Duane's Depressed (32 page)

“So why is the state of your family’s garden that important to you?” she asked. “So important that you’d throw a tire through a plate glass window?”

Duane was startled. Dr. Carmichael had never questioned him so directly.

“Well, I mainly threw the tire because I was aggravated at not getting any service,” he said.

“Yes, and you still sound aggravated,” she said. “But it was concern for the garden that prompted you to take the tire to the station. You claim to feel no connection with your family, and you have little curiosity about your children. But when you saw that the garden plot hadn’t been prepared you were troubled. If you’re so through with family life why do you care so much about the garden?”

Dr. Carmichael was looking directly at him, in her grave
way. Duane began to feel a little tense. The thing that seemed worrisome to him was that he had lost his temper and thrown a tire through a plate glass window, a very unusual thing for him to do. Even in his wild youth he had never done anything destructive of anyone else’s property. He would have to go back to the Bond brothers at some point and apologize. What he had done seemed foolish to him. He should just have taken the tire to another station, where someone might have been more energetic about tending to customers’ needs.

It puzzled him that the doctor had chosen to focus on the garden aspect of it all, rather than on the tire throwing. Everyone recognized the importance of growing a garden—or at least everyone had recognized it when he was younger. Growing a good garden meant not having to spend all your money at the grocery store, where the produce was not likely to be as good. Of course there had always been people who
didn’t
garden, but they were usually people who were either too shiftless or too rich. Taking good care of one’s garden was only common sense, especially in a country that was prone to drought.

“It was just my upbringing, I guess,” he told her. “I was brought up not to neglect the garden. Maybe it was because of the Depression. My mother always gardened, although she was never much good at it. But at least we always had beans and potatoes and corn to fall back on.”

“But the Depression was sixty years back and your family is now rather affluent,” Dr. Carmichael said. “They no longer
need
to grow their food. Most people don’t need to grow food these days. They buy food at the supermarket.”

“You can’t buy a tomato with any taste to it at a supermarket,” Duane said.

“Oh, granted,” the doctor said. “But let’s consider what happened. You went home and had breakfast with your family. Then you noticed that the garden hadn’t been planted, and that upset you.”

“Not only not planted—it hadn’t even been plowed, and it’s past time,” Duane said. “It’s way past time, in fact.”

“This is something you would have tended to yourself, if you’d been home, correct?” the doctor asked.

“You bet,” Duane said.

“It’s a duty, in your mind, then?” she asked.

“Well, yes . . . it’s a duty,” Duane said. “We have a good garden plot and all the equipment we need to plow it and plant it. It’s just laziness to neglect a garden.”

“It seems as if you want your family to assume the same duties you assumed,” the doctor said. “But they aren’t you—and you’ve left them. What if they want to live in a different way? What if they never plant that garden?”

For a moment Duane regretted ever coming to see Dr. Carmichael. It was all just talk—he couldn’t see that it mattered. There had been some relief in talking to her the first few times he had come, but this visit was just making him feel muddled. Here she was, boring in on the question of his unplanted garden. It made him feel tired.

“Do you plan to plant a garden out at your cabin?” she asked.

“I thought I might have a little pea patch, and some tomatoes,” he said. “Maybe grow some turnips. I like turnip greens.”

“What interests me is that, where your family is concerned, you’ve taken away your help but you haven’t taken away many of your expectations,” the doctor said. “You want them to be as responsible as you have been.”

She paused.

“You want them to be a credit to their raising, which is a normal thing for a parent to feel,” she added.

Duane looked at the long couch along the west wall of the room. He thought it would be a relief to lie on it for a while: just lie on the couch and not think. But there were only ten minutes left in the visit, and if he were on the couch he feared he would just embarrass himself by going right to sleep. He remembered that the doctor had wanted him on the couch for this visit—probably he had been so agitated about throwing the tire through the window that she had just let him sit in the chair and babble.

Dr. Carmichael saw where he was looking.

“That’s okay, we’ll get you on the couch next time,” she said. “It’s rather a different experience, being on the couch.”

“I guess I’m just tired,” Duane said. “I biked in.”

“Are you glad you have the bike?” she asked. “Is it better than walking?”

