Texas by the Tail

by Jim Thompson

  “Thinking about it is all that’s kept me alive,” the kid said. “I can die happy knowing that I’m taking all those bastards to hell with me.”

  The father decided that it was a good time to give his son the word. The kid listened with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, as one accustomed to seeing his dreams washed down the john.

  “So we don’t own anything, huh? You hocked it all to get the well drilled.”

  “I’m sorry, yes.”

  “What about the rig and the tools?”

  “All gone. The trucks, our car, everything.”

  “Goddam,” the kid said. “Those one hundred and eighty-two bastards could be dead right now for what this well cost!”

  He had a right to be pretty damn sore about it, he felt, but somehow he couldn’t be. Somehow, he wanted to howl with laughter, because when you thought about it, you know, it was really funny as hell.

  He started to take a drink, and then decided that he didn’t want any. He lighted a cigarette, noting wonderingly that he no longer had ulcer pains. He coughed and spat in his handkerchief, and there was no blood in the spit.

  “My God,” he told his father, and there was awe in his voice. “I’m afraid I’m going to live!”

  He and the old man walked out of town together; they couldn’t afford anything but the ankle express. With the discovery of oil, Big Spring was already burgeoning into a city. The old man turned and looked back at it from its outskirts, and there was pride in his defeated eyes.

  “We did that, son,” he said. “You and I. We caused a city to bloom in the wilderness. We’ve made history.”

  “We should have stood in bed,” the kid said. But then he laughed and gave the old man an affectionate slap in the back. For his physical health was not all that had improved during the past two years.

  Out there on the prairies where time had stood still for endless eons, out there where nature loomed large and man was small, he had gotten a new perspective on himself. And his once all-consuming problems had shrunk in size, and he had grown proportionately in the only way that growing matters. Out there he had discovered that a man could be much less and much more than the sum of his moments, and that what had been done could be undone by enduring.

  Arm in arm, he and the old man went down the road together, not into the sunset, for that was behind them, but into the dawn or where the dawn would have been if it had been that time of day. They went down the road together, the old man and his kid, the kid became a man, and he got rid of the book with the one hundred and eighty-two names, getting rid of a lot else along with it. And it was the last book he ever compiled of that kind.

  21

  That’s quite a story, Art,” Mitch laughed. “Is that really the way little Big Spring became big Big Spring?”

  “You hintin’ that I’m a liar?” his friend demanded crustily. And then he also laughed. “Well, that’s pretty much the way it happened,” he said. “It’s a middlin’ true story. No story can be gospel true unless you’ve got all the facts and the time to tell ’em, which is two gots I ain’t got. You figure on savin’ that bottle for yourself, or passing it like a gent?”

  Mitch chuckled and passed the bottle of sour mash. His friend downed an enormous drink of it, without the slightest change of expression, and began rolling a brown-paper cigarette. He was eighty years old, Mitch knew, and he looked a healthy sixty. He was an ex-cowhand, ex-gambler, ex-rancher, and ex-banker. He described his present vocation as gal-chasin’ and booze-tastin’.

  They were sitting in Mitch’s room in the town’s leading hotel. The old man could have written a check for the full value of the hotel, and the block it stood in. Yet he pinched out the coal of his cigarette, and put the butt into the pocket of his threadbare shirt.

  Mitch had seen many old men do the same thing in these far-out western cities. Men with permanently bowed legs and faces as brown as saddle leather, and fortunes so large they could not even spend the interest on them. They sat around the hotel lobbies in Big Spring and Midland and San Angelo, reading newspapers that other people left behind, squeezing two or three smokes out of the same brown-paper cigarette. But it was not because they were stingy. They had simply grown up in an era and an area where there was little to buy and few opportunities for buying. The same newspaper might be passed around a bunkhouse for months, because a newspaper was a rare thing and something to be treasured. Similarly, a man was careful with his tobacco, for it might be a very long time before he could replenish his supply.

  That was why the old men were as they were—because of the way they had lived as younger men. Because they had reversed the usual order of things, learning the value of everything with suitably little regard for its ephemeral, meaningless price.

