Moving On (99 page)

The sixth or seventh call of the day came at midnight, when she was in bed but not asleep. They picked the argument up where they had left it two hours before.

“Why won’t you go anyplace where there’s not a Hilton hotel?” she asked.

“It wouldn’t have no airport.”

“What do you do between these calls? You either gamble or else you’ve got something brewing with Miss Rodeo America. Which is it?”

“I generally watch TV,” he said.

“You could have spent Christmas with me.”

“I wish I had, now. If you’d get over not liking Acapulco we’d go and have a happy New Year. I thought that was where you jet-set types hung out this time of year.”

“I’m too old to be jet set,” she said. “I’m a sedate middle-aged woman and I don’t want to go to any tacky resorts. Why don’t we go to the Orient? We could spend New Year’s in Tokyo. I’ll get the tickets if you’re too tight.”

“Too much air time,” he said. “I hate long plane rides. I don’t want to go noplace we can’t get to in four hours in the air.”

“Well, South America, then. Peru. I’ve never been there.”

“Nope. If you ain’t been there it’s bound to be too far.”

“You’re impossible,” she said. “I want to go to sleep. It’s a mistake to decide anything on Christmas Day, anyway. We’ll argue sometime in the morning.”

“Not too early, we won’t,” he said. “I was thinking of heading back to L.A. tonight. I’ve fucked around here long enough.”

“This late?”

“It ain’t any special time here. I feel like driving. Anyhow, Coon’s here. If I don’t feel like driving he can drive. That’s what I keep him around for.”

“Well, what time will you call?”

“Whenever I wake up. Tomorrow afternoon.”

“I miss you,” she said. “Holidays always make me lonesome for you. Why don’t you come here?”

Sonny considered it. “I ain’t got enough pills for that long a drive,” he said. “And I don’t like to drive that far with Coon. I’d kick him out before we got to Albuquerque. I may kick him out, anyway, but if I do I can get to L.A. with no trouble.”

“I wish you’d get off those pills.”

“Naw, I was thinking of getting on more of them,” Sonny said. “I was just thinking, maybe what I need to do is let my hair grow and take lots of speed and LSD and turn into a cowboy hippie. Maybe it ain’t too late for me yet. I could sort of be the Joe Namath of rodeo, you know.”

“Who?” she asked, mildly amazed by the picture he was drawing and yet mildly disturbed too, for she knew he was just as apt to do it as not, if the mood to do it persisted.

“He’s a quarterback,” Sonny said.

“Even you couldn’t get away with long hair around a rodeo,” she said. “Half the drunks in the West would be wanting to fight.”

“That’d be okay. I could whip a few of them and the publicity wouldn’t hurt. They might even make me into a television series.”

“Well, you just be careful tonight, speedy.”

“Be nice if I was where you could rub my back,” he said thoughtfully.

“Wouldn’t it, though. You wouldn’t have to drive here, necessarily. I could send the plane in the morning. Your young friend could take the hearse back to L.A.”

“Naw, I’m too pepped up,” he said. “I want to drive and, anyway, I don’t want to fuck around here all night. I’ll see you in a day or two, soon as we make up our minds where to go for New Year’s. Want to get married?”

“I don’t know that I’m that lonesome,” she said. “You want to? You think I’d be better for you than long hair and LSD?”

“Hard to say,’ he said. “I guess it’s watching all this gambling that makes me ask. It wouldn’t be no more foolish than anything else.”

“You just remember what a good back rubber I am,” she said. “I knew you’d eventually begin to appreciate my domestic skills. You think we should sleep on it? We’ve only known one another fifteen years.”

“You sleep on it,” he said, “and I’ll run on over to L.A.”

“Proposals are usually accompanied by a declaration of love,” Eleanor said, smiling.

“I’m in too big a rush to get off to start in on anything like that,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind being snuggled up with you right now, though. You’re good to have around in a norther.”

“Okay,” she said. “Don’t strain yourself trying to think of compliments. I’m very fond of you too, and I’m going to sleep. Call me when you wake up, okay?”

“Yeah, sleep tight,” he said.

Coon was disgruntled that they were leaving. He thought Las Vegas was a great place, much better than L.A. In Las Vegas nobody looked down on him for dressing like a cowboy, at least no one did in the places he was allowed in. Being a cowboy in L.A. was increasingly unrewarding. Hippies with hair three feet long were treated better than he was, it seemed to him. Girls didn’t put them down, and in L.A. girls put him down constantly. None had put him down in Las Vegas, because he hadn’t spoken to any. He just looked. On the whole, from a looker’s standpoint, the girls of Las Vegas had it over the girls of L.A. Too many of the girls he ran into in L.A. had something wrong with them—crooked noses or something. Las Vegas girls didn’t seem to have discouraging defects. They were out of reach, but nice to look at.

