Hello Darlin' (5 page)

I got up to get some dry clothes and when I returned, the bag was frozen solid. I
woke my dad and asked if I could get in with him.

“Lukey, there’s barely room in here for me,” he said. “You can get some canvas out
of the back of the truck and curl up with the dog.”

I’d already tried that. From then on, Nora slept alone.

Such discomforts were forgotten as soon as I set out in pursuit of deer. I can still
recall every detail of my first one. It’s an event you never forget. I was seated
in an outcropping of rocks when I heard a
thump-thump-thump.
Looking around, I saw about thirty deer on my right, running toward me. In those
days, there were hundreds of deer. I once counted more than eight hundred in a single
field at night with a spotlight. These particular deer had been spooked by something.
I could tell from the way they ran. Then they stopped right in front of me and the
biggest buck I’d ever seen was looking straight at me. I dropped him on my first shot.

Deer hunting is a rite of passage in Texas. I felt like I was now a man.

*   *   *

That trip also saw me go through another rite of passage. By the sixth day, we were
out of booze and beer. My dad and his friends were unable
to imagine continuing their trip without more firewater. They organized a liquor
run to Piedras Negras, a little town across the border in Mexico. Dad turned to me
and said something about the fact that I had a girlfriend who I’d been seeing for
a long time. He was speaking about Joey. I said, “No, sir, we don’t get that far.”
And I wasn’t lying.

“Well, son,” he said, “we’re going to get you laid.”

I was thunderstruck. We drove straight into the red light district, which actually
had red lights in front of the different bars, and we entered a dance hall. Nobody
was dancing, but there were about thirty girls sitting around the bar. After drinking
about four or five Carta Blancas, my dad told me to pick one out. I still couldn’t
believe this was about to happen.

“What?”

“We’re going to get you bred down here.”

It was a real situation. To save face, I wasn’t able to say no. I glanced around at
the girls and picked out one that looked nice—kind and pretty. Dad motioned to her,
worked out a price (five bucks), and watched as she took me into a little cabin that
was barely large enough for her bed, which I sat on with great trepidation. The cabin
was lit by a string of Christmas lights and the walls were papered with magazine photos
of saints and priests and nuns. The religious motif of her crib snuffed whatever ardor
I had brought in, which wasn’t much.

She took off her dress, letting it fall so that the multicolored lights reflected
off her white corset, which was all she wore. Without making eye contact, she unsnapped
the crotch and lay down on the bed. Until that moment I’d never laid eyes on what
I was looking at. While I was amazed, I wasn’t excited, and the perfunctory way this
girl presented herself to me put even more of a damper on my nonexistent ardor.

She nevertheless tried a few things, embarrassing me until I finally let her know
that I wasn’t interested. Instead, in my broken Spanish, we struck a deal. For an
extra five bucks, she went back into the dance
hall and told my dad and his friends what a powerful, virile young man I was. She
was pleased. I was pleased. More important, Dad was pleased. Everyone congratulated
me. My dad praised me on a job well done. Needless to say, I felt pretty good about
the whole thing.

I’d passed the ultimate Texas test—I’d gotten my deer and got laid … kind of.

T
he combination of having a girlfriend and getting my first car, a 1943 Jeep, made
me grow up quickly. I don t think any two things have a more profound effect on a
young man. I was in love and mobile. When Joey went off to college, I was devastated
but I still had my freedom. As a senior, I also branched out socially, writing for
the school newspaper and acting in the school play, a production of a comedy called
This Girl Business.

On opening night, I got my first laugh. By the final performance, I had eight or ten
laughs. I’d learned that once the audience decides you’re funny, they’ll laugh at
almost anything, a look, a gesture … it almost doesn’t matter as long as they buy
into what you’re doing.

After graduation, I began working at the Antelope Tool Company. An opening had been
created for me as a favor to my father, who in his law practice represented the company
as well as its very wealthy owner, Jess Hall Sr. A former pro wrestler, Big Jess,
as he was known, made his fortune by inventing scratchers and centralizers, essential
components in oil drilling. Scratchers kept paraffin from building up on the sides
of the concrete pipes that brought oil up from the depths
of the earth, and centralizers kept the miles-long steel drilling pipes from binding
onto the walls of the hole.

First Play

Big Jess had four sons. For Christmas one year, he gave each one a Beechcraft Bonanza,
a fast little airplane. Awhile later, one of the sons crashed his plane in Canada
and was killed. Because the old man was
ailing at the time, a battle ensued over who would assume control of the family’s
business. Jess Hall Jr.—known as Little Jess—a tough as nails good old boy who laughed
and had a good time, emerged victorious in a drama that would sound familiar to me
many years later.

