McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (48 page)

 
          
 
We stopped for the night in
Knoxville
and woke up to a world so fogged in with
Appalachian fog that neither of us wanted to get out of bed and deal with it.
The white mist was so dense that it looked like it had been painted on the
windows of the motel.

 
          
 
"Shoot, I don't see how people get
around," Josie said, rubbing on the window as if by doing so she could rub
a little hole in the fog. It didn't work so she came back to bed and snuggled
against me.

 
          
 
"It'll go away when the sun comes
up," I said.

 
          
 
"Yeah, but what happens on a cloudy
day?" she wanted to know.

 
          
 
At certain levels of tension and uncertainty
the least little things make a difference.
Sunlight, for
example.
If I wake up in a borderline mood and see the sun shining it
might lift my mood several notches. I might get up feeling optimistic and go
out and buy something wonderful.

 
          
 
Total fog has just the opposite effect. I felt
like never getting out of bed. In such a fog it would be difficult to find my
car, much less a junk shop or an antique store. I had been to several flea
markets that opened in the early morning, when the mist was still rising. The
flea marketers moved through it like ghosts, setting up tables and putting out
old bottles and other objects, oblivious to the fact that the customers
couldn't see the tables, much less the objects. Certain well-equipped scouts
carried big miner's lights for just such occasions. I had a miner's light
myself, and had used it to good effect at several dawn flea markets. Once I had
bought a marvelous
Pennsylvania
butter spreader by the light of my miner's light, in the days when I
scouted obsessively.

 
          
 
Lying in bed in the fogged-in motel in
Knoxville
, with

 
          
 
Josie's arms locked tightly around me as she
stared at the very un-Texas fog surrounding us, I began to feel nostalgic for
the days when I had scouted obsessively. I had had a lot of discipline, once.
In fact I had had a good bit of it right up until the moment I had met Cindy
Sanders. Of course there had been lapses, when my passions for Coffee, Kate,
and Tanya had been at their heights. But Coffee, Kate, and Tanya were fixed
entities, each of them easily located and quite predictable once found. In my
mind they had become so closely identified with their respective
Texas
cities that they could have been called
Austin, Houston, and Dallas. Their qualities and the qualities of their three
cities were very similar, their rhythms the rhythms of those places. To the
extent that I understood the places, I understood the women, and vice versa.

 
          
 
Nothing like that applied to my relationship
in the
District
of Columbia
and its environs, where I understood nothing, neither the women nor the
place. So far my every move had been wrong, womanwise. I felt like I was on a
down escalator where women were concerned, though fortunately the small warm
one with her arms wrapped around me didn’t think poorly of me yet.

 
          
 
"What kinds of people live here?'* Josie
inquired.

 
          
 
"Just the usual kinds," I said.
"It's not always this foggy."

 
          
 
"It seems like a long way, back to
Henrietta," she said. "Do you think I could get a job, up in
Washington
?"

 
          
 
"I guess you could," I said.
"But I thought you were just going to send for your pilot. It's not a long
flight."

 
          
 
"It is if you don't really want to go
back," she said.

 
          
 
"Don't worry, I ain't gonna be a
burden," she added. "I know you got all
them
picky girl friends to think about."

 
          
 
"I wasn't thinking of you as a
burden," I said.

 
          
 
"You
wasn't
thinking of me at all," Josie said quietly. "That's okay. I wasn't
thinking of you, either. It's just an accident, ain't it?"

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"That you come by and that I run off with
you," she said.
"Just an accident.
It ain't
like we met one another in high school and fell in love."

 
          
 
"No," I said. "You're right.
Did you meet Little Joe in high school?"

 
          
 
"Yeah," she said. "Everybody
was trying to get him because he was so rich. Lucky me, I got him."

 
          
 
Relieved by the accidental nature of
everything that was
happening,
we made love, had a big
breakfast, and dashed out of
Tennessee
into
Virginia
. The fog burned off when we got to
Bristol
and we drove north through
Virginia
on a beautiful fall day. The leaves had
turned in my absence— the slopes of the
Blue Ridge
were exhibiting their most brilliant fall
foliage, a sight that Josie managed to take in stride.

 
          
 
"I was never much interested in
leaves," she said. "Momma likes 'em, though."

