In An Arid Land

In An Arid Land

Thirteen Stories of Texas

Paul Scott Malone

"Bringing Joboy Back" first appeared in
American Fiction 88
; "Prize Rope" in
New Growth 2: Contemporary Short Stories by Texas Writers
; "The Lost Earring" in
New Virginia Review
; "The Sulfur-Colored Stone" in
Writers' Forum
; "Floundering" in
Descant
; "The Unyielding Silence" in
Southern Humanities Review
; "Mother's Thimbles" in
Writers' Forum
; "A Minor Disturbance" in
Other Voices
; "The Pier, The Porch, The Pearly Gates" in
Pembroke Magazine
; "The Wondrous Nature of Repentance" in
Concho River Review
; and "In an Arid Land" in
Black Warrior Review
.

I wish to thank the editors of these publications, Alexander Blackburn in particular, for their faith and encouragement. I also wish to thank the National Endowment for the Arts, the Society of Southwestern Authors and the University of Arizona's Program in Creative Writing for their generous support.

Copyright © 1995, Paul Scott Malone

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Malone, Paul Scott

In an arid land : thirteen stories of Texas / by Paul Scott Malone.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-87565-140-2

1. TexasFiction. I. Title

PS3563.A43246415 1995

813'.54dc20

94-16972

CIP

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Cover and text designed by Barbara Whitehead

For Cheryl

We're fixing up a majestic breakfast for our first morning. In my old black skillet, on my green Coleman stove, sitting on green metal legs above a little sand dune, nine patties of Jimmy Dean's HOT sausage are sizzling. The sausage is my job. I study it closely, turn each patty with the long blade on my Swiss Army knife, sniff the wonderful greasy odor, take a sip of my screwdriver in a plastic cup. Then I glance up looking for Eddie.

I find him out in the surf, still in its morning calm. He's fishing again, his big head and his long black rod silhouetted against that monster sunrise. He casts, turns his body to battle a low wave, reels in his bait like some machine. Eddie doesn't much care for fishing; he's doing it because that's what men do when they go to the beach, and because he's heartbroken.

"What's on his mind?" Ed Senior wants to know, coming up behind me. "I don't think he slept at all and he hasn't spoken a word since we got up, just a grunt now and then, like an animal."

"Squaw problems," I say.

"That's what I figured," he says.

"So what's new, huh?"

"Dern women," says Ed Senior and he snorts a laugh to show he's joking; he doesn't know the facts of the matter. I know the facts and I know it's not Marcia's fault that Eddie's heartbroken; this is No-Fault Heartbreak, you might say. She changed, he changed, they changed, an old American story; and I happen to know she's in Albuquerque this week looking for a place to live.

We stand there worrying, wearing nothing but swim trunks, wriggling our toes in the sand, me with my knife, him with his Dutch oven full of biscuits, staring out to sea like wives of old. Eddie's my best friend, has been most of my life, and he's Ed Senior's only son. We've come here, to this lonely stretch of beach, because Eddie wanted us to. An empty house is a mean companion. So here we are, three white guys loose upon the earth.

"Dern women," the Old One says again, grinning at me as he turns away. He goes back to his fire pit, pokes the coals with a stick and replaces the Dutch oven on the blackened grate. The biscuits, the coffee, the fried potatoes with onions and some kind of private seasoning he brought along-these are Ed Senior's jobs, and he knows what he's doing. The eggs are Eddie's job.

"Is it time yet?"

"Pretty close," he says. "Better call him in."

We both look out to sea. Eddie casts again, reels it in like he's in a bad hurry, with an awkward but furious kind of precision, like it's a chore he's got to get through but never will.

It's unlikely he'll catch anything; we all know this. There's a fat old noisy dredge as big as a destroyer working in the shrimp boat channel just down the island from us and it's pumping the sludge over the jetties into the Gulf. Just our luck. The water all around is gray and gritty, the fish gone elsewhere.

I turn the sausage for the last time, slice off a juicy bite to be sure it's done, put down my knife and then I trudge through the sand to the water. I stand in the water, staring at Eddie, just watching him, still silent, until he turns and sees me.

After breakfast Ed Senior mixes up a new round of screwdrivers. He squeezes a lime wedge into each red cup and tells us it's his own personal recipe. We grin like conspirators, touch cups in a toast and then sit in folding chairs beneath the shelter we have erected with a blue plastic tarp and four crooked poles of driftwood. Ed Senior slaps Eddie's knee and shows an enormous smile to be uplifting. He says, "Boys, this is the life, ain't it?"

