It occurred to me as I was paying for the gas that I wasn't far from the home of Little Joe Twine. His home was just down the road, near a town called Henrietta. In some parts of the world Little Joe would be called Joseph Twine II, but in Henrietta he's called Little Joe, to distinguish him from his father. Big Joe. The situation is further confused by the fact that Little Joe is married to a small blonde named Josie.
The Twines owned the largest ranch in that part of the world, a lovely ranch whose thousands of acres are dotted here and there with oil pumps. I had met Little Joe and Josie about a year earlier, at the home of a gun dealer in Amarillo. They had driven up to sell the gun dealer all the Twine family guns—and since the Twines had been a pioneer family that meant quite a few.
"These ain't the only guns in the world. Little Joe," Josie said several times, as I sat drinking beer and watching the transaction. The whole floor of the house was covered with rifles, pistols, and shotguns.
"No, but they're the handiest," Little Joe muttered. He was fat, long-haired, and depressed.
"Listen," Josie said with authority, "if I need to shoot you I'll shoot you. I can buy plenty of guns on a credit card."
"This don't mean I expect to live forever," Little Joe replied.
Then he snorted some cocaine.
Later I ran into Josie in the kitchen, where she was pouring vodka into a large pitcher of tomato juice. She was good-looking, but unhappy in the eyes, and had cut her blond hair too short.
"Let's go upstairs and fuck," she said in a friendly tone. "Shoot, it'll take them all night to finish this deal."
"That might be dangerous," I said. "Little Joe might load one of the guns and come up and shoot us."
"He ain't about to," Josie said. "The reason he's selling these guns is to stop me from shooting him."
"Why would he think you'd do that?"
"Because Momma Twine shot Big Joe two weeks ago," she said. "Don't you read the papers?"
"I guess I missed it," I said.
"I don't see how, it was on the TV too," Josie said. "Big Joe was down in the lots working some cattle and she walked down with a 30-30 and shot him right off his horse. She took good aim, too. Ten cowboys standing around and nobody even noticed her until she pulled the trigger.”
"Was he hurt bad?”
"He was killed deader than a sonofabitch," Josie said. "It worries Little Joe. He's afraid it'll give me ideas. Shoot, I ain't even mad at him. Little Joe's real paranoid."
Then she told me about her life, which consisted of driving down to Dallas—as she put it—almost every day. It was only 85 miles to Dallas, a short toot in that country. In Dallas she bought things for a while and then went to a city billy bar, had a few beers, and looked for boyfriends. Little Joe spent his days playing cassettes of dirty movies on his wall-size TV. Sometimes the cowboys came in and watched, and a lot of dope was enjoyed. Now that Big Joe was dead nobody saw any reason to do much work, least of all Little Joe.
Instead of fucking we went out and sat in my car awhile, drinking vodka and tomato juice and watching the wind blow. While we were drinking Little Joe and the gun dealer came out, got in the gun dealer's pickup, and drove off, destination unknown.
"I don't know why I come on this trip," Josie said. "Shoot, I don't even know why I married Little Joe, except he's rich. Wanta go to Dallas? We could stop off at the ranch and have breakfast. I can cook."
The house was the Twine ranch headquarters, about 300 miles away.
"Or we could have the pilot fly up and get us," Josie said. "Little Joe probably went to Lubbock to buy some dope. No telling when he'll be back. We keep this pilot to fly us around but we hardly ever call him. I think he's about bored to death."
She was wearing a wonderful pair of red ostrich-skin boots with elaborate flame stitching, and when I complimented her on them she smiled. "I got about three hundred pair," she said. "Me and Little Joe just buy boots all the time."
Since Little Joe and the gun dealer had not returned in an hour, I drove Josie home. The Twine ranch house was done in typical degenerate third-generation style, with ugly shag rugs and dozens of telephones and TV sets. Little Joe never wanted to be out of sight of a TV set or out of reach of a phone, so he had put several phones and TVs in every room. The phones were all different colors and sizes, from fake antiques to Mickey Mouse phones. There was not one good thing in the house, except the boots. Upstairs there was a walk-in closet the size of a presidential suite, all filled with boots. The Twine family had evidently never thrown away a pair of boots, or worn one out, either. There were boots in the closet going back to Big Joe's father's early days, most of them in fairly decent condition.
