,” he said. “When I looked around I seen I wasn’t but just across the peach orchard from the Eldenfelders’ house. So I got me a limb for a crutch and hopscotched across the orchard.”

  “A man’s taking his life in his hands, going up to a Dutchman’s house on one leg,” I said. “It’s a wonder the dogs didn’t rip you up.”

  “I thought about that,” he said. “We was near neighbors, and the dogs knew me a little, else I wouldn’t have gone up at all. I picked me up a pocketful of big hails, just in case.”

  “Just in case what? You couldn’t hit a dog with a hailstone in fifteen throws.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I could always chunk good and straight. Remember the time we played that baseball game in Thalia and I chunked that Methodist preacher they had playing second base. I chunked him good enough.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “By god I do remember. I remember he got you down and beat hell out of you after the ballgame, too. You didn’t chunk him hard enough.”

  “He surprised me,” he said. “Got in the first lick. I didn’t figure a preacher would hit a man without warning him.”

  “A preacher’s got that much sense,” I said. “He may not have much more.” And there’s a sad end to that story. The preacher waited a year or two and got in a hell of a last lick—he was the one married Gid and Mabel.

  “Anyhow I didn’t need the hails,” he said. “The dogs come charging out all right, thirty or forty of them, but that little bitty old rat terrier they used to have was the only one actually went for my legs. The rest just stood around growling and showing their teeth.”

  “By god now, that took nerve,” I said. “If you’d a fell, there wouldn’t have even been a belt buckle left. I might not have ragged you so hard all these years if I had seen that. I admire a man with the kind of backbone you showed.”

  “Just shut up,” he said. “I limped on to the house. That rat terrier give me hell, too. I meant to come over some day when the folks were gone and kick the shit out of that dog, but the coyotes got him first. Finally the old man heard the commotion and came out on the porch. He thought it was funny, me fighting that rat terrier with my peach limb. ‘Get up steps,’ he said. ‘Dead cow’s for dinner.’ Only I didn’t find out what he meant till it was too late.”

  “Find out whose cow it was, you mean?”

  “Naw, how long it had been dead. I thought it tasted all right for Dutchman’s cooking. So did old Wolf. ‘Good-cow,’ he said. ‘Dead mit de lightnin’ vee days ven we find her.’”

  “Poison you?”

  “No, it didn’t hurt me. Wasn’t as spoiled as some of the stuff you buy in grocery stores nowadays.”

  “Was Bartle home then?” I asked. I remember Bartle Eldenfelder; he was a fighting demon.

  Gid had to stop and laugh when I mentioned Bartle. “No, he was gone,” he said. “That bastard.” He had to wipe the laugh tears off his cheeks. “Frank Scott come by my place one morning and said he was going to whip Bartle for dancing with his wife. I told him I hoped he’d eaten a big breakfast—it just made him madder.”

  “Who won?” I said. I had underestimated Frank Scott’s fighting ability once myself.

  “Bartle whipped him right off. Frank came dragging back by bleeding like a stuck hog. Said Bartle hit him with a hoe handle.”

  “That was about the time his wife left him, I guess. She told everybody. Frank hit her with a hoe handle, but nobody believed her, neither.” But if he never, he should have. She was too pretty for her own good, and a whole lot too pretty for Frank’s. Once I was taking her out the door at a dance and met Frank coming in. If he hadn’t taken time to hit her first, I would have got whipped worse than I did.

  “Anyhow, that’s the story,” he said. “After I ate the rotten cow Annie hitched up the wagon and took me home. I had to wade the creek.”

  “Okay now,” I said. “It’s what you and Annie did before you waded the creek that I been waiting all this time to hear. Just tell that.”

  Gid grinned a little. “I swear you got a filthy mind,” he said.

  “No, I just like to know the feller I’m working for. If I’m working for a sex maniac, I want to know about it.”

  “That ain’t it,” he said. “You just got the damn nostalgia. You wish you was young enough to have a shot at Annie agin yourself.”

  “You damn right I am,” I said. “And kiss my butt. I was better off then than I am now, it don’t take no college degree to know that.”

  “Maybe you were and maybe you weren’t,” he
said. “I know one thing, them times were hard. You couldn’t drag me back.”

  I just snorted. “Okay,” I said. “How about if I could show you Molly, looking like she looked in 1924. I don’t guess that would tempt you none.”

  That hit him right on the sore spot; I knew it would. I stood up and brushed the dirt off my pants.

