The Last Picture Show (5 page)

"Well, I wonder what my chances are of interesting you kids in John Keats this morning," he said, when the class was settled.

"None at all," Duane said, and everybody laughed. Mr. Cecil laughed too—it was all in fun. The kids didn't hold it against him that he liked poetry, and he didn't hold it against them that they didn't. He read them whatever poetry he felt like reading, and they dozed or got other homework done and didn't interrupt. Once in a while he told good stories about the poets' lives; Lord Byron and all his mistresses interested the boys in the class a good deal. They agreed among themselves that Lord Byron must have been a great cocksman, but why he had bothered to write poetry they couldn't figure.

While Mr. Cecil was trying to decide what poetry to read that day Sonny got Joe Bob Blanton's algebra homework and began to copy it. For a year or two it had been necessary to threaten to whip Joe Bob before he would hand over his problems, but in time he began to want to be popular and handed them over willingly. That morning, to everyone's surprise, he held up his .hand and got in an argument with Mr. Cecil over one of Keats' poems.

"I read the one about the nightingale," he said. "It didn't sound so good to me. It sounded like he wanted to be a nightingale, and I think it's silly of all these poets to want to be something besides what the Lord made them. It's criticizing the Lord."

Everybody snickered except Mr. Cecil. Joe Bob was sort of religion crazy, but nobody could blame him for it, considering the family he had. He was even a preacher himself, already: the summer before he had gone to church camp and got the call. Everybody figured Joe Bob had just done it to get a little extra attention from the girls at the church camp, but if that was it it sure backfired. So far as Brother Blanton was concerned the Lord's call was final: once you heard it you were a preacher forever. He started Joe Bob preaching sermons right away.

Mr. Cecil never quite knew what to do when Joe Bob got started. "Oh, I don't really think he wanted to be a nightingale, Joe Bob," he said. "Maybe he just wanted to be immortal."

Joe Bob was not satisfied with that either; he took out his pocket comb and slicked back his blond hair.

"All you have to do to be immortal is lead a good Christian life," he said. "Anybody can do it if they love the Lord, and you can't do it by writing poems anyway:"

"Maybe not, maybe not," Mr. Cecil said, chuckling a little. "Here, now let me read you this."

He started reading the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," but the class was not listening. Joe Bob, having said his say, had lost interest in the whole matter and was doing his chemistry. Duane was catching a little nap, and Jacy was studying her mouth in a little mirror she kept behind her English book—she had been considering changing her lipstick shade but didn't want to do so hastily. Sonny looked out the window, and Mr. Cecil read peacefully on until the bell rang.

Civics class was next, a very popular class. Sonny and Duane had taken the precaution to sit in the back of the room, so they could cheat or sleep or do whatever they wanted to, but actually, in civics class, they could have done about as much if they had been sitting in the front row. Coach Popper taught civics—if what he did could be called teaching—and he could not have cared less what went on.

Not only was the coach the dumbest teacher in school, he was also the laziest. Three days out of four he would go to sleep in class while he was trying to figure out some paragraph in the textbook. He didn't even know the Pledge of Allegiance, and some of the kids at least knew that. When he went to sleep, he never woke up until the bell rang, and the kids did just as they pleased. Duane usually took a nap, and Joe Bob made a big point of reading the Bible. The only girl in class was a big ugly junior named Agnes Bean; the boys who didn't have anything else to do teased her. Leroy Malone, Old Lady Malone's grandson, sat right behind Agnes and kept the class amused by popping her brassiere strap against her back. Once he made her so mad popping the strap that Agnes reached under the desk, slipped off her brogan shoe, and turned and cold-cocked him with it before he could get his guard up. His nose bled all over his desk and he had to get up and sneak down to the rest room and hold wet towels on it until it stopped.

Another time, for meanness, the boys all ganged up on Joe Bob and stuck him out the window. They hung onto his ankles and let him dangle upside down a while, assuring him that if he yelled and woke up the coach they would drop him. Nobody was sure whether they really would have dropped him or not, but Joe Bob was sensible and kept quiet. The classroom was just on the second floor, so the fall might not have hurt him much even if they had dropped him.

