Perhaps because he was in unfamiliar surroundings, Davey woke early. It was only a little while after dawn. Patsy had not slept very deeply and woke as soon as he did. She fed him and decided to take him for a walk, even though it would mean carrying him. Jim was sound asleep and would be for hours and she didn’t like sitting in closed rooms. She put on some jeans and a sweatshirt—brought in case she decided to make a quick trip to visit Roger—and sat Davey on her hip and went out. The red sun had barely risen above the plain when they left the motel. It was a clear ball, hanging in the gray sky to the east. The streets were quiet and it was cool and Davey was pleased to be out and moving. Cars passed them, cars on Route Sixty-six. Davey looked at them, and the weary occupants of the cars looked back curiously at the young woman in sneakers and jeans, walking her baby at dawn. “You’re getting heavy, old chum,” she said, switching him to her other hip. Davey spat up on her sweatshirt and kept his eyes on the road. There was dew on the grass by the sidewalk.
When they had walked a few blocks they turned and came back, and by the time they reached the motel Davey had grown very heavy. The sun was higher and had turned from red to orange. A truck full of horses passed; one of the horses whinnied and for a second there was the smell of horse manure. Patsy tried to show Davey the truck, but he missed it. When they turned through the portico and went up the sidewalk of the motel she looked a little sadly at the pool. She could see the remains of the party: glasses, a few beer cans, a pair of sandals. She walked over, thinking Davey would enjoy seeing the water, and discovered to her surprise that an old acquaintance was in the pool—namely Sonny. He had been resting at the edge of the pool, almost under the diving board.
“Well, hello,” she said. “Fancy meeting you here. What a good time for a swim.”
“Best possible time,” he said, as nonchalant as if he had been expecting her. “Go get your suit on.”
“What would I do with him?” she asked, tempted by the invitation.
Sonny swam lazily over to the edge where they were. Davey stared at him, amazed to see a man in the water. “You could dump him in bed with his pa,” he said. “Be good experience for Jim, wouldn’t it?” He was a little baggy under the eyes, as if he hadn’t slept, but he seemed relaxed.
“It would if his pa were awake,” she said. “Maybe we’ll just sit and watch you.”
“Naw, come on in,” Sonny said. “I can tell you’re dying to swim. I’m about swum out. Worst comes to worst I could baby-sit for you.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll be right back.”
She got into her suit, got a robe, a towel, a rattle and a clown doll and several other toys, bundled Davey and his paraphernalia in a blanket, and went back to the pool. The motel yard was still empty. She spread the blanket a safe distance from the pool and put Davey on it, his toys in a semicircle around him. Sonny got out and stood looking at them. He seemed to have no towel.
“Well, he can’t be no harder to handle than his mother,” he said. “I’ll try and keep him from getting kidnaped.”
Patsy took her robe off and he grinned at her. “Watch my child, not me,” she said. The top of the water was icy cold and made her gasp when it covered her breasts. She waved at Davey, to reassure him, and began to swim to warm up. Davey looked very solemn, as if he could not quite believe what was happening. By the time she had done two lengths she had lost her chill and the cool water felt good. From time to time she swam over and talked to Davey. He had decided it was some kind of sport, and he grinned. Soon he ceased to pay her any mind and began to mouth his toys. After a while she got out and wrapped herself in a huge towel. The air made her cold. Davey and Sonny seemed to have established a solemn relationship. Now and then Sonny would push a toy Davey’s way with his foot and Davey would look at him solemnly and take it and, after a moment, solemnly put it down again. Sonny was leaning back in a pool chair, apparently lost in thought. He was not really paying very close attention to Davey, who had found the ring of a pull-open beer can and was about to put it in his mouth when Patsy stopped him.
“I’m sorry my husband insisted on isolating us last night,” she said. “I was looking forward to seeing Eleanor again. Maybe we’ll all eat together tonight.”
“Nope, you just missed her,” he said. “There she goes now.” He pointed into the sky. Far away, beyond downtown Amarillo, a small white plane was flying toward the southeast.
“Oh, I don’t believe it,” Patsy said.
