Ларри Макмертри - The Last Picture Show

If you didn't have someone to sneak off and court with, all there was to do at lunchtime was play volleyball. The one alternative amusement was watching the Melly brothers, George and Ed, who ordinarily spent their lunch hour jacking off in the boy's rest room. The Melly boys lived on a broken-down farm in the western part of the county, and had very few pleasures. Freshmen and sophomores got a kick out of watching them go at it, but it was really beneath the attention of seniors like Sonny and Duane.

As classes were being dismissed that afternoon Coach Popper announced that anyone interested in coming out for basketball should be in the gym in fifteen minutes. Basketball was not a big deal sport in Thalia; Sonny and Duane only went out because they were seniors and felt obligated. Also, the road trips were nice because the boys' and girls' teams rode on the same school bus. When all candidates were assembled in the boys' dressing room there turned out to be only nine boys there, not even enough for two teams. It was no real surprise: Thalia was generally conceded to have about the most miserable basketball team in the state. On a few spectacularly dismal occasions they had managed to lose games by over a hundred points.

The nine boys began to get into their jockey straps and shorts, and were rubbing foot toughener on their feet when Coach Popper came in from the equipment room. He wore a green fatigue jacket that he had swiped from the army and he was dragging two big sacks of basketballs. He was big and he was proud of it: two hundred and thirty-five pounds, at least half of it gut.

As soon as he got to the dressing room he stopped and took a quick tally. His countenance darkened.

"Goddamit!" he said. "Ain't there but nine of you little farts? Forty-six boys in this high school, ain't but nine come out? If this ain't a piss-ignorant place to have to coach. Where's Joe Bob, anyhow? The least that little piss-ant can do is come out for basketball."

"He's home jackin' off," Leroy said. "Or else he's readin' the Bible. That's all he does, one or the other:'

"You all take ten laps and get out there and shoot some free throws," the coach said. "I'm going down to the church and get him. He ain't worth a shit but he's easy to find and I ain't gonna drive all over this county looking for basketball players. I ain't gonna hold no practice unless we got at least two teams, either."

He hitched his pants up over his big, sagging belly and went out the door.

All but two or three of the boys ignored the ten-lap command and began shooting whatever kind of shots came into their heads. The only one who actually ran all ten laps was Bobby Logan, the most conscientious athlete in school. Bobby liked to stay in shape and always trained hard; he was smart, too, but he was such a nice kid that nobody held it against him. He was the coach's special favorite.

When the coach came back he had Joe Bob at his heels. By that time all the boys were throwing three-quarter court peg shots, like Ozark Ike in the comics. Balls were bouncing everywhere. Once in a game Sonny seen an Indian boy from Durant, Oklahoma actually make a three-quarter court peg shot in the last five seconds of play. It didn't really win the game for Durant, because they were already leading Thalia by about sixty-five points, but it impressed Sonny, and he resolved to start trying a few himself.

"Hey, quit chunkin' them balls, you little dumb-asses," Coach Popper Yelled. "Just for thAt we'll have some wind sprints."

Joe Bob was standing just behind the coach combing his hair. The coach happened to turn around and the sight made him so mad he grabbed Joe Bob's comb and threw it up in the stands as high as he could. "Get your skinny ass suited out," he said. All the boys grinned when Joe Bob went into the dressing room because while the coach was gone they had mixed a little glue in with the foot toughener. If Joe Bob used any of the foot toughener he would probably have to keep his socks on for about three weeks.

The coach divided the boys into two teams and put them to running simple plays. He sat in a bridge chair with a blue towel around his neck and watched them, yelling from time to time. He had a little paper cup for his tobacco juice sitting by the chair. The loudest he yelled all afternoon was when a freshman who hadn't yet learned to dribble let a ball knock the cup over. They spent the last twenty minutes of practice running wind sprints up and down the gym. Joe Bob's feet were so badly blistered by that time that he had to hop the last two wind sprints on one leg. Some of the freshmen were no better off, and Coach Popper thought it was a hilarious sight.

"Tough it out, boys, tough it out," he yelled. "You got to be men like the rest of us, ain't none of you pretty enough to be women: "

In the dressing room there was a great laugh when it turned out Joe Bob had used the foot toughener after all. The only reason he could get his socks off at all was that he had almost solid blisters and the blisters peeled loose a lot easier than the glue. When Coach Popper saw the sight he laughed till he cried. "You might try boilin' 'em off, Joe Bob," he said. "It wouldn't be no harder on your feet."

In fact, the coach made matters even worse for Joe Bob by horsing around and trying to grab his pecker.

"Look at that little worm there," he said, making a grab. "What kind of female you ever gonna get with that thing for bait, Joe? Wouldn't do for a six-year-old girl."

He kept laughing and grabbing, backing Joe Bob around the room until finally Joe Bob couldn't stand it anymore and ran to the showers with one sock still on.

"Another minute and I'd have had him bawling," the coach said jovially, sitting down to take off his tennis shoes. It was all pretty funny, the boys thought, but when they came out of the shower something happened that wasn't so funny. Everybody was horsing around, popping towels and grabbing at one another's nuts, like they usually did after practice. Duane and Sonny and Bobby Logan were having a little three-way towel fight, and the trouble started when Duanc caught Bobby a smacker on the hip. It was just a flat pop and didn't hurt Bobby at all, but the coach happened to be coming out of the shower about that time and for some reason it made him furious. He was naked except for a whistle around his neck, but he grabbed a towel and laid into Sonny and Duane. He let one fly at Duane that would have castrated him on the spot if it had landed. "I'll show you little fuckers some towel fightin'," he said. The boys were too surprised to fight back: they just retreated into a corner where there were benches and clothes hangers to block some of the coach's shots. His wet hair was down in his face and he was snorting and, puffing like a mad boar , hog.

In a minute or two he got over it, though, and threw the wet towel at Sonny. "No more goddamn towel fightin'," he said and went over and looked closely at Bobby Logan's hip. The freshmen were scared almost to death-one was so nervous he put his shoes on the wrong feet and wore them home that way, too scared to stop and change. The older boys had seen the coach flare up before and knew it was just a matter of surviving until he cooled off. The time be shot at Sonny it was because he thought Sonny had scared away a dove he was sneaking up on. Fortunately, Sonny was a hundred yards away and wasn't hit.

"I don't understand how Mrs. Popper's lasted," Duane said, as he was dressing.

"She ain't the healthiest looking woman in town," Sonny reminded him. Mrs. Popper's name was Ruth; she was a small woman, pretty but tired and nervous looking. No one saw much of her. At Christmastime she sometimes made Sonny and Duane cookies and brought them around. Sam the Lion had known her all her life and said that she had been lovely when she was young.