After civics there was a study hall, and then lunch, a boring time. One year Duane and Jacy had been able to sneak off to the lake and court during lunch, but it was only because Lois Farrow was drinking unusually hard that year and wasn't watching her daughter too closely. Lois was the only woman in Thalia who drank and made no bones about it. That same year Gene Farrow gave a big barbecue out at a little ranch he owned, and all his employees were invited. Duane was roughnecking for Gene then and took Sonny along on his invitation. Lois was there in a low-necked yellow dress, drinking whiskey as fast as most of the roughnecks drank beer. She was also shooting craps with anyone who cared to shoot with her. That was the day that Abilene won over a thousand dollars shooting craps, six hundred of it from Lois and the other four hundred from Lester Marlow, who was Jacy's official date. Lois thought Abilene cheated her and wanted Gene to fire him on the spot, but Gene wouldn't. She cussed them both out, got in her Cadillac, and started for town, but the steering wheel got away from her as the Cadillac was speeding up and she smashed into a mesquite tree. Lois just got out, gave everybody a good hard look, and started to town on foot. Nobody stopped her. Gene Farrow got drunk and Abilene kept gambling. While he was rolling dice with Lester, Duane took Jacy over behind some cars and in the excitement almost got her brassiere off. Sonny himself won $27 in a blackjack game, and he was not even an employee. That night somebody busted Lois' lip and blacked her eye; some thought Gene Farrow did it but others claimed it was Abilene. He had known the Farrows before they were rich, and he wasn't a man to put up with much name calling, and nobody but Lois would have had the guts to call,him names in the first place; if there was anything in the world she was scared of nobody knew what it was. She was a tall, rangy blond, still almost as slim as her daughter, and she was not in the habit of walking around anyone.

If you didn't have someone to sneak off and court with, all there was to do at lunchtime was play volleyball. The one alternative amusement was watching the Melly brothers, George and Ed, who ordinarily spent their lunch hour jacking off in the boy's rest room. The Melly boys lived on a broken-down farm in the western part of the county, and had very few pleasures. Freshmen and sophomores got a kick out of watching them go at it, but it was really beneath the attention of seniors like Sonny and Duane.

As classes were being dismissed that afternoon Coach Popper announced that anyone interested in coming out for basketball should be in the gym in fifteen minutes. Basketball was not a big deal sport in Thalia; Sonny and Duane only went out because they were seniors and felt obligated. Also, the road trips were nice because the boys' and girls' teams rode on the same school bus. When all candidates were assembled in the boys' dressing room there turned out to be only nine boys there, not even enough for two teams. It was no real surprise: Thalia was generally conceded to have about the most miserable basketball team in the state. On a few spectacularly dismal occasions they had managed to lose games by over a hundred points.

The nine boys began to get into their jockey straps and shorts, and were rubbing foot toughener on their feet when Coach Popper came in from the equipment room. He wore a green fatigue jacket that he had swiped from the army and he was dragging two big sacks of basketballs. He was big and he was proud of it: two hundred and thirty-five pounds, at least half of it gut.

As soon as he got to the dressing room he stopped and took a quick tally. His countenance darkened.

"Goddamit!" he said. "Ain't there but nine of you little farts? Forty-six boys in this high school, ain't but nine come out? If this ain't a piss-ignorant place to have to coach. Where's Joe Bob, anyhow? The least that little piss-ant can do is come out for basketball."

"He's home jackin' off," Leroy said. "Or else he's readin' the Bible. That's all he does, one or the other:'

"You all take ten laps and get out there and shoot some free throws," the coach said. "I'm going down to the church and get him. He ain't worth a shit but he's easy to find and I ain't gonna drive all over this county looking for basketball players. I ain't gonna hold no practice unless we got at least two teams, either."

He hitched his pants up over his big, sagging belly and went out the door.

All but two or three of the boys ignored the ten-lap command and began shooting whatever kind of shots came into their heads. The only one who actually ran all ten laps was Bobby Logan, the most conscientious athlete in school. Bobby liked to stay in shape and always trained hard; he was smart, too, but he was such a nice kid that nobody held it against him. He was the coach's special favorite.

