Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  If you didn’t have someone to sneak off and court with, all there was to do at lunchtime was play volleyball. The one alternative amusement was watching the Melly brothers, George and Ed, who ordinarily spent their lunch hour jacking off in the boys’ rest room. The Melly boys lived on a broken-down farm in the western part of the county, and had very few pleasures. Freshmen and sophomores got a kick out of watching them go at it, but it was really beneath the attention of seniors like Sonny and Duane.

  As classes were being dismissed that afternoon Coach Popper announced that anyone interested in coming out for basketball should be in the gym in fifteen minutes. Basketball was not a big deal sport in Thalia; Sonny and Duane only went out because they were seniors and felt obligated. Also, the road trips were nice because the boys’ and girls’ teams rode on the same school bus. When all candidates were assembled in the boys’ dressing room there turned out to be only nine boys there, not even enough for two teams. It was no real surprise: Thalia was generally conceded to have about the most miserable basketball team in the state. On a few spectacularly dismal occasions they had managed to lose games by over a hundred points.

  The nine boys began to get into their jockey straps and shorts, and were rubbing foot toughener on their feet when Coach Popper came in from the equipment room. He wore a green fatigue jacket that he had swiped from the army and he was dragging two big sacks of basketballs. He was big and he was proud of it: two hundred and thirty-five pounds, at least half of it gut.

  As soon as he got to the dressing room he stopped and took a quick tally. His countenance darkened.

  “Goddammit!” he said. “Ain’t there but nine of you little farts? Forty-six boys in this high school, ain’t but nine come out? If this ain’t a piss-ignorant place to have to coach. Where’s Joe Bob, anyhow? The least that little piss-ant can do is come out for basketball.”

  “He’s home jackin’ off,” Leroy said. “Or else he’s readin’ the Bible. That’s all he does, one or the other.”

  “You all take ten laps and get out there and shoot some free throws,” the coach said. “I’m going down to the church and get him. He ain’t worth a shit but he’s easy to find and I ain’t gonna drive all over this county looking for basketball players. I ain’t gonna hold no practice unless we got at least two teams, either.”

  He hitched his pants up over his big, sagging belly and went out the door.

  All but two or three of the boys ignored the ten-lap command and began shooting whatever kind of shots came into their heads. The only one who actually ran all ten laps was Bobby Logan, the most conscientious athlete in school. Bobby liked to stay in shape and always trained hard; he was smart, too, but he was such a nice kid that nobody held it against him. He was the coach’s special favorite.

  When the coach came back he had Joe Bob at his heels. By that time all the boys were throwing three-quarter court peg shots, like Ozark Ike in the comics. Balls were bouncing everywhere. Once in a game Sonny had seen an Indian boy from Durant, Oklahoma actually make a three-quarter court peg shot in the last five seconds of play. It didn’t really win the game for Durant, because they were already leading Thalia by about sixty-five points, but it impressed Sonny, and he resolved to start trying a few himself.

  “Hey, quit chunkin’ them balls, you little dumbasses,” Coach Popper yelled. “Just for that we’ll have some wind sprints.”

  Joe Bob was standing just behind the coach combing his hair. The coach happened to turn around and the sight made him so mad he grabbed Joe Bob’s comb and threw it up in the stands as high as he could. “Get your skinny ass suited out,” he said. All the boys grinned when Joe Bob went into the dressing room because while the coach was gone they had mixed a little glue in with the foot toughener. If Joe Bob used any of the foot toughener he would probably have to keep his socks on for about three weeks.

  The coach divided the boys into two teams and put them to running simple plays. He sat in a bridge chair with a blue towel around his neck and watched them, yelling from time to time. He had a little paper cup for his tobacco juice sitting by the chair. The loudest he yelled all afternoon was when a freshman who hadn’t yet learned to dribble let a ball knock the cup over. They spent the last twenty minutes of practice running wind sprints up and down the gym. Joe Bob’s feet were so badly blistered by that time that he had to hop the last two wind sprints on one leg. Some of the freshmen were no better off, and Coach Popper thought it was a hilarious sight.

