Again he was flooded with guilt…walking out on Frankie like that. And now she had as much as told him to get lost.
If nothing else, Whitehead had been right about him being a dreamer. From the very beginning he had made Sherylynne out to be somebody she wasn’t. He had loved Sherylynne, but a Sherylynne of his own making. She thought he would make a lot of money—her own failed dream—and when he didn’t, well, there was Whitehead, waiting in the wings.
Whitehead had made himself up as well, a caricature, playing the role of the self-made, loudmouthed Texas oil man, doing it so successfully Harley couldn’t visualize him any other way. He doubted Whitehead could either, buried so deeply in his own myth that his true self was lost forever.
The whole world was pathetic, himself the most pathetic of all. His own paintings were little more than thinly disguised attempts to remake the world to his own liking. Nobody gave a damn about art. He was a fool: Don Quixote charging windmills with a paintbrush.
The wind had gotten up a little, sighing mournfully in the broom weeds. The windmill creaked, the fan blades shuddering against the tie-down. The house itself looked remote, hermetically sealed, closed against him under the flattening winter sky.
Unexpected and against his will, his eyes filled. His lungs convulsed and a sob burst out of him like a hiccup, then another, deep, wracking. He clamped both arms around himself and managed a deep breath, the sobs turning to tear-squeezed laughter—embarrassed at his own idiocy.
Chapter 48
San Angelo
HE DROVE BACK through Separation. At Highpoint he eased the car off onto the shoulder opposite the lone service station behind the point of the Y where 153 and 70 split. He sat for a moment, thinking.
The last he’d heard, Darlene and Billy Wayne were divorced and she was living in San Angelo. That was a few years ago and she might well have remarried by now. Once again he recalled the moonlight glinting on the ankle chain in Billy Wayne’s car. She’d worn that same chain to Uncle Jay’s funeral.
Contemplating what he was thinking about doing, what he had already done—leaving Frankie, attacking Whitehead, raising hell all over Lake Charles with Sherylynne—the ear-ringing, dreamy unreality of it all, he wondered if he might be losing his mind. He looked at his watch: 9:15 a.m.
He pulled across the road to the service station—a little boxy building of native rock, two gas pumps out front. The attendant, a thin turkey-necked man in overalls and a billed Texaco cap, came out. He hesitated when he saw Harley’s face, grinned a little, then cleaned his windshield while the tank filled. There was a pay phone on the wall inside next to the restroom. He got Darlene’s number from long-distance information and had the operator charge the call to his home phone.
A roommate answered, a bubbly girl who introduced herself as Fran. “Darlene;s still asleep,” she said, “but I’ll wake her.” Before he could protest, the line went silent. It remained silent so long he had begun to think she had hung up when a sleepy voice said, “H’lo?”
“Darlene. Hi. It’s Harley. Sorry to wake you.”
“Who?”
“Harley. Harley Buchanan.” He forced a short laugh. “You still asleep?”
“Harley?”
“Surely you haven’t forgotten me already?”
“Harley Jay… Where in the world are you?”
“Highpoint, up on the Divide.”
“Really?”
“What’s going on with you? Are you working?”
“Ma Bell. Yes, but I’m off. Long weekend. You know, shift work.”
“You feel like having company? I thought we might go grab a bite to eat or whatever.”
“Harley Jay, that’d just tickle me plumb to death!”
“Good. I got your phone number from the operator. I guess you’d better give me your address.”
After he wrote down her address and said good-bye, he stood for a minute, wondering just what the hell he was doing. What he should do was drive back to Hardwater, get a motel room, sleep a good ten hours or so, and head back to New York.
IT WAS ROUGHLY fifty miles south from Highpoint to San Angelo. His watch read 9:45 a.m. By the time he arrived, the ice had disappeared. It was warming up. He asked directions and found her house, a small Arts and Crafts job with an outsized front porch in a working-class neighborhood. An old Dodge pickup and a newer Nissan sat in the graveled driveway. He parked in the street next to the curb. The yard was bare, a few patches of dry grass rattling in the wind. His stomach clutched up, his mind went swimmy. He had no idea who Darlene was anymore or what he was doing here.
