Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  He turned old Blue-ass toward the barn, and off they went.

  “Ain’t that a sight?” Gid said.

  “Get in and back her up, Molly,” I said. “This chain ain’t very long.”

  IT DIDN’T take long to get the pickup out, once I got her hitched to it. It’s just a wonder she didn’t pull it in two.

  “Now you got about ten feet of slack,” I said. “Go slow till the chain gets tight. Then give her hell.”

  “You reckon she can do it?” Gid said.

  “You just stand back so the mud won’t splatter on you,” she said.

  She gunned that old Ford like it was a B-36. I just braced myself; I knew what she was going to do. Directly off she went, and it like to popped my head off when she hit the end of the chain. But we sure came out of the mud. Gid gave a jump for the running board, but he wasn’t close enough, so he got left. I went to honking for her to stop: the road was still so slick I was afraid to tap my brakes. I just sat loose in the seat and got ready to jump if it come to that. There wasn’t no limit to how reckless Molly could drive. Once I was riding with her when she turned over a trailer with two sows and eleven shoats in it; a Greyhound bus passed us and honked. “He never needed to honk at me,” she said. It took me half a day to gather those squealing bastards up.

  For a change, I was lucky. We came to a corner, and when we got around it she felt a little jerk on the chain and remembered me. I was out of the pickup and had the chain unhooked before we quit rolling good.

  “I’ll be,” she said. “I guess we left Gid.”

  “He’s coming down the road.” I hadn’t looked, but I knew Gid that well. I was fixing to back up for him when I heard him holler.

  “Just hold on,” he said. “If you was to back up you’d run over me.” He was red in the face as an old turkey gobbler.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he said to Molly. “I wish you’d been tied to a tree.”

  “You didn’t need to walk,” she said. He didn’t bother Molly. “Now git in this car. We won’t go to town, we’ll just go back to my place. I want to work on this arm a little.” She slipped up and got him by his sore arm, so he couldn’t pull back, and led him right on over to the Ford without another word said. He knew better than to fool with her when she had the advantage. We stopped at the wreck a minute, so he could fish out a box of cigars. I bet it blistered him a little to have her drive him up the hill he’d just slid down.

  MOLLY WAS still living on the old Taylor place, where she had lived her whole life. It was on a hill—some say the highest place in the county—and you could see it for miles and miles around. The first time I ever saw Molly was on that place; she was carrying a jug of the old man’s whiskey up the cellar steps. It was the first time I had ever been visiting anywhere. All my folks were blonds, and I never will forget how surprised I was to see them black-headed Taylor kids. Pa and the old man sat on the back steps and drank whiskey out of the same jug for half an hour, and then they chased me and Molly down and made us drink a little. We cried and run off down to the pigpen together and made some mud pies out of the pigwallow and ate them, to get the whiskey taste out of our mouths. When we went back the old man thought of some more devilment: he sat a bucket on the fence and said he’d give me a dime if I’d shoot it off with his old twelve-gauge shotgun. I didn’t know what a dime was, but I was crazy about guns. Pa steadied it for me so I don’t guess I caught the whole kick, but I caught enough. I missed the bucket, too, so the old man wouldn’t give me the dime; I never found out what one was till two years later. Molly took up for me and led me down in the cellar and showed me the still.

  And she stayed right there and done all of her living right up on that hill. I guess she just never saw no reason to move around. Her old man and old lady were dead before she married Eddie, and all the other kids had left home. Eddie never had nothing but a pack of turd hounds and a pair of roughnecking boots from the day he was born till the day he fell off the derrick; their getting married was just a matter of finding a justice of the peace who was sober enough to talk. But it’s still strange to think of her spending her whole life there on her hill. One night when we were younger and were laying up together, I was awake listening to the wind rattle the windowpanes, and I asked her about it.

  “Ain’t you curious to see the world at all?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I’m doing just as much living right here and now as I could anywhere.” And she hugged me and we went back to sleep.

