Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  Lester was a wealthy boy from Wichita Falls who came to Thalia often. Ostensibly, his purpose in coming was to screw Jacy Farrow, but his suit was not progressing too well and the real reason he kept coming was because losing large sums of money to Abilene gave him a certain local prestige. It was very important to Lester that he do something big, and since losing was a lot easier than winning, he contented himself with losing big.

  Sonny had watched the two shoot so many times that it held no interest for him, so he took his week’s wages and walked across the dark courthouse lawn to the picture show. Jacy’s white Ford convertible was parked out front, where it always was on Saturday night. The movie that night was called Storm Warning, and the posterboards held pictures of Doris Day, Ronald Reagan, Steve Cochran, and Ginger Rogers. It was past 10 P.M., and Miss Mosey, who sold tickets, had already closed the window; Sonny found her in the lobby, cleaning out the popcorn machine. She was a thin little old lady with such bad eyesight and hearing that she sometimes had to walk halfway down the aisle to tell whether the comedy or the newsreel was on.

  “My goodness, Frank oughtn’t to work you so late on weekends,” she said. “You done missed the comedy so you don’t need to give me but thirty cents.”

  Sonny thanked her and bought a package of Doublemint gum before he went into the show. Very few people ever came to the late feature; there were not more than twenty in the whole theater. As soon as his eyes adjusted Sonny determined that Jacy and Duane were still out parking; Charlene Duggs was sitting about halfway down the aisle with her little sister Marlene. Sonny walked down the aisle and tapped her on the shoulder, and the two girls scooted over a seat.

  “I decided you had a wreck,” Charlene said, not bothering to whisper. She smelled like powder and toilet water.

  “You two want some chewin’ gum?” Sonny offered, holding out the package. The girls each instantly took a stick and popped the gum into their mouths almost simultaneously. They never had any gum money themselves and were both great moochers. Their father, Royce Duggs, ran a dinky little one-man garage out on the highway; most of his work was done on pickups and tractors, and money was tight. The girls would not have been able to afford the toilet water either, but their mother, Beulah Duggs, had a secret passion for it and bought it with money that Royce Duggs thought was going for the girls’ school lunches. The three of them could only get away with using it on Saturday night when Royce was customarily too drunk to be able to smell.

  After the feature had been playing for a few minutes Sonny and Charlene got up and moved back into one of the corners. It made Sonny nervous to sit with Charlene and Marlene both. Even though Charlene was a senior and Marlene just a sophomore, the two looked so much alike that he was afraid he might accidentally start holding hands with the wrong one. Back in the corner, he held Charlene’s hand and they smooched a little, but not much. Sonny really wanted to see the movie, and it was easy for him to hold his passion down. Charlene had not got all the sweetness out of the stick of Doublemint and didn’t want to take it out of her mouth just to kiss Sonny, but after a few minutes she changed her mind, took it out, and stuck it under the arm of her seat. It seemed to her that Sonny looked a little bit like Steve Cochran, and she began to kiss him energetically, squirming and pressing herself against his knee. Sonny returned the kiss, but with somewhat muted interest. He wanted to keep at least one eye on the screen, so if Ginger Rogers decided to take her clothes off he wouldn’t miss it. The posters outside indicated she at least got down to her slip at one point. Besides, Charlene was always getting worked up in picture shows; at first Sonny had thought her fits of cinematic passion very encouraging, until he discovered it was practically impossible to get her worked up except in picture shows.

  The movies were Charlene’s life, as she was fond of saying. She spent most of her afternoons hanging around the little beauty shop where her mother worked, reading movie magazines, and she always referred to movie stars by their first names. Once when an aunt gave her a dollar for her birthday she went down to the variety store and bought two fifty-cent portraits to sit on her dresser: one was of June Allyson and the other Van Johnson. Marlene copied Charlene’s passions as exactly as possible, but when the same aunt gave her a dollar the variety store’s stock of portraits was low and she had to make do with Esther Williams and Mickey Rooney. Charlene kidded her mercilessly about the latter, and took to sleeping with Van Johnson under her pillow because she was afraid Marlene might mutilate him out of envy.

