Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  I sat down at the radio a minute and tried to get a weather report, but all I got was static. Anyway, the way the sycamore thrashed was weather report enough. I put an apple in my pocket, in case I got hungry, and shut the back door good when I went out. Just as I stepped off the porch the big raindrops began to splatter me; there was an awful wind, and a big old tumbleweed came swooshing across the yard from the south and bounced right into me. In the dark I never seen it coming, and it scared me, and stung a little, but I got loose from it and went on to the cellar and shut the door after me. The sandstone steps felt cool on my feet; it was pitch dark. I had a kerosene lantern sitting on a table, but before I could work my way over to it I stumped my toe on an old pressure cooker that was sitting on the floor. I never could remember to throw it away, and I stumped my toe on it practically ever time I went to the cellar. From down there I could still hear the wind singing, but it didn’t sound dangerous; nothing sounded dangerous from down in the cellar. I lit the lantern and looked through the quilts to be sure there wasn’t no stinging lizard in them. The cellar was clean, and there never had been many stinging lizards down there, but it never hurt to look; not near as much as it hurt to get stung. Then I blew out the lantern and snuggled down in the quilts and ate my apple. It was a nice sweet one and smelled fresh, like it had just come off the tree that day.

  When I got done I dropped the core under the cot. I had such a good taste in my mouth; it was one thing I liked about apples. Lately I had got so I always belched peaches, so I didn’t eat them much, except in homemade ice cream. I felt nice and cozy and relaxed snuggled in the quilts, and I wasn’t too worried about the storm. Where cyclones were concerned I was awful lucky. One time one went right between the house and the barn, and all it done was turn Dad’s old wagon over; it never even hurt the chickenhouse.

  I thought I would doze right off to sleep, but I didn’t. I lay there wide awake. It began to rain real hard; I heard it beating against the tin door of the cellar. After I lay there thirty minutes or an hour I knew I was going to get real blue before the night was over, and in a little while I began to cry. I didn’t even try to stop myself. At first I was just barely sniffing, but then all my feelings rushed up to my chest and my head and I heard myself crying over the rain on the door. I was crying so hard I thought I had fallen off the cot; when I was coughing and trying to get my breath I pulled back one of the quilts and felt the canvas with my hand, so I hadn’t fallen. My breasts just felt like empty sacks. I turned the pillow over on the dry side and cried some more hard crying, and finally I quit and pushed the pillow off the cot and lay on my stomach with my head on my arms. I was all upset and knew I wouldn’t go to sleep, but I didn’t feel any more like I was going to die.

  There was no cure for being upset that way; I just had to grit my teeth and wait for the feelings to die down. Being lonesome itself was just part of it—mostly I couldn’t stand not having anybody to do for. I never was happy when I just had myself to do for, or even when I had somebody else wanting to do for me. That was nice, but that wasn’t the main point about loving, at least not with me. The main point was having somebody I could let my feelings out on. And I couldn’t do that very well at a distance, I needed to have somebody right around close, so I could touch them and cook for them and do little things like that. It was always men or boys, with me. I never knew a woman I cared for—not even Ma. Men need a lot of things they don’t even know about themselves, and most of them they can’t get nowhere but from women. It was easy to do for them, most of the time, and it made me feel so comfortable. A lot of times it wasn’t easy, of course, but it still felt better to try. With Johnny and Joe it was easy; they were just alike and needed exactly the same kind of handling. With Gid it was sometimes awful hard because Gid was too honest; he never would fool himself or let nobody else fool him, even if it was for his own good. I tried it enough times to know it couldn’t be done, especially if he was having hard times with Mabel. It had nearly always been hard with Dad, and with Eddie, and it was hardest of all with Jimmy, who was just Gid times two. At least Dad and Eddie liked themselves, even if they didn’t like me, and I could figure out what to do from that. But Jimmy, he never liked himself or me, and that made life hell for him. And he hadn’t changed. Wherever he was, over there in the Pacific, he was wishing he was somebody else’s son besides mine. I never even put my hand on Jimmy, not even on his arm, after he found out that Gid was his daddy, and that I was still letting Gid and Johnny get in bed with me. Only I wasn’t letting them come, I was wanting them to: Jimmy didn’t know that, or didn’t understand it, but if he had he would have just hated me more. I blame some of Jimmy’s troubles on religion, but I can’t blame them all on it; I have to blame most of them on myself. If I had married Gid instead of Eddie, Jim might have been a happy boy. But if that had happened, Eddie would have killed Gid, or Gid and Johnny would have fell apart, and there might not have even been a Joe. I don’t know that I done very wrong. But I know that Jimmy’s miserable; some of the time I am too. Four men and two boys were what I’d had for a life, and laying there on the cot I could picture every one of them, plain as day. But there wasn’t a one of them I could get my arms around, and right then, that was what I wanted; I would rather have been blind and had the touch than like I was, with just the picture.