  “Tough it out, boys, tough it out,” he yelled. “You got to be men like the rest of us, ain’t none of you pretty enough to be women.”

  In the dressing room there was a great laugh when it turned out Joe Bob had used the foot toughener after all. The only reason he could get his socks off at all was that he had almost solid blisters and the blisters peeled loose a lot easier than the glue. When Coach Popper saw the sight he laughed till he cried. “You might try boilin’ ’em off, Joe Bob,” he said. “It wouldn’t be no harder on your feet.”

  In fact, the coach made matters even worse for Joe Bob by horsing around and trying to grab his pecker.

  “Look at that little worm there,” he said, making a grab. “What kind of female you ever gonna get with that thing for bait, Joe? Wouldn’t do for a six-year-old girl.”

  He kept laughing and grabbing, backing Joe Bob around the room until finally Joe Bob couldn’t stand it anymore and ran to the showers with one sock still on.

  “Another minute and I’d have had him bawling,” the coach said jovially, sitting down to take off his tennis shoes.

  It was all pretty funny, the boys thought, but when they came out of the shower something happened that wasn’t so funny. Everybody was horsing around, popping towels and grabbing at one another’s nuts, like they usually did after practice. Duane and Sonny and Bobby Logan were having a little three-way towel fight, and the trouble started when Duane caught Bobby a smacker on the hip. It was just a flat pop and didn’t hurt Bobby at all, but the coach happened to be coming out of the shower about that time and for some reason it made him furious. He was naked except for a whistle around his neck, but he grabbed a towel and laid into Sonny and Duane. He let one fly at Duane that would have castrated him on the spot if it had landed. “I’ll show you little fuckers some towel fightin’,” he said. The boys were too surprised to fight back: they just retreated into a corner where there were benches and clothes hangers to block some of the coach’s shots. His wet hair was down in his face and he was snorting and puffing like a mad boar hog.

  In a minute or two he got over it, though, and threw the wet towel at Sonny. “No more goddamn towel fightin’,” he said and went over and looked closely at Bobby Logan’s hip. The freshmen were scared almost to death—one was so nervous he put his shoes on the wrong feet and wore them home that way, too scared to stop and change. The older boys had seen the coach flare up before and knew it was just a matter of surviving until he cooled off. The time he shot at Sonny it was because he thought Sonny had scared away a dove he was sneaking up on. Fortunately, Sonny was a hundred yards away and wasn’t hit.

  “I don’t understand how Mrs. Popper’s lasted,” Duane said, as he was dressing.

  “She ain’t the healthiest looking woman in town,” Sonny reminded him. Mrs. Popper’s name was Ruth; she was a small woman, pretty but tired and nervous looking. No one saw much of her. At Christmastime she sometimes made Sonny and Duane cookies and brought them around. Sam the Lion had known her all her life and said that she had been lovely when she was young.

  Jacy was waiting for the boys when they came out. “My folks are gone to Wichita,” she said. “Let’s go get a hamburger.”

  They got in the convertible and drove to the drive-in, a place called The Rat-Hole. The boys were starved and ordered two hamburgers apiece; while they were cooking, Jacy and Duane smooched a little and Sonny cleaned his fingernails and looked out the back window. About the time their order came Abilene drove up in his Mercury and parked besid
e them. They all waved at him and he nodded in reply, barely moving his head. He was drinking a can of beer.

  “You need a haircut,” Jacy said, putting her hand lightly on the back Duane’s neck. They were sitting very close together, and were feeding one another French fries when the Farrows’ big blue Cadillac pulled in and parked beside them. Lois Farrow was driving. She had her sunglasses on, even though it was a cloudy day. Duane scooted back to his side of the car as quickly as he could, but the Farrows gave no indication that they even noticed him. In a minute Mrs. Farrow got out and walked around to Jacy’s window.

