“We sure ain’t findin’ no women,” Duane said. “Want to look some more or do you want to take the easy out?”
“It’s too cold to prowl much,” Sonny said.
With no more ado they turned up the street toward the easy out, a whorehouse called The New Deal Hotel. It was about the nicest whorehouse in that part of the country, but a little expensive on that account. Since it was Duane’s last night the boys decided to splurge. When they got to the hotel a bunch of high-school boys from Seymour were standing on the sidewalk shivering, trying to get up the nerve to go inside, It was easy to tell they were from Seymour because of their football jackets.
“Yep, it’s a whorehouse all right,” Duane said. “You boys coming up?”
“How much do they charge?” one boy asked, his teeth chattering. “We’re afraid to go up for fear we ain’t got the money.”
“They start at about ten bucks,” Duane said, and the boys’ faces fell. They had been hoping for five.
Sonny and Duane went on in and up the green-carpeted stairs, leaving the Seymour boys to count their money. The madame was a quiet, polite woman who looked and dressed like the saleswomen in a Wichita Falls department store. Sonny’s girl was a polite, thin-nosed brunette from Corsicana, named Pauline. Everything was splendidly comfortable in the New Deal: the rooms were warm, the beds wide and clean, the carpets good. The girls were pleasant, but so efficient that afterward it seemed to Sonny that he and the girl had barely touched. Before he was even thawed out he and Duane were going back down the green stairs, each ten dollars poorer and neither much less horny.
The Seymour boys were all gone, the streets almost empty. While they were walking back to their pickup the city street-sweeper chugged by and Sonny remembered Billy and hoped Miss Mosey had seen he got home out of the cold.
“Well, I guess the next piece I get will be yellow,” Duane said philosophically.
By the time they got back to the Lake Worth bridge, he was asleep. Sonny didn’t care—he enjoyed the drive, and was in no hurry. With the wind blowing against him he couldn’t make much time, but he didn’t need to. North of Jacksboro he stopped the pickup and got out to take a leak, and Duane woke up and followed suit. It was about five o’clock when they pulled into Thalia. The posterboards in front of the picture show were naked. It seemed to Sonny it would have been better to have left some posters up, even the posters to The Kid from Texas.
“Got about two hours till bus time,” he said, when they were at the rooming house. “Want to go down and have some coffee?”
“Yeah,” Duane said. “Wait till I go in and get my gear.”
In his uniform Duane looked a lot different. When he got back in the pickup he casually handed Sonny the keys to the Mercury. “Here,” he said. “Why don’t you look after that car for me?”
Sonny took the keys, embarrassed. “Your Ma don’t need it?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t want her drivin’ it, no better than she can drive. You might help her run the groceries home, if you have time.”
Sonny didn’t know what else to say. In the warm café they both got a little sleepy and ended up playing the jukebox to keep awake. Genevieve wasn’t there. Her husband had gone back to work in August and she had hired a girl named Etta May to work the night shift.
When the bus pulled up out front, both boys were glad. Sitting and waiting was hard on the nerves. The bus driver came in to have a cup of coffee and Sonny and Duane walked across the street to the yellow Continental Trailways bus. The wind made their eyes water, and took their breath—they had to turn their backs to it. Duane leaned his dufflebag against the front of the bus.
“Hear anything from Jacy?” he asked suddenly, since there was just two minutes left to talk.
“No, not a thing. She hasn’t been back to town since August. I guess she just stays in Dallas all the time.”
“I ain’t over her yet,” Duane said. “It’s the damnedest thing. I ain’t over her yet. That’s the only reason me and you got into it, that night. Reckon she likes it down in Dallas?”
“It’s hard to say,” Sonny said. “Maybe she does. Reckon you and her would have got it all straightened out if I hadn’t butted in?”
“Aw no,” Duane said. “They would have annulled me too, even if we had. You all never even got to the motel?”
“No,” Sonny said.
The bus driver came out of the café and hurried across the street, tucking his chin into his shoulder so his face would be out of the wind. Duane picked up the dufflebag and he and Sonny shook hands awkwardly.
“Duane, be careful,” Sonny said. “I’ll take care of that Mercury.”
“Okay,” Duane said. “See you in a year or two, if I don’t get shot.”