  “Let’s see now,” said Art Savage, Mitch’s friend. “What was we talkin’ about before you hid the whiskey and got me all confused?”

  “Mrs. Lord,” Mitch grinned. “And since when could anyone hide whiskey from you?”

  “Don’t get smart with me, bub. But about Gidge Lord—Gidge Parton, I always think of her. Used to tomcat around with her a lot before she married Win Lord. A leetle bit younger’n I was but that didn’t seem to make her no never mind. Don’t know just what might have come of it if Win hadn’t edged in on me, because that Gidge was really a lot of gal.…”

  Savage paused, his faded blue eyes contemplating the past and its might-have-beens. Mitch brought him out of it by passing the whiskey bottle.

  “So you haven’t seen her in recent years?” he suggested.

  “Who the hell says I ain’t?” Savage demanded. “Sure, I seen her. Two-three months after she was married, we started gettin’ together again. Didn’t feel quite right about it in a way; it’s always kind of consciencesome triflin’ with another man’s wife, y’know, and it ain’t ever been healthy in Texas. But Gidge wanted to, and with Win boozin’ and whoring all the time, I didn’t feel too bad about it. We finally broke it up when she got pregnant. Reckon I’d’ve broke it up before then, if I’d had my druthers, because a lot of Win’s nastiness had rubbed off on her, and she could run him a close second for low-down. What the hell are you grinnin’ about, anyways?”

  “Me?” Mitch said innocently. “Well, nothing really. It just occurred to me that perhaps you were—”

  “Don’t you say it!” Savage said grimly. “Don’t you dast say it! Anytime I see a thing like Winnie Lord, Jr., coming out of a place I been in, I’ll pinch its head off. He’s Win’s begettin’ and don’t you ever think he ain’t. The spittin’ image of him. You ever seen the two of them together at the same age you couldn’t have told ’em apart.”

  Mitch murmured reassuringly. He declared that he had never seriously thought that a fine man like Savage could father such a skunk.

  “About these checks, Art. What do you think would be a good approach on them?”

  “Sue. Have to pay off in the long run on good paper.”

  Mitch explained that suing was out of the question. Savage scratched his ankle with the toe of his boot and reached for the whiskey again. It was just possible, he said, that suing wouldn’t do any good anyway; fella sued he might find a long line ahead of him.

  “Come t’think of it, that’s probably why them checks wasn’t paid, Mitch. The way Gidge is feelin’ the squeeze, she ain’t paying nothing she can possibly get out of.”

  “Yes?” Mitch said. “I’m not sure I follow you, Art.”

  “What’s so hard to follow? The ranch is in trouble, money trouble, an’ it couldn’t happen to a nicer outfit.”

  “But how could it be, for God’s sake? Over a million acres of land and two or three hundred producing oil wells, and—”

  Savage told him how it could be. Because the ranch didn’t end with its million acres. It stretched all the way to New York and on down to South America, and even over into Iran and the Far East. The ranch holdings included chain stores and apartment houses, and shipping and manufacturing companies, and so damned many
other things that even Gidge Lord probably didn’t know what they were.

  “Oh, sure, she’s got people runnin’ the shebang for her. Whole office buildin’ full of ’em in New York, I understand. But the best people in the world can’t help you none if you don’t listen to ’em, and they sure can’t make a dollar be in more’n one place ’t once.” Savage paused, chuckling with grim satisfaction. “Told her a long time ago she was spreading herself too thin—just tryin’ to be friendly, you know. And you know what she told me?”

  “Something pretty unpleasant, I suppose.”

  “It was, oh, it was unpleasant, all right. Not to mention downright dirty-mouthed. Had a mind to repeat it to her last week when she paid me a call, but I just don’t believe in talking that way in front of ladies even if they ain’t.”

  Savage revealed that Gidge Lord had tried to borrow money from him (without success, naturally!). The banks were loaded with her paper, and would take no more, and she was now beating the bushes for private money. She needed twenty million—or so she had told Savage—and she was short more than half of it.

