Midnight Cowboy (11 page)

But in this sweeping view he felt something had been glossed over or left out; some first-class sonofabitch was playing hide-and-seek in his memory. But who? Or what?

And all at once he thought of Sally Buck.

Sally Buck on the telephone: “Joe, how you doin’, honey, that’s nice, listen, I got me a late appointment, and I’ll be s’tired when I get outa here, I might just step around the corner to the Horse and Saddle for a beer or two.”

“Handsome? How you feelin’? Listen, y’gramaw’s goin’ t’Santa Fe for over the Fourth, looks like I got me a new beau, how’s that for an ole lady, huh? You be all right here in town, won’t you.”

Sally Buck standing in the doorway of her bedroom:

“Believe I’ll just hit the hay, sweetheart, get a decent night sleep for a change, did you have a nice day, better tell me all about it in the mornin’, I’m too tired to follow what y’sayin’.”

Sally Buck in her beauty shop:

“Listen, sugar, this waitin’ room is for ladies and you know how they are, you take that magazine along home if you want, and don’t play too hard now.”

“Hey, toots, they’s no point in you waitin’ around for me. I might have to stop off at Molly V Ed’s anyhow. Can’t you tuck y’self in like a big fella?”

“Report card? Didn’t I just sign one last week? You mean it’s been six weeks! Lord, how time flies, give it here, where do I do it, on the back? There! Now run along, baby, I got me a head in there waitin for a set.”

Sally Buck. He couldn’t remember why he’d ever loved her so much: silly, pinch-faced old chatterbox, never sat still, always dabbing at her nose with perfume so you couldn’t smell the liquor (but you could anyway), or pulling dollar bills out of her pocketbook to buy off old promises she’d made, forever fooling with a compact or picking lint off her dress whenever you tried to tell something to her. All he could think of in her favor was how spindly her legs were and how sad it was to look at her big bony knees when she crossed them. But even as a ghost in that Albuquerque hotel room, she couldn’t give a little real attention to him, just sat there fretting about getting her house back or riding horseback or some damn thing. Ride on, Sally, old fool, he thought, ride on to the devil. Set his head in curls while you’re at it. Shee-it.

And
who
, questioned his mind, straining after a sense of fairness that would make his case even tighter,
who
had ever looked upon him as a creature worth giving the time of day to? Who? Just say who. There came to mind two faces and a cowboy song. The faces he would not allow: The owner of one was in the loony bin, and the other had not been a flesh-and-blood person for nearly two thousand years, if then. And that left
git along little dogie git along git along
…

Woodsy Niles I

Woodsy Niles was clearly an exception. But what good was he here and now? The memory picture of him was too shiny, too brilliant to look upon with any trust, it was nothing but the tobacco-scented, guitar-strumming, grining-devil souvenir of a long-ago, long-ago summer; and so rare, much too rare to find a place for in any useful view of the world. And so the crazy, shining, blue-bearded face of Woodsy Niles and the big bony knees of Sally Buck he placed out of the range of his thinking: They were dangerous to him, they caused the anger to run out of him. And somehow he had come to know that if he was going to manage in the world, he’d need all the anger he could keep hold of.

Joe found himself working faster and harder in the scullery of the Sunshine Cafeteria. There was a kind of fever in the way he loaded the dishes into the trays and threw the trays onto the conveyor belt. It was as if he had to feed just so many millions of dishes into the steaming jaws of that machine, and then it would be appeased and belch up enough money to …

He wasn’t certain what the money was for. He only knew he had to get some of it together in order to cause something to happen. He went about with the single eye of a man with a plan. But he didn’t quite know what the plan was.

Three mornings a week he spent in a gymnasium, where he performed strenuous exercises, punched a bag, and swam the length of the pool eight times. He watched his body acquire new strength and agility. He massaged his scalp and fooled with his hair a lot, and he became obsessed with the acquisition of a Western wardrobe, carrying with him night and day a feeling, a belief, that everything would change for the better when he had created himself in a certain new image. He knew what the image was, that of a cowboy, but he never did press himself too far on the question of how that image would make his life different. There is an Indian legend that at a certain time in the life of a young man he is given a dream in which he sees a mask, and when he awakens he must set to work carving a real mask in that dream image. This is the mask he must wear into battle in order to be victorious. It was as if Joe Buck had had such a dream, and his life was given over to the carving of the mask.

He wasted little time these days in longing for the company of others or in any kind of brooding. If he had no kin in the world, who was there to yearn for?

But he did do a lot of aimless wandering at night when he left the cafeteria. To Joe it was not aimless at all. Ask him what he was doing, and he would have brushed the question aside, as if his purpose were to be found somewhere deeper than questions and answers could penetrate. But he was clearly searching the town for something. He kept his eyes wide open and alert, scanning the nighttime streets of downtown Houston like a warrior scout. Very little of what he saw seemed worth remembering. Most of what passed his eye left no more of a mark on him than images leave on the face of a mirror.

But there were, from his many nights of wandering and looking, three pictures that had somehow fallen through to a level in him deeper than the surface, and these, in memory, showed themselves to him over and over again:

One was a cutout image of a young Hollywood actor floodlighted on top of a movie marquee. He stood there with his suntanned snarl in full color, two stories bigger than life, legs apart, pelvis thrust forward, and he was in the act of turning a big gun on you. The barrel of it was coming at you thick and gleaming, and it was about to go off.

The second article in this nighttime collection of images was a brief scene on a street corner. A long white convertible was stopped for a red light. The woman in the driver’s seat was looking at a tall, handsome young man in Western clothes standing at the curb. Her motor died under her. But she kept on looking at the young man. After a moment she said, “I can’t get it started without help.” And the young man said, “I’ll
bet
you can’t, honey.”

