Yellow Mesquite (6 page)

“Separation. About twenty-five miles south of Hardwater.”

Whitehead laughed his big laugh. “Yep. I know of it. Can’t say’s I blame you for leaving.”

Harley grinned, but his mind was elsewhere, wondering what he would do if there really weren’t any art schools in Dallas.

“Course, I don’t believe in school myself,” Whitehead said. “I quit in the sixth grade, and if I’d a knowed then what I know now, hell, I’d a quit in the third.”

Harley gave him a skeptical look.

“Boy, once you learn to read and write they ain’t nothing else to it. Just a damn holding pen where they can teach you to take orders. That’s why nobody knows how to think for theirself. Hell, no. If I’s doing it over I’d quit in the third.”

Harley waited for the big rolling laugh that would mean it was a joke. But there was none.
 

“You serious about that?”

“Hell, yes, I’m serious. Boy, Harley Jay, in my book you’re headed in the right direction, you just ain’t going far enough. You gotta get on up there to New Yark. That’s where all them artists are. You ain’t never heard of no artist worth a pot of beans in Dallas, did you?”

Harley didn’t want to tell him he’d never heard of any artist at all to speak of.

“Yep, boy. New Yark’s got all them artists up there. And most of ’em we sent ’em. See, what we do is, we send ’em up there to train, then we buy ’em back again. That Rashinberg feller, now he’s a Texas boy. I bought a little pitcher of his a couple years back, looks like something he got outta the damn dump. Cost me a few bucks too, I can tell you. But that same piece today’s worth ten times what I paid for it. Hell, maybe more.” Whitehead grinned, squinted, and shook his head. “Just between me’n you, I don’t get it. But Mavis, that’s my wife, she likes to buy them little thangs, so I figure what the hell. Besides, I got people advisin’ me on it, and so far I ain’t done nothing but make money on ’em.”

“That right? You really buy pictures from New York?” He could hear the awe in his own voice.

“Shore I do.” Whitehead winked. “And who knows, one a these days I might be buying one a yours.”

Harley grinned at the thought of it. An hour ago he was standing back there by the highway, one foot barely out the door, and now here he was, already hobnobbing with big New York art people.

“Now for myself, I got a little pitcher by Fred Remington.” Whitehead fixed him with a sharp eye. “You know his pitchers?”

Harley shook his head. “Can’t say I do.”

“Now there’s a man really knows his horses.”

“He a New York artist, too?”

“Boy, where you been all your life? Fred’s dead. Been dead for—hell, I dunno…
years
.”

“Oh…”
 

“Listen, boy, Harley Jay, you really wanna do something like this art thang, or anythang else for that matter, you gotta get right up there at the top and mix it up with ’em. You can’t learn nothing hanging around out here in some cow pasture, and you can’t learn much more lollygagging around no art school. Not in Dallas and not in New Yark, neither. If I’s you I’d keep right on tracking, right on past Dallas to New Yark, and I’d go straight to that Rashinberg’s and I’d stand myself on his doorstep and I’d say, Rashinberg, I’ve come all the way up here from Texas and I’ll do anything you ast me, sweep up, run errands; hell, you name it and you got it; and all I ask in turn is just a place to sleep and something to eat once in a while. You tell him that, boy, and I can gar-run-damn-tee you’ll be well on the road to success. And even if he wants to call the poleece and have you throwed out, you just tell him, Okay Rashinberg, but it ain’t gonna do no good, ’cause soon as I get out, I’m gonna be right back. Persistence, boy.
Persistence!
That’s how you get where you wanna be.”

Harley watched Whitehead closely. “You mean it? You’d do something like that?”

“W’hell yes. I
did
do something like that. I didn’t mess around with no school, learning other people’s ideas. Once I seen the lay of the land, I quit and went straight over to old T. W. Mosier’s. He’s the first man out around Midland to know anythang ’bout the oil bidness. I was twelve years old. I went over and I told him, ‘Mr. Mosier,’ I said, ‘I come over here to go to work for you. When do we start?’ Well, Mr. Mosier, he told me, said, ‘Boy, you get your skinny ass on outta here.’ But I tell you, I didn’t pay ’im no mind. No, sir. Follered him around all day. That night about dark, he come outta the house with a rope and give me a whuppin’ with it. Yes-sir-ree. A whuppin’. I slept out behind the toolshed that night, but next morning when he come outta the house I was sittin’ on the porch waitin’ for ’im. I told him, ‘By god,’ I said, ‘I’m ready to go to work anytime you are.’ Well, sir, that old man, he whupped the scabs off me three days runnin’ before he
finally
got the idee.”