  “Well, that might change my mind all right,” he said.

  I was sorry I said it. I could remember how she looked in 1924 myself.

  “You want me to bring the water can?” I said.

  “Naw, we ain’t gonna work very long. Take a big drink.”

  We started back down the fence row, with him a little in the lead. I stumbled and like to fell; memories had kept me from seeing the ground.

  “She could make my mouth water.” I sad.

  “I’d just as soon not think about it,” he said. “I’ll be glad when I get that operation. My kidneys shore do ache.”

  “You don’t reckon Molly will really get upset about the way we run this fence, do you?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “But then I never could predict Molly very well. Anything that’s connected with her dad she’s touchy about.”

  When we got to the working place, Gid began to tamp the posts and I began to dig. The damn ground was so hard it took me half a dozen licks to get through the top crust, and then the sandrock started. I don’t know how long we worked, but after a while I looked up and seen the old red sun sitting right on top of Squaw Mountain, ten miles away. That brought her back too. When we were young it was an awful good picnicking place—there was supposed to be an Indian woman buried there, and me and Molly spent many an afternoon looking for her grave. Squaw Mountain was where the rattlesnake bit her. It wasn’t even coiled but it got her right in the fat part of her calf. She shut her eyes when I got ready to cut around the bite; I barely had the nerve to do it. “If you don’t I won’t be your girl,” she said, and I went ahead. While I was working the tourniquet she kissed me. “I’m still your girl,” she said. I had the devil of a time getting her home.

  “She’s going down, Gid,” I said. “Let’s quit.”

  He leaned on his tamping bar a minute, looking at the sun. He was so hot he was sweating on the ears. “One more hole,” he said. I dug it and he dropped the post in and tamped it while I took my sweaty shirttail out so the evening cool would get to my belly.

  “That’s a day,” he said. He dropped the tamping bar and stood there leaning on the post, panting a little and glaring at me.

  “What’s the matter?” I said. “Wasn’t that hole deep enough?”

  He snorted through his nose. “You never have believed how bad that hailstorm was,” he said. “Out in New Mexico, living with an Indian woman. Your old man never made a bushel of wheat that year.”

  “So what,” I said. “He knew about hail when he decided to plant the stuff in the first place.” But I guess I should have been sorry where it concerned Dad. The hailstorm turned Dad back into a poor man, and that turned him into a drunkard. But I guess if the hail hadn’t, something else would have.

  Gid picked up the crowbar and I shouldered my diggers, and we started back up the fence row.

  “Nearly seven o’clock,” I said. “Too many hours for an old-timer like you to work. You ain’t no wild coyote any more.”

  “You’re no young stud yourself,” he said.

  We made it to the lots and pitched our fencing stuff in the back of the pickup. Gid flipped a coin to see which one of us would drive, and he won. He was an expert coin flipper, or else the luckiest man alive. He never had to drive over once a month.

  “Don’t run over that rock,” he said, after we started off.

  “You just settle down,” I said. “I’m driving this vehicle, now. Tomorrow, is it, you’re taking your granddaughter to the picture show?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Snow White. Get you in a good game of dominos.”

  I drove out of the pastures and onto the highway. “Pretty sundown,” Gid said. “Looky how the sky’s lit up. Looks like somebody set the world on fire.”

  “It wasn’t neither one of us that done it,” I said. But the sky was awful bright, over west of Thalia. The whole west side of the sky was orange and red.

  “I wish we had time to go by and see Molly,” he said. “Maybe we can day after tomorrow.”

  Two

  THREE DAYS LATER, I MET GID ON THE ROAD. HE NEVER showed up in the morning, so after I ate my dinner I decided I’d go in to the domino hall and play a little. I didn’t figure he was coming; but I just shouldn’t have figured. Before I got halfway to town I seen his car, about two hills up the road, coming like sixty: I knew right then I’d made the trip for nothing.

  Usually, when I met him on the road, he’d come flying over some hill and get nearly by me before he even seen the pickup, much less recognized it. I’d get to watch him go skidding by, cussing and talking to himself. I always just stopped my vehicle and waited: there wasn’t no sense in both of us trying to back up in a narrow road, no better than either one of us could drive. Gid would grind into reverse and back he’d come, leaning out the window and spitting cigar and backing as fast as a six-cylinder Chevvy would back. Usually he would swerve off in the bar ditch a time or two, and run over a beer bottle or an old railroad tie somebody had thrown out to get rid of. Most of the time the damage wasn’t serious. Some times were worse than others.

