McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (36 page)

 
          
 
But then what?

 
          
 
"Well, I hear they're selling the
Smithsonian," Bryan Ponder said. "You gonna get in on that?"

 
          
 
"I don't think so," I said,
listlessly.

 
          
 
That I had no urge to was in
itself
sort of terrible. I hadn't even pressed Hobart
Cawdrey to let me look at the Smithsonian warehouses that might still be for
sale. Even if I didn't want to buy 2,000 cannons I could still have gone and
looked at the weapons. I had fantasized about those warehouses for years, and
then had not really even tried to worm my way into one of them. Actually I felt
like the sight of a warehouse full of anything would have filled me with
despair.

 
          
 
"What's the matter, son?" Bryan
Ponder asked. "You look a little down."

 
          
 
"I guess I am," I said, offering no
excuse.

 
          
 
"Well, this town'll get you down, if you
ain't used to it," he said, in a rather kindly tone. "It's fine for
spies and newspapermen but it ain't everybody's cup of tea. Maybe you oughta
move to
Minnesota
."

 
          
 
"Why
Minnesota
?"
I asked, curious.

 
          
 
"I'm from
Minnesota
," he said.
"A good
climate but not many nests.
The
tropics is
where you go to find your best nests. Who's gonna buy my nests if you
don't?"

 
          
 
"Well, I guess you can't sell them to the
Smithsonian," I said. "They'd have to make reproductions of all of
them so they could sell the originals."

 
          
 
He
grinned
a big
gaunt grin. The notion of someone making reproductions of his thousands of
nests didn't startle him at all. I wondered vaguely if there were nest forgers,
just as there were hubcap forgers, but I didn't ask.

 
          
 
"Maybe you're in the wrong trade,"
he said. "Maybe the spying trade would suit you better. Traders make the
best spies, anyhow. In my younger days I was a trading fool. When I was in the
Balkans I even traded for a wife."

 
          
 
"What'd you trade?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Well, I traded a secret," he said.
"It was a fake secret, actually, but it got the job done."

 
          
 
"How did it turn out?"

 
          
 
He looked at me solemnly, in a way that made
me wish I could take the question back.

 
          
 
"It turned out fine till last year,"
he said. "Then she died. She put up with me and these nests for
thirty-four years. Then she died. I never knew a human with a lovelier voice.
Ain't that strange? I spent thirty-four years just
listening,
I liked her voice that much."

 
          
 
"What was her name?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Sophie," he said. "Don't you
know anybody that'd buy these nests? Now that Sophie's dead I've lost patience
with 'em."

 
          
 
"Well, there's Big John," I said.

 
          
 
Five minutes later I had him on the phone. He
wasn't in his antique bam in
Zanesville
, but they said I might catch him at a
certain chili parlor in
Cincinnati
, and I did. Naturally he was eager to buy the nests. His plan was to
spray them with some kind of liquid varnish and disperse them through a network
of roadside produce stands in the
midwest
. Travelers
who stopped to buy a few tomatoes could buy a varnished nest as a souvenir. Of
course that would only work for the small nests. The large nests would require
different merchandising skills, but I was sure Big John had them. He could sell
anything, and was willing to buy anything, too. The thought of having several
thousand nests excited him a lot. He said he would leave for
Washington
as soon as he finished his chili. He
believed in the instant strike, which is probably why he is such a successful
trader.

 
          
 
I envied him his excitement, his zest for the
buy. I had had the same zest until quite recently, but it seemed to have
utterly vanished. I walked back through the house with Bryan Ponder, feeling
absolutely zestless.

 
          
 
"I wonder what the floor will look like,
when he moves all these
nests?
" Bryan Ponder
said.

 
          
 
I think it had just occurred to him that he
really was going to lose all his nests. The sound of Big John's voice had
convinced him he was dealing with a serious man, who would soon come and take
his nests away.

 
          
 
It was probably a surprise. Many collectors
fantasize about selling their collections, without really expecting it to
happen. Sometimes they go so far as to set wheels in motion, only to balk at
some point in the transaction. They think of it as a fantasy, or a dream they
will soon wake up from, but often they don't come fully awake until some dealer
is carting their collection out the door. Then they get really upset. Sometimes
they stop the deal, much to the dealer's disgust. Sometimes—if the dealer is
adamant— they even buy their own collections back. Or else, unable to bear the
sight of their own space, they begin a new collection the next day.

 
          
 
It didn't seem likely that Bryan Ponder was
going to start picking up nests again, though. His surprise was mild. He walked
me out to my car, more bemused than anything.

 
          
 
"Think about
Minnesota
," he said, noticing that I had not
exactly perked up. "It's a wonderful place.
New, mostly.
I favor new places."

 
          
 
He glanced down the street, in the general
direction of
Washington
, scratching his ribs through his undershirt as he looked.