  Everybody gets hard nights, though, I guess. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever felt sick with my feelings, and wasn’t girl enough to think it would be the last. When you lay around feeling cut off from folks, crazy things go through your mind. I would see men’s hands and faces and other parts of them, sometimes even their stomachs, Eddie’s or Johnny’s or Gid’s. Probably if I had gone on and married Johnny, it would have been good for both of us, but he wouldn’t have done it, even if I had really wanted to. He was too responsibility-shy. Besides it would have made Gid feel terrible; he had wanted to marry me all his life.

  Once I almost decided to marry Gid—I guess I was just jealous of Mabel. We were in my bedroom.

  “If you’ve got the guts to quit her, I’ll marry you,” I said. “If you don’t, I wish you’d quit wishing out loud.”

  That was when Gid was having terrible times at home, and when I said that he looked like he was about to split in two.

  “Honey, you know it ain’t a matter of guts,” he said. “If I didn’t have that much guts, I wouldn’t be here now. But I don’t believe in divorcement—it ain’t right. If Mabel wants to do it, she can. I ain’t going to.”

  “If it was conscience, you wouldn’t be here,” I said. “So I still think it’s guts.” I talked awful to Gid sometimes; I don’t know why he didn’t choke me. I would nearly drive him crazy.

  “Well, let’s just be quiet for a little while,” he said. “Honey, I got to go in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  That made me feel terrible, and I pulled him over to me. We had some rough times, me and Gid, a lot rougher than any I ever had with Johnny. Or with Eddie either. Nothing was rough with Johnny, and when things were bad with me and Eddie it was just because he plain enjoyed being rough and mean to women; I was hardly ever hard on him like I was on Gid. Sometimes I hated Gid, and I never felt that strong about Eddie one way or the other.

  After I had cried enough, and thought about things enough, I finally did go to sleep. It wasn’t good sleeping—I felt like I had fever, but I guess I would have slept all morning if Gid hadn’t been good enough to come by and see about me. First thing I knew someone was banging on the cellar door. Down where I was it still pitch dark.

  “I’m down here, I said. “You can open the door.”

  Bright sunlight fell on the steps and across the foot of the cot, and I seen Gid’s old boots on the top step and knew it was him.

  “Well, thank goodness,” he said. “Can I come on down? I was scared you’d blown plumb away.” He took another step, so I could see about to his knees.

  I sat up and pushed the hair back out of my face. “My lord,” I said, “I’ve overslep
t. What time is it, Gid? I bet the milk cow thinks she’s forgot.”

  “Oh, it’s not too late,” he said. “About seven. I can get them chores for you. Can I come down?”

  “Please come on down here,” I said, pulling the quilts up around my middle. “Did the house blow away?” He came on down the steps, I seen his legs and his belly—he was getting a little bulge—and then all of him, standing there kinda grinning at me but looking like he had been worried. Gid was always my favorite; sometimes when I seen him the delight would shoot right through me, as sharp sometimes as a sting.

  “Well, Molly, I sure was worried about you,” he said. “I heard on the five o’clock weather report there was two tornadoes sighted out this way.”

