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Excerpts from Last Call
From "Easter Weekend"
March-April 1958
Saturday afternoon, Mr. Tate father took them all to see The
Ten Commandments, a special event since they had never, as a family,
been to an indoor movie
theater before. Several times each summer, especially before Rich was born,
they all went to the Charnelle Drive-in. Mr. Tate would park the truck with
the bed facing the screen, and they’d sit on cushions in the back,
Manny lying atop the cab, Gloria down front in the grassy area with her girlfriends
or later in some beat-up jalopy with another girl and two pimply-faced boys.
A sweaty jug of iced lemonade and a huge paper bag full of buttered popcorn
(which they’d spent the afternoon popping at home) were wedged beside
the wheel hump. Laura’s father would clamp the speakers to each side
of the truck and turn the volume up high, even though it wasn’t necessary
because the sound from the two hundred other speakers in the drive-in could
easily be heard. But that was okay with Laura. She loved the effect, strange,
almost dreamlike, of hearing the same private conversation being carried
on simultaneously all around her while the film flickered on the monstrous,
bug-spattered
screen. It was both communal and intimate—the smell of food, the collective
smacking and munching and swallowing, the stars twinkling overhead like a
Hollywood effect. If the movie was boring, she would look around or head
off to the
bathroom. Sometimes she would spy couples kissing in cars and trucks, ponytails
smashed against the windows, and other vehicles parked way in the back, windows
fogged over, rocking slightly. It often seemed to her like permissible eavesdropping,
a public display of secrets.
The Paladian Theater in Amarillo, however, possessed
its own special exoticism. It had just opened its doors, and Mr. Tate wanted
to see a movie there because
he had supervised a portion of the construction the previous fall. They arrived
a good half-hour before the film began, bought their tickets, and Mr. Tate
spoke with the manager and then gave them all a tour of the theater, which
seemed as
thrillingly majestic as an English palace with its tall, red, crushed-velvet
curtains, and the gold and black rococo curlicues on the facing of the balcony,
and the screen towering impressively above them, protected and veiled rather
than exposed, like the drive-in screen, to the elements and insects and beer-swigging
vandalism of adolescent boys.
Dressed sharply in a white shirt, jeans, and
boots, Mr. Tate spoke to and laughed with the manager like they were old
friends, and then he strode about
the empty
theater like he owned it, pointing to the inlaid design of the balcony,
explaining the joist work of the three pillars and steel-framed balcony support
which
he himself had welded, rattling off the cost of the seats and the curtains
and the
screen, which indicated (Laura couldn’t quite tell from her father’s
tone) either magnanimous wealth or a waste of money. At his insistence, Manny,
Gene, and Laura clambered up the carpeted, spiral stairs to the balcony and
leaned over the ledge, waving down to Rich, who stood smiling like a munchkin
before
the massive screen.
They took their seats as other people filed in. Mr. Tate
gave Manny and Laura three dollars and told them—in a clownish, mock-hick
voice that made everybody laugh—to “oversee the movie vittles.” They
bought lemonade for their parents, Velma, and Rich, and root beer for themselves
and Gene, a
brick of Hershey’s chocolate for everybody to share, as well as two
big bags of popcorn scooped from the reservoir of orange-yellow fluff.
The glass-covered light bulbs dimmed. The red curtain parted
as the music from the first short, a Disney cartoon, trumpeted. Unlike the
drive-in,
the sound
was not loud, but it was clear, the picture sharp, brighter without the
crackles and lines and burn holes she had learned to ignore on the outdoor
screen.
A trailer for a black and white John Wayne western and then a
newsreel, and then the movie itself. Laura hadn’t quite known what
to expect—a Technicolor
sermon?—but soon she was enthralled by the grand panoramic majesty
of it all. It made her want to read the Bible. Who knew it was that
romantic, that
dramatic?
When they had arrived in early afternoon it had been hot
and cloudless, but when they emerged from the theater over four hours
later, the sun
had slipped
beneath
the horizon. The sidewalk and grass glistened with rain, the sky
milky purple, as swollen and variegated as a two-day bruise. Laura felt disoriented.
It
was like falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon and waking
in
the night,
not sure what had happened or even what day it was. Time seemed to
evaporate or be
kidnapped. She didn’t know if she liked this feeling—thick,
narcotic, as palpable as an overripe melon.
Aunt Velma loved the movie,
though she thought it a little racy for kids.