He got out, went up the walkway and up the steps onto the semi-enclosed porch. The entrance door was on the left. In a window on the right, he glimpsed a movement of curtains behind open venetian blinds. He knocked and heard muffled voices inside. Presently the door opened and a trim young woman with short blonde hair, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, stood smiling at him. Her smile faded, eyes widening, seeing his wrecked face.
“Fran? Hi, I’m Harley. Sorry if I scared you. I’m not as bad as I look.”
She held out her hand and they shook. “Come on in. Darlene’ll be right out.” Fran stood back, studying him with a bemused smile. “Here. Sit down here,” she said, gesturing at a vinyl-covered recliner. “Can I get you something to drink? How ’bout a cold Lone Star?”
“Sounds good. Thanks.”
“Looks like you ran into a door,” she said with an easy smile, a little gap between her front teeth.
He grinned. “That ain’t all.”
Fran laughed again. “Sit. I’ll be right back.”
He sat in the recliner, looking about at the room—make-do furniture, but clean, orderly. He felt disoriented, transported from his loft to some never-never land.
“Darlene’s told me so much about you, I feel like I know you already,” Fran said, bringing in the beer and a glass.
So, Darlene had spoken of him.
“Well, he said, “there’s no telling what she told.”
“I’d have a beer with you but I’m meeting my friend Mark. We’re going to breakfast.” She looked at her watch. “What do you do, what kinda work?”
“I’m a painter.” He set the glass aside and took a sip from the bottle.
“Oh. That’s nice. What do you paint? Houses?”
“Pictures. Like you hang on the wall.”
Fran looked at him, quizzical. “Pitchers? What kinda pitchers?”
“It’s hard to describe. I’ve been called an Abstract Symbolist, whatever that is.”
“Sounds modern. My sister paints. She had some pitchers in the lobby of the Cactus Hotel once. She paints windmills. Bluebonnets and stuff.”
“Good. Good for her. How about you? What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m drawing right now.”
“Drawing?”
“Unemployment. I got laid off from Woolworth.” Fran tilted her head at him, a sly smile. “You and Darlene, y’all were sweethearts growing up, right?”
“Seems like a long time ago.”
A door bumped open in the hallway and Darlene sashayed out, flushed, smiling—Darlene with the big oval eyes glistening over high cheekbones, face framed in shoulder-length brown hair. He wasn’t sure if the surge of emotion he felt was for the old Darlene he once loved, or a brain jolt at her getup—jean shorts so short the bottoms of the front pockets were visible, the top button a good two inches below her navel. Her legs were long and lean, her stomach flatted below the tails of a white shirt knotted under her breasts.
“Harley Jay––” she began, arms outstretched, then she stopped, her expression falling. “Harley Jay…what in the world happened to your face?”
Fran lifted one eyebrow. “Ran into a door. He just told me. Huh. Imagine that.”
“Accident,” he mumbled. More disoriented than ever. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he took her by the hand and pulled her to him. He kissed her lightly, careful of his nose, briefly tasting the velvety warmth of her l
ips, the sweet aftertaste of bubble gum. He released her and stood back. “Boy, Darlene, don’t you look fine.”
Head tilted, she took hold of his shoulders and held him at arms length. “Sheew, Harley Jay, you look just like a little old raccoon with those black eyes. Your nose, is it broke?”
“It’s fine. Just a little tender.”
“I’m gonna go now,” Fran said. “It was nice meeting you, Harley.”
“You too, Fran.”
Fran stopped in the doorway, looked at him, then at Darlene. “I like him,” she said simply, and closed the door after herself.
Silence fell over the room now that they were alone. It was difficult not to stare at Darlene, her legs, her short-shorts clinging to her pelvic bones, her concave stomach…
“Nice roommate,” he said, hearing the car start up outside.
