Author: Larry McMurtry
Category: Literature
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“Well it’s absurd,” she said, impatient with him. “I didn’t say anything to make you talk to me that way.”
“Right,” he said, smiling suddenly as if she had just reminded him of something. “It was just seeing you, you know. Milk right from the cow. You ain’t even had time to cool. You’re right as you can be. Who wants to talk to a nice pitcher of milk.” And he grinned at her over the glass the barman handed him.
The comment offended Patsy to the quick. Not only was he presuming to size her up, but the result of it all was that he had sized her up precisely as she had sized herself up every time she looked at Eleanor Guthrie. She was a girl. It did not please her at all that he found her girlishness entrancing. She could not think of a comeback to his remark about her being a pitcher of milk—though later she thought of a hundred. She turned abruptly, went to the bedroom, and shut herself in the john, very depressed and wishing she had had the good sense to stay at the motel. But a look in the mirror improved her spirits. The dancing had given her color. She was not going to let a bastard like Sonny Shanks chase her home. What she needed was to find Mr. Percy and dance some more.
When she came out, Shanks was standing in the bedroom looking even moodier than he had been.
“Never meant to tick you off,” he said. “I was just paying you a compliment.”
She didn’t like him being there waiting for her. He spoke quietly enough, but she didn’t like his stance, or his eyes. There was a force in him very much stronger than any she had ever had to deal with, and it scared her.
“Oh, just leave me alone,” she said, going past him. “Go bother my aunt, if you have to bother somebody.”
Sonny pursed his lips quizzically. “Eleanor’s gonna like you,” he said in a very casual tone. It was as if he had suddenly decided to switch off the force.
Patsy went back to the party a little confused. Sonny was too shifty—one second hateful, the next almost likable. She went over and sat down on the floor by the couch near Jim’s legs. Joe Percy was there, mopping his brow, and Jim looked slightly pinched around the mouth, as if he wished Joe Percy weren’t there. When Patsy sat down Jim glanced at her fondly, but it was an absent, abstract fondness, as if his mind and not his eyes had registered her presence.
Joe Percy held a whiskey glass with a single ice cube in it. He twirled the glass in his fingers in such a way that the whiskey and the cube spun around and around together, the cube never touching the glass. “How do?” he said when Patsy sat down. “I never made it back. I was intercepted. Let me finish this drink and we’ll dance some more.” His eyes were friendly and intelligent, and he did not appear to be fooled by anyone, least of all himself.
“Yep, I’ve written every kind,” he said, turning back to Eleanor. “Jungle movies, pirate movies, serials, spy movies, movies about the Mounties, everything. I’ve worked for more fourth-rate directors than any man alive, unless it’s Randolph Scott. So now I guess I’ll write a rodeo movie. From what I’ve seen of rodeo, it deserves me.”
“A versatile man,” Eleanor said.
“I should say, versatile,” he said. “You wouldn’t know the half of it.” He winked at Patsy and gave her a sly, confidential, surprisingly tender smile, as if to neutralize in advance any vulgarity he might feel called to utter.
“There was once a famous actress, plagued like myself by fourth-rate directors, who assured me I was the best lay in Hollywood.
“After Bob Mitchum, of course,” he added with a broad grin. “Always excepting Bob Mitchum.”
“I think you’re a trifle vain,” Patsy said, deciding she liked such conversations when they were with people like Mr. Percy. She was positive no actress had ever told him any such thing, he was merely being entertaining, probably for her benefit.
“Trifle!” Joe Percy said. “I should hope I’m vain. A writer without vanity would be like a woman without a cunt, if you’ll pardon the usage. Drink, anyone?”