Rich had fallen asleep. Manny loved the fights and the special effects,
and Gene’s
favorite part was when Moses seemed to be walking around in a burning bush-induced
glaze, his face red, his hair suddenly white. Mr. Tate thought it was way
too long and had twice stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. Mrs. Tate
liked the
Exodus—the joy on all those people’s faces when they finally
left Egypt.
“What did you think, Laura?” Aunt Velma asked.
“I loved it.”
“And your favorite part?”
“All of it,” she said, but felt her answer disappointed everyone.
They had given specifics, but she still felt too stunned by the
experience to talk about it.
***
Easter Sunday. They rose before dawn and went
to the sunrise service
at Aunt Velma’s church, where the preacher recounted the
old familiar story of the Crucifixion, the days of darkness,
the stone mysteriously moved from the
tomb, Jesus appearing to the women who loved Him and then later
to His disciples, who needed testing, a hand in the holes of
His body, and the final glorious ascension,
hallelujah, hallelujah, amen.
Laura listened absently. She’d
heard this story many times, and while on Friday, during Aunt
Velma’s dinner blessing,
it had seemed vividly alive, it now had lost its power to hold
her attention. It seemed, in fact, hackneyed
compared to the movie they’d watched yesterday. She bent
her head, as if in prayer, closed her eyes and tried to unfurl
the movie in her mind. The most
distinct images weren’t the ones she would have thought—the
Red Sea parting, Pharaoh’s army stopped by the pillar of
fire. She saw, instead, the more intimate moments. The princess
playing that crazy game, called Hounds
and Jackals, with the Pharaoh. (It stunned her to think of Biblical
figures playing board games.) The gold dress “spun from
the beards of shellfish.” Moses
in chains in the dungeon, the princess prostrate before him.
The dark shine of his sweaty body, half-naked and caked in mud,
in the immaculate throne room before
his father, who turned away from him, who forbade the name of
Moses to be mentioned again. Yul Brynner with that black snake
of hair coiled exotically out of the
side of his bald head.
Everyone suddenly stood and shuffled the
hymnals. She opened her eyes and stood up, too, out of habit,
and pretended to sing, “He arose, He arose, He arose,” while
a bright flicker of shame goosed over her because she’d
been thinking about the movie, particularly Moses’ sweat-glistened
chest, instead of being thankful for Jesus dying to take away
her sins. (pp. 14-18)
To read the rest of “Easter
Weekend,” buy Last Call.
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From "Texas Moon"
1978
The band had just begun the Cotton-Eyed Joe, and I could see from under
the table the legs of the dancers like spokes of a wheel stomping around
on the
dance floor, everybody chanting,
One, two, three. BULL-SHIT!
What’d you say? BULL-SHIT!
I had never seen the Cotton-Eyed Joe from
this angle. It was quite a sight. All the skirts swirling, legs rubbing against
each other to the whine
of the fiddle.
About that time two big boots and a pair of denim jeans appeared at the
table. I could tell without a word spoken that it was Rich, my brother.
“Did you lose your keys again or are you out of chewing tobacco?”
It
was an embarrassing situation, me under the table in the sawdust at The Texas
Moon. I was trying to hide from Angie, my wife, who I’d glimpsed just
moments earlier. Trapped in the corner of the bar, there was no place for
me to go but
under.
Rich stuck his head down to get a better look. A white skirt
fluttered between his bowed legs. He’d already had a few drinks, I
could tell. His blonde beard looked too curly, like a girl had fingered it,
and his eyes were glassy.
“I’ve got some Red Man, Gene. You don’t have to chew sawdust.” He
pulled the pouch from his pocket and offered it to me. He loved
to rile me. I scooped up a small handful of sawdust and poured it in his open
pouch.
That silly bastard mixed it up with his index finger, pinched off
a big wad and stuck it in the front of his lip. He didn’t
even flinch, just kept playing along, like it was the sweetest-tasting
thing he had ever sucked on. It must
have been a pretty ridiculous sight, us carrying on a conversation,
me under the table, him chewing sawdust, his butt facing the dance
floor.
Rich was semi-crazy, that was for sure. And the luckiest
man I ever knew. When he was twenty, he bought himself a ‘76
red Nova with two bright purple stripes down the hood. The second
day he had it his brakes locked as we raced
down Adirondack Street, and he plowed right into a huge sycamore
tree. I jumped out of my Skylark, thinking he was dead for sure,
but when the firemen wedged
the door open, Rich crawled out with only a few scratches on his
arm. He’d
get into a fight every other week or so, come home bloody, but
never disfigured. He’d had pool cues busted over his head,
bats cracked across his kneecaps, beer bottles practically shoved
down his throat. He claimed he’d even been
swimming with sharks when he rigged off-shore. He had come through
it all laughing like the blessed idiot he was. Eating sawdust wasn’t
any big deal.