 
          
 
"Now you take
Washington
," he said. "It's old. People in
old places get picky. They run out of energy so they make do with taste, which
is not as good a thing. What you've got in

 
          
 
Washington
is a nineteenth-century town wishing it was
an eighteenth-century town. It's just a damn graveyard of styles. That's why I
live in Riverdale."

 
          
 
It seemed an odd speech, coming from a man who
lived across the street from the world's oldest laundromat. But then it would
have been odd to hear a normal speech from a man who claimed to have 11,000
nests.

 
          
 
"If Sophie had lived I would have kept
them," he said. "Sophie finally got to liking nests, but then the
cancer killed her off. I think I'll just sell them to that fellah. Find out
what the floor looks like."

 
          
 
He gave me a friendly wave as I drove away.

 
          
 
It was only about four in the afternoon when I
left Bryan Ponder's—nearly three hours before I was due at Jean Arber's for
dinner. Ordinarily I would have nosed around the Hyattsville-Riverdale area,
seeing what I could find in the local antique shops. But I wasn't in an
ordinary mood.

 
          
 
What I did instead was drive out to
Greenbelt
,
Maryland
, where I sat in the parking lot of a Safeway for two hours, watching
people come and go with their bags of groceries. I felt blank, neither
depressed nor elated, neither interested nor bored. Watching the humble
citizens of
Greenbelt
carry out their equally humble bags of
groceries was not an exciting way to pass the time, but it was sufficient. One
woman's sack burst as she was passing in front of my car and she looked so
distressed that I got out
to help
her. The sack
contained mostly Spam, plus a few cans of frozen orange juice and a stalk of
celery. I guarded the Spam while the woman went back to get another sack.

 
          
 
I knew that at some point I had to call Cindy
and tell her a lie, but no lie came immediately to mind and I kept putting it
off. That proved to be a mistake, because while I was sitting watching the
afternoon traffic back up on the street in front of me the car phone rang and
it was Cindy.

 
          
 
"I thought you were going to call in,”
she said. "Where are you?”

 
          
 
"I'm out in
Frederick
," I said, instinctively placing myself
about fifty miles from my actual location.

 
          
 
"Come on back," she said.
"Lilah's throwing a little party. She wants us."

 
          
 
"Uh-oh,” I said. "I don't know if I
can make it.”

 
          
 
There was a moment of silence. It was not a
pleased silence, either.

 
          
 
"I told her we'd come," Cindy said,
as if that fact rendered the matter closed.

 
          
 
"I thought you were dependable," she
added. "What are you doing in
Maryland
, anyway?"

 
          
 
"I'm waiting to see a man about a
gun," I said.

 
          
 
"Are you kidding me?" she said.
"You're going to screw up this party because of a gun?"

 
          
 
"I didn't know there was going to be a
party," I pointed out.

 
          
 
"You would have if you'd called in."

 
          
 
"I called in several times but the line
was always busy," I said. It wasn't true, but it was plausible.

 
          
 
Cindy was silent again. She was not
particularly contentious—argument for argument's sake didn't really interest
her. Her view of life was grounded in certain simple verities, the main one
being that she should get whatever she wanted. It was not so much a facet of
selfishness as of extreme good health. To be denied might mean being
unhappy,
and she was too healthy to allow herself to be
unhappy.

 
          
 
Unfortunately she had caught me in a rare
mood. I wasn't particularly looking forward to having dinner with Jean Arber
and her daughters, but neither did I want to go to a party at Lilah Landry's. I
felt like I might just sit in the Safeway parking lot for several days,
watching people carry out bags of groceries. I had settled in nicely to that
life, and I wasn't ready to leave it.

 
          
 
Consequently, I met silence with silence.
Cindy didn't say anything and neither did I.

 
          
 
I didn't expect that to last long, and it
didn't.

 
          
 
"Aren't you going to say anything?"
she asked.

 
          
 
"I already said it," I said. "I
really have to see this man about the gun. It's a $20,000 gun. I can't get him
on the phone, either. He's on his way here from
Pennsylvania
."

 
          
 
It was not bad, for a spur-of-the-moment lie.
After all, I did have a fine gun in the car. The right collector might pay me
$20,000 for it. It meant I had something to show when I finally went back to
face the music.

 
          
 
"I can't believe you're doing this,"
Cindy said. "I told Lilah we'd come to the party."

 
          
 
"Yeah, but you didn't know I had a
previous engagement," I said. "And I didn't know about the party.
Things don't always mesh."

 
          
 
"They do in my life," she said.

 
          
 
"Look," I said. "Just go on to
the party. I'll get there when I can."

 
          
 
"No way," Cindy said. "I can't
show up without you."

 
          
 
"Why not?"

 
          
 
"People are getting interested in
you," she said. "You're being talked about. Lilah just asked me to
get you. She's not gonna want me showing up by myself."