Miss Rodeo America made him ache. Her name was Wanda Lou Rawlins and she hailed from Waxahachie, Texas. She was a petite brunette who never took her Stetson off. Coon ached, and Wanda Lou did her best to make up to Sonny, who was her official escort on a couple of occasions. She was tired of Waxahachie and wanted to live in L.A. and be in Sonny’s next movie, if there was one. She would have considered it an honor to sleep with him, and most probably a pleasure too. All Coon could do was watch. He had watched before, so often in fact that he had come to derive a kind of vicarious satisfaction from Sonny’s conquests. He dreamed about them while sleeping in the hearse, where he slept when he was driving for Sonny. He had watched Miss Rodeo America go around for three days with her tongue virtually hanging out and he gave her some thought at night while resting in the hearse and watching the lights along the Strip. Thus it was actually a disappointment when Sonny told him to bring the hearse around—they were leaving. He couldn’t understand why Sonny would just walk off from a piece like Wanda Lou without so much as a sniff. It made him restless. He felt doubly deprived. It was wasteful. Sonny could at least have screwed her once, if only for courtesy’s sake. Coon felt chivalric toward her. It was no way to treat a queen. After all, there was only one Miss Rodeo America.

Soon they were thirty miles into the desert, gliding toward Barstow at an easy eighty-five. Sonny had elected to drive, but he was not quite ready for the real speed. He was feeling his seat, meditating. He liked the desert, had crossed it at night endless times in his years of rodeoing. He had taken two Dexamyls and was feeling good. Eleanor stayed on his mind. It would be very pleasant to sit on the couch with her and drink bourbon in front of the mesquite fire. It was time he went to Texas; he hadn’t been there since the summer, when the movie production moved to L.A. For a few miles he considered possibilities, regretting that he had not taken the road straight south to Needles. Then he could have shot across to Texas on Sixty-six and been there in twenty hours. He could have doubled back, but the prospect didn’t please him. It wasn’t worth it. In fifty miles he resolved it in his mind and found his seat and moved up to ninety-five. He could fly to Dallas the next day and have Eleanor send the plane for him. She could send it all the way to L.A., for that matter. He was settling down to enjoy the run to Hollywood when Coon voiced his disgruntlement in regard to Wanda Lou.

“I don’t see why you wanted to run off,” he said. “Wouldn’t catch me running off from a woman that good-looking.”

“What good-looking?” Sonny said absently. He had completely forgotten Wanda Lou.

“You know,” Soon said irritably. “Wanda.” It seemed to him a token of intimacy that she had allowed him to use her first name.

Sonny was a little amused. “You liked her, huh?” he said.

“Well, who wouldn’t. You could have screwed her if you’d halfway tried.”

“Tried?” Sonny said. “I was afraid to get on an elevator with her unless somebody else was in it.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Coon said. “And you pass it up.”

“I got city ways now,” Sonny said. “A girl from Waxahachie is just as apt to have ticks as not. You ever had a tick on your balls?”

Coon was sullenly silent. The glamour of being Sonny’s driver was wearing off and he was oppressed by the unfairness of life. Not only was he not getting girls, he was not improving as a bronc rider either, and the only reason he had stopped being a bronc rider was to get what girls Sonny didn’t want. He was convinced that in another day in Las Vegas Wanda Lou might have come to him for consolation. It seldom happened, but he brooded about it and decided it would have, in her case.

“Fucking desert,” he said. “What a big fucking desert. Fucking Sahara desert.”

Sonny was mildly amused and mildly irritated. He was in the mood for a quiet drive.

“You should have told me you was in love with her,” he said. “I might could have fixed you up. You might as well quit cussing the desert. It ain’t the desert’s fault you’re dumb and ugly.”

He meant it jokingly, but Coon’s bad mood was getting out of hand. He felt very aggrieved. “Merry Christmas, motherfuckers,” he said to two shivering hitchhikers they zoomed past. Both had beards.

“Goddamn hippies,” he said. “I guess their last ride got tired of smelling them. I hate those fucking hippies. That’s what I liked about Las Vegas. No goddamn hippies around.”

