“Why don’t we just take off an’ go someplace,” Duane said. “I’m sick of this town. You’re the only friend I got here, except Jacy.”
“You mean go and stay gone?” Sonny asked.
“No, just for a day or two. We could go to Mexico and get back by sometime Monday.”
“Reckon the pickup would make it?” Sonny asked, welcoming the prospect.
They got out their billfolds and counted their money. Saturday had been payday, and between them they had almost a hundred dollars.
“We can make it on that,” Duane said. “Let’s go clean up.”
A few minutes later Sonny vomited all over the bathroom, but once he got the mess cleaned up he felt much better. His ear was not throbbing so badly. They put on clean Levi’s and shirts and doctored themselves with aspirin, convinced they would both survive. The pickup didn’t have much gas in it and they had to stop in town and wake up Andy Fanner, who had a key to one of the gas stations.
“Why you boys or-tant to go all that way,” Andy said cheerfully. “The water’s buggy in Mexico.”
“We’ll just drink beer and tequila,” Duane said.
“You need-ernt to tell me,” Andy said sagely. “I been there. You get the clap you’ll wish you hadn’t drunk nothin’. Where you goin’, Laredo?”
The boys looked at one another. They hadn’t planned that far ahead; they were just going to Mexico.
“Which is the best place?” Sonny asked.
Andy wasn’t positive and he didn’t have a map, so they went back to the café and got one out of the glove compartment of Genevieve’s old Dodge. They took it inside to read it.
“Good lord,” Genevieve said, when she saw their skinned-up faces. They explained, and she sat down in a booth with them. “You all can just have the map,” she said. “I ain’t going far enough away that I need to worry about getting lost, I don’t guess.”
“Let’s go all the way to Matamoros, since we’re goin’,” Duane suggested. “I’ve heard it’s about the wildest.”
“Matamoros suits me,” Sonny said, gulping his coffee. They could hardly believe such an adventure was before them, and they wanted to get away before something happened to stop it.
Genevieve, however, was a little dubious. She followed them out to the pickup to see them off. The streets were empty, the streetlights shining palely. The stoplight blinked red and green all to itself.
“This pickup don’t look so good,” she said. The boys were so eager that it made her strangely sad. “Have either of you ever been that far away before?”
“Austin’s the farthest I’ve been,” Sonny said. It was the same with Duane, and Matamoros was almost twice as far as Austin. It made them all the more eager, but to their amazement Genevieve suddenly began to cry about something, right there on the street. Sonny had been just about to start the motor when she put her elbows on the pickup window and wiped away the tears with her hand. Both boys were stricken, afraid they were going to miss the trip after all.
“Why don’t you boys take my car?” Genevieve sniffed. “You’ll never make it in this old pickup.”
They were astonished. It was an unprecedented offer. Women were clearly beyond all understanding.
“Naw, we better go in this one,” Sonny told her softly. She was looking off down the street—he had never noticed before, but she seemed lonesome.
“We might wreck yours, an’ then where would we be?” he added.
“Okay,” Genevieve said, hardly paying attention. Something made her breasts ache. “Wait just a minute.”
She went in the café and got a ten dollar bill out of her purse. After she had wiped her eyes with a Kleenex she took the money outside and handed it to Sonny.
“Hide that somewhere,” she said. “Use it when you don’t have anything else to use. I’d like for you to get back in time for your graduation.”
Both boys assured her that the money was quite unnecessary, but she pressed it on them anyway. “Sam’s up there sitting on the curb,” she said. “Guess he can’t sleep. You might go say good-bye to him.”
The boys were glad of anything that would prolong the ecstasy of departure a few more minutes. Sonny backed solemnly into the empty street and turned toward the poolhall. Sam the Lion was sitting on the curb, scratching his ankles. Sonny drove right up in front of him and leaned out the window.
“Better come go with us,” he said. “We’re headed for the Valley.”
Astonished, Sam got up from the curb and came over to the pickup. He peered at the boys curiously.