“Well, isn’t this something!” Darlene said. “You, right here. Last I heard, you was in New Yark or somewhere.”
“Still am.”
She gave him a curious look. “You down here looking for work?”
“No, I went to Louisiana to see my daughter. I dropped by to see the folks, but they weren’t home.”
“What happened to your face, really?”
“Had a wreck, broke my nose on the steering wheel.”
“Well, Harley Jay, if you ain’t a sight!”
“Want to go grab a bite of breakfast?”
“We could. Sure.”
In another half hour they were seated in a booth in a greasy spoon called The Wheel and Deal.
“So what would you like to do?” Darlene asked.
“Hey, this is your town. What do you suggest?”
“Shoot, I’m off till Wednesday night, graveyard shift.” She gave him her old narrow-eyed, half-amused, half-serious look. “You’re not out here runnin’ around on your wife, are you?”
He was momentarily taken aback. “That’s over with. Been over a long time.”
Darlene didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Well, of course she got the baby?”
He felt his spirits fading. “For the time being, yes.”
She studied him further, as if making up her mind about something. “Okay,” she said, brightening. “We ought to do something, celebrate getting together again.”
“I’m for it,” he said, making an effort to shake off the sudden pall of depression. “Hey, you’re the one knows this town.”
“Shoot, there’s not much to do around here…except… Harley Jay, how much time you got?”
“How much do you need?” He couldn’t shake the dreamy, disoriented feeling.
“You wanna go to Mexico?”
He sobered a little. “Mexico?”
“It’s a lot of fun over there.”
“Mexico? Today?”
“Villa Acuña, right the other side of Del Rio. I went over there in a pickup with some railroaders from Hardwater once, and we just had the best time ever”—she laughed—“ ’cept Pete got drunk and throwed up all over hisself, and we made him ride in back all the way home.”
Harley had never been there, but everybody knew of Villa Acuña. It was a place high school boys bragged about going to for a weekend, a place that when you mentioned it by name caused grown men to look off into the distance and shake their heads. Uncle Jay said there wasn’t anything to be had from Villa Acuña but gonorrhea and jail, and he didn’t have much use for either. It didn’t sound like a place for women—didn’t sound like much of a place for anybody, for that matter. But Darlene had been there…with railroaders? And she had had a good time?
“How far is it?” he asked.
“About a hunnerd and fifty or so. It don’t take all that long. About two and a half hours, at most. That road’s just straight as a plank and hardly nothing on it.”
He looked at his watch. 10:45 a.m. “That’d put us in there at around one-thirty. Probably two-thirty by the time we get out of here.”
Darlene’s eyes brightened. “You wanna do it? Go down there, spend the night, come back Sunday?”
The thought of going away with Darlene, spending the night with her, made him weak. But it also troubled him in some way he couldn’t explain. “Sure,” he said. “Sounds good.”
She drew her shoulders up, a mischievous smile. “You just won’t believe it till you see it.”
“Well, then, let’s get a shake on.”
“This is exciting, Harley Jay! You and me. Imagine that!”
He was imagining it all right. At the same time he was thinking of Frankie. She had told him to get lost, but was that permanent? He knew in his heart of hearts that Darlene no longer meant anything to him, long term. So why was he going with her to Mexico, and feeling more guilty than ever?
Back at her house, she went into her bedroom to pack. He was relieved when she emerged wearing regular jeans, her shirttail stuffed in. She had packed an overnight bag, and she carried a brown paper grocery sack. She wrote a quick note for Fran, left it on the dining table. “I’m set.”
“I’ll carry those for you,” he said as they stepped out onto the porch.
She handed over the suitcase and locked the door to the house. “I’ll carry this one,” she said of the paper bag.”
“That the latest in designer luggage?” he said of the grocery sack, opening the trunk.