Whitehead smiled bitterly, but his eyes were full of light, and his craggy face had a touch of softness about it. “Old man Mosier. Yes-sir-ree. Know what kinda job he gimme? Taking care of the damn dogs, that’s what. The damn dogs. Had about fifteen or twenty of them greyhounds. Used to run jackrabbits with ’em, and he give me the job of feedin’ ’em and cleanin’ up after ’em. Ugliest damn stinkin’ dog in the world—look like something rotten squeezed out of a grape. But I done it, and by god, I seen lots a deals going down. And boy, I had a knack for it. A real
knack
. First thing you know, old Mosier, he’s takin’ me inta his confidence, asking my opinion. And boy, Harley Jay, that’s how you get where you wanna be, by
bein’
there.” Whitehead waved his hand through the air. “Get yerself right on up to the top and jump in it flatfooted.”

Whitehead was kind of bigger-than-life, unlike anybody he had ever known. It was plain enough that he had quit school, but there might be something in what he was saying, too.
 

They slowed considerably through Fort Worth, cruising through the traffic outside Arlington at about eighty. Harley glimpsed big-eyed faces framed in car windows as they blurred past.
 

He was wondering what Mr. Whitehead would think of the drawings packed in the bottom of his suitcase when all at once Whitehead craned forward over the wheel, squinting toward the Dallas skyline sitting on the prairie horizon ahead like a painted stage prop. A boil of black smoke rolled up in the distance.

“Hot damn,” Whitehead said, a slow grin, light fanning from his eyes. “That looks like old R.T.’s Caddy.”

The hood was up, a man standing alongside, his head in the engine well, a hat in his hand. He looked up, then went rigid for about two blinks before turning in his tracks toward the big green “Dallas City Limits” sign not a hundred yards away, and he took off running in his cowboy boots on the dirt shoulder with his chest thrown out, and he wasn’t fifty yards from that sign, clomp-stomping it off to beat the band, and Whitehead sat down on the horn and they blew past like a screaming jet.

Harley looked back and saw the man stop and kick up a cloud of dirt, then he threw his Stetson on the ground and stomped it. Black smoke whipped and rolled from under the white Cadillac in Whitehead’s wake. Then the whole business dwindled into the distance, and Whitehead was laughing and laughing, like he must be having the best day of his life. “Har-a-har-har! You see that little birddog run? Hobble-de-bop, knee-pump, sockin’ ’em down, wasn’t he? A-har-har-a-har!”

“We’re not gonna stop and help him?”

“Hell, no. Old R.T.’ll get along. A-har-har-har!”

Then they were going down Commerce Street, but not so fast now because of the traffic, and there was the Adolphus Hotel, and Whitehead sprawled behind the wheel just like he owned all of Dallas as well.

The car heaved to a stop before the hotel, and Harley dragged his suitcase over the seat. “I sure ’preciate the ride. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

“Boy, Harley Jay, you let this be a lesson to you.”

“A lesson?”

“Keep your foot on it, son. Even if them lead dogs got a head start, keep your foot on it, ’cause who knows, they maybe gonna blow a head gasket. See, you ain’t never whipped till you give up.”

“Yes sir,” Harley said. “I’m gonna do it. Keep my foot on it.”

Whitehead took a card out of a little leather envelope in his jacket pocket and handed it to him. “You ever want a job, boy, Harley Jay, you look me up, hear?”

“Thank you.” Harley put the card in his wallet in the window behind his drivers license, then got out with the cardboard suitcase. He watched Whitehead strut up the steps to the entrance. Whitehead handed his car keys to the parking attendant. Turning, he waved once to Harley, and then disappeared inside behind the potted rubber plants.
 

Harley stood in the heat, the hazy smell of burning oil and brakes drifting out from under Whitehead’s Cadillac, the metal making little ticking sounds, cooling, the parking attendant coming to get it.
 

Harley blotted his forehead on his shirtsleeve. He gazed about at the buildings towering around him. Well, the first thing would be to get a newspaper and see if he could find a room. Or maybe he should look for a job first. Or maybe he should ask somebody if there really were any art schools in Dallas.
 