“That’s her. Going back to her ranch. Decided I was a lost cause, I guess.”
“I’m sure you are,” Patsy said, a little awed. It would be nice to have a neat little plane at one’s command.
Sonny shoved Davey a rattle with his foot. Davey regarded the foot with more interest than the rattle.
“I guess I am a lost cause,” Sonny said.
“I thought you were at the height of your fame.”
“That’s the trouble,” he said. “I’m at the height of my fame.” There was a strange bitterness in the way he said it. She glanced at him and he looked up just as she did and looked her squarely in the eye. The look hit home, frightening her a little. He was the same unpredictable, scary man.
“Well,” she said, discomfited. She realized what it was Eleanor saw in him. “Don’t look at me that way.”
Sonny ran his fingers through his wet black hair and a drop of water hit Davey, startling him.
“What I meant was, I’d just as soon be a year or two back from the height.”
“Maybe you are. Maybe you haven’t really peaked yet—isn’t that the term. You seem in pretty good shape.”
“You never knowed me when I was in really good shape,” he said. “Wisht you had. I peaked five or six years ago, where rodeo’s concerned. I just been winning on finesse the last year or two. You can’t finesse forever. Now you done broke my heart, and it don’t look like I’m going to turn out to be no movie star, like I thought I might. What do you reckon that leaves?”
“I didn’t break your heart; I don’t think you have one. I just turned you down. Don’t get maudlin about it.”
He regarded her silently for almost a minute, and it made her uneasy. She kept herself wrapped in the towel. He made her feel very unworldly and demure. The ends of her hair were dripping still. Life was constantly difficult, she decided.
“Someday you’ll wish you hadn’t turned me down,” Sonny said quietly.
She didn’t know what to say. She picked Davey up and held him in her lap. “Haven’t you ever had an urge for one of these? I thought all men wanted children.”
Sonny gave Davey a quick glance and shook his head. “I got a nephew in Big Spring,” he said. “That’s descendants enough for me.”
“Not me,” she said. “I wish I had two or three more just like this one.”
“How long you had your boy friend?” he asked lightly.
Patsy was taken aback. She pretended shock. “Me?” she said. “How could I think of boy friends after rejecting you? You were my peak possibility.”
Sonny grinned. “You ain’t gonna be able to squeeze three more kids out of Jim,” he said. “He’s too busy winding film.”
“That’s an insulting thing to say,” she said, but Sonny grinned his most charming grin.
“If you do finagle two or three more kids, that’s when you’re gonna wish you hadn’t turned me down,” he said. “Once you get all flabby and bedraggled it’s kinda nice to have a little romance to remember. You could tell your girl friends how the king of the cowboys used to screw you in his hearse. I’ll be dead and gone by then, probably—it’d make it all that much nicer to remember.”
“You conceited bastard,” she said. “What a vision of my old age that is—or my middle age. Does it make you feel good to envision this procession of girl friends putting flowers on your grave forever? I don’t intend to be bedraggled, and I certainly doubt I’ll sit around wishing I’d let you ravish me in that seedy hearse of yours.”
“Want so
me breakfast? The water made me hungry.”
“I don’t particularly want to eat with you. I’ll go dress and get my own breakfast.”
“Wait,” he said. “Joe’s been pining for you. I’ll get him up to sit between us and hold your hand.”
He trotted around the pool and began to pound on one of the doors. In a minute it opened and Joe Percy stood in it in his underwear, looking so bleary and outraged that Patsy laughed. Joe was looking her way, but vaguely.
“Hi, Joe,” she said. “I’m over here in a towel.” She picked Davey up and went around the pool to introduce them. Joe was blinking unhappily, for the sun had risen higher and the courtyard was very bright. He went back into his room and emerged in his sunglasses, looking much more cheerful. They agreed on breakfast and Patsy hurried back to the room to dress. Jim was still asleep. She plopped Davey on the big bed and was dressed in five minutes. She changed Davey and put him on the bed with Jim.
“Wake up,” she said. “I’m leaving Davey with you for a while.”
Jim sat up, but still looked asleep. “Where are you going?” he asked. “Where can I get you?”
