Texas by the Tail

He took a sip of his vermouth cassis, keeping his eyes on the banker. Agate gulped down the last of his double Scotch, sat twirling the glass nervously. God, why couldn't he have waited? Why had he had to be in such a hell of a hurry? Why-how-

Suddenly, he saw a way out, or thought he saw one. It was a stupid way, actually no way at all. But desperation and the abrupt infusion of whiskey made it seem brilliant. Smiling, he tucked the money envelope into his pocket, and held out a hand.

'The fifteen is plenty,' he said, 'and excuse me if I've given you a hard time. I had a rough morning at the bank.'

Mitch hesitated, studying him a moment longer. But the explanation sounded reasonable, and he could think of no other. Blue Monday-a hard morning after a hard weekend. It figured, didn't it?

'It happens to the best of us' he said. 'Then we're all set? Still friends?'

'Of course we are. Certainly we are, Mitch. Just give me a holler the next time you need help. I'm afraid I can't do anything for you in that Zearsdale matter, but anything else…'

Mitch nodded, not particularly disappointed. The Zearsdale option had been a longshot, something he had had to try for without really expecting to hit. It was enough that he had been able to square himself with the banker, and he was very relieved to have done it.

A dress-suited waiter approached, looked expectantly from one to the other of them. Mitch suggested lunch, but Agate shook his head.

'I think I'll just settle for another drink, another double, please,' he said. 'And don't let me keep you, Mitch. I've got some things to think out, and I'd just as soon be alone for a while.'

Mitch took the hint and excused himself. As he departed, the waiter brought Agate's second drink, and the banker took a grateful gulp from the brimming glass. With a sigh, he settled back in the upholstered booth. For the moment, at least, he could almost see himself as the suave man of large affairs, the shrewd and imposing executive, which only drink or dreams had ever permitted him to be.

His wife and children had no use for him. His employers and co-executives gave him neither liking nor respect. Fortuitously, he had been available at a time when death and war had vacated increasingly desirable positions, and thinned the ranks of those aspiring to them. He had been there-when no one else was there-so now he was here. And no one knew better than he that he had no right to be here, the assistant vice-president of a large bank. Mere chance was responsible; chance and a lack of imagination were responsible, a mental laziness which had kept him in the same rut it had led him to-a normally dead-end rut-for more than thirty years.

He had come straight from high school to the bank. Now nearing fifty, he was increasingly conscious of his inadequacies and decreasingly able to repair or conceal them. Time had shrunk him even as it had expanded the responsibilities of his job. The noise of his rattling around in it was drawing frequent and frightening looks from his superiors.

It would be extremely awkward, of course, almost impractical, to dispose of a thirty-year man who was an upper echelon executive. And Agate's appearance was a constant contradiction of the errors which could only occasionally be traced to him. How could one believe that there was virtual emptiness behind the impressive, banker-like exterior with which he daily faced the world? With so much on display, then, logically, there had to be a great deal more underneath; as with an iceberg, whose greatest mass is below the surface.

Logic and had-to-be's to the contrary, however, there was daily evidence that his employers were at last seeing him for what he was. As literally nothing compared to what he should have been. As a very vulnerable link in a chain which needed to be strong. Now, if somewhat belatedly, they were discovering the real man… a discovery which the first of a long series of hustlers had made almost fifteen years before.

Those were the facts on Lee Jackson Agate.

In the bemusing glow of alcohol he ignored them, becoming one of the highest and mightiest among the high and the mighty. He argued pleasantly with a readily acquiescent self, pointing out that he was a success, wasn't he? However it had come about, he was a success.

He had a fine home, two fine cars, a comfortable quantity of stocks and bonds. He was quite a little in debt, having unwisely followed the same market advice he had given various customers of the bank. But why niggle over trifles? What was debt to a man with such an impeccable credit rating that he had been able to acquire liabilities which were more than double his assets?

His house was in his wife's name, darn her, as were his blue chip stocks. But the nagging and henpecking which had brought about this arrangement could not change Texas law. In effect, a married woman in Texas could not own property, her assets being under the legal control of her husband. He could do just about as he pleased with what she had hoped to do as she pleased-darn her!-so he would just go into this Zearsdale stock-option deal, and he would split a fast one hundred and fifty thousand with Mitch. And then afterwards, when his wife saw how truly brilliant he was.

Well, things had been quite good with them at one time. Back in the beginning they had been good. Then, his parents had come to live with them, having no other way of living, and the good had rapidly become bad. His wife had resented them. She had resented him for being too namby-pamby to let them starve. They were well-meaning-what parents are not?-but they were also woefully ignorant, and in their anxiety to be amiable, good comp'ny, they provided their daughter-in-law with the means of wreaking vengeance on Agate for the rest of his life.

'Pa'-his mother would say. 'Do you remember the time when you sneaked up on Lee when he was out in the privy, an'…'

Or, 'Ma'-his father would say. 'You remember the time when Lee got sent home from school f'r havin' lice in his pants? 'Pears like someone told him if he set on a hen's nest long enough he could lay aigs, an'…'

Or, 'Yessir, that Lee was really a case. Fell t'sleep in church with his mouth open, an' a big ol' Juney-bug flew down his throat. Had to knock him out with a prayer book before we could get him calmed down…'

That was the way it went. That was the way, with Lee Agate trying to smile, unable to chide his own parents; his wife listening, eyes sparkling maliciously. And later, when passion or tenderness mounted in him, when his being cried out for the understanding he had so freely given himself, then, then a chilling snigger, a gesture of simulated disgust, a suggestion that he go on out to the privy, the repeated implication that he was stupid or perverted or clumsy or nasty or vicious, any and all of the unpleasant things which the senile anecdotes of his parents had painted him as being.

Naturally, his wife's attitude carried over to his children. He had never been able to correct them or even to suggest a course of conduct to them without arousing their derision. It had been a very long time since he had tried to, just as it had been a very long time since he had made any gesture of love to his wife; anything more than the merest peck on the cheek. She resented this, of course, and his children resented his abandonment of his proper role in the family. Perhaps, in the final analysis, he was at fault rather than they.

It is an unquestioned tradition in the lore of the American family that the adult male would go the way of the buffalo except for the protection and guidance of his wife and children. He may be trusted to perform brain surgery, but never to sharpen a pencil. He may be a chef, but in his own home he cannot boil water. He may be a writer, but his help on a freshman theme is a virtual guarantee of a failing grade.

Possibly there is an inverse relationship between the low rating of the American male in his own home and the alarming increase in impotence, insanity, alcoholism, homosexuality, suicides, divorces, abortions, murders, censorship and educated illiterates. Still, the male is holding out rather well against the loved ones who want only to tear him apart and gobble him up. He makes his office his home, his work his pride. Undistracted, he proves his worthwhileness over and over, eventually garnering so much moral muscle that even his kiddies are impressed and refrain from cursing him in front of strangers, and his little woman gives him a little of what little women have to give without first making him confess that he is a walleyed son-of-a-bitch and that she is the nicest, sweetest, darlingest, generousest, beautifulest, unselfishest, perfectest, ad infinitum, ad nauseum something- oranother that ever dwelt south of heaven.

Unfortunately for Lee Agate (and his family) he had no job. Not in the true sense of the word. A