“You care to have any, Gene?” He held the pouch out to me, grinning. “It
sure is tasty.”
“I’ll pass, thank you.”
“Suit yourself. By the way, Angie’s here,” he said. “She’s
over by the pool tables with Shelly Denison. She looks mighty
good.”
I got out from under the table. The Texas Moon used to be a roller
skating rink back when Rich and I were growing up, but it had
been converted
into a country
and western club a few years back, so now there was a large dance
floor where the rink used to be, three bars, a stage big enough
for a six-piece
band,
pool tables in one corner and in the other a mechanical bull
on which I had seen
just a few months earlier a man break his neck. Rich and I had
been coming here more
often since our sister, Gloria, and her son, Travis, started
working here. Gloria’s
husband and oldest son had died in a car accident earlier in
the year, and while they waited for the lawyers to bicker over
the insurance settlement, they had
been working—her as a waitress, he as an under-aged helper
for the bartenders. I felt bad for them, and visited them whenever
I could. Since they’d been
working here, they both seemed in better spirits. It was that
kind of place. The good band music, the lively crowds, the dancing,
and the silliness of the
mechanical bull could cheer you up.
Across the dance floor, Angie
leaned over the green felt on the center pool table, a cue stick
in her hand, studying her shot.
She looked
wonderful, wearing the
blue cotton captain’s shirt I’d bought her last summer
at South Padre Island, her thick black hair done up in a French
braid, the way I liked it. It’s
a strange thing to see a woman you love and have lived with after
not seeing her for four months. It makes you wonder, for one
thing, what the hell you are
doing piddling around on the floor of The Texas Moon.
We had
been separated for about six months, the longest we’d ever
been apart. I hadn’t seen her at all in four months because
we hadn’t
broken up on the best of terms, and she said she was going to
file for divorce this time. I felt sure she was bluffing. We’d
always been together and, except for a few intervals, I was sure
we always would be. At the moment, though,
I had about ten good reasons for not wanting to see her, the
most important of which was that I owed her money.
“Does she know I’m here?” I asked Rich.
“She didn’t ask.”
“
Did you volunteer the information?”
“She ain’t dumb, Gene.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“What the hell are you so scared of?” he asked.
“It’s not a matter of being scared.” He was awfully stupid
sometimes. He’d never been married himself, though
he’d been dating
a girl named Babs for about a year, and there were
things I couldn’t seem
to explain to him. “She doesn’t want to see me, does
she?” I
asked.
“I’m not one to tell you what you can and cannot do. I gotta get
back to the pool table. I have a game coming up.”
“Go on then,” I said.
“Could you loan me a twenty?” he asked, but changed his request
when he saw my face. “Ten? I lost some money to a
little Mexican runt, and I want a chance to win it
back.”
I had just been paid, so I had a little
more than a hundred with me. I handed Rich a twenty. “I’m
going home,” I
said.
“You can’t hide from her forever,” he called over his shoulder
from the middle of the dance floor. He didn’t
even wait for an answer, just laughed and walked
toward the pool tables, sawdust bulging in his lower
lip. Crazy bastard. (pp. 71-74)
To read the rest of “Texas
Moon,” buy Last
Call.
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From "Costa Rica"
1970-71
In 1970, my father quits selling carpet and goes into business for
himself. He and my mother and his parents get in on the ground level of a
cosmetics firm. They sell lipstick, aloe vera, eyeliner, face powder, blush,
fingernail
polish, fingernail polish remover, the works. My mother is pretty, blonde,
a model, so that helps selling. They travel around Texas and Oklahoma in
a car and give speeches in bank lobbies and restaurant banquet rooms and
sell cosmetics out of briefcases. Though only six, I preach the powers
of positive thinking. People love me. I’m a star on the cosmetics circuit.
My father gets some distributors underneath him, in a pyramid structure,
and then he is in business.
In six months we are rich.
Success breeds success. My grandmother and mother
discover a wonderful bra, something special about lifting and supporting.
My father thinks
it’s funny. “Push
those titties up and create some cleavage,” he says and demonstrates
on my mother, pinching her nipples through the fabric of her blouse, then
squeezing
her breasts together so that a dark line appears where her flesh meets. He
laughs.