He got on and waved quickly from the window as the bus started up. A ragweed skated across the dusty street and the bus ran over it. Sonny put his hands in his pockets and walked back across the street to the pickup, not feeling too good. It was another one of those mornings when no one was there.
CHAPTER XXVI
OF ALL THE people in Thalia, Billy missed the picture show most. He couldn’t understand that it was permanently closed. Every night he kept thinking it would open again. For seven years he had gone to the show every single night, always sitting in the balcony, always sweeping out once the show was over; he just couldn’t stop expecting it. Every night he took his broom and went over to the picture show, hoping it would be open. When it wasn’t, he sat on the curb in front of the courthouse, watching the theater, hoping it would open a little later; then, after a while, in puzzlement, he would sweep listlessly off down the highway toward Wichita Falls. Sonny watched him as closely as he could, but it still worried him. He was afraid Billy might get through a fence or over a cattle-guard and sweep right off into the mesquite. He might sweep away down the creeks and gullies and never be found.
Once, on a Friday afternoon, Miss Mosey had to go into the theater to get something she had left and she let Billy in for a minute. The screen was disappointingly dead, but Billy figured that at least he was in, so he went up into the balcony and sat waiting. Miss Mosey thought he had gone back outside and locked him in. It was not until late that night, when Sonny got worried and began asking around, that Miss Mosey thought of the balcony. When they got there, Billy was sitting quietly in the dark with his broom, waiting, perfectly sure that the show would come on sometime.
All through October, then through November, Billy missed the show. Sonny didn’t know what to do about it, but it was a bad time in general and he didn’t know what to do about himself either. He had taken another lease to pump. He wanted to work harder and tire himself out, so he wouldn’t have to lie awake at night and feel alone. Nothing much was happening, and he didn’t think much was going to. One day he went to Wichita and bought a television set, thinking it might help Billy, but it didn’t at all. Billy would watch it as long as Sonny was around, but the minute Sonny left he left too. He didn’t trust the television. He kept going over to the picture show night after night, norther or no norther—he sat on the sidewalk and waited, cold and puzzled. He knew it would open sooner or later, and Sonny could think of no way to make him understand that it wouldn’t.
One cold, sandstormy morning in late November Sonny woke up early and went downstairs to light the poolhall fires. Billy was not around, but that was not unusual. Sonny sneezed two or three times, the air was so dry. One of the gas stoves was old and he had to blow on it to get all the burners to light. While he was blowing on the burners he heard a big cattle truck roar past the poolhall, coming in from the south. Suddenly there was a loud shriek, as the driver hit the brakes for all he was worth—the stoplight was always turning red at the wrong time and catching trucks that thought they had it made.
Sonny went back upstairs and dressed to go eat breakfast. He couldn’t find either one of his eye patches and supposed Billy must have them. It was the kind of morning when a welding helmet would have been a nice sort of thing t
o wear. The sky was cloudy and gritty, and the wind cut. When he stepped outside Sonny noticed that the big cattle truck was stopped by the square, with a little knot of men gathered around it. The doctor’s car had just pulled up to the knot of men and the old doctor got out, his hair uncombed, his pajamas showing under his bathrobe. Someone had been run over. Sonny started to turn away, but then he saw Billy’s broom lying in the street. By the time he got to the men the doctor had returned to his car and was driving away.
Billy was lying face up on the street, near the curb. For some reason he had put both eye patches on—his eyes were completely covered. There were just four or five men there—the sheriff and his deputy, a couple of men from the filling stations, one cowboy, and a pumper who was going out early. They were not paying attention to Billy, but were trying to keep the truck driver from feeling bad. He was a big, square-faced man from Waurika, Oklahoma, who didn’t look like he felt too bad. The truck was loaded with Hereford yearlings and they were bumping one another around and shitting, the bright green cowshit dripping off the sideboards and splatting onto the street.
“This sand was blowin’,” the trucker said. His name was Hurley. “I never noticed him, never figured nobody would be in the street. Why he had them damn blinders on his eyes, he couldn’t even see. What was he doin’ out there anyway, carryin’ that broom?”
