“He sure has a pretty home.”
“You got to see it?”
“He invited us over after we had supper with him. No one can call him ordinary.”
“Cody doesn’t forgive. He harbors resentments. I stole his childhood, Satch, just like I did your mother’s.”
“I don’t think they see it that way,” I lied.
“I want you to listen to me about the oil people you’re fixing to involve yourself with. Give them the chance, they’ll tear you boys up. They might be from Texas, but they’re not our kind of people. They’ll wave every flag they can get their hands on and tell you they’re patriots. Don’t be taken in. They’re not political. They’re just downright mean.”
Chapter
8
SPRING CAME EARLY in 1946, the year that arguably marked the inception of the New American Empire, and with it came the development of our company, which Hershel insisted on naming the Dixie Belle Pipeline Company. We underbid two contractors in Louisiana, and by April we were cutting a right-of-way through wooded areas north of the Atchafalaya Basin. The night before the first weld was made on our first pipe joint, we celebrated by going to a Cajun dance hall in Opelousas.
It was hot and smoky inside the hall, ventilated by two huge window fans, the dance floor crowded, the walls scrolled with neon beer signs. Through a serving window, I could see three black men French-frying potatoes in chicken fat, their skin glistening with sweat. Hershel danced with his wife, Linda Gail, then asked Rosita to dance, and I was left alone at the table with Linda Gail. She had a small gap between her front teeth and the solid physique and round face of a farm girl; her auburn hair was full of curls that looked like springs, her eyes as serene and one-dimensional as a cloudless sky. Nonetheless, she was a pretty girl and, I suspected, more intelligent than she seemed at first glance. “Have you ever been to River Oaks?” she asked.
“In Houston?”
“That’s the only River Oaks I know of. Did you ever live there?”
“No, I grew up in the country, far west of there.”
“I can’t imagine anybody having that much money, can you?”
“I guess some people have it and some don’t.”
“Hershel thinks the world of you.”
“He’s pretty hard to beat himself,” I replied.
“He gets impressed too easily. That’s how people take advantage of him.”
A black man put a tray of French fries on the table. She picked up one and put it in her mouth and watched the black man walk away. “Do you think they wash their hands?”
I looked at her awkwardly.
She laughed. “Got you. You need to develop a sense of humor. Nobody in a place like this washes their hands. Oh, look, thank God, the band is taking a break. I thought my ears were going to start bleeding. You’d think they’d try to learn English, at least enough to sing a song. Will you order me a whiskey sour? I’m going to drop a nickel in the jukebox. Jesus, it’s hot. A person could make a fortune selling deodorant in this place.”
She walked away, pulling her blouse off her skin with the tips of her fingers and shaking it to cool herself. There were four men drinking beer at a table not far from the jukebox. Linda Gail positioned herself in front of the jukebox and read the song titles while she smoothed her dress against her hips with the heels of her hands. One of the men at the table got up and stood behind her. He wore a soiled dress shirt and a beat-up fedora and was unshaved and had a long face and narrow shoulders. Linda Gail propped one arm on top of the jukebox and leaned down, as though examining the selections more closely, the orange and green and red glow of the plastic casing marbling the tops of her breasts.
“This is quite a place,” Hershel said when he and Rosita returned to the table. “Where’s Linda Gail?”
I could see the tall man looking down at Linda Gail’s breasts, his three friends at the table enjoying the show. “I think she went to the ladies’ room,” I said.
“I guess we have to get up pretty early tomorrow,” Hershel said. “Y’all had enough for tonight?”
“Linda Gail said she wanted a whiskey sour.”
“She likes mixed drinks, all right. Growing up in the Assemblies of God has a way of doing that to you.”
I saw Linda Gail turn from the jukebox and head back toward us. “Let’s have one more round, then go,” I said.
I have always believed that women have a much more accurate sense about other women than we do. I think the same is true of men: We know things about our own kind that women do not. The things we know are not good, either. There are feral creatures among our gender, throwbacks to an earlier time, and as a man, you know this as soon as you are in their proximity. For that reason I have never subscribed to the notion that we all descend from the same tree. There are gatherers and there are hunters. The inclination of the latter is always in their eyes.
The waitress brought us another round. Linda Gail sipped her drink, her eyes roving around the dance hall. “Hershel promised to take me to Mexico City to see a bullfight,” she said. “But here we sit.”