  Probably, in the long run, she was right. She done her share up on that hill. She was born there, and went to school what little she went over in the Idiot Ridge schoolhouse. The flu killed the old lady in 1918; the old man drank lye. Her oldest brother Shep, I don’t know what became of him. Mary Margaret married a store clerk, and Rich got caught stealing saddles and sent to the pen; Molly said once he was out, but he never came our way. Eddie fell off that oil rig, and then the Germans got Joe and the Japs got Jimmy. All that time Molly stayed there and went on. Sometimes I wonder what will become of the old Taylor place when Molly and the rest of us are gone. I can’t imagine that hill without her. But I guess there ain’t nothing that don’t come to an end sometime.

  When we got there she took us in the kitchen and fed us peach cobbler and coffee. Gid was quiet as a mouse. After a while she went out in the smokehouse and brought in some kerosene for him to soak his arm in.

  He perked right up. “Oh, is that all?” he said. He couldn’t get his sleeve up fast enough. I guess he thought she went after the dehorning saw.

  “Yell if she gets too rough,” I said. “I got to go outside. Smelling that kerosene ain’t good for a healthy man.”

  I went out back and sat on the steps. You could see way off west, across Molly’s land and a lot of Gid’s. Her back bedroom was a nice place to wake up. The clouds to the west were peeling away like layers of gauze, and it wasn’t long before the sun was shining on the wet mesquite. I could hear her and Gid talking through the screen door. It was childish, but it made me feel left out. I knew all about it. Old as they was, Gid was still halfway talking about leaving Mabel and coming to live with Molly, and she was halfway encouraging it. And it would have been a good thing for Gid and her both, I guess; it just made me feel a little left out. We had both hung around her so long. Course Gid ought to left Mabel. Living with her thirty years was no judgment, in my book. But she had a grandkid to hold over him. I got up and walked around to the garden, to see how the tomatoes and the roasting ears were holding out. I seen I was going to have to make it around for supper a little more often, if I was going to beat the blister bugs to what there was. Molly kind of expected me for a supper anyway, a lot of times.

  When I came out of the garden the sun was so bright that I went around to the front of the house, where the shade was. In a little while Gid come out on the porch; he had about a half a bed-sheet wrapped around his arm, and he was grinning like a possum.

  “I’m as good as new,” he said.

  Molly came out with three big glasses of buttermilk and a plate of cold cornbread. Nobody had much to say, so we sat quiet for a change, eating cornbread and buttermilk. Once in a while the conversation would kinda settle; I guess we were all thinking about old times. Finally I looked around and Molly and Gid were staring off across the pastures, not seeing anything.

  “What time is it?” I said. They both jumped.

  Gid fished out his pocket watch, but it was stopped.

  “Shadows are pretty long,” Molly said.

  “Time we got on,” he said.

  “Aw, you’all stay for supper. I’ve got some fresh black-eyed peas shelled. We’ll dress a fryer.”

  “I guess we can’t,” Gid said, sounding a little gloomy. He set his empty buttermilk glass down on the tray. His nose still looked raw and stingy.

  Molly walked out in the yard and began to pick on the lilac bushes. “I don’t see why you’all don’t just sit a few more minutes,” she said. “Supper won�
��t take no time.”

  “We’ll have to put it off till some other time,” Gid said. “We’re much obliged.”

  “I don’t want your much obliged,” she said, kinda snappy. “I want you to eat with me.”

  Then we walked around the house and stood by the cellar a minute, the cellar Old Man Taylor had built. The sun was down and it was clouding up agin over in the northwest.

  Gid said let’s go and Molly tried one more time to get us to stay. She walked out to the pickup with us, looking down in the dumps. Gid bragged on her bandage a little, to try and perk her up.

  “You’all come by and see me,” she said.

  “I’ll be by,” I said. “I might even get back tonight.”

  “I wish you would, if it ain’t out of your way. I’ll keep something on the stove.”

  “No, don’t go to no trouble,” I said. “No sense in you waiting up special. I might not get by till eleven o’clock, I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Do as you please.”

  We told her good-by and I drove on out through the cattle guard, into the lane. Molly was still standing by her windmill, watching the world, or maybe just watching us.