  “Oh, sit down here,” I said. “I’m all right.” And when he sat down on the cot I couldn’t keep from hugging him. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and I felt the bristles on his face against my neck and his arms squeezing my sides; it made me feel good clear to the bottom. He was tense and tight as a drum. Gid always came to me tense. I held him and rubbed my hand on his neck and down his back, and in about two minutes he kind of sighed and let things loosen inside him.

  “I don’t know what I’d do if you was to blow away,” he said.

  “Hush,” I said. “I won’t.” I made enough room on the cot that he could lay down by me; it wasn’t comfortable, but for a few minutes it was okay; I felt like myself agin. Then Gid got embarrassed that I would think he came for bedroom stuff—as many times as he had come for that he still got embarrassed if he thought I knew it—and he sat up.

  “Well, I never meant to come out here and go back to bed,” he said, picking his hat up off the floor.

  “I guess you’re the silliest man alive,” I said. “Maybe that’s why I love you so much. When you were young I didn’t think you were silly at all.”

  I got up too and slipped my bathrobe on and we went up the steps and outside. The yard grass was wet and cool against my bare feet, but it was a clear day, and the sun was drying things up fast. I guess it was the latest I’d slept in two or three years. There were a lot of broken limbs and leaves and tumbleweeds in the yard, and it had blown a few shingles off the roof, but I didn’t see any serious damage. Gid went around the house, inspecting everything, but I felt too good to worry about wind damage; I stood by the cellar, yawning and stretching the kinks out of myself, soaking up the sun. Gid went in the house and got the milk bucket and came and stood by me a minute. He had a look on his face that meant he really wanted to spend the day with me but wanted to do fifty other things too.

  “I’ll go milk,” he said. “I never ate breakfast in town, I could eat with you. I got a million things to do today.”

  I rubbed my head against his neck; it embarrassed him a little.

  “Go on and milk,” I said. “I’ll get breakfast. But you needn’t be planning on rushing off.”

  “I got to, Molly,” he said. “I just wish I didn’t.”

  I went in and cooked a big breakfast, eggs and bacon and biscuits and gravy, and pretty soon he came in with the milk. We sat down and ate.

  “What do you hear from Jimmy?” he said, while we were drinking coffee.

  “Nothing.” And that was all he said during breakfast. I knew he was getting up his nerve to leave.

  “Well, that was a good breakfast,” he said, pushing back his chair. “I hate to eat and run, but I guess I better. I got many a mile to make today.”

  “Don’t leave this morning, Gid,” I said. “Just stay around here.”

  When I came right out and asked him, flat like that, he had to at least look at me. He was too honest just to dodge behind his hat.

  “You need me to help you do something?” he said.

  I could have slapped him for saying that. I needed him to help me live. “No,” I said. “I just like to be around you.”

  It was like I had run a needle into his quick. He shoved his hands in his pocket and shook his head. He didn’t say anything, and I sipped my coffee.

  “I’m glad you do,” he said, finally. “I’d like to stay a month. But you know what I’m up against. I’ve got a few more obligations than you have.”

  I felt miserable for being so hard on him, but I got harder in spite of it.

  “Okay,” I said. “Come back next time there’s a storm.”

  “Aw, now be fair,” he said, and I could tell he was trembling. “I got things I have to do; I’m a husband. Can’t you understand that?”

  “I understand you ain’t going to stay,” I said. “It’s pretty plain what you don’t want to do.” Before I could finish saying it he had stepped over and yanked me out of the chair so quick I didn’t even see his hand, grabbed my hair and yanked my head back so tears sprang out of my eyes, and my face was about two inches from his. But after he held me that way a minute his hands began to tremble.

  “I’m sorry, Gid,” I said, and we walked outside together and stood in the yard.

  “I’m the most worthless white man alive,” he said. “I’ll stay a week.”

  “No, honey, go on and work,” I said.

  “You got some gloves? We might as well patch up them old corrals of yours.”