He got up and went to the bar. Jim was patting his foot nervously in time with the music. “I wonder what makes Californians so blunt,” Eleanor said. Patsy had no idea. She felt a bit flat and noticed that Jim was getting drunk. She didn’t have to look at him to notice it, she could tell by his voice. He had only been drunk four or five times since they had been married. She got up and went over to the picture window. The lights of Phoenix were brilliant in the darkness. Looking down, she saw that Sonny and the man in the gray suit and one of the girls in Capri pants were standing by the swimming pool. Sonny still had on the red shirt but had changed to swimming trunks. He stripped off the shirt, slid into the pool, and swam two lengths, cutting right down the center of the greenish water. Then he pulled himself smoothly back up on the side and shook the water off himself with a twist or two of his body, almost like a dog. The girl handed him his shirt and the three of them disappeared beneath the ledge of the motel.
Mr. Percy came over and suggested they dance some more, but Patsy shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve had enough of this party. I like you, though. I’m glad I met you.”
“Mutual,” he said and kissed her on the cheek. It pleased her.
“That’s it,” he said. “Smile. You’ve got a smile all your own.”
When she told Jim she wanted to take a cab back to the motel he was surprised and confused and followed her shakily to the telephone.
“Aren’t you having a good time?” he asked.
“I did for a while. I’m just worn out. You’re getting looped, you know. I think that lady’s gone to your head.”
Jim looked guilty and fumbled through the yellow pages, trying to select a taxi service.
“Don’t look abashed,” she said. “Stay and have a good party. She ought to go to your head. If I were a man she’d probably go to mine. I’ll expect you to tell me everything she says. Let me take the Ford. You’re the one who will need a cab.”
“Okay,” he said. “I love you.” He followed her out the door and insisted on kissing her, as if to prove it. She didn’t need proof, and the kiss was interrupted by Sonny and the girl and the silent man.
“Leavin’ us?” Sonny asked. “Shame. I’ll walk you to your car.”
As before, he gave her no choice, but he seemed to be feeling good and went ahead of her, doing a little dance step. She was embarrassed to have been seen kissing her husband.
“Who is that man who was with you?” she asked. “Doesn’t he speak?”
“Not much. That’s the pill man. He sells pills.”
“Pills?”
“Yeah, all kinds. Good pills. Ever take any?”
“Only the pill with a capital P. And aspirin occasionally.”
“Well, you ain’t keepin’ up with the times,” he said.
“If you’ve got a pill that will get my husband home to me, give him one. I have a feeling he may pass out on you.”
“I’ll bring him home myself if he does.” He gallantly opened the door for her and bowed her in.
“Is that Western courtliness?” she asked. “You’re always bowing and dipping.”
But Sonny had turned and was already trotting lightly across the motel parking lot, his shirttails flapping as he ran.
12
PATSY WAS GLAD that Jim had elected to stay at the party. Though it disconcerted her a little to see him drunk, she had the notion that drunkenness was good for him. It seemed to her that if he was really going to try and be some kind of artist he probably ought to live a little more wildly than he did. Him getting drunk was fine, but she had no desire to stay around being the responsible wife of a drunken man. She couldn’t imagine anything bad happening to him, or him doing anything bad, and was sure he would wander in in an hour or two, voluble, contrite, and secretly pleased with himself.
She discovered after it was too late that she would have liked to dance more, but the only man there she had wanted to dance with was Mr. Percy, and she was not sure how long he would have held up. She put on her green gown and got in bed to rea
d. They had a bedraggled paperback copy of The Sot-Weed Factor that she had been whimsically picking her way through for weeks. She read a page or two and put it down and went to the book box to dig out Gibbon. They had an old three-volume Modern Library edition that one of Jim’s teachers had given him in high school. Patsy had been reading it intermittently ever since they had married and was almost through Volume II. She dug it out, but after a page or two of it she concluded she was not in a reading mood and got a pen and some paper and began a letter to her friend Emma Horton. Frequently in their letters to each other she and Emma adopted the pretense that they were the heroines of epistolary novels. In their junior year they had both taken a course in the English novel and had read Pamela together. Their letters were usually full of all sorts of sophomoric literary showing-off, and they both enjoyed them immensely. Emma was married to a graduate student in English. She was fat and rather slovenly but very bright and sweet and kind of heart, and she had two children already, both boys.