“Going to the Valley tonight,” he said. “My God.” He was touched by the folly of youth and stood with his foot on the running board a moment.
“I guess the town can get along without us till Monday,” Sonny said.
“I reckon,” Sam said lightly. “If I was young enough to bounce that far I’d go with you. Need any money?”
“No. We got plenty.”
“You can’t tell,” Sam said, fishing out his billfold. “Better take ten dollars for insurance. They say money kinda melts when you take it across a border.”
The boys were too embarrassed to tell Sam that Genevieve had given them some already. They took the bill guiltily, anxious to be off. Sam stepped back to the curb and the boys waved and made a wide U-turn in the empty street. Genevieve was still outside the café and they waved at her too as they went by. She watched them, hugging her breasts. When they got to the stoplight it was red and they stopped, even though there wasn’t another moving car within fifteen miles of them. The light winked green and the pickup turned the corner and sped out of sight.
Genevieve went over and kicked lightly at the front tire of her Dodge—to her the tire always looked low. The boys had made her remember what it was to be young. Once, before they had any kids, she and her husband Dan took off one weekend and drove to Raton, New Mexico. They stayed in a motel, lost twenty dollars at the horse races, made love six times in two days, and had dinner in the coffee shop of a fancy restaurant. She had even worn eye shadow. Romance might not last, but it was something while it did. She looked up the street and waved at Sam the Lion, but he was looking the other way and didn’t notice her and she went back into the empty café, wishing for a few minutes that she was young again and free and could go rattling off across Texas toward the Rio Grande.
Sixteen
ALL DAY THE BOYS ALTERNATED, ONE DRIVING THE OTHER sleeping, and by late evening they were in the Valley, driving between the green orange groves. It was amazing how different the world was, once the plains were left behind. In the Valley there were even palm trees. The sky was violet, and dusk lingered until they were almost to Matamoros. Every few miles they passed roadside groceries, lit with yellow light bulbs and crowded with tables piled high with corn and squash, cabbages and tomatoes.
“This is a crazy place,” Duane said. “Who you reckon eats all that squash?”
They drove straight on through Brownsville and paid a fat, bored tollhouse keeper twenty cents so they could drive across the bridge. Below them was the Rio Grande, a river they had heard about all their lives. Its waters were mostly dark, touched only here and there by the yellow bridge lights. Several Mexican boys in ragged shirts were sitting on one of the guardrails, spitting into the water and chattering to one another.
A few blocks from the bridge they came to a stoplight on a pole, with four or five boys squatting by it. Apparently someone had run into the light pole because it was leaning away from the street at a forty-five-degree angle. As soon as Sonny stopped one of the boys ran out and jumped lightly onto the running board.
“Girl?” he said. “Boy’s Town? Dirty movie?”
“Well, I guess,” Sonny said. “I guess that’s what we came for.”
The boy quickly got in the cab and began to chatter directions in Tex-Mex—Sonny followed them as best he could. They soon left the boulevard and got into some of the narrowest streets the boys had ever seen. Barefooted kids and cats and dogs w
ere playing in the street, night or no night, and they moved aside for the pickup very reluctantly. A smell of onions seemed to pervade the whole town, and the streets went every which direction. There were lots of intersections but no stop signs—apparently the right of way belonged to the driver with the most nerve. Sonny kept stopping at the intersections, but that was reversal of local custom: most drivers beeped their horns and speeded up, hoping to dart through before anyone could hit them.
Mexico was more different from Thalia than either of the boys would have believed. The number of people who went about at night was amazing to them. In Thalia three or four boys on the courthouse square constituted a lively crowd, but the street of Matamoros teemed with people. Groups of men stood on what, in Thalia, would have been sidewalks, children rushed about in the dust, and old men sat against buildings.
Their guide finally ordered them to stop in front of a dark lump that was apparently some sort of dwelling.
“This couldn’t be no whorehouse,” Duane said. “It ain’t big enough to have a whore in it.”
Not knowing what else to do, they got out and followed their guide to the door. A paunchy Mexican in his undershirt and khakis opened it and grunted at the guide. “Ees got movies,” the boy said.