  “SHE’S GETTING lonesome in her old age,” he said.

  “Tell me where to go,” I said. “I don’t want to get blamed for taking you someplace wrong.” He never had found out I wasn’t no mind reader. Once when we was younger and got drunk I took him to a rodeo in Newcastle and it turned out he had paid his entry fee in one in Waurika, Oklahoma, a hundred and fifty miles the other way.

  “Just take me home,” he said. He was blue; he always got blue in the late evenings—had been for years. If I had to face Mabel, I wouldn’t have had no fondness for sundown, either.

  “Molly’s been lonesome a good while,” I said. “Her independent talk don’t fool me.”

  “We’re the only ones that ever go and see her,” he said. “Wonder why she don’t like womenfolk.”

  “Same reason I don’t. They’re silly as hens, all of them except her.”

  He turned it over in his mind for a while. It wasn’t quite dark good, but all the lights were on in Thalia. Ever time we topped a hill I seen them flashing. The shower had cooled things off and the country smelled nice and green. Being in wrecks made Gid thoughtful.

  “Molly’s had a lot,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But I wouldn’t call it no whopping success of a life.”

  “She’s made mistakes,” he said. “So have I and so have you.”

  “At least I ain’t made the same ones over and over agin,” I said.

  “Why not? You might as well make them you’re used to as to make new ones all the time. It don’t do no more damage.

  “Anyhow,” he said, “I wish she wasn’t lonesome.”

  We drove through Thalia. Two or three cars were parked in front of the picture show, and a couple more outside the domino hall.

  “Television’s got the picture show business,” he said.

  “No wonder. They quit making good shows. The last one I seen that was any count was Red River.”

  “Good night,” he said, “that was years ago.”

  “So were a lot of good things,” I said. Six or eight kids were scuffling and fighting on the courthouse lawn, under the mulberry trees.

  “You don’t keep up,” he said. “Shane was made since then. So was The Searchers.”

  “Them was so-so,” I said. “All the good movie stars are getting too old.”

  “I wish I had the energy them kids have,” he said.

  “You’d waste it,” I said. “Just like they’re doing.”

  We passed the drive-in eating place, and it looked like 90 percent of the cars in town were there. “Them things are what makes the money,” I said.

  “I know it,” he said. “I hate a drive-in. Them jukeboxes are awful.”

  “Susie’ll be right there in a few years,” I said. “Right in the middle of it.”

  “I guess so,” he said. “I reckon so.”

  I pulled up in his driveway and stopped. Gid opened the door but he kept sitting there.

  “How’ll we get those goddamn goats?” he said.

  “I favor a thirty-thirty,” I said. “The ammunition’s cheap.”

  “But the goats ain’t. We’ll just get out there about daybreak and get them ourselves.”

  “I knew you’d decide on the hardest way.”

  “If you stop at the domino hall,” he said, “tell Charlie Starton to get his wrecker and go get that car. You might show him where it is.” What he meant was, be damn sure I didn’t let that car sit out there all night.

  “Okay,” I said. “See you when it gets light. Any special horse? You got one that’s good on goats?”

  “Bring me any one you can catch,” he said.

  He was out, still holding to the car door. I began to back up. The only way to get loose from him was to drive loose. When I swung into the street my headlights shone on him, standing outside his door cleaning his boots.

  Charlie Starton was standing on the sidewalk in front of the domino hall, smoking a cigar.

  “What’s the matter with Gid?” he said. “Can’t he drive?”

  I never cared to stand around having no conversation with Charlie Starton.

  “His reflexes don’t work too fast,” I said. “Are you coming or ain’t you?”

  When there was money involved Charlie’s reflexes worked awful fast. He followed me right out and winched up the car. I turned in at Molly’s, but it was past ten, and she had gone to bed; I hated that. I hated to see Molly lonesome, and I had been counting on some cold supper besides. But it wasn’t no go. I went home and fed the chickens and ate me a bowl of Post Toasties and went to bed.