 
          
 
Near Wytheville we stopped to see an elderly
Virginia
aristocrat I knew, named Mead Mead IV. Mead
lived in what appeared to be perfect leisure in a beautiful old
eighteenth-century manor house, attended by tactful servants, all black. The
lifestyle of the Mead manor was so eighteenth century that there was no way of
knowing whether Mead or any of the servants knew that the Civil War had
occurred.

 
          
 
Both Mead and the servants were more than a
little shocked by the sight of Josie, in her yellow shirt and tricolored hair,
but fortunately their manners were adequate to the situation.

 
          
 
I had only stopped in order to sell Mead a
nineteenth-century lightbulb. He was a passionate collector of
nineteenth-century lightbulbs, his one concession to modem times. He had over
four hundred and kept each one in an individual wooden case which one of his handymen
made.

 
          
 
I had found a beautiful nineteenth-century
lightbulb in
South Dakota
. It had been the living room lightbulb of a family who had only used
the living room once or twice in the twentieth century. Consequently, the bulb
still worked. I knew Mead would be delighted, since only about 10 of his 400
lightbulbs still worked. He had a nineteenth-century light fixture in his
study, and when he screwed in the
South Dakota
lightbulb it shone with a pure if feeble
light.

 
          
 
"Perfectly beautiful," Mead said. He
loved the pure feeble light of nineteenth-century lightbulbs. A look of
pleasure lingered on his features as he wrote the check and handed it to me.
His thin silver hair was neatly combed and the effect of perfect elegance was
marred only by a few traces of egg on his necktie.

 
          
 
As we were driving out of the manor's long
driveway, Josie reached over and got the check out of my pocket.

 
          
 
"I just want to read it," she said.
"You mean he paid you five hundred dollars for a lightbulb?"

 
          
 
I nodded.

 
          
 
"I never seen such a creepy house,"
she said, and the rest of the way to
Washington
she brooded about the elegant creepiness of
manor houses in
Virginia
.

 
          
 
When we got to
Washington
I headed straight for Boog's, the one place
in
Washington
I was fairly sure Josie wouldn't think was
creepy.

 
          
 
I was right. Boog had just flown in from
Kansas City
, bringing some barbecued ribs. Micah had
his little TV set on the table and was giggling helplessly at a
Sanford
and Son rerun.

 
          
 
"Hi, like your hairdo," were the
first words out of Boog's mouth, when he spotted Josie. In two minutes she was
eating ribs like one of the family and helping Micah watch Sanford and Son.
Micah liked her almost as instantly as Boog had, since she was the first person
to come along in months who knew reruns as well as he did.

 
          
 
Boss seemed to be in a somber mood. She was
not unfriendly to Josie, or to anyone, but she didn't say much.

 
          
 
I had meant to ask if Josie could stay at the
Millers' for a night or two, until we got our bearings, but before I could even
mention it Boog invited her to stay as long as she wanted to.

 
          
 
"Oh great," Micah said. "I hope
you like Bob Newhart."

 
          
 
Half an hour later they all
went off to
Georgetown
to see a double-feature
Bogart rerun.
Josie went
with them, looking younger and happier than I had ever seen her.

 
          
 
Boss didn't go. She sat at the table, idly
fingering her long black hair.

 
          
 
"I didn't mean for her just to move
in," I said, thinking Boss might be annoyed that I had brought a young
woman into their lives.

 
          
 
"I don't care if she moves in," Boss
said, "She seems like a nice kid. Why didn't you go see Coffee when you
were in
Texas
?"

 
          
 
"I meant to," I said. "I know I
should have."

 
          
 
"Coffee depends on you," Boss said.
"She's also about the only woman who gives a flip about you. You ought to
be a little more loyal."

 
          
 
Boss's hair was extremely beautiful. She stood
up and began to clear the table. I helped her.

 
          
 
"I'm glad you showed up," she said.
"I've got some papers for you to sign. I sold the horse farm today. Spud
bought it."

 
          
 
"Spud?"
I
said, shocked. "I thought he was in
Miami
."

 
          
 
"When's the last time you heard from
Cindy?" Boss asked.

 
          
 
"A couple of days ago," I said.

 
          
 
"Spud just left his wife and moved in
with her," she said. "Naturally her engagement to Harris is off. They
need the horse farm for a weekend place, since Betsy will get Spud's weekend
place, if they divorce."