The Dog of the South Read Online Free PDF Page A

tables we had to memorize but I loved it, the sheared beam. I had once tried to explain to Dupree how things fell apart from being pulled and compressed and twisted and bent and sheared but he wouldn’t listen. Whenever that kind of thing came up, he would always say— boast , the way those people do—that he had no head for figures and couldn’t do things with his hands, slyly suggesting the presence of finer qualities.

Two
    I N LAREDO I GOT a six-dollar motel room that had a lot of posted rules on the door and one rubber pillow on the bed and an oil-burning heater in the wall that had left many a salesman groggy. It was the kind of place I knew well. I always try to get a room in a cheap motel with no restaurant that is near a better motel where I can eat and drink. Norma never liked this practice. She was afraid we would be caught out in the better place and humiliated before some socialites we might have just met. The socialites would spot our room key, with a chunk of wood dangling from it like a carrot, or catch us in some gaffe, and stop talking to us. This Laredo room also had a tin shower stall and one paper bath mat.
    I went to a discount store and bought three quarts of transmission fluid and some food for the road and a Styrofoam ice chest and a frozen pie. I didn’t want the pie but I did want the carton it came in. Back in the shadows of my room I replaced the pie with the Colt Cobra and sealed the box with tape. The cylinder of the revolver made a bulge in the carton and I regretted that I had not brought a flat automatic. Then I put the innocent-looking carton at the bottom of the ice chest and covered it with little crescents of ice from the motel dispenser. This was against motel policy, the crescents being intended for solitary drinks in the room instead of bulk use.
    But I filled the chest anyway and on top of the ice I arranged cans of beer and packets of baloney and cheese in a festive display. The pie itself, lemon, I carried about in the room for a while, putting it down here and there. I couldn’t find a good place for it. Finally I took it outside and left it by the Dumpster for a passing rat, who would squeak with delight when he saw those white billows of meringue.
    The better motel was across the wide street. I went over and scouted the place out, the magazine rack and the lounge and the restaurant. No salad bar but that was all right. I noted too that a person would have to pass through the steaming nastiness of the kitchen in order to reach the toilet. The people who were running the motel seemed to be from some place like North Dakota instead of Texas, and they all seemed to be worried about something, distracted. I could hear carpentry work going on in the kitchen and occasional shouts.
    You can usually count on a pretty good chicken-fried steak in Texas, if not a chicken-fried chicken, but I didn’t like this setup. All afternoon I had been thinking about one of those steaks, with white gravy and a lot of black pepper, and now I was afraid these people from Fargo would bring me a prefabricated vealette pattie instead of fresh meat. I ordered roast beef and I told the waitress I wanted plenty of gristle and would like for the meat to be gray with an iridescent rainbow sheen. She was not in the mood for teasing, being preoccupied with some private distress like the others. She brought me a plate of fish sticks and the smallest portion of coleslaw I’ve ever seen. It was in a paper nut cup. I didn’t say anything because they have a rough job. Those waitresses are on their feet all day and they never get a raise and they never get a vacation until they quit. The menu was complete fiction. She was serving the fish sticks to everybody, and not a uniform count either.
    After supper I went into the darkened lounge. It was still “happy hour” and the place was packed with local people. I saw no socialites. I had trouble getting a stool at the bar because