But enough history I began by making scratchers, alongside my
friend Larry Hall, one of Big Jess’s grandsons. The two of us worked inside an old
metal Quonset hut, where afternoon temperatures inside surged well above the 110-degree
mark. We turned out three or four springs for the scratcher a minute. If we had worked
any faster, we would’ve keeled over from heatstroke. I spent nearly every cent I made
in the Coke machine—and the Cokes were only a nickel apiece.

Scratcher

Shows you how much money I made.

The hut was filled with machines—which Big Jess had also invented—that spit scratchers
out at three hundred a minute. They did a hundred times the work we did without breaking
a sweat. Demoralized after a few weeks I begged for another job.

“Sure thing,” said Little Jess, who put me to work unloading one-hundred-pound sacks
of cement from railroad boxcars that stopped outside Antelope Tool Company. Every
bag had to be lifted by hand. Every fiftieth bag was broken, spilling its contents,
making the conditions horrendous. I worked in cement dust up to my ankles, breathed
the dirty air, and wiped it from my glasses. Whatever dust didn’t make
it into my lungs or eyes stuck to my sweaty skin and hardened. I’d never worked as
hard or gone home as achy and sick.

After my first day, I worked up the nerve to get Mr. Hall to transfer me again. It
was either that or die. He stuck me on the crew of laborers digging sewer lines and
the swimming pool for his new home. The ground was cleechie, a hard sediment rock
resembling cement. It was impossible to dig this stuff. You had to blast it. I would
make a few holes by pounding a stake into the ground, then another guy would load
it with dynamite and blow it up.

Gradually the hole got bigger. Once we got below ground, the lack of air, the heat,
and the lingering dynamite fumes made working in it almost lethal. I got terrible
headaches. Big strong men passed out every few hours. As the bodies piled up, I feared
my turn was coming. Too soon for my taste. I didn’t want to go having dug my own grave.

My dad understood when I quit, but he wouldn’t let me hang around the rest of the
summer, and so he found me a job bucking hay. That was basically more hard manual
labor. I cut alfalfa, tied it in bales, loaded it on trucks, and then unloaded it
in barns. The thick dust in the air and the heat made this job miserable too. But
one guy told me not to worry about the heat. As he explained, Texas got the first
harvest, then everyone migrated north to states with cooler climates. He was actually
excited at the prospect.

“Larry,” he said, “think about all the money we can make following the harvest all
the way up to Montana.”

I’d never seen a man as enthusiastic. He couldn’t have been getting any more money
than I was, and I got only fifty cents an hour.

And for what? Hay for some damn cow to eat.

I had another serious talk with my dad.

“I’m just not cut out for this kind of cowboying,” I said. “I haven’t seen a horse
for two summers, except in a rodeo.”

My dad was sympathetic. Taking pity on me, he suggested a hiatus until the fall, when
I’d start college. But that itself was a subject we hadn’t discussed. College. My
dad laid out his vision. He wanted me
to attend college, then law school, and then join his firm, eventually taking it
over.

I wasn’t a bad student but I wasn’t what you’d call a disciplined student either.

“I don’t think I have that studious quality that’s required to be a good lawyer,”
I said.

“What are you talking about, Larry?” my dad said. “You do great in history. You remembered
your lines in the school play. You’ll be a great lawyer.”

I don’t remember the extent of our discussion. Nor do I remember exactly at what point
I arrived at this next insight. But I realized I didn’t have the facility most people
had to plan for the future. I was more into living the moment. My dad worried that
what I really meant was I didn’t want to work hard. I don’t think so. I was willing
to break my neck for something I liked, something that I was passionate about doing,
something I thought was fun …

“I think I want to act,” I said.

He was silent, but his response was in his eyes. “Act?”

“I really like it. I want to give it a try.”

Thank God my dad was an understanding man—or pretended to be.

D
ad took me to the Greyhound station. With what was left of my summer salary, I bought
a one-way ticket to New York City.

When I arrived, Mom offered me a choice between a new car or a trip to Sweden. Knowing
I could always get a car, I opted for a trip with a group called Experiment in International
Living.

Carrying a backpack and a small suitcase, I took an old steamship to Rotterdam and
a train to Stockholm, where I was placed with a Swedish family. The Roones had never
met an American until I walked through the door. I burst into their sedate family
like ice cream over pickles. It was pure culture clash. We looked at each other with
total bewilderment.

For my welcoming meal, they served me a bowl of curdled milk, a traditional dish called
filmjölk.
It smelled like old socks. When I spooned it to my mouth, a long, elasticlike string
of icky goop remained in the bowl. My stomach turned. It pleaded with me not to eat
it. The whole family watched as I put my spoon back down in the bowl. As reluctant
and uncomfortable as I was in rejecting their culture and hospitality, I couldn’t
bring myself to eat this dish. I feared what might happen if I did.