Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  When Jacy saw how unselfconscious he had become she grew terribly annoyed with him for having gone first. If he had offered to let her be first, like a gentleman should have, she would be sitting calmly on the side and it would be over with. But everybody in the room was watching her and there was simply nothing to do but bluff it out.

  “Goodness, I hope I don’t fall off this thing,” she said, when she got on the diving board. Diving boards always looked a lot higher up when you were on them.

  “Sandy will fish you out if you do,” Annie-Annie said.

  Sure enough, that hideous little Sandy had slipped into the pool again and was swimming around like a frog about ten feet from the diving board. He had his mask on. Jacy decided she was with the most brazen bunch of kids she had ever seen, and she didn’t like one of them.

  She took her shoes off first, and then pulled her sweater off over her head. It was not as easy for her to undress fast as it had been for Lester. Once the sweater was off the question was whether she should take her skirt off first and then her bra and panties, or her bra off first and then her skirt and panties. She decided the skirt should come off first and she got out of it without looking up. It was embarrassing to have to reach back and unhook a bra in front of so many kids, but she had so much off already that she couldn’t afford to dawdle. It seemed as though she had been out on the board about thirty minutes, as compared to five seconds for Lester. Once she got the bra off she started to yank her panties down and jump, but just as she bent over to slide them down Sandy frogged right under the board and peered up at her through his goggles. Jacy lost her balance and had to sit down very quickly to keep from falling in. At that all the kids burst out laughing and whistling and pointing at Sandy, who was becalmed just beneath her, his tiny little mast sticking up out of the water. It was plainly degrading. Angrily Jacy jerked the panties off her ankles and dropped them right on Sandy’s mask.

  Instantly the crowd became hers: they all began to laugh at Sandy, who frog kicked off toward the shallow end of the pool. Jacy let herself off the board and swam to the poolside to much acclaim—two boys helped her up on the side.

  For an hour she swam and giggled, and the longer she stayed with them the more she came to like the crowd. They seemed like the wildest, most intelligent kids she had ever seen, and she determined then and there to throw in her lot with them. Before the night was over she could stand by the pool talking to some boy or other and feel perfectly at ease—the drops of water shining in her pubic hair soon ceased to disconcert her and began to seem rather becoming. At last she could even look at boys’ penises without embarrassment.

  Only one thing upset her: her new wristwatch, Duane’s Christmas present. She had forgotten to take it off when she jumped into the pool. The kids all pooh-poohed her and told her not to worry so much about a fifty-dollar watch and she saw that they were right. It was just a wristwatch, and she could always make it up to Duane some other way.

  Ten

  JACY AND LESTER HAD NOT BEEN GONE FROM THE DANCE ten minutes before word got around that they were going to a swimming party where everyone would be naked. The reason word got around so fast was that Lester told several of the younger kids about it just before he left. He told them he and Jacy were going to swim naked, just like everybody else. It was almost past belief, but when the kids saw him actually drive away with Jacy they instantly believed it and began to talk about it. Nothing wilder had ever been heard of in Thalia—it was even wilder than actually making out, because that was customarily done in the dark and nothing much could be seen.

  In no time there were groups of excited boys standing around, speculating about the look of Jacy’s breasts. They even had a hot argument over whether or not blond girls really had blond hair underneath their panties. Some of the younger, illiterate kids thought that all women had black hair in that particular place, but the better-read youths soon convinced them otherwise by reference to the panty-dropping scene in I, the Jury, a book the local drugstore could never keep in stock.

  The news about Lester and Jacy did not surprise Sonny much. He knew that any time Lester came to Thalia he was likely to end up taking Jacy somewhere, and since he had heard for years that Wichita kids were always having orgies it was only natural that sooner or later Lester would take Jacy to one. The worst thing about it was that it would depress Duane something fierce.

