Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  “Well, Gid,” I said. “My god, you ought to stay out there with her, if you want to. It’s about time you pleased yourself a little, if you’re ever going to. Or it looks that way to me.”

  “Well, I want to,” he said. “And I may do it. In fact, I guess I intend to do it. But you can’t just go off and do something like that on the spur of the moment, without making no arrangements. There’s a right way and a wrong.”

  “And you’re the only man alive that can tell them apart,” I said. “Or maybe just the only one that bothers to try.”

  When I let him out at his house he told me to buy a keg of steeples. He said he’d be out Monday and we’d start steepling the fence. I never stopped by Molly’s, going home. I couldn’t think what I would say to her.

  Seven

  IT WAS A GOOD THING I GOT THE STEEPLES, BECAUSE Monday morning he was there before I got the milk strained. I stayed about that far behind the rest of the day.

  “Are you ready?” he said.

  “I’m bound to be readier than you are,” I said. “I’m well, anyway.”

  “Shut up and let’s go,” he said. I sat the milk in the icebox and got my steepling hatchet. I had soaked it in water all night so the head wouldn’t fly off and kill Gid.

  The wires were done stretched; I had done that; so all we had to do was steeple. We didn’t waste no time. I got off from him a hundred yards or so, and we started in. I guess I steepled forty or fifty posts before I thought to look around, and Gid wasn’t nowhere in sight. It scared the sense out of me: I thought he’d passed out. I started running back up the fence row, but I wasn’t used to running and I thought I was gonna collapse. If he hadn’t of hollered, I’d have passed him right by. He wasn’t over fifty yards from where he started steepling. There was a little shady shrub oak tree there and he was sitting under it fanning himself with his hat. I never saw a man so wet with sweat in my whole life.

  “I didn’t know you could run so fast,” he said. “Where’s the fire?”

  “By god,” I said, trying to get my breath. “It looks like it’s underneath you.” I had to sit down and get my breath.

  “I just came out here to rest,” he said. “I was getting too hot.”

  “My god, Gid,” I said. “If you’re sweating like that already, what you better do is sickle in to town and rest on some nice cool bed. It ain’t good for a man in your shape to get that hot.”

  “Oh, I’m all right,” he said. “You’re more give out than me, just from that run.”

  “I may be out of breath,” I said. “But I ain’t sweated down from steepling no ten or fifteen posts.”

  “It was more like a hundred and fifty, the way my arm feels,” he said. “But it’s just sweat. Must have been them drugs they gave me. I never sweated this much before.”

  “Hell of a note,” I said. “Why don’t you let me hire a Mexican or two, to finish this fence? They work a lot cheaper than doctors.”

  “I never asked for no advice,” he said. “I guess I know when I’m able to work and when I’m not.”

  “I doubt very seriously that you do,” I said. “But I can’t do much about it.”

  “You can get to steepling,” he said.

  And that was the way it went, the rest of the week. Gid couldn’t work but thirty minutes at a time without having to rest, but he wouldn’t quit. The whole week he was just up and down. I finally just let him alone about it. I guess he just had so much sweat to get out of his system. After we finished the fencing we spent a week spraying the cattle and getting them shaped up. He finally got where he could work an hour or two at a stretch, but he wasn’t the hand he used to be.

  I ASKED him once if he’d been by to see Molly, and he said he had. Mabel was off on a vacation in Colorado and had Sarah and Susie with her, so Gid was batching. I imagine he seen Molly a lot. I never asked him what they decided about living together, and he never said. I knew he wouldn’t do nothing till Mabel got back; that would make him feel too sneaky. He didn’t much want to talk about it, and I couldn’t blame him particularly, so very little was ever said.

  ONE MORNING he came out looking kinda blue—he had got it into his head to fix the windmill that day. It was the mill on the old Fry place, where I was living. I had used it for years and years, without no particular trouble except a worn-out sucker rod now and then. But he had done ordered a new set of pipes and a new running barrel, and everything: a man was going to bring them out from town that morning. It looked like a hell of a hard day’s work, and I tried to head him off.

