In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

65 “Hello Cuz!” the man slapping me on the back said cheerfully as he sat down next to me.“Man it’s good to see you,even under these circumstances.” It was Billy Rex. He was approaching fifty now, a successful banker in a small Hill Country town. His thin blond hair was turning gray. He still wore the thick eyeglasses he’d worn most of his life,and at five foot ten,Billy Rex was showing some middle-aged banker’s thickening. He was now a confident, gentle man, a far cry from the shy, bespectacled kid of that long ago summer. “Hello, Billy Rex!” I said as I shook his hand. “Good to see you too.” After a burst of greetings and family information swapping, we lapsed into silence as we sat in the funeral parlor with Son, each of us lost in our own memories of the man, but mostly of the boy. Other visitors came, paid their respects, and left, but we stayed on. At noon we heard church bells around town signaling the hour. Billy Rex and I got up from our chairs and walked outside into what had become a beautiful fall day; bright sunlight and only thin, wispy clouds scattered in a very blue sky. We both climbed into my truck and drove uphill toward Sul Ross, where Billy Rex and I both had graduated. We spent an hour eating lunch at a small café we had remembered from our college days. “Let’s drive around Alpine a little to see what’s changed,” Billy Rex suggested. “Good idea,” I said, and we headed back into Alpine proper. We visited some of our youthful haunts, and eventually found ourselves at the small house outside town my family had rented during that summer. “Goddamn! This is depressing,” I said as we arrived. It was apparent that the house had been unoccupied for many years, and it showed the detrimental effects of time and neglect.Weeds grew waist high outside of the house and erupted through broken boards on the porch. Large chunks of stucco had fallen off the sides of the house. All of the windows were broken or missing, as were the doors. There was a sag in the roof that left the middle several feet lower than the ends. The windmill I had loved so much was gone, as was the tank that had accompanied it.Two vehicles, an old Chevrolet automobile and an ancient Ford pickup, had been abandoned in the weeds.The windows were broken out of the rusting hulks and the tires were missing, the vehicles sitting on wheels sunken into the Chapter 17 11:00 AM, Friday, October 8, 2004, Alpine, West Texas 66 earth. A mean-looking cur dog barked at us threateningly from the weeds in front of the house. It was sad to see a place I remembered so fondly so run down. I did not get out of the truck. The incessantly barking dog discouraged any closer inspection, but from the street I could see into what had been the living room where I’d laid on the floor at my father’s feet listening to the radio. As I sat there remembering, I could almost hear the Fibber McGee and Molly show and my father’s laughter. My sister and I would lie on the floor while our parents sat listening to the voice on the radio, picturing vividly the unimaginable clutter of Fibber McGee’s closet or the majestic beauty of Gene Autry’s Flying A ranch. Nothing I have ever seen on TV matched the beauty of the scenes I imagined while listening to the radio. “Hey Cuz, we’d better get going now,” Billy Rex said, softly. I had been lost in thought, not sure how long I had sat staring into the house. “Yeah. You’re right,” I said. For the first time since receiving the call about Son’s death and starting on this trip, I was beginning to feel a real sense of loss. Billy Rex and I both were quiet as we drove back toward the funeral home to retrieve his car. I suddenly remembered driving home with my father at night after some trip to Fort Stockton. I had lain across the front seat with my head in my father’s lap as he drove us home. It had been dark in the car except for the glow from the instrument panel on the dash...

Share