Midnight Cowboy Read Free Page A

attention.
     
    This man was named Woodsy Niles. His beard was blue and his eyes were bright, and he showed Joe Buck how to ride a horse and how to make a slingshot, and he taught him how to chew tobacco and how to smoke cigarettes, and a special way of holding his peter so that he could piss an arc higher than his own head. Woodsy Niles was a happy kind of man who had his own pleasurable and snappy way of doing everything, even walking. Yes, he walked as if he believed no moment should pass without pleasure, and he took enjoyment even from such simple acts as moving across a room or opening the corral gates. He sang a lot of songs, too, this Woodsy Niles, sang them in a fine manly voice, accompanying himself on a guitar, and sometimes when they spent the night at his ranch, Joe would awaken as late as three A.M . to the songs that issued from the bedroom where Woodsy and Sally slept. The boy always supposed Woodsy had simply awakened in the night feeling far too strong and handsome and salty to squander himself on mere sleep, and was forced to let off some of the excess in a chorus or two of
The Last Roundup
. He did the “git alongs” in a way that made Sally giggle, and when he got to the part about the place in the sky where the strays are counted and branded, Joe was apt to get the blues, but in a strangely pleasurable way, and he had to restrain himself from joining the beautiful people in the bedroom. This was one of the first things Joe learned about lying with a woman in the night: You sing songs to her. It seemed a splendid way to do, and what’s more, the whole house got the good of it.
     
    But inevitably Sally had some falling out or other with this remarkable man—as sooner or later she did with all the others—and Joe was left to pine for him as for a goneaway father. But surely it was in this time of Woodsy Niles that Joe had begun to see himself as some sort of a cowboy.
     
    There was, following this love affair, a flurry of Sundays in which Sally Buck took the boy to church. What she liked best about these mornings was their promenade aspect, the opportunity afforded for daytime dress-up. Spending almost all of her daytimes in the shop, she had, for example, few opportunities to parade around in her lovely hats. And the boy set her off well; everyone said they looked like a mother and son team, an illusion that seemed to chop an entire generation of years from her age.
     
    But for Joe these visits to church were another matter altogether: After the regular services, the adults had coffee and rolls in the church basement while the youngsters attended Sunday school upstairs. It was at these sessions that Jesus replaced Woodsy Niles in Joe’s affections. He was taught by a young lady with warm, humorous, kindly eyes that Jesus loved him. There was always a painting on an easel in front of the class; it depicted Jesus walking with a boy child. You could see only the back of the boy’s head, but Joe felt that he himself was that child. Songs were sung, songs about how Jesus walked with him and talked with him and told him he was His own. And one day the young lady teacher told about the events of a certain terrible Friday in the life of this gentle, bearded man, and then she passed out small colored pictures that they were allowed to keep. Jesus was looking right at him, and his eyes said: “Let me tell you I have seen an awful lot of misery, and have suffered something fierce in my life, but it sure is a comfort to have a cowboy like you for a friend.” Something like that. Something that gave Joe a personal and strong feeling of connection with the suffering that was going on in those eyes, along with a desire to alleviate it in some way. Studying the picture, it: occurred to him that, clean-shaven, Jesus might have a blue face like Woodsy’s, and he began to wonder if there might be other similarities as well. For several nights he placed on his chest of drawers in front of the Jesus picture a plug