  “Just think a minute, Gid,” I said. “It’s the first of September. In another month it’ll be cool, and that mill won’t be half as hard to fix.”

  “I know it’ll be a little hot,” he said. “But we’ll just fix it anyway, while we got the time. We might be doing something else in another month. Let’s go get the sucker rod out.”

  The sucker rod in itself wasn’t much of a job, and we had it out in no time. The job was going to be lifting that old pipe out and lowering the new pipe in. I never had been much of a pipe hand, and the old stuff was corroded at the joints. It had been in long enough to be petrified.

  While we were waiting for the man with the pipe to come, we sat in the shade of the waterhouse and told some old windmilling stories we saved up for days like that. I had had an uncle get killed on a windmill, and I was scared of them as I was of a rattlesnake. I told Gid about it.

  “It was a steel mill,” I said. “Lightning struck it while he was up working on it. Electrocuted him.”

  “They’re dangerous,” he said. “If it’s a wooden mill, the dam frames are apt to break and let you fall. Remember Clarence Fierson? He got his neck broke falling off one.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said. “Went around with his neck in a brace for years. Lucky at that.”

  Pretty soon the pipe man came and the hard work began. It was all we could do to carry the new pipe over to the windmill where we needed it. Gid got as hot as a pistol, and I wasn’t cool, myself.

  “I don’t believe we better fool with this stuff,” I said. “You’ll strain your operation, lifting this shit. I can barely hold out myself.”

  “You want to work on the mill or on the ground?” he said.

  “I’m trying to think what will be the best for you. If you get up there you’ll get dizzy and fall, and if you stay down here you’ll get all the heavy lifting.”

  “Shut up about me,” he said. “I ain’t collapsed yet, and I been windmilling all my life. You stay down here.”

  He began to unscrew this and unscrew that, and in a little while it was too late to back out, we done had the thing torn into. We spent the rest of the morning unscrewing the old rotten pipe and lifting it out.

  When dinner time came we were both give out. I went in the house and fried us a little steak and made some tea, and for dinner we had steak and bread and about a gallon of iced tea apiece. We were too tired to tell any windmill stories, too. Gid flopped down on the living room couch, and I got me a pillow and stretched out on the floor. We couldn’t get ourselves moving agin till two o’clock.

  “Godamighty,” I said, when I finally sat up. “I sure hate to go back out there.”

  “Yeah, them pipes will be hot,” he said. “Hot and heavy.”

  “I can’t figure you out,” I said. “As much money as you got, and you’re still fighting a goddamn windmill. Why do you do it, Gid?”

  “Sometimes I wonder myself,” he said.

  We got up and went back to work. The sun was just a blur in the sky it was so hot, and the new pipes would fry an egg. It was all we could do to keep ahold of them, gloves or no gloves, and we had to cut threads in three or four joints. That took half the afternoon. Then Gid got back up in the mill and we raised the pipe and let it down in the well, a foot at a time. Once Gid lost his grip and I thought the whole shebang would go to the bottom, but I managed to slow it with my pipe wrench till he could get another hold. Finally we got the pipe run and h
e came down to rest. We were both wringing wet.

  “Well, we’re nearly done,” I said. “It’ll be cool in another hour. I’m kinda glad we done her, now.”

  “Me too,” he said, mopping his face. “One thing about it, when we get this bastard fixed this time, me and you oughtn’t to have to ever lay a hand on it agin. It ought to last at least twenty-five years.”

  “So ought we,” I said. “We might get to fix it agin. We’re better windmillers than I thought we were.”

  “A man has to be experienced like us before he has enough know-how to fix one of these things.”

  “Watch out now,” I said. “I fixed a lot of them while I was getting the experience, and you did too. Besides, it wasn’t the know-how I was worried about, it was the do-how. Two weeks ago you were flat of your back eating soup.”

  “Laying around in bed’s what like to ruined me,” he said.

  We put the sucker rod in, but it liked about a foot coming up to where it was supposed to connect. So we had to go down to the barn and get another piece and replace it. The barn was beginning to make a shadow and the big heat was over for the day. Gid went up and made the connection and came back.

  “Turn her on,” he said. “I want to see the water run.”

