Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  “I wasn’t meaning her,” he said. “I was talking about you. She’s as nice as they come, I wasn’t calling her no whore. But you ain’t no more of a lily-white boy than I am.”

  “I know it,” I said. “I just want to get this settled. It’s been bothering me for two weeks.”

  “What I’m trying to get you to understand, there ain’t nothing to settle. Molly ain’t done nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve always treated her nice and she likes both of us. You’re just ashamed of something that ain’t shameful.”

  “Maybe so,” I said, “but I’m pretty crazy about her, and I imagine you are too. But one of us ought to take care of her, and it’ll be a shame if one of us don’t that’s all I meant to say. You was first, so you get the first chance.”

  “But that ain’t even right, Gid,” he said. “I wasn’t first, no such thing. I always figured you was first. You was, and you know it. So why try to put the blame on me. I wouldn’t do a thing like that to you.”

  That confused me. “The hell you wasn’t first,” I said. “Molly told me herself—she wasn’t thinking what she was saying, I guess—that I wasn’t the first one. Why are you trying to get out of it if you ain’t ashamed?”

  “Because I wasn’t first,” he said. “If you wasn’t, then somebody else was. Not you nor me. Hell, I never stayed with her a time till last summer. When did you start?”

  “The night of that harvest dance,” I said. It flabbergasted us both. We never said a word for about fifteen miles, I guess. My ears like to froze off.

  “Well, I guess we caught her,” he said, finally. “I swear. I always figured it had been you. I wonder who the hell it was.”

  “It can’t be just anybody,” I said. “She’s too sweet a girl. Who have we overlooked?”

  “Aw hell,” he said. “We ought to thought of it sooner. It must have been that damn Eddie.”

  “Not that worthless bastard, I can’t believe that.” But I remembered one time she said he was the only one silly enough for her her. I guess she meant it.

  “He’s the very one,” Johnny said. “He ought to have the shit kicked out of him. What business does he have fiddling around with Molly anyway? That hound-running sonofabitch has probably got fleas plumb up to his middle.”

  “Yeah, that shit-ass,” I said. “Evertime I see him he’s greasy to the elbows. What would she want to take up with somebody like that for?”

  “Aw, Molly’s crazy,” he said. He didn’t sound too happy, and I wasn’t either. Neither of us could stand that goddamn Eddie. “She don’t think like other girls,” he said. “Her trouble is, she’s too nice. She’s lived with that no-count bastard of a daddy so long she can’t tell worthless people from them that’s got something to them.”

  “That’s about it. That old man’s the cause of it all.”

  “I guess she figures she don’t have no chance of being a nice girl anyway, growing up around him. That’s probably why she took up with Eddie.”

  “Maybe there’s somebody else,” I said. “I’d rather it be nearly anybody than him.”

  But we couldn’t think of another soul.

  “Anyhow,” Johnny said, “now you see that neither one of us has got to marry her. We don’t need to have no guilty conscience. If he done it first, he’s the one ought to marry her.”

  That shocked me worse than anything he’d said the whole night. “My god,” I said. “You think I’d sit by and watch Molly marry a worthless sonofabitch like him. Why he ain’t got nothing but a few hound dogs and a pair of roughnecking boots. He’d just drag her to one oil patch after another all her life.”

  “Serve her right, by god,” he said. “She oughtn’t to taken up with him in the first place.”

  “I know,” I said. “But it don’t make no difference. I’ll just marry her anyway, even if I am third man. I ain’t going to let her marry Eddie.”

  “Looky there,” he said. “Ain’t that a sight? I never knowed we was this close.”

  I looked, and there were the lights of Fort Worth. You never saw so many lights in your life. It was hard to imagine living in a place that big, but it sure was exciting to see all the lights at once. The train blew its whistle.

  “That’s cowtown,” Johnny said.

  “It’s too early for anybody to be up,” I said. “I wonder what they need with so many lights.”

  “I guess they just leave them lit so jackasses like us can tell when we’re coming to a real town.”

