Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

While the boys worked Sam stood by the stove and warmed his aching feet. He wished Sonny weren't so reckless economically, but there was nothing he could do about it. Billy was less of a problem, partly because he was so dumb. Billy's real father was an old railroad man who had worked in Thalia for a short time just before the war; his mother was a deaf and dumb girl who had no people except an aunt. The old man cornered the girl in the balcony of the picture show one night and begat Billy. The sheriff saw to it that the old man married the girl, but she died when Billy was born and he was raised by the family of Mexicans who helped the old man keep the railroad track repaired. After the war the hauling petered out and the track was taken up. The old man left and got a job bumping cars on a stockyards track in Oklahoma, leaving Billy with the Mexicans. They hung around for several more years, piling prickly pear and grubbing mesquite, but then a man from Plainview talked them into moving out there to pick cotton. They snuck off one morning and left Billy sitting on the curb in front of the picture show.

From then on, Sam the Lion took care of him. Billy learned to sweep, and he kept all three of Sam's places swept out; in return he got his keep and also, every single night, he got to watch the picture show. He always sat in the balcony, his broom at his side; for years he saw every show that came to Thalia, and so far as anyone knew, he liked them all. He was never known to leave while the screen was lit.

"You workin' today?" Sam asked, noticing that Sonny was taking his time brushing the eight-ball table.

"The truck's being greased," Sonny said. On weekends, and sometimes week-nights too, he drove a butane truck for Frank Fartley of Fartley Butane and Propane. He didn't make as much money as his friend Duane made roughnecking, but the work was easier.

Just as Sam the Lion was about to get back to the subject of the football game they all heard a familiar sound and paused to listen. Abilene was coming into town in his Mercury. Abilene was the driller Duane worked for. He had spent a lot of money souping up the Mercury, and in Thalia the sound of his exhausts was as unmistakable as the sound of the wind.

"Well, we barely got'em clean in time," Sam said. Abilene not only had the best car in the country, he also shot the best stick of pool. Drilling and pool shooting were things he did so well that no one could decide which was his true vocation and which his avocation. Some mornings he went home and cleaned up before he came to the poolhall-he liked to be clean and well dressed when he gambled-but if it was too early for any of the nine-ball players to be up he would often stop and practice in his drilling clothes.

The Mercury stopped in front of the poolhall and Sam went over and got Abilene's ivory-banded cue out of the padlocked rack and laid it on the counter for him. When the door opened the wind sliced inside ahead of the man. Abilene had on sunglasses and the heavy green coveralls he wore to protect his clothes from the oil-field grease; as soon as he was in he unzipped the coveralls and hung them on a nail Sam had fixed for him. His blue wool shirt and gabardine pants were creased and trim.

"Mornin'," Sam said.

"Mornin'," Abilene replied, handing Sam his expensive-looking sunglasses. He once had a pair fall out of his pocket and break when he was bending over to pick up a piece of pool chalk; after that he always had Sam put the sunglasses in a drawer for him. Though he was the poolhall's best customer, he and Sam the Lion had almost nothing to say to one another. Abilene paid Sam two hundred and fifty dollars a year for a private key to the poolhall, so he could come in and practice anytime he wanted to. Often Sonny would come in from some long butane run at two or three o'clock in the morning and see that Abilene was in the poolhall, practicing. The garage where the butane truck was kept was right across the street from the poolhall and sometimes Sonny would walk across and stand by one of the windows watching Abilene shoot. No one ever tried to go in when Abilene was in the poolhall alone.

"Let's shoot one, Sonny," Abilene said. "I feel like a little snooker before breakfast."

Sonny was taken by surprise. He knew he would not even be good competition for Abilene, but he went and got a cue anyway. It did not occur to him to turn down the invitation. Abilene shot first and ran thirty points off the break.

"Duane didn't go to sleep on you last night, did he?" Sonny asked, feeling that he ought at least to make conversation.

"No, the breeze kept us awake," Abilene replied. That was their conversation. Sonny only got to shoot four times; for the most part he just stood back and watched Abilene move gracefully around the green table, easing in his shots with the ivory-banded cue. He won the game by 175 points.

"You shoot pool about like you play football," he said, when the game was over.

Sonny ignored the insult and pitched a quarter on the felt to pay for the game. Abileme insulted everybody, young and old alike, and Sonny was not obliged to take it personally. Sam the Lion came over to rack the balls.

"I hope they hurry and get that truck greased," he said. "'The way your fortune's sinking you'll be bankrupt before you get out of here."

"What'd our bet come to, Sam," Abilene asked casually. He busted the fresh rack and started shooting red balls. Sam grinned at Sonny and went over to the cash register and got five ten-dollar bills. He laid them on the side of the snooker table and when Abilene noticed them he took a money clip out of his pocket and put the fifty dollars in it.

"It's what I get for bettin' on my hometown ball club," Sam said. "I ought to have better sense."

"It wouldn't hurt if you had a better home town," Abilene said.

Sam always bet on the boys, thinking it would make them feel good, but the strategy seldom worked because they almost always lost. Most of them only trained when they felt like it, and that was not very often. The few who did train were handicapped by their intense dislike of Coach Popper. Sonny was not alone in considering the coach a horse's ass, but the school board liked the coach and never considered firing him: he was a man's man, and he worked cheap. They saw no reason to hire a better coach until a better bunch of boys came along, and there was no telling when that would be. Sam the Lion went loyally on losing money, while Abilene, who invariably bet against Thalia, cleared about a thousand dollars a season from Sam and others like him.

While Sam and Sonny were idly watching Abilene practice, Billy swept quietly down the other side of the poolhall and on out the door. The cold wind that came through the door when Billy went out woke them up. "Go get him, Sonny," Sam said. "Make him put his broom up for a while."

Billy hadn't had time to get far; he was just three doors away, in front of what once had been the Thalia Pontiac Agency. He was calmly sweeping north, into the cold wind. All his floor-sweep had already blown away, but he was quite content to sweep at the curling ribbons of sand that the wind blew past him. A time or two in his life he had swept all the way to the Thalia city limits sign before anyone had noticed him.

When Sonny stepped out of the poolhall the black pickup that the roughnecks used was stopped at the red light. The light changed and the pickup passed the courthouse and slowed a moment at the corner by the poolhall, so Duane could jump out. He was a tall boy with curly black hair. Because he was a fullback and a roughneck he held himself a little stiffly. He had on Levi's and a Levi jacket with the collar turned up. Sonny pointed at Billy and he and Duane each grabbed one of Billy's arms and hustled him back down the sidewalk into the warming poolhall. Sam took the broom and put it up on a shelf where Billy couldn't reach it.