Dear Em,
I’m too tired to write long sentences. I just got home from a wicked party. Why people sleep with the people they seem to sleep with is beyond me. Why anyone sleeps with anyone is sort of a puzzle, actually.
The party was given by Mr. Sonny Shanks, World’s Champion Cowboy. He’s the one who sat me down on the bed where he had just done it, as you’ll recall. I met his mistress—at least I assume she is. Eleanor Guthrie, who owns the big ranch. Very lovely—she could do much better than him. Jim was stunned and is still there getting smashed. She made me feel underweight. I was the second-most-ogled, though. I met a real screen writer who used real dirty words. It was a very worldly party. There was even a pusher there, very sinister. I think it was William Burroughs.
We’re going to Utah next—god knows how long that will take, or where I’ll be stuck. I’ll be glad when we get back to Houston. We can exchange secrets, if either of us have any by then.
She paused, and was debating whether to go into a description of the Tatums, or the Tatums-to-be, when she heard a car drive up outside. After a moment there was a gentle knock at the door.
“Jim?”
“Me.” It was Shanks’s voice. “Just making a delivery.”
“Oh, okay,” she said. “One minute.” She went to the closet and got her terry-cloth robe, a little surprised that Jim had passed out so soon. Usually when he drank he drank for hours, getting more and more voluble as the night progressed. She belted the robe around her so that as little of her nightgown showed as possible.
But when she opened the door there was no sign of Jim, just Sonny standing there smiling at her cheerfully. He was just as he had been at the beginning of the party, in the red shirt and Levi’s and still barefooted. His heavy black hair was tousled and still a little wet from his swim. He strolled in and looked around the room with interest.
“This is how the pore half lives, ain’t it?” he said. “You-all ain’t poor, what are you doin’ here? I wish I had a dollar for ever crappy little motel room I’ve stayed in.”
Patsy’s heart was pounding. He had walked in so quickly that she couldn’t think. She merely stood where she was, her hand on the doorknob.
“Where’s my husband?” She saw the hearse outside and felt a momentary relief. Jim was probably in it, somewhere.
“He’s probably about ready to fall over in Eleanor’s lap, if he ain’t already. I come right on as soon as you left, but I had to run an errand or two on the way.”
“Please get out,” she said. “I thought you were bringing my husband. I didn’t invite you here.”
Sonny waved a hand at her as if what she said was only a joke between friends. He sat down on the bed, picked up the volume of Gibbon, and looked at it curiously.
“Wonder why I’ve taken to women who read in my old age,” he said. “First forty or fifty I went with couldn’t read the directions on a mousetrap.”
“Would you get off my bed and get out,” Patsy said, anger replacing her fear. She flung the door back so hard that the doorknob made a dent in the cheap plaster, and she stood clenching and unclenching her fists, waiting for him to be gone.
Sonny put the book down, peered for a moment at her letter, which was on the bed, and got up and moved toward the door. Just as she was ready to slam it behind him and start crying, Patsy realized he wasn’t going out. His moves were always surprises—she was never quite up with him. He came right to her, before she realized that was where he was coming, and took her and scooped her off her feet. She stiffened, but his surprises had a kind of paralyzing effect; they all but stopped her heart. Sonny nudged the door shut with his heel and crossed the room and laid Patsy on the bed, taking some care not to mash her letter. The paralysis wore off when he put her down and she began to cry, very confused and expecting instant rape. But Sonny brought a box of Kleenex and kept handing them to her until her crying fit passed and she could see him again. She lay as stiffly as possible, trying to stop her mouth from quivering and her chest from heaving.
“Calm down,” he said. “I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
“Then what are you doing?” she asked weakly. “Why are you here? Why aren’t you at your own party?”
“Well, you seen what kind of party it was. I mostly got it up hoping you’d come.”
“What do you mean?” she said. “Hoping I’d come. Mrs. Guthrie was there. Why bother me?”