“Just down to have breakfast with a couple of old beaus.”
“You better give me some instructions,” he said. “He and I are practically strangers.”
“I know. It’s high time you got acquainted. All he needs at the moment is to be amused.”
She was out the door before either he or Davey could protest. Sonny and Joe were both there when she walked in, Sonny in the midst of a platter of ham and eggs, Joe with a cup of coffee and a plate of untouched toast. Sonny had on one of his bright red shirts, which went well with his dark hair and his good mood. Even Joe was in a good mood, though clearly hung over. Patsy had ham and eggs and a cantaloupe and some tomato juice, and they had a pleasant chatty breakfast. Patsy fenced cheerfully with Sonny, who treated her to some of his lightest and least threatening charm. Joe was extremely obscene on the subject of Amarillo society. Patsy loved it. The two of them made her feel innocent and worldly at the same time.
They lingered, and when Patsy finally got back to the room Davey was red in the face and screaming his lungs out. He was on one of the big beds. Jim sat on the edge of it looking worried. Patsy picked Davey up and clucked him a bit and his screams subsided. He choked and heaved and grew quiet.
“You should have walked him a bit,” she said.
“I tried,” Jim said. “He just got stiff. I offered him everything in the room but he wouldn’t have anything. What’s the matter with him?”
“Nothing. He’s just disoriented.” She put her cheek against her son’s. He was still a little stiff. It seemed too bad that Jim was unable to make either of them anything but stiff, but she didn’t mention it. She felt too friendly and relaxed. Jim went and breakfasted and by the time he got back with a paper both his wife and his son were napping.
12
SATURDAY TURNED OUT TO BE FUN. Patsy had envisioned boredom and arguments and was pleasantly surprised when neither materialized. She and Davey napped until noon and then went down and found the Tatums, who were leaving that evening for Laramie. They were very cheerful and it seemed like great luck, her arriving in time to see them and show them Davey. Boots thought he was the most delightful little creature she had ever seen and virtually took him over for the day. Patsy was glad to let her. In the afternoon, when it was time for his nap, they put him on Joe Percy’s bed, with the door left open a crack so they could hear him, and sat around the pool playing canasta, Patsy and Pete against Boots and Joe. Pete played surprisingly well. He was wearing the same cut-off Levi’s he had worn in Phoenix. His face seemed a little puffier than it had, but his eyes were lively again and he was loose and almost boisterous and kept up an amusing, self-deprecating chatter about his part in the film. It kept Boots in stitches, and as she played slap-dash canasta, anyway, Patsy and Pete won easily.
“How come you two are so cheerful?” Patsy asked.
“Hard to be blue when you’re winning at cards,” Pete said. “Actually we’re just solvent again. This movie job got us out of the hole.”
“Don’t buy any yachts,” Joe said. “This money is printed on a special paper—it vanishes two days after you get it. Come on, Boots, concentrate. Think who you’re playing with. I used to be the best canasta player in Hollywood.”
“How about Robert Mitchum?” Patsy asked, winking at him.
Joe looked blank for a minute and then grinned. “Don’t think he’s had time to learn the game,” he said.
“Laramie is where you got hurt, wasn’t it?” Patsy asked Boots. “I can’t believe that was just a year ago.”
It was, indeed, very hard to believe, and from time to time, through the afternoon, she dropped into reverie, thinking about it. Though Pete and Boots and Joe and Sonny and even Jim looked at her and treated her as if she were the Patsy she had been the year before, she knew that to varying degrees they were merely mistaking her for someone she no longer was. When she tried to remember herself in those days, she could not. She could not remember how she had felt, driving through the West with Jim; could not at all remember how she had felt the day she held hands with Pete in Cheyenne. She only remembered that those things had happened a year ago. It was hot by the pool, even though they had an umbrella. They were all sweating, all consuming quantities of beer, Coke, gin-and-tonic, according to their preference, as they played. Heat she could remember: the heat of the desert, and the heat of Houston. But not moods, not feelings, not sensations. In a year she had become a mother and an adulteress. Several times she had felt a moment of emptiness, from being so far from Hank, and had wanted to sneak away and call him, but for some reason he was stubborn about not having a phone and wouldn’t get one.