It was the boots I remembered, as I was getting gas in Wichita Falls. If Josie hadn't shot Little Joe yet maybe I could buy their boot collection and fulfill my obligation to Cindy at one swoop.
I had the Twine number in my book, and I called it, hoping for Josie. Instead, I got Little Joe.
"You got any hash?" he asked, once he figured out who I was. Though clearly disappointed when I said no, he invited me over anyway.
When I knocked at the door, twenty minutes later, he met me. He was wearing cut-offs, a purple T-shirt, and a look not far from idiocy. In the years since I had seen him he had gained another fifty pounds, and managed to avoid barbers. His hair was really long.
"Got any dirty movies?" he asked. "If you got any I'll buy 'em as long as there ain't queers or niggers in them. I mainly like to watch heterosexual activity between members of the white race."
When I stepped into the large, ugly living room I saw that that was exactly what he had been watching. Several pale bodies were bobbing and weaving on the wall-size TV screen, but Little Joe was so high he had let the set get out of focus. The bodies were just a blur, though a pale blur.
There was a huge blue suede couch along one wall, beside which sat a large tube of gas of some kind. It looked like the tubes that welders have on their trucks, but it was hard to know why Little Joe would need acetylene in his living room.
"Aw, that's just laughing gas," he said. "Want some?"
He offered me a little mask, such as dentists use when they give gas, but I declined so he plopped down on the couch and put the mask on his own face, opening the nozzle on the tube of gas so that he would get a strong stream of nitrous oxide right up his nose.
"Where's Josie?" I asked.
"Upstairs watching the cable," he said. "She don’t like dirty movies."
As I started to leave the room I almost stepped on a cowboy, stretched out on the floor by one of the doors. He had on boots, spurs, and chaps, but he lay so limply that for a moment I thought he must be dead. His eyes were open, but they weren't fixed on anything.
"What's wrong with him?" I asked.
Little Joe had forgotten about the cowboy.
"Is he still there?" he said. "I thought Josie called the ambulance to come and get him. He took some horse medicine by accident.
"He'll be all right," he added. "Only thing is we may have to cut his boots off. That horse medicine makes your feet swell."
The vast hall upstairs was lined with extremely bad oil paintings of Texas rural scenes. Far down the hall I could hear the sound of a television set. It proved to come from the master bedroom, which was about the size of a tennis court. Much of it was filled with one of the largest beds I had ever seen. Josie sat in the middle of it, in a nightgown, watching Benjy on another wall-size TV.
"Why howdy," she said, when she saw me. "You're the one that buys things. I wisht you'd buy me." She touched a control and the sound went off on the big TV. Benjy's antics continued in silence.
"Actually I was hoping to buy some boots," I said.
She was still drinking vodka and tomato juice, and had begun to let her hair grow out. Since it had to grow through various levels of dye it was not yet easy to predict what color it would be.
"Did you call the ambulance about that cowboy?" I asked. "He didn't look too healthy
."
"Well, it's what he gets, for tryin' to get high on horse medicine," Josie said. "It's real boring around here. I've started taking dope too. What I'd like to do is take a trip. Are you going anywhere?"
"I am," I said. "Fm just not sure where."
"Anywhere will do me," Josie said. "I'm even afraid to drive now, Little Joe's hid so much dope in all the cars. If I was to get stopped for speeding I'd go to jail for years. It ain't worth it. Are you going north or south?"
"North," I said.
Josie got out of bed, went to a large closet, selected a yellow cowboy shirt, peeled oflf her gown, and put on the shirt. She got into some Levi's and yellow running shoes, found a purse, dropped a comb in it, and was ready to go.