They all went inside, into a bedroom. Through an open doorway the boys could see an old woman stiriing something in a pot, onions and tomatoes it smelled like. An old man with no shirt on and white hair on his chest sat at a table staring at some dominoes. Neither the old man nor old woman so much as glanced at the boys. There were two beds in the bedroom and on one of them three little Mexican boys were curled up, asleep. Sonny felt strange when he saw them. They looked very helpless, and he could not feel it was very polite for Duane and him to barge into their room. The paunchy man immediately brought up the subject of movies. “Ten dollars,” he said. “Got all kinds.”
He knelt and drew a tiny little projector out from under the bed and took several rolls of eight-millimeter film out of a little bureau. The boys looked uncomfortably at one another. They either had to pay and watch the movies or else refuse and leave, and since they had driven five hundred miles to see some wickedness it was pointless to refuse. Duane handed over a ten dollar bill and the man stuffed it in his pocket and calmly began to clear one of the beds. He picked the sleeping boys up one at a time, carried them into the kitchen, and deposited them under the table where the old man sat. The little boys moaned a little and stirred in their sleep, but they didn’t wake up. The paunchy man then put the projector on their bed and prepared to show the movies on a sheet hung against the opposite wall.
“I don’t like this,” Sonny said, appalled. “I never come all this way just to get some kids out of bed. If he ain’t got a better place than this to show them I’d just as soon go on.”
Duane was of the same mind, but when they tried to explain themselves, the guide and the projectionist both seemed puzzled.
“Ees okay,” the guide said. “Sleepin’ away.” He gestured at the three little boys, all of whom were sound asleep on the dirt floor.
Sonny and Duane were stubborn. Even though the little boys were asleep, it wouldn’t do: they couldn’t enjoy a dirty movie so long as they were in sight of the displaced kids. Finally the projectionist shrugged, picked up the projector, and led them back through the hot kitchen and across an alley. The guide followed, carrying the film. Above them the sky was dark and the stars very bright.
They came to what seemed to be a sort of long outhouse, and when the guide knocked a thin, middle-aged man opened the door. He had only one leg, but no crutch, the room being so small that he could easily hop from one resting place to the next. As soon as they were all inside the guide informed the boys that it would cost them five dollars more because of the change of rooms: the one legged man could not be put to the trouble of sitting through a pornographic movie for nothing. Sonny paid it and the projectionist plugged the projector into a light socket. An old American calendar hung on the door, a picture of a girl in mechanic’s overalls on the front of it. The one-legged man simply turned the calendar around and they had a screen.
“You mean they’re going to show it on the back of a calendar,” Duane said. “For fifteen dollars?”
The light was turned off and the projector began to buzz—the title of the picture was Man’s Best Friend. It was clearly an old picture, because the lady who came on the screen was dressed like ladies in Laurel and Hardy movies. The similarity was so strong that for a moment the boys expected Laurel and Hardy to come on the screen and do dirty things to her. As the plot unfolded the print became more and more scratchy and more and more faded; soon it was barely possible to tell that the figures on the screen were human. The boys leaned forward to get a better look and were amazed to discover that the figures on the screen weren’t all human. One of the actors was a German shepherd dog.
“My God,” Duane said.
They both immediately felt the trip was worthwhile, if only for the gossip value. Nobody in Thalia had ever seen a dog and a lady behaving that way: clearly it was the ultimate depravity, even more depraved than having congress with Negro whores. They were speechless. A man came on and replaced the dog, and then the dog came back on and he and the man teamed up. The projectionist and the guide chuckled with delight at this development, but the boys were too surprised to do anything but watch. The ugliness of it all held them spellbound. When it was over they walked to the pickup in silence, followed by the guide and the projectionist. The latter was making a sales pitch.
“Lots more reels,” he said. “Got French, Gypsy, Chinese lesbians, all kinds. Five dollars a reel from now on.”
The boys shook their heads. They wanted to get away and think. The guide shrugged and climbed in beside them and they drove away, leaving the fat man in the middle of the road.
