“Was it hard work?”
“It was so hard you wouldn’t believe it. I did all kinds of things. Cowboys don’t call one another nigger.”
“Do your mom and dad work on the range with you?”
“No, my mama has a job. She does clean-up work. My daddy he got killed in Vietnam. He got some medals and stuff. He wasn’t a cowboy like me.”
I looked up and saw the shuttle. I picked up my suitcase and stood.
“I got to go now,” I said. “I hope you get your gun back. Lot of good cowboys lose fights from time to time.”
“There was three of them.”
“There you are.
“It hasn’t got any black cowboys in it I bet,” he said, and gave it back to me.
“I want one with black cowboys in it. I’m not reading any more of ‘em unless they got black cowboys in them.”
“I’m sure there are some,” I said.
“There ought to be.”
I got on the shuttle and it carried me to the other hotel. I got off and walked to where I was supposed to be, and on the way over there I put the book in one of those wire trash baskets that line the streets.
Steppin’ Out, Summer, ‘68
Buddy drank another swig of beer and when he brought the bottle down he said to Jake and Wilson, “I could sure use some pussy.”
“We could all use some,” Wilson said, “problem is we don’t never get any.”
“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.
“Uh huh,” Wilson said. “You talk pussy plenty good, but I don’t ever see you with a date. I ain’t never even seen you walking a dog, let alone a girl. You don’t even have a car, so how you gonna get with a girl?”
“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.
“You see what you want,” Buddy said. “I’m gonna be getting me a Chevy soon. I got my eye on one.”
“Yeah?” Wilson said. “What one?”
“Drew Carrington’s old crate.”
“Shit,” Wilson said, “that motherfucker caught on fire at a streetlight and he run it off in the creek.”
“They got it out,” Buddy said.
“They say them flames jumped twenty feet out from under the hood before he run it off in there,” Jake said.
“Water put the fire out,” Buddy said.
“Uh huh,” Wilson said, “after the motor blowed up through the hood. They found that motherfucker in a tree out back of Old Maud Page’s place. One of the pistons fell out of it and hit her on the head while she was picking up apples. She was in the hospital three days.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “And I hear Carrington’s in Dallas now, never got better from the accident. Near drowned and some of the engine blew back into the car and hit him in the nuts, castrated him, fucked up his legs. He can’t walk. He’s on a wheeled board or something, got some retard that pulls him around.”
“Them’s just stories,” Buddy said. “Motor’s still in the car. Carrington got him a job in Dallas as a mechanic. He didn’t get hurt at all. Old Woman Page didn’t get hit by no piston either. It missed her by a foot. Scared her so bad she had a little stroke. That’s why she was in the hospital.”
“You seen the motor?” Wilson asked. “Tell me you’ve seen it.”
“No,” Buddy said, “but I’ve heard about it from good sources, and they say it can be fixed.”
“Jack it up and drive another car under it,” Wilson said, “it’ll be all right.”
“That’s the way I see it too,” Jake said.
“Listen to you two,” Buddy said. “You know it all. You’re real operators. I’ll tell you morons one thing, I line up a little of the hole that winks and stinks, like I’m doing tonight, you won’t get none of it.”
Wilson and Jake shuffled and eyed each other. An unspoken but clear message passed between them. They had never known Buddy to actually get any, or anyone else to know of him getting any, but he had a couple of years on them, and he might have gotten some, way he talked about it, and they damn sure knew they weren’t getting any, and if there was a chance of it, things had to be patched up.
“Car like that,” Wilson said, “if you worked hard enough, you might get it to run. Some new pistons or something… What you got lined up for tonight?”
Buddy’s face put on some importance. “I know a gal likes to do the circle, you know what I mean?”
Wilson hated to admit it, but he didn’t. “The circle?”
“Pull the train,” Buddy said. “Do the team. You know, fuck a bunch of guys, one after the other.”
“Oh,” Wilson said.
“I knew that,” Jake said.
“Yeah,” Wilson said. “Yeah sure you did.” Then to Buddy: “When you gonna see this gal?”
Buddy, still important, took a swig of beer and pursed his lips and studied the afternoon sky. “Figured I’d walk on over there little after dark. It’s a mile or so.”
“Say she likes to do more than one guy?” Wilson asked.
“Way I hear it,” Buddy said, “she’ll do ‘em till they ain’t able to do. My cousin, Butch, he told me about her.”
Butch. The magic word. Wilson and Jake eyed each other again. There could be something in this after all. Butch was twenty, had a fast car, could play a little bit on the harmonica, bought his own beer, cussed in front of adults, and most importantly, he had been seen with women.
Buddy continued. “Her name’s Sally. Butch said she cost five dollars. He’s done her a few times. Got her name off a bathroom wall.”
“She costs?” Wilson asked.
“Think some gal’s going to do us all without some money for it?” Buddy said.
Again, an unspoken signal passed between Wilson and Jake. There could be truth in that.
“Butch gave me her address, said her pimp sits on the front porch and you go right up and negotiate with him. Says you talk right, he might take four.”
“I don’t know,” Wilson said. “I ain’t never paid for it.”
“Me neither,” said Jake.
“Ain’t neither one of you ever had any at all, let alone paid for it,” Buddy said.
Once more, Wilson and Jake were struck with the hard and painful facts.
Buddy looked at their faces and smiled. He took another sip of beer. “Well, you bring your five dollars, and I reckon you can tag along with me. Come by the house about dark and we’ll walk over together.”
“Yeah, well, all right,” Wilson said. “I wish we had a car.”
“Keep wishing,” Buddy said. “You boys hang with me, we’ll all be riding in Carrington’s old Chevy before long. I’ve got some prospects.”
It was just about dark when Wilson and Jake got over to Buddy’s neighborhood, which was a long street with four houses on it widely spaced. Buddy’s house was the ugliest of the four. It looked ready to nod off its concrete blocks at any moment and go crashing into the unkempt yard and die in a heap of rotting lumber and squeaking nails. Great strips of graying Sherwin-Williams flat-white paint hung from it in patches, giving it the appearance of having a skin disease. The roof was tin and loved the sun and pulled it in and held it so that the interior basked in a sort of slow simmer until well after sundown. Even now, late in the day, a rush of heat came off the roof and rippled down the street like the last results of a nuclear wind.
Wilson and Jake came up on the house from the side, not wanting to go to the door. Buddy’s mother was a grumpy old bitch in a brown bathrobe and bunny rabbit slippers with an ear missing on the left foot. No one had ever seen her wearing anything else, except now and then she added a shower cap to her uniform, and no one had