  We went down to the barn and he got out the tools, and we spent the whole morning patching on the lots, putting a new board in here and there and resting with one another and doing odds and ends and talking. We just piddled, and enjoyed it. Then I fixed him a big dinner and about two o’clock hugged him and sent him on. He was thinking about taking me in the bedroom but I didn’t encourage him; if he had that day, he would have been down on himself for a month and wouldn’t have come to see me all that time. If we held off, he’d be back in a day or two, when he felt easier, and and it would be better for him. Gid was a complicated person, but I had been studying him a long time, and I knew his twists. We had given one another a lot of good times, of one kind or another, since that summer I got pregnant with Jimmy. That seemed an awful long time ago. I guess the times we spent together, the good ones, not the bad ones—there were enough of them, too—were the best times either one of us ever had.

  Three days later, about the middle of the afternoon, Gid came back over. I had been working in the henhouse all day and was sweated down, but I was still glad to see him. I wiped off my face and took him right in the house.

  Three

  ONE DAY ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF JUNE A MAN FROM UP around Vernon came by and wanted to sell me some alfalfa hay. I hadn’t bought any alfalfa in three years and it sounded cheap enough, so I told him to go ahead and bring me ten ton; he said he’d be there with it the next day.

  That afternoon about three o’clock I put on my overalls and got the hull fork and climbed up to see what I could do about cleaning out the loft. I didn’t want the men to have to do it when they got there with the hay. It was a pretty hot day for that time of the year. I turned on the faucet at the water trough and washed my face and got a big drink before I climbed up. Working in the loft was like working in an oven.

  I opened the loft doors at both ends, so there would be a little ventilation. There was plenty to do, I seen that. The loft probably hadn’t been cleaned out since Dad built the barn. The wastage and chaff from all the hay we’d put up was about shin deep, all over the loft, and it was full of all kinds of mess that Dad had left around and I never had bothered: baling wire and hay hooks and buckets and whatnot. I got to poking around, and there was every kind of nest you could imagine in the old loose, dry hay. Rats’ nests and mice nests and cats’ nests and barn owls’ nests and possum nests and probably even a skunk nest or two, if skunks can climb. Many a time, in the winter, I would go up in the loft and find a big old momma possum curled up in the hay, snoozing where it was warm.

  There were fifteen or twenty rotten bales of leftover hay that wasn’t good enough to feed, so the first thing I did was get a hay hook and drag those over and shove them out the north loft door; that way the milk cows could find them and eat what they wanted of them
. I left one bale, to sit on.

  Moving the bales was work itself, and when I got done I could feel the sweat dripping down my legs and down my sides. I drug my sitting bale over by the south door where I could get some breeze, and rested awhile. From the loft I could see way off south, to where Gid’s fence line ran across Idiot Ridge. I wisht I could see more of Gid. I missed him when I didn’t get to see him regular; but I guess he came over ever time his conscience would let him. I never had been able to talk Gid out of his conscience, or love him out of it, either; I had tried both ways. Me and Gid were in a situation where neither one of us could completely win, and I used to wonder why we let ourselves get that way. Maybe we didn’t—I don’t know that there are situations where you can completely win. Not where you can completely win something important.

  A lot of medium-sized thunderheads were blowing around in the sky, so that patches of shadow would come over the pastures and sometimes right up to the barn. Then the clouds would go on north, and it would be bright and sunny till another bunch came along. When I had rested enough I got up and took the hull fork and went to raking the wastage out the loft door. The old stuff was so matted down that it made hard raking. I was always scaring out rats; most of them run along the rafters till they found a hole and went down into the saddlehouse or the oatbin. When Jimmy and Joe were little boys they used to take their rat terrier up in the loft and let him kill rats; it was how we lost that dog, actually. One day he ran a big rat out the loft door and went right out after it. The dog broke his neck and the rat got away. Joe come running up to the house, screaming; he was just heartbroken. It was the first time anything he loved had died. I picked Joe up and ran down to the barn and Jimmy had already carried the dog over by the post pile and was digging a hole to bury him. He was crying, but he wasn’t hysterical. He had had one dog die of a rattlesnake bite. Joe couldn’t understand why he was putting Scooter in the ground.