  We stood up and looked, and pretty soon there were houses all around us and we went back in the caboose awhile, to warm up. The oil-fielder was still asleep. We decided he was drunk.

  “I tell you what,” Johnny said. We took off his shoes real careful and hid them over in a corner and got his shoelaces and tied his ankles together with them. We left a little play in the laces, but we tied about a dozen real hard knots and then spit on them to make them slippery.

  “It’ll take him a solid hour to get loose,” Johnny said.

  “It serves him right. It’s what he gets for being an oil-fielder.” We thought that was a pretty funny trick.

  Pretty soon the train slowed down and stopped at the stockyards, and then the fun stopped too, for a while. We didn’t know up from down about the stockyards, or what we we’re supposed to do or nothing, and we got out and stood around in the cold and the dark for about an hour, waiting to unload the cattle. There were a lot of stockyards fellers moving around with lanterns and punchpoles, and a lot of railroad men too, but they never said nothing to us and we didn’t bother them.

  “Hell, maybe we ought to ask somebody,” I said finally. “What if the train goes on and takes our stock with it?”

  “I don’t know,” Johnny said. “My damn hands are froze. I hate to bother any of these men, don’t you?”

  I hated to too, so we stood awhile longer. Then the train blew its whistle, and that scared us enough that we found a Mexican and asked him. But he only knew Mexican and we only knew white man, so we finally had to ask one of the stockyards men.

  “Goddamn, boys, you’all look about frozen,” he said. We told him our problem, and, by god, if they hadn’t already unloaded our cattle and taken them to a pen way off across the yards. We had been so cold we never noticed and had got by the wrong railroad car, one full of cattle that was going on to the slaughterhouse.

  “Well, I guess we can go get a hotel room, can’t we?” Johnny said.

  “Not till we find them cattle,” I said. “What if somebody tried to mix them with another bunch? Dad would have a fit.”

  So we struck off across the yards looking for them, and just had an awful time. We had to crawl over about a hundred fences, and we couldn’t see well enough to tell if any of the bunches of cattle were ours or not. There must have been a thousand bunches of cattle, each one in a different pen. Finally by mistake we got in a pen with a couple of damn boar hogs. We didn’t even see them and thought the pen was empty till we got about halfway across it and heard one grunt as he come for us.

  “Goddamn,” Johnny said. “Run.” We took off and hadn’t take two steps till another hog jumped up in front of us. He squealed and come at us too, but we jumped him before he got to his feet good and hit the fence and went up it.

  “Shit,” Johnny said, “you can look for them cattle if you want to. I’m going to the hotel. I ain’t no hog fighter.”

  The old boars were grunting and squealing around below us like they really wanted blood. I wasn’t a hog fighter either.

  “Goddammit,” I said. “They oughtn’t to taken them cattle out of the cars without asking me. I’m the one responsible for them, ain’t I? Now I guess they’re lost.”

  “Well, if they are, we just won’t go home,” Johnny said. “We can work around here for a few days and then catch a train up north. If them cattle are lost, I don’t never want to see Archer County agin.”

  We finally found our way out of the yards and went through the big Exchange building. On the other side of it w
as the street. We walked down it and came to a lot of honkytonks and hotels; the honkytonks were closed, and the hotels didn’t look too lively, but we finally come to one called the Longhorn, and an old feller came out dripping chewing tobacco on the rug and gave us a room for fifty cents apiece. I was worried about the cattle. I figured if I had lost them, I better go farther away than the Panhandle. I better go at least to Canada.

  Johnny, though, he wasn’t worrying; they wasn’t his cattle.

  “Me for some shut-eye,” he said. “I wonder if that roughneck ever woke up.”

  It was an awful small, bare room we got, without no bathroom and with one of the littlest beds you ever saw.

  “You mean we paid fifty cents apiece just to get a little old bed like that?” I said. “Hell, I slept in a bigger bed than that when I was a baby.”

  Johnny could sleep anywhere; he pulled off his boots and lay down. “Which you want,” he said, “top or bottom? There ain’t room enough for sideways.”

