McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (45 page)

 
          
 
"Why howdy," she said, when she saw
me. "You're the one that buys things. I wisht you'd buy me." She
touched a control and the sound went off on the big TV. Benjy's antics
continued in silence.

 
          
 
"Actually I was hoping to buy some
boots," I said.

 
          
 
She was still drinking vodka and tomato juice,
and had begun to let her hair grow out. Since it had to grow through various
levels of dye it was not yet easy to predict what color it would be.

 
          
 
"Did you call the ambulance about that
cowboy?" I asked. "He didn't look too healthy."

 
          
 
"Well, it's what he gets, for tryin' to
get high on horse medicine," Josie said. "It's real boring around
here. I've started taking dope too. What I'd like to do is take a trip. Are you
going anywhere?"

 
          
 
"I am," I said.
"Fm
just not sure where."

 
          
 
"Anywhere will do me," Josie said.
"I'm even afraid to drive
now,
Little Joe's hid
so much dope in all the cars. If I was to get stopped for speeding I'd go to
jail for years. It ain't worth it. Are you going north or south?"

 
          
 
"North," I said.

 
          
 
Josie got out of bed, went to a large closet,
selected a yellow cowboy shirt, peeled oflf her gown, and put on the shirt. She
got into some Levi's and yellow running shoes, found a purse, dropped a comb in
it, and was ready to go.

 
          
 
"You don't care if I go, do you?"
she said. "You can just kick me out whenever you get tired of me. I'll
just call the pilot and make him fly up and get me."

 
          
 
I felt paralyzed. All I had meant to do was
buy boots. Josie had not been part of my plans. Even so, it seemed a pity to
disappoint her. I knew I ought to be forceful and just say no, but I didn't. I
just stood there feeling vaguely wrong, creating by my indecision the
assumption that it was fine for her to go with me.

 
          
 
"Do you think I can buy some boots?"
I asked, feebly.

 
          
 
"Sure," Josie said. "We got a
few to spare."

 
          
 
We went to the boot closet and turned the
light on. I made a careful count, determining that the closet contained 262
pair of boots. I began a tasteful selection. My first choice had the
Alamo
embossed on them in white pigskin. Another
had the
San Jacinto
monument in mother-of-pearl. Several pairs
were covered in rhinestones, and many pairs were at least seventy-five years
old.

 
          
 
"Little Joe got the rhinestone ones when
he was trying to be a singer," Josie said.

 
          
 
The closet was a boot scout's paradise. The
Twines had been eclectic, evidently buying almost any boots they ran across.
There were boots with the impossibly high heels that had been in vogue in the
twenties. There were Mexican boots,
Montana
boots, and a pair of boots that had been
awarded some Twine at a steer-roping contest in Tucumcari in 1918. In no time
at all I had picked out forty pair, all old. Then I selected five pair of
garish boots from Little Joe's assemblage, and several pair of Josie's. Her
taste ran to exotic skins: armadillo, warthog,
shark
.
Also, she had a passion for yellow. At least two-thirds of her boots were
yellow, regardless of the skin.

 
          
 
"Yellow's the only color I feel sexy
in,'* she said, looking at the yellow shirt she was wearing.

 
          
 
"We better just throw them out the
window," Josie said. "Then maybe we can just drive around in the car
and pick them up."

 
          
 
The suggestion did not surprise me—I knew it
would probably not be easy simply to buy the boots from Little Joe. He might
appear to be a total dopehead, but the one thing that had to be remembered
about him was that he was very rich. The rich don't sell easily. If they have
something someone wants they automatically assume it's got to be worth much
more than the person is willing to give. Also, they don't need money—even
extravagant sums don't tempt them. If you offer them a million they figure that
what you're after is worth five million; and if you persuade them it's worth
only a million they may decide to keep it anyway, on the grounds that it's
pointless to sell something that's only worth a million.

 
          
 
Besides, I had heard Little Joe bargaining
with the gun dealer in
Amarillo
, and the dealer later told me that the deal had taken four days to
complete. He had paid too much for almost every single gun, and had stopped
even wanting the guns by the time Little Joe was satisfied.
All
the
dealer wanted by that time was for Little Joe to go away.

 
          
 
I didn't want to stay in Henrietta four days,
haggling over boots.

 
          
 
"He likes to gamble," Josie said.
"If you're willin' to bet you got a chance."

 
          
 
We went down to discover Little Joe rolling
around on the blue couch in a strange contorted manner. He appeared to be doing
exercises of some sort.