“I hope he puts them kids back in bed,” Sonny commented.
“Boy’s Town now,” the guide said happily. “Five hundred girls there. Clean, too.”
They soon left the downtown area and bumped off toward the outskirts of Matamoros. A red Chevrolet with Texas license plates was just in front of them, throwing the white dust of the dirt road up into their headlights. Soon they saw Boy’s Town, the neon lights from the larger cabarets winking red and green against the night. At first it looked like there were a hundred clubs, but after they drove around a while they saw that there were only fifteen or twenty big places, one on every corner. Between the corners were dark, unlit rows of cribs. The guide gestured contemptuously at the cribs and took them to a place called the Cabaret ZeeZee. When the boys parked, a fat policeman in khakis walked up and offered to open the door for them, but the guide chattered insultingly to him and he shrugged lazily and turned away.
The boys entered the cabaret timidly, expecting to be mobbed at once by whores or else slugged by Mexican gangsters, but neither thing happened. They were simply ignored. There was a large jukebox and a few couples dancing, but most of the people in the club were American boys, sitting around tables.
“The competition’s gonna be worse here than it is in Thalia,” Duane said. “We might as well get some beer.”
They sat down at one of the tile-topped tables and waited several minutes before a waitress came over and got their order. She brought them the first Mexican beer they had ever tasted, and they drank the first bottles thirstily. In their tired, excited state the beer quickly took effect—before they knew it they had had five bottles apiece, and the fatigue of the trip seemed to be dropping away. A fat-faced girl in a green blouse came over, introduced herself as Juanita, and with no further preamble squeezed Sonny intimately through his blue jeans. He was amazed. Though responsive, he felt the evening would bring better things than Juanita, so he politely demurred. Juanita went around and squeezed Duane the same way, but got the same reply.
“Texas ees full of queers,” she said, swishing her buttocks derogatorily as she walked away. The boys contemplated themselves over the beer b
ottles, wondering if they had been seriously insulted.
As the night wore on Sonny gradually set his mind on a slim, black-headed girl who spent most of her time on the dance floor, dancing with boys from Texas A & M. There were a good many boys from Texas A & M in the cabaret.
“I thought Aggies was all irresistible cocksmen,” Duane said. “What’s so many of them doing in a whorehouse?”
In time Sonny approached the girl, whose name was Maria. She cheerfully came to the table with him and downed three whiskeys while he was having a final beer. Between drinks she blew her warm, slightly sticky breath in his ear and squeezed him the way Juanita had.
“All night party?” she asked. “Jus’ twenty-five dollars. We can leef right now.”
It seemed ungallant to haggle with such a confident girl, so Sonny agreed. It turned out he owed eight dollars for the drinks, but it didn’t seem gallant to haggle about that either. He paid, and Maria led him out the back door of the Cabaret ZeeZee into a very dark alley, where the only light was from the bright stars far above. The place she took him didn’t even have a door, just a blue curtain with a light behind it. The room was extremely tiny. The one light bulb was in a socket on the wall and the bed was an old iron cot with a small mattress and a thin green bedspread.
In the room, Maria seemed less perky than she had in the club. She looked younger than she had inside. Sonny watched her unzip her dress—her back was brown and smooth, but when she turned to face him he was really surprised. Her breasts were heavy, her nipples large and purplish, and she was clearly pregnant. He had never seen a pregnant woman naked before, but he knew from the heavy bulge of her abdomen that she must be carrying a child. She tried to look at him with whorish gaiety, but somehow it didn’t work: the smile was without life, and showed her gums. When he was undressed she splashed him with coolish water from a brown pitcher, and scrutinized him with such care that an old worry popped into his mind. Perhaps his equipment was too small? He had worried about that when he first began to go with Ruth, and had even tried to find out how large one’s equipment was supposed to be, but the only two reference works in the high-school library were the World Book and the Texas Almanac, neither of which had anything helpful on penises. Gradually it had ceased to worry him, but with Maria he had begun to feel generally hesitant.
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