  While he was waiting for Duane to get the news, Sonny wandered into the refreshment room. There had been a big table full of plates of cookies, with a huge bowl of punch for the kids and the grown-ups who didn’t drink. All the punch was gone and the only cookies left were a few rubbery, inedible brownies. Empty paper cups were strewn all around and a lady in a black dress was bent over picking them up and putting them in a big wastebasket. It was Mrs. Popper. The school teachers’ wives always fixed the refreshments for the Christmas dance, but somehow Sonny was surprised to bump into Mrs. Popper just then. Coach Popper never came to dances, and especially not to Saturday night dances. He would not have missed Gunsmoke for all the dances in Texas.

  “Hello, Sonny,” Mrs. Popper said. “Want to help me pick up these cups, since you’re not dancing? I’m tired.”

  She looked tired, too—at least her face did. She was not wearing any makeup and had apparently just come down to do her part with the refreshments.

  “Sure, be glad to,” Sonny said, picking up a cup. The punch had been a sweet, grape mixture and the rims of the cups were sticky. Sonny gathered about twenty and went to drop them in the wastebasket.

  “I guess you still haven’t found a new girl friend, have you?” Mrs. Popper asked quietly. Sonny was very startled. He had forgotten she knew about his old girl friend.

  “No ma’am, but I’m looking hard,” he said.

  “Are you?” Ruth said, even more quietly. “It seems to me that if you were really looking hard you might look at me.”

  Surprised, Sonny did look at her, and remembered that they had become a little fond of one another the afternoon he had driven her to the hospital. He remembered wishing they had kissed, and when he looked at her mouth he wished it again, a very strange wish to be having in the refreshment room of the Legion Hall, during the Christmas dance. But there was something fresh about Mrs. Popper’s mouth, as if what was left of the softness and beauty she was said to have had as a girl still lingered there. Sonny was mute. Suddenly he wanted Mrs. Popper and he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do about it. He was simply mute, and his silence filled Ruth with despair. She waited a moment, hoping he would say something; when he didn’t she felt something slip out of line inside of her and she turned away, holding the wastebasket full of dirty cups. She was afraid she might cry. Sonny saw the look of sadness come in her face and realized he had to say something if he wanted anything to happen between them.

  “I’ll help you carry that out to the trash barrel,” he said.

  Then it was Ruth’s turn to be mute—mute with relief. They went out the back door together and walked to the group of barrels at the edge of the alley. When they had dumped the cups into one of barrels, Ruth hesitantly came close to Sonny and then came very close. Her cheek was warm against his throat, and he smelled the thin, clean smell of her perfume. For a minute they were too silent—Sonny looked over her head, beyond the town. Far across the pastures he saw the lights of an oil derrick, brighter than the cold winter stars. Suddenly Mrs. Popper lifted her head and they kissed. Their mouths didn’t hit just right at first and she put her fingers gently on each side of his face and guided his mouth to hers. The touch of her cool fingers startled and excited him and he pulled her to him more tightly. Her breath was warm across his cheek. Near the end of the kiss she parted her lips and teeth for a moment and touched him once with her tongue. Then she took her mouth away and for several minutes pressed her lips lightly against his throat.

  “You’re not as scared as you were the first time I wanted to do this,” she said.

  It was true: Sonny didn
’t feel at all scared, though his legs were trembling just a little from excitement. He liked to feel Mrs. Popper’s lips moving against his throat. This had been the first time in his life when kissing someone had been as pleasant as he imagined kissing should be. It was never that pleasant with Charlene.

  “Maybe we’re going to have something, after all,” Ruth said. “Will you drive me to the hospital again next week, if I arrange for Herman to ask you?”

  “You bet,” Sonny said. “The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.” He bent down to find her mouth and Ruth put her hands on his cheeks again. They kissed slowly and luxuriously. At first the kiss was as soft as the first one had been, but then Ruth discovered that Sonny had awakened and was thrusting at her, not so much with his mouth as with himself, wanting more of her. He kissed so hard her head was pushed back and when she opened her eyes for a moment she was looking straight up, toward the stars. Sonny tried to get even closer to her, pulling her against him with his arm. In years nothing had thrilled her so much or touched her so much as he did, simply by wanting her—the rush of her blood made her almost dizzy. She took his tongue into her mouth and touched it lightly for a second with her tongue and the edges of her teeth. Then she took her face away quickly, pressing it against his neck again.