"You don't care if I go, do you?" she said. "You can just kick me out whenever you get tired of me. I'll just call the pilot and make him fly up and get me."
I felt paralyzed. All I had meant to do was buy boots. Josie had not been part of my plans. Even so, it seemed a pity to disappoint her. I knew I ought to be forceful and just say no, but I didn't. I just stood there feeling vaguely wrong, creating by my indecision the assumption that it was fine for her to go with me.
"Do you think I can buy some boots?" I asked, feebly.
"Sure," Josie said. "We got a few to spare."
We went to the boot closet and turned the light on. I made a careful count, determining that the closet contained 262 pair of boots. I began a tasteful selection. My first choice had the Alamo embossed on them in white pigskin. Another had the San Jacinto monument in mother-of-pearl. Several pairs were covered in rhinestones, and many pairs were at least seventy-five years old.
"Little Joe got the rhinestone ones when he was trying to be a singer," Josie said.
The closet was a boot scout's paradise. The Twines had been eclectic, evidently buying almost any boots they ran across. There were boots with the impossibly high heels that had been in vogue in the twenties. There were Mexican boots, Montana boots, and a pair of boots that had been awarded some Twine at a steer-roping contest in Tucumcari in 1918. In no time at all I had picked out forty pair, all old. Then I selected five pair of garish boots from Little Joe's assemblage, and several pair of Josie's. Her taste ran to exotic skins: armadillo, warthog, shark. Also, she had a passion for yellow. At least two-thirds of her boots were yellow, regardless of the skin.
"Yellow's the only color I feel sexy in,'* she said, looking at the yellow shirt she was wearing.
"We better just throw them out the window," Josie said. "Then maybe we can just drive around in the car and pick them up."
The suggestion did not surprise me—I knew it would probably not be easy simply to buy the boots from Little Joe. He might appear to be a total dopehead, but the one thing that had to be remembered about him was that he was very rich. The rich don't sell easily. If they have something someone wants they automatically assume it's got to be worth much more than the person is willing to give. Also, they don't need money—even extravagant sums don't tempt them. If you offer them a million they figure that what you're after is worth five million; and if you persuade them it's worth only a million they may decide to keep it anyway, on the grounds that it's pointless to sell something that's only worth a million.
Besides, I had heard Little Joe bargaining with the gun dealer in Amarillo, and the dealer later told me that the deal had taken four days to complete. He had paid too much for almost every single gun, and had stopped even wanting the guns by the time Little Joe was satisfied. All the dealer wanted by that time was for Little Joe to go away.
I didn't want to stay in Henrietta four days, haggling over boots.
"He likes to gamble," Josie said. "If you're willin' to bet you got a chance."
We went down to discover Little Joe rolling around on the blue couch in a strange contorted manner. He appeared to be doing exercises of some sort.
"It's yoga," Josie whispered. "Somebody told him if he learned yoga he'd eventually get limber enough so he could suck himself off. Did you know that less than one percent of human males can suck themselves off?"
"I didn't know that," I said.
While Little Joe exercised, laughing gas poured into the room from his unused mask. Also, the pornographic movie was still going on, behind our backs, and the cowboy who had taken the horse medicine still lay on the floor, glassy-eyed.
Josie switched off the pornographic movie and flipped channels until she found Benjy. She wanted to be sure the little fellow was still all right.
Little Joe stopped exercising, sat up, and popped the mask back over his nose. He was sweating profusely.
"I'm taking a trip," Josie said. "I might be back next week.”
Little Joe received this news without apparent interest.
"Jack wants to buy a few boots," Josie added.
"Which boots?" Little Joe asked, a faint gleam of perception lighting his pupils.
"Boots, boots," Josie said, snapping her fingers at him as if she were a hypnotist, trying to bring someone out of a trance.
Little Joe got up without a word and went upstairs. We followed. I had lined all the boots up in the hallway. He squatted down and looked at them carefully. I knew from experience he was going to try to estimate the precise dollar value of each pair.