  Three

  ABOUT TWO WEEKS LATER WE MET MOLLY AT THE FEED store one morning. It was August then, and the country was drying up, so Gid wanted to feed his old cows a little. I was in town early and we thought we’d be the first customers, but Molly’s old Ford was sitting by the loading platform.

  “She’s getting her chicken feed,” I said.

  Gid looked a little nervous. Him and her might have been having arguments, I didn’t know.

  Her and the feed-store hands were sitting in the back of the store on the sacks of dogfood, drinking coffee. Samuel Houston was petting his old mangy dog and telling a big windy. He didn’t own the feed store, he just foremanned it: His boy T.I. and a crew of Mexicans did what little work got done.

  Molly looked up and said hello to us, but Samuel H. never broke his stride.

  “He caught me about two miles this side of the stop sign,” he said. “Come walking up to the car with a big gun on his hip and a badge on his chest. ‘I’d like to see your driver’s license,’ he said, like it was a friendly conversation. ‘I’d like to see your funeral notice, you sonofabitch,’ I said. ‘Now, mister, don’t use that foul language,’ he said. ‘What are you going to tell the judge when you have to show him this ticket?’ ‘I guess, by god, I’ll tell him I run a goddamn stop sign,’ I said. ‘Now give it here, I got to get this feed unloaded this morning.’”

  “Why, I’d have stomped that mother into the pavement,” T.I. said. “Where he needed to be stomped.” He might have, too. Once at a medicine show T.I. won what they said was a genuine white Mormon wife, only it turned out to be a genuine White Rock Hen. He stomped a little that night. His real name was Texas Independence.

  “Why, hello, Gid,” Samuel Houston said, “have you seen my dog? This here’s the smartest dog I ever raised, and I call him Billie Sol. He can suck the eggs right out from under the hens without them even noticing.”

  Gid just looked impatient. “I hate to bother you fellers,” he said. “But if it ain’t too much trouble, I’d like about a dozen sacks of cottonseed cake.”

  The three Mexicans got the biggest laugh out of that. They led such easy lives sitting around that percolator, I guess they could get a big laugh out of anything.


  “Oh, it’s no trouble,” Samuel H. said. “No trouble atall. That’s what we’re in business for. Sit down and help yourself to some coffee.”

  “No thank you,” Gid said. “I believe we’ll get the cake and get on. The longer we wait the hotter it will get.”

  “Then, by god, why go? A man can get too hot out working, if he ain’t careful. It’ll be cool agin this afternoon.”

  “Oh, sit down a minute,” Molly said. “I got a favor to ask you.”

  But Gid was having a stubborn fit; he kept standing up fidgeting. Finally I got tired of standing and sat down.

  “We’d sure like to get on,” Gid said. “Maybe me and Johnny could just load the feed ourselves, if you’d show us where it is.”

  “Why sure, Gid,” Samuel Houston said. “It’s right over there in the corner. Just feel right at home. Show him where that cottonseed cake is, T.I.”

  T.I. yawned like he had just got up. “Sure,” he said. “Why don’t you let these boys help you pitch it in the truck? They don’t mind.”

  I knew it would eventually come down to me helping load it. Gid would have soon handled a rattlesnake as a sack of cattle feed. He never lifted one except in emergencies. But as soon as I stood up and moved, the Mexicans grabbed the sacks and had the feed loaded in a minute and a half. And as soon as Gid saw that, he was perfectly happy to stay awhile; he felt like things were getting done.

  Only he said the exact wrong thing, and Molly thought he said it to her.

  “That’s the stuff,” he said. “We can get going in a minute now and get some work done. I wasn’t raised lazy, like most people.”

  I don’t know what possessed him to say it; maybe it was being nervous. And I don’t know what possessed Molly to take it wrong; he never meant to aim it at her. But she sat her cup down and gave him the strangest hurt look.

  The elevator boss drove up then, and Samuel and T.I. and the Mexicans jumped to get to work. Just us three stayed there, and it was real quiet. I tried my hardest to think of some conversation to kinda pass it all over, and I know Gid did too, but we couldn’t come up with much. It was plain silly, but it was awkward as hell; five minutes of it would have made me sick.