  But I thought I’d look at the street a minute, and when I let the windowshade up I seen it was daylight.

  “Why, it’s morning,” I said. “Get up and let’s go look for those cattle.”

  But he was done asleep and I went on without him. I figured I could do as well by myself anyway.

  WHEN I got back to the yards things looked a lot more cheerful; the sun was up and the cattle were bawling and people were charging around everywhere. They had big wide planks nailed on top of the fences, so you could just walk around above the pens and see the cattle without having to get down in the cowshit. I found my cattle in about ten minutes, and was I relieved. There was even a feller with them filling up the hayrack with hay. Them yards was really run right. The hay feller turned out to be a sourpuss.

  “Howdy,” I said. “I sure am glad to see those cattle.”

  “You’re the Fry boy, ain’t you?” he said.

  “Gideon Fry. I’m glad to meet you.”

  “Why’d the hell you sleep so late?” he said. “You done missed two good chances to sell these cattle already. Your dad, now, he was always out at the yards by daybreak.”

  I never cared much to take a chewing out from an old fat hay hauler in a corduroy cap, so I asked him which way the buyers went. He got up on the fence and pointed one out to me, way across the yards. He bought for Swift & Armour, it turned out. I went over and introduced myself, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t buy the cattle right there, for a dime a pound. He took me right on in the Exchange building after the cattle were weighed and gave me a check. So that was that. I was so surprised I felt lightheaded; I had expected a hell of a day’s work selling them cattle. It was just an hour after sunup and they were already sold.

  There was a little lunch counter over in one corner of the big rotunda of the Exchange building, and I went over and bought myself a cup of coffee and set down with it. I just set there, feeling good, drinking the hot coffee; I felt like I could handle anything.

  By then it was seven o’clock on a Monday morning, and the floor of the Exchange building was swirling with people. There was a big blackboard over on one wall and two men were at it all the time with chalk and erasers, marking up reports of prices and the number of cattle and whatnot at all the other big markets, Chicago and Kansas City and Omaha and I don’t remember where else. The big cattlemen were stomping around the lobby, making deals and ordering people around. You could tell them right off from the just plain cowboys, even if they dressed alike. The cattlemen were the ones giving orders and acting like Dad acts, and the cowboys were taking orders and going off every which way to carry them out. I heard one feller, he was standing about ten feet from me make a deal for over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cattle and he was just standing there drinking coffee, like me. Watching them big operators made an impression on me. They acted like what they were doing was important, and they did things like they meant them. Nobody was ordering them around, like Dad done me and Johnny. They was their own bosses—they weren’t nasty about it, you could just tell. I guess it was independence. Anyhow, I went and got another cup of good strong hot coffee and set down to think about it. Dad had probably been right about me. Johnny, he could go off and cowboy if he wanted to; I might enjoy going along for a while, but it just wouldn’t suit me for long. I wanted to amount to what all them big boys amounted to.

  In a little while I went down the street a few doors and had breakfast at a little café. I started to go get Johnny, but I decided I might as well let him sleep. I felt like I’d wasted too much time in my life, and that cattle money was burning my pocket. There was all them cattle out in the yards, just waiting for somebody to buy them and make money on them. I intended to go make a little.

  So I went back and spent the day on the yards. I kept expecting Johnny, but he never come, and I didn’t have time to go get him. I had over eight thousand dollars of Dad’s money when I started buying and trading and fooling around. Right off I bought a little bunch of steers and sold them not an hour later for a dollar a hundred profit. Boy, I felt like I was on the way. Only then a damn scoundrel from South Texas sold me another bunch too high. I guess I was tired or something and didn’t look at them good. It was the ruination of me. I had made six hundred dollars on my first little deal and I figured I’d make that much more on the steers. Then I could buy some real good steers to take home to Dad, and I would still have made money. But, by god, if the last bunch wasn’t the worst bunch of cattle I ever bought in my life. When I finally took time to really look them over, I seen how sorry they was, full of pinkeyes and foul foots and crips of one kind and another; looking at them from up above had fooled me. I spent all afternoon trying to sell them: I didn’t dare go home with them. Finally I sold them back to the bastard I bought them from, at a four dollar a hundred loss. I lost twelve hundred dollars right there. During the afternoon I did buy some good steers and arranged to ship them to Henrietta, but that didn’t make up for the twelve hundred dollars. It was just gone. I seen right then I was going to have to pay better attention if I was ever going to make a cattleman. Only I just gave up for that day. Losing that money kinda made me sick. I wanted to whip that South Texas bastard, but I didn’t have a legitimate reason to. He had skinned me fair and square. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.

