The Last Picture Show (19 page)

After the fight with Lester, Sonny and Duane walked over to the café to have a cheeseburger. Duane really wanted sympathy, but Genevieve was not inclined to give him any.

"No sir," she said. "There wasn't any point in your bullyin' Lester-it ain't his fault you can't make your girl friend behave:'

"You're as bad as Sam," Duane said bitterly. "Why lacy would marry me tonight, if she had the chance."

Sonny got up and put a couple of nickels in the jukebox, hoping a little music would ease the tension. It didn't seem to help much, so after a few minutes the boys left and drove out to the Y, a fork in the road about five miles from town. The fork was on top of a hill, and when they got there they sat and looked across the fiat at the cluster of lights that was Thalia. In the deep spring darkness the lights shone very clear. The windows of the pickup were down and they could smell the fresh smell of the pastures.

They only sat a few minutes, and then drove back to town. When they pulled up at the rooming house the Wichita boys were there, sitting on the fenders of the Mercury.

"There's the Bunne brothers," Duane said. "That damn Lester must have sent 'em."

Both of them were badly scared, but they didn't want the Wichita boys to know that so they got out as if nothing were wrong. For a moment no one said anything. Sonny nervously scraped his sole on the pavement and the sound was very loud in the still night.

Mickey Bunne came cockily over and broke the silence. "Hear you men beat the piss out of Lester," he said.

"I beat the piss out of him," Duane said quickly. "Sonny wasn't involved."

"That ain't the way Lester tells it:"

The other boys got off the fenders and began to edge around.

"He probably lied about it," Duane said. "I didn't hit him over five times, anyway. I told him to stop going with my girl."

Mickey moved a step closer. "He said you both whipped him."

"You don't really think it would take two of us to whip Lester, do you?" Sonny asked. "All he had was a bloody nose and a busted lip. If we'd both fought he wouldn't have been able to drive home, much less tell lies about it."

The Wichita boys were momentarily silent, even Mickey. What Sonny said was obviously true: it didn't take two people to whip Lester Marlow, and he hadn't been damaged much, anyway. Most of the boys didn't feel particularly unfriendly to Duane and Sonny, but that didn't matter. There had to be a fight. The Bunne brothers wouldn't go home without a fight. Fortunately Mickey Bunne was quickwitted and saw right away what tack to take.

"Who whipped him don't matter," he said. "We don't like you country boys tellin' us who to go with and who to leave alone. We like to screw country girls once in a while."

Duane was getting a little nervous. "I didn't tell him not to screw country girls," he said. "I told him not to bother Jacy. He can fuck the whole rest of this town for all I care -I'm just tired of him botherin' Jacy."

Mickey grinned. "Lester don't bother her," he said. "She laps it up. I seen her naked one time myself, out at Bobby Sheen's. She ain't bad lookin'. Who she really likes is Bobby Sheen-him and her played around all one night. I guess she's about as much ours as she is yours. I may want to go with her myself some time, you can't tell."

That was too much for Duane: he hit at Mickey, and the fight was on. It was not too bad for Duane, although Mickey beat him handily and knocked him down once,. Duane was so mad he didn't really feel the pounding he took. He was fighting for his girl, after all. Sonny was the one who suffered most. He wasn't mad at all, and he wasn't fighting for anyone in particular. Besides that, he didn't like to fight and didn't know how, whereas Jack Bunne liked it and knew how very well. It made for a painful beating.

Fortunately the Bunne brothers knew when to quit. They were not looking for trouble, just for excitement. Sonny and Duane were both standing when they quit, although Sonny wanted very much to sit down. He had a pain in his ribs.

"Well let's go, men," one of the boys said. "'The deputy sheriff's liable to come drivin' by."

"We ain't broke no laws," Jack Bunne said, not even winded, but the boys all went on and piled in the Mercury. They whooped and laughed as the car pulled away. "Motherfuckers," Duane said wearily.

Sonny walked over and sat down on the curb. One of his ears was paining him severely, and he had caught at least a couple of hard licks in the rib cage. Duane came and sat down too. They were both too winded and depressed to say anything. It was enough just to sit. The town was very quiet. From the west, far out in the pastures, they heard some hounds, so far away that their braying sounded as thin as the yapping of puppies.

