McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (47 page)

 
          
 
I was silent for a moment.

 
          
 
"Jack, are you there?" she asked.

 
          
 
She had rarely used my name in speaking to me.

 
          
 
"I'm here," 1 said.

 
          
 
"Can't you just do it and not ask
questions?" she said. "That's our problem, you know."

 
          
 
"What is?"

 
          
 
"We talk too much," Cindy said.
"We should just do things and not talk so much."

 
          
 
"Can I just ask you one more
question?" I said.

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"What if I start to
Miami
and Spud shows up while I'm in transit? He
may just be planning to let you suffer and then surprise you. How am I gonna
know?"

 
          
 
"I wish you didn't make everything so
complicated," Cindy said.

 
          
 
I was silent again.

 
          
 
"I feel like I'm about to give up,"
she said. "You know how you sometimes feel you're about to vomit? I feel
that way, only I'm about to give up."

 
          
 
"Listen," I said. "I've been
driving too long. I've got to sleep. You should sleep too. Then call me. If you
give up you could fly to someplace and I'll meet you."

 
          
 
"Okay," Cindy said, meekly. "I
hope you're gonna be reliable this time. I hope I can get you if I call."

 
          
 
"I have to eat," I said. "I'm
sometimes out of the car for a few minutes. But you can keep trying. You'll get
me."

 
          
 
"Okay, Jack," Cindy said. "Do
you love me?"

 
          
 
"Yeah," I said.

 
          
 
"Okay, Jack," she said again, and
hung up.

 
          
 
When I came back to the room Josie was lying
right in the middle of one of the two large double beds, staring at the
ceiling. She had the covers pulled up to her chin, and she looked perplexed.

 
          
 
I felt sympathetic. Only a few hours earlier I
had been staring at the ceiling of a motel in
Lubbock
, feeling perplexed. Even Cindy Sanders, who
seemed to have nearly everything going for her, was probably lying in bed in
Miami
, staring at the ceiling and feeling
perplexed.

 
          
 
"I’m sorry," I said. "I got a
phone call on my car phone."

 
          
 
"I don't know why I come," Josie
said.

 
          
 
She looked like she had spent too much time
asking herself questions that had no answers.

 
          
 
"Maybe you just wanted a change," I
suggested.

 
          
 
"Yeah, but this ain't a change," she
said. "I feel lonesome at home and I feel lonesome here."

 
          
 
She looked at me quizzically, to see what I
could offer. I didn't have a thing to say. The truth was
,
I felt lonesome too.

 
          
 
"Little Joe just about never comes
upstairs anymore," Josie said. "I never thought I'd spend my whole
life watching TV, but that's how it's worked out. It's a good thing we can get
120 channels, otherwise I wouldn't have
nothing
to do
at all."

 
          
 
Then we both fell silent. Our adventure, if
that was what we were having, was turning out to be miserable all around.

 
          
 
I excused myself, as if I was leaving a dinner
table, and brushed my teeth. I felt very awkward, and had no one but myself to
blame for feeling that way. I almost never use good judgment, or any judgment, when
it came to personal relationships. What was I doing in
Hope
,
Arkansas
, with the wife of a millionaire rancher from Henrietta?

 
          
 
I brushed my teeth for quite a while, but came
up with no good answer to that question.

 
          
 
When I came out, Josie was still staring at
the ceiling.

 
          
 
"Do you know a lot of rich people?"
she asked.

 
          
 
I sat on the other bed and began to take off
my boots.

 
          
 
"Quite a few," I said.

 
          
 
"I never knew any till I married Little
Joe," she said. "My dad's just a carpenter. What are the ones you
know like?"

 
          
 
I tried to think, but it was hard to come up
with a general analysis of rich people.

 
          
 
"The thing about Little Joe is that he
expects a lot," Josie said. "I guess that's the difference. I guess I
just never expected very much."

 
          
 
I took off my socks.

 
          
 
"I still don't expect very much,"
Josie said, sadly. "Seems to me like the less I expect the less I get. I
was just sittin' up there watching Benjy and you walked in. I thought I'd just
run off with you before I had time to start expectin' anything. Once you start
expectin' something then it's sadder if you don't get it, don't you
think?"

 
          
 
At that point I decided to try and sleep with
Josie, as a means of stopping her from saying such heartbreaking things. She
seemed to have tapped a pure spring of sadness inside herself, the result no
doubt of several years spent sitting around the Twine ranch watching Little Joe
grow dopier and dopier.