  After a few minutes of squirming alternately against the seat arm and Sonny’s knee, lost in visions of Steve Cochran, Charlene abruptly relaxed and sat back. She languidly returned the chewing gum to her mouth, and for a while they watched the movie in silence. Then she remembered a matter she had been intending to bring up.

  “Guess what?” she said. “We been going steady a year tonight. You should have got me something for an anniversary present.”

  Sonny had been contentedly watching Ginger Rogers, waiting for the slip scene. Charlene’s remark took him by surprise.

  “Well, you can have another stick of gum,” he said. “That’s all I’ve got on me.”

  “Okay, and I’ll take a dollar, too,” Charlene said. “It cost that much for me and Marlene to come to the show, and I don’t want to pay my own way on my anniversary.”

  Sonny handed her the package of chewing gum, but not the dollar. Normally he expected to pay Charlene’s way to the show, but he saw no reason at all why he should spend fifty cents on Marlene. While he was thinking out the ethics of the matter the exit door opened down to the right of the screen and Duane and Jacy slipped in, their arms around one another. They came back and sat down by Sonny and Charlene.

  “Hi you all, what are you doin’ back here in the dark?” Jacy whispered gaily. Her pretty mouth was a little numb from two hours of virtually uninterrupted kissing. As soon as it seemed polite, she and Duane started kissing again and settled into an osculatory doze that lasted through the final reel of the movie. Charlene began nervously popping her finger joints, something she did whenever Jacy came around. Sonny tried to concentrate on the screen, but it was hard. Jacy and Duane kept right on kissing, even when the movie ended and the lights came on. They didn’t break their clinch until Billy came down from the balcony with his broom, and began to sweep.

  “Sure was a short show,” Jacy said, turning to grin at Sonny. Her nose wrinkled delightfully when she grinned. She shook her head so that her straight blond hair would hang more smoothly against her neck. Duane’s hair was tousled, but when Jacy playfully tried to comb it he yawned and shook her off. She put on fresh lipstick and they all got up and went outside.

  Miss Mosey had taken the Storm Warning posters down and was gallantly trying to tack up the posters for Sunday’s show, which was Francis Goes to the Army. The wind whipped around the corners of the old building, making the posters flop. Miss Mosey’s fingers were so cold she could barely hold the tacks, so the boys helped her finish while the girls shivered on the curb. Marlene was shivering on the curb too, waiting for Sonny to drop her off at the Duggses. Duane walked Jacy to her convertible and kissed her good-night a time or two, then came gloomily to the pickup, depressed at the thought of how long it was until Saturday night came again.

  When they had taken Marlene home and dropped Duane at the rooming house, Sonny and Charlene drove back to town so they could find out what time it was from the clock in the jewelry store window. As usual, it was almost time for Charlene to go home.

  “Oh, let’s go on to the lake,” she said. “I guess I can be a few minutes late tonight, since it’s my anniversary.”

  “I never saw anything like that Jacy and Duane,” she said. “Kissing in the picture show after the lights go on. That’s pretty bad if you ask me. One of these days Mrs. Farrow’s gonna catch ’em an’ that’ll be the end of that romance.”

  Sonny drove on to the city lake without saying anything, but the remark depressed him. So far as he was
concerned Jacy and Duane knew true love and would surely manage to get married and be happy. What depressed him was that it had just become clear to him that Charlene really wanted to go with Duane, just as he himself really wanted to go with Jacy.

  As soon as the pickup stopped Charlene moved over against him. “Crack your window and leave the heater on,” she said. “It’s still too cold in here for me.”

  Sonny tried to shrug off his depression by beginning the little routine they always went through when they parked: first he would kiss Charlene for about ten minutes; then she would let him take off her brassiere and play with her breasts; finally, when he tried to move on to other things she would quickly scoot back across the seat, put the bra back on, and make him take her home. Sometimes she indulged in an engulfing kiss or two on the doorstep, knowing that she could fling herself inside the house if a perilously high wave of passion threatened to sweep over her.