"Why don't we just take off an' go someplace," Duane said. "I'm sick of this town. You're the only friend I got here, except Jacy."

"You mean go and stay gone?" Sonny asked.

"No, just for a day or two. We could go to Mexico and get back by sometime Monday."

"Reckon the pickup would make it?" Sonny asked, welcoming the prospect.

They got out their billfolds and counted their money. Saturday had been payday, and between them they had almost a hundred dollars.

"We can make it on that," Duane said. "Let's go clean up."

A few minutes later Sonny vomited all over the bathroom, but once he got the mess cleaned up he felt much better. His ear was not throbbing so badly. They put on clean Levi's and shirts and doctored themselves with aspirin, convinced they would both survive. The pickup didn't have much gas in it and they had to stop in town and wake up Andy Fanner, who had a key to one of the gas stations.

"Why you boys want to go all that way," Andy said cheerfully. "The water's buggy in Mexico."

"We'll just drink beer and tequila," Duane said.

"You need-ernt to tell me," Andy said sagely. "I been there. You get the clap you'll wish you hadn't drunk nothin'. Where you goin', Laredo?"

The boys looked at one another. They hadn't planned that far ahead; they were just going to Mexico.

"Which is the best place?" Sonny asked.

Andy wasn't positive and he didn't have a map, so they went back to the café and got one out of the glove compartment of Genevieve's old Dodge. They took it inside to read it.

"Good lord," Genevieve said, when she saw their skinned-up faces. They explained, and she sat down in a booth with them. "You all can just have the map," she said. "I ain't going far enough away that I need to worry about getting lost, I don't guess:"

"Let's go all the way to Matamoros, since we're goin'," Duane suggested. "I've heard it's about the wildest."

"Matamoros suits me," Sonny said, gulping his coffee. They could hardly believe such an adventure was before them, and they wanted to get away before something happened to stop it.

Genevieve, however, was a little dubious. She followed them out to the pickup to see them off. The streets were empty, the streetlights shining palely. The stoplight blinked red and green all to itself.

"This pickup don't look so good," she said. The boys were so eager that it made her strangely sad. "Have either of you ever been that far away before?"

"Austin's the farthest I've been," Sonny said. It was the same with Duane, and Matamoros was almost twice as far as Austin. It made them all the more eager, but to their amazement Genevieve suddenly began to cry about something, right there on the street. Sonny had been just about to start the motor when she put her elbows on the pickup window and wiped away the tears with her hand. Both boys were stricken, afraid they were going to miss the trip after all.

"Why don't you boys take my car?" Genevieve sniffed. "You'll never make it in this old pickup."

They were astonished. It was an unprecedented offer. Women were clearly beyond all understanding.

"Naw, we better go in this one," Sonny told her softly. She was looking off down the street-he had never noticed before, but she seemed lonesome.

"We might wreck yours, an' then where would we be?" he added.

"Okay," Genevieve said, hardly paying attention. Something made her breasts ache. "Wait just a minute:"

She went in the café and got a ten dollar bill out of her purse. After she had wiped her eyes with a Kleenex she took the money outside and handed it to Sonny.

"Hide that somewhere," she said. "Use it when you don't have anything else to use. I'd like for you to get back in time for your graduation:"

Both boys assured her that the money was quite unnecessary, but she pressed it on them anyway. "Sam's up there sitting on the curb," she said. "Guess he can't sleep. You might go say good-bye to him."

The boys were glad of anything that would prolong the ecstasy of departure a few more minutes. Sonny backed solemnly into the empty street and turned toward the poolhall. Sam the Lion was sitting on the curb, scratching his ankles. Sonny drove right up in front of him and leaned out the window.

"Better come go with us," he said. "We're headed for the Valley."

Astonished, Sam got up from the curb and came over to the pickup. He peered at the boys curiously.

"Going to the Valley tonight," he said. "My God." He was touched by the folly of youth and stood with his foot on the running board a moment.

"I guess the town can get along without us till Monday," Sonny said.

"I reckon," Sam said lightly. "If I was young enough to bounce that far I'd go with you. Need any money?"

"No. We got plenty."