The third picture to remain in him from these walks was the only one he couldn’t enjoy looking at later. But whether or not he liked it, it was one of the three and would not be discarded. This was a large poster depicting that bearded young man in whose eyes resides all the sorrow of history. Above his head was a message attributed to him in a large Gothic typeface, and on the bottom of the poster, scrawled there in raspberry-colored lipstick, were the words
FUCK THEE
.

And these were the things Joe Buck found as he was seeking to find his way.

The power of a Greyhound bus impressed itself upon Joe at once, and during the first hundred east-bound miles he gave his attention over to it almost entirely: the sound the changing gears made, the breathing of the brakes, and, on the open road, the deep bass hum of a thing that was not exhausted by the miles but seemed to thrive on them. There was an empty seat in the front opposite the driver, and Joe sat up there smoking for a while, fascinated by what was taking place between the bus and the highway, the way the highway seemed to enter it underneath, all these miles disappearing into an enormous machine and the machine all the while seeming to get leaner and more fit. Before returning to his own seat, Joe wanted to make some remark to the driver. “It’s a powerful mothah, ain’t it?” But the driver didn’t look up.

Walking back toward his own seat, Joe felt like a circus performer dancing on horseback. This great being through whose center he moved had something in common with himself, but Joe was little better equipped to think about it than was the bus itself. He felt it, though, some kind of masterful participation in the world of time and space, a moving forward into destiny.

Back in his own seat, he smiled at this new sense of himself and blew a kiss at his new boots, and before long his eyes were closed and he was sleeping the deep black sleep of a creature who has not yet been born.

The first half of Joe’s big trip East was passed in this way. Sometimes his eyes were open, but even at such intervals he dreamed himself into whatever landscape he was passing through, still so confident of himself and his future that he gave them scarcely a passing thought.

It was on the afternoon of the second day, the day on which at five
P.M
. his arrival was to take place, that Joe became somewhat fretful. Perfection had begun to arouse his suspicions. It occurred to him that he might be embroiled in some colossal confidence game in which he was both victim and perpetrator. For instance: Exactly what in hell was he going to do in New York City? He kept glancing above him, taking reassurance from the presence of his black-and-white horsehide suitcase and all the fine articles it contained, and every few minutes he touched the hip on which his money rode. He searched the faces of other passengers, wondering if someone among them was a potential ally or if they were all strangers like himself, uneasy at the prospect of arrival in the richest and tallest of all cities.

The last rest stop was at a Howard Johnson’s in Pennsylvania. Joe took his suitcase with him into the men’s room and spent the twenty minutes grooming himself for his arrival in New York City. He shaved, splashed himself with Florida Water, changed into a fresh shirt, and gave a quick spit-shine to his boots. Even though there were other men using the facilities, Joe could not resist using the mirror in his own peculiar way. He walked away from it, prepared his expression, his attitude, then spun around to surprise his image. What he saw was tremendously comforting to him. When he click-click-clicked out of that men’s room, other passengers were already returning to the bus. Two very young girls, occupants of seats near the front of the bus who had been keenly aware of Joe Buck’s presence throughout the trip, were climbing aboard just ahead of him. One of them, stimulated by his proximity, giggled breathlessly. Joe was as pleased as he could be. As he passed their seat, he tipped his Stetson and allowed them full benefit of the sweet, crooked smile he had developed. Their reaction was wild and hysterical: For miles, in a kind of heavenly hell of painful titillation, the girls stifled screams, hid behind damp handkerchiefs and struck each other. Joe was reassured and couldn’t remember what he’d been worried about. What to do when he got to New York? Shee-it, what could be simpler? Head for Times Square and follow his nose.

Suddenly up ahead was the Manhattan skyline, buildings like markers in a crowded graveyard. Joe’s hand moved to his crotch, and under his breath he said, “I’m gonna take hold o’ this thing and I’m gonna swing it like a lasso and I’m gonna rope in this whole fuckin’ island.”

At the Times Square Palace Hotel, Joe was conducted to his room by a shriveled old bellhop who called him “sir” a number of times and carried his suitcase for him. Joe gave him a dollar and then closed the door and examined the room. It was twice as expensive as the place in Houston, but many times more pleasant, and it had a private bath as well. The walls had been freshly greened; the bedspread was spotlessly clean, tan in color; the furniture was maple. Over the bed was a water color of the Manhattan skyline, and next to the bed a telephone on a stand. Joe believed himself to be in a first-class situation.

He unpacked, placing his radio on the bedside table. Then he lighted a cigarette and sat at a small desk in front of the window, looking back and forth in amazement at his two new worlds, 42nd Street out there, throbbing and rich and noisy, and this place inside where his hat would hang and where his head would rest.

He sat for a long time studying the bureau, and for one crazy moment he found himself unable to believe that his personal belongings were still there, even though he himself had just placed them there. For that brief moment he was convinced that when something was out of sight it lost its existence altogether.

He hurried across the room and looked into the mirror. It was a relief to find that he himself was still there, but he was not entirely certain until he had waved and smiled at his image and blown a cloud of smoke at it. Then he checked the drawers of the bureau and the closet. Reassured, he crossed the room again, stopping to smile once more at his reflection in the mirror, saying: “Now you take it easy, cowboy. You’re all settled in here, about to get rich.” He performed a little hip dance, mimicking copulation, and returned to the desk to finish smoking his cigarette.

“New York City,” he said, looking at the street. A fat incredibly sloppy old woman, sitting on the sidewalk under a movie marquee across the street, poured something from a bottle onto her filthy, naked feet and rubbed them with her free hand. No one paid much attention to her. A policeman watched with some interest but no concern and then moved on.