  After the proper amount of kissing Sonny deftly unhooked her bra. This was the signal for Charlene to draw her arms from the sleeves of her sweater and slip out of the straps. Sonny hung the bra on the rear-view mirror. So long as the proprieties were observed, Charlene liked being felt; she obligingly slipped her sweater up around her neck.

  “Eeh, your hands are like ice,” she said, sucking in her breath. Despite the heater the cab was cold enough to make her nipples crinkle. The wind had blown all the clouds away, but the moon was thin and dim and the choppy lake lay in darkness. When Sonny moved his hand the little dash-light threw patches of shadow over Charlene’s stocky torso.

  In a few minutes it became apparent that the cab was warming up faster than either Sonny or Charlene. He idly held one of her breasts in his hand, but it might have been an apple someone had given him just when he was least hungry.

  “Hey,” Charlene said suddenly, noticing. “What’s the matter with you? You act half asleep.”

  Sonny was disconcerted. He was not sure what was wrong. It did not occur to him that he was bored. After all, he had Charlene’s breast in his hand, and in Thalia it was generally agreed that the one thing that was never boring was feeling a girl’s breasts. Grasping for straws, Sonny tried moving his hand downward, but it soon got entangled in Charlene’s pudgy fingers.

  “Quit, quit,” she said, leaning her head back in expectation of a passionate kiss.

  “But this is our anniversary,” Sonny said. “Let’s do something different.”

  Charlene grimly kept his hand at navel level, infuriated that he should think he really had license to go lower. That was plainly unfair, because he hadn’t even given her a present. She scooted back toward her side of the cab and snatched her brassiere off the mirror.

  “What are you trying to do, Sonny, get me pregnant?” she asked indignantly.

  Sonny was stunned by the thought. “My lord,” he said. “It was just my hand.”

  “Yeah, and one thing leads to another,” she complained, struggling to catch the top hook of her bra. “Momma told me how that old stuff works.”

  Sonny reached over and hooked the hook for her, but he was more depressed than ever. It was obvious to him that it was a disgrace not to be going with someone prettier than Charlene, or if not prettier, at least someone more likable. The problem was how to break up with her and get his football jacket back.

  “Well, you needn’t to get mad,” he said finally. “After so long a time I get tired of doing the same thing, and you do too. You wasn’t no livelier than me.”

  “That’s because you ain’t good lookin’ enough,” she said coldly. “You ain’t even got a ducktail. Why should I let you fiddle around and get me pregnant. We’ll have plenty of time for that old stuff when we decide to get engaged.”

  Sonny twirled the knob of his steering wheel and looked out at the cold scudding water. He kept wanting to say something really nasty to Charlene, but he restrained himself. Charlene tucked her sweater back into her skirt and combed angrily at her brownish blond hair. Her mother had given her a permanent the day before and her hair was as stiff as wire.

  “Let’s go home,” she said. “I’m done late anyway. Some anniversary.”

  Sonny backed the pickup around and started for the little cluster of yellow lights that was Thalia. The lake was only a couple of miles out.

  “Charlene, if you feel that way I’d just as soon break up,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil no more anniversaries for you.”

  Charlene was surprised, but she recovered quickly. “That’s the way nice girls get treated in this town,” she said, proud to be a martyr to virtue.

  “I knew you wasn’t dependable,” she added, taking the football jacket and laying it on the seat between them. “Boys that act like you do never are. That jacket’s got a hole in the pocket, but you needn’t ask me to sew it up. And you can give me back my pictures. I don’t want you showin’ ’em to a lot of other boys and tellin’ them how hot I am.”

  Sonny stopped the pickup in front of her house and fished in his billfold for the three or four snapshots Charlene had given him. One of them, taken at a swimming pool in Wichita Falls, had been taken the summer before. Charlene was in a bathing suit. When she gave Sonny the picture she had taken a ballpoint pen and written on the back of the snapshot, “Look What Legs!”, hoping he would show it to Duane. The photograph showed clearly that her legs were short and fat, but in spite of it she managed to think of herself as possessing gazellelike slimness. Sonny laid the pictures on top of the football jacket, and Charlene scooped them up.