"Don't be so slow, Little Joe," Josie said, impatient to be on the road.
Little Joe didn't reply. He was studying the boots.
"How about if we gamble?" I said. "One toss of the coin. If I win I get the boots."
"What about if I win?" Little Joe said. "What do I get?"
"Let's go out to the car," I said. "Maybe I've got something that would interest you."
We went out into the cold moonlit night. I could hear the chug-chug of oil pumps, each of them chugging through the night to make Little Joe richer. I showed him the Henry rifle, thinking perhaps the family passion for guns had returned, but it hadn't.
"We solt the guns," he said.
Then his eyes lit on the Valentino hubcaps. He picked one up and looked at it.
"Where'd a thang like this come from?" he asked.
For a second I was tempted to lie. I didn't really want to gamble the hubcaps against the boots. The hubcaps were truly rare. Only four sets existed. Not only were they worth more than the boots, they were also my legacy from Beulah Mahony. She had treasured them a long time and had finally chosen me to have them. It had been an act of love, of a sort.
The boots I was merely getting for Cindy Sanders, whom I might never see again.
Besides, the gamble involved an imbalance of class. The boots were good, but the hubcaps were simply in a different, and a higher, class.
Little Joe was clearly in love with the cobra hubcaps. I knew right away that he'd take the gamble, if I agreed to it.
I told him about Valentino, about the hubcap forger, about the fact that only four sets existed. Every word I said made him more eager.
"I'll flip, but not for an even trade," I said. "The hubcaps are worth too much more than the boots. If you win I want $5,000 to boot."
Josie had grown cold and was sitting in the car going through my collection of eight-track tapes.
"Okay," Little Joe said. "I like them snakes."
We went back inside. Little Joe rolled the glassy-eyed cowboy over and dug in his pockets until he found a quarter. Then he went back to the couch and popped a few pills, while he considered.
"You flip," he said, pitching over the quarter.
I felt a little strange. I wasn't really taking the bet because I wanted the boots all that much—the problem was that I wanted the hubcaps too much. In five years I had never put them up for sale, which was a breach of discipline. One of my firmest principles is that those who sell should not keep. The minute a scout starts keeping his best finds he becomes a collector. All scouts have love affairs with objects, but true scouts have brief intense passions, not marriages. I didn't want to own something I loved so much I wouldn't sell it. That would violate the
logic of what I was doing. The game is about selling, as much as buying: If you have the courage to sell a really great object today you may be rewarded with the opportunity to buy an even greater object tomorrow.
The truth was, I had had the hubcaps long enough. It was time to risk them, and this was as good a way as any.
I flipped the coin.
"Tails," Little Joe said.
The coin landed. It was heads. The hubcaps were still mine, and I had won some fifty pairs of boots.
Little Joe was not in the least discouraged. After a moment he went over and looked at the glassy-eyed cowboy.
"That son of a bitch took himself a real dose," he said. "If he'd come to he could help you load the boots."
I loaded them myself, making several trips. Josie had started the motor in order to keep warm. Streams of white exhaust poured out into the cold night. I had to make several trips. Little Joe went back to watching the movie, the gas mask still back over his nose. Josie played a Willie Nelson tape on my stereo. Finally I got all the boots into the luggage compartment, tucking them carefully around the various other objects that were there. As I was fitting in the last of the boots the glassy-eyed cowboy walked out of the house. His spurs jingled slightly as he walked across the gravel driveway. He no longer looked glassy-eyed. When he saw the rear end full of boots he stopped a moment, looking at them.
"Now what would anybody want with that many boots?" he said, in a slow drawl. "A man ain't got but two feet."
Then he went to the nearest pickup, got in, and drove off.
"I guess Mitch got all right," Josie said, when I got in. "If the ambulance shows up now all they'll get is Little Joe."
She was snapping her fingers quietly, in time with the music. As we drove out of the driveway, dust from Mitch's pickup rose ahead of us, white as the moonlight.
Cadillac Jack Page 29