line in a Frank O’Hara poem that goes ‘I’m always tying up and then deciding to depart.’ Story of my life.”
“You read poetry?” Leonard said.
“Just when I’m tired of masturbating,” Jim Bob said. “My reading poetry shock you?”
“That you can read shocks me,” Leonard said.
“So, if you can read and have a way to while away the hours, why are you doing this?” I asked.
“We got a kind of connection,” Jim Bob said. “We’re part of a rare kind of club.”
“That right?”
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “It’s made up of guys who think the world ought to work smooth and people ought to treat each other right, and when they don’t we go out there and try and fix things and every time we do, we change us into them, and yet we keep hoping and we keep trying and maybe one day we’ll realize we’ll never get it right and we’ll just give in. I don’t know. I sound like a tired philosopher.”
“You sound like I feel,” Tonto said.
“I think you’re reading your books backwards,” Leonard said.
“Again, why are you doing it then?” I asked.
“There aren’t many of us left, Hap, and I’m trying to keep you from becoming totally one of us by taking in the slack I don’t want you to handle. It’s not my job and it shouldn’t matter, but Leonard here, he can’t do it alone. You aren’t a delicate flower, my man, but there’s still something of the hopeful in you and I’d hate to see all of that get sucked out. Probably too late for the rest of us.”
“You don’t know me,” Tonto said.
“Oh, yes I do,” Jim Bob said.
Tonto didn’t argue back. Jim Bob said, “Hap, you ought to be a social worker, not a tough guy. You’re tough enough, but your heart isn’t in it. Soiled as you are, underneath the dirt there’s pretty good linen.”
“I keep telling him that,” Leonard said. “That he’s soiled, I mean. I don’t know about the linen part.”
“And you,” Jim Bob said to Leonard. “Shouldn’t you be home too? Ain’t you got you a boyfriend? You’re a little farther gone on the scale, but at least you’ve got some sense of normalcy going on, got a relationship going.”
Leonard sighed. “Actually, it’s on the fence.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Why do you really do it?” I said to Jim Bob. “I think you’re dodging the question.”
“Man, this is like getting in touch with our feelings, isn’t it?” Jim Bob said. “I told you why.”
“It isn’t about me, and you know it,” I said. “I see you only now and then. What about the rest of the time? Why do you damn near get yourself killed on a regular basis? Private gun for hire, that kind of thing. Let’s expand that question beyond you, my good man. What the fuck is wrong with all of us? And it’s got to be more than just wanting to set the world right.”
“Too many cowboy movies,” Leonard said.
“All right,” Jim Bob said. “Here it is. I do it because if I don’t I’ve got nothing but myself, and though I dearly love myself, I’m a little tired of being me right now. Sometimes I feel like I’m laughing in the dark all by my goddamn self, because I am, and what I got to show for it is a paid-off house with no one in it, not even a dog, because I’m gone too much and when I’m gone I can’t see a whole lot of reason to race back. I had a woman like you got, Hap, I’d hold on to her until the crack of goddamn doom. Can you understand that?”
“I wish life was that simple,” I said.
“I’d just like to come home and have John there,” Leonard said. The words sprang from his mouth like an escaped prisoner.
“You’ve talked to him?” Jim Bob said, pushing his hat back on his head.
“I’ve tried.”
“Leonard’s idea of talking,” I said, “is telling people how it is. Not the same thing as a true discussion. The signal of his love for John was that he climbed up in the bed and shit in it.”
“Yuck,” Jim Bob said. “I wouldn’t like that.”
“Yeah, he took it hard,” Leonard said. “I’m just not a talker about some things, you know. Not like you share- your-feelings guys.”
“So you go straight to shitting in the bed?” Jim Bob said.
“It’s a statement,” Leonard said. “And I’ll have you know, at the bottom of it all I’m a sensitive motherfucker.”
Tonto, who had been listening quietly, watching the road, said, “Hey, Leonard, were you saying you’re queer?”
“The queerest,” Leonard said. “You got a problem with that?”
“Where’s the dick go?”
“Anywhere I can put it.”
“Oh,” Tonto said. “No problem. Just curious. Hap, you’re pussy-whipped.”
“I know.”
“That’s all right,” Tonto said, his voice growing higher than before. “I wish I was pussy-whipped. What about