  “Well, good-night,” Sonny said. “I ain’t got no hard feelings if you don’t.”

  Charlene got out, but then she bethought herself of something and held the pickup door open a moment. “Don’t you try to go with Marlene,” she said. “Marlene’s young, and she’s a good Christian girl. If you try to go with her I’ll tell my Daddy what a wolf you was with me and he’ll stomp the you-know-what out of you.”

  “You was pretty glad to let me do what little I did,” Sonny said, angered. “You just mind your own business and let Marlene mind hers.”

  Charlene gave him a last ill-tempered look. “If you’ve given me one of those diseases you’ll be sorry,” she said.

  She could cheerfully have stabbed Sonny with an ice pick, but instead, to impress Marlene, she went in the house, woke her up, and cried for half the night about her blighted romance. She told Marlene Sonny had forced her to fondle him indecently.

  “What in the world did it look like?” Marlene asked, bug-eyed with startled envy.

  “Oh, the awfulest thing you ever saw,” Charlene assured her, smearing a thick coating of beauty cream on her face. “Ouuee, he was nasty. I hope you don’t ever get involved with a man like that, honey—they make you old before your time. I bet I’ve aged a year, just tonight.”

  Later, when the lights were out, Marlene tried to figure on her fingers what month it would be when Charlene would be sent away in disgrace to Kizer, Arkansas, to have her baby. They had an aunt who lived in Kizer. Marlene was not exactly clear in her mind about how one went about getting pregnant, but she assumed that with such goings on Charlene must have. It was conceivable that her mother would make Charlene leave the picture of Van Johnson behind when she was sent away, and that thought cheered Marlene very much. In any case, it would be nice to have the bedroom to herself.

  Three

  AFTER HE LET CHARLENE OUT SONNY DROVE BACK TO town. He was amazed that breaking up with her had been so easy: all he felt was a strong sense of relief at having his football jacket back. It was the jacket he had earned in his junior year when he and Duane had been cocaptains, and it had “Cocaptain” stitched across the front in green thread. He was proud of it, and glad to have it safely out of Charlene’s hands.

  When he got back to the square it was midnight and the town looked just as deserted as it had looked that morning. The night watchman’s old white Nash was parked where it always was, and the night watchman, a man named Andy Fanner, was asleep in the front se
at, his heels propped on the dash. As usual, he had his motor running and his windows rolled up; the town thought Andy a very likely candidate for monoxide poisoning and expected any morning to find him a purplish corpse, but he slept comfortably through hundreds of winter nights with no apparent ill effects. Sonny didn’t share the general worry: he had ridden in the Nash and knew there were holes enough in the floorboard to provide ample ventilation.

  He drove to the all-night café and started in, but when he looked through the window he saw that his father, Frank Crawford, was sitting at the counter, sipping defensively at a cup of coffee and talking to Genevieve Morgan, the night waitress. His father liked Genevieve and Sonny liked her too, but they couldn’t both talk to her at the same time so Sonny returned to the pickup and backed down the street to the square to wait for his father to come out. Waiting made him a little uneasy; somehow he couldn’t help begrudging his father the nightly conversations with Genevieve. She was a shapely black-headed woman in her mid-thirties whose husband had been busted up in a rig accident almost a year before. He was not yet well enough to go back to the oil fields, and since they had two boys and were paying on a house, Genevieve had to go to work. The waitressing job was ten at night to six in the morning, and she didn’t like it, but in Thalia there were not many jobs open at any hour. When she took over the night shift Sam’s business had improved enormously: half the truckers and roughnecks and cowboys in that part of the country would hit the café at night, hoping to make out with Genevieve. She was beginning to thicken a bit at the waist, but she was still pretty, high-breasted, and long-legged; men accustomed to the droopy-hipped plod of most small town waitresses liked the way Genevieve carried herself. Sonny liked it himself and had as many fantasies about Genevieve as he had about Jacy Farrow.