In Big Trouble

'So what do you say?' Maury demanded.

'To what?'

'Barbecue or chili dogs. Ruby's is right up here at the top of the Drag, if you don't mind walking a little ways.'

'The Drag?'

'Guadalupe Street, the very concrete beneath your feet. Hey, is there anything you want to see on campus? We could cut through there, if you like. Maybe you could post WANTED signs or something on the community bulletin boards.'

Tess looked at the utility poles of Guadalupe Street, so covered with fliers that they might be made of papier-mache. 'I don't think so.'

'Don't you want to see the campus, anyway? See the Tower?'

'The Tower?'

'Charles Whitman, baby.' Maury's eyes lighted up. 'Did you know that there was, like, this whole family that was shot inside the Tower that day and they lay there-lie there? lay there-throughout the whole thing and one of them was alive.'

'How interesting,' Tess said. Still, she understood why Maury would find such a tale fascinating, as long as it was in the abstract. Paradoxical as it might sound, it was often the very lack of experience that made people calloused. She considered telling him some of the things she had seen in the past year. A couple gunned down in their bed. A body in a ditch. A cab coming out of the fog to dispatch a young man in the prime of his life. All the 'reality' shows on television couldn't make you understand what it was like to be there at the exact moment when life ended, when someone's soul, for want of a better word, ebbed from the body. But Maury was a boy, a handsome, happy boy who sold comic books for a living. He wasn't remotely interested in reality, which made him a strangely agreeable companion.

As she and Maury walked, she continued to scan the faces of the buskers and hustlers along the Drag. A young woman played her violin, a lovely classical air soaring over the street, but she didn't even look up when coins dropped into her open case. They passed a little open-air market with glass and beaded jewelry, a textbook store crammed with burnt orange and white accessories. A young man sat on top of a trash can, whaling away on a set of bongos.

A young man she knew. Well, she was overdue for one brilliant moment of plain, unadulterated good luck.

'Gary!'

It took him a second to register that someone was calling his name, and there seemed to be far too much subtext in the changes his expression went through on its way to recognition. Confusion, the momentary joy of spotting a familiar face in a land of strangers. Finally, he settled for something petulant and sulky.

'Tess Monaghan. Fancy meeting you here.'

'Ditto.'

'So, what's up?'

'Maybe you can tell me. I'm looking for Crow.'

'Good luck.' He unfold his legs, crawled down from the top of the trash can. 'I haven't talked to that fucker in weeks.'

'What about Poe White Trash?'

'Deader than its namesake. The name never did go over down here. The few times we got a gig, usually at some freebie festival, someone would call the Chronicle and complain about our name. ‘Inherently racist in its implication that other cultures don't meet the same standards of normative behavior.' Someone actually wrote that in a letter to the editor. Normative behavior. I thought it should be our new name.'

'You're kidding me.'

'About the name, not about the letter. Welcome to PC city, hon, and I'm not talking about the computer industry.'

'So the band broke up? Where did everyone go? Where's Crow?'

'Crow broke up the band. Said he was going in a new direction, literally and artistically, but it was really her fault.'

Crow's mysterious female companion again. 'Blond girl? With features like a china doll?'

'Blond, sure, but I don't know about any doll,' Gary said, rubbing his chin, as if trying to stimulate growth in the wispy, halfhearted goatee there, a new affectation. 'Unless you're talking Chuckie, from those slasher movies. She Yoko'ed us but good. Once Crow met her, it was like I didn't even know him anymore. He suddenly wanted to do all this indigenous shit. He even asked me if I could learn to play the accordion. I told him he could take that Lawrence Welk shit and shove it up his ass.'

'When was this?'

'Summer, I guess. Like it's not summer now. I remember it was hot. Then again, it's been hot since we got here in May. July? August? I don't know. A while. The other guys went back to Baltimore. I thought I'd give Austin a try. I mean, the winters here gotta be better, right?' He was pleading, his voice as urgent as any panhandler's. 'A whole summer gone, and I haven't had a single steamed crab.'

Tess had no patience for seafood reveries. 'Where is Crow now? Is he in a new band? What's the name of this blond girl?'

'You know, I never knew her full name. She called herself Emmie, just one fucking name, like Madonna. She was performing under the name Lady M when we met her. But she had a place out in the Hill Country, I know that much. She and Crow crashed there sometimes. She said Austin wasn't the place to be anymore, and he believed her. He believed every stupid shit thing that came out of her mouth.'

'Where's the Hill Country?'

'It's the area west of Austin and it's a pretty big place. LBJ's home,' Maury put in. 'You're going to need more than that to go on.'

Gary glared at Maury, as if this strapping young Texan was responsible for everything that had gone wrong for him in the Lone Star State. 'I know that. I'm not stupid. It began with a B.'

'Boerne Tess asked, remembering the postmark on Crow's note to her.

'Naw, but somewhere like that. Bingo? Boffo? Blanco! He's in Blanco, OK? Or near there. I remember because of the White Album. But I think the town was called something like Two Sisters.'

Tess was still mystified, but Maury nodded, smiling. 'Now that's something to go on. Twin Sisters's a small enough place so a stranger might stick out.'

Two lucky breaks in fifteen minutes-finding Gary, finding a lead. Tess just hoped she hadn't blown her serendipity account for all eternity.

'Okay, I'll head down there tomorrow.'

'But what about dinner tonight?' Maury put in plaintively.

'Sure, fine, your pick.'

'Barbecue. Chili dogs? Barbecue.'

'Barbecue's good here,' Gary said, his tone grudging.

Maury inspected the dejected drummer. He was wearing a Mencken's Cultured Pearl T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out and his arms were scrawny and sunburned. He had managed a haircut recently, but that only called attention to the white stripe on his bright red neck. 'You want to join us? My treat, because I hate to hear of someone having a bad time in my hometown. Don't you know this is Eden?'

'Yeah, well, the snake and the broad with the apple have already been here and gotten me kicked out,' Gary said. 'But I could go for some barbecue, I guess.'

There was precious little that was white about Blanco County. The hills were brown, with outcroppings of rock, the highway black, the cloudless sky above so blue, and so huge that Tess felt paradoxically claustrophobic, as if a gigantic sheet had been thrown over her. It seemed she could drive for days and days and never arrive anywhere.

Still, it was a relief just to be alone for a while, no one but Esskay for company. Not that solitude had come easily. Maury, sensing a payoff might be near, had wanted to continue on his whole Bwana trip. She had wanted