When the coach came back he had Joe Bob at his heels. By that time all the boys were throwing three-quarter court peg shots, like Ozark Ike in the comics. Balls were bouncing everywhere. Once in a game Sonny seen an Indian boy from Durant, Oklahoma actually make a three-quarter court peg shot in the last five seconds of play. It didn't really win the game for Durant, because they were already leading Thalia by about sixty-five points, but it impressed Sonny, and he resolved to start trying a few himself.

"Hey, quit chunkin' them balls, you little dumb-asses," Coach Popper Yelled. "Just for thAt we'll have some wind sprints."

Joe Bob was standing just behind the coach combing his hair. The coach happened to turn around and the sight made him so mad he grabbed Joe Bob's comb and threw it up in the stands as high as he could. "Get your skinny ass suited out," he said. All the boys grinned when Joe Bob went into the dressing room because while the coach was gone they had mixed a little glue in with the foot toughener. If Joe Bob used any of the foot toughener he would probably have to keep his socks on for about three weeks.

The coach divided the boys into two teams and put them to running simple plays. He sat in a bridge chair with a blue towel around his neck and watched them, yelling from time to time. He had a little paper cup for his tobacco juice sitting by the chair. The loudest he yelled all afternoon was when a freshman who hadn't yet learned to dribble let a ball knock the cup over. They spent the last twenty minutes of practice running wind sprints up and down the gym. Joe Bob's feet were so badly blistered by that time that he had to hop the last two wind sprints on one leg. Some of the freshmen were no better off, and Coach Popper thought it was a hilarious sight.

"Tough it out, boys, tough it out," he yelled. "You got to be men like the rest of us, ain't none of you pretty enough to be women: "

In the dressing room there was a great laugh when it turned out Joe Bob had used the foot toughener after all. The only reason he could get his socks off at all was that he had almost solid blisters and the blisters peeled loose a lot easier than the glue. When Coach Popper saw the sight he laughed till he cried. "You might try boilin' 'em off, Joe Bob," he said. "It wouldn't be no harder on your feet."

In fact, the coach made matters even worse for Joe Bob by horsing around and trying to grab his pecker.

"Look at that little worm there," he said, making a grab. "What kind of female you ever gonna get with that thing for bait, Joe? Wouldn't do for a six-year-old girl."

He kept laughing and grabbing, backing Joe Bob around the room until finally Joe Bob couldn't stand it anymore and ran to the showers with one sock still on.

"Another minute and I'd have had him bawling," the coach said jovially, sitting down to take off his tennis shoes. It was all pretty funny, the boys thought, but when they came out of the shower something happened that wasn't so funny. Everybody was horsing around, popping towels and grabbing at one another's nuts, like they usually did after practice. Duane and Sonny and Bobby Logan were having a little three-way towel fight, and the trouble started when Duanc caught Bobby a smacker on the hip. It was just a flat pop and didn't hurt Bobby at all, but the coach happened to be coming out of the shower about that time and for some reason it made him furious. He was naked except for a whistle around his neck, but he grabbed a towel and laid into Sonny and Duane. He let one fly at Duane that would have castrated him on the spot if it had landed. "I'll show you little fuckers some towel fightin'," he said. The boys were too surprised to fight back: they just retreated into a corner where there were benches and clothes hangers to block some of the coach's shots. His wet hair was down in his face and he was snorting and, puffing like a mad boar , hog.

In a minute or two he got over it, though, and threw the wet towel at Sonny. "No more goddamn towel fightin'," he said and went over and looked closely at Bobby Logan's hip. The freshmen were scared almost to death-one was so nervous he put his shoes on the wrong feet and wore them home that way, too scared to stop and change. The older boys had seen the coach flare up before and knew it was just a matter of surviving until he cooled off. The time be shot at Sonny it was because he thought Sonny had scared away a dove he was sneaking up on. Fortunately, Sonny was a hundred yards away and wasn't hit.

"I don't understand how Mrs. Popper's lasted," Duane said, as he was dressing.

"She ain't the healthiest looking woman in town," Sonny reminded him. Mrs. Popper's name was Ruth; she was a small woman, pretty but tired and nervous looking. No one saw much of her. At Christmastime she sometimes made Sonny and Duane cookies and brought them around. Sam the Lion had known her all her life and said that she had been lovely when she was young.