  “I told her if she was so hard up she’d better clamp down on Winnie, but o’course she’d never do it. Prob’ly couldn’t, short of killin’ him, and anyways I guess what he blows in doesn’t stack up to a lot when you need as much as she does.”

  “I suppose not,” Mitch said. “Particularly when he can have so much fun without paying anything for it.”

  “Oh, sure. They’re real fond of doing that.”

  They finished the bottle, the old man drinking most of it. Mitch saw him to the door, and they shook hands.

  “Well, thanks for dropping in, Art. Let’s get together again when I’m out this way.”

  “Anytime,” Savage said. “You just whistle an’ I’ll come a-runnin’. Did I tell you anything helpful?”

  “Helpful?”

  “Uh-uh. For when you go out to the ranch tomorrow.”

  “Well, I’m not sure. But—”

  “Then I’ll tell you somethin’ now. Don’t go.”

  He nodded firmly and went down the hall to the elevator, very erect, swaying with the teeter of his boots.

  At eight o’clock the next morning, Mitch started for the ranch.

  His first forty minutes or so were on the highway, and easygoing. He turned off it onto a county road, which twisted sharply and constantly at its township lines and ended abruptly, after some twenty miles, at the side of a small mountain.

  A three-strand barbed-wire fence ran along the base of the mountain. From the top wire, a rusted tin sign swung gently in the incessant West Texas wind:

  LORD

  Keep Out

  The fence followed a rutted trail which led off across the rolling grasslands in a southwesterly direction. Mitch turned into the trail, wincing as the car’s crankcase dragged dirt. He drove very carefully, running in low gear much of the time. The car bounced and pitched, and a ribbon of steam seeped out from under the hood.

  The Lords had little interest in roads. They traveled by plane and helicopter. A spur railroad led into the ranch from its other side, bringing in what they wanted to buy and taking out what they wished to sell. Since they seldom used roads themselves, then, naturally, they would not contribute to their upkeep. County and district tax boards had long since given up trying to make them.

  In less than an hour, Mitch was forced to stop to let the car cool off. With the hood raised, he leaned against a fender and mopped the dust from his eyes. He looked down the shambling line of the fence, the tin warning signs swinging from it at fifty-foot intervals, Lord—Keep Out, and he thought, Okay, so I believe you! On perhaps every fifth or sixth fence post was the bleached skull of a steer, grisly testimony to the truth that ranching is not a gravy train. One of these mementos grinned at Mitch from a few feet away. The horns were tilted at a rakish angle, and the fleshless jaws hung open as though speaking to him.

  He turned away from it suddenly. He said aloud, “My God, what am I doing here?” And he had no sensible answer to the question. He had come here because he didn’t know what else to do. Because there was always a chance in the seemingly most chanceless situation. Not much of a chance, maybe. A much better chance doubtless of getting your butt kicked off. But there was a chance, and if he could see it and act on it, he could still stay even with the game. He could still have Red. And if he missed it, that one-in-a-million chance—

  Well, nothing would matter much, anyway.

  He got back in the car and drove on. Rather grimly, his jaw set; fighting down the insistent queasiness of his stomach. This had to be done, the long shot risk had to be taken. But all his gambler’s instincts cried out against it, and all his years of civilized living shrank from it. It had been a very long time since he had traveled in circles where clobbering was an accepted practice. He wondered if he was still up to it, and he guessed he would find out very soon.

  The trail rose gently for a mile or more, then dropped into a softly swelling flatland. The brutal scrub-oaked cliffs and rocky hummocks were abruptly gone, and the emptiness around them was gone, and the land was filled with the evidence of life.

  Pumping jacks and stub-derricks marched across the countryside. Telephone poles, heavy with cross-braces and cables, appeared out of nowhere. White-faced cattle moved over the grass like a slowly unrolling carpet, spread out in an endless array of thoughtfully munching jaws and lazily switching tails until they were lost in the horizon. Far off to the right were the glimmering white outlines of the ranch buildings. Behind them a plane arrowed up into the sky and disappeared in its brilliance.

