Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

Snuffling, Jacy fished in her purse and handed them to Lois.

"It's a hell of a note," he said.

"Oh shut up and take her home," Lois put in wearily. "I'm tired of this."

"You bet I will. You take her car. So far as I'm concerned Sonny can walk."

He led Jacy to the CadilIac, got in, and spun the big car off, throwing up dust in the unpaved road that ran by the jailhouse. Lois and Sonny were left standing in the jailyard, by a little cedar bush. It was very quiet all of a sudden, the moon white overhead.

"I would like to apologize for all this, Sonny," Lois said. "It wasn't my doings. So far as I'm concerned you have a perfect right to anything you could get out of Jacy, but I can tell you right now that wouldn't have been much."

Sonny didn't know what to say. He felt awfully tired, and Lois noticed it.

"You're welcome to ride back with me," she said. "In fact I'd enjoy the company. I can understand how you might not want to, though. If you don't just say so and I'll give you some bus money."

Mrs. Farrow didn't seem so bad, and Sonny was much too tired to enjoy the thought of waiting for a bus. "I believe I'll ride with you," he said.

They started back over the same road that Sonny had just driven with Jacy. Mrs. Farrow drove fast, but there was no sign of the Cadillac ahead of them.

"Gene's probably driving ninety," she said. "I bet he's telling Jacy it was all my fault and his, for not loving her more or something."

Sonny didn't know whether he napped or not, but soon they were almost back to Lawton. The wind whipped Mrs. Farrow's hair about her face just as it had Jacy's, when they were driving up. To the west, toward the plains, there were low flashings of lightning and the rumble of thunder. Somewhere over near Frederic it was raining. Sonny noticed that Mrs. Farrow had a little flask that she drank from now and then.

"Here," she said, holding it out to him. "Have a little bourbon—you can have the rest of it, in fact. I've got to drive. It might pick you up."

Sonny took the flask and sipped from it. The whiskey was very sharp on his tongue, but he kept the bask and continued to sip, and after a time he felt a vagueness spreading through him that was almost comfortable. He was surprised to find Mrs. Farrow so likable.

"Not much of a wedding night, is it?" she said. She grinned at him, but it was not an insulting grin.

"No, not much of one," he said.

"Let me tell you something you won't believe, Sonny. You're lucky we got her away from you as quick as we did. Even if you had got to a motel room she'd have found some way to keep from giving it to you. God knows how, but Jacy would have thought of something. You'd have been a lot better off to stay with Ruth Popper:"

Sonny was startled. "Does everybody know about that?" he asked.

"Of course," Lois said. "It sounded like a good thing to me. You shouldn't have let Jacy turn your head."

"She's prettier," Sonny said. "I guess I shouldn't have though. I don't guess I can go see Mrs. Popper any more:"

"I shouldn't imagine. I wouldn't have you back if you'd left me for Jacy, but then you never know. I'm not Ruth." They turned south out of Lawton. The bourbon was going down easier and easier. In the west the lightning flashes were closer together, and in the moments of light they could see heavy clouds low over the plains.

"I hope we don't have to put this damn top up," Lois said. She found herself moved by Sonny's youth. He held the bourbon flask very carefully and looked almost comically young. Giving way to an impulse, she reached over and touched his neck. It startled him a great deal.

"Didn't mean to scare you," she said. "I guess I just felt motherly for a second. Or maybe I felt wifely, I don't know. It's strange to have a married daughter who wouldn't go through with her wedding night."

Sonny looked at her curiously and she smiled at him, an honest, attractive smile, as she kept stroking the back of his neck lightly. He drank more bourbon and watched the intermittent lightning yellow the plains. He felt as though life was completely beyond him.

In a little while they crossed Red River, the slap of their tires echoing off the old stone bridge abutments. The water in the channel was shallow and silvery.

"Anyhow, I know why Sam the Lion liked you," Sonny said, and it was Lois' turn to be startled.

"Sam?" she said. "Who told you he liked me? Genevieve?"

Sonny nodded. Lois was silent for a moment, "No, it was more than that," she said. "He loved me, honey."

They were silent almost to Burkburnett, but Sonny noticed that Lois kept wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.

"I get sad when I think about Sam for long," she said in explanation, her voice unsteady. "I can still remember his hands, you see. Did you know he had beautiful hands?"

They passed by Shepherd Field, with its flickering, rotating airplane beacons and its rows of dark narrow barracks. "I think he was the only man in that whole horny town who knew what sex was worth," Lois said, her voice a little hoarse. "I probably never would have learned myself if it hadn't been for Sam. I'd be one of those Amity types who thinks bridge is the best thing life offers womankind. Gene couldn't have taught me, he doesn't know himself."

Then they were coming down on the lights of Wichita. "Sam the Lion," Lois said, smiling. "Sam the Lion. Nobody knows where he got that name but me. I gave it to him one night—it just came to me. He was so pleased. I was twenty-two then, can you imagine?"

Then suddenly her shoulders began to shake and she did a strange thing. She wheeled the convertible off the highway in a screech of brakes and stopped on the hill across from the auction barn. She scooted across the seat and grabbed Sonny's arms, tears running down her face.

"But you know somethin'," she said, her whole body shaking. "It's terrible to only find one man your whole life who knows what it's worth, Sonny. It's just terrible. I wouldn't be tellin' you if it wasn't. I've looked, too—you wouldn't bu-lieve how I've looked. When Sam, when Sam . . the Lion was seventy years old he could just walk in ... I don't know, hug me and call me Lois or something an' do more for me than anybody. He really knew what I was worth, an' the rest of them haven't, not one man in this whole country...

She lay against Sonny's chest and cried very hard, her face hidden. He put his arms around her and waited. He felt so tired that he could be calm through anything. After a while Lois' body quit heaving. She slipped her hand inside his shirt and touched his chest, and when she finally sat up her face was quite calm. In fact there was something almost gay in her face.

"Hey," she said. "I like you. I don't know if you know what I'm worth or not, but I sure like you and I should like you to have a nicer wedding night than Jacy could ever have given you. I'll take you someplace right now and we'll see to that. Okay? You're not scared of me, are you?"

"No," Sonny said, though he was. But he was glad to go with her, scared or not; he would have gone with her anywhere, just to see what she would do next, what crazy thing life would bring next. Lois got back behind the wheel and drove to a big motel on the Henrietta highway, one Sonny had passed many times. He had certainly never dreamed he would be going into it with Jacy's mother, on his wedding night.

Lois paid for a room and got the key. They were right at the back of the court, and she had a little trouble getting the key in the lock. "Gene and Jacy are home now, wondering why we're driving so slow," she said. She went in and Sonny followed her. She turned on a small bed light and raised her hands to her throat to unclip a black necklace she wore.

"We'll let 'em wonder," she said. "I'll tell them we had. a flat and had to get it fixed in Lawton. It's amazing how many good excuses there are:"