  “I’m going home now,” she said. “This is no place to dawdle. Tuesday we’ll do this more. I really want to do it more, don’t you?”

  “You bet,” Sonny said, bending to kiss her neck. He didn’t want to talk—what he wanted was more of the delicate, delicious sensations her mouth had given him. It seemed to him it might just be best if he said so.

  “I want to kiss you one more time before you go home,” he said.

  “Goodness,” Ruth said. “Okay.” She lifted her hand and traced the edges of his lips with one finger before she kissed him. Again, when they kissed, he pressed against her with an insistence that thrilled Ruth: it was if he were trying to find her very center, her deepest place. While they were kissing, a car turned into the other end of the parking lot and the lights arced in their direction. It was simply some teenagers turning around, but it scared them and they broke apart immediately.

  “In three days I’ll see you,” Ruth said, picking up the wastebasket.

  Sonny felt it wouldn’t do for him to follow her in, so he walked around the building and entered at the front door. When he came in Duane was standing by the coatroom, obviously furious. Leroy Malone and two or three other boys were standing there too.

  “I guess you heard the news,” Duane said. “My girl’s gone swimming naked with Lester Marlow. That’s about the damnedest thing I ever heard. It’s enough to make a man go get drunk.”

  “I guess Mrs. Farrow forced her into it,” Sonny said.

  “Let’s go get drunk,” Leroy suggested. “I know where we can steal a couple of bottles of vodka—I saw a man put two in his car just a minute ago.”

  The suggestion had much appeal, and Sonny immediately seconded it. Getting drunk would be the only way to save Duane from a gloomy night, and besides he felt a good bit like getting drunk himself. Kissing Mrs. Popper had left him excited and confused.

  Leroy swiped the vodka and the three of them drove to the poolhall, which generally stayed open until one or two o’clock on Saturday nights. A good many of the younger kids trailed up also, hoping to get a swallow or two of vodka.

  They all bought Cokes and took them back to the john one at a time and spiked them. None of them were used to vodka and it was not long before it began to have an effect on their behavior, not to mention their pool shooting. They shot so badly that it took them thirty minutes to finish an eight-ball game.

  “Boys, from the way you all are shootin’ a feller would think you were drunk,” Sam the Lion said innocently, breaking them all up.

  Leroy Malone was very inventive when it came to pestering Billy, and when eight-ball began to get tiresome it occurred to him that it might be fun to get Billy drunk. He drew Sonny and Duane aside.

  “Let’s take Billy somewhere and get him drunk,” he said. “Think how funny he’d be drunk.”

  The boys were not against it. Anything for mischief and adventure. They grabbed Billy and waltzed him outside. Several of the younger boys got wind of the plot and tagged along.

  “We could go on down to the stockpens,” Leroy suggested. “There’s a blind heifer down there we could fuck. She belongs to my uncle. There’s enough of us we could hold her down. It’d be as good a place as any to get Billy drunk.”

  The prospect of copulation with a blind heifer excited the younger boys almost to frenzy, but Duane and Sonny, being seniors, gave only tacit approval. They regarded such goings on without distaste, but were no longer as rabid about animals as they had been. Sensible youths, growing up in Thalia, soon learned to make do with what there was, and in the course of their adolescence both boys had frequently had recourse to bovine outlets. At that they were considered overfastidious by the farm youth of the area, who thought only dandies restricted themselves to cows and heifers. The farm kids did it with cows, mares, sheep, dogs, and whatever else they could catch. There were reports that a boy from Scotland did it with domesticated geese, but no one had ever actually witnessed it. It was common knowledge that the reason boys from the dairy farming communities were so reluctant to come out for football was because it put them home too late for the milking and caused them to miss regular connection with the milk cows.