 
          
 
"It's yoga," Josie whispered.
"Somebody told him if he learned yoga he'd eventually get limber enough so
he could suck himself off. Did you know that less than one percent of human
males can suck themselves off?"

 
          
 
"I didn't know that," I said.

 
          
 
While Little Joe exercised, laughing gas
poured into the room from his unused mask. Also, the pornographic movie was
still going on, behind our backs, and the cowboy who had taken the horse
medicine still lay on the floor, glassy-eyed.

 
          
 
Josie switched off the pornographic movie and
flipped channels until she found Benjy. She wanted to be sure the little fellow
was still all right.

 
          
 
Little Joe stopped exercising, sat up, and
popped the mask back over his nose. He was sweating profusely.

 
          
 
"I'm taking a trip," Josie said.
"I might be back next week.”

 
          
 
Little Joe received this news without apparent
interest.

 
          
 
"Jack wants to buy a few boots,"
Josie added.

 
          
 
"Which boots?" Little Joe asked, a
faint gleam of perception lighting his pupils.

 
          
 
"Boots, boots," Josie said, snapping
her fingers at him as if she were a hypnotist, trying to bring someone out of a
trance.

 
          
 
Little Joe got up without a word and went
upstairs. We followed. I had lined all the boots up in the hallway. He squatted
down and looked at them carefully. I knew from experience he was going to try
to estimate the precise dollar value of each pair.

 
          
 
"Don't be so slow, Little Joe,"
Josie said, impatient to be on the road.

 
          
 
Little Joe didn't reply. He was studying the
boots.

 
          
 
"How about if we
gamble?"
I said.
"One toss of the coin.
If I win I get the boots."

 
          
 
"What about if I
win?"
Little Joe said. "What do I get?"

 
          
 
"Let's go out to the car," I said.
"Maybe I've got something that would interest you."

 
          
 
We went out into the cold moonlit night. I
could hear the chug-chug of oil pumps, each of them chugging through the night
to make Little Joe richer. I showed him the Henry rifle, thinking perhaps the
family passion for guns had returned, but it hadn't.

 
          
 
"We solt the guns," he said.

 
          
 
Then his eyes lit on the Valentino hubcaps. He
picked one up and looked at it.

 
          
 
"Where'd a thang like this come
from?" he asked.

 
          
 
For a second I was tempted to lie. I didn't
really want to gamble the hubcaps against the boots. The hubcaps were truly
rare. Only four sets existed. Not only were they worth more than the boots,
they were also my legacy from Beulah Mahony. She had treasured them a long time
and had finally chosen me to have them. It had been an act of love, of a sort.

 
          
 
The boots I was merely getting for Cindy
Sanders, whom I might never see again.

 
          
 
Besides, the gamble involved an imbalance of
class. The boots were good, but the hubcaps were simply in a different, and a
higher, class.

 
          
 
Little Joe was clearly in love with the cobra
hubcaps. I knew right away that he'd take the gamble, if I agreed to it.

 
          
 
I told him about Valentino, about the hubcap
forger, about the fact that only four sets existed. Every word I said made him
more eager.

 
          
 
"I'll flip, but not for an even
trade," I said. "The hubcaps are worth too much more than the boots.
If you win I want $5,000 to boot."

 
          
 
Josie had grown cold and was sitting in the
car going through my collection of eight-track tapes.

 
          
 
"Okay," Little Joe said. "I
like
them
snakes."

 
          
 
We went back inside. Little Joe rolled the
glassy-eyed cowboy over and dug in his pockets until he found a quarter. Then
he went back to the couch and popped a few pills, while he considered.

 
          
 
"You flip," he said, pitching over
the quarter.

 
          
 
I felt a little strange. I wasn't really
taking the bet because I wanted the boots all that much—the problem was that I
wanted the hubcaps too much. In five years I had never put them up for sale,
which was a breach of discipline. One of my firmest principles is that those
who sell should not keep. The minute a scout starts keeping his best finds he
becomes a collector. All scouts have love affairs with objects, but true scouts
have brief intense passions, not marriages. I didn't want to own something I
loved so much I wouldn't sell it. That would violate the logic of what I was
doing. The game is about selling, as much as buying: If you have the courage to
sell a really great object today you may be rewarded with the opportunity to
buy an even greater object tomorrow.

 
          
 
The truth was
,
I had
had the hubcaps long enough. It was time to risk them, and this was as good a
way as any.

 
          
 
I flipped the coin.

 
          
 
"Tails," Little Joe said.

 
          
 
The coin landed. It was heads. The hubcaps
were still mine, and I had won some fifty pairs of boots.