“Aw, nothin’, Hurley,” the sheriff said. “He was just an ol’ simpleminded kid, sort of returded—never had no sense. Wasn’t your fault, I can see that. He was just there—he wasn’t doin’ nothing.”
Sonny couldn’t stand the way the men looked at the truck driver and had already forgotten Billy.
“He was sweeping, you sons of bitches!” he yelled suddenly, surprising the men and himself. They all looked at him as if he were crazy, and indeed, he didn’t know himself why he had yelled. He walked over on the courthouse lawn, not knowing what to do. In a minute he bent over and vomited by one of the dusty, stunted little cedar trees that the Amity club had planted. His father had come by that time.
“Son, it’s a bad blow,” he said. “You let me take care of things, okay? You don’t want to be bothered with any funeral-home stuff, do you?”
Sonny didn’t; he was glad to let his father take care of it. He walked out in the street and got Billy’s broom and took it over to him.
“Reckon I better go try to sell a little gas,” one of the filling-station men said. “Look’s like this here’s about wound up.”
Sonny didn’t want to yell at the men again, but he couldn’t stand to walk away and leave Billy there by the truck, with the circle of men spitting and farting and shuffling all around him. Before any of them knew what he was up to he got Billy under the arms and started off with him, dragging him and trying to run. The men were so amazed they didn’t even try to stop him. The heels of Billy’s brogans scraped on the pavement, but Sonny kept on, dragged him across the windy street to the curb in front of the picture show. That was as far as he went. He laid Billy on the sidewalk where at least he would be out of the street, and covered him with his Levi’s jacket. He just left the eye patches on.
The men slowly came over. They looked at Sonny as if he were someone very strange. Hurley and the sheriff came together and stood back a little way from the crowd.
“You all got some crazy kids in this town,” Hurley said, spitting his tobacco juice carefully down wind.
By the time Sonny got back to the apartment Genevieve was there. She was crying but when she saw Sonny she made herself quit. She stayed for about an hour, made some coffee, and tried to get Sonny to cry or talk or something. He wouldn’t. He wandered around the apartment, once in a while looked out at the gritty sky. Genevieve saw it was going to take some time.
“Sonny, I got to go to the café,” she said. “People keep eatin’, come what may. Come on down when you feel like it. Dan’ll be glad to pump your leases for you when he comes in this afternoon.”
Sonny didn’t know what he would feel like doing that afternoon, so he didn’t say anything. When Genevieve left he turned on the television set and watched it all morning: it made a voice in the room, anyway.
About the middle of the afternoon he began to feel like he had to do something. He had the feeling again, the feeling that he was the only person in town. He got his gloves and his football jacket and got in the pickup, meaning to go on out and pump his leases, but no sooner had he started than he got scared. When he passed the city limits signs he stopped a minute. The gray pastures and the distant brown ridges looked too empty. He himself felt too empty. As empty as he felt and as empty as the country looked it was too risky going out into it—he might be blown around for days like a broomweed in the wind.
He turned around and drove back past the sign, but stopped again. From the road the town looked raw, scraped by the wind, as empty as the country. It didn’t look like the town it had been when he was in high school, in the days of Sam the Lion.
Scared to death, he drove to Ruth’s house. It was broad daylight, mid-afternoon, but he parked right in front of the house. The coach was bound to be in school. Sitting in the driveway was the coach’s new car, a shiny red Ford V-8. The Quarterback Club and the people of the town were so proud of his coaching that they had presented him with the car at the homecoming game, two weeks before.
Sonny went slowly up the walk, wondering if Ruth would let him in. He knocked at the screen, and when no one answered opened the screen and knocked on the glass-paneled front door.
In a moment Ruth opened it. She was in her bathrobe—that was about all Sonny saw. He didn’t look at her face, except to glance.
“Hi,” he said.
Ruth said nothing at all. She was surprised, then after a moment angered, then frightened.
“Could I have a cup of coffee with you?” Sonny asked finally, lifting his face.
“I guess,” Ruth said, her tone reluctant. She let him in and he followed her through the dark, dusty-smelling living room to the kitchen. They were awkwardly silent while she made the coffee. Neither knew what to do.
“I’m sorry I’m still in my bathrobe,” Ruth said finally. “It gets harder all the time to get around to getting dressed.”