“I’m serious,” she says and slaps his hand away.
They prove
it to him by selling, door-to-door, over four hundred bras in a week and
plop down five thousand dollars on the coffee table. So my father
buys a
warehouse in downtown Dallas and starts a bra and lingerie business.
He
puts my grandmother and my mother in charge, president and vice-president.
They
make more money.
I stop giving speeches about positive thinking, and
instead start playing with Max, the son of the manager of the huge condominium
complex where
we live.
I go over to Max’s place one day, and he shows me the master
key to all the mailboxes in the complex.
“Come with me,” he says.
***
By now my father is driving a Cadillac
Eldorado and is making deals, big deals, with men named Donald Duck and Carlos
Esposito and Bob
McKay. Carlos
is married
to the daughter of a Costa Rican diplomat, who owns twelve thousand
acres. My father and his friends put their heads together and
decide to buy
Costa Rica.
All of it. Start a timber and cattle operation. Clear cut and
then have the cattle graze the land.
With Carlos, Bob, my grandfather, and
my uncle, my father flies down to Costa Rica to scope out the situation.
Once in the country,
they
rent a
pilot and
a Cessna. The plane is small, though, so only my father, Carlos,
Bob, and the pilot
can go.
They take off. There are miles of hundred foot trees
in Costa Rica. The plane dips down low in a valley so they can
survey
the jungle.
Then the
pilot tries
to nose the plane over a mountain range. My father and Bob and
Carlos are looking out the windows, taking lots of pictures—both
snapshots and sixteen millimeter. It starts to rain, suddenly,
hard, and one of the engines sputters. The pilot
doesn’t want to hit the mountain, so he tells them, in
a mixture of English and Spanish, to fasten their seatbelts because
he is going to try a crash landing.
Everybody goes nuts.
“Are you crazy?” my father shouts. “We’ll die if we hit
those trees.”
“We have no choice,” the pilot says. “Better the jungle
than the mountain.”
***
Meanwhile, I am at home, sitting on the bed beside
my mother. She is holding a belt in one hand, and she is crying because
she does
not
like to whip
me but knows that I must be whipped, and whipped hard, because
Max and I threw
one hundred
and thirty-four mailboxes full of letters, bills, and magazines
in the gutter before Max’s father caught us.
My mother
says, “You know this hurts me to do this, don’t
you?”
I remain still, look at the belt, a thin red
one with a thick gold square buckle I’ve seen her wear
many times. Whatever I say will be wrong. Then she is holding
on to my arm with one hand and hitting my butt and legs with
the belt.
She is the hub of the wheel, our connected arms the spoke,
and I am rolling in painful circles on the carpet, shrieking
for her to stop. The phone rings, but
my mother does not answer it. I put my hand out to stop the
belt and receive a whop. I scream.
“Don’t put it back there if you don’t want it hit,” my
mother says calmly.
We are in the middle of this when my
grandmother opens the door. Her face is sad, her eyes bloodshot, and it is
clear
she has
been crying.
For me, I believe.
My mother stops with the belt and I feel overwhelming love
and gratitude for my grandmother, this woman with white
cotton candy
for hair.
She says, “Laura, Neil’s plane
has crashed.”
***
When my father regains consciousness,
he discovers three things more or less simultaneously:
one, he is alive; two, his
ribs are probably
broken
and his
back and arms lacerated; and, three, it is incredibly
humid and dark. He calls out
for Carlos, Bob, and the pilot, and hears, about ten
feet away, the voice of the pilot, gibbering in Spanish. In the
dark, he tries to
dislodge
himself from his seat, but when he stands the pain in
his
ribs
stabs him and he
only feels
a white-hot flash in his head before he topples over.
***
My uncle stays to help the search party while my grandfather immediately flies
back from Costa Rica to comfort us
and to tell us the brutal
truth of the situation.
There are rescue crews searching, but, quite frankly,
there is very little chance—one
in a thousand—of even finding the plane in such
impenetrable forests, and even less chance of survival.
My grandfather tells us that a DC10 crashed in
the jungles several years ago and no one even found
the plane. My mother begins to sob uncontrollably,
keening,
but my grandmother, a Sun Belt Baptist and sometime
reader of fortunes, looks my grandfather in the face
and calmly tells him, “Neil
will not die young. I know it.” We turn to her,
expectantly.
We believe her, though she will be wrong.
(pp. 149-152)
To read the rest of “Costa Rica,” buy Last Call.
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