"You can't tell," Sam said, fishing out his billfold. "Better take ten dollars for insurance. They say money kinda melts when you take it across a border:"

The boys were too embarrassed to tell Sam that Genevieve had given them some already. They took the bill guiltily, anxious to be off. Sam stepped back to the curb and the boys waved and made a wide U-turn in the empty street. Genevieve was still outside the café and they waved at her too as they went by. She watched them, hugging her breasts. When they got to the stoplight it was red and they stopped, even though there wasn't another moving car within fifteen miles of them. The light winked green and the pickup turned the corner and sped out of sight.

Genevieve went over and kicked lightly at the front tire of her Dodge-to her the tire always looked low. The boys had made her remember what it was to be young. Once, before they had any kids, she and her husband Dan took off one weekend and drove to Raton, New Mexico. They stayed in a motel, lost twenty dollars at the horse races, made love six times in two days, and had dinner in the coffee shop of a fancy restaurant. She had even worn eye shadow. Romance might not last, but it was.something while it did. She looked up the street and waved at Sam the Lion, but he was looking the other way and didn't notice her and she went back into the empty café, wishing for a few minutes that she was young again and free and could go rattling off across Texas toward the Rio Grande.

All day the boys alternated, one driving the other sleeping, and by late evening they were in the Valley, driving between the green orange groves. It was amazing how different the world was, once the plains were left behind. In the Valley there were even palm trees. The sky was violet, and dusk lingered until they were almost to Matamoros. Every few miles they passed roadside groceries, lit with yellow light bulbs and crowded with tables piled high with corn and squash, cabbages and tomatoes.

"This is a crazy place," Duane said. "Who you reckon eats all that squash?"

They drove straight on through Brownsville and paid a fat, bored tollhouse keeper twenty cents so they could drive across the bridge. Below them was the Rio Grande, a river they had heard about all their lives. Its waters were mostly dark, touched only here and there by the yellow bridge lights. Several Mexican boys in ragged shirts were sitting on one of the guardrails, spitting into the water and chattering to one another.

A few blocks from the bridge they came to a stoplight on a pole, with four or five boys squatting by it. Apparently someone had run into the light pole because it was leaning away from the street at a forty-five degree angle. As soon as Sonny stopped one of the boys ran out and jumped lightly onto the running board.

"Girl?" he said. "Boy's Town? Dirty movie?"

"Well, I guess," Sonny said. "I guess," Sonny said. "I guess that's what we came for."

The boy quickly got in the cab and began to chatter directions in Tex-Mex-Sonny followed them as best he could. They soon left the boulevard and got into some of the narrowest streets the boys had ever seen. Barefooted kids and cats and dogs were playing in the street, night or no night, and they moved aside for the pickup very reluctantly. A smell of onions seemed to pervade the whole town, and the streets went every which direction. There were lots of intersections but no stop signs—apparently the right of way belonged to the driver with the most nerve. Sonny kept stopping at the intersections, but that was a reversal of local custom: most drivers beeped their horns and speeded up, hoping to dart through before anyone could hit them.

Mexico was more different from Thalia than either of the boys would have believed. The number of people who went about at night was amazing to them. In Thalia three or four boys on the courthouse square constituted a lively crowd, but the streets of Matamoros teemed with people. Groups of men stood on what, in Thalia, would have been sidewalks, children rushed about in the dust, and old men sat against buildings.

Their guide finally ordered them to stop in front of a dark lump that was apparently some sort of dwelling. "This couldn't be no whorehouse," Duane said. "It ain't big enough to have a whore in it:"

Not knowing what else to do, they got out and followed their guide to the door. A paunchy Mexican in his undershirt and khakis opened it and grunted at the guide. "Ees got movies," the boy said.

They all went inside, into a bedroom. Through an open doorway the boys could see an old woman stirring something in a pot, onions and tomatoes it smelled like. An old man with no shirt on and white hair on his chest sat at a table staring at some dominoes. Neither the old man nor old woman so much as glanced at the boys. There were two beds in the bedroom and on one of them three little Mexican boys were curled up, asleep. Sonny felt strange when he saw them. They looked very helpless, and he could not feel it was very polite for Duane and him to barge into their room. The paunchy man immediately brought up the subject of movies. "Ten dollars," he said. "Got all kinds:"