“Miss Guthrie,” he said. “She’s one of those folks that are so rich they don’t change their names when they get married. One reason I ain’t never married her. She don’t want to be named Shanks and I sure ain’t gonna change my name.”
“Oh, anyway,” Patsy said. “It doesn’t affect what I meant. This is all absurd.”
“It ain’t,” Sonny said. “You got looks all your own. I just wanted to get you by yourself a few minutes to see if you might not turn out to like me. If you do, we can sort of take it from there.”
“To hell with that,” Patsy said. “I could have started liking you at the party if I was going to. I’m not going to start liking you now, and I certainly don’t like you barging in on me with some subterfuge and then refusing to leave when I asked you to. I’m married! Don’t cowboys understand marriage at all?”
“Understand what about it?”
“Oh, please, just go away,” she said. “I don’t want to argue with you and it makes me very uncomfortable for you to be sitting on my bed. I’m married, that’s all, and you and I are not going to take anything from anywhere. Just go away. You scare me in here.”
Sonny regarded her with an air of friendly and tolerant amusement.
“Well, that’s a start, anyway,” he said.
“It’s not a start! Don’t twist my words favorably. I’m not going to suddenly stop being scared of you and throw myself in your arms. Just get out. Please get out!”
“How long you been married?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “No conversation. I don’t want to talk to you. If you want to know anything send me a questionnaire and I’ll answer it in detail. I don’t want to talk any more.”
“Well, I just hope I ain’t fallin’ in love with you,” he said with light sarcasm and put his hand on her calf. Patsy rolled off the bed and clenched her fists.
“I knew you’d try something,” she said. “Go back to your party, you stupid slob. I’m going to call the police unless you leave right now.”
But she was not accustomed to men who could really move, and as she turned to go to the phone Sonny caught her and scooped her up in his arms again. His face was a few inches from hers, and the genuinely amused look he had when he came in had been replaced by the hard varnished smile he had worn at the party.
“I hate to be called stupid,” he said. “Specially by young bitches who don’t know up from down. You could learn more from me than you’ll learn from your goddamn books.” The Gibbon had been knocked on the floor and with a single kick Sonny sent it flying across the room. He was holding her so tightly in
his arms that she could feel his muscles, as hard and ungiving as wood. With no further ado he carried her to the door, lowered her a bit so he could open it and carried her out.
“I ain’t kidnaping you,” he said. “You ain’t in no danger unless you yell and if you yell I’ll break your goddamn jaw.”
The set of his face and his wooden muscles convinced her that he meant it. She had never been close to real violence in her life and was scared almost breathless. He would certainly hit her if he felt moved to, and the thought was terrifying. He boosted her abruptly into the back end of the hearse and shoved her toward the bed where she had sat once before. Then he climbed in after her and pulled the doors shut.
“Let’s go, Coon,” he said. Patsy looked around and saw that the sullen young cowboy who had been at the party was in the driver’s seat. He looked back at her, still sullen.
“Oh, please, I apologize,” she said. “I’m sorry I called you stupid. Don’t take me anywhere, just let me go back in.”
Sonny seemed to have recovered some of his earlier good humor. He stretched out one leg and propped his foot on the mattress where she sat. “Nope,” he said. “You got to take the consequences of being insulting. That’s Coon Carter driving. Coon, Mrs. Carpenter.”
“Mr. Shanks, please,” Patsy said. “You know you didn’t have any right to be in my room. I apologize again. Please let me go back.”
But Sonny waved Coon on and the hearse pulled out of the courtyard. Patsy looked back sadly at the Ford and tried to straighten her hair. She felt too numb to cry.
“You didn’t even shut the door to my room,” she said. “Suppose people go in and steal us blind? I have things I don’t want stolen. What kind of person are you?”
Sonny reached his bare foot in the direction of her calf, but she avoided it by scooting back on the mattress. She enveloped herself as totally as possible in her bathrobe.
“Where we goin’?” Coon asked. His voice was husky, like the voice of a child just awakened from sleep.