  Many of the town kids were also versatile and resourceful—the only difficulty was that they had access to a smaller and less varied animal population. Even so, one spindly sophomore whose father sold insurance had once been surprised in ecstatic union with a roan cocker spaniel, and a degraded youth from the north side of town got so desperate one day that he crawled into a neighbor’s pig pen in broad daylight and did it with a sow.

  “I say a blind heifer beats nothing,” Leroy said, and no one actively disagreed with the sentiment. They all got in the pickup and headed for the stockpens, eight or nine of the younger boys shivering in the back.

  The stockpens were a mile or two north of town, surrounded by mesquite. When they got there all the boys in the back piled out and went to locate the heifer, but Sonny and Duane stayed in the cab a minute and took a final drink of vodka to warm them up. They gave Billy a Coke that was about a third full of vodka and he drank it happily.

  “We better slow him down,” Duane said. “If he gets too drunk he may want a turn at the heifer. I doubt old Hank Malone would want an idiot screwin’ his livestock.”

  Sonny got out, not saying anything. It bothered him when people called Billy an idiot. Billy didn’t seem that much dumber than other people, and he was a lot friendlier than most.

  When they got to the lots Leroy was sitting on the fence watching the younger kids chasing the scared, sightless heifer around the dark pen.

  “They’re after her,” he said. “They’ll get her in a minute.”

  The little heifer didn’t weigh over three hundred pounds and in a few minutes the boys cornered her by the loading chute and wrestled her to the ground. She struggled for a while but finally gave it up and lay still. A freshman was sitting on her head and her frightened breath raised little puffs of dust from the sandy lot. Sonny, Duane, and Leroy got off the fence and went over to watch. Billy had climbed up on the fence, but he didn’t know what was going on and just sat there sucking the empty Coke bottle.

  “You boys are holding her wrong,” Leroy said in a superior tone. “Ain’t you ever fucked a heifer before? You little piss-ants must be virgins. Let her up on her knees.”

  The younger boys thought that was bitter news: the heifer had been trouble enough to get down. Leroy was a senior, however, and they respected his authority. When they let her up she almost got away, but there were nine of them and they managed to hang on and stop her.

  It had come time to decide who went first, and the younger boys, nearing exhaustion just from holding the heifer, pre
ssed for a decision. It would be one of the three seniors, of course.

  “You all decide,” one of them pleaded. “We can’t hold her all night.”

  At that point Sonny surprised everyone, even himself, by suddenly withdrawing from the competition.

  “You all help yourselves,” he said hastily. “I drunk too much, I think I’m gonna have to puke.”

  It was the best excuse he could think of. When he agreed to come to the stockpens he supposed he would naturally be a participant, but the moment he saw the little blind heifer he knew he didn’t want to. It had something to do with Mrs. Popper, though he was not certain just what. It didn’t seem right to kiss Mrs. Popper and still fiddle around with heifers, blind or not blind. Not only did it not seem right: it no longer seemed like fun. Kissing Mrs. Popper even once was bound to be more fun than anything he could possibly do with the skinny, quivering little heifer. He suddenly felt like he had graduated, and it was an uneasy feeling. He knew Duane and the other boys would think it awfully strange of him not to take a turn, so to fool them he went off in the mesquites and pretended to be sick.

  When he came back to the fence the orgy in the lot was in full progress. Duane was attacking the heifer, and Leroy, who had already finished, was helping hold. Two or three of the younger boys had their pants down and were parading lustfully around the lot. One sophomore was in something of a predicament because, by an unexpected stroke of luck, he had actually made out with a girl that night, a pig from Holliday who had come to the dance. As a consequence of that success the boy was feeling somewhat enervated and was attempting to restore himself by beating his member against a cold aluminum gate. When the freshmen started in on the heifer it was even more hilarious: many of them were too short to reach the target comfortably and had to struggle on tiptoe.