  I turned the mill loose and a little south breeze caught the wheel. Pretty soon the old rusty water began to pour out of the hydrant, and we stood there waiting for the stream to get clear. It was still and hour to sundown, but we were two tired cowboys, I don’t mind to admit. Gid was squatted down watching the water run, and I was propped up against a standard with my shirttail out, letting my belly cool. Pretty soon the rusty water washed out and the water came out of the faucet good and cold and clear. Gid stuck his mouth to the faucet and drank awhile, and then caught his breath and drank some more.

  “Be careful you don’t founder,” I said, “drinking so much cold water.”

  “Sure good water,” he said, leaning back on his heels. “I remember when me and Dad had that well dug. It sure has been a good well.”

  Then we heard water splashing behind us. We looked up and seen it was the overhead pipe, the one that went to the storage tank. We had forgot to connect it.

  “I’ll get it,” I said. “Just take a second.”

  “No, go on and get you a drink,” he said. “I left my pliers up there anyway.”

  “You’re the derrick hand,” I said, and went to drinking. I took about three good cool swallows and heard him yell: he had just hit the ground. I guess he lost his grip, or else his foot slipped, but he couldn’t have been over three or four feet up the ladder when it happened. It didn’t look like he hit very hard, either, and I seen him start to get right up, he even got his hand on a rung. Then he hesitated, and I thought one of his legs might be broke.

  “Wait, Gid,” I said.

  I got to him and eased him down on one elbow and he never acted the least bit hurt or wild, but I don’t believe he recognized me at all.

  “Well, boys, he threw me agin,” he said. “I’ll ride him yet.”

  It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck for a minute. But I wasn’t really worried. I thought he was just out of his senses for a minute. He had gone out of his head that way several times. He tried to get up but I held him.

  “Let me up, boys,” he said. “I ain’t hurt.”

  “Okay, now, Gid,” I said. “Just lay a minute and get your breath.”

  He minded me. “That bastard threw me, Johnny,” he said. He had quit fighting to get up and lay there, looking real weak. I think that scared me the most.

  “Here,” I said. “Where do you think you are? You just fell off the ladder a couple of feet. That you’re talking about was a long time ago.”

  I knew just exactly what he was thinking. When we was young there was a horse called Old Missouri, that everybody tried to ride. Dad owned him, God knows why. One day, he threw Gid six times. He never threw me but once, because I never tried to ride him but one time. But there never was a horse that Gid couldn’t wear down eventually, and he finally got so he could stay on Old Missouri.

  “I’ve been throwed harder,” he said.

  He went on like that for a while, and I didn’t try to stop him. I figured he’d come out of it in a few minutes. But he looked weak as a fish, and I finally decided to take him on it—getting him in the car was a real job. I stretched him out on the back seat and went back and turned off the faucet at the windmill. Gid’s doctor was in Wichita, but I struck for Thalia, it was closer. I started out slow, trying to miss the bumps, but I finally let that go and concentrated on speed.

  When I come to the highway I stopped a minute and Gid opened his eyes and looked at me. He seemed perfectly sensible.

  “What you reckon Molly’s doing?” he said. “I must be slipping.” Then he went off agin. “Sounds like I hear a train,” he said. “Let’s me and you go to the Panhandle. I’m tired of this country.”

  It made me sad to hear him talk that way, when it was forty years too late and him out of his mind. I begin to let the hammer down on his old Chevvy.

  And then, by god, he come completely out of it. “That god-damn old windmill,” he said. “Did you turn it off?”

  “Last thing I did,” I said.

  “Well, it won’t take long to make that connection,” he said. “My damn side hurts. I wish I’d woke up a little sooner, I’d had you take me over to Molly’s, I ain’t sick enough to go to town. Maybe this time I’d have sense enough to stay there where I belong. Why don’t you just take me back? I’d kinda like to see her.”

  “Aw, we better let a doc look at you first,” I said. “I can run you out there tonight or in the morning.”

  Then he looked out the window, I guess: he said what he always said when he looked at the country in that part of the summertime: “The country’s too dry, I sure do wish it would rain. My grass is just about gone.”