“Well, I can get to someplace I need to get to on the bike,” Duane said. “I can come in and out in a day. But it’s not better than walking.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just not,” he said. “I like walking.”

“We’ll talk about that a little, next time,” the doctor said.

18

D
UANE HAD MEANT TO BIKE
right on back to his cabin, but there was the vexed question of Shorty, who had been the sole inhabitant of a semiexpensive room at the Stingaree Courts for two days. When he arrived at the motel and opened the door to number 141 Shorty was so glad to see him that he hopped around in a frenzy for a while.

“If anybody knew I was paying forty-eight dollars a day for a dog to stay in a motel they’d really think I was crazy,” Duane said. Shorty dashed off across the parking lot to chase a tomcat that was lurking around, but the tomcat easily faced him down and Shorty soon returned.

Duane had meant to check out and drag Shorty back to the cabin by one means or another, but he made the mistake of lying down on the water bed for a few minutes. The longing he had felt in the doctor’s office—a desire just to lie down and doze peacefully—came over him again, and he nodded off. He had not even fully closed the door to his room.

He awoke, deep in the night, to the sound of a loud argument in the parking lot. Sleep dragging at his muscles, he got up and went to the door just in time to see a tall, skinny young man slap Gay-lee twice.

“Ricky, don’t—Ricky, don’t!” Gay-lee said.

Before Duane could move to intervene, the young man
jumped in a pickup and drove off. Gay-lee stood where she was, sobbing. Shorty barked and barked.

Duane walked over to the girl.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“In my feelings I am, because Ricky’s a two-timing bastard,” she said.

“I thought I saw him hit you,” Duane said.

“Just slaps, he didn’t hurt me,” Gay-lee said. “Ricky don’t know what to do with a woman that’s fussing at him other than to slap her and drive off.”

“I guess it’s none of my business,” Duane said. “Thanks for looking after my dog.”

Gay-lee was staring down the road, at the taillights of the departing pickup, still visible a long way down the road.

“You’re not going to take our puppy away, are you? My girls love him,” Gay-lee asked.

“Well, I was considering it,” Duane admitted.

Gay-lee looked at him with fresh distress, more distress than she had exhibited over the slapping.

“Me and Sis depend on the puppy to keep us happy,” Gaylee said. “Sis has got thirteen children and all her boys are in jail.

“Plus I just got out of jail myself,” she added. “I been writing bad checks. They
will
put you in jail for that sooner or later. But it’s the only way I have to get new clothes. If I can’t get new clothes once in a while I’d go crazy. I get over there to Dillard’s and I pick up some of them Ralph Lauren clothes and it’s almost like I get a religious feeling. So I scribble out a bad check. Shoot, I’d rather sit in jail a day or two than never have nothing pretty to wear.”

Duane had an impulse to help the girl—she was about the age of his youngest daughter, who couldn’t resist pretty clothes either. Julie wrote bad checks galore but she never had to go to jail because he or Karla always covered them.

“It’s while I was sitting in the slammer that Ricky took up with that slut from Iowa Park,” Gay-lee said. “I was only in jail two days. You’d think it wouldn’t kill him to be faithful for just two days, but oh no, Ricky couldn’t do it. I get home and there’s a slut from Iowa Park sleeping in my own bed. How’s that for ugly?”

“Do you have any education?” Duane asked.

“You bet, I only like nine hours from having a college degree,” Gay-Lee said.

“I’ve turned my whole oil business over to my son Dickie,” he said. “He fired all the office staff—his wife’s running the office by herself. He might want to hire you if you can type and file and help keep an office going.”

“Dickie?” the girl asked. “Dickie who?”

“Dickie Moore,” Duane said.

“Oh man,” she said, and started laughing. “You want me to work for Dickie Moore?”

She looked at Duane and saw that he was shocked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’re trying to help me and all.”

“My mistake,” Duane said. “I didn’t realize you knew Dickie.”

“I knew him,” Gay-lee said simply. “Me and Dickie used to run around together when we was both wild—I mean, when we was
really
wild.”

She paused, lost for a moment in memory.

“There’s not many people out on this stretch of road who
don’t
know Dickie, because this is where the stuff is,” she said. “You’re so quiet and nice—I would never have taken you for Dickie’s dad.”