He picked up his suitcase and started off down the street, Whitehead echoing in his head:
And by god a’mighty, if there aren’t any art schools in Dallas, I’ll track it right on up there to New York City! Yes-sir-ree. Park it right on that Rashin-what’s-his-name’s doorstep.

He wondered if Darlene knew he was gone yet.

Chapter 6

—Dallas—

Crump

A
T SUNUP HARLEY
and the other grunts pitched the last scoops of sand up into the bed of the pickup truck and tossed the shovels in the bins along either side. Berry climbed up into the driver’s seat. Tommy Pellerd came around and jerked the door open. “I’m driving this sonofabitchin’ pickup.” Pellerd, a weight lifter and an amateur wrestler, had a long thick body and short stubby legs. His chin ran out about a foot and turned up to meet his nose.
 

“Like hell,” said Berry. “You drove yesterday.”

Pellerd caught Berry by the shirtfront, hauled him from behind the wheel and hit him in the nose. Berry went sprawling in the sand and rolled over, cupping his face in his hands. Pellerd slid in behind the wheel.

 
Moon stood looking at Berry on the ground. He looked at Tommy Pellerd in the truck. “You drove yesterday,” Moon said.

 
“I’m driving today, too.”

 
Berry got up holding his bloodied nose. He crawled up in back under the tarp, cursing Pellerd under his breath. Moon followed.
 

 
Harley climbed into the back. He didn’t care who drove. To him it was just another day of setting utility poles for Dallas Power & Light.
 

LATE THAT AFTERNOON
Berry dropped Harley off on Gaston Avenue, and he walked the five blocks down to Aunt Grace’s boardinghouse. He had been in Dallas three months—three months with Dallas Power & Light and three months at Aunt Grace’s, and it seemed like forever. He still wasn’t used to the noise, the constant roar of cars and trucks, the wail of sirens screaming down Gaston Avenue day and night to Baylor Hospital. As it turned out, there really weren’t any art schools in Dallas. This wasn’t what he had left Separation for, so he decided to save all the money he could and then head up to New York.

He turned up the driveway, past the bay windows protruding from the old Victorian into the shrubbery, and around to the back door, work boots crunching on the gravel. He looked out toward the women’s quarters above the four-car garage. There were four women housed there, all of them nurses at the hospital. They weren’t allowed in the main house except for the evening meal, and the men weren’t allowed in the women’s quarters, period. Aunt Grace ran a tight ship.
 

Harley entered through the kitchen, said hello to Mattie, the Negro cook washing vegetables at the sink. He went on through the living room, past all the old furniture—tasseled lamps, brocaded chairs and curtains—and up the curved staircase. The emptiness of the house and Aunt Grace’s frowning ancestors in their oval frames made him feel like an intruder. The old house smelled of disinfectant, furniture polish, ammonia, mothballs and other people’s lives, past and present.

His upstairs room had its own smell of oil paint and turpentine. Several paintings stood propped against the walls, resting on newspapers. Art books and drawings were stacked on the floor. Mattie complained that his room was impossible to clean.
 

He set his hard hat on the dresser near a pile of books then took a change of clothes and a towel across the hall to the bathroom.
 

After a shower he returned to his room, lay on the bed and leafed through a recent issue of
Art News
. There was an article on Diebenkorn, a West Coast painter he was interested in—all that space, the big simplified shapes. And the colors, the rich blues and greens. A lot of Matisse there. Between the art magazines and museums on the weekends, he was soaking up art, past and present. Heady stuff.
 

Vague images struggled in the periphery of his imagination—large planes of silvery blue, yellow ocher, a dense rusty red…and space…something he couldn’t quite get a handle on, just out of reach.

A DOZEN OR
so tripod easels stood like a small geometric forest in Crump’s studio above a funeral parlor on Ackard Street. The air inside felt heavy, pungent with the smell of turpentine and formaldehyde. The model, an old man in khakis with sharp angular elbows and jutting knees, sat like a pile of loose boards in a chair on the model stand.

While there were no art schools in Dallas, he had found Crump. At one time, Crump had been a background artist for Disney, but now made his living teaching and copying photos out of
National Geographic
and
Arizona Highways
.

Crump wandered among his students, eyes aglitter on the works in progress. The overhead fluorescent lights glistened on his oily black hair, combed straight back over a long head. His mustache curled up Salvador Dalí–style. He had about him the smell of perfume and the ever-present formaldehyde. A clean denim apron covered his necktie.