The tarp flaps and complains overhead. We sip our drinks, smoke cigarettes we wouldn't smoke back in the city, breathe in the salty air, gaze at the roaring Gulf. Already it's ninety degrees and we're sweating, our pale bodies suffering.

It's an elaborate camp we have made. Our huge rented tent snaps and grumbles in the anxious breeze. Inside is all our personal gear, knapsacks and satchels and gimme caps, books that won't get read, two sleeping bags, Ed Senior's aluminum cot, a Playboy magazine, a .357 Ruger automatic, our wallets full of money and credit cards and fishing licenses purchased at a bait shop yesterday, along with tiny photos of loved ones. Round about are ice chests and old trunks, jugs of fresh water and big red gasoline cans, pairs of sneakers and tackle boxes already settling into the sand. A second spare tire, which the park rangers suggested we bring along when Eddie called last week, serves as the bar; it is covered with leaning liquor bottles and even, as a sort of joke by Ed Senior which we the young ones don't get, a metal martini mixer and a squat round decanter of expensive liqueur.

"Grace and style, boys," he explained when he emptied the "liquor store," one of the trunks, while we were setting up camp.

To put it straight, we overloaded. The roof of Eddie's big Jeep was weighted down so cruelly on our drive down here that the ceiling liner touched my head in the backseat. Better to have than to have not was our motto in packing. We are sixty-three miles from civilization. We are a long way from home. We are without supervision. This is how he wanted it; he wanted Remote. He has owned the Jeep for two years, put 64,000 miles on it, and yesterday, grinding through the deep soft sand in our search for Remote, was only the third time he has used the four-wheel drive.

Eddie rises, gulps the rest of his drink and without a word to either of us he picks up his rod and his bait can and then he walks like a man with a mission straight into the water.

We fish for a while, catch nothing, but it feels good being in the warm surf, which is up now and fighting us. We're on the first sandbar. The water is groin deep. Ed Senior and I are working the trench between us and the beach. Eddie's still casting out, into the oncoming waves. He reaches way back with his brand-new surf rig and heaves with all his might, sending the sinker and the shrimp on its hook into a tremendous arc that ends with a tiny splash out among the breakers. Each time he looks somehow disappointed, as if he's trying to hit Florida or the Gulf Stream with every toss and intends to keep at it until he does.

Soon Ed Senior tires of the fight. I can see it in his drooping red face, his weary gray hair. He waves at me, points to the camp and smiles before he wades through the trench to the beach. He dries himself, changes into some baggy plaid shorts and a polo shirt, and I see him disappear into the tent for a nap.

Another hour of nothing. Now I'm tired too and I can feel the sting of the sun on my white-boy shoulders. Eddie the Machine is still working, casting out and reeling in, casting out and reeling in. I make my way down the sandbar to him, and he actually flinches and jumps when he senses me there beside him. He looks at me like I'm a Hammerhead come to eat him.

"Let's go in," I yell over the roar.

He shakes his head no, indicates with a nod that I should go ahead though if I want to. He reels in, turns to toss again and it's then that I notice there's no bait on his hook nothing but curved steel. With that same look in his face he heaves and sends his naked hook flying toward Florida.

I yell, "Hey, man, they've stolen your bait."

Eddie glances at me with those cool blue eyes in his reddening face and he shrugs his reddening shoulders as if it doesn't matter, and he starts reeling in again. So I leave him there and slog it to the beach. In camp I find one of his tee shirts flapping from a pole of the shelter.

On the front of the tee shirt, in faded blue letters above and below a faded blue stencil of a big Texas gobbler, it says,
Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot A Marathon for Health Greater Houston Heart Association.
I remember that day. I remember a photograph of Eddie and Marcia, their faces worn out and drained of color but happy, their dark hair stringy and wild under their sweatbands, his hammy arm across her shoulders, and each of them wearing a Turkey Trot tee shirt. They're looking right into the camera and their eyes are the Lights of Expectation. Also in the picture are his mom and Ed Senior, who'd come in to town for the occasion, beaming like proud parents should. I took that picture, though I hadn't run in the race, to celebrate his return from the brink. He was healthy again after two years of struggling with itthe crud in his veins, the goo in his lungs, those murderous habitsand we were crazy with joy and love for what he'd done.