Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

"They start at about ten bucks," Duane said, and the boys' faces fell. They had been hoping for five.

Sonny and Duane went on in and up the green-carpeted stairs, leaving the Seymour boys to count their money. The madame was a quiet, polite woman who looked and dressed like the saleswomen in a Wichita Falls department store. Sonny's girl was a polite, thin-nosed brunette from Corsieana, named Pauline. Everything was splendidly comfortable in the New Deal: the rooms were warm, the beds wide and clean, the carpets good. The girls were pleasant, but so efficient that afterward it seemed to Sonny that he and the girl had barely touched. Before he was even thawed out he and Duane were going back down the green stairs, each ten dollars poorer and neither much less horny.

The Seymour boys were all gone, the streets almost empty. While they were walking back to their pickup the city street-sweeper chugged by and Sonny remembered Billy and hoped Miss Mosey had seen he got home out of the cold.

"Well, I guess the next piece I get will be yellow," Duane said philosophically.

By the time they got back to the Lake Worth bridge, he was asleep.Sonny didn't care—he enjoyed the drive, and was in no hurry. With the wind blowing against him he couldn't make much time, but he didn't need to. North of Jacksboro he stopped the pickup and got out to take a leak, and Duane woke up and followed suit. It was about five o'clock when they pulled into Thalia. The posterboards in front of the picture show were naked. It seemed to Sonny it would have been better to have left some posters up, even the posters to The Texas Kid.

"Got about two hours till bus time," he said, when they were at the rooming house. "Want to go down and have some coffee?"

"Yeah," Duane said. "Wait till I go in and get my gear." In his uniform Duane looked a lot different. When he got back in the pickup he casually handed Sonny the keys to the Mercury. "Here," he said. "Why don't you look after that car for me?"

Sonny took the keys, embarrassed. "Your Ma don't need it?" he asked.

"I wouldn't want her drivin' it, no better than she can drive. You might help her run the groceries home, if you have time."

Sonny didn't know what else to say. In the warm café they both got a little sleepy and ended up playing the jukebox to keep awake. Genevieve wasn't there. Her husband had gone back to work in August and she had hired a girl named Etta May to work the night shift.

When the bus pulled up out front, both boys were glad. Sitting and waiting was hard on the nerves. The bus driver came in to have a cup of coffee and Sonny and Duane walked across the street to the yellow Continental Trailways bus. The wind made their eyes water, and took their breath -they had to turn their backs to it. Duane leaned his dufflebag against the front of the bus.

"Hear anything from Jacy?" he asked suddenly, since there was just two minutes left to talk.

"No, not a thing. She hasn't been back to town since August. I guess she just stays in Dallas all the time."

"I ain't over her yet," Duane said. "It's the damnedest thing. I ain't over her yet. That's the only reason me and you got into it, that night. Reckon she likes it down in Dallas?"

"It's hard to say," Sonny said, "Maybe she does. Reckon you and her would have got it all straightened out if I hadn't butted in?"

"Aw no," Duane said. "They would have annulled me too, even if we had. You all never even got to the motel?"

"No," Sonny said.

The bus driver came out of the café and hurried across the street, tucking his chin into his shoulder so his face would be out of the wind. Duane picked up the dufflebag and he and Sonny shook hands awkwardly.

"Duane, be careful," Sonny said. "I'll take care of that Mercury."

"Okay," Duane said. "See you in a year or two, if I don't get shot."

He got on and waved quickly from the window as the bus started up. A ragweed skated across the dusty street and the bus ran over it. Sonny put his hands in his pockets and walked back across the street to the pickup, not feeling too good. It was another one of those mornings when no one was there.

chapter twenty-six

Of all the people in Thalia, Billy missed the picture show most. He couldn't understand that it was permanently closed. Every night he kept thinking it would open again. For seven years he had gone to the show every single night, always sitting in the balcony, always sweeping out once the show was over; he just couldn't stop expecting it. Every night he took his broom and went over to the picture show, hoping it would be open. When it wasn't, he sat on the curb in front of the courthouse, watching the theater, hoping it would open a little later; then, after a while, in puzzlement, he would sweep listlessly off down the highway toward Wichita Falls. Sonny watched him as closely as he could, but it still worried him. He was afraid Billy might get through a fence or over a cattleguard and sweep right off into the mesquite. He might sweep away down the creeks and gullies and never be found.

Once, on a Friday afternoon, Miss Mosey had to go into' the theater to get something she had left and she let Billy in for a minute. The screen was disappointingly dead, but Billy figured that at least he was in, so he went up into the balcony and sat waiting. Miss Mosey thought he had gone back outside and locked him in. It was not until late that night, when Sonny got worried and began asking around, that Miss Mosey thought of the balcony. When they got there, Billy was sitting quietly in the dark with his broom, waiting, perfectly sure that the show would come on sometime.

All through October, then through November, Billy missed the show. Sonny didn't know what to do about it, but it was a bad time in general and he didn't know what to do about himself either. He had taken another lease to pump. He wanted to work harder and tire himself out, so he wouldn't have to lie awake at night and feel alone. Nothing much was happening, and he didn't think much was going to. One day he went to Wichita and bought a television set, thinking it might help Billy, but it didn't at all. Billy would watch it as long as Sonny was around, but the minute Sonny left he left too. He didn't trust the television. He kept going over to the picture show night after night, norther or no norther—he sat on the sidewalk and waited, cold and puzzled. He knew it would open sooner or later, and Sonny could think of no way to make him understand that it wouldn't.

One cold, sandstormy morning in late November Sonny woke up early and went downstairs to light the poolhall fires. Billy was not around, but that was not unusual. Sonny sneezed two or three times, the air was so dry. One of the gas stoves was old and he had to blow on it to get all the burners to light. While he was blowing on the burners he heard a big cattle truck roar past the poolhall, coming in from the south. Suddenly there was a loud shriek, as the driver hit the brakes for all he was worth—the stoplight was always turning red at the wrong time and catching trucks that thought they had it made.

Sonny went back upstairs and dressed to go eat breakfast. He couldn't find either one of his eye patches and supposed Billy must have them. It was the kind of morning when a welding helmet would have been a nice sort of thing to wear. The sky was cloudy and gritty, and the wind cut. When he stepped outside Sonny noticed that the big cattle truck was stopped by the square, with a little knot of men gathered around it. The doctor's car had just pulled up to the knot of men and the old doctor got out, his hair uncombed, his pyjamas showing under his bathrobe. Someone had been run over. Sonny started to turn away, but then he saw Billy's broom laying in the street. By the time he got to the men the doctor had returned to his car and was driving away.