Chapter 2, Part 2

Duane's Depressed
by Larry McMurtry

(Page 3 of 4)

"Now Baroque came along in real old-timey times," she explained one morning, after an evening when they had both underestimated the force of some tequila they were drinking, with the stereo in their bedroom turned up high enough to drown out the sounds of Nellie screaming at T.C., her boyfriend of the moment.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Duane said. He didn't mind Karla auditing courses — in fact, he encouraged it — but he did mind having to audit her auditings, particularly when he had a hangover.

"Baroque, Duane — Baroque," Karla said. It always pleased her to learn a complicated new word that no one else in Thalia knew the meaning of.

"I heard you. What does it mean?" he asked.

"Well, it kinda means 'too much,' you know?" Karla said, thinking that was probably the simplest way to explain it to someone like Duane, who had never given ten seconds' thought to art of any kind, unless it was just pictures of cowboys loping around in the snow or something.

"Okay, too much," Duane said. He was slightly addicted to antihistamine nose sprays at the time — he quickly squirted some nose spray into his nose before Karla could stop him.

"'Too much' is like our family," he said. "Would it be fair to say our family is Baroque?"

"Duane, of course not, our family is perfectly normal," Karla said. "They might have a few too many hormones or something but otherwise they're perfectly normal."

"Nope, if 'Baroque' really means 'too much,' then our family is Baroque and I'm leaving," he informed her.

Ten days later he and Bobby Lee hammered the cabin together, on the edge of a rocky hill on some property Duane owned a few miles out of town. It was built in a place with no shade and lots of rattlesnakes, so many that none of the grand-kids were permitted anywhere near it, at least not in the warm months. Karla had only set foot in it twice, and the only satisfaction she got on either visit was to confiscate two or three containers of nose spray.

Rough and lonely as it was — or perhaps because it was rough and lonely — Duane loved the cabin and spent many weekends in it. The only regular visitor was Bobby Lee, and he only became a regular visitor after the trouble developed with his testicle, when he became so depressed and in need of company that Duane didn't have the heart to turn him out.

The existence of the cabin had always made Karla a little uneasy, though — it still did.

"I'd just like to know what you find to do out there all by yourself," she asked, several times.

"I don't do anything," Duane explained.

"Duane, that's worrisome to me," Karla said. "It's not normal for a healthy man to sit off on a hill and not do anything.

"You could at least get a telephone," she said later.

"I don't want a telephone," Duane said. "I've got a radio, though." He thought he might throw his wife that small crumb of normality, a quality she had come to put a great deal of stock in, now that she was plunging on through middle age.

"Big deal," Karla said. "What if I need you quick? What do I do?"

"Call the radio station and have them page me," he suggested.

"Duane, don't be perverse," Karla said, the perverse being a concept she had learned about in a psychology class she had audited.

"Now you made me drop my dictionary and lose my place" Ruth Popper complained, while Karla was snooping around the office seeing what she could find.

"I'm sorry, Ruth — what word were you looking up?" Karla said, picking up the dictionary.

"I was looking up 'Nepal,' " Ruth said. She always had a few good words like "Nepal" ready when busybodies asked her how she was coming along with her puzzles.

Karla opened the dictionary to the Ns but before she could find the word "Nepal" her sense of something not being quite right returned. It wasn't a full-scale panic attack, just a sense that a gear had slipped, somewhere in her life.

"If Duane went to the cabin what did he drive?" she asked. Earlene stopped typing — she looked blank.

"Why, his pickup, I guess," she said.

"No, his pickup is parked in the carport," Karla said. "Could he have taken one of the trucks?"

Earlene shook her head.

"The trucks are where the rigs are," she said.

"He didn't take a truck; he's walking it," Ruth said.

"Ruth, he couldn't be walking it," Karla said. "The cabin is six miles out of town and there's a norther blowing."

"Don't care — he's walking it," Ruth said, wishing everybody would leave her alone so she could start counting the letters in "Mississippi."

"Maybe he borrowed your car," Karla suggested to Earlene.

Earlene shook her head. Her car keys were right there by the ashtray on her desk. Nonetheless she got up and ran over to peek out the door, just to make absolutely sure her blue Toyota was still there. If there was one thing Earlene couldn't tolerate it was the thought of being afoot.

"He's walking it," Ruth said again. "If you don't believe me go down the road and you'll see."

"Oh lord, I guess he does want a divorce," Karla said, thinking out loud. Her first instinct had been right; the situation was now crystal clear.

Her remark proved to be an immediate showstopper. Ruth Popper forgot about Nepal and Mississippi. Earlene ceased typing. Her fingers were still poised above the keys, but she wasn't moving a muscle. Earlene had long had a crush on Duane — perhaps, at last, there was a chance. Wild hope sprang up in her heart.

"Oh well, I'm surprised it lasted this long," Ruth said. "You two never did have a thing in common."

"Nothing in common — what about those nine grandkids?" Karla asked. For a moment she felt like strangling Ruth Popper. Maybe after the murder she could plead temporary insanity and be put on probation like her son Jack.

Heartened as Earlene was by the news that Duane was finally divorcing Karla, she didn't believe for a minute that he was actually walking around in the street.

"We forgot about the toolshed," she said. "He's probably out there playing with wrenches or something. I'll go look."

"I'll go with you," Karla said. She was well aware that Earlene had a crush on Duane.

But the toolshed proved to be cold, oily, and empty. There were plenty of wrenches on the workbench, but Duane wasn't playing with any of them. Earlene had convinced herself that Duane — for the moment her boss, but soon, possibly, her beau — must be in the toolshed. Now that it was clear that he wasn't, she didn't know what to think. Only three cars had been parked at the office that day: her Toyota, Ruth Popper's Volkswagen Bug, and Karla's BMW. All three were still there. The unpleasant possibility that Ruth was right and that Duane actually was walking to his cabin had to be faced.

"I guess the divorce must have really got that man torn up," she said.

"I don't know, Earlene," Karla said. "People get divorced every day, I guess."

"I know it — I even got divorced," Earlene said. "And I'm Church of Christ, too."

"If you ask me, a simple divorce is no excuse for doing something crazy, like walking six miles in a norther," Karla said.

The thought that Duane, her favorite boss of all time, might be crazy was not a thought Earlene really wanted to entertain. Karla didn't want to entertain it either, but the fact was, Duane was gone and the cars weren't. What else were they to think?

The two women, who had rushed out to the toolshed eager and hopeful, convinced that they would find Duane in it, trudged back to the office depressed and uncertain, while the cold wind blew dust against their legs.

Copyright © 1999 by Larry McMurtry

About the Author

Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-eight novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received the Academy Award. He lives in Archer City, Texas.