  “We’re having supper at home tonight,” she said. “As soon as the boys get through with their hamburgers you take them to town and get yourself home, you hear?”

  Mrs. Farrow looked bored, even with her sunglasses on. For some reason Sonny felt scared of her, and so did Jacy and Duane. All three were nervous. Mrs. Farrow noticed Abilene sitting there and she calmly thumbed her nose at him. He gave her a finger in return and took another swallow of his beer. Lois went back to the Cadillac and the three kids hastily finished their meal, Jacy dripping tears of annoyance into her strawberry milk shake.

  “She didn’t have to look so hateful,” Jacy said, sniffling. “I just wish my grandmother was alive. She’d see we got married even if we had to run away and do it.”

  Five

  AT THE FARROW SUPPER TABLE AN HOUR LATER, LOIS AND Jacy politely ignored one another, while Gene made conversation with desperate good cheer. After supper, though, he gave up, watched Groucho Marx, and then got in bed and quickly drank himself to sleep. He just wasn’t built to withstand the quality of tension Lois and Jacy could generate.

  The one thing Lois envied Gene was his ability to drink himself to sleep quickly. He went to sleep on so little alcohol that he was never bothered with hangovers the next day, whereas Lois had to drink for hours before the liquor would turn her off. If she just had to sleep, she took pills.

  When it was almost Jacy’s bedtime Lois stopped at her door for a minute, knocked, and went in. Jacy had already showered and was sitting on the bed in pink pajamas, rubbing cleansing cream into her face. Occasionally, despite her precautions, Jacy got what she called a blemish, but she took great pains with her complexion and didn’t have many.

  “Go on, don’t let me interrupt your facial,” Lois said. She walked around the room, frowning. Almost every object in the room annoyed her; she couldn’t decide whether Jacy simply had bad taste or had deliberately chosen ugly objects as a means of affronting her. There were five or six stuffed animals, all of which Duane had won for her at ball-throwing booths in the State Fair; they were grouped in one corner, around a large Mortimer Snerd doll, also a gift from Duane. One wall was mostly bulletin board, and every picture of Jacy or Duane that had ever appeared in the Thalia Times was tacked on it. In addition to the pictures there were football programs, photographs of Jacy as cheerleader (sophomore year) and as Football Queen (junior year), the menu of the junior dinner dance, the program of the junior play, and many other mementos. On the bedside table there was a framed picture of Duane, and on the wall, a framed picture of Jesus. Next to the picture of Duane was an alarm clock and a white zipper Bible, and on the other side of the bed was Jacy’s pile of movie magazines, most of them with Debbie Reynolds on the cover. Debbie Reynolds was Jacy’s ideal.

  “Well, I guess you hate me tonight, right?” Lois said.

  “Oh, Momma you know I love you,” Jacy said, wiping the cream off. “But I love Duane too, even if you don’t like it.”

  “Like it? Liking it or disliking it hasn’t entered my head, because I don’t believe it. Who you love is your own pretty self and what you really love is knowing you’re pretty—I’m sure he tells you how pretty you are all the time so I don’t doubt you’re fond of him. Even your grandmother learned that much about you. And you are pretty, you ought to enjoy it. I’d just sort of hate to see you marry Duane, though, because in about two months he’d quit flattering you and you wouldn’t be rich anymore and life wouldn’t be near as much fun for you as it is right now.”

  “But I don’t care about money,” Jacy said solemnly. “I don’t care about it at all.”

  Lois sighed. “You’re pretty stupid then,” she said. “If you’re that stupid you ought to go and marry him—it would be the cheapest way to educate you.”

  Jacy was so shocked at being called stupid that she didn’t even cry. Her mother knew she made straight-A report cards!

  “You married Daddy when he was poor,” she said weakly. “He got rich so I don’t see why Duane couldn’t.”

  “I’ll tell you why, beautiful,” Lois said. “I scared your daddy into getting rich. He’s so scared of me that for twenty years he’s done nothing but run around trying to find things to please me. He’s never found the right things but he made a million dollars looking.”

