Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

Spitting snuff juice into an empty Texaco paper coffee cup a tenth filled with brown saliva, the cowboy chuckled, “California? Well, that’s a ways away.”

“I know,” she said, nodding. “Can you help me out?”

“I don’t know ’bout California,” the cowboy qualified, “but I intend to get outta Texas by seven this evening. I could drop ya off in New Mexico.”

“That’s a start, cowboy.” She smiled.

“Well, get in, cowgirl.” He smiled back.

Before she committed to climbing into the fella’s Caddy, she examined the cowboy more closely. He was somewhere around forty-seven, handsome but weather-beaten (sorta like his Cadillac); he wore a white straw cowboy hat on his head, a cream-colored snap-button country-and-western-type shirt with armpit stains, and had a big pinch of snuff under his lip. She looked in the backseat, which had a duffel bag in it not too different from hers. Except his had an olive-green military look to it, while hers was black and had the 7 Up logo on it. She looked past the fins of the Cadillac at the horse trailer attached to the back hitch and asked, “You got a horse in that trailer?”

“You know I do,” he said.

“What’s his name?” she asked.

“ Her name is Honeychilde,” he drawled.

“Well,” she said, smiling, “I suppose a fella names his mare Honeychilde ain’t gonna rape me.”

“Well, that’s your first mistake.” He grinned at her. “A dude with a big black stallion named Boston Strangler, now, that’s a fella you can trust.” He winked.

“Well,” the blonde said, “here goes nothin’,” throwing her duffel bag in the backseat next to his. She opened the door and climbed into the Cadillac.

“That door is kinda fucked up,” the cowboy instructed. “You gotta slam it real hard.”

She opened the door again and followed his instructions, slamming it real hard.

“That’s the spirit,” he said, as he pulled back on to the highway.

The cowboy driver got the conversation started. “So where ya goin’ in California?” He turned Merle Haggard back up to a decent volume. “L.A., San Francisco, or Pomona?”

The blond girl asked, “Who would hitch from Texas to Pomona?”

“Well, I just might,” the cowboy confessed. “But I ain’t no blond bathin’ beauty.”

“Los Angeles,” she said.

“You goin’ to be a surfer?” the cowboy asked. “Like Annette Funicello?”

“I don’t think she’s a real surfer,” said the blonde. “In fact, neither her or Frankie even got a tan. You got more of a tan than they got.”

“Yeah, I got ’bout five more lines in my forehead than they got too.” Looking at his pretty passenger, he said, “And bless your sweet heart callin’ my sun damage a tan .”

The young hitcher introduced herself to the older cowboy; they traded names and shook hands.

“So where ya goin’?” the cowboy asked again.

“Los Angeles. My boyfriend is waiting for me.”

The blonde had no boyfriend waiting for her in Los Angeles. That’s just what she planned to tell lone men who might give her a ride. She then proceeded to talk for the next forty-five minutes about her imaginary boyfriend, which was all part of her method of hitchhiking. She gave him the name Tony.

It was during her Tony spiel that she started trusting the white-hatted cowboy somewhat, because he was neither disappointed nor uninterested in her new life in L.A. with Anthony.

“Well, if ya ask me,” he drawled, “this Tony’s one lucky fella!”

“Where are you and Honeychilde off to?” the blonde asked.

Now it was the cowboy’s turn to be a little cagey. He and Honeychilde were off to Prescott, Arizona. See, the cowboy was a rodeo rider; he’d just finished one rodeo over the weekend in Dallas, called Wild West Weekend, where he won zip-a-dee-doo-dah and banged up everything that wasn’t already busted to begin with. Now he was off to Prescott, his hometown, for another rodeo the weekend after next. The Prescott Frontier Days was the first rodeo ever held, back in 1888, and the cowboy would be damned if he was gonna lose in front of his hometown audience. All this he kept mum with the leggy blonde sitting Indian style on his passenger seat, ’cause, frankly, he didn’t know if he wanted her company that long. So he talked in detail about the rodeo in Dallas he’d just left and vaguely about where he and his horse were off to. But as the two drove and talked, they got to know each other better, and little by little their defenses dropped away.

Being from Texas and the daughter of a military man, she liked this witty shitkicker good ol’ boy. And he liked her too, and not just to look at. She was very bright—that was clear from just a casual conversation. As they talked more, she even revealed she spoke fluent Italian, due to a time her family was stationed in Italy because of her father’s military career. Which was enough for the cowboy to classify her as a genius, especially since most of the gals he went for could barely speak English (he was partial to Mexican girls).

The barefoot blonde would have to be dim to not realize how pretty she was. But she didn’t define her personality by how she looked. She defined it by her sweet disposition, her curiosity about other people, and her genuine excitement about adventure, and while a touch cautious about the dangers that could befall a young woman on the road, she was nevertheless thrilled. And you could color the cowboy charmed. In fact, it was fair to say he even got a crush on her. But since this young gal was probably no more than twenty-two, she fell outside of the range of his morally approved parameters. He had a rule to never engage in slap and tickle with anybody younger than his twenty-five-year-old daughter. Now his rule might be downgraded to a guideline if his passenger insisted. But he was aware enough to know how unlikely that was. Their relationship was that of pretty half-dressed passenger and friendly driver, and that was alright by him.

They stopped for dinner at a choke and puke once they crossed the Texas state line into New Mexico. If she had been broke, he would have offered to buy her a bowl of chili, but since she wasn’t, he didn’t. They drove two more hours, till he pulled into a motel around nine at night.

Okay , the blonde thought, if the cowboy’s gonna make a play, now’s the time.

But she didn’t give him the opportunity. Before he could even offer the backseat of his car for her to sleep in, she had her duffel bag out of the back and was hugging him goodbye. He watched her bare feet walk her off into the dark distance.

During their time together (about six hours), once she got comfortable with him, she revealed her real reason for going to Los Angeles. It was to be an actress and work in movies, or at least television. She admitted she didn’t want to say it before because it was such a cliché. Also, it sounded like such a pie-in-the-sky daydream coming from a Texas beauty-pageant winner that it even made her look a little stupid. And if people thought that, they wouldn’t be alone. Because that’s exactly what her father thought.

But the cowboy spit out snuff juice into his little paper cup and disagreed. He told her, a gal out in Los Angeles that was as goddamn good-lookin’ as her would hafta be stupid not to try a career in pictures. Not only that, he told her, he liked her chances. “Now, if my cousin Sherry wanted to go to Hollywood and be the next Sophia Loren, that would be pie in the sky. But a pretty little gal like you,” he speculated, “I wouldn’t be surprised I don’t see you actin’ opposite Tony Curtis ’fore long.”

As she disappeared into the night, just before she got out of earshot and he checked himself into the motel, he yelled to her one last note of encouragement: “‘member what I said—when you’re actin’ opposite Tony Curtis, you tell ’em hello for me.”