 
          
 
"That's pretty insulting," I said.
"I don't think we should go at all, in that case. Why go to a party where
you're not wanted?"

 
          
 
"But I am wanted, if I bring you,"
she said.

 
          
 
"Well," I said, "I think you're
subtracting yourself. If you're not wanted unless you're with me, then you're
not wanted."

 
          
 
"I hate you," she said suddenly.
"You just got here last week and you don't understand anything. Just shut
up and come on back. You don't have to buy a gun.

 
          
 
"I don't appreciate this," she went
on, with a quiver in her voice. "I've done a lot for you. If it wasn't for
me people wouldn't even be interested in you."

 
          
 
"I don't think they're very
interested," I said. "I think I'm just a new face."

 
          
 
There was another silence. During my life with
Coffee I had become something of a connoisseur of silences. During the latter, Coffee
was simply more or less absent. In fact, her genius was for the absent silence.
Hers could go on for days.

 
          
 
Cindy's present silence seemed to have elided
from angry to hurt. It might have been strategy. Women can usually figure out
when tears will get them more than blows.

 
          
 
"I didn't think you'd do this to
me," she said, with a kind of dying fall in her voice. "I thought you
were nice," she added.

 
          
 
"I guess I'm not," I said. It was
all I could think of to say.

 
          
 
"I'm not going without you," she
said. "I'm going home. You just better come."

 
          
 
Then she hung up.

 
          
 
I immediately called back, but the line was
busy.

 
          
 
This was an unfortunate turn of events. Cindy
had adopted, instinctively, the smart tactic of making me feel guilty. I had no
doubt that she would do exactly what she said. She would go home and wait,
expecting that guilt would bring me back in plenty of time for the party.

 
          
 
However, after sitting for a while, I found
that I wasn't feeling guilty. The parking lot of a Safeway in
Greenbelt
,
Maryland
, is in some ways a remote place. It was not literally a desert, but
sitting in it I felt some of the remoteness that I might have felt had I been
in a desert.
Greenbelt
seemed to be a kind of enclave for people who were not quite right. None
of the people who were moping around in the parking lot were monsters in any
way—in fact, they seemed rather pleasant—but on the other hand they weren't
quite like people in other places, either. A great many of them were stooped,
whether with the weight of cares or because of arthritic conditions I don't
know. Many were smiling, and yet they didn't look like the sort of people who
had much to smile about. They didn't seem to be smiling at anyone, or for any
reason, unless they were secretly delighted to be carrying home shopping bags
filled with Spam or Spaghetti-Os or other treats. I don't think that was the
case, though. I think they were just smiling out into the universe, in a rather
childlike fashion.

 
          
 
In fact, the longer I watched them shuffle out
of the Safeway and push their grocery carts slowly off to their nondescript
little cars, the more it seemed that the parking lot in
Greenbelt
had developed its own indigenous life
forms. You wouldn't have seen a single person who looked like them in the parking
lot of a Safeway in southwest
Houston
—to give only one example.

 
          
 
The effect of watching them for an hour or so
was to make me feel extremely remote from
Georgetown
, Cindy, and all social obligations of a
normal type. The people moving around my car all seemed to be slightly bent,
slightly handicapped, slightly gaga, or just depressing to look at. As dusk
fell I began to feel that I had wandered into a garden of grotesques. They were
not aggressive grotesques—they all looked rather soft, rather helpless. I saw
four men get off a bus and start across the parking lot and all four of them
walked oddly. Instead of pointing forward their legs pointed at angles to one
another.

 
          
 
Also, unfortunately, I notice clothes. All the
hideous synthetics worn by the people in the Department of Transportation had
depressed me that morning, and now the clothes of the people in the parking lot
in
Greenbelt
were depressing me just as much. They
looked like remnants that had been handed down through generations of bottom-grade
civil servants. Overall, they reminded me of what people wear who v/ork in the
charity stores I used to work in: Goodwill, Salvation Army, St. Vincent de
Paul,
Disabled
Vets.

 
          
 
The longer I sat the more convinced I became
that there must be some connection between the customers of this particular
Safeway and the thrift stores of the D.C. area. Perhaps
Greenbelt
was a service town for all the thrifts,
thoughtfully established by someone for just that purpose.

 
          
 
It was a snobbish thought, as I was well
aware. But no one can be a successful scout without being a visual snob. The
ability to spot beauty even in bad light is the first essential— perhaps the
only essential. When I had first come to the parking lot the people had sort of
matched my mood. I felt I must be slightly off center, for living the life I
did—being surrounded by people who were slightly off center had been a kind of
comfort. But the comfort was only temporary. I might be off center, but the
people in the parking lot now were way off on the edge somewhere, in a time
zone of their own. I might be adrift, but I didn't want to drift any farther in
their direction.