  “If Daddy could do it Duane could too,” Jacy insisted, pouting.

  “Not married to you, he couldn’t,” Lois said. “You’re not scary enough. You’d be miserable poor but as long as you had somebody to hold your hand and tell you how pretty you are you’d make out.”

  “Well you’re miserable and you’re rich,” Jacy countered. “I sure don’t want to be like you.”

  “You sound exactly like your grandmother,” Lois said, looking absently out the window. “There’s not much danger you’ll be like me. Have you ever slept with Duane?”

  It was undoubtedly the most surprising conversation Jacy had ever had!

  “Me?” she said. “You know I wouldn’t do that, Momma.”

  “Well, you just as well,” Lois said quietly, a little amused at herself and at life. She never had been able to resist shocking her mother; apparently it was going to be almost as difficult to resist shocking her daughter.

  “Seriously,” she added. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t have as much fun as you’re capable of having. You can come with me to the doctor sometime and we’ll arrange something so you won’t have to worry about babies. You do have to be careful about that.”

  To Jacy what she was hearing was almost beyond belief.

  “But Momma,” she said. “It’s a sin unless you’re married, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “Oh, don’t be so mealymouthed,” Lois shouted. “Why am I even talking to you? I just thought if you slept with Duane a few times you’d find out there really isn’t anything magic about him, and have yourself some fun to boot. Maybe then you’d realize that pretty things and pretty people are what you like in life and we can send you to a good school where you’ll marry some good-looking kid with the wherewithal to give you a pleasant life.”

  “But I don’t want to leave,” Jacy said plaintively. “Why can’t I just stay here and go to college in Wichita?”

  “Because life’s too damn hard here,” Lois said. “The land’s got too much power over you. Being rich here is a good way to go insane. Everything’s flat and empty and there’s nothing to do but spend money.”

  She walked over to Jacy’s dresser and picked up the big fifty-dollar bottle of Chanel No. 5 that Gene had given his daughter the Christmas before.

  “May I have some of your perfume?” she asked. “I suddenly feel like smelling good.”

  “Help yourself,” Jacy said, suddenly wishing her mother were gone. “Don’t you have any?”

  “Yes, but this is right here, and I feel like smelling good right now. Do you ever feel like doing anything right now?”

  She wet her palms and fingertips with perfume and placed her hands against her throat, then touched her fingers behind her ears. The cool scent was delicious. She dampened her hands again, touched her shoulders, and then stooped and ran her palms down the calves of her legs.

  “That’s lovely,” she said. Almost at once the perfume made her feel less depressed, and when she looked at Jacy again she noticed how young she was. Jacy’s hair was pulled back by a headband, and her face, clean of makeup, was so clearly
a girl’s face that Lois ceased to feel angry with her.

  “This is the first time in months I’ve seen your eyelids,” she said. “You should leave your face just like that—it would win you more. Makeup is just sort of a custom you’ve adopted. All you really need right now is an eyebrow pencil.”

  Jacy looked blank and sleepy and Lois knew her advice was wasted.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll let you alone. I probably confused you tonight and I do hope so. If I could just confuse you it would be a start. The only really important thing I came in to tell you was that life is very monotonous. Things happen the same way over and over again. I think it’s more monotonous in this part of the country than it is in other places, but I don’t really know that—it may be monotonous everywhere. I’m sick of it, myself. Everything gets old if you do it often enough. I don’t particularly care who you marry, but if you want to find out about monotony real quick just marry Duane.”

  With that she left and walked down the thickly carpeted hall to her bedroom. As she walked through the door she heard her husband snoring; the only light in the room was the tiny orange glow of the electric blanket control. Lois sat down on the bed and rubbed her calves wearily. To kill the morning she had gone to Wichita Falls and spent $150; to kill the afternoon she had had three drinks and several rubbers of bridge at the country club. It seemed unjust that after all that work she should still have the problem of how to kill the night. She got up and went out in the hall, where she could see her wristwatch. It was only a little after ten.