 
          
 
I particularly didn't want to hear her say any
more about expectations, since I too spent a lot of time expecting things that
didn't happen. My fantasies were just little seances of expectation.

 
          
 
"Can I come to bed with you?" I
asked, before Josie could say another word.

 
          
 
Josie seemed surprised. She had evidently
abandoned that expectation so completely that it startled her.

 
          
 
"Did you just get horny, or what?"
she asked.

 
          
 
"I ain't been doin' much fuckin'
lately," she added, as if that had a bearing on the question.

 
          
 
"It doesn't matter," I said.

 
          
 
"I don't know what happened," Josie
said. "I used to do a lot. Then gradually I stopped. I don't buy much
anymore, either. All the stuff looks the same to me now."

 
          
 
I turned off the light, undressed, and got in
bed with her.

 
          
 
"Was the reason you wasn't horny before
because my hair's so funny looking?" she asked, sliding over to me. Her
tiny body was hot, from having had covers on it for the last half hour.

 
          
 
"Had nothing to do with it," I said.
"Your hair looks fine."

 
          
 
The next day Josie and I drove across
Arkansas
and
Tennessee
. Josie had never seen the
Mississippi
and got very excited when we approached it.

 
          
 
"Shoot, I don't see how they got a bridge
across it," she said, when she actually saw the river. She looked the
happiest I had seen her, and she tried to get me to stop on the bridge so she
could take a picture of it.

 
          
 
"I can't stop on the bridge and anyway I
don't have a camera," I said.

 
          
 
Josie looked disappointed. Practically her
first trip and already she was being denied things. Simple American needs, too,
such as getting to take a picture of the
Mississippi
to send to her mother, who liked postcards.

 
          
 
By the time we got into
Memphis
I felt so bad that we stopped and bought a
Polaroid and we went back to the river and took pictures. We also bought a lot
of postcards at a newsstand by the river. She wrote five or six and sent them
right oflf to her mother. Most of them just said, "Hi, Mom, wish you were
here!" Josie has not had much practice composing postcards.

 
          
 
I spent most of the day expecting the phone to
ring. Undoubtedly the phone would ring and Cindy would demand that I rush to
Miami
. Josie would enjoy seeing
Florida
and her pilot could easily fly there to get
her. I had begun to like her more and more, actually. She was afifec-tionate,
generous, and kind. We got to
Nashville
and the phone still hadn't rung so we just
kept going east.

 
          
 
By this time I was very puzzled by Cindy's
silence. Something had to have changed. Spud must have come, after all. I felt
quite disappointed. Cindy wasn't affectionate, generous, or kind, but she was
absolutely beautiful, and I had been looking forward to having her back.

 
          
 
Then, just as we were approaching
Oak Ridge
,
Tennessee
, the phone did ring, only when I picked it up it wasn't Cindy's voice I
heard.

 
          
 
"Is you still in the car?" Belinda
asked.

 
          
 
"Why yes, I am," I said.
"Where's your mother?"

 
          
 
"She wants to talk to you. Bye,"
Belinda said.

 
          
 
"We just wanted to find out if this
phone-in-the-car stuff really works," Jean said.

 
          
 
Josie had stopped tapping my leg and was
trying to pretend she wasn't there.

 
          
 
"Where are ya?" Jean asked.

 
          
 
"
Tennessee
," I said. "I'm on my way
back."

 
          
 
"Buy any nice trunks?" she asked.

 
          
 
"No," I said. "However, the
trunk of my car is full of interesting boots."

 
          
 
"There's no such thing as an interesting
boot," Jean said. "Are you alone?"

 
          
 
"Yep," I lied.

 
          
 
"If you weren't you'd be in trouble by
now," she said. "You're not very wary or you wouldn't have given me
this number."

 
          
 
"I'm not very wary," I said.

 
          
 
"Weil, there's not much news," Jean
said. "I sold sixteen dollars worth of cups today.
A big
day for me.
When may we expect to see you?"

 
          
 
"Probably in a day or two," I said.
"Although there's a distant prospect that I might have to go
to
Miami
.
I've heard of an estate that sounds interesting."

 
          
 
"Are you sure it's an estate, and not a
woman?" Jean asked.