  It had rained that morning, and I met him right at the top of the hill by Jamison Williams’ goat pasture. The old claytop hill was a little slippery. Gid went somewhere down the south side of the hill getting stopped. I kept one foot on the clutch and the other on the brake and sat there on my side of the hill, waiting. In a minute I heard the gears grind, and then I seen the back end of the Chevvy come over the hill. I saw right off it was coming in sight too fast and too far to the west, so I pushed in on my clutch and rolled on down out of the way. It looked like what happened was Gid’s hands were sweaty and slipped off the wheel. Anyhow, the Chevvy went into a slide and came sideslipping down the hill and kinda bounced the bar ditch and went through Jamison’s fence and made a little dido and came back through another part of the fence and headed for the road agin. Only by then it was slowed too much to bounce the ditch, and it hit the soft dirt and turned over.

  Well, when I seen that I jumped out of the pickup and ran over and yanked open the first door I came to and helped Gid out. The glove compartment had come open and he was practically buried in maps and beer openers and pliers and old envelopes; he kept that glove compartment about as full as Fibber McGee kept his hall closet.

  “Are you hurt, Gid?” I said. The only thing I could see was a big skinned place on his nose. It didn’t look deep, but the blood was dripping on his new gray shirt. “Is your nose broke?” I said.

  “No, goddamnit!” he said. “Get to hell away if you can’t do nothing but stand there asking questions.”

  “You must have bumped the windshield,” I said.

  “Hell, I bumped the whole damn roof,” he said.

  “Don’t’ talk,” I said. “Sit down here a minute. You was just in a wreck, don’t you realize that?”

  But he went walking up the hill, bending over so his nose wouldn’t drip on his shirt. He acted like he was going on to the ranch, afoot. “Hey,” I said. “Don’t go walking off that way. Your insides may be hurt,”

  “I lost my cigar coming down here somewheres,” he said. “I just got it lit and I don’t intend to let it go to waste.” Now if that wasn’t consistent. I sat down on the Chevvy and he went on and found his cigar and came back.

  “Get up from there,” he said. “Get the pickup and chain and we’ll drag this sonofabitch out.”

  I got up and looked around, and if it wasn’t just my luck. When I jumped out of my pickup I plumb forgot about it and the bastard had rolled off in the east bar ditch and stuck itself tight as a wedge. Gid was moderately mad when he seen he had two vehicles not fifty f
eet apart that wouldn’t neither one budge.

  “Shit,” he said. “Looks like you could have taken time to stop that pickup, Johnny. I guess if I was chasing a herd of cattle and my horse fell, you’d just bail off and let the horse and cattle go.”

  “I might,” I admitted. “There ain’t much telling what I’ll do.” A kid would have known better than to leave that pickup out of gear.

  “I thought I heard you yell at me when you went through the fence,” I said. “That’s what made me in such a big hurry.”

  “Aw, you got to do something when you’re running over a fence,” he said. “I just yelled to be yelling. What do you think I’m paying you for?”

  “Damned if I know,” I said. “I haven’t worked for you but thirty-eight years, you ain’t had time yet to tell me what you wanted me to do.”

  “Well, it’s not for driving into the domino parlor every day, that’s for sure,” he said.

  “I thought I better come in and get the news,” I said. “The country could have gone to war, for all I knowed.”

  “You got a radio,” he said.

  “Yes, but when I turn it on I don’t get nothing but music or static. And most of the time I’d rather listen to the static.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Don’t stand out there in the road arguing with me all day. Let’s dig her out.”

  “Which one?” I said.

  “Yours. It wouldn’t do no good to dig mine, it would still be wrong side up when we got it dug.”

  “Dig her out yourself, by god,” I said. I thought the car wreck must have driven him out of his mind. “Why, there’s a tractor at the Henrys’, not two mile away. I can go get it and be back before we could get the shovel sharp.”

  “Dig her out, by god,” he said. “I don’t intend to borrow from the Henrys.”

  But just then a hundred or so of Jamison Williams’ goats came out of a post-oak thicket and made for the hole in the fence. When Gid seen them coming it sobered him in a minute.

  “Run,” he said. “Let’s stop up them holes or them bastards will be all over the country and we’ll have to round them up.”

  And by god they would. Goats could hide in weeds and badger holes where it would take you a week to find one, much less a hundred.