Duane was silent. He felt foolish. Who was he to presume that he could do better for Gay-lee than she could do for herself? She seemed like a nice girl. What was she doing, whoring on the Seymour highway? But then, what was
he
doing, sleeping in a room three doors down from hers? Why did he have on biking clothes in the middle of the night?

Gay-lee looked at him nervously—she seemed embarrassed.

“Oh my lord, now I’m ashamed of myself,” she said. “I would never have offered you no pussy that first day if I had known you were Dickie’s dad.”

“That’s over and done with—forget it,” he said. “If you’re all right I guess I’ll go back to bed.”

“Okay, Mr. Moore,” Gay-lee said. “If I can ever be of assistance please let me know.”

She said it rather formally, as if her whole relationship to him had changed now that she knew he was Dickie’s father.

“You can just call me Duane,” he said.

They continued to stand in the dark, empty parking lot, lit only by the early morning moon, as if there were more that needed to be said, although neither of them knew what.

“I don’t know about that Ricky,” Duane said finally, to break the silence.

“He’s a devil but I love him to pieces,” Gay-lee said. “He wouldn’t have slapped me if I hadn’t got in his face so bad about that slut he slept with while I was in jail.”

Then she gave a little laugh.

“You’re itching to reform me, ain’t you, Mr. Moore?” she said. “You’re aching to make me proper, like Dickie’s sisters. What’s their names?”

“Nellie and Julie.”

“That’s right—Nellie and Julie,” she said. “I met them once or twice when me and Dickie were doing drugs. They were trying to be wild themselves but they ain’t never going to be very wild. You don’t have to worry about them. Dickie, I don’t know. Did he do rehab, or what?”

“Three times,” Duane said.

“It’ll take more than rehab to take the wild out of Dickie—if you don’t mind my saying so,” Gay-lee said. “When Dickie’s on a tear he makes Ricky seem like a preacher. Where’s Jack now? I knew both your boys at one time. Little Jack’s got a few wild bones in him too.”

“He’s trapping wild pigs for a living,” Duane said. “We don’t see him for weeks at a stretch.”

Gay-lee laughed.

“Jack’s worst tendency is to go in bars and pick fights with people he can’t whip,” she said. “Maybe trapping pigs will take some of the steam out of him.”

“I hope so,” Duane said. He turned to go to his room but before he got there Gay-lee called out to him.

“Mr. Moore?” she said.

Duane turned back toward her.

“I just want you to know I was proper once,” Gay-lee said. “I’m a preacher’s daughter from Tyler, Texas. I was even a Rangerette for about half a season, till I got on drugs. I shook hands with President Clinton once, when he was in Texarkana giving a talk. I seen a good bit of the proper side of life.”

“Didn’t like it?” Duane asked.

“I guess I just had too much to live up to, my dad being a preacher and all,” she said. “People can only live up to so much—so here I am being a whore on the Seymour highway. But I’m really sorry I asked you what I asked you that first day. I should have known better.”

“Why? I was a total stranger,” he said.

“Because you don’t look like a man who would ever need to pay for pussy, that’s why,” Gay-lee said. “You look like the type of guy who can get it free.”

Shorty was dancing around Gay-lee, standing on his hind legs and trying to get her to pet him, which she did.

“How many children did you say Sis has?” he asked.

“Thirteen. She’s had a real hard life,” Gay-lee said. “Fourteen, if you count me. My mom’s dead. Sis is about the nearest thing to a mother that I have.”

“Do you really want this dog?” Duane asked. “I been thinking of going to Egypt and I wouldn’t be able to take him if I do.”

“You bet, we’d love to have him, me and Sis.”

“What if you’re busy?” Duane asked. “Wouldn’t it be a little awkward to have a dog?”

Gay-lee giggled. “Oh, if I’m busy I’ll just stick the puppy in my car,” she said. “It’s that Toyota sitting over there. It don’t run worth a shit but it would make a fine doghouse.”

“Then he’s yours,” Duane said. “You don’t even have to take him to a vet. He’s had all his shots.”

“Oh, Mr. Moore, thanks,” Gay-lee said. “Me and Sis will take real good care of him. It’ll just sort of pick our spirits up, to have a pet of our own. You know what I mean?”