 
          
 
"Oh well," I said, made cautious by
the tone of her voice.

 
          
 
Jean was silent.

 
          
 
"It might be a little of both," I
admitted.

 
          
 
"And then again it might be a woman and
not an estate," Jean said. "Am I right?"

 
          
 
She had cleverly trapped me in a situation in
which I had to admit to a lie, or else keep lying. Neither option was very
palatable, particularly not with Josie sitting there pretending not to hear a
word I said.

 
          
 
"You're right," I said, deciding she
would probably rather have a rival than a liar.

 
          
 
"Then how come you mentioned the
estate?" she asked.

 
          
 
"I guess I was just being tactful,"
I said weakly.

 
          
 
"No, you were being dishonest," Jean
said,
anger in her voice. "I hate dishonest men.
Jimmy lied to me practically every day. I wish you hadn't done it. We aren't
involved enough for you to need to lie to me."

 
          
 
"I apologize," I said. "It was
stupid."

 
          
 
"More importantly, it was wrong,"
Jean said. "Stupidity I can forgive."

 
          
 
She was silent again. I didn't know what to
say. I had already apologized once—apologizing twice wouldn't help.

 
          
 
"I wish I hadn't called," Jean said.
"It was just a spur of the moment fancy Belinda and I had.
Beverly
thought it was weird to call someone in a
car, and she was right.
Beverly
's got a lot of sense."

 
          
 
"Whereas you and Belinda can't resist
your impulses," I said lightly.

 
          
 
"Unfortunately not," Jean said.

 
          
 
"I met you at a complicated time of my
life," I said.

 
          
 
"Shut up," she said. "I hate
men who make excuses like that. All times of my life are complicated, as it
happens."

 
          
 
"I don't think I'm really going to
Miami
," I said. "I don't know why I
even mentioned it."

 
          
 
"You mentioned it to leave yourself an
out," Jean said. "I wish I could find a man somewhere who didn't
constantly feel the need to leave himself an out."

 
          
 
"Don't you ever do that?"

 
          
 
"I'm a parent," Jean said.
"When you're a parent, there's no out. But then how would you understand
that?"

 
          
 
"Well, I make an awful lot of
mistakes," I said.

 
          
 
Jean laughed a rather harsh laugh.

 
          
 
"You sure do," she said, and hung
up.

 
          
 
I felt very depressed. First Cindy had
vanished from the radarscope and now I had witlessly and needlessly alienated
Jean. All I had to show for a perfectly pointless three-thousand-mile drive was
Josie Twine and a trunk full of boots, neither of which I had any notion what
to do with. Besides that, I had entered into an agreement with Uncle Ike
Spettle, who was going to show up in
Washington
in a month's time, expecting to become a
national celebrity, as a reward for his century-long stewardship of a pair of
boots. People had become celebrities for far less, but that didn't solve my
problem.

 
          
 
Josie was looking at me curiously, in a kindly
way.

 
          
 
"Shoot," she said. "You must
know some picky women."

 
          
 
"Yep," I agreed.

 
          
 
"How many girl friends you got?" she
asked.

 
          
 
"I don't know," I said honestly.
"Maybe none.
Or maybe as many as five
or six.
It depends on how you define girl friend."

 
          
 
"That ain't very complicated," she
said. "It's just somebody who'll sleep with you if you happen to be
around.

 
          
 
"Much as you travel I can see why you'd
need quite a few," she added, in a kind voice.

 
          
 
In my depression it seemed an amazingly humane
and worldly judgment, coming from a young woman from Henrietta.

 
          
 
"You don't think it's wrong to have
several?" I asked.

 
          
 
Josie shrugged. "It beats tryin' to learn
to suck
yourself
off," she said. "I've been
trying to get Little Joe to go to a psychiatrist, but he won't."

 
          
 
"Have you ever gone to one?"

 
          
 
"Aw, yeah," she said. "I went
to one down in
Dallas
for nearly a year. He said I oughta leave Little Joe, only he didn't
tell me how I was supposed to get energy enough to do it."

 
          
 
"Maybe you have left him," I
suggested. "Maybe that's what this trip's about."

 
          
 
Josie scooted over enough that she could hug
one of my arms.

 
          
 
"I hope so," she said. "I was
getting so lonesome staying upstairs all the time I was about to go crazy.
Shoot, I'd rather drive around and see the country."