But then, as she was pouring the coffee, anger and fright and bitterness began to well up in her. In a moment they filled her past the point where she could contain them, and indeed, she ceased to want to contain them. She wanted to break something, do something terrible. Suddenly she flung Sonny’s coffee, cup and all, at the cabinet, then she flung her own, then flung the coffee pot at the wall. It broke and a great brown stain of coffee spread over the wallpaper and dripped down onto the linoleum. Somehow the sight of it was very satisfying.
“What am I doing apologizing to you?” she said, turning to Sonny. “Why am I always apologizing to you, you little… little bastard. For three months I’ve been apologizing to you, without you even being here to hear me. I haven’t done anything wrong, why can’t I quit apologizing. You’re the one who ought to be sorry. I wouldn’t be in my bathrobe now if it hadn’t been for you—I’d have had my clothes on hours ago. You’re the one that made me quit caring whether I got dressed or not. I guess just because your friend got killed you want me to forget what you did and make it all right. I’m not sorry for you! You would have left Billy too, just like you left me. I bet you left him plenty of nights, whenever Jacy whistled. I wouldn’t treat a dog that way but that’s the way you treated me, and Billy too.”
Sonny was very startled. He had never thought of himself as having deserted Billy. He started to say something, but Ruth didn’t stop talking long enough. She sat down at the table and kept talking.
“I guess you thought I was so old and ugly you didn’t owe me any explanations,” she said. “You didn’t need to be careful of me. There wasn’t anything I could do about you and her, why should you be careful of me. You didn’t love me. Look at me, can’t you even look at me!”
Sonny did look. Her hair and lips l
ooked dry, and her face was paler and older than he had remembered it. The bathrobe was light blue.
“You see?” she said. “You shouldn’t have come here. I’m around that corner now. You ruined it and it’s lost completely. Just your needing me won’t bring it back.”
Sonny didn’t know. Her eyes seemed like they had always seemed, and having her so mad at him was suddenly a great relief. He saw her hands, nervously clasped on the table. The skin on the backs of her hands was a little darker, a little more freckled than the white skin of her fingers. He reached out and took one of her hands. She was startled, and her fingers were stiff, but Sonny held on and in a moment, disconcerted, Ruth let him hold her hand. Their hands knew one another and soon warmed a little.
When Sonny wove his fingers through hers Ruth looked at him cautiously and saw that he was still and numb, resting, not thinking at all. He had probably not even heard the things she said, probably would not remember them—he was beyond her hurting. It was as if he had just come in and they had started holding hands. She would have to decide from that, not from all the things she had said, nor even from the things that had happened, the pain and humiliation of the summer. What if he had valued a silly young girl more than her? It was only stupid, only the sort of thing a boy would do.
She could forgive him that stupidity, but it was not about forgiveness that she had to decide: it was about herself, whether she could stand it again, whether she wanted to. Even if the springs in her would start again it would only be a year or two or three before it would all repeat itself. Something would take him from her and the process of drying up would have to be endured again.
“I’m really not smart,” she thought, and with the fingers of her other hand she began to smooth the little black hairs at the back of his wrist. “I’m not smart, and if I take him back again it will all be to go through again.”
She didn’t know whether she was brave enough to accept it, but she turned his hand over and traced the little lines in his palm, traced them up to the wrist. She pressed the tips of her fingers against the blue veins at his wrist, and followed the vein upward until it went under the sleeve of his shirt. It irritated her that her fingers wanted to go on, to go up the arm to his elbow and over the smooth muscle to the hollow of his shoulder. All at once tears sprang in her eyes and wet her face, her whole body swelled. She knew she was going to have the nerve, after all, and she took Sonny’s young hand and pressed it to her throat, to her wet face. She was on the verge of speaking to him, of saying something fine. It seemed to her that on the tip of her tongue was something it had taken her forty years to learn, something wise or brave or beautiful that she could finally say. It would be just what Sonny needed to know about life, and she would have said it if her own relief had not been so strong. She gasped with it, squeezed his hand, and somehow lost the words—she could not hear them for the rush of her blood. The quick pulse inside her was all she could feel and the words were lost after all.
The Last Picture Show Page 25