  The trail took another right-angle turn. A mile later it ended at a cattle-crossing and gate. Immediately inside the gate, blocking the graveled road which stretched up into the ranch, stood a jeep. It carried the thick aerial of a radio transmitter. A young cowhand sat in it, talking over the phone, his white teeth flashing occasionally as he laughed.

  He gestured a greeting at Mitch with the barrel of his rifle, then pointed it, shaking his head as Mitch started to get out of the car. Mitch stayed where he was. A couple of minutes later, the cowhand hung up the phone and came over to him.

  He wore a gunbelt and gun—the first cowhand Mitch had ever seen so equipped. He also kept his rifle with him. He thrust his tow-colored head through the window, his mouth parted in a wide grin, and said, “Uh-hah?”

  Mitch explained that he wanted to see Mrs. Lord and her son, and the grin—it was meaningless, mirthless—widened.

  “Winnie ain’t here. What’d you want to see his maw about?”

  “It’s a personal matter.”

  “Too personal to tell me?”

  “I’m afraid so, yes.”

  The cowhand moved his rifle, scratching it against the side of the car, and pointed with it. “That’s the road back to town, mister. The same one you came in on.”

  Mitch told him about the checks. He told him in complete detail, for the man would be satisfied with nothing less.

  Then, he sat back to wait, his heart thumping a little, as the cowhand telephoned from the jeep. The call lasted a long time, or so it seemed to Mitch, and the cowhand seemed to be laughing through most of it. At last he hung up, backed the jeep off the road, and motioned for Mitch to come ahead.

  Mitch did so, bumping across the cattle guard. The man signaled to him again and he stopped abreast of the jeep.

  White teeth flashed at him. “Straight ahead, mister. Can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks,” Mitch said. “Thanks very much.”

  “Don’t turn off nowheres. Start strayin’ you’ll get shot.”

  Mitch nodded and drove on. The road peaked a long, almost indiscernible slope, and then he was looking down into the orderly chaos of the ranch buildings.

  They were arranged in a series of ragged open-end squares, with the white adobe ranch residence in the center. It was two stories and roofed with heavy red tiles. A tile-roofed veranda or “gallery” extended across its length
at the first floor level, shading the homey assortment of lounging chairs beneath it.

  A hum of activity arose from the buildings; ambiguous, blending together. The roar of a jeep, the cracking of a radio, the clatter and click of machinery—voices in blurred conversation, an outburst of muted laughter, a loud shout of “What the goddam hell are you—?” ending with the sudden roar of a tractor.

  Men moved in and out of the lanes between the buildings. A man carrying a saddle over his shoulder, two men driving a jeep, two others lugging some heavy metal object. A white-aproned old man flung dishwater from a distant window, and a man rose up from beneath the window and shook his fist angrily.

  Mitch parked the car in the packed-down gravel of the courtyard. He got out, and started across the patchy grass lawn to the house, then turned as a voice hailed him.

  “Corley!”

  Off to the left, immediately beyond the inside square of buildings was a stub derrick, the site, apparently, of an abandoned or pumped-out well, since no jack or lines ran to it. Two ranch hands and a girl had emerged from its sheet-iron enclosure, the girl striding in the lead. She raised her hand as Mitch turned, indicating that it was she who had called. He waved back a little diffidently, and started toward her.

  She must be a member of the family; no woman employee would be out consorting with cowhands. Yet he had heard of no female Lords, aside from Mrs. Lord, and he would have heard of this girl.

  She was so tanned that he couldn’t tell what her face looked like. In fact, he hardly gave her face a passing glance. He looked at her body and he could not look away, for the girl seemed naked. Naked, yes, despite the riding pants and the blouse, because that was the way she was built. You could have bundled her up in a dozen overcoats, and she still would have been wearing nothing, and she would have known it and liked it. Because she was built that way, too.

  She was a bitch with her tail up. She came toward him bitchily, the svelte hips swaying with promise, the extravagant breasts bobbling and jiggling. And the heat welled out of her from fifty feet away.