“Who’s that girl Sonny’s after?” she asked at one point. Every once in a while she saw Sonny casually rub the girl’s leg with his foot.
“Her name is Angie Miracle,” Joe said.
“Great tan.” In comparison, she felt distinctly pallid.
“Apparently even her clitoris is tan,” Joe said. “Eye-witnesses have told me as much. I think I hear your son.”
He did, and the card game was interrupted. Davey was brought out and allowed to gnaw on a joker, and the afternoon passed pleasantly. Patsy took him in the water for a bit and struck up a conversation with a nice long-haired young man from Redondo Beach. He had triplets and was lonesome for them. “They’re thirteen months old now,” he said. “They’re just great. You ought to have some.”
“That would finish my family at a stroke,” Patsy said, momentarily enthralled with the young man, and the idea of triplets.
“Not ours,” he said. “We want to try and have another set. The odds are really against us but what’s it hurt to try? They’re very individual, really. I don’t know where people get the idea they’re not. Come and see them if you’re ever in L.A.
“You remind me of my wife,” he added and splashed a handful of water on her shoulder wistfully. When he got out of the pool he went in and wrote his address on a card and stuck it in Patsy’s pool bag. “My wife’s name is Rhoda,” he said, “in case I’m at work when you call.” He waved and seemed to assume he would be seeing her shortly.
“Good luck with your second set,” Patsy said.
The Tatums were packed to leave but consented to stay until after dinner. There was almost a scene with Dixie, who wanted Patsy and Jim to go to dinner with her and the director. She was amazed that they would think of going to dinner with the Tatums, who were clearly hired help, in preference to dining with a director. She had apparently decided that even Joe was a little déclassé. Patsy grew irritated and Jim was smug: it always gratified him when Dixie’s nouveau streak showed itself.
Dinner with the Tatums was pleasant. They ate Mexican food and drank beer. It was Davey’s first trip to a restaurant and he displayed an amazing ability for grabbing spoons and forks, and a preference for grabbing spoons and forks with food in them. P
atsy’s dress suffered so badly that the company began to wince every time Davey moved, but she herself remained unruffled. She had had three glasses of beer and felt a little high.
Soon after dinner they bade the Tatums goodbye. The sky behind Amarillo was deep violet, and the first stars had appeared. A breeze had blown up. Davey was asleep on Patsy’s shoulder; she walked him back and forth on the sidewalk while Pete stuffed a few last items into the station wagon. Joe Percy, to everyone’s surprise, gave Boots a big box of candy as a going-away present. She hugged him and burst into tears. Patsy too was strangely touched. Pete finished his packing, spat in the gutter, and regarded the scene with the little smile that Patsy remembered, the smile he had had the first night she met him. “Joe, you might have got me something,” he said. “After all, I carried her to bed after all that dancing. Better get in, honey. I got so much food in me I’ll be lucky to stay awake as far as Dumas.”
Boots managed to kiss Davey without awakening him. Patsy hugged her, and Boots waved at Jim and got in. “Come see us,” Patsy said to Pete.
He bent over to inspect a loose reflector and the street light lit his face and his curling thinning hair. When he stood up his eyes caught hers for a second and he smiled again. “We’ll get by sometime,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”
“Well, there they go,” Joe Percy said.
The dark sky over the plains was very deep, a vast sky, good to stand under and yet not a quietening or a comforting sky. Patsy was troubled. Something about Pete Tatum touched her still. It would be nice to know what the little smile meant, why it came when it did, went when it did. And yet she was glad they had left. It was fitting they should leave in the evening and drive across the breezy plains all night, higher and higher, upward to Colorado, upward to Wyoming. Vicariously, in the hour that followed, she went along on such a drive, though in fact she went with Jim to their room, put Davey down, and read magazines while Jim read magazines. But her mind drifted away from news and fashions, back to the car and the plains at night, and the lights of service stations, so bright after one had been asleep, and the smell of the coarse dewy grass in the early morning—all things she had known but a year before.
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