  ABOUT AN HOUR before dark I went through the Exchange building and walked on back to the Longhorn Hotel. It was getting cold agin, and I felt sleepy and lonesome and plumb depressed with the world. Who I really wanted to see right then was Molly, in the worst way. Fort Worth didn’t look like a very cheerful place any more. In fact, when I looked at it close, it looked like the dustiest, ugliest place I’d ever seen, except that town in Kansas where the hospital was. I would have given another twelve hundred dollars to have been back home, eating supper with Molly and listening to her talk.

  But I wasn’t there, and I had lost the money, and that was all there was to it. I sure did feel blue. I went up the stairs to our room, intending to get Johnny up so I could lay down and sleep, but when I opened the door I seen he wasn’t there. And it was such a cold lonesome ugly little old bare room that I didn’t feel like going to sleep in it, even if I was about to drop. The bed never had nothing on it but a little thin green counterpane anyway, and that wouldn’t have kept a midget warm.

  So I went back down stairs and out on the street. The street lights were done on, and they made the town look yellow and full of shadows. I figured Johnny was at the nearest honkytonk, but he wasn’t; I had to go in eight or ten before I found him. Finally I seen him, way back in a bar, sitting at a table with some old feller I didn’t know. They couldn’t hardly see one another for the beer bottles stacked in front of them. Then I recognized the feller he was with: I had heard Dad tell about him. His name was Sam, and he was kind of a stockyards beggar, I guess; he had one real leg and one pegleg, and he wore a boot on the peg just like he did on the real foot. In his younger days he had been a cowboy on some big ranch and had got his leg pinched
off between two boxcars, loading cattle one day. Johnny looked in high spirits.

  “Hello partner,” he said. “Where you been all day? I had me a good nap.”

  “I stayed out on the yards and traded a little,” I said. “Wish I hadn’t. A sonofabitch got the best of me and I lost a lot of Dad’s money. I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”

  “Drink a beer and don’t brood,” he said. “Hell, don’t never brood. Sam can show us where and we’ll go lose our virginity; then we can go home plumb busted.”

  “I can show you, sonny,” Sam said. “Call that waitress over here. I’m strangling of thirst.”

  The waitress was a big fat woman in a red skirt; she was too ugly to look at if you could help it. I drank a couple of bottles right quick, but they didn’t improve my spirits none.

  “I wished you’d have come out there,” I said to Johnny. “I needed you. What kind of a hand are you, anyway?”

  “One with sense,” he said. “And I ain’t drunk, either, so quit frowning at me. I wouldn’t get drunk before you did; it wouldn’t be polite. Hell, if I had come out the way I was feeling today, we might have lost everything and really been up shit creek.”

  “I lost enough for both of us.” I said. “Goddamn the luck.”

  “That’s what I say, sonny,” Sam said. “Goddamn the luck. I been saying that for years. Call that waitress over here, I could stand a little more beer, couldn’t you’ all?”

  We stood a hell of a lot more of it. I don’t guess we left the place till ten or eleven o’clock, and by that time the table top was full of beer bottles and we had set so many on the floor we were practically surrounded. We left a little alley for the waitress to come through, between me and where Sam was laying. He had slid off on the floor and went to sleep earlier in the evening and was stretched out nice and comfortable with his pegleg boot propped up on one rung of the chair. They had tried to drag him out, but me and Johnny felt like we ought to protect him. We would have fought like hell if anybody had grabbed him.