“You’re just full of peace on earth, ain’t you?” Sonny said. “All because you got no pussy for Christmas. You could have bought you some for a Christmas present if you weren’t so tight. Half the women in Las Vegas are for sale.”

“I don’t buy it,” Coon said righteously, though he bought it on occasion.

Sonny suddenly lifted his foot and let the hearse coast. When it was down to fifty he braked and pulled to the side of the road. He turned and reached into the back, got Coon’s dufflebag, and politely handed it to him.

“And a Merry Christmas to you,” he said.

Coon was stunned. He was well aware that Sonny was given to arbitrary decisions, but he had not been expecting an arbitrary decision of such a nature just then.

“What’d I do?” he asked.

But Sonny had torn a check off his checkbook and was scribbling a note on the back of it. He turned on the cab light. “Here,” he said, handing the note to Coon, who looked at it blankly.

Dear Wanda Lou:

Coon can’t wait to have a date with you. Be nice to him, honey, he’s a real good old boy.

Sonny

“She won’t gimme no date,” Coon said. “You crazy?”

“I may be and I may not be. The one thing I’m sure of is that I’m tired of listening to you talk. If you get out here and start back you might get to meet them hippies.”

“I don’t wanta meet ’em. Can’t I ride with you? I’ll be quiet.”

“No, you need a little desert air and I need a little solitude. Better put that Levi jacket on. It’s cold out there.”

“Just to Barstow?” Coon said. “Be a lot easier hitching out of there.”

“I’m not going to slow down in Barstow. I guess if you want to take a chance on jumping out, you can.”

Coon knew there was no point in arguing. Sonny was drumming his fingers impatiently on the wheel.

“Reckon she’d give me a date if I give her the note?” Coon asked.

“Ain’t but one way to find out. See you by and by.”

Coon got out without another word and Sonny spun the hearse back on the highway and was off. There would be no more interruptions, but the exchange with Coon had broken his mood, the mood he had been in since talking with Eleanor. He had been feeling mellow. The thought of the big ranch and the good food and the fireplace and Eleanor had seemed very desirable, very resting. But his mood had switched. He wanted speed instead of rest.

The hearse sliced through the desert at close to a hundred and ten, and the farther he drove the faster he wanted to drive. Barstow was passed, a few lights in the night, and then Victorville, and he bore down on San Bernardino, made it and swung west into the traffic of the San Bernardino freeway. The traffic annoyed him. He got into boxes of traffic and honked until one or another of the cars gave way for him; then he swept on. He wanted more driving. It seemed like no time since he had left Las Vegas and already L.A. was only fifty miles away. He wanted more driving than that, but for once he had no clear notion of where he wanted to go. He felt too pilled up to stop. There were too many places to go, and anyway he wanted to go faster than he could drive on the San Bernardino freeway.

He thought of turning south and shooting down to Tijuana. It would serve Eleanor right if he made her come to Tijuana for New Year’s. Instead of getting married they could watch the donkey show. But he didn’t turn toward Tijuana; the urge wasn’t strong enough. He could go to Palm Springs, make her come there. They could fuck for a while in Palm Springs and if they wanted to get married they could easily do it there. The traffic swept him on, but he tried to outrun it; he kept the hearse close to a hundred on the open stretches. Or he could go to Texas after all. That feeling felt best. Back to Texas, with Coon got rid of and the whole clear dark desert to drive through. The lights of the cars ahead annoyed him. He didn’t feel like seeing taillights. He passed strings of cars, schools of cars, scores of them. He wanted the clear desert, with the headlights whitening the straight road. Then he could open the hearse up and really drive.

But he kept on toward L.A., and there kept on being lights in front of him. His saddle was in L.A. For some reason he had forgotten to put it in the hearse and had not taken it to Las Vegas. He decided then what to do—he would run on to L.A., get his saddle and some pills, and split down Highway Ten for Texas. He could make Arizona by breakfast, and Arizona was fine to drive through. Hitchhikers could drive when he came down. Or he could drive all the way. It would be a great drive, Las Vegas to L.A. and then back to Texas. No taillights ahead that he couldn’t pass. No more California, no more movies. There was a rodeo in Denver just after New Year’s. They could spend New Year’s in Colorado, in the Broadmoor, or in Denver or in Aspen. Once with another driver he had driven all the way from Calgary to Baton Rouge in three days to make a rodeo. That had done in his first hearse; that had been fifteen years ago. Vegas to L.A. and back to Texas, with no other drivers—it appealed to him. All he needed was his saddle and some pills.