Texasville Read Free

said.
    Duane took the gun out of the water. In the far corner of the vast yard the new white satellite dish was tilted skyward, its antenna pointed toward a spot somewhere over the equator. The dish was the most expensive one available in Dallas. Before they had even got it aligned properly Karla had gone to Dallas and returned with a Betamax, a VHS and four thousand dollars’ worth of movies she had purchased from a video store. So far they had only watched two of them: Coal Miner’s Daughter, which Karla and Nellie watched once or twice a week, and a sex movie called Hot Channels.
    Duane pointed out to her that it was possible to rent movies. They could even be rented from Sonny Crawford’s small convenience store, in Thalia.
    “I know that, Duane,” Karla said. “Just because I’m horny don’t mean I’m dumb. The ones I want to see are always checked out, though.”
    However, on her next visit to Dallas she considerately bought only eight hundred dollars’ worth of movies.
    Duane had been in the hot tub nearly half an hour and was beginning to feel a little bleached. He climbed out and dried himself and his pistol. He felt weary—very weary. Sometimes he would wake up in the night needing to relieve himself and would feel so tired by the time he stumbled into the bathroom that he would have to sit on the pot and nap for a few minutes before going back to bed. Getting rich had been tiring, but nothing like as tiring as going broke.
    The minute Duane climbed out, Shorty stopped rolling around on the deck and raced across the yard to park himself expectantly beside Duane’s pickup. He knew it was almost time for Duane to go to town, and he was ready to roll.

CHAPTER 2
    O N THE WAY TO TOWN DUANE GOT ON THE CB AND tried to check in with Ruth Popper, his outspoken secretary, who was actually no more outspoken than Karla, his wife, or Janine Wells, his girlfriend, or Minerva, his maid.
    While he was becoming rich, the women in his life had become outspoken. He had stopped being rich, but they had not stopped being outspoken. Any one of them would argue with a skillet, or with whatever was being cooked in the skillet, or with whoever came by—Duane himself, usually—to eat what was being cooked.
    He didn’t really want to talk to Ruth, but there was always the faint chance that oil prices had risen during the night, in which case somebody with a little credit left might want an oil well drilled.
    The CB crackled, but Ruth didn’t answer. Shorty watched the CB alertly. At first he had barked his characteristic piercing bark every time it crackled, but after Duane had whacked him with his work gloves several hundred times Shorty got the message and stopped barking at it, though he continued towatch it alertly in case whatever was in it popped out and attacked Duane.
    Just as the pickup swung onto the highway leading into Thalia, Ruth Popper jogged off the pavement and began to run up the dirt road. Ruth was a passionate jogger. She passed so close to the pickup that Duane could have leaned out and hit her in the head with a hammer—though only if he’d been quick. Despite her age, Ruth was speedy. She wore earphones and had a Walkman, a speedometer, and various other gadgets attached to her belt as she ran. She also carried an orange weight in each hand.
    She showed no sign of being aware that she had just passed within a yard of her boss and his dog. Feeling slightly foolish, Duane hung up the CB and watched her recede in the rearview mirror, her feet throwing up neat identical puffs of dust from the powdery road.
    Ruth Popper was the only person left in Thalia who had preserved a belief in exercise, now that the oil boom was over. It had taken the greatest bonanza in local memory to popularize exercise among people who had worked too hard all their lives to give it the least thought, but once it caught on it caught on big.
    Duane himself started jogging four miles a day, and devoted an evening or two a week to