Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

As soon as the pickup stopped Billy jumped out and ran in the poolhall. It was officially closed, but they could all see Sam the Lion inside, reading a newspaper he had spread out on one of the tables. All he was really doing was waiting for Billy to come in. They lived in a plain little three-room apartment above the poolhall, and Sam never went to bed until Billy was in safe.

Billy ran right on past him, up the stairs, and Sam left his paper and followed him. The boys waited nervously outside, wondering if they would be able to narrate the episode in such a way that Sam the Lion would see the humor in it. Sonny knew they couldn't and waited miserably for Sam to come down, but the boys who thought they might strutted around on the sidewalk talking with great bravado. Duane was sleepy and lay down in the cab of the pickup and went to sleep. The boys could have left, but none of them really wanted to go home until Sam the Lion came down and bawled them out. His bawling them out would relieve their minds of whatever minor guilt feelings they had about Billy, and would leave them free to enjoy the celebrity of having participated in such an event.

Finally the light went out in the upstairs apartment and Sam the Lion came down. He opened the door and stood quietly a minute, looking at the boys. Sam the Lion was not the type who yelled and cussed about the pranks boys pulled. They could not see his face, but the light from the poolhall touched his white mane of hair.

"Who's got his underwear?" he asked, after a minute. Sonny had them, and it put him on a terrible spot. He had been so anxious to get Billy back in his pants that he had forgotten to put the underwear on him-he picked them up later and stuffed them in his pocket. For a moment he was tempted to say nothing and pretend the underwear was lost if he pulled them out and handed them over it would make him seem more of a participant than he had been. Sam didn't withdraw the question and the other boys began to look at Sonny nervously, so he took the underwear out of his pocket and awkwardly handed them over.

"When I was helpin' get his pants on I couldn't find them," he said. "I just forgot to hand them to him."

"Who went and bloodied his nose?"

"Jimmie Sue Jones," Leroy said. "We thought he was getting tired of being a virgin so we chipped in and bought him a piece. Jimmie Sue got mad about somethin' and gave him that nosebleed."

"Jimmie Sue?" Sam said, startled. "You what?" He had supposed it was just a simple case of the boys taking Billy's pants off, something that happened all the time. When he realized what Leroy said he was stunned, and sat down in the doorway of the poolhall.

Sonny became really worried. "Is Billy all right?" he asked. "We're sorry, Sam."

"He went to sleep.," Sam said, a little absently. "Did he want to go with Jimmie Sue?"

"Not hardly," Leroy said. "He didn't even know what he was supposed to do."

Sam scratched his ankles for a minute and then stood up again. He didn't look particularly mad, just tired and discouraged.

"Boys, get on home," he said. "I'm done with all of you. I don't want to associate with you anymore and I don't want Billy to, either. Scaring an unfortunate creature like Billy when there ain't no reason to scare him is just plain trashy behavior. I've seen a lifetime of it and I'm tired of putting up with it: You can just stay out of this poolhall and out of my picture show and café too:"

With that he closed and locked the door and went upstairs to bed. The boys were thunderstruck. They had been prepared for Sam to rage and storm and instead he had simply closed the door and locked them out. No one knew what to say. They stood on the cold sidewalk a minute, confused.

"We're his best customers," Leroy said. "He can't run us off, can he?"

Sonny and the other boys knew very well he could. It made Sonny feel a little sick. They all crawled back into the pickup and Sonny delivered them to their homes. Duane didn't fully wake up until they were back at the rooming house, and when Sonny told him what Sam the Lion had done he thought it was hilariously funny. Since he had been lying down and Sam had not seen him it was clear to Duane that he was not included in the banishment.

"Good thing I went to sleep when I did," he said. "I'd hate to have to eat at that drive-in all the time:"

He went in and contentedly went back to sleep, but Sonny stayed awake and reread most of an old copy of Outdoor Life. Duane taking the news the way he had made the evening even more depressing, and it had been depressing enough as it was.

Kissing Mrs. Popper had been the only good thing that happened all night, and Sonny had no idea what would come of that. It occurred to him that at least it would be something exciting to think about in bed, so he turned the light off and tried it. Her face and the touch of her lips were fresh in his mind and it worked pretty well, though occasionally, before he finished, a few old images of Jacy and Genevieve slipped in. Jacking off was an old game, monotonous, but a good way to get to sleep when all else failed.

chapter eleven

When Sonny kissed Mrs. Popper outside the Legion Hall it seemed to him that a whole spectrum of delicious experience lay suddenly within his grasp. No kisses had ever been so exciting and so full of promise, neither for him nor for Ruth. She felt as if she were finally about to discover something she had somehow missed discovering twenty years before. Neither of them foresaw any great difficulties, just the minor difficulty of keeping it all secret.

Both, in fact, were so excited that they longed to talk about it to someone, but that they couldn't do. In Thalia sex was just not talked about. Even Genevieve would go to considerable lengths to keep from calling a spade a spade. Everything acknowledged the existence of sex: babies were born now and then, and things to prevent them were sold at the drugstores and one or two of the filling stations. The men told dirty jokes and talked all the time about how they wished they had more pussy, but it didn't really seem to bother many of them so long as the football team was doing well. The kids were told as little about sex as possible and spent most of their time trying to find out more. The boys speculated a lot among themselves and got the nature of the basic act straight when they were fairly young, but some of the girls were still in the dark about it when they graduated from high school. Many girls simply refused to believe that the things the boys peed out of could have any part in the creation of babies. They knew good and well that God wouldn't have wanted any arrangement of His to be that nasty.

The only thing everyone agreed on was that the act itself could only be earthly bliss. Once the obstacle of virginity was done away with, mutual ecstasy would be the invariable result. One or two of the bolder girls knew differently, but they didn't want to be thought freaks so they kept quiet about their difficulties.

When Sonny and Ruth met again, the Tuesday after the dance, they both expected things to be simple and wonderful, and they were both disappointed. For one thing, they both felt compelled to go through with the unnecessary trip to the doctor; both of them were nervous and tense and they rode to Olney in silence. The dusty air had given Ruth a sniffle, and Sonny could see the bluish shadows under her eyes. The wait in Olney was short, but on the way back they found themselves even more at a loss for conversation than they had been coming. Ruth could not imagine what had possessed her to think she could bring off such a thing as a love affair. They each concluded that they were not as appealing in the daylight as they had been in the dark, so they sat looking out their separate windows at their separate sides of the road. There was little in the leafless winter landscape to cheer them.