  I didn’t say nothing to that, but I was relieved he was back in his senses. I was trying to pass a Dutchman; he was pulling a load of hay.

  “Oh me, Johnny,” Gid said. “Ain’t this been a hell of a time?”

  “It sure has, Gid” I said. The sun was near enough down to be right in my eyes, and I needed all my concentration just to drive. I thought Gid said something else, to me, to Molly, to somebody, and then he didn’t say no more and I was hoping he had dozed off to sleep. But when I caught the red light by the courthouse in Thalia, and had to stop, I looked back at him and knew right then that Gideon Fry was dead.

  Eight

  AT THE CLINIC THEY SAID HE COULDN’T HAVE BEEN DEAD over ten minutes, or maybe fifteen. But I guess to Gid ten minutes was just as final as ten years. A bloodclot done it, they said. Some people blamed me for bumping him over them old roads. But I don’t think it would have made any difference. I couldn’t have gone off and left him there on the grass by the windmill, while I drove twenty-five miles in and the doctor drove twenty-five miles back. The doctor at the clinic said the fall had started internal bleeding.

  The meanest, hardest part of it all, for me, was going off that night and leaving Gid at the hospital. They wheeled him away somewhere on a stretcher, and when I asked the doctor what I could do, he said, “Nothing.” I called Buck, Gid’s son-in-law, and he told me which funeral home to have Gid sent to; I asked him if he knew where Mabel was, and he give me her hotel number in Colorado Springs. When I got her I said, “Well, Mabel, I’ve got some pretty bad news for you.” “What’s happened to him?” she said. “He fell off a windmill,” I said. “The fall never hurt him but it caused a bloodclot and the bloodclot killed him, Mabel. He died about an hour ago.” “The Lord help us,” she said. “Are you sure? What am I going to do?” They said she got hysterical after she hung up.

  After that, things was kind of out of my hands; there wasn’t no reason for me to stay. But I couldn’t hardly go. It didn’t seem right to just go off and leave him there. I kept wondering which jobs around the ranch he wanted me to get done
in the next day or two. But I finally seen there wasn’t nothing I could do but go. None of the hospital people paid any attention to me, and I hated the smell of the place.

  I DROVE out to Molly’s then, and broke it to her. She came out in the yard to meet me, it was done way after dark, and I told her about it and she cried, there by the yard gate. She was awful broke up. After a while we went over to the ranch and she drove Gid’s car back to town for me and I followed in the pickup. We left it at Buck’s. When we got back to Molly’s she had quit crying for a little while.

  “Well, come on in, let’s make some coffee,” she said. “You’ll stay here with me tonight, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  It was a sure sad night for us, but we didn’t say fifteen words. We drank a good bit of coffee.

  “You know, the night we got the word about Jimmy, me and Gid played dominos,” she said.

  “You want to play some tonight?” I said.

  “Oh lord no,” she said. “I’d rather not.”

  It was the first time I’d spent a whole night with Molly in three or four years, maybe longer than that. She went in the bathroom and put on her white nightgown and I got in bed. I held her hand and we both lay there awake for an hour and a half, on our backs. Once in a while Molly sniffled, but she wasn’t crying much.

  “Well, he was some feller,” I said. “I don’t expect to ever see another like him. You know that saddle he gave me? That’s the most expensive saddle ever made in the Thalia saddle shop. Me and him had a big fight the day he give it to me. Over you, I guess.”

  I guess it was worse for Molly. Him and her had associated so much there, in the house, right there in that same bedroom we was in, there was no telling what all she was remembering. I guess he was all over the room, for her.

  “Gid was my favorite,” she said. I finally went to sleep, I don’t know whether she did or not.

  IN THE MORNING, when I woke up, an unusual thing happened. I had turned over during the night and I had my arm across Molly’s middle and my face was in her hair. When I got my eyes open she was looking right square at me. There were dark circles under her eyes, but she had just the trace of a grin on her face. For a minute I didn’t know why, and then I noticed myself. As old as I was, too, and on a morning like that. And Molly had done noticed, that’s why she was watching me. At first I was plumb embarrassed.