Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

"Y'all don't mind if I read this, do you?" he asked. "I ain't got a memory worth a damn."

They didn't mind him reading, but Jacy did mind him standing so close to them. He had a body odor that almost made her gag, but he winked at her with mild lechery and seemed to think she found him attractive.

"Wouldn't mind marrying you myself, honey," he said. "You got more meat on you than Ma has."

"Don't be sassing, now," his wife said. "You can wait till I get this sunbonnet off before you start:"

He read the service heavily, sometimes stopping to trace his place with a forefinger. When he asked about rings Sonny shook his head. "She's marryin' a cheap skate, Ma," the J.P. said.

When it was over Sonny gave Jacy a quick kiss, but she wanted a long romantic one so they kissed for almost a minute while the old lady wandered off to start shelling her black-eyed peas. As soon as they quit kissing the J.P. came over and placed a wet kiss of his own on Jacy's cheek-it made her furious. Sonny gave him a ten dollar bill and he stuffed it in his pocket contemptuously.

"Yeah, a cheap skate," he said. As they left he followed them out on the porch. "Heit, you got a collaspable," he hollered, when they were getting in the car. "Used to be collaspables were twenty dollar weddin's ever time. Y'all got any fornicatin' friends down in Texas tell 'em to cut it out and come up here to see me. I'll set 'em right with the Lord as cheap as the next man."

"Why he's just awful," Jacy said. "I never dreamed they let people like him do matryin'."

"Anyway, we're man and wife," Sonny said, barely able to believe it. At the first stop sign they kissed again and wiggled their tongues enthusiastically. Jacy was for going to Lake Texoma to spend their wedding night, and Sonny was agreeable to anything.

They left Altus in a high good mood and drove back to Lawton, where they stopped to eat. In Lawton, for some reason, Jacy began to feel a little depressed. A strange thought occurred to her. They were in the parking lot of the restaurant where they were going to eat, so they kissed for a while, as newlyweds should. While they were kissing Sonny got excited and fondled her in a place in which he was very interested. It was all right for him to do it, of course, but a little later, while she was in the rest room of the steak house, it occurred to her that maybe her parents wouldn't have the police arrest them after all. Maybe they would just wash their hands of it and go on watching television. It might even be that they thought she ought to live with Sonny, since she had married him.

That was a very sobering thought: to think that they didn't love her enough to want to keep her from living over a poolhall.

Thinking about it took away her appetite, and though she tried to appear gay she really only picked at her fried shrimp. They ordered beer with the meal and drank it self-consciously. It occurred to Jacy that even if her folks sent the cops they might miss them in the dark, or they might even get to the motel before the cops started looking. The thought depressed her more and more.

Sonny noticed that marriage was making Jacy a little nervous, but he supposed it was just worry over her parents. He was sure she would calm down once they got to Lake Texoma. But the strange thing was, the closer they came to the lake, the more nervous she became. He scooted over next to her and patted her leg, but that just seemed to make her more edgy.

When Sonny scooted close to her Jacy really began to feel funny. She realized suddenly that she just didn't want a wedding night with him at all—she had been wrong to think she did. She didn't know whether she even wanted to kiss him anymore or not. Kissing someone who just had one eye was kind of creepy.

Then, just outside Madill, a cop stopped them and everything changed completely. Jacy ceased to feel the least bit nervous.

"What part of Texas y'all from?" the patrolman asked, holding out his hand for Jacy's license. He flashed a flashlight in their faces.

"Newlyweds, ain't you?" he said, when they told him where they were from.

They admitted it.

"Well, better follow me in," he said. "I think somebody's lookin' for you."

"But we ain't done nothin' wrong," Sonny said. "Ain't we got a right to get married? How can you arrest us, just like that?"

"I ain't arrestin' you," the patrolman said, peeling a stick of chewing gum. "I just want you to come with me, till we find out. I don't have no idea what you've got a right to do"

"I guess we better follow him, honey," Jacy said. She turned to Sonny and kissed him promisingly. "I'll just be heartbroken if my folks have done this," she added, kissing him again lightly as she put the car in gear.

The patrolman led them to a jailhouse in Madill. He didn't put them in a cell or anything, but they had to sit in the jail for almost two hours and that was almost as depressing as being in a cell. Jacy realized she was tragically in love, and clung to Sonny tightly. They even got in some nice kissing, but in a way it was depressing, at least to Sonny. Jacy's folks were in Lawton and were coming after her. He couldn't figure out the justice of it.

"I thought anybody had the right to get married," he said, several times. The patrolman had gone on about his business. There were only two people besides themselves in the whole jail: one was a prisoner and the other was a red-headed jail-keeper named Elmer.

"Well you might have the right and you might not," Elmer said. "I couldn't say. I ain't gonna hold no gun on you, but if you leave you'll just get caught agin. You might as well wait here as anywhere. If you're thirsty we got a Coke machine you're welcome to use."

While they were waiting the sheriff came in, a fat, white-headed man. He took one look at them and concluded they didn't have any right to do anything.

"Kids, we really oughta lock you up," he said. "Running off from home, making your parents chase all the way up here. I don't know what the world's coming to."

Sonny didn't either, but he knew one thing for sure: he was never going to get to sleep with Jacy. They would never be together in an actual bed, not for a whole night or even part of a night. Somehow his whole life had worked out to keep that one thing from happening, and it was the one thing he wanted most of all. He was not at all sure he would ever get to make love to anyone he cared about, much less to Jacy. In the hot little jail lobby, sitting on the one bench, he couldn't even remember why he had ever thought he would get to sleep with her.

It disappointed him terribly and made him feel a little sick and very tired. About ten o'clock Elmer let the one prisoner come in and watch the late movie with him on the jail's old Magnavox TV. That was what they were all doing when Lois and Gene arrived. Sonny was so tired by then that he wasn't even scared of Gene, even though Gene started yelling at him the minute he stepped through the jailhouse door.

"You're fired, you whelpl" he said. "What do you mean, runnin' off with my daughter, tellin' her she's gonna live over s poolhall?"

He would have gone on, but Elmer cut him off.

"Just take him out in the yard to bawl him out, Mister," he said. "I can't hear this movie if you bawl him out in here." It was a Randolph Scott movie, and they had all been sort of enjoying it.

As they went out the door Jacy clung to Sonny, crying bitterly. Mrs. Farrow said nothing at all, but Gene was still mad as cats.

"I'll bawl him out all right," he said. "Think I worked like a dog all my life so my daughter could end up over a poolhall?"

"We was gonna get another apartment," Sonny said, though they had not actually given the matter much thought. "I bet you was," Gene said. He grabbed Jacy by the arm and jerked her away from Sonny. "Where's your car keys, hon?" he asked.