“You’ll be surprised,” she said with a coy smile. She set the mystery sack in alongside their bags. He closed the trunk and opened the passenger door for her.
Chapter 49
Mexico
HIGHWAY 277 RAN due south with hardly a wobble from San Angelo through the small brush-and-prickly-pear settlements of Eldorado and Sonora. From Sonora, the blacktop cut through the wilderness for ninety miles straight to Del Rio. It wasn’t much of a road, but they had it to themselves; in the last hour, they’d met just two pickups and one truck.
Except for a little barbed-wire fencing, the only sign of civilization in this desolate stretch was a manmade pond of stone and cement. The pond stood in a thin copse of mesquite trees just off the road on the left. Roughly thirty feet across, the walls were low to accommodate livestock.
The weather was warm, warmer as they traveled south. It was hard to imagine the cold, the slush of snow he had left in New York just…what, three days ago? He recalled Frankie as if in a dream, shivering on the sidewalk as he rode away in the taxi. He glanced aside at Darlene, her sandals in the footwell, bare feet propped on the dash, going at her bubble gum. It was hard to think of her and Frankie in the same frame of reference. He considered the possibility that he might have become unhinged and just didn’t know it, mistaking insanity—poor judgment, the ringing in his ears—for physical exhaustion.
Darlene seemed happy, excited. She went on at some length about roller skating in San Angelo. She had her own skates and a cute little outfit—a short, red pleated skirt and black tights; she was one of the better skaters and liked to skate-dance, however there were very few men, mostly just boys. She wanted to know if he was still “doodling them drawings?” He laughed out loud, but he didn’t quite know why. He told her a little about New York, about the loft where he lived and worked. She looked at him askance. “My goodness. I can’t imagine.” She wondered aloud if he made any money.
“No much,” he said.
It was 2:00 p.m. when he turned left onto Highway 90 near Del Rio. A few squat dwellings, pink and green stucco, were visible back off the road in the brush. Then the town began to materialize—commercial buildings, wool and mohair warehouses, a burger joint, a service station. He pulled into the station and had the tank filled. The attendant washed the windshield and checked the tire pressure. And, yes, there was a Holiday Inn just up the road.
The Holiday was a simple two-story concrete-block building, it too painted sea-foam green. There was a breezeway, and an inside staircase ascended to a walkway around the second floor. He signed them in, then carried their two bags into their ground-floor room while Darlene carried the grocery bag.
“I’m starved,” Darlene said. She hung a change of clothes in the alcove. She had already dumped a plastic zip-bag of makeup on the bathroom’s vanity, and placed the paper bag underneath.
“What the heck is that?” he said of the paper bag.
She paused, studying him, her color rising a little. “You’re not gonna get mad, are you?”
“Mad?”
“Well…it makes some men mad.” She lowered her gaze. “But, Harley Jay, it’s the only way I can do it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s something new. For women.”
He stared, bewildered.
Darlene took the paper bag up and set it on the countertop. She removed a little red tackle box. She gave him another furtive look, then snapped it open.
“This is for you,” she said, holding up a diaphragm and a tube of jelly. She laid the diaphragm aside and took out a plastic penis. “And this is for me.”
He continued to stare, at a loss.
“You’re not gonna get mad, are you?”
There were half a dozen plastic penises in the box—red, yellow, blue, some with ridges…
“You are,” Darlene said. “You’re mad…”
“Mad?”
“Well, it’s the only way I can do it. I mean, I can put it in and do it like anybody else, sure, but I can’t do it. You know, climax they call it.”
He wasn’t mad. He didn’t know what he was, but it wasn’t mad. Confused? Surprised? Bewildered? Whatever, he wasn’t up to expending energy sorting it out. What he really wanted was to lie across that chenille bedspread and sleep for ten hours straight. Forget everything.
“I’m not mad,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
“Well, I hope you’re not mad,” she said, putting everything away. “It’s not all that unusual, you know. Lot’s of women haven’t ever done it. Read Cosmopolitan.
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