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Authors: Charles Portis
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absolutely no charge. His company would be payment enough. He questioned me about my driving skills and I assured him that I was a good driver. He said he was afraid to take a Mexican bus because the drivers here had a reputation for trying to beat out locomotives at grade crossings. He offered me some money in advance and I waved it aside. I told him I would pick him up in the morning.
I had planned on searching the sky that night for the Southern Cross and the Coalsack but when I left the bar it was overcast and drizzling rain. I bought two hot dogs from a man pushing a cart around the square. One block away the town was totally dark. I staggered down the middle of the cobbled street and tried to make it appear that I was sauntering. In the darkened doorways there were people smoking cigarettes and thinking their Mexican thoughts.
A hotel cat, a white one, followed me up the stairs to my room and I gave him one of the hot dogs. I didnât let him in the room. That would be a misplaced kindness. He would take up with me and then I would have to leave. Just inside the door there was a full-length mirror and the image it gave back was wavy and yellowish. I knew that Norma must have stood before it and adjusted her clothes. What would she be wearing? I liked her best in her winter clothes and I couldnât remember much about her summer things. What a knockout she was in her white coat and her red knit cap! With Jack Frost nipping her cheeks and her wavy nose!
Four
R AIN WAS STILL FALLING when I got up in the morning. After I had paid the hotel bill, I had seven or eight dollars and around sixty pesos left. There was a terrible metallic clatter when I tried to start the car. A bad water pump or a bad universal joint will give you notice before it goes but this was some sudden and major failure, or so I thought. A broken connecting rod or a broken timing chain. Strength of materials! Well, I said to myself, the little Buick is done.
I got out and opened the hood. There was the white cat, decapitated by the fan blades. I couldnât believe it. He had crawled up into the engine compartment of this car, not another car, and there was my bloody handiwork. I couldnât handle anything. I couldnât even manage the minor decencies of life. I could hardly get my breath and I walked around and around the car.
A boy with some schoolbooks stopped to watch me and I gave him ten pesos to remove the carcass. I tried to get a grip on myself. Idleness and solitude led to these dramatics: an ordinary turd indulging himself as the chief of sinners. I drove down to the square and waited for the bank to open. My hands were shaking. I had read somewhere that white cats were very often deaf, like Dalmatian dogs. I had dry mouth and tunnel vision.
The bank manager said he could not cash the bonds but he could accept them as a deposit if I wished to open a checking account. They should clear in about a month. A month! Why had I not cashed them all in the States? What a piddler! Norma would have enjoyed this and I couldnât have blamed her for it. I was always impatient with this kind of childish improvidence in other people.
The Siesta trailer park was now a field of mud. Dr. Symes was having coffee in his white Ford bus. The passenger seats had been removed from the thing and replaced by a clutter of household furnishings that had not been anchored or scaled down or customized in any way. There was a dirty mattress on the floor and a jumble of boxes and chairs and tables. It was an old manâs mess on top of a hippie mess. I accepted a roll and passed up the coffee. I loved those Mexican rolls but I didnât like the looks of the doctorâs cup and Iâve never cared for instant coffee because it has no smell.
I was frank with him. I explained the bonds problem and I showed him exactly how much money I had. It was a bad moment. I was already embarrassed by my behavior in the bar and now, after all the expansive
I had planned on searching the sky that night for the Southern Cross and the Coalsack but when I left the bar it was overcast and drizzling rain. I bought two hot dogs from a man pushing a cart around the square. One block away the town was totally dark. I staggered down the middle of the cobbled street and tried to make it appear that I was sauntering. In the darkened doorways there were people smoking cigarettes and thinking their Mexican thoughts.
A hotel cat, a white one, followed me up the stairs to my room and I gave him one of the hot dogs. I didnât let him in the room. That would be a misplaced kindness. He would take up with me and then I would have to leave. Just inside the door there was a full-length mirror and the image it gave back was wavy and yellowish. I knew that Norma must have stood before it and adjusted her clothes. What would she be wearing? I liked her best in her winter clothes and I couldnât remember much about her summer things. What a knockout she was in her white coat and her red knit cap! With Jack Frost nipping her cheeks and her wavy nose!
Four
R AIN WAS STILL FALLING when I got up in the morning. After I had paid the hotel bill, I had seven or eight dollars and around sixty pesos left. There was a terrible metallic clatter when I tried to start the car. A bad water pump or a bad universal joint will give you notice before it goes but this was some sudden and major failure, or so I thought. A broken connecting rod or a broken timing chain. Strength of materials! Well, I said to myself, the little Buick is done.
I got out and opened the hood. There was the white cat, decapitated by the fan blades. I couldnât believe it. He had crawled up into the engine compartment of this car, not another car, and there was my bloody handiwork. I couldnât handle anything. I couldnât even manage the minor decencies of life. I could hardly get my breath and I walked around and around the car.
A boy with some schoolbooks stopped to watch me and I gave him ten pesos to remove the carcass. I tried to get a grip on myself. Idleness and solitude led to these dramatics: an ordinary turd indulging himself as the chief of sinners. I drove down to the square and waited for the bank to open. My hands were shaking. I had read somewhere that white cats were very often deaf, like Dalmatian dogs. I had dry mouth and tunnel vision.
The bank manager said he could not cash the bonds but he could accept them as a deposit if I wished to open a checking account. They should clear in about a month. A month! Why had I not cashed them all in the States? What a piddler! Norma would have enjoyed this and I couldnât have blamed her for it. I was always impatient with this kind of childish improvidence in other people.
The Siesta trailer park was now a field of mud. Dr. Symes was having coffee in his white Ford bus. The passenger seats had been removed from the thing and replaced by a clutter of household furnishings that had not been anchored or scaled down or customized in any way. There was a dirty mattress on the floor and a jumble of boxes and chairs and tables. It was an old manâs mess on top of a hippie mess. I accepted a roll and passed up the coffee. I loved those Mexican rolls but I didnât like the looks of the doctorâs cup and Iâve never cared for instant coffee because it has no smell.
I was frank with him. I explained the bonds problem and I showed him exactly how much money I had. It was a bad moment. I was already embarrassed by my behavior in the bar and now, after all the expansive
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